season render it most necessary. In the long winter months, his supply of food is often scanty, and fuel is, perhaps, also wanting, to make his hearth cheerful, and keep out the piercing cold. But with spring come more certain and pleasant labours, longer and more genial days, soft winds, and warming sunshine; and then his wife and family, the dear partners of his privations, share with him a more liberal supply of the necessaries of life, and, stirred by the sweet influences of the season, bless with him the bountiful Author of Nature, who forgets not, but kindly regards, the humblest of His children. In the calm spring evenings, what delightful hours the cottager spends in his little garden! With a heart buoyant with enjoyment he delves the useful plot of ground, and, in joyful hope, commits to the earth his few simple plants and seeds. He is surrounded with officious little labourers, who strive to assist him, but haply only mar his work, and whose attention is divided between the business of the evening, and the violets and daisies that spring up in the turf-walk beneath their feet. He is not without a feeling-unuttered though it be-of the sweetness of spring, and the delights of the passing hour; for, as the shades of night fall darkly on the scene, he leans upon his spade, and lingers to breathe the odorous air, to hear the faint murmur of his wearied bees, now settling peaceably in their hive for the night, and the glad notes of birds dying melodiously away in the inner woods. Cowper, that most delightful of poets, has, with exquisite feeling and beauty of expression, thus alluded to the enjoyments of the poor at this season :— Even in the spring and play-time of the year, Here we have a picture, which we hope is not merely ideal. It must surely be a pleasure to all, to consider it as copied from Nature. It is customary, we know, to estimate at a small amount the sensibilities of the poor, and to paint poverty as a state of life unblest by any of the finer emotions. But, though it must be admitted that extreme po verty too frequently demoralises and hardens the character, by fostering a sullen discontent, and giving rise to a spirit of gloomy desperation, how often do we find, even among the poorest classes, a strong, though uncultivated, sentiment of natural beauty-a keen sense of rural enjoyment, along with all the unsophisticated feelings of our nature! God hath not so partially distributed happiness, as to exclude the meanest of his children from the joys peculiar to this animating season. He has planted in the bosoms of them all the germ of that love of Nature, which, in all countries and climes, has been so productive of enjoyment, and which lies at the foundation of all the Imaginative Arts. There is often as much true vernal joy felt in the village mead, as in the luxuriant lawns of the opulent. O let us bless the great Creator, who has scattered so much beauty and delightful variety over His works, and has given to all the power of enjoying them; who has put so much happiness within the reach of poverty itself; and has decked forth a world, that even sin is not allowed wholly to mar or destroy!-Duncan's Sacred Philosophy of the Sea sons. TOO GREAT REGULARITY AND NICETY.-Johnson. We are taught by Celsus that health is best preserved by avoiding settled habits of life, and deviating sometimes into slight aberrations from the laws of medicine; by varying the proportions of food and exercise, interrupting the successions of rest and labour, and mingling hardships with indulgence. The body, long accustomed to stated quantities and uniform periods, is disordered by the smallest irregularity; and since we cannot adjust every day by the balance or barometer, it is fit sometimes to depart from rigid accuracy, that we may be able to comply with necessary affairs, or strong inclinations. He that too long observes nice punctualities, condemns himself to voluntary imbecility, and will not long escape the miseries of disease. The same laxity of regimen is equally necessary to intellectual health, and to a perpetual susceptibility of occasional pleasure. Long confinement to the same company, which perhaps similitude of taste brought first together, quickly contracts his faculties, and makes a thousand things offensive that are in themselves indifferent; a man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratifications of mankind. In things which are not immediately subject to religious or moral consideration, it is dangerous to be too long or too rigidly in the right. Sensibility may, by an incessant attention to elegance and propriety, be quickened to a tenderness inconsistent with the condition of humanity, irritable by the smallest asperity, and vulnerable by the gentlest touch. He that pleases himself too much with minute exactness, and submits to endure nothing in accommodations, attendance, or address, below the point of perfection, will, whenever he enters the crowd of life, be harassed with innumerable distresses, from which those who have not in the same manner increased their sensations find no disturbance. His exotic softness will shrink at the coarseness of vulgar felicity, like a plant transplanted to northern nurseries, from the dews and sunshine of the tropical regions. There will always be a wide interval between practical and ideal excellence; and therefore, if we allow not ourselves to be satisfied while we can perceive any error or defect, we must refer our hopes of ease to some other period of existence. It is well known, that, exposed to a microscope, the smoothest polish of the most solid bodies discovers cavities and prominences; and that the softest bloom of roseate virginity repels the eye with excrescences and discolorations. The perceptions as well as the senses may be improved to our own disquiet, and we may, by diligent cultivation of the powers of dislike, raise in time an artificial fastidiousness, which shall fill the imagination with phantoms of turpitude, show us the naked skeleton of every delight, and present us only with the pains of pleasure, and the deformities of beauty. # CHARACTER OF LORD FALKLAND.*-Lord Clarendon. In this unhappy battle was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious parts of learning and * Slain at the battle of Newbury, in 1643. knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity. Before this parliament, his condition of life was so happy, that it was hardly capable of improvement. Before he came to be twenty years of age, he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gift of a grandfather, without passing through his father or mother. His education for some years had been in Ireland, where his father was lord deputy; so that, when he returned into England to the possession of his fortune, he was unentangled with any acquaintance or friends, which usually grow up by the custom of conversation; and therefore was to make a pure election of his company, which he chose by other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility of that time. And it cannot be denied, though he admitted some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of their natures, and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship for the most part was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity; and such men had a title to his bosom. He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts, in any man, and, if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were neces sary to that end. And therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and accurately read all the Greek his torians. M In this time, his house being within little more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university, who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in any thing, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation. He was superior to all those passions and affections which attend vulgar minds, and was guilty of no other ambition than of knowledge, and to be reputed a lover of all good men; and that made him too much a contemner of those arts, which must be indulged in the transactions of human affairs. In the last short parliament he was a burgess in the House of Commons; and from the debates, which were there managed with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, he contracted such a reverence to parliaments, that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom, or that the kingdom could be tolerably happy in the intermission of them. The great opinion he had of the uprightness and integrity of those persons who appeared most active, especially of Mr Hampden, kept him longer from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom; and though he differed from them commonly in conclusion, he believed long their purposes were honest. When he grew better informed what was law, and discerned in them a desire to control that law by a vote of one or both houses, no man more opposed those attempts, and gave the adverse party more trouble by reason and argumentation, insomuch as he was, by degrees, looked upon as an advocate for the court, to which he contributed so little, that he declined those addresses and even those invitations which he was obliged almost by civility to entertain; and he was so jealous of the least imagination that he should incline to preferment, that he affected even a |