flowed. Marat, covered in his bath with a dirty ink-spotted sheet, had only his head, shoulders, chest, and right arm out of the water. There was nothing in the appearance of this man to touch the heart of a woman, and make her hesitate to strike the blow. Gray hair surrounded by a dirty handkerchief, a retiring forehead, bold eyes, large cheek-bones, an enormous sneering mouth, a hairy chest, emaciated limbs, and a livid skin: such was Marat.

Charlotte avoided catching his eye, for fear of betraying the horror inspired by his appearance. Standing with her eyes cast down, and her hands hanging by the side of the bath, she waited for Marat to question her as to the situation of Normandy. She replied briefly, suiting her answers so as to flatter what she believed to be the disposition of the demagogue. He asked her the names of the deputies who had taken refuge in Caen. She told him, and he wrote them down. "That is well," said he, when he had finished writing, with the accent of a man who is sure of vengeance. "Before a week is over they shall all be brought to the guillotine."

At these words, as if she had waited for another crime to urge her to the deed, Charlotte drew from her bosom the knife, and plunged it with supernatural force up to the hilt in the heart of Marat. With the same movement Charlotte withdrew the bloody knife from the body of her victim, and let it fall at her feet. "Come to me, my

dear friend, come to me," cried Marat, and expired under the blow.

301. THE CLOUDS.

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noon-day dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

SHELLEY.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass
in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits,

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains ;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead.

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch, through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
Whilst the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of the earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky:

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when, with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and upbuild it again."

302.—Of the Goodness of the Deity.

PALEY.

[WILLIAM PALEY was born at Peterborough, in 1743. He was educated by his father, who was head-master of the Grammar School of Giggleswick, in Yorkshire, and he graduated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1763. His life was passed in the calm discharge of his professional duties, and in the composition of the various works which have made his name one of the most familiar in English literature. Paley never reached any of the great distinctions of the church. His tolerance and freedom of inquiry were not in unison with the opinions of those who had the bestowal of preferment. His reputation as a moralist and theologian has rather diminished of late years. His philosophy is that of expediency-his religion is that which is proposed to the reason rather than the heart. But for acuteness, strength of grasp, and felicity of illustration, he has never been surpassed; and though his chief works are founded upon materials collected by others, his powers as a writer are so admirable, that well known facts and common thoughts become original under his treatment. His great works are, Moral and Political Philosophy; Evidences of Christianity; and Natural Theology.' latter popular book our extract is taken. Paley died in 1805.]

Hora Paulinæ ;'
From the

The proof of the divine goodness rests upon two propositions: each, as we contend, capable of being made out by observations drawn from the appearances of nature.

The first is, "that in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial.”

The second, "that the Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain."

First, "in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial."

No productions of nature display contrivance so manifestly as the parts of animals; and the parts of animals have all of them, I believe, a real, and with very few exceptions, all of them a known and intelligible subserviency to the use of the animal. Now, when the multitude of animals is considered, the number of parts in each, their figure and fitness, the faculties depending upon them, the variety of species, the complexity of structure, the success, in so many cases, the felicity of the result, we can never reflect, without the profoundest adoration, upon the character of that Being from whom all these things have proceeded we cannot help acknowledging what an exertion of benevolence creation was; of a benevolence how minute in its care, how vast in its comprehension !

When we appeal to the parts and faculties of animals, and to the limbs and senses of animals in particular, we state, I conceive, the proper medium of proof for the conclusion which we wish to establish. I will not say that the insensible parts of nature are made solely for the sensitive parts, but this I say, that when we consider the benevolence of the Deity, we can only consider it in relation to sensitive being. Without this reference, or referred to anything else, the attribute has no object, the term has no meaning. Dead matter is nothing. The parts, therefore, especially the limbs and senses, of animals, although they constitute in mass and quantity a small portion of the material creation, yet, since they alone are instruments of perception, they compose what may be called the whole of visible nature, estimated with a view to the disposition of its Author. Consequently, it is in these that we are to seek his character. It is by these that we are to prove that the world was made with a benevolent design.

Nor is the design abortive. It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. "The insect youth are on the wing." Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motion, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties. A bee amongst the flowers in spring is one of the most cheerful objects