to be imposed upon a populous and enlightened parish at the arbitrary fiat of a patron, who would not hear of objection, or even of inquiry into his character and capacity; and yet the wrong in the imposition of a spiritual guide is still more flagrant, by the whole difference between the soul and the body, between time and eternity.

Can the clerical purchaser of a next presentation be always sure that he will not sigh for the death of the incumbent, because he sighs for his living? If not, religion, reason, and justice, seem equally to require that the temptation of saleable advowsons should be removed from his path, and that these spiritual rotten boroughs should be consigned to the tomb of their parliamentary brethren in schedule A.

AFFECTION-filial-an implanted instinct, exalted by a feeling of gratitude and a sense of duty.The Roman daughter, who nourished her imprisoned father, when condemned to be starved to death, from her own breast, has generally been adduced as the noblest recorded instance of filial affection; but the palm may almost be contested by an Irish son, if we may receive without suspicion the evidence of a fond and doting father-" Ah now, my darlint!" exclaimed the latter, when his boy threatened to enlist in the army-"would you be laving your poor ould father

that doats upon ye? You, the best and the most dutiful of all my children, and the only one that never struck me when I was down!"

AFFLICTION—A French writer, arguing, perhaps, from the analogy of the English language, wherein two negatives constitute an affirmative, observes that deux afflictions mises ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation, an experiment which few, we apprehend, will be anxious to try. Man has been termed the child of affliction, an affiliation of which the writer does not recognise the truth; but for the benefit of those who hold a contrary opinion, he ventures to plagiarise a few stanzas versified from a prose apologue of Dr. Sheridan

Affliction one day, as she hark'd to the roar
Of the stormy and struggling billow,

Drew a beautiful form on the sands of the shore,
With the branch of a weeping willow.

Jupiter, struck with the noble plan,

As he roam'd on the verge of the ocean,
Breathed on the figure, and calling it Man,
Endued it with life and motion.

A creature so glorious in mind and in frame,
So stamp'd with each parent's impression,
Among them a point of contention became,
Each claiming the right of possession.

"He is mine," said Affliction; "I gave him his birth,

I alone am his cause of creation"—

"The materials were furnished by me," answered Earth"I gave him," said Jove, "animation."

The gods all assembled in solemn divan,
After hearing each claimant's petition,
Pronounced a definitive verdict on man,

And thus settled his fate's disposition.

"Let Affliction possess her own child, till the woes

Of life cease to harass and goad it;

After death give his body to earth, whence it rose,
And his spirit to Jove, who bestowed it."

AGE-old-an infirmity which nobody knows. Nothing can exceed our early impatience to escape from youth to manhood, and appear older than we are, except our subsequent anxiety to obtain the reputation of being younger than we are. The first longing is natural, for Hope is before us, and it seems possible to anticipate that which we must soon reach ; but the second is a weakness, not less strange than general, for we cannot expect to recover that from which we are perpetually flying, or avoid that to which we are incessantly approaching. If by putting back our own date, we could arrest the great clock of time, there would be an intelligible motive for our conduct. Alas! the time-piece of old Chronos never stops.

Women, who imagine their influence to depend

upon their personal attractions, naturally wish to preserve their youth. It is in their power to do so; for she who captivates the heart and the understanding, never grows old: and as men are generally estimated by their moral and intellectual, rather than their baptismal recommendations; as a philosopher of fifty is preferred, by all those whose preference is worth having, to a fool of twenty, there is something very contemptible in a male horror of senility. So prevalent, however, is the feeling, that, with the exception of one individual, who has obtained an enviable immortality as "middle age HALLAM," we have no chronology for men and women at, or beyond the meridian of life. They are all "persons of a certain age,” which is the most uncertain one upon record. plimentary in everything, the French say of a woman thus circumstanced, that she is femme d'un age raisonnable, as if she had gained, in her reasoning faculties, what she had lost in personal charms; and this, doubtless, ought to be the process with us all. To our mind, as to a preserving greenhouse, should we transfer, in the winter of life, the attractions of our spring and summer.

Com

As variety is universally allowed to be pleasing, the diversity occasioned by the progress of age should, in itself, be a source of delight. Perpetual sunshine would soon be found more annoying than an alterna

tion of the seasons; so would a continuous youth be more irksome than the gradual approach of old age. Existence may be compared to a drum, which has only one single tone; but change of time gives it variety and cheerfulness enough.

The infirmity of falsifying our age is at least as old as Cicero, who, hearing one of his contemporaries attempting to make himself ten years younger than he really was, drily observed "Then at the time you and I were at school together, you were not born."

ALCHYMIST-The true possessor of the philosopher's stone is the miner, whose iron, copper, and tin are always convertible into the more precious metals. Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy, for it turns earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health. Most appropriate was the rebuke of Pope Leo X., who, when a visionary pretended to have discovered the philosopher's stone, and demanded a recompence, gave him an empty purse.

ALCORAN-In the life of Mahomet, prefixed to Reland's work, "De Religione Mohammedica," is the following passage, allusive to the peculiar tenets of the Moammarites, a famous sect among the Mahometans:-"Suppose," say they, "we should resolve all our faith into the sole text of the Alcoran, the diffi