The glorious ever-burning lamps on high,
Dwells not in temples rear'd by mortal hands
With majesty diminish'd: him the earth

And utmost heavens acknowledge LORD OF ALL.
Nought all the pompous waste of sacrifice-
Vain pageantry!-that Being can avail,
Whose happiness beyond the farthest ken
Of time endures; from whom our vital breath,
And every good dependent man enjoys.

HE from one family, one parent stock,
Wide o'er this earth the sons of men diffus'd;
HE to their distant habitations gave
Th' appointed limits; while at his command,
Or nations perish, or new empires rise.
To know their Maker, or explore the ways
Of matchless goodness, such the pleasing task
To men assigned, nor far from human search
Is plac'd the GODHEAD; felt within each breast
Is God's existence, for in him our life,
And powers of motion, and our being are:
We are his oFFSPRING; so your far-fam❜d bard
ARATUS Sung; if we, though mortal, boast
Celestial lineage, how vain the thought,
By man's device, or sculpture's mimic art,
To frame the likeness of DIVINITY!

While ignorance prevail'd, while o'er the world Its darkness intellectual error spread,

Our gracious Father view'd with pitying eye
Bewilder'd mortals, nor each failing mark'd,
In chastisement inexorably just:
Now to religion's long-neglected paths
Man he recalls, and wills that all repent.
The day he has ordain'd, the solemn day
Of retribution; JESUS, chosen judge,
Shall every virtue, every crime unfold,

Our actions ponder, and pronounce our doom.
From heaven this JESUS, mighty stranger! came,
His nature glorious and ineffable

In human semblance veil'd, he dwelt on earth
Lowly in goodness, yet his wondrous deeds
Aloud his great original proclaim'd:
And when by rulers cruel and unjust
Condemn'd, unheard, the patient victim fell,
As God had promis'd, as of old the voice
Of prescient sages spake, he death o'ercame,
Burst his sepulchral bands, and rose to life.

7

Biblical Ellustrations.

EZEKIEL Xxxvii. 16, 17.

Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions: aud join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.

THE mode of writing on rods or billets, alluded to in this passage, was practised by the Greeks. Plutarch, in his life of Solon, (Vitæ, tom. i. p. 20. ed. Bryant) and Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. lib. ii. c. 12.) inform us, that, the very ancient laws of that philosopher, preserved at Athens, were cut in tablets of wood called Axones. These were quadrangular, and so contrived as to turn on axes, and to present their contents on all sides to the eyes of the passengers. The laws on these wooden tables, as well as those on stone, were inscribed after the manner called Boustrophedon, that is, the first line beginning from right to left, or from left to right, and the second in an opposite direction, as ploughmen trace their furrows; as in the following words, copied from an inscription on a marble, in the National Museum at Paris:

ΝΕΚΕΘΕΝΑΜ ΣΟΛΛΥ
ΑΡΙΣΤΟΚΙΔΕΣ ΝΟΕΣΕΝ.

em decalp sully H❞

Aristocydes made me."

The Scythians also conveyed their ideas by marking or cutng certain figures and a variety of lines, upon splinters or illets of wood; and amongst the Lacedemonians, the Scytale aconica, was a little round staff, which they made use of to rite their secret letters. In the Apocrypha, (2 Esdras, xiv. 4, 37, 44.) we read of a considerable number, i. e. 204 books eing made of box-wood, and written upon in the open field, by certain swift writers.

A somewhat similar mode of writing obtained among the ancient Irish, by whom it was denominated cionn fa eite.

The Boustrophedon writing is said to have been disused by the Greeks, about four hundred and fifty seven years before the Christian era, but was in use among the Irish at a much later period.

The original manner of writing among the aboriginal Britons, was by cutting the letters with a knife upon sticks, which were most commonly squared, and sometimes formed into three sides; consequently a single stick contained either four or three lines. The squares were used for general subjects, and for stanzas of four lines in poetry, the trilateral ones were adapted to triades, and for a peculiar kind of ancient metre, called Triban or triplet, and Englyn Milwyr, or the warrior's verse. Several sticks with writing on them were put together, forming a kind of frame, which was called Peithynen or Elucidation, and was so constructed that each stick might be turned for the facility of reading, the end of each running out alternately on both sides of the frame. An engraved specimen of this kind of writing may be seen in Fry's Pantographia, Townley's Biblical Illustrations, or Horne's Introductions.

A continuation of this mode of writing may be found in the Runic or Clog (a corruption of log) almanacks, which prevailed among the northern nations of Europe so late even as the sixteenth century. A late writer informs us, that the boors of Esel, an island of the Baltic Sea, at the entrance of the Gulf of Livonia, continue the practice of making these rude calendars for themselves; and that they are in use likewise in the isles of Ruhn, and Mohn. Two curious specimens of the Runic almanacks are in the collegiate library at Manchester.

Dr. Clarke informs us, that a person whom he visited at Umea in Sweden, "produced several ancient Runic staves, such as are known in Sweden under the name of Runic almanacks or Runic calendars. They were all of wood, about three feet and a half long, shaped like the straight swords represented in churches upon the brazen sepulchral plates of our Saxon ancestors. The blades were on each side engraved with Runic