that they could not easily loosen her grasp. Impressed by the remarkable energy of her will, they relaxed their efforts. To all their remonstrances she answered, If you bury him you shall bury me with him.' At last, by dint of reasoning on the necessity of the case, they obtained from her a promise, that, if he showed no signs of life before they again came round, she would make no further opposition to the removal.

"Having gained this respite, she hung the watch upon the bedpost, and renewed her efforts with redoubled zeal. She placed kegs of hot water about him, forced brandy between his teeth, breathed into his nostrils, and held hartshorn to his nose; but still the body lay motionless and cold. She looked anxiously at the watch: in five minutes the promised half-hour would expire, and those dreadful voices would be heard, passing through the street. Hopelessness came over her—she dropped the head she had been sustaining-her hand trembled violently -and the hartshorn she had been holding was spilled on the pallid face. Accidentally, the position of the head had become slightly tipped backward, and the powerful liquid flowed into his nostril. Instantly there was a short, quick gasp-a struggle-his eyes opened! and when the deathmen came again, they found him sitting up in the bed. He is still alive, and has enjoyed unusually good health."

The Desborough Family. By MRS. PONSONBY. In 3 vols. MRS. Ponsonby has already acquired a literary reputation, of which she may well be proud; the work before us will not lessen that reputation; it is a work of talent. The scenes lie in high life; titled personages form the leading characters in the book. Love scenes in aristocratic life abound in the work, and therefore in the circulating libraries "The Desborough Family" will, no doubt, be a popular production. The want of coherence in the story is the greatest defect in the work; incidents are lugged in, and conversations introduced, which have not the remotest connection with the main story. We mention this in the hope that Mrs. Ponsonby will not fall into the same error in future.

The Lady's Practical Arithmetician; or, Conversational Arithmetic. By MRS. AYERS.

This work is by the authoress of the "Young Christian's Companion." It is a book of great merit, and is well adapted for the use of schools. Were it sufficiently known it would command an extensive circulation; it certainly ought to be in the hands of every young lady who means to acquire a knowledge of arithmetic-a branch of study which, we regret to say, is too much neglected in ladies' schools.

AN ESSAY ON THE NATURAL ORIGIN OF CONVENTIONAL LAWS AND DISTINCTIONS.

BY MRS. LOUDON.

FORMING A SECOND PART TO THE ESSAY ON NATURAL RESPONSIBILITY, ADDRESSED TO THE LABOURING CLASSES.

CHAPTER I.

In the former part of this Essay I spoke of benevolent design as apparent in the nature and arrangement of the human faculties; showing you that those faculties and the laws which govern them are calculated to lead to the prevalence of moral order and consequent happiness; and that the moral disorder which exists proceeds, as directly as does physical disorder, from neglect or perversion of the laws of nature, all of which, the mental as well as the physical, bear evidence both of design and of the benevolent character of that design.

But you would ask me, perhaps, why, if God loves us all and wills our happiness, he did not make us all rich and prosperous? He did not, my friends, make any of us rich or prosperous in the common acceptation of the term-that is, in conventional wealth, set apart for our peculiar usc. How that state of things gradually grew out of the necessity of labouring the earth to obtain her fruits, I shall show you as we proceed. In a much more enlarged sense, however, the Designer and Author of the Universe has made us all rich.

He has given to us all the earth, the air, the water, the sunshine, the fruits, the herbs, the animals, the birds, the fishes, the fructifying changes of the scasons, and limbs to labour the bosom of the earth, and by that labour to increase and to appropriate her fruitfulness. He has given to us all the stupendous laws of outward nature, with their wonder-working powers; and he has given to us all a mental faculty which I have already described to you, and which enables us to perceive the connection between causes and their effects, by means of which faculty we can adapt those great wonder-working laws to our daily uses, and make them, as it were, our servants, our giant slaves! appropriating their strength as though it belonged to our own limbs; as you all know we do with respect to steam power, and the power of fire in boiling the water and generating the steam, and the power of the winds in propelling the sails of vessels or of windmills, and of water in turning August, 1845.-VOL. XLIII. NO. CLXXII.

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watermills, together with ten thousand other laws of nature which we can adapt, though we cannot change, and which we adapt the more securely believing they will not change.

He has given to us all natural and social ties, and he has given to us all the natural laws of our inward being, consisting of the moral and intellectual faculties and human sympathies and human instincts which I have already described to you, and by the right adaptation of which to those natural and social ties, we can cause those ties to become the sources of the highest order of felicity. Indeed, your own understandings must perceive, if you recall what was said in the former part of this Essay, that if you adapted those laws of mind to their proper purposes with the same faith and regularity that you adapt the powers of steam, or wind, or water to whatever you want them to do, that moral order and happiness would result as certainly as does the moving of the machine or the turning of the mill.

But to return to the enumeration of our sources of happiness or true riches. God has given to the face of nature beauty and magnificence, and to the mind of man a faculty which delights in the contemplation of such. He has given to the voice of nature sweet sounds; the note of the bird, the hum of the bee, the murmur of the wave, and to the ear of man susceptibility to pleasing sounds; while to the voice of man himself he has given all the elements of harmony, and to his mind faculties for arranging such into the expression of his emotions and sentiments, and of thus drawing from such arrangements of sounds enjoyment of a higher description than that derived from the perception of mere harmony. To the flower, the herb, the spice, he has given aromatic odours; to man a sense to which such are pleasing. To the fruit, the plant, and all that nourishes life, he has given various flavours; to man a sense to which such flavours and such varieties are agreeable.

The vigorous movements of the limbs for exercise, and even for necessary labour, within due bounds, give rise to pleasurable sensations, and are conducive to health; while the repose required after exercise, as well as sleep itself, become new sources of comfort and delight. But observe, that to enjoy all this, which, to people accustomed to live in a civilized country, whery every one is under the protection of the laws, seems to be scarcely more than the common order of nature, the highest cultivation is necessary, not only of the earth and of all physical nature, but also of our own moral and intellectual being. To enjoy even a small portion of those blessings there must have been a good deal of previous bodily labour bestowed on the earth and its fruits, and a very considerable share of socal order established. The actual state of some uncivilized tribes would throw great light on this subject, and prove not an unprofitable or uninteresting study for evenings on which your meetings were devoted to reading. Such reading

would show you that there are countries where, although the whole land is as yet unappropriated, the wretched, naked, scattered inhabitants are all in such a state of abject poverty, that they wander about scraping in the hollows of old trees for worms with which to allay the cravings of hunger.

You would, perhaps, ask why the whole land being, as I have said, unappropriated, there are no corn-fields to reap, no cattle to kill, no fruits to gather, no vegetables to collect? It is precisely because the whole of the land is unappropriated that there are no such resources. When everything belongs to every one, there cannot be anything to be possessed by any one: for this reason, that no one likes to take the trouble of cultivating and sowing a field when he knows that every one who chooses can take away the crop, and that he should not have one ear of wheat more than those who had been too lazy to work, unless he could also fight and scramble for it better than his neighbours. In like manner, no one will take the trouble to catch wild cattle, and make fences and sheds to preserve them ready for his use in a country where everybody else could take them from him, and that he should be constantly obliged to risk his life fighting in defence of the property he had thus endeavoured to appropriate; while, after all, greater numbers could always overpower himself and his family. Such is, at present, the actual state of things among such savages as, without the protection of laws, attempt to collect anything like comfort around their dwellings. By such unhappy people the yell of the approaching savage is nightly listened for; and when he arrives, the roof of the helpless family is fired, their cattle and their young women carried off, their men and their old women slaughtered.

But could not all the inhabitants of such a country, you will naturally ask, come to a mutual agreement that they should each of them cultivate some fields, make fences and sheds for cattle, build a cottage and plant a garden round it, for the comfort of themselves and their families; and that all would flock to the assistance and defence of any one from whom another should attempt to take away the property he had thus created and appropriated by the labour of his hands?

They certainly could and ought to do so; and such an agreement would constitute a law for the establishment and protection of private property, which is the first step towards civilization; and from this moment no one could take to himself anything he had not earned by his labour without being dishonest, and incurring the risk of losing his life by the hands of those whose rights he had invaded, and whose comfort he had endangered, by breaking the compact which had been entered into for the advantage and tranquillity of ALL. And now, under the shelter of this law, every one would soon see the advantage of cultivating a portion of

ground for himself, and his wife and children, and the face of the country would change from that of a desert to that of a garden. But some would be more industrious than others, and more frugal in the use of their crops; and those prudent people would find, when winter came on, that they had stores of provisions more than sufficient to feed their families, while the others, who were less industrious and more wasteful in their habits, would find that they had not enough to carry them through the winter. These latter would then be obliged to offer a part of their piece of land in exchange for food to those who had made the large stores. Those persons obtaining thus more land, would have the means of making still larger stores the next year; and those who thus lost a part of their land would be reduced to still scantier stores. Thus, differences of condition would commence, and, in time, some would have no land left, while others would have more than they could labour themselves. Those who, thus, had no land, would now be obliged to offer to do some of the extra work for those who had a double quantity, on condition that they would give them a share of food in return. Thus woule arise labouring on other people's land, or being what we call day labourers.

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Some would now propose the expedient of working on a part another man's land, which we call a farm, on the condition of giving the owner of the land a part of the produce, and keeping the rest as payment or wages for the labour of him who did the work; and thus would arise what we call rent, and the class we call farmers.

Those who had not any land, and who could not find land to hire, or work to do on the land of others, would now be obliged to endeavour to make themselves useful in some other way by helping those who had food to give them in exchange for their labour, to build a better sort of houses, or to make a better sort of furniture, or of clothing, &c. The arts of civilized life would thus begin to appear. And now something to perform the office of our money-that is to say, some token that one man owed another so much food, or that another owed him so much labour; in short, a circulating medium would become necessary. Those who were industrious and frugal would now begin to make stores of this circulating medium, and become what we call moneyed men.

Then those who had been idle, or extravagant, or unfortunate, and who had, therefore, neither money nor land, and who could not find, among those who had food or money to give in exchange for labour any necessary work to do, would be obliged to endeavour to invent something ornamental or agreeable, to tempt those who had thus become rich to give them food or money in exchange for this ornamental work, and thus would luxury commence. And now people would begin to perceive, that by buying materials and working them up by their labour into something which they could