high, as the last peal of the thunder of heaven; such is the noise of battle. As roll a thousand waves to the rock, so Swaran's host came on; as meets a rock a thousand waves, so Innis-fail met Swaran. Death raises al! his voices around, and mixes with the sound of shields. The field echoes from wing to wing, as a hundred hammers that fall by turns on the red son of the furnace. As a hundred winds on Morven, as the streams of a hundred hills, as clouds fly successive over the heavens, or as the dark ocean assaults the shore of the desert-so roaring, so vast, so terrible, the armies mixed on Lena's echoing heath. The groan of the people spread over the hills. It was like the thunder of night, when the clouds burst on Cona, and a thousand ghosts shriek at once on the hollow wind." Never were images of more awful sublimity employed to heighten the terror of battle. Blair.

Reflections in Westminster Abbey.

WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable I yesterday passed the whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and the church; amusing myself with the tomb-stones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another-the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence-whether brass or marble-as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born, and that they died.

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull-intermixed with a kind of a fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what

innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together, under the pavement of that ancient cathedral;-how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass;—how beauty, strength, and youth; with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter!

I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds, and gloomy imaginations: but, for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of Nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve myself with objects which others consider with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out: when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tomb-stone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contest and disputes-I reflect, with sorrow and astonishment, on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind: When I read the several dates of the tombs-of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago-1 consider that great day when we shall all of us be contempories, and make our appearance together! Addison.

Virtue, Man's Highest Interest.

I FIND myself existing upon a little spot, surrounded every way by an immense unknown expansion.-Where am I? What sort of a place do I inhabit? Is it exactly accommodated, in every instance, to my convenience? Is there no excess of cold, none of heat, to offend me? Am I never annoyed by animals, either of my own kind, or a different? Is every thing subservient to me, as though I had ordered all myself?-No-nothing like it-the farthest from it possible. The world appears not, then, originally

made for the private convenience of me alone?—It does not. But is it not possible so to accommodate it, by my own particular industry?-If to accommodate man and beast, heaven and earth-if this be beyond me-it is not possible.--What consequence then follows? or can there be any other than this?-If I seek an interest of my own, detached from that of others, I seek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have existence.

How, then, must I determine? Have I no interest at all? If I have not, I am a fool for staying here: 'tis a smoky house, and the sooner out of it the better. But why no interest? Can I be contented with none, but one separate and detached? Is a social interest, joined with others, such an absurdity as not to be admitted? The bee, the beaver, and the tribes of herding animals, are enough to convince me that the thing is somewhere at least possible; how, then, am I assured that it is not equally true of man? Admit it; and what follows? If so, then honour and justice are my interest; then the whole train of moral virtues are my interest: without some portion of which, not even thieves can maintain society.

But farther still-I stop not here I pursue this social interest as far as I can trace my several relations. I pass from my own stock, my own neighbourhood, my own nation, to the whole race of mankind, as dispersed throughout the earth-Am I not related to them all, by the mutual aids of commerce, by the general intercourse of arts and letters, by that common nature of which we all participate?

Again I must have food and clothing. Without a proper genial warmth, I instantly perish. Am I not related, in this view, to the very earth itself? to the distant sun, from whose beams I derive vigour? to that stupendous course and order of the infinite host of heaven, by which the times and seasons ever uniformly pass on? Were this order once confounded, I could not probably survive a moment; so absolutely do I depend on this common general welfare. What, then, have I to do, but to enlarge virtue into piety? Not only honour and justice, and what I owe to man, is my interest; but gratitude also, acquiescence, resignation, adoration, and all I owe to this great polity, and its greater Governor-our common Parent!

Harris.

The Monk.

A POOR Monk of the order of St. Francis, came into the room to beg something for his convent. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was determined not to give him a single sous; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket-buttoned it up-set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him. There was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure— a few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it-might be about seventy; but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them-which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years-could be no more than sixty. Truth might lie between-He was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance-notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time-agreed to the account.

It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted -mild, pale-penetrating; free from all common-place ideas of fat-contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth-It looked forwards; but looked—as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows: but it would have suited a Bramin; and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it.

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of any one to design; for it was neither elegant nor otherwise, but as character and expression made it so. It was a thin, spare form, something above the common size-if it lost not the distinction by a bend forwards in the figure-but it was the attitude of entreaty; and, as it now stands present in my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it.

When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; and laying his left hand upon his breast-a slender white staff with which he journeyed being in his rightwhen I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order—and did it with so simple a grace—

and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure-I was bewitched not to have been struck with it

-A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sous.

"Tis very true, said I-replying to a cast upwards with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address-'tis very true; and Heaven be their resource who have no other than the charity of the world; the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.

As I pronounced the words "great claims," he gave a slight glance with his eyes downwards upon the sleeve of his tunic-I felt the full force of the appeal. I acknowledge it, said I; a coarse habit, and that but once in three years, with meagre diet-are no great matters: but the true point of pity is, as they can be earned in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by pressing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirm. The captive who lies down counting over and over again the days of his affliction, languishes also for his share of it; and had you been of the order of mercy, instead of the order of St. Francis, poor as I am continued I, pointing at my portmanteau-full cheerfully should it have been opened to you for the ransom of the unfortunate. The monk made me a bow-But, resumed I, the unfortunate of our own country surely have the first right; and I have left thousands in distress upon the English shore. The monk gave a cordial wave with his head-as much as to say, No doubt there is misery enough in every corner of the world, as well as within our convent."- -But we distinguish, said I-laying my hand upon the sleeve of his tunic, in return for his appeal-we distinguish, my good father, betwixt those who wish only to eat the bread of their own labour; and those who eat the bread of other people's, and have no other plan in life, but to get through it in sloth and ignorance, for the love of God

The poor Franciscan made no reply. A hectic of a mo.nent passed across his cheek, but could not tarry. Nature seemed to have done with her resentments in him: he showed none-but letting his staff fall within his arms, he pressed both his hands with resignation upon his breast -and retired.