they are paid to heaven; the sense we there receive of our lowness hurts us not, as the subjects are beyond all reach of comparison; and we feel a joy in communicating our thoughts to an infinity of perfections, which diffuses a glow of triumphant pleasure over our whole frame; and, while it reminds us that we are the work of such hands, gives us pride in our humility.

The consecrating our first thoughts in this serious manner to our Creator, does not fail to influence us for the day: our passions, our pursuits, a thousand busy intermeddling considerations, draw us insensibly away from the pure tenour we should naturally have held from it, if not incumbered with this rebellious flesh ; but enough of it will always remain to give a colour to the succeeding actions; and, even if we banish it so far as to plunge into real ill afterwards, we shall not want a check within to tell us that it is so, and to call us back.

We can have no adequate idea of that enjoyment of the presence of God, which is named to us as one of the joys of a happy immortality; but some faint glimpse of it may be obtained from this happy consideration: the pleasure of an hour's tribute of undisturbed praise of this kind, is assuredly the first of all human satisfactions; and, while we feel that

every thing we compliment with the name of joy, makes but a poor return for what it robs us of in breaking in upon it; while we quarrel with our bodily sensations that interrupt it; we may form some idea of the full pleasure we shall feel in more elevated thoughts of the same kind, when we are free from the incumbrance.

INSPECTOR, No. 83.

A NIGHT-PIECE.

Twas when bright Cynthia with her silver car,
Soft stealing from Endymion's bed,

Had call'd forth ev'ry glitt'ring star,

And up

th' ascent of heav'n her brilliant host had led

Night, with all her negro train,
Took possession of the plain:

In a hearse she rode reclin❜d,

Drawn by screech-owls slow and blind :

Close to her, with printless feet,

Crept Stillness in a winding-sheet

Next to her deaf Silence was seen,
Treading on tip-toes o'er the green;
Softly, lightly, gently she trips,
Still holding her finger seal'd to her lips

Then came Sleep, serene and bland,
Bearing a death-watch in his hand;
In fluid air around him swims
A tribe grotesque of mimic dreams

You could not see a sight,

You could not hear a sound;
But all confess'd the night,

And horror deepen'd round.

STUDENT, vol. i. p. 353,

The seventeen immediately subsequent lines are omitted. Smart, though possessing true genius, was a very unequal and careless writer; many of his poems exhibiting great beauties and as great defects in close approximation.

No. LXVIII.

-Erunt, et crescent, inque valebunt,
Quantum quoique datum est per fœdera naturæ.

LUCRETIUS.

-All

Exist, increase, and perish; following firm
The laws by nature framed.

Good.

I was the other afternoon upon the ramble with my often-mentioned little party; and as I always wish to set those who would follow me in my observations on the right scent, I hope no body will think me impertinently circumstantial when I add that Hampstead-heath was the scene of our observations. It cost us some wounds, among the furze bushes, to make our way to a little bog that stands on the declivity of the hill: at the lower verge of this quagmire, I pointed to a puddle of reddish water, the surface of which was in continual motion; and desired the guesses of my company as to the occasion of that circumstance. After some had imagined that it was the effect of fermentation, some of the shaking of the bog under our feet, and some that it was owing to a spring bubbling up there, I desired one of our party to dip in his

hand, and taking out a quantity of what came first in his way, to give me, by that, an opportunity of explaining the motion to him.

I had loaded our equipage, on this occasion, with a large glass vessel, and a servant was ordered to follow us to the heath with it. The gentleman who had dipped his hand into the water, brought up in it more than a hundred dirty shapeless animals, with much of the appearance of common maggots, but vastly uglier. They were brown, thick, short, and furnished with tails. I ordered these to be laid down upon the grass, and dispatching a servant for some clear water, sat down, and called a council of philosophy to inquire into their nature, origin, and properties.

I had so often already informed my little auditory that none of the winged insects were hatched in their perfect state from the egg, but that they all are first produced in form of worms, maggots, or caterpillars; or, in other words, covered with skins under which they live, move, and eat, and have the appearance of very different animals from their parents; that it did not appear strange to them, when I observed, that these creatures before us were not now in their ultimate state.

I informed them that they were the produce