History eight times with his own hand, merely to make himself familiar with the style of that great man.

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There are two great proverbs, one among the Turks, and the other among the Spaniards, both of which contain much that is true. 'A busy man is troubled with but one devil; but the idle man with a thousand." "Men are usually tempted by the devil; but the idle man positively tempts the devil." How much corrupting company, how many temptations to do wrong, how many seasons of danger to your character, and danger to the peace of your friends, will you escape, by forming the habit of being decidedly industrious every day!Todd's Student's Guide.

THEATRICALS.

LETTER FROM THE LATE REV. PETER ROE, MINISTER OF ST. MARY'S, KILKENNY, TO TWO OF HIS YOUNG

PARISHIONERS.

Dublin, October 20, 1812. MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS,-My personal regard for you, and my relation to you as your pastor, combine to urge on the performance of a duty which is, I can truly say, irksome to me, and may be found not less so to you; but when the eternal interest of immortal souls is at stake, every minor consideration sinks into insignificance. And I have now to regret that I did not long since address to you the language of exhortation.

I have observed, with great pain of mind, for some time past, your want of that seriousness, that attention to the preached Gospel, that desire to hear, and speak of, in the domestic circle, the glorious things that concern the great salvation, which were once evident in you, and which the friends of truth, and of your souls, had observed with such pleasure, and such gratitude to God. A day or two before I left home, information reached me that you intended to go to the theatre,—that place of folly, where not only the dresses, the decorations, company, conversation, music, attitudes of the per

formers, &c. &c., are calculated to banish from the mind every serious, every chaste, every correct-I will not say religious thought-but where the glorious truth of God has been reviled-where the solemn demeanour, which becomes those who have their treasure in heaven, has been mimicked, and where the humble followers of Jesus (including your own mother) have been held up as objects only fit for the raillery of the infidel or the debauchee.

Into this place you have gone with your eyes open. Warned of the consequences and the danger of so doing, you have afforded an awful and decided preference of transitory, carnal pleasures, to the joy and peace which belong to the children of God. You have done that which you must have known was contrary to a fond parent's wish, and, I will add, to the wish of every friend who really deserves the name. For think not that those who flatter the natural vanity of the mind-who are delighted when they see you dressed like the world, and living like the world-who would run any length in order to obtain companions in sin and folly,-think not that they are your friends. No; they have no wish beyond their own personal gratification: and if you were sick or afflicted, you would find a termination of their friendship, and that they would turn at once to others, and share with them the same insincerity of human friendship.

A course of sin is, in general, required to stifle conscience, and render the heart of man deaf to its cry. I therefore indulge the hope that you may have heard the voice of that monitor, and that the truths you have so often heard, and with which you are so well acquainted, may have flashed conviction upon your minds, and that you are now truly penitent for having listened to temptation's siren song, and joined the pleasures and practices of that world, the friendship of which is enmity against God. For God's sake, and for your own souls' sake, take up your Bibles; once more lay them before the throne of mercy, and on your bended knees implore the God of all grace that he may lead you to the fountain open in Jesus-that from him you may receive "redemp

tion"-"the forgiveness of all your sins." Invitations are still held out to you; for, though you have acted wrong-not through ignorance, or for the want of means of instruction, but knowingly-still "there is mercy with the Lord that he may be feared"- "there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth :" and I trust and pray that you may, ere long, know, to the comfort of your souls, that Jesus is a Saviour from the love of sin and the world here, as well as from hell and its miseries hereafter. Read John xvii.; John's First Epistle; 1 Peter ii. and iii.; and may you, through grace, "mark, learn, and inwardly digest" these portions of sacred Scripture.

Accept this letter as a token of my sincerest regard; and believe me, ever yours in truth and faithfulness, To the Misses PETER ROE.

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BIOGRAPHER'S REMARKS: A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" So it was found here. The ladies to whom the above was addressed, received it as it deserved to be received. Their first was also, we believe, their last visit to a theatre: and they still live to thank God, who, in ordering the bounds of their habitation, cast their lot in a place so highly favoured with an able and affectionate pastor as the parish of St. Mary's, Kilkenny.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

A Whisper for the Nursery: a Word for the School-room: a Lecture for all who will Listen. With Plans for the Employment and Enjoyment of the Sabbath Hours. London: Ward and Co.

The author of this work is evidently gifted with the faculty of communicating her ideas in a lively and interesting way. The book consists of two parts. The first contains a number of apophthegms on the subject of education, illustrated by appropriate anecdotes. The second part contains a series of lessons on the Book of Daniel, well calculated, we think, to interest the young in that portion of Holy Scripture. As a specimen of the

book, we subjoin the author's remarks on the duty of teachers to ascertain the bias and bent of the minds of their pupils.

"Every mind has its own peculiar foundation and construction; and only as the superstructure is made to harmonize, can unity, strength, or beauty be attained.

"But fashion, which pervades the educational (and the universal) world, and which so few have the moral courage to resist, too often enfeebles the mind, and disgusts the taste of the pupil. The rife epidemic of the day tinctures the stream of education. Hours and days are devoted to music by those who have no ear,—to drawing, by those who have no eye,-to the languages, by those who will never converse but in their native tongue; and thus the bright morning of life is wasted-character has been lost-a mere copyist has been produced; but not a single faculty of the mind fully developed; and no attention given to the fact, that, in the acquisition of all learning, the individual taste should be the chief instrument employed, and ail the treasures it accumulates be the result of its own intellectual effort. This alone will render them precious and imperishable.

"If the capacious and powerful-minded Dr. Harris can 'submit that a student should never have more than two tutors directing his studies at one time, or he will be perplexed by the multiplicity of their claims, and distressed by the consciousness that he is doing nothing so well as he would and could,' what must be the hapless fate of a child having everything to learn,' yet frightened away from the very portal of the study by lists of sciences and ologies with which he has no sympathy, but to which he is forced to give a reluctant regard!

"Doctor Johnson defines knowledge as 'a general illumination of mind,' but surely modern education is rather calculated to produce a general bewilderment. A modern Babel-'confusion worse confounded.' But then, Mrs. Smith must have her daughters taught all that Mrs. Brown's children have learned !

Naturally, children love to labour; education should direct the industry to profitable objects. Abridgments, which are intended to diminish their labours, only teach them to hover over the surface, and never penetrate into the depths of knowledge. Easily attained, it is as easily forgotten. It is associated with no personal effort, no happy recollection of difficulties overcome, or triumphs won.

"Let them read, compare, and examine for themselves, and then observe the vivacity of their impressions, the soundness of their judgments, the awakening of their curiosity, and the liveliness of their imagination; and contrast all these with the lifeless effects produced by the skeletons called abridgments, which contract rather than expand the faculties, and occupy the mind with disjointed and multitudinous abbreviations, resembling a kind of mental mosaic, or the odds and ends of broken fragments embedded in the brain.

"Goëthe, writing of his childhood, says, 'Happily, then there were no children's books: and as I could not get Blue-beard or Puss-in-Boots, I studied Rollin and the History of the Middle Ages. And as all the great writers had simple and childlike ways

of thinking, I found it easy and agreeable to learn what they had given to posterity.'

"Doubtless the libraries of the young are now far more opulent. The literature of the nursery occupies a higher station, and embraces a wider range. But still, the grand desideratum is to prevent mental labour, and find a royal road to wisdom, ending too often in bye-paths, leading to the sandy, sterile desert, or the thistleful garden of the sluggard.

"Tieck, the great German philosopher, would never suffer a child's book to come into his house. And Jacobi gives this graphic sketch of his early studies:-The absence of external excitement rendered the instruction we received our best preservative from ennui, and we found in our father's library our stimulus and our food. We described nature like Kleish, and wrote Idyls like Gessner.'

"How different was the result when the writer once attended an examination, where children were only crammed with catechisms and manuals, and where botany was declared to be the study of the stars,' and 'geometry the knowledge of different earths,' and 'Judas Iscariot the Redeemer of the World!!' And the teacher quietly apologized for the untoward replies by saying, 'that they had mistaken their position in the class, and had answered the questions as they expected they would come to their turn!' I wish this statement to be received as an unvarnished fact.

"It is the exercise of studious thought, reflection, and meditation, that obtains the truest improvement.

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'A boy,' says Dr. Watts, may repeat a whole book of Euclid, yet be no geometrician; or have learnt half the Bible by rote, or become a living Concordance, and yet understand nothing of divinity.'

"And so it fell to the lot of the writer to verify this opinion, in the replies of a first-class boy in her parochial school. He had learned the book of Proverbs through, as he was accustomed boastingly to declare. He was accounted a diligent and intelligent lad; yet, when he was questioned as to the subject of the morning's sermon, a look of vacancy gave the surest answer of his entire ignorance. And when the inquiry was made, 'What then did occupy your thoughts at church?' he carelessly replied, 'Oh, I shut my eyes, and thought of nauthen' (nothing).

"Education, in this instance, had not commenced. The mental faculties had not even been enlisted, and the discovery led to the alteration of the entire system of instruction. Nothing is gained until you are understood. Nothing is retained long that is not fully comprehended. The mind is merely clogged by words, whilst there is a famine of ideas. And, too often, the exclusive use of children's books tends to make their little students morally and intellectually stunted, if not deformed. The world to them lies within the nursery and the school room, and is altogether factitious. The great histories of humanity are never mentioned in their presence. Nature ceases to be vocal; domestic incident furnishes no occasion of instruction or warning; and learning degenerates into a dull routine, associated with school-rooms and forms, all thoughts of which are to be forgotten in the play ground and the family circle."