tion (and common sense to take care of it), am as sound in mind, body, and spirit, as I was on this day fifty-six years ago, when first I set my foot on shore at Governour's Wharf, New York. Besides, it's a fact (for which my family can vouch), I have been only one day confined to the house by sickness during that period.

Now, I dare say you think with me, that the church on the Sabbath is better than the tavern for the labouring man.- - Grant Thorburn.

A GOOD THOUGHT.

John Howard having settled his accounts at the close of a particular year, and found a balance in his favour, proposed to his wife to make use of it in a journey to London, or in any other amusement she chose. "What a pretty cottage for a poor family it would build!" was her answer. This point met with his cordial approbation, and the money was laid out accordingly.

LOST AND FOUND.

Some years ago, a boy was sent one winter day, when the murky clouds threatened an early storm, with a message to his father, a shepherd on the Cheviots. Soon after he left home, the snow began to fall. Blinded by it, he missed his way, wandered across a moor, and never reached the place he had been sent to. His dead body was found several miles from home on the melting of the snow, three weeks afterwards.

Another boy was once sent an errand, on a winter night, to a place of some distance; and, when on his way, was overtaken by a snow-storm. He was so bewildered by it, that he could not find the place he wished to reach, though he sought long and earnestly for it. At last, knowing. that he was in great danger, he cried out as loud as he could, "Lost-lost-lost!" His cry was heard by a gentleman in a house not far off. He sought for him, found him, and thus saved him from death.

What a solemn thing it is to be brought to the very verge of death, and yet to escape death! What a terrible thing it is to perish with the full knowledge that a place of safety is within sight, and almost within reach !

THE SABBATH MORN.

WHO would not greet the Sabbath morn,
The season of celestial joy;

Who would not hail the blest return
Of holy pleasure and employ.

Peaceful and dear and solemn hour ;
Period of calm and heavenly rest;
All nature owns thy sacred power,
And calls on mortals to be blest.

The sunbeam sleeps upon the hill,
And silent is the scene around;
Save the soft flow of yonder rill,

Or forest warbler's mellow sound.
The peaceful strains that fill the grove,
Now with increasing sweetness flow,
In notes of harmony and love,
Like paradise renew'd below.

O now more pure the dew drop seems,
And lovelier is the flow'ret's bloom,
And brighter are the morning's beams,
And richer is its sweet perfume.

Season of deep and holy thought;
Hour of divine, serene repose;
Be earth's low pleasures all forgot
In joys the worldling never knows.
And now the distant solemn chime,

In soften'd cadence strikes the ear;
Calling to thought and hope sublime,
Far above earth's low changing sphere.

While Contemplation, pure as light, Wings the rapt soul to realms of day, Fills it with holy calm delight,

And sheds Devotion's purest ray.

Famed in fable and in song, the Nautilus is as beautiful an object, both in appearance and economy, as anything sacred to classical literature. There are two kinds, one known as the Paper Nautilus, the other as the Chambered Nautilus. The Paper Nautilus is that which has chiefly engrossed the attention of the fanciful, and which has been made the subject of so many strange fictions. The shell is one of the most elegant of the whole tribe of univalves, and is remarkable for its thinness, its pure whiteness, and the elegant ribs that run towards the keel. It has been said that the Nautilus is the first and best of sailors, and that from him men have learnt the art of navigation. His

THE JUVENILE COMPANION.

name, Argonaut, signifies a mariner, as Argo signifies a ship. In the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean the Nautilus is common, and these waters are the scenes of his reputed exploits. He is said to rise to the surface in calm weather, and to float along in the most elegant manner, by spreading certain little membranous sails before the wind, and, at the same time, rowing himself by means of his feet, as represented in the cut. Sometimes he only spreads his sails, and suffers his eight arms or legs to hang over the sides of his boat, or, occasionally, to steer by-a perfect gondolier, minus the singing. In Wood's "Zoography" we read, that "in order to rise from the bottom of the water, for the purpose of sailing on the surface, the Nautilus discharges a quantity of water from its shell, by which it becomes lighter than the surrounding medium, and of course rises to the top. Numbers of these curious animals may be seen sailing about, and diverting themselves on the smooth surface of the sea; but if any danger approaches, or the winds begin to rise, they immediately lower their sails, and shrinking into the body of the shell, sink at once to the bottom. Their extreme timidity makes it very difficult to take them alive; for, whenever any person approaches, they immediately leave the surface of the water, and although seamen have often got very near them, yet, when they arrived within a certain distance, and stretched their hands to secure the fish, they constantly disappointed the person by sinking to the bottom."

A fiction so faithful could not long escape the poets, who have in many instances turned it to beautiful uses. Montgomery describes its rising from the bed of the ocean in a manner at once delicate and graphic

Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,

Keel upward from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled;
Fraught with young life it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark

Put out a tier of oars on either side,

Spread to the wafting breeze a two-fold sail,

And mounted up, and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appeared this lovely Nautilus,
My fellow being, like myself, alive.

Dr. Barnard draws from it a lesson of hope for the welfare of the absent

Up with thy thin transparent sail,
Thou tiny mariner!-The gale
Comes gently from the land, and brings
The odour of all lovely things,
That Zephyr in his wanton play
Scatters in Spring's triumphant way;

Up beauteous Nautilus!-away!
The idle muse that chides thy stay
Shall watch thee long, with anxious eye,
O'er thy bright course delighted fly;
And when black storms deform the main,
Cry welcome to the sands again!

Heaven grant that she through life's wild sea
May sail as innocent as thee;

And, homeward turned, like thee may find
Sure refuge from the wave and wind.

It seems a poor compensation for the loss of this delicate and fanciful idea, for science to inform us that, by accurate observation of the living animal, it is found that no such navigation is exhibited by it; but that the expanded arms are spread over the shell, meeting along its keel or edge, and almost completely enclosing it. These flat fingers are not sails then, but secreting organs by which the calcareous secretion is poured out for the increase of the shell. By the action of the arms it does swim, but backwards, and instead of its being a poetical embodiment of the fairy style of navigation, invented by Nature in a moment of ideal exhilaration, for the especial delectation of rhapso