We have received from Stanford and Swords TH CHURCH CHANT BOOK, written, arranged, and in part composed by Rev. William Staunton. It is designed to facilitate the practice of chanting in Churches private circles, and comprises a large selection of chant tunes in the Gregorian and modern modes, adapted to the services of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It has also an introduction and instructions relative to the mode of performance, which contain many valuable suggestions. The arrangement of the chants are judicious, and many of the author's pieces are remarkably fine. PRACTICAL MERCANTILE CORRESPONDENCE. By We have also received, from the same firm, SwORDS cal-POCKET ALMANAC for 1851-which contains, in addi tion to a great variety of statistical information, the Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. CALENDAR FOR MARCH. 2. Quinquagesima Sunday.-Next Sunday before Lent. 5. The First Day of LENT, commonly called ASH WEDNESDAY. [Proper Psalms instead of the Psalms for the Day. Proper Prayers immediately before the General Thanksgiving at Morning Prayer-printed between the Collect and the Epistle.] 9. First Sunday in Lent. 25. The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 30. Fourth Sunday in Lent. HE event in the life of Da- bling and astonished. If the king would tell niel, which the accompa- them the dream, they would interpret it; but nying engraving is de- it was beyond their wisdom or their art to signed to illustrate, is one enter into the land of shadows, and summon of the most remarkable in thence the flitting forms which had passed bethe eventful history of that Prophet. fore the mind of the king in sleep. "There Jerusalem having been conquered is not a man upon the earth that can show by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the king's matter: therefore there is no king, the city reduced to ashes, and the tem-lord, nor ruler, that asked such things of any ple destroyed, Daniel, among other magician, or astrologer, or Chaldean." But Israelites, was carried away into captivity. the king was angry, and commanded all the He was soon remarked for his wisdom and wise men of Babylon to be destroyed. integrity, and the king communed with him, and paid great respect to his counsel and words. Thus, taken into the midst of an idolatrous and heathen nation, Daniel was selected by the God whom he worshiped, as an instrument to show forth His power and majesty. The king had a dream, which, when the fetters of sleep were broken, had faded from his mind, so that while the vision which had come to him in the silence of the night could not be recalled, it still left his spirits oppressed with the dread of some approaching and fearful calamity. He was greatly troubled. He called to him the magicians, astrologers, and sorcerers of the Chaldeans, and required them to make known unto him the dream and the interpretation. They stood before him trem What the magicians and wise men were unable to perform, Daniel promised to accomplish. He prayed to God for knowledge, and in a night vision the secret was revealed to him. He communicated to the king, with the most exact precision in its details, the dream, which had "gone from him," and then he interpreted the dream, and showed the events in the future, which it foreshadowed. The king, overcome by the wisdom and prophetic power exhibited by Daniel, which had accomplished what the magicians and sorcerers pronounced impossible, fell down and worshiped him, acknowledged that his God was a "God of gods, a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets," and made Daniel a ruler over Babylon, and the chief of the governors, over all the wise men of Babylon. VOL. VIII.-NO. IV. After this he interpreted the dream of Ne-for the sense of justice and right is not apt to buchadnezzar, sent to warn him that he should be very quick and nice, when malice and enbe driven from men, and have his dwelling vy are working out an end. But this was among the beasts; and interpreted to Bel-not necessary. They knew the fearlessness, shazzar the handwriting which the fingers of the unswerving firmness and determination, a man's hand wrote upon the wall, in the with which Daniel adhered to the truth, and midst of festivities and debauchery. performed his duty. They knew that nothing When Darius, the Median, took the king-could turn him aside from this; so they predom, he made Daniel the first president and vailed upon the king to establish a royal stachief man in the kingdom, and preferred him tute, "that whosoever shall ask a petition of above all other presidents and princes, "be- any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, cause an excellent spirit was in him." O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions." The law was passed. Daniel was distinguished for his wisdom, his fearlessness, his integrity, his unshrinking The enemies of the Prophet were not misdischarge of duty, as well as for his prophetic taken. He would not cease to offer up praypower. "An excellent spirit was in him," ers and petitions to the God of his fathers, and he became chief man in the state; a most who had done such wonderful things for him, dangerous position then, as now, and always. { and who, by investing him with supernatural The eye of disappointed ambition, jealousy, powers, had raised him to the eminence he envy, and revenge, turned upon him its sinis- then occupied. He disregarded the decree. ter glance. The poisoned arrow was taken In the midst of an idolatrous people, he bore from its quiver, and winged secretly and public witness to the truth. "And his winnoiselessly in the dark. Men who wanted his dows being open in his chamber towards Jeplace, gnashed upon him with their teeth, and rusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three those whose defects were made more obvious times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks beby contrast with the beautiful proportions of fore his God, as he did aforetime." How his character, plotted his destruction. He sublime the spectacle! What dauntless couwas a stumbling-block in their path, and must rage, what intrepidity of purpose! God had be destroyed. Envy, malice, hatred, and re-enunciated His decree from the top of the venge, came together in dark and secret mount around which the lightnings gleamed, counsel, to devise some scheme by which the and the thunders roared, commanding all men just man might be cast down. It was true to worship Him, and Him only. The king that "none occcasion nor fault" could be issued a decree commanding men not to worfound in him; but what of that? Did malice ship God. God was on the one side, and man ever falter in its work of evil, because its on the other. Daniel did not hesitate. He victim was not in fault? Nay, rather does obeyed God rather than man. His enemies not that very fact arm it with tenfold viru- were watching his every motion. They saw lence, and impel it to make a cause? So was him on his knees praying to his God; and it in the case of the Prophet Daniel. No forthwith the king was appealed to, to carry cause could be found, so his enemies deter- out the decree. Darius, when he heard this, mined to make a cause. They would have "was sore displeased with himself," for hava law passed, an act of special legislation, to ing published the decree. He reverenced meet the particular case of the particular in- Daniel for his wisdom and integrity. He dividual, and thus accomplish what otherwise had passed the law without knowing whither could not be effected. It was not to be what it tended; but he now saw that they who had in modern times is termed an ex post facto importuned him to give it effect had been law. It was not to look to the past. Doubt-prompted by motives of hatred and revenge less these men, had it been necessary for their towards the man whom he esteemed and hopurpose, would not have had their sense of jus-nored, and he "set his heart on Daniel to detice and right shocked even by such an outrage, liver him; and labored till the going down of |