of these circumstances is the absence of sunshine, or day. light (as these stimuli are necessary to the carrying on the process, of nutrition in the plant). It is therefore injurious, more or less, to sleep in a room in which there are plants. Notes and Queries.

SUNSET IN THE ALPS.

Anon the evening came, walking noiselessly upon the mountains; and shedding on the spirit a not unpleasant melancholy. The Alps seemed to grow taller. Deep masses of shade were projected from summit to summit. Pine forest, and green vale, aud dashing, torrent, and quiet hamlet, all retired from view, as if they wished to go to sleep beneath the friendly shadows. A deep and reverent silence stole over the Alps, as if the stillness of the firmament had descended upon them. Over all nature was shed this spirit of quiet and profound tranquillity. Every tree was motionless. The murmur of the brook, the wing of the bird, the creak of our diligence, the voices of the postillion and conducteur, all felt the softening influence of the hour. But mark! what glory is this which begins to burn upon the crest of the snowy Alps? First there comes a flood of rosy light, and then a deep bright crimson, like the ruby's flash or the sapphire's blaze, and then a circlet of flaming peaks studs the horizon. It looks as if a great conflagration were about to begin. But suddenly the light fades, and piles of cold, pale white rise above you. You can scarce believe them to be the same mountains. But, quick as the lightning, the flash comes again. A flood of glory rolls once more along their summits. It is a last and mighty blaze. You feel as if it were a struggle for life,— as if it were a war waged by the spirits of darkness against these celctial forms. The struggle is over: the darkness has prevailed. These mighty mountain torches are extinguished one after one; and cold, ghastly piles, of sepulchral hue, which you shiver to look up at, and which remind you of the dead, rise still and calm in the firmament above you. You feel relieved when darkness interposes its veil betwixt you and them. The night sets in deep and calm, and beautiful, with troops of stars overhead. The voice of

streams, all night long, fills the silent hills with melodious echoes.-Wylie's Pilgrimage from the Alps and the Tiber.

LABOUR.

Men who live by manual labour are looked down upon and pitied, and it is not until they become independent of it-until their brown and horny hands grow somewhat white and soft-drop the tool and wear the tawdry ring, that they are considered respectable and happy. It comes not within our plan to trace the origin of this monstrous idea, which has risen to such a reigning power over the civilised world. We aver, however, that it springs neither from true philosophy nor the Bible. Physical labour is a divine institution. In the days of human innocence, man was put into the garden "to dress and keep it." As a divine institution, instead of being an obstruction to true progress, it is one of its most effective and necessary means to promote vigour of body, mind, and character. Why does the Almighty require man to labour, think you; Why does he require him to ply his physical energies in order to extract from the earth the necessary elements of life? Why has he left us to build our own houses, to weave our own garments, and to dig out of the soil our own food? Could not He, who adorns the lily and feeds the fowls of heaven, have prepared all to our hand? Manifestly yes. But he has not done so, because we have souls, and physical labour is adapted to develope their moral powers.-Thomas's Progress of Being.

BOOKS.

Nations quarrel and fight; authors quarrel and fight; fortunate it is for the world that books do not fight. Folios leading on quartos to do battle with duodecimos, officered by octavos, were a sad sight. Books, in the main, are civil. They sometimes say things stupid enough, and sometimes things provoking enough, disposing one to break the peace; but in such a case a wise man will recollect that he has to do merely with a book, and will shelve it as the Admiralty shelves an obnoxious officer. We are permitted to thrash an author or a publisher

goodness knows why-but a book, never. Metaphorically speaking, we may cut a book, but materially speaking, we must be tender even of pulling its dog's-ears. And when all the world is smoke and flame, and when wounds and woes make hearts heavy, the book as a recompense steps from its place-from dusty shelf or dull cupboard, it may be to administer comfort. We verily believe that a man who has been used to books, chancing to die on desert sands, would feel gratified in his last moments, by the sight even of a page of Mavor's Spelling Book. Books leap ditches and bound over barricades. They come to us in spite of pestilence; they visit us in spite of war. They find their way to us from St. Petersburgh and Moscow, though the Czar bids us defiance.-Literary Journal.

ANECDOTE OF WHITFIELD.

Whitfield, when preaching at Priceton, New Jersey, detecting one of his auditory fast asleep, came to a pause, and deliberately spoke as follows:-"If I had come to speak to you in my own name, you might question my right to interrupt your indolent repose; but I have come in the name of the Lord of Hosts," (and accompanying these words with a heavy blow upon the pulpit, he roared out,) "and I must and will be heard!" The sleeper started up as if he had heard close to his head a clap of thunder.

THE POETICAL AND THE LITERAL.

Once, in a wood, Mrs. Wordsworth and a lady were talking, when the stock-dove was cooing. A farmer's wife coming by, said to herself, "Oh, I do like stockdoves." Mrs. Wordsworth, in all her enthusiasm for Wordsworth's poetry, and remembering his own beautiful address to the stock-dove, took the old woman to her heart. "But," continued the woman, "6 some like 'em in a pie; for my part, there's nothing like 'em stewed in onions."

A LOW FIGURE.

An attorney in London died exceedingly poor; a shilling subscription was set on foot to pay the expenses of his funeral Most of the attorneys and barristers having subscribed, one of them applied to Toler, afterwards Lord

Chief Justice Norbury, expressing a hope that he would also subscribe a shilling. "Only a shilling?" said Toler, "only a shilling to bury an attorney? Here's a guinea; go, bury one-and-twenty of them!"

ONE HAPPY HEART.

Have you made one happy heart to-day? How calmly you can seek your pillow! how sweetly sleep! In all this world there is nothing so sweet as giving comfort to the distressed, as getting a sun-ray into a gloomy heart. Children of sorrow meet us wherever we turn; there is not a moment that tears are not shed and sighs uttered. Yet how many of those sighs are caused by our own thoughtlessness! How many a daughter wrings the very soul of a fond mother by acts of unkindness and ingratitude! How many husbands, by one little word, make a whole day of sad hours and unkind thoughts! How many wives, by recrimination, estrange and embitter loving hearts! How many brothers and sisters meet but to vex and injure each other, making wounds that no human heart can heal! Ah! if each one worked upon this maxim day by day,-strive to make some heart happy,jealousy, revenge, madness, hate, with their kindred evil associates, would for ever leave the earth.

THE LADDER.

In the year 1830, there lived a little boy who spent all his Sabbaths in studying the Bible, in which he felt the greatest interest. To be free of interruption he would repair to the garret; and that no one might find him, he used to "take the ladder up after him.' This little boy loved Jesus Christ, and delighted to do his will. He had read the words of the Saviour, "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet"; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret." He had no closet; but he could climb into a garret by means of a ladder ; and that he might study the Bible and pray to God in secret, "he took the ladder up after youth died, he climbed to heaven. the presence of Jesus in a mansion

him." In 1831 this He is now enjoying where he needs no

ladder; but, free from the approach of interruption, he unites with angels and holy spirits in praising God, and in adoring the love of that Saviour who died, that a child like him might inherit the kingdom of heaven.

CROCODILES.

Few reptiles are more disgusting in appearance than crocodiles; but, nevertheless, their utility counterbalances their bad qualities, as they cleanse the water from all impurities. So numerous are they that their heads may be seen, in fives and tens together, floating at the top of the water like rough corks; and at about five P.M. they bask on the shore, close to the margin of the water, ready to scuttle in on the shortest notice. They are then particularly on the alert, and it is a most difficult thing to stalk them, so as to get near enough to make a certain shot. Around the margin of a lake, in a large plain far in the distance, may be seen a distinct line upon the short grass, like the fallen trunk of a tree. As there are no trees at hand, this must necessarily be a crocodile. Seldom can the best hand at stalking them get within eighty yards of him before he lifts his scaly head, and, listening for a second, plunges off the bank.-Baker's Eight Years in Ceylon.

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN'S HUMANITY.

It was the custom of Sir John Franklin never to kill a fly; and, though teased by them beyond expression, espeeially when engaged in taking observations, he would quietly desist from his work, and patiently blow the halfgorged intruders from his hands :-"The world was wide enough for both." This was jocosely remarked upon at the time by Akaitcho and the four or five Indians who accompanied him; but the impression, it seems, had sunk deep, for on Maufelly's seeing me fill my tent with smoke, and then throw open the front and beat the sides with leafy branches, to drive out the stupified pests before I went to rest, he could not refrain from expressing his surprise that I should be so unlike the old chief, who would not destroy so much as a single mosquito.-Back's Arctic Expedition.