Our heads are sometimes in heaven, contemplating the nature of God, the blessedness of saints, the state of eternity; while our hearts are held captive below, in a conversation earthly, sensual, devilish. It is possible we may sometimes commend virtue convincingly, unanswerably; and yet our own hearts be nover affected by our own arguments; we may represent vice in her native dress of horror, and yet our hearts be not at all startled with their own menaces; we may study and acquaint ourselves with all the truths of religion; and yet all this out of curiosity, or hypocrisy, or ostentation; not out of the power of godliness, or the serious purpose of good living. All which is a sufficient proof that the consent of the head and of the heart are two different things. AIMING AT THE IMPOSSIBLE. THE writer last quoted, in alluding to man's attempts to do what Christ declares to be an impossibility, that is, to serve two masters, thus advises: Learn to be one man; that is, learn to live and act alike. For while we act from contrary principles, sometimes give, and sometimes, defraud; sometimes love, and sometimes betray; sometimes are devout, and sometimes careless of God; this is to be two men, which is a foolish aim, and always ends in loss of pains. "No," says wise Epictetus; "learn to be one man:" thou mayest be a good man, or thou mayest be a bad man, and that to the purpose; but it is impossible that thou shouldest be both. And here the philosopher had the happiness to fall in exactly with the notion of the text: "We cannot serve two masters." NOTES OF WARNING. IN former days, on a dangerous rock on the coast of Scotland, a deep-toned bell was so placed as to be rung by the motion of the waves. To this warning bell Mrs. Hemans alludes in the lines: When the tide's billowy swell Had reach'd its height, Then toll'd the Rock's lone bell Sternly at night. Far over cliff and surge Swept the deep sound, E'en so may we, that float Welcome each warning note, THE COMFORTER. THE word Paraclete, from the Greek word used by Saint John to designate the third person of the Trinity, sounds strangely to English ears. Found in dictionaries, and used occasionally by poets, as in those lines of Charles Wesley, O source of uncreated heat it has never taken root in the language. It VOL. XII.-34 sounds stiff, pedantic, un-English. On the contrary, as is well said by a writer in the Dublin University Magazine, How gracious and tender, how divine, yet how English, is that word Comforter as the equivalent of the Paraclete in the latter part of St. John's Gospel. Yet most of us, perhaps, are not aware who it was to whom our language owed that glorious translation. Five hundred years has this word been passing from lip to lip, wherever English is spoken. It has been ascending in hymns and prayers, alike in the music of cathedrals and in the simplicity of family worship, by the giant flood of the Mississippi, in the plains of Australia, and beneath the palms of India. Who first employed the word that has sunk into so many hearts, and risen from so many lips? A poor priest, with bare feet and russet mantle; but that priest was John Wiclif! HEAD WORK. In THE visible, from the nature of the case, takes precedence over the invisible. nothing is this more manifest than in the general appreciation of manual over intellectual toil. As has been well said: Literary labor is undervalued, chiefly because the tools wherewith it is done are invisible. If the brain made as much noise as a mill, or if thought-sowing followed hard after a breaking-up plow, the produce of the mind would at once assert a place in the prices current. If a writer could be so equipped with wheels and pinions as to entirely conceal the man within, like the automaton chess-player, and sentences were recorded by a wooden, instead of a living hand, the expression of thought would be at a premium, becauso the clock-work would seem to show that it cost something to make it. CHARITY. THERE is, at times, a remarkable point and pithiness in the moral teachings of the East: ern sages. A Persian thus relates an item in his own experience: Having in my youth notions of severe piety, I used to rise in the night to watch, pray, and read the Koran. One night, when I was engaged in these exercises, my father, a man of practical virtue, awoke while I was reading. "Behold," said I to him, "other children are lost in irreligious slumber, while I alone wake to praise God." "Son of my soul," said he, "it is better to sleep than to wake to remark the faults of your brethren." Never force yourself to admire anything when you are not in the humor; but never force yourself away from what you feel to be lovely in search of anything better, and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world will unfold themselves to you in still increasing fullness of passionate power, and your difficulty will be no more to seek or compose subjects, but only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious thoughts with which you will be haunted; thoughts which will of course be noble or original in proportion to your own depth of character and general power of mind; for it is not so much by the consideration you give to any single drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers of thought, that the character of composition will be determined. Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will make you enjoy coarse colors and affected forms. Habits of patient comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious as they will make your actions wise; and every increase of your noble enthusiasm in your living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon the works of your hands. THE SONG OF THE DOVE. OUR readers will agree with us that this is one of MOORE's most beautiful lyrics. Notice the exquisite charm of the rhythm throughout, and especially the unlooked-for third rhyme in the ante-penultimate verse of each stanza. The song was originally published in a Dublin newspaper, and has been strangely omitted in the standard edition of the poet's works: Sweet dove, that homeward winging And see in heaven ascending, True type of sinners' hopes and fears; When light celestial blending Draws glory out of tears. MOTHERS FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. Is there not truth beautifully expressed in this short sentence, from an unknown pen? It is much easier for a mother to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for the rest of the world. She fancies she is leading the children, when, after all, the children are leading her; and they keep her, indeed, where the river is the narrowest and the air the clearest; and the beckoning of a radiant hand is so plainly seen from the other side, that it is no wonder that she often lets go her clasp upon the little fingers she is holding, and goes over to her neighbors, and the children follow like lambs to the fold, for we think it ought somewhere to be written, "Where the mother is, there will the children be also." THE WORLD'S AGE. HERE is a spirited little lyric, by Charles Kingsley, which will be new to most of our readers: Who will say the world is dying? Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken; Still the race of hero spirits Pass the lamp from hand to hand; Age from age the words inherits "Wife, and Child, and Father-land." Still the youthful hunter gathers Fiery joy from wold and wood; He will dare as dared his fathers, Give him cause as good. While a slave bewails his fetters; While an orphan pleads in vain; While an infant lisps his letters, Heir of all the ages' gain; While a lip grows ripe for kissing; While a moan from man is wrung; Know, by every want and blessing, That the world is young. THE LIFE TO COME. It is said of Richard Watson, who seldom grew weary in the company of congenial spirits, that he was wont to retort upon those who suggested the lateness of the hour as a reason for separating, "Why talk about late and early; are we not immortal?" So Mr. Greyson, in one of his letters, invites his correspondent: To resume these edifying speculations when we shall be less likely to be injured by them and less Ifable to interruptions; say, ten thousand five hundred and forty-nine years hence, at your pleasant house in Paradise-street, in the Heavenly City, the metropolis of the better country, in full view of the immortal verdure and glorious sunlit summits of the everlasting hills. There will I wrangle with you with much delight for a thousand years! PATERNAL DUTY. A WRITER in the London Leisure Hour, makes the following remarks, which are as full of truth as they are of good common sense: The father who plunges into business so deeply that he has no leisure for domestic duties and pleasures, and whose only intercourse with his children consists in a brief word of authority, or a surly lamentation over their intolerable expensiveness, is equally to be pitied and to be blamed. What right has he to devote to other pursuits the time which God has allotted to his children? Nor is it an excuse to say that he cannot support his family in their present style of living without this effort. I ask, by what right can his family demand to live in a manner which requires him to neglect his most solemn and important duties? Nor is it an excuse to say that he wishes to leave them a competence. Is he under obligation to leave them that competence which he desires? Is it an advantage to be relieved from the necessity of labor? Besides, is money the only desirable bequest which a father can leave to his children? Surely well-cultivated intellects; hearts sensible to domestic affection, the love of parents, of brethren and sisters; a taste for home pleasures; habits of order, regularity, and industry; hatred of vice and vicious men, and a lively sensibility to the excellence of virtue, are as valuable a legacy as an inheritance of property, simple property, purchased by the loss of every habit which would render that property a blessing. The National Magazine. MAY, 1858. EDITORIAL NOTES AND GLEANINGS. THE GREAT AWAKENING, as it is aptly called, is the prominent theme of conversation, not only in religious circles, but among all classes of the community. It has been compared to the memorable revival in the days of Whitefield and the elder Edwards. So far as we can judge, the present outpouring of the Holy Spirit is even or more copious, and its effects are more powerful. It is not confined by denominational limits, nor bounded by localities. The means employed are widely diversified, and, in the main, entirely free from extravagance any objectionable feature. The weekly religious papers cannot find room to chronicle the progress of the revival, and the daily secular press is strangely occupied with accounts of prayer meetings, exhortations, and the narratives of sinners who have found the Saviour. The interest, at the present time, appears to be increasing in all directions. NATHANIEL W. TAYLOR, Professor of Didactic Theology in Yale College, died in New Haven on the tenth of March, in the seventy-second year of his age. In the earlier part of his ministerial life he was an exemplary and laborious pastor, and an eloquent and successful preacher. To the end of his days his preaching was noted for clearness of statement, logical accuracy, and pungent appeal. Thirty-six years ago he was appointed to the professorship which he held until the day of his death. He discharged its duties with ability, and with an enthusiasm that, while it charmed the large classes which successively filled his lecture room, was potent in molding their doctrinal views in accordance with his own. Not only with those who professed a religious creed differing from his, but with many who like himself took Calvin for a theological guide, he had, in the course of his life, many, and some rather bitter controversies. Certainly not upon these does he look back as the most interesting portion of his probationary state; and now that he has gone hence we choose rather to think of him as a disciple who, differed widely from ourselves on some minor points, but who loved our common Lord, and whom we hope to meet in a realm where polemical theology can have no place. Several weeks before the final summons came he laid aside all active labors, patiently waiting, as he said, for the end, and committing his spirit, like the first martyr, to the Lord Jesus; and thus he fell asleep. THE REV. DR. CROSWELL, another venerable servant of Christ, has been gathered to his fath ALL ALIKE.-We learn from one of our exchange papers, that a mass meeting of the citizens of Taylor County, Virginia, was held at Boothsville on the 8th of March, at which the following, among other resolutions, was passed unanimously: "That the five Christian Advocates, published in the cities of New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago, having become abolition sheets of the rankest character, we ask our commonwealth's attorneys and postmasters to examine them, and, if found to be of an unlawful character, to deal with them and their agents as the laws of our state direct." Sensible people those citizens of Taylor County! In this region it has been thought that "the five Christian Advocates" are not all in precisely the same category. One of them, at least, has endeavored to steer between Scylla and Charybdis, but the effort has been in vain. It shares the same fate as the most fearless and outspoken of them all. It is an "abolition sheet of the rankest character," say the citizens of Taylor County, in mass meeting assembled. So, tried by the standard of those who buy and sell men, women, and children, is every other periodical that ventures to whisper a word against the abomination, or to utter a syllable in favor of down-trodden and crushed humanity. The issue is fairly made. There is no neutral ground. The hair-splitting sophistry by which well-meaning men have argued for a difference between abolitionism and antislavery is utterly repudiated, laughed at, treated with contempt by our slaveholding fellowcitizens, in the Church and out of it. "If I were anti-slavery in sentiment," said an eminent Southern divine, "consistency would compel me to be an abolitionist in action." He that is not with us is against us is the slaveholder's motto. It is openly avowed, not in the far South only, but all along the " border," not by fire-eating politicians merely, but by the professing followers of Christ. Nor does the distinction between "mercenary" and sinful slaveholding, which has been used as an opiate to lull the conscience, meet with any more fa vor. It is boldly and arrogantly claimed that the institution itself is right, and he who seeks an apology for that which is in accordance with the will of God is not considered as a friend, any more than he who honestly aims at the extirpation of what he has been taught by the fathers of the Church to consider a great evil. We accept the dividing line. It is clearly drawn, and cannot be misunderstood. It leaves pro-slavery of every shade on the one side, and anti-slavery on the other. The mad-dog cry of "abolitionist" is no longer terrible. It will soon cease to be even offensive, and in the days of our children, if not in our own, like the epithet Methodist, at first given in derision, it will be a name, as the embodiment of a sentiment, in which to rejoice and be glad. MR. SEWARD'S SPEECH.-The speech of Senator Seward, of New York, delivered in the United States Senate on the 4th of March, is pronounced by the Northern press generally (excepting the pro-slavery allies of the administration) as a model one, and " worthy of the best statesmen of our best days." We make the following brief extract: THE SOUTH WILL NOT RESIST. Do you tell me that the slave states will not ac quiesce, but will agitate? Think first, whether the free states will acquiesce in a decision that shall not only be unjust, but fraudulent. True, they will not menace the republic. They have an easy and simple remedy, namely, to take the government out of unjust and unfaithful hands, and commit it to those which will be just and faithful. They are ready to do this now. They want only a little more harmony of purpose, and a little more completeness of organization. These will result only from the least addition to the pressure of slavery upon them. You are lending all that is necessary, and even more, in this very act. But will the slave states agitate? Why? Because they have lost at last a battle they could not win, unwisely provoked, fought with all the advantages of strategy and intervention, and on a field chosen by themselves. What would they gain? Can they compel Kansas to adopt slavery against her will? Would it be reasonable or just to do it if they could? Was negro servitude ever forced by the sword on any people that inherited the blood which circulates in our veins, and the sentiments which make us a free people? If they will agitate on such ground as this, then how, or when, by what concessions we can make, will they ever be satisfied? To what end would they agitate? It can now only be to divide the Union. Will they not need some fairer and more plausible excuse for a proposition so desperate? How would they improve their condition by drawing down a certain ruin upon themselves? Would they gain any new security for slavery? Would they not hazard securities that are invaluable? Sir, they who talk so idly, talk what they do not know themselves. No man, when cool, can promise what he will do when he shall become inflamed; no man inflamed can speak for his actions when time and necessity shall bring reflection. Much less can any one speak for states in such emergences. SEWING MACHINES.- Last month we gave our readers an epistle from an intelligent lady in the country, setting forth her own practical experience in the use of these wonderful instruments. The machine to which she referred was one of those known as The Grover and Baker improvements, and her eulogy seemed to us at the time rather highly colored. We have since had an opportunity to examine one for ourselves, and to test its value. Beautiful in its exterior appearance, the instrument was admired by the female portion of our household; and its internal arrangements, with its highly polished and delicate machinery, were a source of wonder and study for the boys. But it was not made for ornament, nor for a mere display of ingenuity. The grand question to be solved was, Will it work? Not hastily was that question settled. Patience, and practical instruction, in addition to the printed directions, were required. A needle or two broken in the attempt; thread suddenly snapped; the treddle perversely obstinate, because of the untutored foot, and other little discouragements were the result of the first experiments. But they have all been overcome. The instrument does its work, does all that its proprietors have promised, and its merry hum, now sounding in our ears, carries us back to the days of our grandmother, and brings her precious spinning-wheel before our mental vision. We make no invidious comparisons between this and other modifications of the sewing machine. All of them, we believe, are alike in the fundamental principle, patented some ten or eleven years ago by Elias Howe, of Massachusetts, and each has minor peculiarities and points of excellence. From our own personal experience we are enabled to attest the simplicity of the Grover and Baker machine, the ease with which its mode of operation may be learned, and the beauty and durability of the work performed by it. We have in preparation for our next number, an extended article on the general subject, to be illustrated by engravings designed to show the principles upon which these machines are constructed, and, so far as can be done by pen and pencil, to make our readers familiar with the modus operandi of one of the most important inventions of the age. - THE ORIGIN AND USE OF TOBACCO.-The Mohammedan legend on the subject is too long to repeat under its eastern garb. Suffice it that a viper was restored to health by the warmth of the Prophet's body. Immediately on convalescence the ungrateful reptile announced the intention of biting his preserver. The Prophet expostulated. An argument ensued, which ended in the viper's carrying out its original project. The Prophet sucked the venom from his wounded wrist and spat it forth. "From the drops sprang that wondrous weed, which has the bitterness of the serpent's tooth quelled by the sweet saliva of the Prophet." But whatever the origin of tobacco, no plant has exercised so much political influence. The Pope Urban VIII. excommunicated all those who took snuff in the churches. The Empress Elizabeth was less severe. She declared that the snuffboxes of those who made use of them in church should be confiscated to the use of the beadle. At Berne the use of tobacco was classified with adultery. In Transylvania the penalty was far greater; in 1639 entire confiscation of property was the sentence of those who should plant tobacco, while consumers were condemned to fines varying from three to two hundred florins. Amurath IV. hung persons found guilty of smoking, with their pipes through their noses and a tobacco pouch hanging from their necks. The Grand Duke of Muscovy forbade smoking and snuff-taking under the penalty of having the nose cut off; while Mohammed IV., son of the Sultan Ibrahim, in 1665, punished the practice with decapitation. It is related of Amurath that a smoking saphi once struck the monarch himself for smoking with him incognito on board a caique. Amurath informed the saphi that the royal decree referred equally to himself. "No," replied the saphi, "I fight for and would die for him. It does not apply to me." A few days subsequently Amurath sent for him, and making himself known, gave his fellow-offender a good appointment. But such penal regulations appear always to have been evaded. Those modern Amuraths, railway directors, says the London Athaneum, arrogate to themselves the right of inflicting a fine of forty shillings, and expulsion from their line, on any one guilty of the sublime act. But it is sweet to smoke under difficulties. Were the prohibition removed, smoking on railways would probably cease. We know of one young man who feigned madness to secure a carriage to himself. Another, on seeing a bishop alight at an intermediate station, immediately made for the compartment, and calling for a guard complained that the carriage was reeking of tobacco smoke. "To be sure, those clerical gentlemen do smoke terribly," answered the official. "Then don't accuse me of it hereafter," rejoined the youth with an arch smile. On one occasion a railway guard thrust his head into a carriage filled with devotees in the act of their devotions, and placing his hand on a cushion, observed, "There are two very good rules on this line, gentlemen. Smoking is strictly prohibited, and the company's servants are forbidden to accept gratuities." In our own day and country the war against the weed is carried on with equal earnestness, but without the least apparent success. "Don't imagine you can drop the use of tobacco by degrees," exclaims one of its enemies. The idea of using less and less, till the habit tapers down to nothing, is well nigh ridiculous. Use little as you please, and you nourish an appetite which never dies so long as fed with one morsel of aliment. The last indulgence with the quid or cigar seldom comes, and thousands testify to failure by this method, where one is successful. We do not pick out an eye, or cut off an arm, by a lingering process! Why should we be so unphilosophical as to bid a man drop his cups, or drop his tobacco, by a lingering process? This is inflicting needless agony! It brings to mind the lady who cut the tail of her lap-dog, piece after piece, day after day, supposing it would be less painful than a single excision. BUTTER AND CHEESE.-The value of these products is often underrated. A few facts will serve to correct this mistake. The amount of butter reported in the census of 1850 was over 315,000,000 pounds. This, at 20 cents per pound-the average wholesale price for some time past in New York-would bring over $63,000,000. The amount of cheese reported in the same census was over 100,000,000 pounds. This, at 10 cents per pound-also wholesale price in New York-would bring $10,000,000. The aggregate of both is $73,000,000. Now the value of slaughtered animals, put down in the census, is $109,000,000. So that the value of the butter and cheese is about two thirds as great as that of the slaughtered animals in the whole country. The cotton crop is stated in the same census to be over 800,000,000 pounds. This, at 15 cents per pound-the wholesale price quoted in New York not long since-would bring over $120,000,000. Thus the butter and cheese of the country is worth more than one half as much as the crop that is regarded as the staple of the entire South. These rough estimates are full of interest to all who make or eat butter or cheese. They should impress all with the importance of improving the quality of these articles of food. WATER IN THE DESERT.-Dr. Livingstone, the African traveler, thus describes an ingenious method by which the Africans obtain water in the desert: The women tie a bunch of grass to one end of a reed, about two feet long, and insert it in a hole, dug as deep as the arm will reach, then ram down the wet sand firmly around it. Applying the mouth to the free end of the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath, in which the water collects, and in a short time rises to the mouth. It will be perceived that this simple, but truly philosophical and effectual method, might have been applied in many cases, in different countries where water was greatly needed, to the saving of life. It seems wonderful that it should have been now first made known to the world, and that it ably for centuries. should have been habitually practiced in Africa, probIt seems worthy of being particularly noticed, that it may no longer be neglected from ignorance. It may be highly important to travelers on our Western deserts and prairies, in some Parts of which water is known to exist below the sur face. FALLACIES OF STATISTICS.-Archbishop Whately remarks upon the overrated importance of statistics: Increase of a thing is often confounded with our increased knowledge of it. When crimes or accidents are recorded in newspapers more than formerly, some people fancy that they happen more than formerly. But crimes, especially (be it observed) such as are the most remote from the experience of each individual, and therefore strike him as something strange, always doubt that a single murder in Great Britain has often furnish interesting articles of intelligence. I have no furnished matter of discourse to more than twenty times as many persons as any twenty such murders would in Turkey. Some foreign traveler in England is said to have remarked on the perceptible diminution in the number of crimes committed during the sitting of Parliament as a proof of our high reverence for that assembly; the fact being, as we all know, that the space occupied in the newspapers by the debates causes the records of many crimes to be omitted. Men are liable to form an over-estimate of the purity of morals in the country as compared with a town, or in a barren and thinly-peopled as compared it must always be expected that the absolute amount with a fertile and populous district. On a given area, of vice will be greater in a town than in a country, so also will be that of virtue; but the proportion of the two must be computed on quite different principles. loses many more patients than an ordinary practitioner; A physician of great skill and in high repute, probably but this proves nothing till we have ascertained the Mistakes comparative numbers of their patients. such as this (which are very frequent) remind one of the well-known riddle, "What is the reason that white sheep eat more than black ones ?" JUSTICE IN RUSSIA.-A poor nobleman had been carrying on a lawsuit for several years, when he received an intimation from the secretary of the tribunal that unless he paid over ten thousand roubles (two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars) to the president, the case would be decided against him. The unfortunate litigant, who could not raise so many pence, bethought him of applying to Count Benkendorff, the chief of the secret service, who he had been led to believe was personally anxious to make an example of some of the delinquents, and who was one of the four or five men holding office in the empire who were deemed incorruptible by the common rumor. The party referred to offered the Count to furnish him with an unquestionable proof of the venality of the president of the court of appeal; and for that purpose that he should be intrusted with the amount of the bribe demanded in notes privately marked. He undertook that these notes should be found on the president's person. The |