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understandings, and pains in the side. A small neat cabinet in a corner of the drawing-room, filled with well-selected specimens of spars, ores, or fossils, would give me a far higher idea of a young lady's true industry than half a dozen chair-bottoms, all worked in the newest German patterns of flowers; or even a pair of large fire-screens, in very small tent-stitch, exhibiting poor Sir Walter Scott in his study, (looking vastly like an Egyptian mummy,) and a bevy of ladies in scarlet and king's yellow, attacked by large-eyed brigands among burnt-Siena rocks and mountains "of nankeen."

Well, well, I must not say more, or I fear the fair and gifted, but self-neglecting creatures for whom I write will not read another word; they will pronounce me "a horrid old creature, a regular Vandal," and skip at once to the next article.

"Revenous à nos (not moutons but) à nos minéraux:” They are not difficult to be procured gratis. All limestone neighbourhoods afford crystals; sandstone and chalk countries are often rich in fossils, and even the little flint and jasper pebbles which lie about the ploughed fields, in many of our midland counties, are well worth the trouble of polishing, if selected by any one a little practised in the matter.

Those who happen to travel in Scotland may easily collect agates and onyxes; or if visiting Ireland, amethysts, and other crystals; Cornwall, Devon, Cumberland and parts of Wales offer abundance of copper, with lead and quartz; and surely any lady or gentleman going abroad, to the marble quarries of Italy, or the crystalline caverns of the Alps, would gladly bring home a few specimens for a fair friend or cousin in England. I must own many and deep

obligations, in this way, to kind friends who have visited foreign climes.

But, first of all, concerning the cabinet itself; for the finest collection will not prosper, if there be not a place of security wherein to dispose of it, and nothing tends more to the good appearance of minerals or shells than a regular and reasonable arrangement. A cabinet is not a very difficult thing to procure. It is not requisite, for our present purpose, that it should be of or molu, or buhl, or ebony inlaid with ivory, nor "real India," nor "real China;"--though I venture to imagine that many who may read these pages may possess such delightful pieces of furniture. But for those not so privileged, the matter is by no means hopeless. Have they no little mahogany or japanned chiffonier, not even a doll's chest of drawers? Nor any large old useless box, into which some cunning carpenter could introduce half a dozen trays, to rest one upon another? If they have none of these things, and cannot positively afford to order a little wooden cabinet, with sliding drawers, which they might easily beautify with their own hands, at the expense of a few shillings,-I fear, I have no further expedients to offer. However, one fact is worth half a dozen schemes, they say; and I could tell of two ladies, who, resolving to form a collection of shells, minerals, and curiosities, procured, at no great expense, a large deal cabinet with sliding drawers. and with the help of a bottle or two of black spirit varnish, some India-looking figured paper, and a little white paint, all applied by their own hands, gave the article so foreign an appearance, that it has

often been mistaken for a genuine importation from the East.

It does not require a very long time, to form a tolerable collection. That which I am about to describe, in a few subsequent papers, was commenced with some twenty or thirty pieces, and in seven or eight years it amounted to above six bundred articles, in minerals and fossils only, by the kind assistance of travelled friends, and various purchases made at moderate prices, at different times.

So far for the construction of a cabinet, and the small beginning needed for a collection. If you wish your drawers to look neat, line the sides with some pale coloured paper, and lay a substratum of new cotton wadding, either white or coloured, for your specimens to rest upon. If they are at all needly, or your shells be thorny, lay the gummed side of the wadding uppermost, or you will tear your wool, and injure the most delicate parts of your specimens every time they are touched. Pink or straw-coloured wool is what the ladies call " very becoming" to shells or white sparry minerals: but for the latter, nothing can equal a flooring of black or dark blue velvet. This certainly sounds very extravagant; but have you no old nor shabby velvet dress to cut up? It will be much better applied in this way, Lady, than if given to your maid, who cannot wear it herself, and will probably sell it to some one in her own rank of life, thereby tempting her into vanity, if not perhaps into sin. It will set off your beautiful lime or quartz crystals to very great advantage, and can, in that way, do no harm to any one.

At the back of each drawer should be

pasted a sheet of tissue paper, to fall forwards, like a veil, over its precious contents.

And now, having procured and prepared our cabinet, we must wait till next month for a plain and easy method of arranging its contents.

X. Q.

"EITHER We must suppose that we are expected to put up with such a barefaced contradiction of the senses of all men, or else that, after all this heaping of the strongest and most spiritual terms of Scripture upon the moral and internal nature of this baptismal transformation, nothing still is meant more radical and spiritual than may exist in company with entire ungodliness of living. The latter I believe to be the true state of the case. Strip this wonderful regeneration of all the transcendental and mystic verbiage with which they hide its real nature, and you will find nothing left but a name, a fiction of ages of Papal darkness, wherein the Bible was almost an unused book; a change so purely external and relative, to say the best of it, that it may exist as really in the wicked as the righteous; and this represented as the great spiritual regeneration required in the Scriptures, by which alone a sinner becomes a child of God, and meet for heaven."-Bishop M'Ilvaine's Charge.

THE BELIEVER'S REST.

WHAT Comfort there is in the thought, that the fears and misgivings of Believers originate only in themselves, springing out of their "own infirmity:" for in the scriptures there is such a fulness of supply, that no temptation can overtake us, but that we may find a way of escape already prepared-no want can occur, for which a provision has not been made-no affliction can oppress, which may not be relieved by some blessed promise-neither can any enemy strain his ingenuity to invent torments for us, against which we may not find shelter and security in the word of our God. And why is this? but because the scriptures are the gift of God, they are his words: the state of mankind at a past period, is precisely the same at the present moment, and to it all future ages will correspond ;-from the fall of Adam to the last day of this world's existence, man's heart and wants and enemies have been and will be unalterably the same, therefore the Bible belongs not only to those in whose days it was more immediately written, but we may claim it for our heritage and for our children's throughout all generations. If we look into it we shall discover our own portrait, given by the hand of God himself; for as the face of man answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. The Bible is the voice of God, blessed is he that hath ears to hear! it is the only light which shineth in

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