continental writer, M. Turgot, has suggested that in all probability abstract ideas are the first which are formed in the minds of children. The origin of this hy pethesis rests upon the common habit of children apparently confounding familiar ideas, as in the instance already analyzed, of a child calling several persons by the name of father. This, as has been shown, arises from the child affixing to the terms it employs certain significations, which differ from those which those terms in ordinary acceptation, and by conventional arrangement, usually express. Now the great perfection of the Christian's creed is this, that the meaning of its leading terms is previously settled by its divine author; and the Christian beholds in his God, his Creator, his Redeemer, his Sanctifier. He finds in the page of revelation, the fixed relation in which man stands to his God; and the mode by which he is to become one with Christ. And while others are tossed upon the troubled ocean of life, driven before the storm, and overclouded in the tempest, his chart is spread before him, his prow is ever towards the haven of his rest, and as he ascends upon the swelling bosom of the heaving and tempestuous billow, he only feels himself, when poised upon its crest (as it were), flung the nearer to Him who is his present help in trouble. The man who takes his creed, his principles, and his definitions from the Bible, will find that his lamp will be trimmed and his oil provided, when he is summoned "to attend the Bridegroom." Reasoning on spiritual things cannot proceed safely without this precaution. Reasoning is the perception of the relation of two ideas by means of their mutual relation to another idea or ideas. A thought is the affection of the mind created by the perception of the relation of two objects or ideas. Reasoning then may be considered as the process by which we arrive at an abstract thought, and which is effected by comparing a particular thought with other thoughts, and tracing a similitude of relations. It has been considered by an eminent philosopher that this process may go forward by using words like algebraical symbols, and without reference to the precise signification of each particular word, in each stage of the process. This dangerous opinion has its foundation in a position which

appears totally fallacious, that algebraical results are analogous to the conclusions which we draw in general reasoning. It confounds the sensible relations of material quantity with the abstract relations of impalpable qualities, than which nothing can be more dissimilar. From the very nature of language, verbal reasoning must be preceded by mental. And the individual who has advanced this doctrine appears unconsciously to have controverted it in another portion of his valuable work, for he tells us, that "part of the process in reasoning consists in fixing, with a rapidity that escapes our memory, the precise meaning of every word which is ambiguous, by the relation in which it stands to the general scope of the argument." In algebraical deduction it is true that there is a meaning primarily attached to the symbols, from which meaning we are supposed not to depart, and so far it may be considered analogous to general reasoning. But in the former the process of tracing the relations is conducted on pre-established principles, founded on the known relations of quantity; whereas in the latter, that process altogether depends on the meaning of the general terms employed. The perception of the several relations can only be ascertained by tracing the similitude of the qualities which produce sensations, or in other words, by analyzing the precise meaning of the terms employed. Language is a necessary instrument to communicate thought, but is not essential to thinking. The vast importance, therefore, of having the language of scriptural discussion clearly understood, cannot be too strongly urged. And so, in defending our holy faith, we should always ascertain the verbal weapons of our adversary, and make him draw his sword from the scabbard. How strangely, or rather how divinely coincident are the opinions, and harmonious the feelings, of all those who acknowledge' the doctrine of the influence of God's Holy Spirit as essential to the formation of a true believer. And how diversified and various the tracks and courses of those who leave the spiritual convoy, and trust their frail barks to the casual gusts of polemical dissension. the errors into which, in the ordinary process of reasoning, from its very nature, man must always be liable to fall,

If

are all avoided by the Gospel system, if the true chart and compass for a heaven-bound voyage can only be found in the page of Divine Revelation; if by the system of Scripture alone, man's nature can be re-constructed, its symmetry adjusted, and reconciliation with his Creator effected -if every affection of the heart, and every emotion of the soul, there, and there only find the bread and the water of life, to satisfy the hunger and thirst after righteousness-if by that avenue alone we find an approach to the throne of grace, enabling us to stand erect in the robes of imputed righteousness—if that system finds men scathed by the lightning of the wrath of offended purity, and clothes him in all the loveliness and eternal verdure of infinite grace-if it gives and realises to man the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to comeif it smashes and shatters the fetters of sin, and emancipates the sinner from the slavery of an unholy nature-if it whispers peace in affliction, sympathy in sorrow-if it lights up the darkness of the grave-if it transfers our affections to the high considerations of divine mercy, and affords a theme for our

heavenly contemplation, the glory and sublimity of which is coeval with eternity and co-extensive with immensity, and all these its effects are traced by the finger of God in his Word, as they demonstrably flow from that divine system upon the principle of me taphysical and moral science; "How beautiful then upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!" Let the political tempests now gathering around rage as they may; we have each our position to defend, and may we be enabled firmly to stand in the day of trial. This consolation, at least, must remain to the true believer, that when driven to the last entrenchment of that civil and religious freedom with which we once were blest, as subjects of a temporal King, and when the last inch of ground remains, and the last moment intervenes between his allotted time and his entrance on eternity, he falls upon the bosom of his martyred master, where a hallowed home and an everlasting rest remain to him, as to all who have trusted in the same unfailing promises, and walked in the same infallible light.

The benefits of history are lost to him who, either a fool or a knave, would regard it as an "Old Almanack.” Without it, man's life should be but the present hour as it flits from him, and, like a ship at sea, no shore in view, no rudder, compass, or log-book, the past course were unprofitable, the future without an object. I confess that I entertain great reverence for history, and, without being the keeper of any man's conscience but my own, I would hold it a sin of deep dye against the happiness of mankind, to vilify its character or deny its authority. It is a treasury upon which all may draw to render the path of life safe, useful, and pleasant; and to it I am indebted for the following narrative, in which private loves, dangers, and sorrows, mingle with the vicissitudes and sufferings of royalty. That narrative, Mr. Editor, I offer as an humble tribute to your laudable attempt to add to the yet scanty stores of our national lite

rature.

A bright morning often ushers in a gloomy and tempestuous day. Charles the First ascended the throne of England with as much popularity as ever flattered or deceived a sovereign-evil advisers brought him to ascend a scaffold, and by his death

To point a moral or adorn a tale.

Henry the Fifth had the magnanimity, or, what is better, the wisdom to forget what the Prince of Wales endured from the official faith and duty of the

Lord Chief Justice. Charles followed his example towards the gay and vicious Duke of Buckingham; but not in the same spirit with that of the hero of Agincourt; and if, at a period nearer to our own times, a prince, on his accession to the throne, had forgotten towards a minister an act of duty which a very limited understanding, alone, could have construed into personal offence, England might, probably, have been spared calamities for the pen of history yet to record. Charles was a man of an excellent heart, but of weak intellect as to the art of governing. He had a bad minister; but, worse and more fatal to his fortunes, he had in Henrietta of France, his royal consort, a bosom-counsellor to popery. Alliance of any kind with France, has been fatal to the throne and people of England. Hume, inclined himself to the Stuarts, has not attempted to withhold or disguise from the judgment of posterity, that the favouring of popery and innovations upon the Established Church, even more than the arbitrary dispensations of the laws, led to the embroilment of the state and the execution of the king on a scaffold, as having violated the laws and constitution of which he had been appointed the guardian, and the integrity of which he was bound to maintain. The assassination of Buckingham did not relieve Charles from the evils which had been superinduced by his pernicious councils. The impetus given to

misrule continued after the head from which it proceeded was laid low, and, when forced by the long parliament, to concession after concession, he found, as in our own times, that he was only endeavouring to "fill a sieve with water"-the stream of time has always "stepping-stones" to facilitate the progress of revolution and calamity. The king gave his assent to the bill depriving the bishops of their votes in parliament, and in that moment he cast from him the soundest and strongest staff which he had to lean upon. It consummated the views and the power of the republican faction. So "antimonarchical an act," as Clarendon terms it, stamped the cause of the king with the seal of desperation and destruction. The royal bark began to sink, the rats obeyed their instinct, and the few, in either house of parliament, who had been the king's friends, forsook him and sided with the 66 lords of the ascendant." Charles, whatever the errors of his government, passionately and faithfully loved his Queen-no profligate minister or favourite, whig or tory could detach him from her. He inherited the fatal uxoriousness of the "first man," and incurred his penalty: his Eden was forfeited, he was made acquainted with death, and his Eve was sent forth on the world. The queen, after the death-contest began, embarked at Dover, for Holland, and the king, who had attended her embarkation, returned to Greenwich to be sacrificed to the spirit of democracy. What follow ed between this period and that when the fortunes of Charles had arrived at a still more interesting crisis, needs not to be detailed here. We are not about to give a regular history of the life and death of the royal martyr, but wish to raise the veil of time from facts relating to some individuals of the Itinerant Court, whose destinies were involved in those of the unhappy monarch, and whose LOVE and LOYALTY were never separated from the fortunes of the royal victim. But let us on to our tale without further preface.

It was on a keenly cold and frosty night, or rather morning, by the clock, on the eleventh of February, in the year of Grace, one thousand six hundred and forty-three, that the little town of Docklum, situated at the mouth of the River Ee, in Friedland,

lay, wrapt profoundly in its accustomed state of tranquillity. This place, now a neat and pleasant town, was, at the period in which our narrative commences, remarkable for nothing but the goodness of its harbour, which, with its proximity and safe egress to the German ocean, and the excellent quality and great variety of the finny tribes swarming on its shores, had rendered it one of the small emporiums, where the patient and money-loving Hollanders carried on their thriving fisheries. Being entirely occupied, either in the pursuits of a maritime, life, or the less dangerous, though not less laborious one, of curing their fish, as their days were peaceful and industrious, so were their slumbers tranquil and profound; and it required neither watchmen nor patrol to secure the property or protect the lives of the well regulated denizens of Docklum. The modern march of intellect had not yet reached them, nor ultra-civilization cursed them with the increase and ingenuity of crime, which in our day, and in our country, makes municipal police, the most arduous part of the science of government to concoct and reduce to practice. There was then, as we believe there is now, perfect harmony in the mental and physical conformation of our Dutch neighbours, and the Craniologists (if there had been any in that day,) would have found few bumps on the head of a genuine Mynheer, unless, as in the

Emerald Isle,' produced by the very successful application of a "sprig of shillela." The organ of money-making could, certainly, have been found developed, but so incorporated with that of honesty that they could not be separated. In numerous points of modern knowledge, it must be confessed, the inhabitants of Docklum, in common with their countrymen in general, were miserably deficient, probably because that then "the scoolmaster was not abroad," and that none of the shining lights of our modern administrations had at that time any archetypes in the political firmament; nor the labours of Paine, Cobbett, Hone, Carlile, and those of the Edinburgh Reviewers had been cast upon society like a moral malaria. The inhabitants of Docklum were so shamefully ignorant, that they knew not the distinctions of Whig and Tory, Repealer and Radical-they were troubled neither with Catholic

Emancipation-Parliamentary Reform -Jesuit Ministers, nor Jesuit Priests; 'passive resistance' could not be translated into their language; they held Pope and Devil in equal repute, and would have had no dealings with either except-upon Change; and the Pope (we will not answer for the other gentleman) seemed as little disposed to have any thing to do with them;-in a word, they were good, plain, downright Protestants, and, however deficient in other reading, they were deeply versed in their Bibles and their ledgers; which was the most favourite study, we presume not to say, but if they laboured equally to save their souls and their fish, they did that which was rare in their own age, and is still more so in ours; above all, they had the wisdom, which we have woefully proved ourselves not to have possessed-they respected the adage, “Let well enough alone," had no King or Prime Minister to provoke to love of change, and, necessarily, were happier than most of their neighbours.

Such were the simple and honest Docklumonians on the night already mentioned; but even Morpheus's leaden sceptre cannot ensure general obedience and there is scarcely a well-inhabited house, much less a small fishing town, in which "kind nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," does not deny her nourishment to some; and, on the night in question, Peter Von DoubleChalkem, the proprietor of a small change-house in Docklum, had been sedulously courting her influence, but she "no ready visit paid." An intense swelling in his legs, which "murdered sleep," and had baffled all medical skill and sagacity to alleviate or determine, and kept him awake. Peter, however, nowise disposed to the rus in urbe of the Docklum Pere la Chaise, kept his ante-mortem ground, despite of every professional prediction to the contrary. Truth to say, our Host of the Dolphin laboured hard to support the credit of his physician, who, with great respect be it spoken, never graduated beyond the pestle and mortar, which formed the sign over his shop-door, situated at the corner of Tombstone-Alley; and, although in daily indulgence of potations, deep and strong, Peter still kept on his legs, bad as they were, and would almost lead one to believe that the only danger attending medical ad

Peter

vice is, the observance of it. was under the influence of his swelled legs and stubborn constitution, on the fine and cold night we have mentioned, when sounds to which his ear was not unaccustomed, brought him to the casement, which looked up the street. It was the distant tramp of a small party of horse, and as our Host added to his retail business, the wholesale benevolence of administering to the wants of those who nauseate the flavour of any liquid, which had undergone the ordeal of an impost, or, in other words, that had been exchequered, he felt assured that some of his free-trade friends were about to visit him; he was disappointed, and so was the love of gain, which was as national to Peter, as natural to all in every part of the world, who sell ale or any thing else. He saw pass under his window a sight, then as rare in Docklum, as an honest statesman, or peace-loving priest of mother church, would be in our day. This sight was an officer and two mounted dragoons, fully caparisoned in the ponderous accoutrements of the times, and corresponding in stature to their horses, which were of the largest black Flanders breed. Peter thrust his head out of the window, looked after the men at arms, wondered what the devil it could be about, and went to bed.

Now, although our Host of the Dolphin is not the hero of our tale, nor long to hold place in our narrative, we are in conscience bound to vindicate him from any distinctive imputation resting on his character, in consequence of our having said that his love of gain was disappointed, because, that whatever called for the visit of the dragoons, they did not call for drink.Truth to say-and we value truth if for no other than a mercantile principle for its scarcity-honest Peter differed in nothing, that we have ever known, from all other honest men, whose creed was to be found in the balance sheet of profit and loss. Indeed, nothing seems more strange and unaccountable to us, than that so much discord and crime should fill the world under the pretext of difference of religion-for a mere and shallow pretext it is, and there is no man, willing to see things in their true light, who must not be convinced that there is but one universal religion, and that the whole human race the inhabitants of Utopia