ble moment, they involve consequences infinitely less || character? Well may we pity the ignorance or superimportant to individuals, and to society at large, than ciliousness of the individual that can affect to look do the silent, obscure, and unpretending labors of the down upon such an employment, as if it were fit only Sabbath school teacher. for those who are utterly incapable of lofty aspirations, and of vigorous and comprehensive intellectual achievements.

And furthermore, it is very observable to every one who has taken any pains to notice the signs of the times, that those denominations which cordially cherish, and zealously sustain these invaluable auxiliaries, are usually in a healthy, flourishing condition, and are almost constantly enlarging their borders; whereas those denominations which either discountenance and condemn them, or adopt them in an apathetic, halfhearted manner, are lingering along with a kind of sickly existence; and unless they speedily change their sentiments and course on this subject, there is great reason to apprehend, that it will not be long before they will be reckoned among the things that were, but are not.

--

BY REV. J. L. GROVER.

THIS is a most interesting period of life. It has, it is true, its labors, and cares, and sorrows; but at the same time, it has its hours of sun-shine-of pleasure and joy. To those of us who have passed the springtime of life, it is endeared by a thousand pleasing associations, and memory lingers around it as the brightest portion of our past history. But how delusive are its dreams, its hopes, and its plans for future happiness. How few of its expectations are realized; and how many of its pleasing dreams terminate in disappointment, and vanish away in the cares and anxieties of after years. With what delight do the young usually look forward to mature life as the time when they shall enjoy all the happiness that fortune and friendship can secure-when they will taste of every cup of pleasure, and wander without restraint wherever duty or inclination may lead. But as they advance in life they find that new duties claim their attention, new wants and engagements call forth their energies; they look upon their obligations to society and to themselves in a different point of light; and laying aside the visionary plans of youth, they enter upon the sober duties of life in the belief that all attainable good must be the result of diligence and untiring perseverance.

There is one object which benevolent and intelligent females accomplish, by their participation in the pleasing task of Sabbath school instruction, that deserves to be particularly mentioned. Many of the children who avail themselves of the benefits of these institutions, (especially in large cities,) are from families whose examples and precepts-if indeed they have the ability, or ever take the trouble to give any precepts at all-are not only unpropitious and useless, but decidedly corrupting and demoralizing in their tendencies. But when the children of such families are introduced into these schools, and brought under the tuition and guidance of enlightened and tasteful females, whose hearts are warmed and expanded with the love of God, and consequently, with deep and ardent sympathies for the ignorant, destitute and neglected; when, I say, those children are brought under the kindly and ennobling influence of such minds, their susceptible natures are not long in feeling and manifesting the happy effects of it. Their confidence is enlisted; their ambition is awakened; a love of character, and a just abhorrence of all that is groveling, dishonest and dishonorable, soon begin to make their appearance. And such children, returning to their homes, are not only qualified || to perceive, and ready to deplore the humiliating scenes of folly and wickedness that are enacted there almost every day; but what is far more important, they have But notwithstanding there is much of romance in not unfrequently been the instruments of an entire, the plans and calculations of the young, the morning and most benignant revolution in the principles and of life is nevertheless a period of vast importance, and habits of the whole domestic circle, to which they be-exerts an influence that will not only be felt in time, long. The hearts of Sabbath school teachers are often cheered with the most affecting and indubitable proofs, that, under the blessing of God, their efforts have been productive of consequences of this description. Such teachers are to such children, in loco parentum-in the place of parents; and the sentiments that their pupils cherish towards and for them, are as generous, confiding and affectionate, as those of the most noble-hearted children towards the most estimable of natural parents. And is there nothing in all this, that is worthy of the devoted attention of the most exalted and best endowed intellect, that ever dignified and adorned the female

but in all the ages of eternity itself. If it be true in the moral as in the natural world, that "just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," how important to give a proper inclination to the thoughts and habits of childhood. While the mind can readily receive and retain the various branches of literature and science, how important that it be exercised in grasping the treasures of knowledge, and in laying the foundation of future usefulness. It is thus that the young will grow up with settled principles and purposes, and be prepared to act well their parts in the different departments of life.

It is a well known fact, however, that since the pow

But why is it that so many permit the precious moments of youth to pass by in the neglect of those things belonging to their peace? They are generally unwilling to forego the vain amusements of this world, and to submit to the restraints that a profession of Christianity imposes; hence they are found living in the "ways of their heart, and in the sight of their eyes," though in doing so they endanger their all in time and in eternity; while others are impressed with the importance of becoming religious, and fully calculate upon making their peace with God before the hour of death; but are putting off the important matter until a more convenient season; and after passing the whole journey of life, they will find that the more convenient season will not arrive. "O that they were wise; they understood this; that they would consider their latter end!"

that

ers of the mind have been weakened and disordered by || virtue, and make greater proficiency in religious expethe fall, knowledge is obtained with labor, and can only rience than those who neglect the calls of mercy until be retained with care and diligence; and hence the a later period in life. young would generally prefer idleness and pleasure to the mental discipline that is necessary to their exploring the treasures of wisdom, and fathoming the sources of mental improvement; consequently their progress in learning is the result of constraint, rather than the exercise of their free, unbiased choice. But could the young be made to feel the value of time, and to realize the advantages arising from a liberal education, they would improve the precious moments of life, by bending their entire energies to the pursuit of useful knowledge. Many, for the want of early application to study, have sustained a loss that they never regained in after life; and thus they not only diminished their influence and usefulness in society, but greatly lessened the amount of their own intellectual enjoyment. If all the hours that are wasted in idleness and unnecessary recreation by the young, were devoted to useful pursuits, how much wiser and happier they might be in this life, and When, therefore, we reflect upon the shortness and in that which is to come. I trust that the pages of the uncertainty of life, what powerful motives do these con“Repository” will awaken useful reflection upon this siderations present, to prompt, persevering action. How subject, and so impress the importance of early exer- rapid is the journey from the cradle to the grave! The tions, as to excite the young to diligence and perse- days of youth glide swiftly by, and before we are aware, verance in pursuing the various branches of learning. we find ourselves bending under the weight of years, There is another subject that should especially claim and trembling on the borders of eternity. Whatever the attention of the young—I mean the religion of the we do towards acquiring useful knowledge, or prepablessed Jesus. Whatever else they may leave undone, ring for the eternal world, must be done speedily. they should not neglect the service of God, and the in- Time, in its noiseless flight, is rapidly bearing us to the terests of eternity. To them the requirement of the tomb. Soon "the keepers of the house will tremble, Savior applies with peculiar force, "Seek ye first the and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the kingdom of God and his righteousness." It should be daughters of music shall be brought low." Death, with first in point of time, as it is first in point of impor-all its gloomy terrors-the soul, with all its faculties, tance. And surely there is no sight upon the earth and eternity, with all its solemn realities, unite with the more lovely, and upon which the angels look with poet in declaring that there is deeper interest, than to see the young devoting the bloom of youth, and consecrating the earliest affections of their hearts to the praise and service of Him who "calls them out of darkness into his marvelous light." And while the saints in heaven unite with the saints upon earth in rejoicing over the conversion of the young, the Savior will "gather them in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and lead them to fountains of living water." There is every consideration in favor of early attention to the duties of religion. The commandment is, "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth," and it cannot be neglected without incurring the divine displeasure. This, of itself, should be motive sufficient to prompt to the performance of duty. But there are other reasons that should not be overlooked connected with this important subject; for it is fact well established by experience, that before habits of vice are contracted, or the soul is polluted with crime, it is comparatively an easy matter to become To give domestic life its sweetest charm; religious-the mind is not loaded with care, and there|| With softness polish, and with virtue warm; are no long established vices to abandon. Besides, those who embrace religion in the days of their youth become early established in the doctrines and duties of Christianity; they grow up with settled principles of Vol. I.-18

a

"No room for mirth or trifling here,
For worldly hope or worldly fear,
If life so soon is gone."

WOMAN.

BY MISS HANNAH MORE.

As some fair violet, loveliest of the glade,
Sheds its mild fragrance on the lonely shade,
Withdraws its modest head from public sight,
Nor courts the sun, nor seeks the glare of light:
Should some rude hand profanely dare intrude,
And bear its beauties from its native wood,
Exposed abroad its languid colors fly,
Its form decays, and all its odors die.
So woman: born to dignify retreat,
Unknown, to flourish; and, unseen,

be great;

Fearful of fame, unwilling to be known,
Should seek but Heaven's applauses, and her own;
Should dread no blame, but that which crimes impart
The censures of a self-condemning heart.

BY MISS M. B. BAKER.

When the ci-devant Marchioness de Blois Beranger was confined in prison at Paris with her father, mother, and a younger sister, she forgot her own misfortunes in her efforts to relieve theirs. She was happy in the thought that they would all die together. But when the news came that her family was condemned and herself liberated, she wept bitterly and exclaim

ed, "Alas! we shall not die together." Shortly after her own conviction was announced, when she cried in triumph, "See, my mother, we shall die together." She supported her mother to the scaffold, strengthened her by her own example, consoled her with words of love, and then calmly resigned herself to

death in the assurance of a blessed reunion with her kindred in heaven.

THANK God! all, all are here. These hideous walls
Wax warm and cheerful: sun and moon and stars
Withhold their welcome shining; but to me
The stellar beauties of unclouded night,
And burning glories of the summer noon,
Are the mere pictures of true happiness-
Mine be the life-the substance. Even here
A constellation shines, fairer than heaven,
With all its fires, hangs o'er a gazing world.
A father's smile, a mother's tearful gaze,
A sister's glance-be these for aye henceforth
My sun-my gentle moon-my trembling star,
Of peace, of holy comfort and of joy,

To deck and gild-to light and cheer my way,
Till I with them, swept from this stormy sphere,
Find soft and sweet repose!

Familiar grown,

With wakeful lingering nights and anxious days,
In this damp cell, our guiltless hearts are crushed,
By fallen fortunes. Earth is no more ours;

My soul's abomination-I am doomed

Its wretched victim. Call it not release.

go

I do abhor, with fierce and scorching hate,
The sound, the breath, the pulse, the thought of life-
Its visions torture me. Shall I
In friendless solitude, without one tie,
forth
To bind my spirit to a heartless world?
For me the moon and stars will yield no light-
Sunshine would wear a worse than dungeon gloom.
The hope to die is quenched; and now the shades
Which lower'd without, brood deep and dark within.
I'm as a courser bounding near the goal,
Driven far back by an o'ermastering power;
Or like a mariner making the port,

From a long voyage on a stormy sea,
Swept back by veering tempests 'mid the rocks
Concealed beneath the billow's maddening foam-
Above and far around a starless night--
Shore out of sight, sails split, and compass gone.

*

And we have past together one more night.
"Tis morning now. How sweetly do the birds
Carol without! I never heard them sing
So charmingly-even the sunshine falls
On its accustomed place within these bars
With an unusual lustre: 'tis, perchance,
That I have grown more calmly thro' the night.
A light broke on my sleep-I had a dream:
I thought that all at once I heard a burst
Of strange mysterious music-sweeter far
Than diapason swells from thousand harps;
And all around there spread a brilliant scene,
Of gently sloping hills, and lovely vales.
Farther than eye could reach; and there were trees,
Surpassing all that I had ever seen,

For verdant beauty; even their very leaves

Throughout these rock-bound vaults death ever lurks, Rustling above made soothing melody,

To guard with sleepless vigilance his prey;
We fly, we fear him not. We court his power,
To free us from this heavy weight of chains.
Then, boundless, we shall soar-we shall o'ersweep
All change and fear and pain, spurning the storm
Which closes round our darken'd destiny.
Yes, half immortal, plumed for airy flight,
With thought unchained, we already seem t' o'erleap
These towering walls, and fetterless and free,
Dart through illimitable fields of space,
To a blest home beyond oppression's reign.
But let my presence now, my cheerful words,
Cheerful as flowing numbers of the harp,
To you the drooping objects of my care,
Impart some crumbs of comfort.

Hark! The door
Turns on its grating hinges; hurried steps
Forewarn intrusion on our solitude.

A messenger! What tidings? Grief or joy?

My honored sire condemned! A mother's name-
A sister's, written down for death, for slaughter,
And I marked out to live! Detested life!

When soft winds stirred them; and the fragrant flowers
(So it did seem) could neither fade nor fall;
And all along from out these sunny vales,
Greener than purest emerald, I saw
Clear fountains gushing forth, whose ripling rills
Murmur'd sweet music; and the glorious sun
(For such a sun my vague imagining
Had not conceived, for glowing radiance)
Flash'd his broad fires, emblazoning earth and sky;

I gazed upon the heavens, but saw no cloud
To throw a shadow on his shining course.
And there were forms of beauty exquisite,
Unlike what I had seen in human mold,
Near and remote. At last a deep toned voice
Fell on mine ear. I knew not whence it came,
Nor how; but then it thrilled me with these words,
Never to be forgot, "This-is-thy-home!”

I then thought of this dungeon and these chains,
And most of you, my friends. But quick as thought,
You too were there. For joy I then awoke.
Perchance 'twere better I had always slept,
For when realities do torture one,

O, how refreshing to the soul are dreams!

Guards, do your work-knock off these cruel chains-and separated without being reconciled. Nicephorus

140

on man.

Original.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

BY PROFESSOR MERRICK.

MAN.

by sensations produced through impressions being made upon the appropriate nerves by bodies capable of affording resistance. The hand is generally regarded as the organ of this sense, though the skin, perhaps, might be so with more propriety. It is true, that the hand is generally employed in receiving impressions from resisting bodies, but all parts of the surface of the body are capable of being similarly affected, though in a less degree. It will be recollected that the skin is composed of three layers; the cuticle, mucous membrane, and corium; and that the latter only is furnished with nerves and blood vessels. These nerves, which are divided to an extreme degree of minuteness, and apparently spread over the entire surface of the corium, give rise to the sensation of touch. If the external surface of the corium be examined with a microscope, there will be seen a great number of minute filaments projecting from it into corresponding grooves in the cuticle. In each of these filaments is bound up the extremity of a nerve with an accompanying blood vessel, and a small quantity of semi-fluid matter. They are especially conspicuous at the ends of the fingers, where the sense of touch is more delicate than in any other part of the body. The cuticle serves as a protection to the nerves. Without this protection the contact of external and resisting bodies would produce excruciating pain, and the nerves would soon become callous and insensible. Of all the senses, touch is probably the most important, and no one is susceptible of a higher degree of cultivation. By the use of this alone the blind are enabled to read with facility, and perform most kinds of manual labor. In some cases they are

In my last article I did not quite finish my remarks The present will contain a brief description of the organs of sense. In man these are five; viz., those of touch, smelling, tasting, hearing, and seeing, each of which is furnished with appropriate nerves. Between these nerves no difference of substance can be distinguished, nor between them and other portions of the nervous system. Even the expanded part of the nerve, which is especially designed to receive the impression, exhibits no peculiarity except its minute division, and soft and uniform texture. Still each nerve is capable of communicating no other sensation than such as was designed to be produced by the organ to which it is appropriated. No other sensation, for example, than that of light can be communicated by the nerve belonging to the eye, and no other than that of sound by the one belonging to the ear; and some assert that no part of the nerve except that which is expanded upon the organ is capable of giving rise to sensation. Upon this last point, however, there is a difference of opinion. Roget says that "no nerve, but the optic nerve, and no part of that nerve, except the retina, [the expanded portion of the nerve,] is capable, however impressed, of giving rise to the sensation of light." Bell, however, says that "every impression on the nerve of the eye, or of the ear, or the nerve of smelling, or of tasting, excites only ideas of vision, of hear-able even to distinguish colors; not indeed as colors, ing, of smelling, or of tasting; not solely because the extremities of the nerves, individually, are suited to external impressions, but because the nerves are, through their whole course and wherever they are irritated, capable of exciting in the mind the idea to which they are appropriate, and no other." It is somewhat singular, that although these nerves cannot excite but one class of sensations when impressed, they can produce these even when acted upon by objects for which the organ was obviously not intended. If the retina of the eye be pricked with the point of a sharp needle, a brilliant spark of light will be perceived; if the ball be pressed,||which is the organ of this sense, is furnished with a it will give rise to all the colors of the rainbow. "A great number of blood vessels and nerves. In the foreblow, an impulse, quite unlike that for which the organs part of this organ the filaments, or papillæ, containing of the senses are provided, will excite them all in their the extremities of the nerves, are not only numerous several ways; the eyes will flash fire, while there is but very prominent, so much so as to be visible by the noise in the ears. An officer received a musket-ball naked eye. It is said if these papillæ be touched with which went through the bones of the face-in descri-a fluid which has a strong taste, such as vinegar, applied bing his sensations, he said that he felt as if there had been a flash of lightning, accompanied with a sound like the shutting of the door of St. Paul's." The senses being designed to take cognition of external objects, the organs are placed at the surface of the body.

THE ORGAN OF TOUCH.

By the sense of touch we are made acquainted with a variety of qualities, as hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, figure, &c. This knowledge is acquired

the sensations being purely those of touch. Those who have been conversant with any of this unfortunate class of persons, must have been struck with the almost constant use which they make of this sense, and the readiness with which it enables them to recognize their friends, articles of dress, and other objects with which they are familiar.

THE ORGAN OF TASTE.

The sense of taste is employed in detecting certain qualities in substances when in a liquid state. These qualities are called sapid. The surface of the tongue,

by means of a camel-hair pencil, they will be seen to become elongated by the action of the stimulus; and it is supposed that this effect always accompanies the perception of taste. As this organ is adapted only to the action of liquids, solid substances which are not solvable in the saliva, or moisture of the mouth, are tasteless.

The primary use of this sense, says Roget, the organ of which is placed at the entrance of the alimentary