a word, upon their whole characters in after life, is very great. Such being the fact, every well-wisher to the human race will be gratified in finding the books intended for children vastly changed in their general character within the last thirty years. How many families of children read as their first books at that time, or a little later, such trash as Blue Beard, Tom Thumb, Whittington and his Cat, Whang the Miller, Cock Robin, &c.

But times are altered. The world is crowded with children's books, almost all of an improved character, yet possessing very different degrees of excellence. A large proportion of them are, as all books should be, written to subserve the cause of morality and religion, and many are written professedly for Sabbath schools.

Such is the little work whose title stands at the head of this article. It embodies a collection of facts, which in some form or other, ought perhaps to be preserved. Yet we regret that the present method of preserving them should have been chosen, because, much as the writer may anticipate good as the result of his labours, we cannot but think he has taken the sure way of defeating his own object.

Many seem to think that a book cannot be proper as a Sunday book, or as an aid in the great cause of religious improvement, unless much is said about death and deathbed scenery. There seems also to be a propensity to judge of a person's prospects beyond the grave, not by the general tenor of his life, but by the circumstances connected with his last sickness and death. This propensity though not so common as it once was, is to be regretted. The writer of the Memoirs of Ann Eliza Starr, much as we value his integrity and good inten

tion, seems to have written under the influence of such views and feelings. Of the twentynine pages contained in the Memoirs, twentythree are devoted to details of her long and distressing sickness and death, and the remaining six are tinged with the same gloom which overspreads the rest of the narrative.

Now how can we expect to excite in the youthful mind a love for religion, by dressing her in such gloomy habiliments? What is there alluring in an early dissolution? What in a long and painful sickness and the conversation about death and eternity, which is here so faithfully but unfortunately detailed? I know these things have no necessary connexion with religion, but children associate them together, and the result is most unhappy. The fact is, that these very means which are so honestly and ardently intended to bring over children to religion, drive them far away from it. We thus defeat our own purpose. Lord Bolingbroke was compelled in his youth to read to his aunt as a matter of duty, Dr Manton's one hundred and ninety long sermons on the one hundred and nineteenth psalm; and perhaps the deep and fixed dislike to religion created by this tiresome task, however piously intended by his relative, had more influence than any argument in perverting the energies of his bold mind to the cause of infidelity. And Mrs Hamilton tells us, from her own observation, that a little girl, to whom Sunday had been made a day of gloomy restraint and dull application, was so shocked by a ser mon in which the preacher described heaven under the figure of an eternal Sabbath, that it was only with great difficulty she recovered in after life from the disgust produced by this unfortunate association. Now these anec

dotes serve to illustrate my meaning, and show how exceedingly important it is that our associations be carefully and judiciously controlled from the first. And we cannot but see that a book like the one before us, though exceedingly well written for adults, is not a proper book to be put into the hands of very young children.

Very many of our juvenile books partake more or less of this same character; an improper and undue stress is laid upon the conversation during sickness, the fortitude and submission the little sufferer exhibited during his trial, and the calmness with which he gave up his soul to God. Religion is designed to make mankindchildren as well as adults-happy. And would we allure children to this great subject, we must so present it that they may see it to be a thing calculated to give them pleasure; make them happy. Let us then present them with the lives of good children—and let them see that religion produces a happy life. If we must detail to them the death of such a child to complete its history, let it be done carefully and briefly. For if we dwell too long on the subject-if sensations of pain are called up, and the child unfortunately associates those ideas of pain with the religious sentiment or feelings of the sufferer, there is no good done, but much hurt. We had better have done nothing. But when the child sees the hero of a little book happy in his conduct and happy in his religious affections and principles, he is made happy, and he immediately associates pleasurable ideas with those principles. How desirable it is that those who understand the human heart in general, and undertake to write for the rising generation, should give this subject proper consideration. Its bearing upon human happiness is obvious.

ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG wife.

WHY are those green clods broken?--The tall grass,
Which in its ripeness wooed the mower's hand,
And the wild rose; whose young buds scarcely bloomed,—
Why are their roots uptorn?-Go ask of him
Who in his lonely chamber weeps so long

At morning's dawn and twilight's pensive hour,
Whose freshly planted hopes could scarcely boast
Less brief duration than yon flower of grass.
-Yet Memory hath her stores whereon to feed,
Though Joy's bright harvest fail,-as clings the bee
To the sweet calyx of some fallen flower.
-The tender smile of fond, confiding love,
Its self-devotion,-its delight to seek
Another's good,-its thousand winning arts
To soothe the hour of weariness and pain,-
Such images may stir the source of tears,
Making remembrance, grief:—but that meek faith,
Which, all distrustful of its holiest deeds,

So strongly clasped a Saviour's feet, when Death
Rang the rent heart-strings like a broken harp,—
The hope which shed its seraph benison
On all who wept around,-the smile that left

A heavenly lustre on the pallid clay,—

These are the gems which Memory lends the soul,
Priceless and pure, to light its pilgrim way

To deathless union with the parted bride.

H.

We are permitted to insert the following from a Manuscript containing the thoughts of an eminently good man, lately deceased, and would add a word in tribute to their revered author. He was for many years deprived of sight. This dread calamity withdrew him from the sphere of active engagements, but did not prevent the most earnest employment of every remaining faculty. His was consequently a most truly useful life, even when it had become apparently an inactive one. His benevolent affections seemed rather quickened than impaired by his personal trials. That gentle spirit which breathes through these pages was uniformly diffused over his whole character. His piety was such as led him not merely to be submissive, tranquil, and resigned, but to make his burden always as light as he could to those who must bear it with him, to be happy and make others so, to seek and promote improvement, to do as much and to enjoy as much as was possible in the sphere, to which God had confined him. And it is not often that more abundant or richer fruits, of moral, or intellectual worth, are produced under the most genial culture, than those which crowned with their beauty and glory the clouded days of this righteous man.

'What think ye of Christ?' is a question which may with propriety be asked of any acquainted with Christianity, and which, indeed, they ought to ask themselves; and every intelligent Christian, it is presumed, will readily answer, He is the Son of God and was the Son of Man. Or in other words, that he was a human being, and yet, in some high and distinguished sense, the Son of God.