in London, there is sculptured the following proper admonition, "BE GONE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS."

It would be well if the south buttress of the tower, or the tympan of the southern porch, of Trinity Church, now building in this city, was to be embellished with a sun-dial, (although watches and clocks are become common, yet the sun-dial will be useful to regulate them by.)* With an appropriate motto, perhaps the following from Cowper might be suitable for it : "Time as he passes us has a silken wing,

Unsoil'd and swift, and of a silken sound."

Or, "Time is the only winged personage that travels backward, and his speed is but hurrying us to the grave." Or, in the more beautiful poetic imagery of Dr. Young:

"Time in advance behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep decrepid with his age;
Behold him when past by, what then is seen?
But his broad pinions fleeter than the wind."

I once heard the following anecdote, highly descriptive of the Hibernian character. A gentleman, who had an Irish servant, told him to go into the garden, look at the sun-dial, and bring him word what the time was; Paddy started off, and when he got there, could not make it out; the sun-dial was fixed to a small stone obelisk, which he pulled up, and brought into the parlour, saying, "sure enough, and I cannot tell; but perhaps, sir, you can.

But bulls or blunders, on this subject, seem not peculiar to these descendants of the Sabians. A Hindoo military officer wishing to know what o'clock it was during the night, called for a candle and lantern, that he might ascertain the hour from a sun-dial that had lately been constructed by the English. This fact is related by the Journals of Travels, by Messrs. Bennett and Tyerman, vol. II., p. 372.

GROTTOES.-There have been many very beautiful erections of this description, highly ornamental, and very costly. Thirtyfive years past, I visited one, on an island in a lake, at Wansted, near London. It was sixteen feet inside, and lined with innumerable sea shells from the floor to the apex of the roof, in which there was a light, beside the side windows. must have been several score bushels of shells, and they must have been collected from all parts of the world; the lower ones,

* We want our watches to go as

"True as the dial to the sun,

Although they be not shin'd upon." HUDIBRAS.

There

were very large, and they kept graduating in size to the top: it had a curious, and beautifully brilliant effect. In this little building might have been readily studied, the whole science of conchology.

Cotton, the accomplished adopted son of Isaac Walton, erected one to his memory, on the banks of the beautiful and romantic Dove, near his seat in Staffordshire. An account of this may be seen in the later editions of " Walton's Angler."

There is one at Paine's Hill, in Surry, formed of blocks of stone, with stalactitial encrustations pendant from the roof, and a stream of water running across the floor.

There is one at Wimborne St. Giles, in Dorsetshire, which cost many thousand pounds.

These are not only schools of art, but delightful places for study and meditation for the talented, the wise, and the good.

"In retreat, (says Blair,) a more refined and enlarged mind leaves the world behind it, feels a call for higher pleasures, and seeks them in retirement. The man of public spirit has recourse to it, in order to form plans for general good; the man of genius to dwell on his favourite themes; the philosopher, to pursue his discoveries; and the saint, to improve himself in grace." But even for the young, the gay, the thoughtless, they afford a pleasing shelter.

"While hollow beats the rushing wind,

And heavy beats the shower-"

And where also the moody, solitary, melancholy, moper, may find a solace, and if it was a long distance, some relief by the walk, and then by

Frequenting shady bowers in discontent

To the air his fruitless clamours he may vent."

And fruitless, indeed, that will be, if the tone of them show he is really solitary; for he who complains of being solitary, cannot have a soul formed for reflection; but surely the objects that surround him would produce thought; and these thoughts should be the parent of ideas, which, like sweet companions, are pleasant enough, and often numerous enough to people a lonely desert, and thus revive a contrary feeling; a feeling which may be enjoyed even in a desert.

"A loneliness that is not lone

A lone, quite wither'd up and gone." LOWELL.

Thus, if our ancestors, taking them in the mass, were not a learned, these numerous objects of great taste and much ingenuity show them to have been an imaginative, and, to a certain extent, an intellectual, race; and, as Hough says, << our progress from the cradle to the grave is to intellectualize."

Oh! if it had been so ordered by the wise and beneficent Deity, that those mighty intellects, which have sailed before man's wandering eyes with majesty and beauty down the stream of time, and, like invigorating summer's mists, have evaporated into the ocean of space. If the-but I must pause from their number, and refer the reader for their noble names, and far more noble qualities, to his Biographical Dictionary. Well, then, the living, if the Moehler's, the Görres', the Buckland's, the Silliman's, the Bulwer's, the Lardner's, the Forrest's, the Irving's, the Moore's, the Rossini's, the Bryant's, gracious heaven! ĺ am again overwhelmed by the crowds of the living of all nations, who are nearly as numerous, and whose productions are as nutritious as the prolific bee, while their arguments are as irresistible, their statements and researches as astounding, as the waters of Niagara, their sentiments as delicate as its never ceasing foam, and as elegant as its diurnal tinted rainbow, yet withal as brilliant and as sparkling as the polished diamond.

I must, therefore, cease personating and eulogizing, but simply presume, were it possible for men of genius, past, present, and to come, to bequeath this glorious portion of themselves to their successors, with the same facility as the wealthy do their possessions; even the unimaginative, unintellectual miser, and the most wasteful, thoughtless spendthrift would no longer worship at the shrine of mammon; this general, this generous, this holy diffusion of their mighty qualities would put this false principle to shame. Thus might we make one step, in the progress of a better art of living, which appears as now conducted, to consist chiefly in the assumption and indulgence of false principles.

"Look round the habitable world, how few

Know their own good, and knowing, it pursue." DRYDEN.

"Some sects in religion," which sprung up during this period, "declaimed against ornament in dress, furniture, and other modes of life. They renounce those as vanity; but this is not the language of universal nature, nor of physical nature either. Where Ideality exists to a considerable extent, there is an innate desire for the beautiful, and an instinctive love and admiration of it; and so far from the arrangements of the Creator in the material world, being in opposition to it, He has scattered, in the most profuse abundance, objects calculated in the highest degree, to excite and gratify the feeling."

What are the flowers that deck the fields, combining perfect elegance of form, with the most exquisite loveliness, delicacy and harmony of tint; but objects addressed purely to Ideality, and the subordinate faculties of Colouring and Form?

They enjoy not their beauty themselves; and afford neither food, nor raiment, nor protection to the corporeal frame of man; and, on this account, some persons have been led to view them as merely nature's vanities, and shows, possessed of neither dignity nor utility. But the individual in whom Ideality is large, will in rapture say, that these objects, and the lofty mountain, the deep glen, the roaring cataract, and all the varied loveliness of hill and dale, fountain and fresh shade, afford to him the banquet of the mind; and they pour into his soul a stream of pleasure so intense, and yet so pure and elevated, that in comparison with it, all the gratifications of sense and animal propensity, sink into insipidity and insignificance."

"In short, to the Phrenologist, the existence of this faculty in the mind, and of external objects fitted to gratify it, is one among numberless instances of the boundless beneficence of the Creator toward man; for it is a faculty purely of enjoyment— one whose sole use is to refine, and exalt, and extend the range of our other powers, to confer on us higher susceptibilities of improvement, and a keener relish for all that is great and glorious in the universe."-Combe's Phrenology.

TASTE AND GENIUS.

TASTE has been defined (in "Good's Book of Nature,") to be, "that faculty which selects and relishes such combinations of ideas, as produce genuine beauty, and rejects the contrary." If this is correct, I think it must be conceded, that they also felt and appreciated this charm to a considerable extent.

ON TASTE.

There is a charm which Taste can give,
Which art alone can ne'er attain;
This zest, this charm will e'er outlive,
All sorts of pleasure and of pain.

What can the sculptor's chisel do,

What can the shuttle e'er perform ;
What can the painter's colours prove,
Without this thrilling, feeling charm?

In vain do poets cull their words,

In vain melodious strings are touch'd,
As much so as the songless birds,

In leafless groves where all is hush'd.

This charm to science gives a tone,
Which cold philosophy approves ;
For want of skill this will attone,

Each passion, sense, and thought, it moves.

Dr. Good, farther observes that "Taste and Genius cannot but be favourable to virtue. They cannot consist conjointly without sensibility. While it is of the very essence of vice, to have its feelings blunted, its conscience seared; their pleasures are notoriously derived from elevated and virtuous sources. There may perhaps be a few exceptions to the remark, but I am speaking of the general principle. The lovely, the graceful, the elegant, the novel, the wonderful, the sublimethese are the food on which they banquet; the grandeur and magnificence of the heavens-the terrible majesty of the tempestuous ocean-the romantic wildness of forests and precipices, and mountains, that lose themselves in the clouds-the sweet tranquillity of a summer evening-the rural gayety of vineyards, hop grounds, corn fields, and orchards-the cheerful hum of busy cities-the stillness of village solitude-the magic face of human beauty-the tear of distressed innocence-the noble struggle of worth with poverty, of patriotism with usurpation, of piety with persecution; these, and innumerable images like these-tender, touching, and dignified-are the subjects for which they fondly hunt, the themes on which they daily expatiate. To say nothing of the higher banqueting, the 'food of angels,' that religion sets before them."

There is another view which we may take of them; the money was not then so much noticed as the person. The present age is distinguished for an inordinate craving for money, merely to exhibit it in senseless, fragile things, displaying neither utility, taste, or judgment, but just to show the party is rich.

The author of the "Economy of the Human Life," justly observes: "An immoderate desire of riches is a poison lodged in the mind; it contaminates and destroys every thing that is good in it; it is no sooner rooted there than all virtue, all honesty, all natural affection fly before the face of it," but, "when I caution you against becoming a miser, I do not therefore advise you to become a prodigal or spendthrift."* For, " 'tis one thing to be rich, another to be covetuous."+

As a strong proof of this contempt of money, I select the following lines in reprobation of it:

"To one who Married a very Rich, but very Deformed Woman."

"Who is't that says, it was not love

Which you unto this match did move,

1