young blood gufh through my veins again; give to my limbs their active energy; reftore the luftre of my languid eye; and let thefe hoary locks yield to the flowing grace of ebon ringlets. do thou thus, Great Being or the life that fixty fummers long, has brought increafed delight upon its wings, fhall now become my execration and my curfe.'-Far be it from my heart to harbour a fentiment fo impious, fo unworthy a rational being! But think my friend: when we look back upon buried time, may not the mind find other causes of dejection ?'

for lovelier groves and more tranflu- God! I repine and murmur; invert cent feams he left behind; all na- for me thy fixed decrees; bid the ture faddens; unbleft he wanders through her boundless ftores; even man has loft all noble features; no breaft receives him; no eye of love beams upon his forrows: no tear of pity falls to foften his afflictions. In the midst of his fpecies he is alone! Even fo it may be with thee. Poverty and difeafe have exiled thee from all the pleafures of life. You look back with ftreaming eyes to thofe you have once enjoyed. The contraft aggravates the prefent. A dreary defert feems to fpread around you. Every fiep carries you further into its glooms; and you figh for a palfport to a new exiftence. But oh ! remember the form that threatens, how may difappear; the bleak and defolate winds that whiftle round your head, may fubfide into -gentle zephyrs foft as the down that clothes the budding mufk 1ofe; the clouds that darken the horizon may brighten into funthine, and quick fpringing flowers deck your barren path. Hope, like a beckoning angel, fhall gently lead you forwards, and fhadow you with her wings as you fink into the grave!'

St. Albert shook his head and fighed. He remained filent for a moment, and then refumed the difcourfe.

Not the recollection of past en joyments that renders prefent exitence indifferent to me. To a well formed mind, that recollection fhould rather adminifter increafed delight. 'Tis as we should fay, Lord! thou haft given me comfort, and peace, and happiness: thou haft firewed my . path with roles, and bade content ment journey with me, hand in hand; but even as darkness and night follow the fplendour of morning, fo ge and decrepitude and much forrow fucceed to the fmiling gaiety and manly vigour of youth: yet eternal

I firmly believe not,' I replied. St. Albert fmiled bitterly, and quit ted my hand. I proceeded.

I firmly believe not; for the forrows which may have agonized a virtuous mind in the career of life, lofe their poignancy when contemplated through the mild obfcurity of time. They are no longer forrows. They become as it were the chofen companions of the breaft, which harmonize with its feelings, when a foft, penfive melancholy reigns. They may dim the eye with tears, and fwell with fighs the bofom, but neither are the tears wrung by internal agony of thought, nor are the fighs laden with anguish. They are like the gentle dews of Heaven, which bend the floweret on its fragile ftem; awhile it droops beneath the precious burden; but filently it imbibes the balmy moisture, and quickens with what erewhile bowed it to the earth. The woes of paft exist. ence, which still prick and fting us, are the avenging dæmons of a guilty contcience.’

Mere declamation replied St. Albert, fomewhat peevithly. You are a young man, and with all the venial impetuofity of youth you draw inconfequential inferences from fuppofitious premifes. More conver

fant

fant perhaps with books, and the folitary contemplations of your own mind, than with man and the world, you arraign, affert, and maintain, with a warmth incident to men whofe life has been rather contemplative than active. There is nothing fo extravagant or abfurd, which the mind will not, by conftant contemplation, learn to confider as just and rational; for folitude peoples its own world, and affigns to its beings its own pe culiar motives of action; and it is only when we bring those motives to the test of real existence, that we difcover their fallacy. Yet I would not check the generous impulfe of nature; thirty years ago I would have reafoned thus; but thirty years of fad experience has taught me that to reason thus is error.'

Imagine not,' I replied. that what I fay is delivered as the crude notions of they moment, which is what I understand by your geneTous impulfe of nature.' No, I may be wrong, and my heart fhares the error; but my judgment lends its fanction to what I utter. I repeat it: the man who really fhudders, or fears, or hesitates to look back upon the past scenes of exiftence, writhes beneath the agonies of an avenging confcience that loudly proclaims premeditated guilt. Can it be otherwife? Why thould thofe evils which spring up in the foil of humanity beneath the foot of every wanderer; which sprung up spontaneously; which, if we had the power, we would gladly cruth even in the germ; why fhould fuch evils in retrospect afflict us with perpetual woes? toolifh cafuifts may teil us that a great part of our wictchednefs flows directly from ourselves. from our vices, our luxuries, our paffons, or defires; but let thefe men of theory new model the globe; let then reafon man out of the nature which he owns, and new form his heart before they thunder forth their fulminations against the wanderings

of their fellow creatures! I cannot
believe that fuch fears for involuntary.
diftreffes can smart your bofom for
a moment; and for heinous, pre.
conceived enormity, that temperate
look and mildly beaming eye, tell me
your foul difowns it. Then droop
no longer beneath imaginary burden;
shake off the boding terrors of a dif
eafed fancy; look upon the days that
beam upon you, and thofe that are
clofed in everlasting night: Eternal
God! thou haft not doomed thy
creatures to breathe in fighs, nei-
ther haft thou ordained them to
pine for ever with a forrowing
fpirit; fo thofe whofe griefs are
many, and whofe fluent tears have
flowed inceflant at the fhrine of woe;
even to thofe, one drop of comfort has
been given, one fource of confolation
which has healed their wounds, in thy
ftreams of living mercy; and thought
their cup has been drugged with
fevereft anguish, yet haft thou at the
bottom infufed a precious balm, like
manna to their fainting fouls! And
fhall he, whofe breaft, but feebly
ftricken with the shafts of fate, bears
no infixed arrows, fhall he murmur ?
Shall he, not mindful of the preroga-
tive he enjoys, not looking with hu
mility to thofe beneath him, that wail.
and weep, and gnath their teeth, but
with envious, up turned eye, gazing
at the ftar that glitters far above him,
thali he fullenly defpife thy bounteous
goodness because not bleffed with all ?
No, my friend; you may have had
your (hare of the calamities of life;
but be not therefore indignant. I am
indeed, as you obferve, young: yet I
have had any forrows; I have loft an
affectionate father; thefe arms have
held the dying form of a beloved
mother; a mother dear to me by all
the facred ties of nature; by all the
tender bonds of affection and of love;
I have watched the last breath trem-
ble on her lips; I have received her
bleffing with the last struggle of her
foul; I have following her to the

"Oh! many a year has paffed fince the voice of confolation from the mouth of friendthip has ftrock my ear, and now it breathes, fweet as the gale of fummer, blown from a field of fpices! My heart feels a new warmth; and fends the blood in warmer currents circling through my frame. Oh, my dear young friend! (for by that name my foul already owns thee) you have brought an hour of comfort to one who long, long fince has felt only the cold grafp

greve ! My friend ! thefe are woes that rend the human breaft: that, for a time dry up even the fources of confolation; but they pass away; and I can now feed upon their remem brance in the fill evening hour, or on my midnight pillow with moth pleatingly folemn fenfations, And why fhould I not I look around, and behold, daily, numbers of my fellow creatures treading the fame poth; this tells me that it is deftiny unthunable; and I am comforteds So let it be with thee! Remember, of defpair! Cheerless have been my that to fuffer is the melancholy birthright of man: and he alone is truly brave, and owns a godlike fortitude of foni, who bears up against the stream of adverfity; who bares his unimirch el bafam to the ftorm, and files with hope when all around is fadnels and defolation. The coward, and the weak tremble in the blast, and cower beneath the fweeping ruin; but to him whofe heart is chaftened, and wears a heavenly panoply, ruin herfelf is not unlovely, for where the has trodden spring up the bloffoms of aternal hope, and while her righthand fweeps the face of things with the exterminating fword, her left fcatters around the amaranthine flowers of everla&ing life.'

nights, and comfortless my days! the fatting fan has lighted me to my pillow, to which have fighed the live long night; and the new born day has feen me wander forth to mourn at large! Adelaide !

He paufed: he grafped my hand : he fobbed that venerable face wasconvulfed with forrow: he trove to hide his weakness, but nature rose superior, and a filent tear rolled down his fanken cheek! Eternal Being spare me for ever fuch a fight again! The tears of woman, in all the pride of youth and beauty, fall on the heart with pleafing tenderness: they move, agitate, tranfport! The tears of man, even in his prime, feem to bend our ftubborn nature to more than usual fympathy! But the tears, the hardwrung drops of aged, venerable, dying man, harrow up the foul! Nature has no fight more afflicting, more folemn!

After a short paufe I ventured to ask who Adelaide was?

The hapless mother,' replied St.Albert, with a tremulous voice," of that more hapless child,' pointing to his

St. Albert was moved at this. While I was fpeaking I thought I perceived fomething like difmay painted on his copatenance; my heart fmote me, and I changed my theme. God for bid I thould fix one thorn in the foul of dying man! As I fpoke of my own loffes, and the temper of mind with which I bore them, his eye brightened the gloom faded from his face like the mills of morning before the. fon. firl rays ys of the fun ;and the laft words He was filent again. I could read uttered with a fervency which I felt, in his countenance that his mind was for I fpoke from my feelings, feemned much affected. My heart was wrung, to operate like a charm. He ftretched and I reproached myself for having forth his hand towards me again; he gone fo far. The youth too, who preffed mine Arongly, and feemed was ftanding at the window, feemed much agitated. After a paufe he to glance a look of reproach at me Spoke: through his tears, (which the laft

words

at the beginning of the year, to make prefents to their princes; and among

t;

with their ephemerides for the year enfuing, whence thefe ephemerides came to be called almanha, that is handfels or new-year's gifts.-Verftegan writes the name almɔn-at and inakes it of Saxon original.Our anceflors, he obferves, used to carry the courfes of the moon for the whole year, upon a square stick, or block of wood which they called al monaught, or, as we may fay al moonheed.

words of his father had excited) as if The would fay, Unconfcious perfecutor! why have you roufed a thought the reft the aftrologers prefent them which fills your father's bofom with agony 'I felt indeed ftrongly that I had been hurried on by the impetuofity of my feelings to a breach, not only of decorum, but of humanity. Í had paid too little regard to the fituatio of St. Albert as a valetudinarian; and I had affumed a warmth which however it might have been the effect of my natural character, ought to have been foftened by the refpect which is always due to the feelings of the human heart. St. Albert felt this too; he thought I fpoke with more energy than difinterestedness would warrant; the apprehenfion struck him forcibly he imagined I was but a captious, headftrong, wranging polemic, whofe brain only feeks pretexts for regorging its own flimfy operations. He hefitated; he was filent. I too felt my fituation; at another time I could have explained; but my heart was not accordant; I rofe haftily; bade St. Albert farewell; and as I quitted the house, I formed the filent refolution of atoning on the morrow for the errors of impetuofity. But. alas! St. Albert lived not to hear me: he had expired in the courfe of the night, and with his last breath fighed forth the name of Adelaide.

:

On Almanacks and the Almanack of
Liege.

THE original of the word almanac is much controverted among grammariaus-Some derive it from the Arabic particle at and manach to count, whence is naturally enough derived almanach the diary, Others, and among them Scaliger, rather derive it from al and manacos, the courfe of the months: which is contradicted by Golius, who advances another opinion. He fays that throughout the Eaft it is the custom for fubjects, January, 1809.

The ufe of almanacks or diaries containing a great variety of aftrological and agricultural records, and of others fanctioned by a prevalent fuperftition, was very common among the Arabians; and it is natural to imagine that from them, by means of the Saracens, it was introduced into European nations. The prefent form and method of almanacks have been afcribed to Regiomontanus, who is faid to have first published in 1474 an almanack, refembling that of the moderns, and containing the charac ters of each year and month, predictions of eclipfes, and other celeftial phafes, calculations of the motions of the planets, &c.

Henry III. of France very prudently decreed, by an ordinance of 1579, that no almanack-maker should prefume to give predictions relative to civil affairs, either of flates or private

perfons, in terms either exprefs or

covert.

1.