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From the following Rev. Gentlemen, members of the Synod of Fife.

"The specimens of the Cheap Magazine which we have seen, induce us members of the Synod of Fife, to recommend that useful work to the perusal of the public." (Signed) Andrew Murray, minister of Auchterderran; Laurence Adamson, minister of Cupar; Thomas Laurie, minister of Newburn; Robert Swan, minister of Abercromby; Geo. Craig Buchanan, minister of Kinross.

Extract from the (LONDON) Monthly Magazine of May.

"A monthly work has been carried on for the two last years at Haddington, on a plan which merits patronage, under the title of The Cheap Magazine, &c. It seems to be well calculated to produce its professed effect among the class of persons to whom it is addressed."

Extract from REVIEW of THE CHEAP MAGAZINE in THE PHILANTHROPIST for last July.

"The work which now engages our attention is a commencement (we hope) of such a series of publications for the instruction of the more numerous classes, as will convince all men, who really have the good of the people at heart, that, notwithstanding the state of THE PRESS, which no man la ments more deeply than we do, it yet is possible, by means of that press, to be of infinite service to a reading people.

"Almost all the dispositions and habits in the lower orders, which are of most importance to their own happiness and to the prosperity of society, are here inculcated, and skillfully inculcated, by Precepts, by Stories, by Anecdotes, by short Biographical Sketches; in short, by every expedient which appears best adapted to entice to the reading, and to produce a deep impression by that which is read. There is no small literary talent, as well as good judgment and right feeling, displayed in the conduct of this part of the work. It may be read with pleasure even by the most cultivated; and contains nothing but what is at the same time accommodated to the apprehension of the most unlearned.

"On the head of Religious instruction it is not necessary to enlarge. A considerable portion of the Cheap Magazine is devoted to it. The importance is no doubt great, of rooting out the base and dishonourable conceptions of the divine nature, of which the religion of many persons consists, and supplanting them by the most pure and accurate conceptions of infinite wisdom and infinite goodness united, which the human mind is capable of forming; and not less undoubtedly great is the importance of obviating those antipathies which diversity of religious opinions engenders between man and man; of training mankind to indulge one another's opinions, and to harmonize in their affections, whatever the discordance of their belief. The religious articles which appear in this work breathe muck of this excellent spiri

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The first division of the Irish Family approach the Shepherd's cot.

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"To nurse

The growing buds of wisdom, that suggest
By every pleasing image they present
Reflections such as meliorate the heart,
Compose the passions, and exalt the mind.

Arrival in Scotland... Fatal economy...Dispersion of the family...Early symptoms of depravity... Good consequences of virtuous example...A gardener's boy well trained... Grateful recollections... Effects of bad habits... Methods adopted to accomplish a cure... Their salutary consequences...Lewis taken into favour... Traits of char acter...A servant's solicitude for his master...An example to nursery-maids...Lady L. dies... A good servant in a new situation proves a good servant still. THE worthy subjects of my tale are now far advanced

in

years, and their children and childrens' children are further evidences of the invaluable advantages that atiend

VOL. II,

A

right

right education. Their unhappy sister who died in America, and DICK before his reformation, exhibited the fatal consequences of bad example; whilst the change in his behaviour evinces, that sincere affection and tenderness, under the guidance of superior intellect, may reclaim those who seem far gone in habitual vice.

I had not been born, when PATRICK CONNEL and his wife passed over to the western coast of Scotland, with eight children, to beg a morsel from door to door; but I shall never forget the description I have heard of this squalid and vagrant family. They wandered, about the middle of autumn, to a lone house, inhabited by a shepherd, who, with severals of his household, was recovering from a tedious fever. The bed clothes they had used were locked up in an outer house, to wait a convenient time for getting them washed. Fatal delay! Better to have had them cleaned at the expense of interrupting the reapers; or, at least, they ought to have been exposed to the air at some distance from the dwelling. When the shepherd and his wife saw these poor mendicants, half naked, and shivering with cold, at the close of a sharp evening, they bestowed a plentiful supper, and gave them leave to take shelter in a warm sheep-cot during the night. " Go you Lilly," said the old woman to her eldest daughter, "take out the tatters we set aside for giving to poor folks, and divide them We never can see more these strangers. among pitiable objects. These shreds locked up in a close place, with the foul blankets, became more pestilential. Lilly caught the infection. Her father relapsed. Sickness again raged---and many lives were sacrificed by deferring an operation that might have been completed in a few hours. How the poor Hibernian wanderers spent the time after departing from the cot, till they presented themselves at Lord L.'s gate, is unknown; except that some people recollected see

ing them in a state of intoxication, which certainly increased the ferment in their blood. Lady L. and some company were walking in the shrubbery, when an Irish melody, sung by many voices in the native tone, charmed her ear. Her ladyship was the only child of an Irish baronet; and those sounds had delighted her in the nurse's arms. The company hastened towards the gate; and came up just in time to observe the poor woman put her infant in the arms of her husband, and drop insensible on the shoulder of the tallest boy. Lady L. grieved and shocked hastily recoiled, believing her countrywoman had sunk under the effects of liquor;-but the family physician who had felt her pulse, admonished every one to keep aloof, as he was assured she had symptoms of a putrid fever. The husband and several of the children overcome by the same disease, supported themselves against the railing of an outer stair. They were conveyed to a receptacle for the sick, which, on every farm belonging to Lord L.'s estates, in a centrical but detached situation, awaited all who were seized with infectious distempers. As these miserable people had no home, such of the children as were still in apparent health were lodged in the hospital, except the young infant, who was so clamorous for her mother, that it was found necessary to send her to a neighbouring farm. She was a puny creature, disgusting with filth, and her very vitals scorched by whisky,-but when that was withheld, and she had been under the charge of a cleanly tender nurse, she became a thriving pleasant baby. She was the only one of her father's family who escaped the fever, which in a short time made her an orphan, and sent her eldest brother and second sister to an untimely grave. These individuals and a dwarfish twin boy, had been favorites with the parents; whose partiality in giving them a larger portion of liquor than the others, certainly short

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ened the days of the two former; and ROGER survived to struggle against diseases that deformed his person through life. The first request, made by all the children when they could ask relief, was a glass of whisky; but they could not be indulged. Lady L. strictly forbade giving spirituous liquors to youth; not only as being hurtful to their constitutions, but as it risqued acquiring an habitual liking for strong drink,-to their temporal and eternal destruc

tion.

Six of the orphans were restored from the bed of sickness. An aunt of Lady L. returning to Ireland, took two of them under her protection. The younger child was called DICK. He was twin to ROGER; and his fine voice, retentive memory, and drollery in singing Irish songs, had,

delighted Mrs GAHAGAN, that she became his patroness, and engaged his sister POL, then eleven years old, to attend him. A fine boy four years old was admitted into Lord L.'s nursery; and the youngest girl was reared there after her second year. Lady L. said, that by placing them so early under the conscientious nursery-maids who had the charge of her own children, and were minutely superintend ed by her ladyship, their first impressions must be favourable to piety, virtue, and all those habits that form worthy characters, and good servants. Her ladyship's sentiments were abundantly justified by the conduct of TERENCE and LIZZY; who in escaping the contamination of bad example, might be truly said to have been exempted from the worst evils that beset mortals.

Poor parents, by keeping their little ones continually under their own eye, and pleasantly infusing into their hearts a deep sense of the Divine Omnipresence, and of the duties by which they may please the all-seeing Creator, might save them from guilt and wretchedness; and gild their lowly condition with the mild rays of contentment and true respectability.

The

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