meaning but mistaken Agnewites, and the advocates for the better observance of the sabbath, would even interdict all lo comotion on that day, and realize as far as possible, the diotum of the Caliph Omar, that in order to deserve heaven wè must make earth a hell. The latter part of the clause they will go far to effect, if their puritanism is to become the law of the land. It is difficult to say which predominates the cruelty or the selfishness of these proposed restrictions, when we recollect that they emanate from parties who have six days in the week for their amusement, and that their rigour falls exclusively upon the humbler classes, who have but one for the purposes of innocent and healthful recreation.

The Niger expedition, in which the captain of one of the vessels exposed his crew to pestilence and death, rather than heave his anchor on a Sunday, shows the ruthless excess to which this fanaticism may be pushed, under a mistaken sense of duty. And all this for a sabbath of man's ordaining, while we leave that ordained of God to the observance of the Jews!

It used to be held that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord; but our Cantwells seem to imagine that what they take from the poor they give to the Lord, an opinion equally unworthy of a good man, and derogatory to a benignant deity. But it is necessary, say the ascetics, to counteract the effect of certain Sunday papers and infidel writers. Counteract! why they are promoting the cause of these men, by pelting them with a bomarang, which recoils and breaks the head of the thrower. Both asailant and repellant may as well give up this most unholy holy War.

Peace, idiots! peace, and both have done,

Each kiss his empty brother;

Religion scorns a foe like one,

And dreads a friend like t'other.

ART AND NATURE.

Instead of being antithetical terms as is generally imagined, these two words express one and the same idea, although it may assume different developements and varying phases, as it presents itself to our minds through a

divine or human medium, a fact which would appear less startling if we duly perpended the profound and comprehensive lines of Pope

All nature is but Art unknown to thee,

All chance, direction which thou canst not see,

All discord, harmony not understood,

All partial evil, universal good.

Art, in fact, is man's nature; nature is God's art; human nature the noblest specimen of God's art; and the noblest masterpieces made by man are but the works of his Maker at second-hand-humanified emanations of the Divinity receiving ever-changing modifications from the different moulds through which they are transmitted. This is the view which sublimises and hallows while it identifies both Nature and Art. Nature, by converting the whole earth into a laboratory, an atelier, a study, a picture-gallery of the heavenly chymist, sculptor, author, painter; art, by making those earthly artists the operatives, the foremen, the amanuenses, the delegates, the secondaries of the great First Cause.

:

True it is, and pity 'tis 'tis true, that many of these gifts are perverted from the high and holy purposes of the donor; but there can be no use without the power of abuse; no human free will without the possibility of contravening the divine will an inherent defect in the nature of man's art, which it is beyond the art of Nature to control, for it would be a contradiction in terms to suppose the coexistence of ability for wrong and impeccability. Happy the artist who has always considered himself the accountable steward of his intellectual or manual gifts who has felt that his talents had their duties as well as their rights who admitting with Dryden that

'Tis the most painful proof the world's accurs'd,

That the best things abused become the worst,

has made, according to his means and measure, a faithful application of the gifts entrusted to him.

From this line of duty in the higher ranks of art there will be found few deviations, for the enthusiasm of genius is literally a sense of the God within us; and the best-perhaps

the only true evidence of this sense is the purity of the purposes to which we apply it. To give a licentious direction to a heaven-bestowed gift is the worst species of sacrilege: but this, we repeat, is of rare occurrence except among the petty fry of art. The Di majores, the most eminently endowed, will generally be found not only the most irreproachable, but the most modest-rather penetrated with gratitude for what they have received from the Creator, than proud of what they can impart to their fellow-creatures. Thus ministering to the holy purposes of nature, the genuine artist will contemplate the blaze of his reputation but as a moral halo which should sanctify while it irradiates his path.

PERMITTED TO BE PRINTED,

St. Petersburg, July 1st, 1842.

P. KORSAKOFF, CENSOR.

Printed at the Office of the «Journal de St. Petersbourg. »

THE

SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD:

AN EXTRAVAGANZA.

Continued from page 48.)

CHAPTER XIV.

Poor Miss Crane !

The failure of her first little culinary experiment reduced her again to despair. If there be not already a Statue of Disappointment, she would have served for its model. It would have melted an Iron Master to have seen her with her eyes fixed intently on the unfortunate cup of paste, as if asking herself, mentally, was it possible that what she had prepared with such pains for the refreshment of a sick parent, was only fit for what?-Why, for the false tin stomach of a healthy bill-sticker!

Dearly as she rated her professional accomplishments and acquirements, I verily believe that at that cruel moment she would have given up all her consummate skill in Fancy Work, to have known how to make a basin of gruel! Proud as she was of her embroidery, she would have exchanged her cunning in it for that of the plainest cook,-for oh! of what avail her Tent Stitch, Chain Stitch, German Stitch, or Satin Stitch 13

VOL. III.

to relieve or soothe a suffering father, afflicted with back stitch, front stitch, side stitch, and cross stitch into the bargain?

Nay, of what use was her solider knowledge ?—for example, in History, Geography, Botany, Conchology, Geology, and Astronomy? Of what effect was it that she knew the scientific name for coal and slate,-or what comfort that she could tell him how many stars there are in Cassiopeia's Chair, whilst he was twisting with agony on a hard wooden one?

"It's no use talking!» exclaimed Miss Ruth, after a long silence, "we must have medical advice! »

But how to obtain it? To call in even an apothecary, one must call in his own language, and the two sisters between them did not possess German enough, High or Low, to call for a Doctor's boy. The hint, however, was not lost on the Reverend T. C., who, with a perversity not unusual, seemed to think that he could diminish his own sufferings by inflicting pain on those about him. Accordingly he no sooner overheard the wish for a Doctor, than with renewed moanings and contortions, he muttered the name of a drug that he felt sure would relieve him. But the physic was as difficult to procure as the physician. In vain Miss Ruth turned, in succession, to the Host, the Hostess, the Maid, the Waiter, and Hans the Coachman, and to each, separately, repeated the word Ru-bub. The Host, the Hostess, the Maid, the Waiter, and Hans the Coachman, only shook their heads in concert, and uttered in chorus the old forstend nicht. »

M

Oh, I do wish, exclaimed Miss Crane, with a tone and a gesture of the keenest self-reproach; how I do wish that

I had brought Buchan's Domestic Medicine abroad with me, instead of Thomson's Seasons ! »

"

"

And of what use would that have been without the medicine-chest?» asked Miss Ruth; «for I don't pretend to rite prescriptions in German. »

That's very true," said Miss Crane, with a long deep sigh whilst the sick man, from pain or wilfulness, Heaven alone knew which gave a groan, so terrific that it startled even the phlegmatic Germans.