thorough repentance. But, in respect to storming heaven, as it were, by the sudden appeals of those who, in a few short days are to expiate their crimes on a scaffold, and to deal with them so triumphantly, as is sometimes the case, seems to me signally unwise, both as respects the wicked and the good-all that such cases seem to justify is a silent, unobtrusive thankfulness for the rich manifestation of God's grace; and not such triumphant processions to the scaffold, as are sometimes witnessed, confounding, the tried saints with those who, almost in articulo mortis have been tried sinners!

This reminds me of a quaint, but very pertinent remark of Sir Walter Raleigh, who saith, 'there be some persons who think to snatch heaven in a moment, which the best can scarce attain unto even in the maintenance of very many years; and when they have glutted themselves with wordly delights, (or crimes of the darkest dye) would jump from Dives' fare, to Lazarus' crown-from the service of Satan, to the solace of a saint!'

Now, to such persons would I respond in the language of this same wise, but unfortunate man, who thus discourseth on the point in hand-"But be ye well assured, that God is not so penurious of friends, as to hold himself and his kingdom saleable for the refuse and reversion of their lives, who have sacrificed the principal part thereof to his enemies, and to their own brutish lusts-then ceasing to offend, only when the ability of offending is taken from them.'

In an article entitled 'The Dutiful Advice of a loving Son to his aged Father,' by the same interesting philosopher, there are some pertinent observations on my subject; which being so full of just thought, nervously expressed, are transferred to my Note Book, to be often read by me, and for my profit, withal, who am no longer a 'son,' but a somewhat 'aged father.'

'If you were now laid upon your departing bed,' (saith the son to the father) 'burthened with the heavy load of your former trespasses, and gored with the sting and prick of a festered conscience; if you felt the cramp of death wresting your heartstrings, and ready to make the rueful divorce be tween body and soul; if you lay panting for breath, and swimming in cold and pale sweat, wearied with struggling against your deadly pangs, oh what would you not give for an hour's repentance!-at what a rate would you value a day's contrition! Then worlds would be worthless in respect of a little respite-a short truce would seem more precious than the treasures of an empirenothing would be so much esteemed as a short time of truce, which now by days, and months, and years, is most lavishly mis-spent!'-Again, ‘it is a strange piece of art, and a very exorbitant course, when the ship is bound, the pilot well, the mariners strong, the gale favourable, and the sea calm, to lie idly in the road, during so seasonable weather: and when the ship leaketh, the pilot sick, the mariners faint, the storms boisterous, and the

seas a turmoil of outrageous surges, then to launch forth, hoist up sail, and set out for a long voyage into a far country!—And yet such is the skill of these evening repenters, who though in the soundness of their health, and perfect use of their reason, they cannot resolve to cut the cables, and weigh anchor that withholds them from God.'-'Nevertheless, they feed themselves with a strong persuasion, that when they are astonied, their wits distracted, their understanding dusked, and their bodies and souls racked and tormented with the throbs and gripes of a mortal sickness-then, forsooth, they begin to think of their weightiest matters, and become sudden saints, when they are scarce able to behave themselves like reasonable creatures.'-'No, no; if neither the canon, civil, nor common law will allow a man, perished in judgment, to make any testament of his temporal substance; how can he, who is animated with inward garboils of an unsettled conscience, distrained with the wringing fits of his expiring body, maimed in all his ability, and circled on every side, with many and strange incumbrances, be thought of due discretion to dispose of his chiefest jewel-his soul? and to despatch eternity, and all the treasures of heaven, in so short a spurt! No, no; they that will loiter in seed-time, and begin to sow when others reap; they that will riot out their health, and begin to cast their accounts, when they are scarce able to speak; they that will slumber out the day, and enter upon their journey when the light doth fail them, must blame

their own folly, if they die in debt, and be eternal beggars.'

The foregoing passages from Sir Walter Raleigh, seem to me most worthy of being printed in letters of gold, and to form a little vade mecum, to be suspended round the neck, close to the heart, of every son and daughter of Adam-that they may be reminded, constantly, how poor the dependence is of those who would flatter themselves that, at some remote day, they may take heaven by storm! And, I feel almost ashamed of my own previous remarks, when placed in such close connection with his,for Raleigh's thoughts, like the diamond, are brilliant in proportion to their solidity-other men's are made to shine in the lustre of language, in proportion as solidity fails them.

But, in conclusion, let me add what Quarles hath said of repentance.

6 'Tis to bewail the sins thou didst commit;

And not commit those sins thou hast bewail'd.
He that bewails and not forsakes them too,
Confesses rather what he means to do.'

In now parting with my subject, I would only say, that an attempt to take heaven by storm, is still an homage to the Most High, and is far better than that sullen despair which the following lines of Joanna Baillie would seem to inculcate :

'Priest! spare thy words-I add not to my sins
That of presumption, in pretending now
To offer up to heaven the forc'd repentance
Of some short moments, for a life of crimes.'

CHAPTER IV.

XIII. THE TRAVELLING ETYMOLOGIST. XIV. BENVENUTO CELLENI.-XV. PUBLIC CEMETERIES.-XVI. EVENTS HOW RELATED TO REMOTE CIRCUMSTANCES.

NOTE XIII.-THE TRAVELLING ETYMOLOGIST.

ONE hardly knows whether to be more amused than vexed, with the idle fancies and studied display of vain and curious learning, in which some college-bred gentlemen, of thin minds, love to indulge. When we permit our thoughts to dwell more on words, than on ideas; when such things as accident, quantity, etymology, nomenclature, and the like auxiliaries and mere ladders to science, are allowed to take the place of the very essence of knowledge, you may be quite sure that the individual so affected, though abounding in all the heaped-up accumulations of learning, has more of memory, than of judgment, is charged to overflowing with facts,-and is yet devoid of the powers of analysis, and of justly applying them; and that, with much voluble and plausible display of knowledge, he has still a very tiny mind, and but little of that philosophical practicalness which comes from the fountain of common sense,