of the head and heart are first unsealed, but enter the field of education, while the dews of the morning are fresh, and amid their persevering toil, look over to the God of harvest, might they not hope to rear flowers such as angels wear, and fruits that ripen in heaven's unwithering clime?

Hartford, January, 1830.

L. H. S.

ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY OF NATIONS.

ANCIENT SACRED HISTORY.

The seventh and last period of this history begins with Herod, who is usually denominated the Great, and reaches down to the destruction of Jerusalem, the seventieth year of the Christian æra, containing one hundred and six years.

Herod is celebrated in history for his infamous cruelties. He however restored the temple, or adorned it in so magnificent a manner, as to render it one of the most stupendous works of the age. After his death the government was divided between Herod Antipas, and his brothers Archelaus and Philip. Each division was called a tetrarchy, or fourth part, and the brothers reigned under the title of tetrarchs. The wife of Herod Antipas was the famous Herodias, by whose persuasion John the Baptist was beheaded. The third Herod was a prudent and excellent governor; he is the Agrippa to whom St. Paul addressed his celebrated oration. He was succeeded by Herod the Fourth, who annexed Judea once more to Syria. And in the next reign, under Herod Agrippa, Jerusalem was besieged, taken, and, together with the temple, was utterly destroyed.

During this period frequent mention is made of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians; and as these different sects are continually referred to in the NewTestament, it may be proper to give a brief account of them here. The Pharisees were so called from their mode of separating themselves from the rest of the people. The Sadducees derive their name from Sadock, the chief of their sect. The Herodians are sup

posed to have been the flatterers of Herod, to have embraced his religion, and to have accommodated themselves to the fashion of the times in which they lived. They were also distinguished from the Pharisees and other Jews, by their falling in with Herod's scheme of subjecting himself and his dominions to the Romans, and introducing among his own nation the manners and customs of heathen countries. In their zeal for the Roman authority they complied with a variety of idolatrous practices introduced by Herod, who, we are informed by Josephus, built a temple to Cæsar, erected a magnificent theatre at Jerusalem, instituted pagan games, and placed the Roman Eagle over the gate of the temple.

(To be continued).

INTERESTING AND INSTRUCTIVE EXTRACTS.

ANECDOTE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
(From an eye-witness.)

That the crimes of the French Revolution were mainly to be attributed to the infidel and irreligious opinions, which had been industriously propagated by Voltaire, and other writers of the same school, is now a matter of history. It were in vain to attempt to trace to the pure love of civil liberty, the unheard of cruelties and massacres which were committed under her name. These can only be referred to the deistical and atheistical notions, which denied Revelation, set up the goddess of reason as the idol of popular worship, declared death an everlasting sleep, and stripped man at once of immortality and future accountability.

It will be remembered, that in 1792, when the approach of the Prussians had spread an alarm in Paris, a meeting of the populace was called by Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and others of the most sanguinary and atrocious characters, in the Camp de Mars. Here it was resolved, that "the domestic foes of the nation ought to be destroyed before its foreign enemies were attacked." Accordingly, parties of armed men, infuriate and thirsty for blood, proceeded to the prisons, where the non-juring clergy, the Swiss officers and

other state prisoners, confined since the 10th of August, were in custody. They were taken out, one by one, and after a kind of mock trial, some few being acquitted, the rest were murdered. The massacre lasted for two days, and more than 1000 persons were put to death Among these was the beautiful and accomplished Princess Lamballe. She was taken from her bed, and carried before this bloody tribunal, massacred, and her head carried by the populace to the Temple, to be seen by the Queen, whose friend she was!

It was on the evening of the second day which had witnessed this dreadful carnage, that a number of the Royalists, male and female, sought an asylum in a mansion, once the scene of revelry and gayety-now of sadness and terror.-There were assembled many of the soi-disant philosophers, and many who had been deluded by them. Among the former, was Monsieur A***, distinguished not less by his learning and talents, than by his licentious, yet sprightly sallies, at the expense of every thing sacred. But now, even the face. tious Monsieur A. was mute. All was silence and despair. At length, Mademoiselle C., a young lady celebrated at the court for her personal charms and general amiableness of character-who had been seduced from the religious principles which at an earlier age had been too faintly impressed on her mind-advancing towards Monsieur A. and throwing herself upon the floor, exclaimed, with a piercing shriek, "O give me back my God!" The company immediately dispersed. What a theme is here for meditation!

RELIGION.

We pity the man who has no religion in his heartno high and irresistible yearning after a better and holier existence-who is contented with the sensuality and grossness of earth-whose spirit never revolts at the darkness of his prison house, nor exults at the thoughts of its final emancipation. We pity him, for he affords no evidence of his high origin-no manifes

tation of that intellectual prerogative, which renders him delegated Lord of the visible creation. He can rank no higher than animal nature; the spiritual could never stoop so lowly. To seek for beastly excitements -to minister with a bountiful hand to depraved and strange appetites-are the attributes of the animal alone. To limit our hopes and aspirations to this life and this world, is like remaining for ever in the place of our birth, without ever lifting the veil of the visible horizon, which bent over infancy.

There is religion in every thing around us-a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of Nature, It is a meek and which man would do well to imitate.

blessed influence, stealing in, as it were, unawares upon the heart. It comes quietly, and without excitement. It has no terror, no gloom in its approaches. It does not rouse up the passions; it is untrammelled by the creeds and unshadowed by the superstitions of man. It is fresh from the hands of its author-and glowing from the immediate presence of the Great Spirit which pervades and quickens it. It is written on the arched sky. It looks out from every star. It is on the sailing cloud, in the invisible wind. It is among the hills and valleys of Earth; where the shrubless mountain top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter, or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage. It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of the unsleeping ocean. It is the poetry of nature. It is this uplifts the spirit within us, until it is tall enough to overlook the shadows of our place of probation—which breaks, link after link, the chains which binds us to materiality and which opens to imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness.

LORD CRAVEN lived in London when the plague raged. His house was in that part of the town since called Craven Buildings. On the plague growing epidemic, his lordship, to avoid the danger, resolved to go to his seat in the country.-As he was walking through

his hall, with his hat on, and putting on his gloves in order to step into his carriage, he overheard his negro postillion saying to another servant, I suppose, by my lord's quitting London to avoid the plague, that his God lives in the country, and not in town.' The poor

black said this in the simplicity of his heart, as really believing a plurality of gods. The speech, however, struck Lord Craven very sensibly, and made him stop in London.

CIRCLE OF THE SCIENCES, WITH SUITABLE REFLECTIONS.

ASTRONOMICAL SKETCHES.-No. In.

Venus appears the most beautiful and the most brilliant of all the planets. Her greatest brightness, according to Dr. Halley, is when she is between her inferior conjunction, and greatest elongation, at about 39° 44' from the Sun.

The transits of Venus over the Sun's disk are much more rare than those of Mercury. The last transit of Venus was on June 3, 1769, and the next will be Dec. 8, 1874. These phenomena have been of the greatest use to astronomy, in ascertaining the true parallax of the Sun, and thereby the distance of the Earth from that body, together with those of the other planets.

When Venus appears west of the Sun, she rises before him in the morning, and is called the morning star: when she appears east of the Sun, she shines in the evening, after he sets, and is called the evening star. She continues in each of these characters for the space of 290 days. Venus, in the form of a crescent, and at her brightest times, affords a more pleasing telescopic view than any other of the heavenly bodies. Her surface is diversified with spots like those of the Moon; and by the motion of these we ascertain the time which she occupies in revolving upon her axis. With Dr. Herschel's telescope, mountains, like those of the Moon, may be seen on her disk. The planet Venus presents the same phenomena as those of Mercury; but her