when all that is sown takes deep root, and buds and blossoms, and brings forth fruit in profuse abundance.

17. In the disagreements between children and parents, it is certain that the children are usually most culpable. Their violent passions and defective experience, render them disobedient and undutiful. Their love of pleasure operates so violently as often to destroy the source of filial affection. 18. A parent is stung to the heart by the ingratitude of a child. He checks his precipitancy, and perhaps with too little command of temper; for who can always hold the reins? Asperity produces asperity. But the child was the aggressor, and therefore deserves a great part of the misery which ensues.

19. It is however, certain, that the parent is often imprudent, as well as the child undutiful. He should endeavour to render home agreeable, by gentleness and reasonable indulgence; for man at every age seeks to be pleased, but more particularly at the juvenile age.

20. He should indeed maintain his authority; but it should be like the mild dominion of a limited monarch, and not the iron rule of an austere tyrant. If home is rendered pleasing, it will not be long deserted. The prodigal will soon return, when his father's house is always ready to receive him with joy.

21. What is said of the consequence of domestic disunion to sons, is equally to be applied to daughters. Indeed, as the misconduct of daughters is more fatal to family peace, though perhaps not more heinous in a moral view, particular care should be taken to render them attached to the comforts of the family circle.

22. When their home is disagreeable, they will be ready to make any exchange; and will often lose their characters, virtue and happiness, in the pursuit of it. Indeed the female character and happiness are so easily injured, that no solicitude can be too great in their preservation. But prudence is necessary in every good cause, as well as zeal and it is found by experience, that the gentlest method of government, if it is limited and directed by good sense, is the best.

23. It ought indeed to be steady, but not rigid: and every pleasure which is innocent in itself, and its consequences, ought to be admitted, with a view to render less disagreeable that unwinking vigilance, which a delicate and sensible parent will judge necessary to be used in the care of a daughter.

24. To what wickedness as well as wretchedness matrimonial disagreements lead, every day's history will clearly inform us. When the husband is driven from his home by a termagant, he will seek enjoyment, which is denied him at home, in the haunts of vice, and in the riots of intemperance: Nor can female corruption be wondered at, though it must be greatly pitied and regretted, when, in the heart of a husband, which love and friendship should warm, hatred is found to rankle.

25. Conjugal infelicity not only renders life most uncomfortable, but leads to desperate dissoluteness and carelessness in manners, which terminate in the ruin of health, and peace and fortune.

26. But it avails little to point out evils without recommending a remedy. One of the first rules which suggests itself is, that families should endeavour, by often and seriously reflecting on the subject, to convince themselves that not only the enjoyments but the virtues of every individual, greatly depend on a cordial union.

27. When they are convinced of this, they will endeavour to promote it; and it fortunately happens, that the very wish and attempt of every individual must infallibly secure success. It may, indeed, be difficult to restrain the occasional sallies of temper; but where there is in the more dispassionate moments, a settled desire to preserve domestic union, the transient violence of passion will not often produce a permanent rupture.

28. It is another most excellent rule, to avoid a gross familiarity, even where the connection is most intimate. The human heart is so constituted as to love respect. It would indeed be unnatural in very intimate friends, to behave to each other with stiffness; but there is a delicacy of manner, and a flattering deference, that tend to preserve that degree of esteem which is necessary to support affection, and which is lost in contempt, when it deviates into excessive familiarity.

29. An habitual politeness of manners will prevent even indifference from degenerating to hatred. It will refine, exalt and perpetuate affection.

30. But the best and most efficacious rule is, that we should not think our moral and religious duties are only to be practised in public, and in sight of those from whose applause we expect the gratification of our vanity, ambition or avarice: But that we should be equally attentive to our behaviour among those who can only pay us by reciprocal love.

31. We must shew the sincerity of our principles and professions by acting consistent with them, not only in the legislature, in the field, in the pulpit, at the bar, or in any public assembly, but at the fire-side.

1. "

XXIX. SELF-TORMENTING.

"DON'T meddle with that gun, Billy," said a care

ful mother; "if it should go off, it would kill you." "It is not charged, mother," says Will. "Well! but may be," says the good old woman, "it will go off, even if it is not charged." -"But there is no lock on it ma'am." "O dear Billy, I am afraid the hollow thing there, the barrel, I think you call it, will shoot, if there is no lock.”

2. Don't laugh at the old lady. Two thirds of our fears and apprehensions of the evils and mischiefs of this life, are just as well grounded as her's were in this case.

3. There are many unavoidable evils in life, which it becomes us as men and as christians, to bear with fortitude; and there is a certain period assigned to us all, and yet dreaded by most of us, wherein we must conflict with death, and finally lose connection with all things beneath the sun. These things are beyond our utmost power to resist, or sagacity to evade.

4. It is our wisest part therefore, to prepare to encounter them in such a manner as shall do honour to our profession, and manifest a perfect conformity to that directory on which our profession stands. But why need we anticipate unavoidable evils, and "feel a thousand deaths in fearing one?"

says,

5. Why need a woman be everlastingly burying her children in her imagination, and spend her whole time in a fancied course of bereavement, because they are mortal, and must die sometime or other? A divine teacher "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof;" but we put new and unnecessary gall in all the bitter cups we have to drink in life, by artfully mixing, sipping, and smelling beforehand; like the squeamish patient, who by viewing and thinking of his physic, brings a greater distress and burden on his stomach, before he takes it, than the physic itself could ever have done.

6. I would have people be more careful of fire arms than they are: But I don't take a gun barrel, unconnected with powder and lock, to be more dangerous than a broomstick.

7. Serjeant Tremble and his wife, during the time of general health, feel as easy and secure as if their children were immortal. Now and then a neighbour drops off with a consumption, or an apoplexy; but this makes no impression, as all their children are plump and hearty.

8. If there are no cancers, dysenteries, small pox, bladders in the throat, and such like things to be heard of, they almost bid defiance to death; but the moment information was given that a child six miles off, had the throat distemper, all comfort bade adieu to the house; and the misery then endured from dreadful apprehensions, lest the disease should enter the family, was unspeakable.

9. The old serjeant thought that when the wind blew from that quarter, he could smell the infection, and therefore ordered the children to keep house, and drink wormwood and rum, as a preservative against contagion. As for Mrs. Tremble, her mind was in a state of never-ceasing agitation at that time: A specimen of the common situation of the family is as follows:

10. Susy, your eyes look heavy, you don't feel a sore throat, do you? Husband, I heard Tommy cough in the bedroom just now. I'm afraid the distemper is beginning in his vitals, let us get up and light a candle. You don't begin to feel any sore on your tongue or your mouth, do you, my dear little chicken? It seems to me Molly did not eat her breakfast with so good a stomach this morning as she used to do. I'm in distress for fear she has got the distemper coming on. 11. The house was one day a perfect bedlam; for having heard that rue and rum was an excellent guard in their present danger, the good lady dispensed the catholicon so liberally among her children one morning, that not a soul of them could eat all day; Tom vomited heartily; Sue looked as red as fire, and Molly as pale as death.

12. O! what terrors, and heart achings, till the force of the medicine was over! To be short, the child that had the distemper died; and no other child was heard of, in those parts to have it; so that tranquillity and security were restored to Mr. Tremble's family, and their children regarded as formerly, proof against mortality.

13. Mrs. Foresight keeps her mind in a continual state of distress and uneasiness, from a prospect of awful disasters that she is forewarned of by dreams, signs and omens. This,

by the way, is affronting behaviour to common sense, and implies a greater reflection upon some of the divine perfections than some well meaning people are aware of.

14. The good woinan looked exceedingly melancholy at breakfast, one day last week, and appeared to have lost her appetite. After some enquiry into the cause of so mournful a visage, we were given to understand that she forsaw the death of some one in the family; having had warning in the night by a certain noise that she never knew fail, and then she went on to tell how such a thing happened, before the death of her father, and mother, and sister, &c.

15. I endeavoured to argue her out of this whimsical, gloomy state of mind, but in vain; she insisted upon it, that though the noise lasted scarce a minute, it began like the dying shriek of an infant, and went on like the tumbling clods upon a coffin, and ended in the ringing of the bell.

16. The poor woman wept bitterly for the loss of the child that was to die; however, she found afterwards occasion for uneasiness on another account. The cat, unluckily shut up in the buttery, and dissatisfied with so long confinement, gave forth that dying shriek, which first produced the good woman's consternation; and then by some sudden effort to get out at a grate at the upper part of the room, overset a large pewter platter; the platter in its way overset a large wooden bowl full of milk; and both together in their way knocked down a white stone dish of salmon, which came with them into a great brass kettle that stood upon the floor. 17. The noise of the cat might easily be taken for that of a child, and the sound of a salmon upon a board, for that of a clod; and any mortal may be excused for thinking that a pewter-platter and a great earthen dish broken in fifty pieces, both tumbling into a brass kettle, sound like a bell.

XXX. HISTORY OF COLUMBUS.

VERY circumstance relating to the

in this country, that

quiry. Yet it isumed, from the present state of literature of an of eninteresting very and ed with the character of that, whose extraordinary geav persons are buslightly acquaintnius led him to the discovery of he continent, and whose singular sufferingsought to excite the indignation of the world.