especially when culled from time to time out of the Bible. The child feels his parent's authority supported by the Bible, and the authority of the Bible supported by his parent's weight and influence. Here are data-fixed data. A man can very seldom get rid of these principles. They 'stand in his way. He wishes to forget them, perhaps; but it is impossible.

Where parental influence does not convert, it hampers. It hangs on the wheels of evil. I had a pious mother who dropped things in my way. I could never rid myself of them. I was a professed infidel: but then I liked to be an infidel in company, rather than when alone. I was wretched when by myself.

These principles, and maxims, and data spoiled my jollity. With my companions I could sometimes stifle them: like embers, we kept one another warm. Besides, I was here a sort of hero. I had beguiled several of my associates into my own opinions, and I had to maintain a character before them. But I could not divest myself of my better principles. I went with one of my companions to see the 'Minor.' He could laugh heartily at Mother Cole-I could not. He saw in her the picture of all who talked about religion-I knew better. The ridicule on regeneration was high sport to him-to me, it was none: it could not move my features. He knew no difference between regeneration and transubstantiation-I did. I knew there was such a thing. I was afraid and ashamed to laugh at it. Parental influence thus cleaves to a man: it harasses him—it throws itself continually in his way.

I find in myself another evidence of the greatness of parental influence. I detect myself to this day in laying down maxims in my family, which I took up at three or four years of age, before I could possibly know the reason of the thing.

It is of incalculable importance to obtain a hold on the conscience. Children have a conscience; and it is not seared, though it is evil. Bringing the eternal world into their view-planning and acting with that world before us-this gains, at length, such a hold on them, that, with all the infidel poison which they may afterwards imbibe, there are few children, who at night—in their chamber in the dark-in a storm of thunder-will not feel. They cannot cheat like other men. They recollect that ETERNITY

which stands in their way. It rises up before them, like the ghost of Banquo to Macbeth. It goads them: it thunder sin their ears. After all they are obliged to compound the matter with conscience, if they cannot be prevailed on to return to God without delay; I MUST be religious, one time or other. That is clear, I cannot get rid of this thing. Well! I will begin at such a time. I will finish such a scheme, and then!

The opinions-the spirit-the conversation-the manners of the parent, influence the child. Whatever sort of man he is, such, in a great degree, will be the child; unless constitution or accident give him another turn. If the parent is a fantastic man-if he is a genealogist, knows nothing but who married such an one, and who married such an one—if he is a sensualist, a low wretch -his children will usually catch these tastes. If he is a literary man-his very girls will talk learnedly. If he is a griping, hard, miserly man-such will be his children. This I speak of as GENERALLY the case. It may happen, that the parent's disposition may have no ground to work on in that of the child. It may happen that the child may be driven into disgust; the miser, for instance, often implants disgust, and his son becomes a spendthrift.

After all, in some cases, perhaps, everything seems to have been done and exhibited by the pious parent in vain. Yet he casts his bread upon the waters. And, perhaps, after he has been in his grave twenty years, his son remembers what his father told him.

Besides, parental influence must be great, because God has said that it shall be so. The parent is not to stand reasoning and calculating, God has said that his character shall have influence.

I

And this appointment of Providence becomes often the punishment of a wicked man. Such a man is a complete SELFIST. am weary of hearing such men talk about their "family"—and their "family"-they "must provide for their family." Their family has no place in their REAL REGARD. They push for themselves. But God says-"No! You think your children shall be so and so. But they shall be rods for your own backs. They shall be your curse. They shall rise up against you." The most common of all human complaints is-parents groaning under the

vices of their children! This is all the effect of parental influence.

In the exercise of this influence there are two leading dangers to be avoided.

Excess of SEVERITY is one danger. My mother, on the contrary, would talk to me, and weep as she talked. I flung out of the house with an oath-but wept too when I got into the street. Sympathy is the powerful engine of a mother. I was desperate: I would go on board a privateer. But there are soft moments to such desperadoes. God does not, at once, abandon them to themselves. There are times when the man says—“ I should be glad to return: but I should not like to meet that face!" if he has been treated with severity.

Yet excess of LAXITY is another danger. The case of Eli affords a serious warning on this subject. Instead of his mild expostulation on the flagrant wickedness of his sons-Nay, my sons, it is no good report that I hear he ought to have exercised his authority as a parent and magistrate in punishing and restraining their crimes.

324.-CHRISTMAS.

FROST at Christmas!-'Tis the Englishman's delight. With a bright sun above and a crackling ground below, the prospect of his holly-crowned fireside becomes doubly cheering. Let us introduce this sacred and jocund season with a home-picture :

The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud-and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! The thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it deep sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, everywhere
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

But O, how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft,
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half-opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face.
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My playmate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful; it thrills my heart
With tender gladness thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim.
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the night thatch
Smokes in the sun thaw; whether the eave-drops fall,
Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

COLERIDGE.

Our ancestors began their winter revels as early as the feast of Saint Martin, the 11th of November. Old HERRICK is in his most joyous mood when he deals with these subjects:

It is the day of Martelmass,
Cups of ale should freely pass;
What though Winter has begun
To push down the Summer sun,