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overstepping the path, and of being plunged into the abyss beneath; hence great caution is necessary on the part of the traveller to avoid such a catastrophe. The sure-footed mule, however, here never makes a false step, but cautiously turns at every angle, keeping close to the wall for its safety.

The pass of the Ghemmi, indeed, is seldom traversed by the tourist, from the known risk and dangers by which it is beset.

When at the top, steady nerve is required to contemplate the extreme height of the rocks, and the vast depth of the precipices; and instances have occurred of travellers missing their footing, falling into the abyss, and being dashed to pieces. The effect, however, of the scenery in ascending by this winding path is sublime. At one moment you appear as if engulfed amidst rock and stone, with nothing in sight but the sky above; the next, on a sudden turn, a magnificent scene, with extensive and majestic prospects, bursts into view. In this part the height reached is more than 700 above the level of the sea.

Rinderhorn, in the year 1782; after which, the road leads into an open tract of pasture ground of very great extent.

Handerstag, which is the largest village in the valley, stands about six miles from Schwarenback, and is beautifully situated in a rich and fruitful country, with 700 or 800 scattered inhabitants, whose cottages and chalets are of a very picturesque appearance.

After travelling this mountain district, it is impossible to avoid admiration at the ingenuity displayed by the Romans, who are said to have first constructed the pass of the Ghemmi. But whilst admiring this work of art, and this specimen of the ingenuity of man, should we not much more admire the Creator, who by his word caused these enduring pyramids of nature to appear, and which still remain unshaken by conflicting elements, and unimpaired by the ravages of time, monuments of his power and goodness?

Let us, then, adore and acknowledge, with reverence, the wonders of God's wisdom, who in everything that he has created, from the smallest grain of sand to the highest mountain, displays his own perfections. On the heights, as well as in the deep places, in mountain and in vale-above and below the earth-may we not exclaim, "Thou showest thyself the benefactor of thy creatures."

FIDELITY OF A DOG.

M. T.

On proceeding towards Handerstag, an immense plain is traversed where little or no vegetation is to be seen, save here and there a little grass to support the sheep that are seen grazing; around all besides is desolation, with numerous beds of snow, and a lake said not to be supplied by springs, but by water from the melted snow of these mountains, A DRUNKEN rat-catcher of the name of which during the greater part of the Tindesley, well-known at Hampton Court year remains frozen. The cold in this and its neighbourhood, was always folregion is intense, nor can anything ex-lowed by a large, rough, half-starved ceed the dreary aspect of the naked lime- looking terrier dog. The rat-catcher and stone rocks, which form the summit of his dog were inseparable companions, and the pass; hence, welcome, indeed, is the one looked just as wretched as the other. picturesque little chalet of Schwaren- In May, 1834, the rat-catcher was found back, which soon after comes into sight, dead in a ditch near Thames Ditton. He being about a mile and a half from the must have fallen into it when he was summit, and where refreshment and rest drunk. When he was discovered, the may be obtained, though the former is of dog was seen endeavouring with all his a simple kind, consisting of excellent might to drag the body out of the ditch, milk, home-made bread, and honey; and in his efforts he had torn the coat there is here, however, sufficient day from the shoulders of his master. The accommodation for a number of travel- dog had saved his life on two former lers with their guides and mules; and, occasions, when he was nearly similarly upon an emergency, lodgings can be ob-circumstanced.-Jesse. tained for the night.

Shortly after leaving the chalet, the path gradually descends-passing by fragments of rocks and forests, the former reported to have been brought down by an avalanche from the Alp called the

PEDANTRY.

PEDANTRY crams our ears with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it.-Colton.

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sisting on grain and herbage, and making use of a great quantity of small stones for the purpose of triturating its food. When attacked, it trusts for escape to its speed, and elevating itself to its full height, it runs off with prodigious velocity, assisting itself with its wings. Dr. Shaw, in his "Travels in Arabia," says, "I had several opportunities of amusing myself with the actions and behaviour of the ostrich. It is very diverting to observe with what dexterity and equipoise of body it would play and frisk about on all occasions. In the heat of the day, sunny side of the house with great maparticularly, it would strut along the jesty. It would be perpetually fanning and priding itself with its quivering

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expanded wings, and at other times it would continue its fanning vibratory movements. With their help it will go faster than the fleetest horse, and with two black boys on its back." M. Adanson saw one proceed with the greatest velocity round the village; and it was impossible to stop it except by putting some obstacle in the way which it could not pass. The sight pleasing him, he directed a full grown negro to mount one, and two men another, and the weight did not seem to encumber the ostriches. At first they went at a moderate gallop, but their speed soon increased so much that they seemed hardly to touch the ground, They ran, he says, like the partridge, and he believed that they would outstrip the fastest English race-horses for a short distance, although if it was continued it would end to their disadvantage. With all their speed, however, they do not run in a straight line, but wheel round in circles of a greater or less extent, so that the Arab huntsman is able, after a very difficult chase, to approach and slay them with their clubs, preferring that weapon, that an effusion of blood may not spoil the feathers. These are chiefly obtained from the wings, which in a bird of full plumage contain forty; the tail feathers seldom exceed nine inches in length, and are of so little value that they are seldom exported from the Cape; as the birds when killed are generally found with their tails worn to the stumps from working in the sand, especially during the season of incubation.

A great diversity of opinion has been held as to the mode of nidification of the ostrich. In the south of Africa the bird covers its eggs like the fowl or partridge; the male being polygamous, several females lay their eggs in one nest, which is a hollow cavity scraped in the sand with a rim round its edge, so that one bird can cover the greater part of them. Many others are scattered around, which are said to serve as nourishment to the young ones when hatched, before they are capable of digesting harder food. The male sits on them at night, the females doing so alternately in the day time. "On the least noise," says Dr. Shaw, 66 or trivial occasion, she forsakes her eggs or her young ones, to which, perhaps, she never returns, or if she does, it may be too late." The young, which appear in forty days from the commencement of the period of

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DR. Merle D'Aubigné was a youthful student in Socinian theology in the College of Geneva, when, in the year 1816, it pleased God to send Mr. Robert Haldane, a remarkable Scottish Christian, on a visit to that city. This man soon became acquainted with a number of the students, and conversed with them familiarly and profoundly concerning the gospel. He found them in great darkness. "Had they been trained," says he, “in the schools of Socrates or Plato, and enjoyed no other means of instruction, they could scarcely have been more ignorant of the doctrines of the gospel. To the Bible and its contents their studies had never been directed. After some conversation, they became convinced of their ignorance of the Scriptures, and of the way of salvation, and exceedingly desirous of information."

The two students with whom Mr. Haldane at first conversed brought six others in the same state of mind with themselves; and with them he had many and long conversations. Their visits became so frequent, and at such different hours, that at length he proposed they should all come together; and it was arranged that they should do so three times a week, from six to eight o'clock in the evening. This gave him time to converse with others, who, from the report of the students, began to visit him, as well as leisure to prepare what might be profitable for their instruction. took the Epistle to the Romans as his subject; and, during the whole of the winter of 1817, until the termination of their studies in the summer, almost all the students in theology regularly attended.

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This was a most remarkable movement of Divine Providence, one of the most remarkable to be found on record. What renders it more astonishing is the fact that Mr. Haldane at first was obliged

to converse with these students through an interpreter, in part at least, so that he could not have then conveyed to them the full fervour of his feelings, or the fire of the truth as it was burning in his own soul. Nevertheless, these singular labours, under circumstances so unpromising, were so blessed by the Divine Spirit, that sixteen out of eighteen young men, who had enjoyed Mr. Haldane's instructions, are said by Dr. Heugh to have become subjects of Divine grace. And among the students thus brought beneath the power of the word of God was the future historian of the Reformation, young Merle D'Aubigné.

D'Aubigné himself has described this remarkable movement. Rev. Adolph Monod, of Paris, was a fellow-student at this time with D'Aubigné, and dates his own conversion also to the efforts of Mr. Haldane. The professor of divinity in the university of Geneva, at that time, instead of teaching the students the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, confined himself to lecturing on the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and similar topics. Instead of the Bible, he gave them quotations from the writings of Seneca and Plato. These were the two saints whom he delighted to hold up to the admiration of his students. A work on the Divinity of Christ having been published by an evangelical clergyman, to such an extent did the opposition against the truth prevail, that young D'Aubigné, and the rest of the students, were induced to meet together, and issue a declaration against the work and its pious author.

At this juncture it was that D'Aubigné heard of the visit of Mr. Haldane. He heard of him as the English or Scotch gentleman, who spoke so much about the Bible, a thing which seemed very strange to him and the other students, to whom the Bible was a shut book. He afterwards met Mr. Haldane at a private house, along with some other friends, and heard him read, from an English Bible, a chapter from the Epistle to the Romans, concerning the natural corruption of man, a doctrine in regard to which he had never before received any instruction. He was astonished to hear of men being corrupt by nature; but clearly convinced by the papers read to him, he said to Mr. Haldane, "Now I do indeed see this doctrine in the Bible." "Yes," replied the good man, "but do you see it in your heart?" It was but

a simple question, but it came home to his conscience: it was the sword of the Spirit, and from that time he saw and felt that his heart was indeed corrupted, and knew from the word of God that he could be saved by grace alone in Christ Jesus.

Felix Neff, that Alpine missionary of apostolic zeal and fervour, was another of these young converts. Never was the seed of the gospel sown to better effect than in these hearts. Such an incursion of Divine grace within the very citadel of error was anything but acceptable to its guardians; but how could they resist it? Who knows how to shut the heart, when God opens it? What “Venerable Company of Pastors " can stand before the door, and keep out the Divine Spirit, when he chooses to enter? The strong man armed must give up his house, when a greater than he comes upon him. Nevertheless, an attempt was made on the part of the "Venerable Company to have Mr. Haldane banished from the country, and it was proposed that he should be cited to answer for the doctrines he was teaching to the students. They would more justly have cited Paul in the Epistle to the Romans: all was of no avail; the light of the gospel was diffused to a remarkable degree, and the religious excitement and knowledge in Geneva went on steadily increasing. The movement among the students had doubtless been greatly helped and forwarded by the remarkable and almost simultaneous conversion and efforts of Dr. Malan among the ministers and teachers. It was of God that Mr. Haldane should visit Geneva at that time.

Dr. Merle D'Aubigné finished his university studies, and repaired to Berlin, in Germany. Thence he was invited to Hamburgh, to become pastor of a French Protestant church in that city. After five years spent in that station, he was called by the king of Holland to Brussels, where he became pastor of an evangelical church, and chaplain to the king. At the time of the revolution in Belgium, in 1830, when D'Aubigné was four days and four nights amidst cannon balls and conflagrations in the city, he escaped, with no small risk of his life, into Holland, and thence returned to his native city. Immediately after this step, the new school of theology was founded and established, and D'Aubigné accepted in it the office of professor of ecclesiastical history and homiletics.

While on his way to Berlin, the mind of D'Aubigné encountered the extraordinary impulse which was the germ of his great work on the History of the Reformation. He had passed the little town of Eisenach, which was the birthplace of Luther, and was visiting the castle of the Wartburg, where the great reformer had been, at such a critical era, safely imprisoned from his enemies. He gazed upon the walls of the cell that Luther occupied. How many men of piety, of learning, of genius, have stood and gazed in like manner! But in the mind of D'Aubigné a great thought was rising; the drama of the lives of the reformers passed in vision before him ;—what if he should write the History of the Reformation? The impulse was strengthened by reflection; he devoted himself to ecclesiastical researches, and so the providence of God led him to the commencement, as we trust it will preserve him for the completion, of that great work. It is a work which will one day cluster around its own history a series of associations and reminiscences, like those that crowd the cell of Luther in the Wartburg. And we should like to see a picture of D'Aubigné standing in that cell, gazing on those walls, and listening to the inward voice which was saying to him, Thou art to write the history of this great Reformation. The visit was of God, as much as Robert Haldane's visit to Geneva; but it is not often that the links of Divine Providence can be so distinctly traced, especially when they pass from outward events into inward purposes.

D'Aubigné was prepared for that work by many qualities and studies, but by none more than that earnest simplicity of character, which makes him understand and sympathise perfectly with the simplicity and earnestness of the reformers, and that deep piety, which leads him to see and to trace God rather than man, in the Reformation. To make his history, he went to the reformers themselves, and not to what men have said about them; and both the reformers and their work he has judged by the word of God. By his dramatic and descriptive power, he sets the reformers acting and speaking in his pages; the work is a great historical epic.

But the greatest charm and value of his history is the heavenly impression it leaves upon the soul-the atmosphere of love to Christ, and of fervent, spiritual feeling pervading it, which makes it,

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indeed, a true book of devotion. It is precious for the clearness and power with which it presents the work of the Spirit of God, especially in tracing the deep conflict and experience of Luther, Zuinglius and others, the great process of inward and external trial through which God carried them, to fit them for the part he would lead them to perform. D'Aubigné's views of Christian doctrine, and of the institutions and ordinances of the church of Christ, his views, also, on the nature of the liberty with which Christ makes his people free, eminently fitted him, in an age when the fetters of a great spiritual despotism are again sought to be clasped upon mankind, to show to the world the church of Christ in her simplicity, her freedom, her true unity and beauty.

By this great work he has gained the reputation of the greatest of modern historians; a work translated, it is said, into the tongue of every Protestant people, and of which already there are no fewer than five translations in the English language. The truth is, there never was a work more remarkably adapted to the wants of the age, and the nature of the trial through which the church of Christ is still passing. The same may be said of the character and experience of D'Aubigné himself, with his coadjutors in Geneva, in the work and way in which God is there leading them.

I shall not soon forget an evening's walk and conversation of great interest, which it was my privilege to enjoy with D'Aubigné, just before I left Geneva. We passed along the magnificent face of Mont Blanc in the sunset, and returned over the hill by the borders of the lake beneath the glow of twilight, in the deepening shadows of the evening. He spoke to me with the kindest openness and freedom of his History of the Reformation, especially the part he was then engaged upon, the length of time before he should be able to issue another volume, and the impossibility of pleasing the opposing parties in his account of the Reformation in England. He told me that he was quite beset with the multitude of letters which were sent to him, urging him to set this, and that, and the other points in such and such a light, beseeching him to do justice to the English church, each man wishing to colour his history through the medium of his own opinions and prejudices.

It is not difficult to see on which side the sympathies of the author belong; but

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