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establish School of mutual Instruction in the capital of his kingdom. In a few years, therefore, should the glorious career of this friend to humanity remain unimpeded, we may safely predict that the first elements of education will be as familiar to the black population of this part of Africa, as they are now to the whiter and more pretending inhabitants of some of the kingdoms of Europe. M. L'Epinat was introduced to the world by the venerable Duc de la Rochefoucauld, who early foresaw what might be expected from a man so feelingly alive to the sufferings of humanity, supported by a zeal so ardent in the cause of all that is useful and beneficial to his species.

MARCH OF ORATORY.

At the meeting of the Manchester Pitt Club, thirty speeches were made -twenty-five by the Chairman!

ANECDOTE OF GENERAL CHURCH.

This officer owed a thousand piastres to his tailor, who came to dun him even in his tent. Unable to pay, and desirous of getting rid of an importunate creditor, General Church offered him a captain's commission, promising to make him an aide-decamp to a general officer. The tailor's vanity was greater than his avarice; he took the commission, and set out to join the army.

MONUMENT TO DUGALD STEWART.

The subscriptions to this work, so honorable to Scotland and literature, already amount to 10001.

HUMAN LIFE.

A variety of curious calculations has lately been made in France, with respect to the average duration of human life, &c. in Paris, during the eighteenth century. It appears, that the average age of marriage was, for men, about twenty-nine years and three quarters-for women, about twenty-four years and three-quarters; and that the average age of parents, at the birth of a son, was, for women,

TURKISH CEMETERY.

The great cemetery at Constantinople lies on the Asiatic shore, and extends its dark, cypress groves for a considerable distance in the vicinity of Scutari. This is perhaps the largest burial-ground in the world, being one hour, or three miles in length; and it has increased to its present size in consequence of the extraordinary predilection the Turks of Constantinople entertain for it. They are persuaded they will again be compelled to retire to Asia, whence they came; and they wish their bodies to be laid in a place where Christian infidels cannot disturb them. The great majority, therefore, of those who die in Constantinople, are transported by their friends across the Bosphorus; and the stairs or slip at which they embark, is called, for this reason, Meit-iskelli, or the Ladder of the Dead.

NEW WORK.

A new volume, by Robert Montgomery, the Author of "The Omnipresence of the Deity," &c. is expected shortly to appear, entitled, "An Universal Prayer, a Poem; Death; a Vision of Heaven; and a Vision of Hell."

[VOL. 1, No. 3.

THE salmon of our own waters, or the land crabs of tropical regions, are not more periodically and unerringly impelled towards the sea than myself; -at that precise period of the season when the heat of vernal mid-day begins to render the thought of a fresh breeze delightful, and when the light curl on the distant waves makes them smile in the sunbeam, like the fastfleeting, but as quickly renovated, hopes of youth.

Is there, can there be, to the mind or eye of man, a more glorious prospect than is yonder unfolded-when the gaze first rests on that shoreless expanse of proudly girdling ocean-upon which the beacon islet, with its seemingly baseless tower, shows like a pillar of some erl-king's submarine palace-and the homeward bark, deep-freighted with the weal and woe of thousands, like a flitting carrier-dove upon the far horizon! "Ocean exhibits, fathomless and broad, Much of the power and majesty of God!" says Cowper, and never did poet's remark find a more universal echo in the human breast. Yet who has not experienced in the end, a sense of monotony and humiliation in that very illimitable breadth and depth, which mock alike the puny vision, the scanty knowledge, and bounded faculties of man ?

The Creator, alone, methinks, is qualified to contemplate, without satiety, that ocean, whose abysses His glance can fathom, and whose waters (to borrow the only adequate language 11 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1, 3d series.

on the subject) have been "meted in the hollow of His hand !"

It is not, at this season, the distant panorama that will content me-and an instinct I never dream of questioning, turns my horse's head towards the beach the first spring day, when the unchecked melody of birds, and the untired industry of bees, and a certain balmy softness in the air, against which (like the downy shield. impervious to the keenest weapon) winter's icy arrows must surely fall powerless-seem to warrant a belief that spring has fairly set in.

After clearing the smooth expanse of intervening downs, they are exchanged for the rude bulwark of rocks, on which is inscribed in characters of adamant the decree-" Here shall thy proud waves be stayed."

In pity to Dumple, and indulgence to myself, I dismount, and, leaving him to the novel luxury of the short salt herbage peeping from among the crags, I ramble in happy forgetfulness along the sunny sands, now lifting an eye of shuddering wonder to the beetling cliffs and overhanging caves, (to whose perilous shelter, fear of death could alone have reconciled mortality)-now stooping with almost infantine delight, to pick up each shining pebble at my feet, as if I thought its glittering texture a radiant specimen of that elder world, whose triturated relics form my noiseless path. Seated upon a jutting rock, I watch the restless sea-birds, skimming

like giant swallows upon the watery plain, and ever and anon the dark unwieldy porpoises heaving, like inky bubbles, on the glassy wave. I love to gaze upon the slow receding of the ebbing tide, and muse upon its counterpart in human fortunes,-when, their fickle stream withdrawn, many a gay rainbow-tinted mollusca lies stranded in unseemly reptile-reality on the desert shore.

But amid all the magnificence of nature, amid even the animated sparkling charms of ocean, man will af ter all be not only, according to the didactic poet," the proper study," but the irresistible magnet, of his fellow mortals. I no sooner, while pursuing the ramble to which I have been alluding, along the beach, caught, from a projecting rock, a peep of the snug little harbor of X-, thronged with boats, and exhibiting an unusual appearance of bustle and activity,-than I felt impelled, by sudden interest in the scene, to recollect the propriety, nay, even necessity, of a long-intended visit to its worthy pastor, Mr. Menteith.

I found, on calling at the Manselying between me and the village, in a little sheltered cove, which nothing ruder than the "sweet south" could ever visit-that the worthy minister was from home; nor did a garrulous old nurse (the only member of the family unwillingly remaining on the premises) fail to make me acquainted with the reason.

"The town's a' asteer the day, sir," said she;" and ye canna wonder at it. There's four-and-twenty as gude men and lads to sail this tide for Greenland, as ever tried the cauld uncanny trade; and there's sair hearts enow nae doubt, amang wives and mothers; and the minister, ye're sure, couldna bide awa' at sic a time, when the women 'll need comfort, and the lads counsel. Yestreen was our Greenland preachings, as we ca' them, and weel I wot, if an honest man's prayers can bring a blessing, they werena spared for them that go down to the sea in ships.'-But will

ye step in, sir, and rest ye?" added my garrulous informant, " or shall I send the herd laddie down bye for the master? He'll be vexed to miss you, and you sic a stranger!-And really you look sair forfoughten wi' scrambling amang our rocks."

I thanked old Elspeth, but declining her hospitality, pursued my walk towards the village, along a line of the same rugged rocks which formed the rest of the shore, but amid which a rude path was now discernible. It led to the little primitive kirk, whose site, selected by a shipwrecked monarch in memorial of deliverance, almost among the very breakers from which he had escaped, rendered it a most appropriate place of worship for a seafaring population. Even in calm weather, the hoarse murmur of the waves against its rocky base was heard with reverential awe during the pauses of the solemn service; but when storms arose, the tempest's roar had proved at times too powerful for the puny voice of man to struggle with. It always reminded me of that most impressive of services, prayers at sea; nor was the illusion likely to be dispelled by the hardy weatherbeaten faces that filled the galleries, or the grotesque seafaring emblems by which they had been in ruder times adorned. Ships-figures taking observations in the costume of Dutch skippers of the last century, were blended with quaint Scripture sentences in black letter, to distract the eyes, and disturb the devotions of many successive generations; and I love to engrave them by description on my memory, ere the hand of regretted, but necessary improvement, shall sweep them all for ever away.

The village of X- consisted, like most other Scotch villages, of a main street; but if any one exclusively attaches to that title, the idea of a level causeway, regularly bordered with parallel lines of houses, he has only to visit the one in question to be undeceived. Accessible at one end only over rocks, scarce partially levelled into the semblance of a road, and terminating on the other in an abrupt and perpendicular ascent,— the middle of the town presented a narrow deeply rutted lane, (reminding me, by the way, in both these particulars, of the old Roman streets of Pompeii,) and its scanty dimensions were, moreover, so abridged by invading outside stairs, that collision with a cart left little alternative save being impaled on a basket of fish hooks, or imbedded in the fragrant lap of a mussel-midden.

The presence of a well-dressed stranger-one whom not even Hamlet, in his wildest mood, could have mistaken for "a fishmonger"-seldom failed to excite an unusual sensation in its amphibious race; but on this eventful day I might have perambulated the village long enough, without attracting more than a transient glance from a truant scholar.

The first dwelling to which I was directed as likely to contain the minister, was one of such small dimensions, as indicated that its occupant, in removing, erelong, to the "narrow house" appointed for all living, would make no very violent, or probably unwelcome, transition. When I lifted the latch, which I did so gently as to be unperceived, there stood, with his back to me, on the scanty floor, a stout young sailor, his bundle in his

There appeared a struggle in his mind, between the love of enterprise and the sense of filial duty. The latter had just triumphed, and as I came in, I heard him say,-" Dinna greet sae sair, mother!-If ye downa bide to see me gang sae far away frae ye, I'll just stay, and try what I can do for ye at hame. There's mair to be made yonder, nae doubt-and" (with a sigh) "mair to be seen for a young lad that wad fain be neibour-like-but I'll bide wi' ye, mother, gin ye like— and there's as gude fish in the sea here,-if they're no just sae muckle,— as ever cam out o't in Greenland."

"Ye'll no bide wi' me, Johnny!" answered the sorrowing, yet resigned parent,-who, a neighbor whispered me, had lost a husband and three sons by the perils of the deep,-" Ye'll gang in the Lord's name, like them that gaed before ye-if it be the Lord's will, ye'll come safe hame again-and if❞—but the alternative that might be submitted to, could not be expressed in words." Gae your way, my bairn, and follow your lawful calling-the widow's ae laddie will no want Ane to keep him skaithless."

I drew back out of sight, while the meek emaciated being, who looked as if sorrow had nearly done its last, and perhaps not worst office, of loosening the ties that bound frame as well as spirit to this world, wrung her son's hand, and feebly sighing-"The Lord gae wi' ye," sunk exhausted in her chair.

"She's right, sirs," said a grave old man of primitive aspect, in his Sunday's suit-one of the elders, who had been evidently employed in reconciling her to the separation. "It's baith useless and sinfu' to wrestle against duty and Providence. There's Marion Jamieson down bye has been fret fretting, and wishing for something to keep her ne'er-do-weel spoilt callant frae the fishing-and didna he fa' into