deer are used to draw the sledge instead of horses, and evince a power of endurance that would hardly have been expected from their outward frames. It is said that they will perform journeys of as much as two hundred miles at a stretch, without being taken out of the harness, and frequently finding their scanty food, during their brief rests, by turning up the snow.

In Kamschatka the large dog of the country is used in long teams for the same purpose, the driver directing them without any reins, simply by his voice alone, or by the aid of a stick, which he throws at the dogs when he wishes to correct or urge them forwards, and then recovering it again with great dexterity as he passes the spot where it has fallen.

Thus is the sledge adapted for the frozen regions where it is employed, and where a wheeled carriage would be clogged and utterly useless, a sledge proceeds with safety, facility, and speed.

TO MY WIFE.

Dear Helen we have lovers been,
And now are man and wife;

But still we love, and love the more,
The more we see of life.

'Tis not by mingling with the throng,
And running pleasure's round;
'Tis not in wealth and worldly fame
That happiness is found.

For worldly fame may flee away,
Riches may prove a bane,

And sad experience often shows
That pleasure ends in pain.

Best 'tis when hands and heart unite,

By holy marriage bound,

Though riches fail, though cares assail,
Still happiness is found.

Then let us love as we have lov'd,

Till death our bond shall sever,

And let us hope when time shall cease,
To live and love for ever.

P. T. 0.

EVENING.

Sweet minstrel of the sky! thy vesper hymn

Of praise and gratitude thou pourest out; While in the west slow fades the light of day, And, with a stealthy pace, comes evetide grey, Sending her dusky shapes, and shadows dim,

To brood upon the hills, and float the vales about.

The rivulet, whose waters kiss my feet,

Glides onward with a dream-like murmuring; The tall grass rustles to the passing breeze, And a low sobbing sound is heard, where trees, That on the verdant slopes and hillocks meet

In groups and clusters, to and fro their branches swing.

Glide on, with murmurs soft, ye gentle waves;

Sing on, sweet lark; ye grasses of the fields,
And trees that stand in leafy majesty,

With sighing breezes, swell the symphony;

'Tis nature's music that my spirit craves,

None other to my breast such consolation yields.

Oh, Nature! unto those who love thee, thou
Art a kind parent, and thou leadest up
Thy children, step by step, until they thread
The heights, where God his dwelling-place hath made
Before the great First Cause of all to bow,-

Quaffing of pure delight from out a crystal cup.

THE GOLDEN PIPPIN.

THE Golden Pippin is a native of Sussex, and is said to have been first reared in Parham Park, which is situated on the north side of the South Downs. The Dutch acknowledge it to be an English apple in their catalogue of fruits, where it is called the "Engelsche good Pipping." The French call it Peppin d'Or, which is a translation of the English name. Catherine, Empress of Russia, was so fond of this apple, that she was regularly supplied with it from England, and that she might have it in the greatest perfection, each apple was separately enveloped in silver paper.

REVIEWS, &c.

The Life of William Cowper, Esq., compiled from his Correspondence, and other authentic sources of information. By Thomas Taylor. London. fc. 8vo. Seeley and Burnside.

WE cordially recommend this volume to the attention of our readers. It is the production of one very competent for the work he has undertaken, not only by his knowledge of the man, but much more by his acquaintance with the Christian character of Cowper. No one is competent to write the life of a sincere and practical believer in the Christian truths but a person himself well acquainted from experience with the working of those truths in the spirit, and such Mr. Taylor appears to be. Cowper was eminently a dweller in the country, and looked upon the works of nature, not merely with a philosophic and a poet's eye, but with a deep and filial sense of their omnipresent author. His letters (among the very foremost models of epistolary excellence) derive, like his poetry, m uch of their interest from this cause. We shall, however, prefer to be the means of circulating some general truths of a more solid character.

The principal subject of general interest in connection with the life and character of Cowper is that of religious melancholy. That not religion, but religious enquiry, should be the source of much solicitude, and even positive unhappiness, seems very natural, when we join together the concern which the thoughtful mind must necessarily feel upon so important a subject, the natural ignorance respecting it with which the most gifted must enter on the enquiry, and the helplessness from naturally perverted habits of thought and feeling which the enquirer is under when he first seeks an entire renovation of his whole soul. Respecting the much canvassed subject of the poet's misery from this source, the editor has given the following very satisfying and convincing account:

Various causes have been assigned by different writers for the

melancholy aberration of mind of which Cowper was now, and at other seasons of his life, the subject; but none are so irreconcilable to every thing like just and legitimate reasoning, as the attempt to ascribe it to religion. That unjust views of the character of God, and of the nature of the Gospel, may occasionally have been the predisposing causes of great and severe mental depression, we are not disposed to deny; though we think this a case of unfrequent occurrence, and one in which the individual must be in a state of great ignorance respecting the fundamental truths of religion.

The impression which haunted his imagination, during the partial derangement which closed the latter period of his life, was not simply erroneous or unscriptural; it was wholly out of the line of religious belief. It had no relation to any one proposition of theology; it was an assumption built upon premises completely fictitious; all was unreal but the anguish and despair which the delusion of his reason produced. The letters he wrote to his correspondents, and the hymns he composed, prior to this second attack, prove unquestionably that his views of religion were at the remotest distance from what can be termed visionary and enthusiastic on the contrary they were perfectly scriptural and evangelical, and were, therefore, infinitely more adapted to support, than to depress his mind.

He had not been led into it by any mental process, nor was it a conclusion at which he had arrived by the operation of either reason or conscience, for it was wholly unconnected with any tenet he held; but it had come upon him as a visitation, not as a judgment, from God, for reasons to us inscrutable, but unquestionably in entire harmony with his infinite benevolence. The sensation, however, was real; it could not be reasoned away, any more than the head-ache, or any other physical disorder. It was as clearly a case of hypochondriasis as those instances in which the patient imagines himself transformed into a block, a tree, or any other material object. If in this case the impression seemed more rational, it was far from being so in reality, as it is evident from the specific nature of the idea on which he fixed, that he was excluded from salvation for not having complied with a suggestion to extinguish his own life, which his hallucination led him to imagine was the command of God. It is impossible that religion could have given birth to a notion thus unnatural and monstrous; and yet that it was mainly this which produced his melancholy, none who have considered the nature of his case can deny.

Yet, in spite of the self-evident impossibility of his faith affecting a sound mind with such a hallucination; though a mind previously diseased might as readily fall into that as any other: in spite of chronology, his first aberration having taken place before he had tasted the good word of God;' in spite of geo

graphy, that calamity having befallen him in London, where he had no acquaintance with persons holding the reprobated doctrines of election and sovereign grace; and in spite of fact, utterly undeniable, that the only effectual consolations which he experienced under his first or subsequent attacks of depression, arose from the truths of the gospel-in spite of all these unanswerable confutations of the ignorant and malignant falsehood, the enemies of Christian truth persevere in repeating, that too much religion made poor Cowper mad.' If they be sincere, they are themselves under the strongest delusion; and it will be well if it prove not, on their part, a wilful one-it will be well, if they have not reached that last perversity of human reason,—to believe a falsehood of their own invention.

Cataract, its Symptom and Cure. ByJohn Stevenson, Esq., Surgeon Oculist to the late King. Highley, Fleet Street.

MR. Stevenson's high standing in his profession is the best guarantee that his observations on the disorder to which he has especially devoted himself are worthy of attention, while the extensive experience through which his present position has been attained, is a sufficient assurance to the readers that that which he himself may not be competent to judge of is as soundly correct in reality as it is plausible in appearance. The best professional testimony has indeed long since assigned to this gentleman the distinction he enjoys. Excruciatingly sensitive in its conformation, the organ of which cataract destroys the power was one with which medical men of all kinds were ever very chary of meddling. Sight is a blessing so important, and a means of enjoyment so extensive and delightful, that it will become every one who would act conscientiously by his fellows, to exercise the utmost caution in interfering with its economy while complete, or in attempting to restore its power when defective or destroyed; and we cannot wonder then that notwithstanding the multitudinous improvements introduced in medical science, and the advance of surgical skill, that the treat · ment of the eye retained for so long a period the same