THE engraving represents the male and female of a bird known by the name of the Bottle Titmouse, with the nest, which they have ingeniously built. This bird is a native of the South, and is commonly found in low, moist situations. It is called in the technical language of the ornithologist, the PARUS CAUDATUS. It lays from twelve to eighteen eggs, which are spotted, with rust color at the larger end.

Original.

THE FILIAL RELATION.

BY REV. ANSEL D. EDDY, D.D.

WHAT Scene so beautiful, so dear, as home? The warm outgoings of parental love hallow it, and its brightest gems are its infant playfulness, its filial devotion, its youthful promise and prospect. How little do the young, though full of life and pleasure, realize what is involved in home, or how much of its happiness depends upon them; what treasures they here possess, and how tributary they may become to its perpetual enjoyment. To our young readers, we would say, the richness, the pleasure, the adornment of home, rest eminently on you. Indeed, the domestic scene is hardly a home without you. Without you, the family is not there; the forming elements of society are not known; but with you rises the brightest prospect which cheers and stimulates the efforts and best hopes of man. In you the parental existence is wrapped up, and by you the choicest affections of humanity are called forth.

From the unconscious months of infancy, slipt away on the bosom of maternal tenderness-alike ignorant of the pains and watchings, the tears and cares you caused—you awake to the realities and joys of home, and your heart is drawn, by the very necessities of your nature, to father and mother, these affectionate guardians which God has given you, and never can you appreciate their feelings and your own obligations, till you shall rise to the same relation which they now hold to you. Here is your first relation. Your first consciousness is of parental goodness. Here arise the first imperious claims upon you, and here are the most sacred duties imposed, claims acknowledged, and duties discharged, which will alike honor and make happy your parents, and prepare you for usefulness in the wider circles of life and the scenes of another world. It is in the family that the State is formed, and the materials of the Church constructed. It is the family, in its filial relations, which the first command, with promise, respects.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

You are to cherish charity towards all mankind—that charity which thinketh no evil and would do good to all; but there are still affections more tender and strong, consistent with this, which rise far superior, and come nearer home to you, and while their private claims are infinitely strong, they entrench not at all on the social system, and abridge not at all your offices of kindness to others. "Heaven has adapted the vividness of our affections to our power of being beneficial; the love being most lively in these moral connections, in which the opportunities of usefulness are most frequent, and capable of being most accurately applied, in relation to the peculiar wants of him who is to be benefitted." And no relation has God made so near, so tender, so affectionate, and on which so much depends, of usefulness and happiness:

"Who framed the whole, the whole to bless,
On mutual wants built mutual happiness:
So, from the first, eternal order ran,

And creature linked to crcature-man to man."

The first duty of life is filial obedience. That obedience which is prompted by love, and secured by sincerest gratitude. You are cast from the hand of your Creator on parental care, the most helpless and dependent of all creatures, and implicit obedience is the dictate of your nature and necessity. Your life is on yielding to parental authority, and the first waywardness of your fallen nature requires its salutary control, and it is filial wisdom, as well as duty, to honor its dictates. What arises from necessity, we would have secured by your cheerful yielding from the promptings of love, respect, and confidence. We would not have filial affection and respect as duties to be urged upon you, as the securities of obedience, but as a part of your very nature, nursed into exercise as the necessary pledge of filial submission and the honor of parental government. Where these are unknown, we shall in vain urge motives to obedience: on such a heart there can be no sympathies left to arouse and direct.

This filial obedience demands an early regard for parental

pleasure. There is no virtue in yielding to absolute force, or in compliance, where resistance would violate the prescribed rules of domestic order: but there is virtue and a charm, in foreseeing and finding delight in acting according to parental pleasure, and allaying anxiety, by withholding all desire for the indulgence which a parent's heart would deny. The most perfect and beautiful illustration of filial obedience is that example, "which leaves not the parent the power to know that it is required to governwhich, by anticipated obedience, takes away the prerogative to command."

Learn parental pleasure, and meet it unexpressed. Never tax the utmost limit of indulgence, nor labor to widen the bounds of gratification. Restrict your desiring to what parental wisdom and love would confer, and make it your highest happiness to carry out the purposes and pleasure they would dictate; thus you give dignity to yourself, and honor those from whom you sprung. Want of filial obedience is evidence that you neither love, respect, nor value either father or mother-evinces utter destitution of natural and moral principle-and you roam from home like the brute, from whom the very attachment of instinct has died away, and you cast back reproach and contempt upon the spot where you were nurtured. You disgrace your origin, declaring that it has no virtue or dignity to respect; rather that you have neither wisdom nor virtue remaining.

We have in view, not alone the filial obedience of the nursery, but that of higher character, which is consistent with parental being and parental memory. There is something truly lovely and kind in that young man, starting from his father's home, and the tender movings of maternal love, and carrying with him profound respect for parental authority. He goes to build a home of hist own-not like the prisoner that has fled control-not so much from choice as from duty. Hesitancy and tears mark his way, and he often returns, with gratitude and affection, to share afresh a mother's love, and receive anew a father's counsel. And she who is most happy in new-found attachments, hastening in vacant pleasure from home and the last parental embrace, is unfit to be a wife, and unworthy of a friend.

There are no redeeming virtues in those who carry not to their parents' graves love and respect for their authority, and who make not the memory of their pleasure to live and reign over them, when they are gone to the tomb. The age in which you live demands respect for the duties now urged upon you. Many would turn from the wisdom and experience of age to attempt a new and nobler course than their fathers trod. They presume on a loftier spirit of enterprize, more skill and energy, with hopes of speedy success. And what but failure and ruin have followed? Rather respect and value mature wisdom, and profit by the experience of others. Ever regard parental authority, and walk in paths which your fathers have successfully pursued. In all your ways, though in distant and in dignified elevation from the parental home, look back, again and again, and all that is generous, virtuous, and noble in you, will be strengthened by grateful recollections of the spot where its foundations were laid. Honor thy father and thy mother, by owning their commanding influence, to your graves; and when you are no more, filial veneration and love shall adorn the sepulchre of your rest.

Selected.

THE MAGIC OF A SUNDAY SCHOOL.

WHAT a good thing is a Sunday-school in a bad neighborhood! It is like a gas-light in some dangerous corner-it makes darkness visible. It is a "Washing and Ironing Society," it makes the people clean and tidy. It is a "Mechanics' Institute,”—it draws out the mind of the people. It is a "Society for the reformation of manners,"-producing a more thorough change than could be effected by a thousand laws. It is a "Society for keeping holy the Sabbath day," which, by a certain indefinable charm, draws men from the abodes of sin to the house of the Lord. It is a Society for securing the salvation of souls,❞—the great usefulness of which will never be known until the final reckoning day. Think of this, dear reader, and try to place a good Sundayschool in every bad neighborhood.

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