OMNIANA. 1812.

THE FRENCH DECADE.

I HAVE nothing to say in defence of the French revolutionists, as far as they are personally concerned in this substitution of every tenth for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only a senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings had clustered; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood between France and the other members of Christendom; but it was dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanizing repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I hear Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, and members of the church of England, inveigh against this change as a blasphemous contempt of the fourth commandment, I pause, and before I can assent to the verdict of condemnation, I must prepare my mind to include in the same sentence, at least as far as theory goes, the names of several among the most revered reformers of

Christianity. Without referring to Luther, I will begin with Master Frith, a founder and martyr of the church of England, having witnessed his faith amid the flames in the year 1533. This meek and enlightened, no less than zealous and orthodox, divine, in his "Declaration of Baptism" thus expresses himself:

Our forefathers, which were in the beginning of the Church, did abrogate the sabbath, to the intent that men might have an example of Christian liberty. Howbeit, because it was necessary that a day should be reserved in which the people should come together to hear the word of God, they ordained instead of the Sabbath, which was Saturday, the next following which is Sunday. And although they might have kept the Saturday with the Jew as a thing indifferent, yet they did much better.

Some three years after the martyrdom of Frith, in 1536, being the 27th of Henry VIII. suffered Master Tindal in the same glorious cause, and this illustrious martyr and translator of the word of life, likewise, in his " Answer to Sir Thomas More," hath similarly resolved this point:

As for the Sabbath, we be lords of the Sabbath, and may yet change it into Monday, or any other day, as we see need; or we may make every tenth day holy day only, if we see cause why. Neither was there any cause to change it from the Saturday, save only to put a difference between us and the Jews; neither need we any holy day at all, if the people might be taught without it.

This great man believed that if Christian nations should ever become Christians indeed, there would every day be so many hours taken from the labour for the perishable body,

to the service of the souls and the understandings of mankind, both masters and servants, as to supersede the necessity of a particular day. At present our Sunday may be considered as so much Holy Land, rescued from the sea of oppression and vain luxury, and embanked against the fury of their billows.

RIDE AND TIE.

"ON a scheme of perfect retribution in the moral world"--observed Empeiristes, and paused to look at, and wipe his spectacles.

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Frogs," interposed Musaello, "must have been experimental philosophers, and experimental philosophers must all transmigrate into frogs."

"The scheme will not be yet perfect," added Gelon, " unless our friend Empeiristes, is specially privileged to become an elect frog twenty times successively, before he reascends into a galvanic philosopher."

"Well, well," replied Empeiristes, with a benignant smile, " I give my consent, if only our little Mary's fits do not recur.'

Little Mary was Gelon's only child, and the darling and god-daughter of Empeiristes. By the application of galvanic influence Empeiristes had removed a nervous affection of her right leg, accompanied with symptomatic epilepsy. The tear started in Gelon's eye, and

he pressed the hand of his friend, while Musaello, half suppressing, half indulging, a similar sense of shame, sportively exclaimed, “ Hang it, Gelon! somehow or other these philosopher fellows always have the better of us wits, in the long run!"

JEREMY TAYLOR.

THE writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor are a perpetual feast to me. His hospitable board groans under the weight and multitude of viands. Yet I seldom rise from the perusal of his works without repeating or recollecting the excellent observation of Minucius Felix. Fabulas et errores ab imperitis parentibus discimus; et quod est gravius, ipsis studiis et disciplinis elaboramus.

CRITICISM.

MANY of our modern criticisms on the works of our elder writers remind me of the connoisseur, who, taking up a small cabinet picture, railed most eloquently at the absurd caprice of the artist in painting a horse sprawling. "Excuse me, Sir," replied the owner of the piece," you hold it the wrong way it is a horse galloping."

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

OUR statesmen, who survey with jealous dread all plans for the education of the lower orders, may be thought to proceed on the system of antagonist muscles; and in the belief, that the closer a nation shuts its eyes, the wider it will open its hands. Or do they act on the principle, that the status belli is the natural relation between the people and the government, and that it is prudent to secure the result of the contest by gouging the adversary in the first instance? Alas! the policy of the maxim is on a level with its honesty. The Philistines had put out the eyes of Samson, and thus, as they thought, fitted him to drudge and grind

Among the slaves and asses, his comrades,
As good for nothing else, no better service :-

But his darkness added to his fury without diminishing his strength, and the very pillars of the temple of oppression

With horrible convulsion, to and fro,

He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them with hurst of thunder,

Upon the heads of all who sat beneath;

Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests,
Their choice nobility.

The error might be less unpardonable with a statesman of the continent;-but with En