death, being in the company of his disciples, began to rub his leg, which had been galled by the chain, and mentioned the pleasurable sensation in the released member. The Greek prison

represents the world; the philosopher, the Christian; the fetters, the calamities of life. When one of these is loosened, the soul experiences a feeling of delight. It is the leg of Socrates unchained. The iron enters into the soul, and afterwards the wound is healed. St. Paul tells the Corinthians, that when he came to Macedonia his flesh had no rest; without, were fightings; within, were fears; but God comforted him by "the coming of Titus." So it is ever.

The future of a man is his recompence; something is promised which he desired; or something is withdrawn of which he complained. Hope is the compendium of compensation. The Eskino, who numbers among his treasures a plank of a tree, cast by the ocean currents on his desolate shores, sees in the moon plains overshadowed by majestic forests; the Indian of the Oroonoko expects to find in the same luminary green and boundless savannas, where people are never stung by moschittoes. Thus the chain of compensation encircles the world.

MAY 28th.-Much amused with Fortune's Wanderings in China, the book for a wet day in the country. He has something to say, and says it. Gutzlaff had complained of the ill-behaviour of the Chinese in their temples; the official persons taking no interest in the religious ceremony, but staring at the European strangers. Fortune doubts the general truth of the story, and recommends us to make a corresponding experiment in England. Let me sketch a scene. While the village choir is scraping into tune, the bassoon grumbles, and the flute breathes its first scream, let the church-doors open, and display, leisurely pacing up the chancel, and under the affrighted eyes of the clerk, a small-footed lady, with eyes to match, from Pekin; or a mandarin, a peacock-feather mounted in his hat, wearing a purple spencer embroidered with gold, a rosary of stones and coral round his neck, and a long tail, exquisitely braided, dangling down his shoulders. Imagine the apparition to seat himself in the pew of the squire; and then, by way of refreshment, to draw from the embroidered purse, always suspended at the girdle, a snuff-bottle of porcelain or coloured glass, and lay a small portion of fragrant dust in the left hand, at the lower joint of the thumb. After these preliminaries, suppose him, with that

inward sense of merit, which may be recognised even in our parochial snuff-takers, to lift the pinch to his nose. Where have been the eyes of the congregation during these mystic ceremonies? I shall not presume to conjecture.

In truth, appearances are not always to be trusted. A recent traveller in Canada was on a hunting-excursion with a party of Indians; before retiring to sleep, all knelt in prayer, rosary in hand. But the dogs, which, to increase their fierceness, had been kept fasting, came prowling into the cabin; and one happened to touch the heel of the Indian whose look was the devoutest and most self-absorbed. He immediately turned round to eject the intruder; and showering on him a volley of French imprecations, finally drove him out with circumstances of peculiar indignity. Having accomplished this feat, he took a long pull at his pipe, and resumed his prayers.

JUNE 1st.-One seldom reads Fontenelle in these swarming book-days; but what a charm there is in his works? His scientific portraits are so simple and life-like; and then how tasteful the frames-never gaudy, but setting off the complexion. Voltaire said that the ignorant understood, and the learned admired him. No

French author has introduced more elegant turns of speech, or embellished a narrative with gracefuller images. His Eloges are models in their way. Speaking of the long illness of Malebranche, he calls him a calm spectator of his own death. The sketch of Leibnitz contains two or three choice touches. He says that to appreciate the extent of the philosopher's genius, we must decompose his character," and survey it in its elements. In this Eloge has been discovered the original of a very beautiful image of modern geology-"Des coquillages petrifiés dans les terres, des pierres où se trouvent des empreints de poissons, ou de plantes, et même de poissons et de plantes, qui ne sont point du pays—médailles incontestables du Déluge." I met with an early theft of the metaphor in a letter from Henry Baker, the naturalist, to Dr. Doddridge: "And as ancient coins and medals struck by mighty princes, in remembrance of their exploits, are highly valued as evidences of such facts, no less ought these fossil marine bodies to be considered as medals of the Almighty, fully proving the desolation he has formerly brought upon the earth.”

But, with all his graces, Fontenelle was a Frenchman. He often flutters into epigram; and, with the ingenuity of our own Cowley,

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shares his sparkling conceits and inverted fancies; and, like him, he softened the ruggedest tempers. He won the kind looks of Warburton, who admired his prose comedies, which the author intended for a posthumous appearance. But, as he pleasantly observes, his length of life-he almost completed a century-having quite exhausted his patience, he determined to wait no longer, and relieved his executors of the publication by undertaking it himself.

JUNE 3rd. Standing under this lime-tree, every bough utters its own sermon. The shadowy motion on the grass preaches. In the world nothing is still. The earth moves; small things and great obey the law; and this chequered turf, to which I am giving a fainter green with the pressure of my feet, goes round the sun as swiftly as the vast forests of America.

The elements are always changing. Air condensed is water; air rarefied is fire. Society has similar fluctuations. A merchant, all his speculations hardened into gold, swells up a lord; or, blown into air, disappears in smoke. Nothing but the Christian mind is unaffected by this circular motion, fluidity, and explosion. I recollect an illustration in a black folio of the seventeenth