of the oppressed were continually entering into the ears of the Most High. And when I knew that this man was once the teachable child that I had loved, the beautiful infant that I had gazed upon with delight, I said in my bitterness, "I have seen an end of all perfection;" and I laid my mouth in the dust.

Neatness.-DENNIE.

"Let thy garments be always white, and let thy head lack no ornament."

THOUGH much occupied in preaching, and noted, as some of my friends say, for a certain poetical heedlessness of character, yet, at least every Sunday, if not oftener, I copy the common custom, and invest my little person in clean array. As, from a variety of motives, and none of them, I hope, bad ones, I go with some degree of constancy to church, I choose to appear there decently and in order. However inattentive through the week, on that solemn day I brush with more than ordinary pains my best coat, am watchful of the purity of my linen, and adjust my cravat with an old bachelor's nicety.

While I was lately busied at my toilet in the work of personal decoration, it popped into my head that a sermon in praise of neatness would do good service, if not to the world at large, at least to many of my reading, writing and thinking brethren, who make their assiduous homage to mind a pretext for negligence of person.

It

Among the minor virtues, cleanliness ought to be conspicuously ranked; and in the common topics of praise we generally arrange some commendation of neatness. involves much. It supposes a love of order, and attention to the laws of custom, and a decent pride. My lord Bacon says, that a good person is a perpetual letter of recommendation. This idea may be extended. Of a well dressed man. it may be affirmed, that he has a sure passport through the realms of civility. In first interviews we can judge of no one except from appearances. He, therefore, whose exterior is agreeable, begins well in any society. Men and

women are disposed to augur favourably rather than otherwise of him who manifests, by the purity and propriety of his garb, a disposition to comply and to please. As in rhetoric a judicious exordium is of admirable use to render an audience docile, attentive and benevolent, so, at our introduction into good company, clean and modish apparel is at least á serviceable herald of our exertions, though an humble one.

As these are very obvious truths, and as literary men are generally vain, and sometimes proud, it is singular that one of the easiest modes of gratifying self-complacency should by them be, for the most part, neglected; and that this sort of carelessness is so adhesive to one tribe of writers, that the words poet and sloven are regarded as synonymous in the world's vocabulary..

This negligence in men of letters sometimes arises from their inordinate application to books and papers, and may be palliated, by a good-natured man, as the natural product of a mind too intensely engaged in sublime speculations, to attend to the blackness of a shoe or the whiteness of a ruffle. Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton might be forgiven by their candid contemporaries, though the first had composed his Essay with unwashen hands, and the second had investigated the laws of nature when he was clad in a soiled night-gown. But slovenliness is often affected by authors, or rather pretenders to authorship, and must then be considered as highly culpable; as an outrage of decorum; as a defiance to the world; as a pitiful scheme to attract notice, by means which are equally in the power of the drayman and the chimney sweeper. I know a poet of this description, who anticipates renown no less from a dirty shirt than from an elegant couplet, and imagines that, when his appearance is the most sordid, the world must conclude, of course, that his mind is splendid and fair. In his opinion "marvellous foul linen" is a token of wit, and inky fingers indicate humour; he avers that a slouched hat is demonstrative of a well stored brain, and that genius always trudges about in unbuckled shoes. He looks for invention in rumpled ruffles, and finds highsounding poetry among the folds of a loose stocking:

Slovenliness, so far from being commendable in an author, is more inexcusable in men of letters than in many others, the nature of whose employment compels them to be conversant with objects sordid and impure. A smith from his forge, or a husbandman from his field, is obliged sometimes to appear stained with the smut of the one or the dust of the other. A writer, on the contrary, sitting

in an easy chair at a polished desk, and leaning on white paper, or examining the pages of a book, is by no means obliged to be soiled by his labours. I see no reason why an author should not be a gentleman; or at least as clean and neat as a Quaker. Far from thinking that filthy dress marks a liberal mind, I should suspect the good sense and talents of him, who affected to wear a tattered coat as the badge of his profession. Should I see a reputed genius totally regardless of his person, I should immediately doubt the delicacy of his taste and the accuracy of his judgment. I should conclude there was some obliquity in his mind-a dull sense of decorum, and a disregard of order. I should fancy that he consorted with low society; and, instead of claiming the privilege of genius to knock and be admitted at palaces, that he chose to sneak in at the 'back door of hovels, and wallow brutishly in the sty of the vulgar.

care.

The orientals are careful of their persons with much Their frequent ablutions and change of garments are noticed in every page of their history. My text is not the only precept of neatness, that can be quoted from the Bible. The wise men of the east supposed there was some analogy between the purity of the body and that of the mind; nor is this a vain imagination.

I cannot conclude this sermon better than by an extract from the works of Count Rumford, who, in few and strong words, has fortified my doctrine:

"With what care and attention do the feathered race wash themselves, and put their plumage in order! and how perfectly neat, clean, and elegant, do they ever appear! Among the beasts of the field, we find that those which are the most cleanly are generally the most gay and cheerful, or are distinguished by a certain air of tranquillity and contentment; and singing birds are always

remarkable for the neatness of their plumage. So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character. Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously attentive to cleanliness, who was a consummate villain."

Description of King's College Chapel.-SILLIMAN. THE chapel of King's College is allowed to be the most perfect and magnificent monument of Gothic architecture in the world. Its dimensions are-length, three hundred and sixteen feet; breadth, eighty-four feet; height of the top of the battlements, ninety feet; to the top of the pinnacles, one hundred and one feet; to the top of the corner towers, one hundred forty-six and a half feet. The inside dimensions are-length, two hundred and ninety-one feet; breadth, forty-five and a half feet; height, seventy-eight. It is all in one room, and the roof is arched with massy stone; the key stones of the arch weigh each a ton, and there is neither brace, beam, nor prop of any kind, o support the roof, all the stones of which are of enormous magnitude. Modern architects, and Sir Christopher Wren among the number, have beheld this roof with astonishment, and have despaired of imitating it. It is reported of Sir Christopher, that he used to say, he would engage to build such an arch, if any one would but show him where to place the first stone..

When you realize the magnitude of this room, the roof of which is sustained entirely by the walls, buttresses and towers, you will say that it is a wonderful monument of human skill and power. The interior is finished in the very finest style of Gothic architecture. The roof is fret

ted with many curious devices raised on the stones, and the walls are adorned with massy sculpture, where the figures appear as if growing to the solid structure of the building; for, while they project into the room on one side, they remain on the other joined by their natural connexion with the stones from which they were originally carved. The windows are superbly painted, and the sub

jects are principally from Scripture history. The panes of glass are separated only by very narrow frames, and the figures painted upon them often extend over a great many panes, without any regard to the divisions: it often happens, therefore, that the figures are as large as the life, and they are always so large as to be distinct at a considerable distance. The windows in Gothic structures are commonly covered, in a great measure, with fine paintings, the colours of which are extremely vivid and beautiful. You can easily conceive, therefore, that, on entering a Gothic church, the eye must be immediately arrested and engrossed by these splendid images: they are rendered very conspicuous by the partial transmission of the light, which they soften and diversify, without impairing it so much as to produce obscurity, while, at the same time, they give the interior of the building an unrivalled air of solemnity and grandeur.

When the spectator retires to one end of the chapel of which I am speaking, and casts his eyes along its beautiful pavements, tessellated with black and white marble, along its roof, impending with a mountain's weight, and along the stupendous columns which support the arch, surveying at the same time the gorgeous transparencies which veil the glass, he is involuntarily filled with awe and astonishment.