enced to die, and that before another sun shall arise the pparatus of death shall be erected for me; but never can be more sensible of my danger, or more sincere in my solutions, than I was, when almost exhausted at my hold the boat by the billows of the sea breaking over me, d when forced to my quarters at the point of the midipman's dirk. No:-No! No well-grounded hope reains for me. I have had providential warnings enough. die, deservedly, the death of a murderer!-Nothing reains for me but that fearful looking for of judgment and ery indignation. O, sir, if I had taken your advice ;the words that I read in the first number of the Cheap lagazine had been imprinted on my mind, beyond the wer of the sophistry of SIMON FRISK to obliterate: A by begins by stealing a marble from his play-fellow :is plea is the same as yours-it was only a marble! this asses without detection, and he next proceeds to carry off ifles from his parents, and divides them with his schoolllows; they, in their turn, do the same, and they have a int stock of juvenile plunder. With his little associates e next sallies out into the open fields, where they fill their ockets with turnips or beans :-one degree farther, and oors and walls are not proof against their depredations; or they find means to rob gardens and orchards a little more advanced, a sense of shame forsakes them, and they o not scruple, in the confusion of mobs and fairs, to atch and carry off what they can lay hold of. By this ime they advance in years, grow up, and get entangled with dissolute company, who, for more regular supplies, encourage them to advance still farther in the ways of ini quity; they now proceed to rob their masters or mistresses, and break into shops and houses; till at last grown hardened in wickedness, they throw off all restraint, bid deFiance to the laws, betake themselves to the highway, and eing fortunate, (as they call it) in escaping so long, at last finish their career on a gibbet!'-There was indeed much truth in this passage, which I have read again and again, till I have got it by heart; and, O what a living comment upon it does my guilty life afford! but I have even exceeded and gone beyond that description, for I am a murderer-and a murderer of the worst kind!-I VOL. II. PP : have have killed my father!!!-But what misery have I not als experienced in my guilty career. Upon paper the tract a laid down as smooth and unruffled. The stream of vice made to flow uninterrupted till it ends in death. Not is the life of the wicked; for, if every person knew wha I have felt, the path of virtue would be made choice o and the precepts of cold morality (as the sophist FRIS called them) would be sought unto and followed, merely fo the pleasure they afford. What I have read in the bible is true indeed :-The ways of wisdom are ways of ples santness, and all her paths are peace; but the wicke flee when no man pursueth,-the wicked (I know i my sad experience) are like the troubled sea, which canna rest, even in this world, and in the world to come, no thing remains but a fearful looking for of judgment an fiery indignation." To this point, I observed, the unhappy youth always re verted; nor could I, with all the arguments or consolation I could suggest, remove from him an idea so full o despair. Faithful as the magnetic needle to the powe which gives it polarity, still would his conscience point to the dismal prospect, and when I spoke of mercy he woul exclaim: What mercy can reach a reprobate like me!a murderer of his father!!- -a wretch worse than the devil himself!!! I told him that the mercy of God extended even to the chief of sinners; and that if he really considered that he be longed to that class, yet he should not by such expressions blaspheme his maker in attempting to set bounds to the power of his grace; that I was glad to observe the improved appearance of his intellectual faculties since my first interview with him, which I attributed in a great measure to the opportunity of reflection and pious instructions he had received in jail, and particularly to the attention he seemed to have paid to THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, WHICH WERE GIVEN BY INSPIRATION TO MAKE MEN WISE UNTO SALVATION. In the New Testament, I observed, he must have discovered, from the instance of the thief on the cross, that there was no room for despair, even at the last hour.-"Hold! hold!" interrupted he quickly, "that case bears not the smallest resemblance semblance to mine. What were the crimes of a thief to ose of a murderer?—and a murderer of the worst kindmurderer of his father! He indeed might go to parase; but nothing remains for me but a fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation; and who can dwell ith everlasting burnings?-He here stopped short as if deavouring to recollect himself, and after a few minutes use again broke out.-But, O, Sir! let me conjure you to ake my case known, for the benefit of the young genera. n, and as a warning to those parents who suffer their ildren to listen to the dangerous harangues of those fatical declaimers who would separate for a moment the cessity of holiness from the doctrines of the gospel, or ink that any Christian can manifest his love to a Reemer, without a strict regard to the least of his comindments. To-morrow you shall be furnished with anher BEACON-to-morrow, you will see me a breathless rpse-to-morrow I shall be hung up betwixt heaven d earth, a spectacle to men and angels! and, oh! dread ought! before to-morrow's sun is set, I shall meet my IDGE!"-Here the poor lad's utterance failed. Exusted by his efforts to be more useful to society in his st moments than he'had been in the days of health and rength, he sunk down into a kind of stupor, from which was with difficulty aroused, just as the pious clergyman, ho had paid him so much attention, entered the prison to ake his accustomed call. In the hopes that he would be ore successful in infusing the balm of consolation than I ad been, I was about to depart, when the unhappy youth rasped my hand firmly in his, and with a full heart and e tear glistening in his eye, faintly articulated-“adieu ! -be present at the execution to-morrow, and do not for et the last request of TOM BRAGWELL*." PP 2 This affecting narrative having run out to such a length, id being unwilling to abridge a communication so interesting and aportant, we shall reserve the account of the last moments of Tom RAGWELL as the subject of another paper. The Book of Nature laid Open. (Continued from p. 417.) "To HIM, ye vocal gales Blow soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes!" "We view his kind, his life-preserving care THE WONDERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE. FROM the earth I ascend into the regions of the Air, rather that mass of invisible fluid that surrounds the globe as with a garment, gravitates to its surface, enters into it pores, revolves with it in its diurnal motion, and circles a long with it in its annual course*. The Air as it is constituted, is one of the most heters geneous mixtures imaginablet. "In it," says GOLDSMITH all the bodies of the earth are continually sending up part of their substance by evaporation. A thousand sub stances that escape all our senses we know to be there the powerful emanations of the loadstone, the effluvia ofe lectricity, the rays of light, and the insinuations of ire.Such are the various substances through which we move and which we are continually taking in at every pore, and returning again with imperceptible discharge Yet notwithstanding the multitude of discordant particles which the atmosphere is composed, it is made wonderfully to harmonize in point of utility; and is wisely contrived, admirably framed, and excellently constituted, for the var ious purposes it was meant to answer, and the many services it was intended to perform, in the world of nature and of art That the air is a fluid there can be no doubt, from its possessing so many properties in common with other fluids; yet in one respect it is wisely made to differ from all others, being incapable of freezing by the greatest degree of cold. Was * "The exterior part of this our habitable world (says LOCKE) is the air, or atmosphere; a light, thin fluid, or springy body, that e compasses the solid earth on all sides." Air, in the popular sense, is acknowledged by BoxLE to be the most heterogeneous body in the universe. Was it not for this singular quality of the atmosphere, what dreadful effects must have been the consequence. Life and animation benoved to have long ago ceased before the rigid blasts of the north, and when winter first shook his hoary locks, the great pulse of nature must have stood still! Another wonderful property of the air is its invisibility ; or although it can be heard in the howling of the tempest, and felt in the pressure of the gale, and notwithstanding the number of bodies that continually mix with its substance, it is still too fine to be seen by the keenest eye. Every object around us is rendered visible, except the air! and happy it is for us that it is so; for had it been otherwise, farewell all the delightful prospects that charm the eye! farewell all the bright beauties of creation. Nature must have put on a sombre aspect, and instead of those delightful regions of light and cheerfulness in which we are placed, our habitations would have been surrounded by the doleful shades of a dusky covering, and environedwith a mantle of darkness and despair. But although the atmosphere is of itself invisible to the sight, it is the happy medium of light and heat. The air is found to moderate the rays of light, to dissipate their violence, and to spread an uniform lustre over every object.. Were the beams of the sun to dart directly upon us without passing through this protecting medium, they would either burn us up at once, or blind us with their effulgence; but by going through the air, they are reflected, refracted,. and turned from their course a thousand different ways, and thus are more evenly diffused over the face of nature.— But this is not all, for by means of the air the beams of the not only rendered tolerable, and the rays of light more copiously diffused throughout creation, but the advantages of heat and light are lengthened and prolonged.. By the reflective property of this fluid which must always be in proportion to its density, the heat of the sun, although duly attempered, must be more sensibly and uniformly felt nigh the surface of the earth, than in the higher regions of the atmosphere; while, to its refractive quality, we are Sun are PP 3 beholden *Of this we had a late example, in the freezing of the valve of Mr SADLER'S balloon at a certain height, while the inhabitants of London enjoyed the mild, or rather warm temperature of a summer's day.. |