LINCOLN'S INN HALL.

THE new buildings of Lincoln's Inn form a pile of considerable mass and extent, and one that appears to great advantage. Not only is it so insulated that it can be viewed in every direction, but it has on its north and east sides the garden and lawn of the Inn, and on its west the spacious and planted inclosure of Lincoln's Inn-fields. These accessories of landscape both harmonize and contrast admirably with the building, and supply to it a foreground and background, whether it be viewed from the east or from the west. New Square, it may JANUARY, 1846.

also be remarked, has been made into a garden. The approach to the new hall, through the garden and along the terrace, affords therefore a variety of scenic points of view.

The vestibule forms a hall or gallery of communication, about. seventy or eighty feet in extent from north to south. It is divided in its plan into three compartments, the centre one of which is carried up much loftier than the other two, so as to form an octagonal lantern, having on each of its sides a window, enriched with stained glass.

The drawing-room and council-room correspond as to size, being thirty-one

B

The library is a very beautiful apartment, placed not in continuation of the general line of the plan from north to south, but transversely to it, imparting considerable variety to the arrangement of the interior. Its dimensions are eighty feet by forty, exclusive of the two spacious oriels at its east and west ends, which extend to about twenty feet more than the entire length. In the lower part of the room the book-cases are brought out at right angles to the walls, so as to form a series of cabinets or recesses on each side, leaving a clear space down the centre of the room of eighteen feet a gallery indeed of noble proportions.

The hall at Lincoln's Inn bears a considerable resemblance in its general arrangement to that of the Middle Temple, hitherto by far the finest among those of the inns of court, but it is now eclipsed by the one her majesty has recently opened.

THE NEW YEAR.

"LIFE is earnest." So says the great poet of Germany. And such is the utterance of the thoughtful few. There are very many who say, or whose lives say it for them-that they rather hold with the poet of England, when he calls life

"A tale told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The deep mystery of its meaning they neither know, nor care to seek. To fill up its hours with as little pain and as much mirth as possible, and so to let it pass, seems their chief ambition and care. The many think in this way. Ask of their employments. Money, as the procurer of the comforts and the ease they aim at, is their chief good, and they do not think any toil too hard in getting it. Night and day their brows are furrowed and their thoughts busy, that they may add more to that which they have already. Ask of

time and drown care, they plunge into follies, vanities, and frivolities, without number. How many of them would furnish pleasure to the thoughtful man, or ought to take up the hours of an immortal man? Ask of their literature. See month by month what men write, and many more read. Its unsubstantial, unprofitable frothiness is witness to the same truth, that the many have but a light estimate of the meaning and the worth of life.

Yet in spite of this, the German speaks truthfully when he says, "Life is earnest." It is a solemn thing to be alive in a world like this, with a nature, a power, a destiny such as ours. Even the triflers among us cannot always shut out the thought; it comes upon them sometimes, though against their will, as if it moved down upon the frail network of their frivolities, which they have spread round them for a defence, and broke through the barrier, that it might come in and speak solemnly to their soul. Like the king in Babylon, they may call for the wine-cup, and think to be light-hearted amidst the excesses of wild revelry; but like him, too, they must sometimes wake up to earnestness and fear when mystic warnings tell of life's higher purposes all unfulfilled, and of the irrecoverable ruin that must await those whose character, when thus weighed, “shall be found wanting."

Fraught with such a power are those seasons when we are called to share or disease is wasting around us, or death to witness some awful providence ; when

comes

the realities of another world seem to up into our chambers; when vision. And such, too, in its tendency come out largely and solemnly upon our and power, is this season in the changings of time-the early hours of another year. Who can pass the boundary-line from one year to another, without feeling serious and earnest as he does so? To stand on the grave-brink of a buried year, and ask it of the record it has made, and will bring out against us byand-by, is hardly a thing that can be lightly or carelessly done. To-day, on this first day of January, 1846, let us stand still a moment before we venture to go out into life again, and question the departed hours, that we may learn better how to employ the time that may yet be in store for us.

We have lived quite through a whole

year. When we began to live its first hour, we were not sure of finishing it; and when we began the next, it was doubtful whether the whole of it would be ours; and so with every hour that came after. Yet we have lived hour after hour, and day after day, and so have lived out the whole year. That portion of life is gone, and will never return. There is no power in the universe that can alter one single hour of the whole : just as we lived it—there it is, stereotyped for ever. How do we like that thought? Are we glad-satisfied even -that so it should be? Are we not at this moment thinking of some things that we would rather have forgotten? We should wish them blotted out altogether; they should not stand just as they do, if we could have them now to alter and to change. We are remembering some hours when we quite forgot God. He was not then in all our thoughts, we were giving ourselves up to what we call pleasure, and enjoyed ourselves without God; we would not have it stand so if we could help it. We would rather that life should have been enjoyed in the very thought of God as our loving Father, providing for us pleasure all undeserved. We remember those little things at one time, and those others at another, which we did, and which must have grieved our Father, for they were sinful; the number of them prove so large while we try to think of the year, that we cannot reckon them all; we would rather that God should not reckon them all so minutely; we would much rather that they were not there to be reckoned. We think how very little good done there is down in the record, and yet how many opportunities there were for doing it; those hours that we idled away-that we wasted in trifleshow we might have used them better for our own improvement, and for the good of very many about us. We do not like that so dark an account should be kept against us; we would have that altered if we could. But you know you cannot alter it; and so you say it is useless to recall it thus. Nay, dear friend, not so. True, you cannot alter that which you recall; yet it is useful to recall it. Useful thus, you cannot live the past hour differently, but you may the next hour. Alter this which you are living now just as you would like to alter that which you lived yesterday. Let all in the past that you would have different, teach you to make all in the future different from

what has been wrong in that past. Live to-morrow as now you are wishing that you had lived yesterday. Do not make fresh work for regrets if you live till the first day in January, 1847, like these regrets that you feel to-day. Be it your care that what you sorrow for in 1845, be quite left out of 1846.

"But how may you be sure of doing this? How may you hope that this new year shall be better spent than that which is gone?" Do you really wish to know? Are you quite in earnest in wishing so to alter? Then humbly now, in prayer, let us ask God by his Spirit to teach us what is right, and by his grace to help us to do it.

But, first of all, can nothing be done with all this guilty and imperfect past? We cannot alter it, we know; but can nothing be done to take away all our unquietness as we think of it? Must we think of it as always waiting there until at the judgment it will condemn us? Oh, no! Though we cannot alter it, God can forgive it. If, truly sorrowing for all the evil, we ask earnestly the mercy of our heavenly Father, through his dear Son, our Saviour, all this long account, though he must remember it, yet he will not remember it against us any more for ever. The sin he will pardon, and the punishment he will prevent. Be it ours, then, to hallow this new year's day by humble, penitential prayer, that God will for Christ's dear sake forgive to us all the guiltiness of the past.

Has not the

And then for the future. great secret of our so frequent wrongdoing been, that we have been trying to go right of ourselves, and have forgotten our own weakness, and the Giver of all strength? Let us stop then a while, and think before we venture out into life again. We are all travellers bound on a solemn journey. In the path we have yet to tread none of us has ever trodden a single step before. It is all new, all untried. We may go wrong. And if we do, we shall suffer harm that can never be altered or undone. We may, perhaps, afterwards return to the right; but the time destroyed, and the wrong suffered, will be facts for ever, that no after facts can change or take away. The time destroyed!-for we have so little here, and that little is so swiftly passing, that we cannot afford to waste any in faint-hearted endeavours after right, much less in diligently following wrong. The right path-the better path

-this we want to find,-to know it with certain mind, and then to follow it with eager step and ready heart. Who shall be our guide? There are many voices answering to our call; but under whose leading shall we know that we are right? "There is a way that seemeth good unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." The path of life-where is it? We will thank God for clear utterance and a certain sound: We have a counsellor, a guide, a friend. "I am the way," his voice is saying. Bright shines his pattern through all the path; he has left it for us as an example that we should follow in his steps. This, then, be our course throughout the new year. Meekly, and with fervent prayer for the Holy Spirit's teaching, will we study the life and the words of our blessed Saviour; and distrusting our own often-tried feebleness, we will ask God's help that the moments, be they many or be they few, that shall yet be given to us in this new year, may bear with them to eternity a better record for us than the past have done. And then, what matters it whether we close the year on earth or in heaven, so that we be at every hour found watching. Death never will come to us an untimely messenger:

"So, if our days must fly,

We'll keep their end in sight;
We'll spend them all in wisdom's way,
And let them speed their flight.

They'll waft us sooner o'er

This life's tempestuous sea: Soon we shall reach the peaceful shore Of blest eternity."

J. A. B.

ALAN QUINTIN'S INQUIRIES.

No. I.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR TIME?

HABITS change, manners change, customs change, great changes since I was a boy, cannot do now as we did then. Oh no! We then were slow, we must now be quick; we then were asleep, we now must be awake.

Are you using time, or abusing time? making it a friend or an enemy? plucking roses, or gathering thorns for eternity?

Odd questions-very odd, but worth hearing, worth regarding, and worth answering. Are you using or abusing time?

My style is brief, my manner abrupt, but my object is good. I will win you

if I can; do you good if you will let me; and warn you whether you will let me or not. Time flies; life is short; unexpected things happen; we are here today, we may be gone to-morrow; an hour lost, is lost for ever. These are old sayings, very old; but none the worse on that account. Hear them; consider them; profit by them; get from them lasting good.

"Much in little" is my motto-small sentences and large signification. Truth is a straight line, and error is a zig-zag; let us have no zig-zags, but all straight lines. Let us not go round the field, but across it. A hundred things have I to say, but very little shall I say upon each. A word to the wise is enough, and more than enough to the foolish.

Though none can do what they would, all may do what they can. What can you do, then? What can I do? What can we all do for man's good and God's glory? God has not made us and breathed the spirit of life into us, for nothing. He gave wings to the bird that he might fly; fins to the fish that he might swim; claws to the mole that he might delve; and to man he has given affections that he might live in love; and a living soul, and reasoning faculties, that he might know God, and magnify his holy name for ever.

"On! On!" "Forward! Forward!" are the watchwords of our day. There is no sitting down by the way-side, no resting at the mile-stone--indeed, milestones are hardly wanted; we may now travel far without seeing any.

Once we travelled by pack-horses; all very well then-will not do now. Sad slow mode of getting on, and so was the wagon-not much faster. No wonder they set up coaches and mails. Packhorses and wagons walked, coaches and mails run, but mankind wanted to fly, and fly they do now along the railroad.

Your journey may be long, but pay your fareA hiss! a shriek! a rumble!-you are there.

If you were five minutes too late for the pack-horse and the wagon, you might overtake them; if five minutes past the proper time by the coach and mail, it was possible they might not have started; but if five minutes too late by the railroad, there is no hope for you. The steam is up, the bell rings to the minute, the shrill whistle is heard, and in five minutes the train is nearly five miles off. Be in time! Be in time!