3. Foremost on the list stands Sir Isaac Newton.* The treatise of his, that cost him the mightiest intellectual effort of all his works, was composed while the body was sustained by bread and water alone. And in spite of the wear and tear of such protracted and prodigious mental labor as his, that same temperance sustained him to his eighty-fifth year.

4. The celebrated John Locke," with a feeble constitution, outlived the term of threescore years and ten, by his temperance. "To this temperate mode of life, too, he was probably indebted for the increase of those intellectual powers, which gave birth to his incomparable work on the human understanding, his treatises on government and education, as well as his other writings, which do so much honor to his memory.”

5. Another intellectual philosopher, who saw fourscore years, was the venerable Kant. "By this commendable and healthy practice," early rising, says his biographer, "daily exercise on foot, temperance in eating and drinking, constant employment, and cheerful company, he protracted his life to this advanced period;" and we may add, acquired the power for his immense labors of mind.

d

6. Few men have more fully established their claims to intellectual superiority of a very high grade, than President Edwards. But it was temperance alone that could carry him through such powerful mental efforts. "Though constitutionally tender, by the rules of temperance, he enjoyed good health, and was enabled to pursue his studies thirteen hours a day."

7. The same means enabled Martin Luther, though his days were stormy in the extreme, to make the moral world bend at his will, and to leave for his posterity so many profound literary productions. "It often happened," says his biographer, "that for several days and nights, he locked himself up in his

a Sir Isaac Newton; an eminent philosopher and mathematician of England. b John Locke; a noted intellectual philosopher of England. c Kant; an intellectual philosopher born at Konigsbergh, Prussia. d President Edwards; an eminent theologian of Connec ticut, and President of Princeton College. e Martin Luther; a distinguished German

divine.

study, and took no other nourishment than bread and water, that he might the more uninterruptedly pursue his labors.”

8. The records of English jurisprudence contain scarcely a name more distinguished than that of Sir Matthew Hale.* And it is the testimony of history, that "his decided piety and rigid temperance laid him open to the attacks of ridicule; but he could not be moved." In eating and drinking, he observed not only great plainness and moderation, but lived so philosophically, that he always ended his meal with an appetite.

9. Perhaps no man accomplishes more for the world than he who writes such a commentary on the Scriptures as that of Matthew Henry. And it is, indeed, an immense literary labor. But the biographer's account of that writer's habits, shows that temperance and diligence were the secret of his

success.

10. Few men have accomplished more than John Wesley ;* and it is gratifying to learn that it was "extraordinary temperance which gave him the power to do so much, and to live so long."

11. In reading the works of Milton, we are not so much delighted with the play of imagination, as with the rich and profound, though sometimes exceedingly anomalous views, which he opens before us. The fact is, he was a man of powers and attainments so great as justly to be classed among the leading intellects of his generation. Nor were such powers and attainments disjoined from temperance.

12. Europe, as well as America, has been filled with the fame of Franklin; and no less wide spread is the history of his temperance. Early in life he adopted a vegetable diet; and thus he not only gained time for study, but "I made the greater progress," says he, "from that greater clearness of head and quickness of apprehension which generally attend temper

a Sir Matthew Hale; an English judge of brilliant talents, and great piety. b Matthew Henry; an eminent English divine. c John Wesley; a distinguished English divine and founder of the denomination called Methodists. d Milton; one of the greatest of the English poets. e Franklin; one of the greatest of philosophers, born in Boston, 1706

ance in eating and drinking." The habit of being contented with a little, and disregarding the gratifications of the palate, remained with him through life, and was highly useful.

LESSON XXXII.

ASTRONOMY.a

WIRT.

1. It was a pleasant evening in the month of May, and my sweet child and I had sauntered up to the castle's top to enjoy the breeze that played around it, and to admire the unclouded firmament, that glowed and sparkled with unusual luster from pole to pole.

ر

2. The atmosphere was in its purest and finest state for vision; the Milky Way' was distinctly developed throughout its whole extent; every planet and every star above the horizon, however near and brilliant or distant and faint, lent its lambent light or twinkling ray to give variety and beauty to the hemisphere; while the round, bright moon seeined to hang off from the azure vault, suspended in midway air; or stooping forward from the firmament her fair and radiant face, as if to court and return our gaze.

3. We amused ourselves for some time, in observing through a telescope the planet Jupiter, sailing in silent majesty with his squadron of satellites along the vast ocean of space between us and the fixed stars; and admired the felicity of that design by which those distant bodies have been parceled out and arranged into constellations; so as to have served not only for beacons to the ancient navigators, but, as it were, for landmarks to astronomers at this day; enabling them, though in different countries, to indicate to each other with ease the place

a The most ancient observations upon astronomy which have come down to us are those of the Chinese and Chaldeans. b Milky Way; a bright belt or zone encompassing the heavens supposed to be composed of stars of which our sun is one. c Jupiter; the greatest of the gods among the Greeks and Romans, after whom this planet was named.

and motion of those planets, comets and magnificent meteors, which inhabit, revolve, and play in the intermediate space.

4. We recalled and dwelt with delight on the rise and progress of the science of astronomy; on that series of astonishing discoveries through successive ages, which display, in so strong a light, the force and reach of the human mind; and on those bold conjectures and sublime reveries, which seem to tower even to the confines of divinity, and denote the high destiny to which mortals tend.

5. That thought, for instance, which is said to have been first started by Pythagoras, and which modern astronomers approve; that the stars which we call fixed, although they appear to us to be nothing more than large spangles of various sizes glittering on the same concave surface, are, nevertheless, bodies as large as our sun, shining, like him, with original and not reflected light, placed at incalculable distances asunder, and each star the solar center of a system of planets which revolve around it, as the planets belonging to our system do around the sun.

6. That this is not only the case with all the stars which our eyes discern in the firmament, or which the telescope has brought within the sphere of our vision, but according to the modern improvements of this thought, that there are probably other stars, whose light has not yet reached us, although light moves with a velocity a million times greater than that of a cannon ball.

7. That those luminous appearances, which we observe in the firmament, like flakes of thin, white cloud, are windows, as it were, which opened to other firmaments, far, far beyond the ken of human eye, or the power of optical instruments, lighted up, like ours, with hosts of stars or suns.

8. That this scheme goes on through infinite space, which is filled with thousands upon thousands of those suns, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid motion,

a Py-thag-o-ras; a Grecian philosopher and mathematician, the inventor of the multiplication table.

yet calm, regular and harmonious, invariably keeping the paths prescribed to them; and these worlds peopled with myriads of intelligent beings. One would think that this conception, thus extended, would be bold enough to satisfy the whole enterprise of the human imagination.

a

9. But what an accession of glory and magnificence does Dr. Herschel superadd to it, when, instead of supposing all those suns fixed, and the motion confined to their respective planets, he loosens those multitudinous suns themselves from their stations, sets them all into motion with their splendid retinue of planets and satellites, and imagines them, thus attended, to perform a stupendous revolution, system above system, around some grander, unknown center, somewhere in the boundless abyss of space!

10. And when carrying on the process, you suppose even that center itself not stationary, but also counterpoised by other masses in the immensity of space, with which, attended by their accumulated trains of

"Flanets, suns and adamantine spheres,

Wheeling unshaken through the void immense,"

it maintains harmonious concert, surrounding, in its vast career, some other center, still more remote and stupendous, which in its turn "You overwhelm me,” cried my daughter, as I was laboring to pursue the immense concatenation; "my mind is bewildered and lost in the effort to follow you, and finds no point on which to rest its weary wing."

11. "Yet there is a point, my dear, the throne of the Most High. Imagine that, the ultimate center, to which this vast and inconceivably magnificent and august apparatus is attached, and around which it is continually revolving. Oh! what a spectacle for the cherubim and seraphim, and the spirits of the just made perfect, who dwell on the right hand of that throne, if, as may be, and probably is the case, their eyes are permitted to pierce through the whole, and take in, at one

a Sir William Herschel, (her'-shel); an eminent English astronomer, the discoverer of the planet Herschel, or Uranus.