shook hands with him, and, with a heart almost bursting, hastened upon deck. *** His articulation now became difficult; but he was distinctly heard to say, "Thank God, I have done my duty!" These words he repeatedly pronounced; and they were the last words which he uttered. He expired at thirty minutes after four,-three hours and a quarter after he had received his wound.

The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public calamity: men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us; and it seemed as if we had never till then known how deeply we loved and reverenced him. What the country had lost in its great naval hero-the greatest of our own and of all former times-was scarcely taken into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end. The fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated, but destroyed; new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading our shores could again be contemplated. It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him: the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, and public monuments, and posthumous rewards, were all which they could now bestow upon him whom the king, the legislature, and the nation would have alike delighted to honor; whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every village through which he might have passed would have wakened the church-bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and "old men from the chimney-corner" to look upon Nelson ere they died. The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British navy, through Nelson's surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition. from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength; for, while Nelson was living to watch the combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in existence.

There was reason to suppose, from the appearances upon opening his body, that in the course of nature he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought

he to be lamented, who died so full of honors and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of the martyr; the most awful, that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero in the hour of victory.

ETYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES-THE TEN TRIBES.

That the lost ten tribes of Israel may be found in London, is a discovery which any person may suppose he has made when he walks for the first time from the city to Wapping. That the tribes of Judah and Benjamin flourish there is known to all mankind; and from them have sprung the Scripites, and the Omniumites, and the Threepercentites.

But it is not so well known that many other tribes noticed in the Old Testament are to be found in this island of Great Britain.

There are the Hittites, who excel in one branch of gymnastics; and there are the Amorites, who are to be found in town and country; and there are the Gadites, who frequent watering-places and take picturesque tours.

Among the Gadites I shall have some of my best readers, who, being in good humor with themselves and with every thing else, except on a rainy day, will even then be in good humor with me. There will be the Amorites in their company; and among the Amorites, too, there will be some who, in the overflowing of their love, will have some liking to spare for the doctor and his faithful memorialist.

The poets-those especially who deal in eroties, lyrics, sentimentals, or sonnets-are the Ah-oh-ites. The gentlemen who speculate in chapels are the Puhites.

The chief seat of the Simeonites is at Cambridge; but they are spread over the land. So are the Man-ass-ites, of whom the finest specimens are to be seen in St. James's Street, at the fashionable time of day for exhibiting the dress and the person upon the pavement.

The freemasons are of the family of the Jachinites. The female Haggites are to be seen, in low life wheeling barrows, and in high life seated at card-tables.

The Shuhamites are the cordwainers. The Teamanites attend the sales of the East India Company. Sir James Mackintosh and Sir James Scarlett and Sir James Graham belong to the Jim-nites.

Who are the Gazathites, if the people of London are not, where any thing is to be seen? All of them are the Gettites when they

1 A hamlet on the north side of the Thames, a little below the Tower, chiefly inhabited by seafaring men and tradesinen.

can; all would be Havites if they could. The journalists should be Geshurites, if they answered to their profession: instead of this, they generally turn out to be Geshuwrongs.

There are, however, three tribes in England, not named in the Old Testament, who considerably outnumber all the rest. These are the High Vulgarites, who are the children of Rahank and Phashan; the Middle Vulgarites, who are the children of Mammon and Terade; and the Low Vulgarites, who are the children. of Tahag, Rahag, and Bohob-tay-il.

With the Low Vulgarites I have no concern; but with the other two tribes, much. Well it is that some of those who are fruges consumere nati1 think it proper that they should consume books also; if they did not, what a miserable creature wouldst thou be, Henry Colburn, who art their bookseller! I myself have that kind of respect for the consumers which we ought to feel for every thing useful. If not the salt of the earth, they are its manure, without which it could not produce so abundantly.

THE CHIEF OBJECT OF LIFE.

The object of a good and wise man in this transitory state of existence should be to fit himself for a better, by controlling the unworthy propensities of his nature and improving all its better aspirations; to do his duty first to his family, then to his neighbors, lastly to his country and his kind; to promote the welfare and happiness of those who are in any degree dependent upon him, or whom he has the means of assisting, and never wantonly to injure the meanest thing that lives; to encourage, as far as he may have the power, whatever is useful and ornamental in society, whatever tends to refine and elevate humanity; to store his mind with such knowledge as it is fitted to receive and he is able to attain; and so to employ the talents committed to his charge, that when the account is required he may hope to have his stewardship approved.

JOHN FOSTER, 1770-1843.

JOHN FOSTER, the author of many well-known Christian essays, was born in Yorkshire, in 1770, and was educated in the Baptist College at Bristol. After completing his course of theological studies, he was settled as a clergyman in several different places, the last of which was Downend, near Bristol; but the character of his mind being such as fitted him for a life of meditation and

1 "Born to consume fruits."

study rather than for the regular exercise of the pastoral office, he retired from public engagements, and spent the remainder of his time in literary pursuits in Stapleton, near Bristol, where he resided-preaching only occasionallyuntil the time of his death, which took place on the 15th of October, 1843.

In 1805 he first published his Essays, in a Series of Letters to a Friend, which took rank, immediately, as among the most original and valuable works of the day. These essays were four in number,-namely, On a Man's writing Memoirs of Himself; On Decision of Character; On the Application of the Epithet Romantic; and On some of the Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been rendered less Acceptable to Persons of Cultivated Taste. These essays passed through many editions, and are "models of vigorous thought and expression, uniting metaphysical nicety and acuteness with practical sagacity and common sense.” He also wrote a volume on the Evils of Popular Ignorance; and his contributions to the Eclectic have been published in two volumes, under the title, Contributions, Biographical, Literary, and Philosophical, to the Eclectic Review.1

The following notice of Mr. Foster appeared in the Bristol Mirror a short time after his death :-"Few writers in the whole range of literature possess in an equal degree the power to touch and set in motion the springs of serious reflection. A closer inspection of his mind convinced those who were admitted to the rare privilege of personal intercourse with him, that those really masterly productions, though much elaborated, were not exhausting efforts, but rather natural specimens of the thoughts and sentiments which habitually dwelt within him. They testify that, with a mind profoundly meditative, deeply imbued with 'the powers of the world to come,' and ardently, even to impatience, desirous of the advancement of mankind in freedom, truth, and piety, he united vast stores of knowledge on a great variety of subjects, and an exquisite perception and appreciation of whatever was sublime or beautiful, whether in thought, nature, or art. His piety toward God, and charity toward men, were as deep as they were unostentatious. He was an unaffectedly great and good man."2

CHANGES FROM YOUTH TO AGE.

If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest-where it had lain forgotten fifty years-a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting, verbatim, many passages of the language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost every other writing could at his age inspire? He would half lose the assurance of his identity, under the impression of this immense dissimilarity.

1 Read Life and Correspondence of John Fos ter, by J. E. Ryland, with notices of him as a preacher, by John Sheppard, 2 volumes.

2 His celebrated friend, the late Robert Hall, bestowed upon him the following just and beautiful eulogium:-" He paints. metaphysics, and has the happy art of arraying what in other hands would appear cold and comfortless abstractions in the warmest colors of fancy. Without quitting his argument in pursuit of ornament or imagery, his imagina

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tion becomes the perfect handmaid of his reason, ready at every moment to spread her canvas and present her pencil. But what affords us the deepest satisfaction is to find such talents enlisted on the side of true Christianity; nor can we forbear indulging a benevolent triumph on the accession to the cause of evangelical piety of powers which its most distinguished opponents would be proud to possess." Read an article on his writings in the North British Review, v. 281.

It would seem as if it must be the tale of the juvenile days of some ancestor, with whom he had no connection but that of name. He would feel the young man thus introduced to him separated by so wide a distance of character as to render all congenial sociality impossible. At every sentence he would be tempted to repeat," Foolish youth, I have no sympathy with your feelings; I can hold no converse with your understanding." Thus, you see that in the course of a long life a man may be several moral persons, so various from one another that, if you could find a real individual that should nearly exemplify the character in one of these stages, and another that should exemplify it in the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these several persons together into one society, which would thus be a representation of the successive states of one man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous party, would oppose and probably despise one another, and soon after separate, not caring if they were never to meet again. If the dissimilarity in mind were as great as in person, there would in both respects be a most striking contrast between the extremes at least, between the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy. The one of these contrasts an old man might contemplate if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of his life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he looks at his present countenance; and the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person, in early life, to preserve, for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental likeness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy.

ADVANTAGES of deciSION OF CHARACTER.

One signal advantage possessed by a mind of this character is, that its passions are not wasted. The whole amount of passion of which any mind, with important transactions before it, is capable, is not more than enough to supply interest and energy to its practical exertions; and, therefore, as little as possible of this sacred fire should be expended in a way that does not augment the force of action. But nothing can less contribute to vigor of effort than protracted anxious fluctuation, intermixed with resolutions decided and revoked, while yet nothing causes a greater expense of feeling. The heart is fretted and exhausted by being subjected to an alternation of contrary excitements, with the ultimate mortifying consciousness of their contributing to no end.

The long-wavering deliberation, whether to perform some bold action of difficult virtue, has often cost more to feeling than the