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"Frail murmurer! well may'st thou lament,
The fatal fruits of discontent;

For, since my shelter was despis'd,
See how thy folly is chastis'd!

Why did thy pride create a care

That all who pass'd might deem thee fair?
But thou hast proved, to thy vexation,
How dear fools pay for admiration.

To Flora's tribes I hope thy fall
Will prove a good, and teach them all
To live contented in their stations,
Nor murmur at her dispensations."

The faded flower made no reply,-
But, trembling to the zephyr's sigh,
Bow'd down its languid head, and died;
The victim of its foolish pride.-Mary M. Colling

MASTERS AND SERVANTS.

THE Connexion between master and servant is a contract of wages for time and labour, and contains both expressed and implied duties.

First-It is required of servants, that they be strictly honest: dishonesty in any condition of life is base, shameful, and wicked; but it must be doubly so when it is committed against those who put confidence in our honesty, for then it is attended with a breach of trust, and aggravated with the basest ingratitude.

But, besides downright dishonesty, a servant may be unjust, and injure her master or mistress as deeply by carelessness and profusion. Carefulness and frugality are as much the express or implied terms of the contract as honesty; and the want of the former is as really a breach of trust as the want of the latter, and just as ruinous.

As servants sell their time and labour to their masters at a certain price, consequently they are bound to attend to the duties of their place, and not give themselves up

to idleness, company keeping, or any other disorderly course, which may take them off from their master's business.

Besides these, servants ought to be tractable and patient submission is their duty, for God has commanded servants to obey their masters. They whose fate it is to serve others, must resolve to make allowances for their humours, to put up with some things that may seem very mortifying, and to bear reproofs with patience. Civil language is always cheap, and impertinence provoking: in cases of passion, silence is the greatest prudence, and a little patience the nearest and surest way to peace.

Servants should never tell the affairs of the family they belong to; for that is a sort of treachery, and often makes mischief.

Domestic economy, and the credit and happiness of a family, depend so much on the servants, that the selection and regulation of them must be considered as an essential part of prudence and duty.

Good masters generally make good servants: those who are continually changing their servants, and complaining of bad ones, have good reason to believe that the fault is in themselves, and that they do not know how to govern. Few, indeed, possess the skill to unite authority with kindness, or are capable of that steady and uniformly reasonable conduct, which alone can maintain true dignity, and command a willing and attentive obedience.

Give your orders in a plain and distinct manner, with good nature, joined to a steadiness which will show they must be punctually obeyed. Treat all your domestics with such mildness and affability, that you may be served rather out of affection than from fear: yet avoid familiarity with them; for if you be too familiar, they will despise your authority. They should be treated neither as your equals nor your slaves, but with a decent and becoming distance, carrying with it a suitable respect to them, and by this means they will both fear and love you. Make their situation as comfortable to them as possible: but remember, if you make them your confidents, you spoil them, and debase yourselves. Let them see that you perfectly know their merits and defects, that you have your eyes upon them, and are not to be cheated.

Be not severe on small faults, as frequent chiding hardens them against reproof and weakens authority. If your servants do not amend their faults after two or three rebukes, dismiss them, and never degrade your character by passion and scolding.-Riddoch and Chapone.

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BLESSINGS OF INSTRUCTION.

The heart has tendrils, like the vine,
Which round another's bosom twine;
Outspringing from the parent tree
Of deeply planted sympathy,

Whose flowers are hope, its fruits are bliss ;
Beneficence its harvest is.

There are some bosoms, dark and drear,
Which an unwater'd desert are;
Yet there a curious eye may trace
Some smiling spot, some verdant place,
Where little flowers, the weeds between,
Spend their soft fragrance all unseen.
Despise them not-for wisdom's toil
Has ne'er disturbed that stubborn soil-
Yet care and culture might have brought
The ore of truth from mines of thought:
And fancy's fairest flowers had bloomed
Where truth and fancy lie entombed.

Insult him not-his blackest crime
May, in his Maker's eye, sublime,
In spite of all thy pride, be less
Than e'en thy daily waywardness:
Than many a sin, and many a stain
Forgotten, and impress'd again.

There is in every human heart
Some not completely barren part,

Where seeds of love and truth might grow,
And flowers of generous virtue blow;
To plant, to watch, to water there-
This be our duty-be our care!

And sweet it is the growth to trace
Of worth, of intellect, of grace,
In bosoms where our labours first
Bid the young seed of spring-time burst,
And lead it on, from hour to hour,
To ripen into perfect flower.

Hast thou e'er seen a garden clad
In all the robes that Eden had?

Or vale o'erspread with streams and trees,—
A paradise of mysteries?

Plains, with green hills adorning them,
Like jewels in a diadem?

These gardens, vales, and plains, and hills,
Which beauty gilds, and music fills,
Were once but deserts-culture's hand
Has scatter'd verdure o'er the land,
And smiles and fragrance rule serene,
Where barren wilds usurp'd the scene.
And such is man! a soil which breeds
Or sweetest flowers, or vilest weeds;
Flowers, lovely as the morning's light-
Weeds, deadly as the aconite;
Just as his heart is train'd to bear
The poisonous weed, or flow'ret fair.

Flow, then, pure knowledge! ever flow!
Change nature's face in man below;
A paradise once more disclose!

Make deserts bloom with Sharon's rose;

And through a Saviour's blood, once shed,

Raise his forlorn and drooping head.—Dr. Bowring.

MATERNAL ANXIETIES.

I CANNOT but remark how fine a harmony there is between the law of sympathetic nature in heaven, and the most touching exhibitions of it on the face of our world. When one of a numerous household droops under

the power of disease, is not that the one to whom all the tenderness is turned, and who, in a manner, monopolizes the inquiries of his neighbourhood, and the care of his family? When the sighing of the midnight storm sends a dismal foreboding into the mother's heart, to whom of all her offspring, are her thoughts and her anxieties then wandering? Is it not to her sailor boy, whom her fancy has placed amid the rude and angry surges of the ocean? Does not this, the hour of his apprehended danger, concentrate upon him the whole force of her wakeful meditations?—and does not he engross, for a season, her every sensibility and her every prayer? We sometimes hear of shipwrecked passengers thrown on a barbarous shore, and seized upon by its prowling inhabitants, and hurried away through the tracks of a dreary and unknown wilderness, and sold into captivity, and loaded with the fetters of irrecoverable bondage, and who, stripped of every other liberty but the liberty of thought, feel even this to be another ingredient of wretchedness; for, what can they think of but home? and as all its kind and tender imagery comes upon their remembrance, how can they think of it but in the bitterness of despair? O! tell me, when the fame of all this disaster reaches his family, who is the member of it to whom is directed the full tide of its griefs and of its sympathies? Who is it that for weeks and for months usurps their every feeling, and calls out their largest sacrifices, and sets them to the busiest expedients for getting him back again? Who is it that makes them forgetful of themselves and of all around them? and tell me if you can assign a limit to the pains and the exertions, and the surrenders which afflicted parents and weeping sisters would make to seek and to save him? Conceive the principle of all these earthly exhibitions to be in full operation around the throne of God. Conceive the universe to be one secure and rejoicing family, and that this alienated world is the only strayed or only captive member belonging to it, and we shall cease to wonder, that from the first period of the captivity of our species down to the consummation of their history in time, there should be such a movement in heaven, or that angels should so often have sped their commissioned way on the errand of

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