My blacker sins, have all been blotted out, And shall I not forgive? I was secured, Tried, and condemn'd to die. My comrades, Sir, Are to destroy my body. When I came To this sad loathsome place, my heart was dark, Quite ignorant of God; and, full of hate, I meditated vengeance: fain I would Have tortured my false friend, and limb from limb I gladly would have torn with savage joy My officers, who had the sentence pass'd. At length there mercifully came the thought, O blessed thought! of that same Sunday-school; And suddenly there flash'd upon my mind What my kind teachers oft had said to me On Sabbath-days, when I had heeded not. They were discouraged, for a wicked boy I was, as you have heard ; yet their advice, Their prayers, cast by the hand of faith Upon the waters, after many days I found, here in a noisome cell, Condemn'd to die, perchance, forgot by all Who once were kind, unless my mother lives, For mothers ne'er forget, however vile A child may be. Dear Sir, I wept, I pray'd, my heart was broken, and I found The way to Him, the merciful, my God And Saviour, whose loved name I oft had heard At school: and holy words, learnt there, But seldom felt, and long forgot, came back. O for ten thousand tongues to praise my God! He has forgiven me, the vilest, me! His love so fills my heart there is no room

For fear of death." This was his narrative.
At length the day, the hour of death arrived,
And that deserter was led forth, and placed
Before his fellow-soldiers to be shot.
O! it must be a fearful sight, a man,
Deliberately, with intention, kill'd,
Kill'd by his old companions. He was calm
In looks and words; all his demeanour proved
A change most wonderful was wrought in him.
He knelt upon his coffin, pray'd for all,-
Pray'd for himself, the officers in power,
Who judged that martial law required his death,
The men, unwilling executioners ;
And lastly for his aged mother pray’d,
If yet she were alive. Then he declared
The peace of mind he felt, received by faith
In Jesus Christ, and on his face there shone
A lively hope of everlasting bliss.
The man was silent; what a pause was that!
And there he knelt, meekly awaiting death.
What some brave spirits suffer'd none can tell ;
One, the commanding officer, appear’d
To feel, most keenly feel, the painful task,
The duty, he believed devolved on him.
At length, and with a trembling voice, he gave
The fatal word, and in a moment fell
That interesting man. A lifeless corpse,
Soon to be mingled with the earth, lay there;
His happy spirit was in paradise.

ELIZA WEAVER BRADBURN. Southampton, May, 1842.

DEW. My dear young friends, are you early risers ? If 80, and I hope you are, you must have noticed when taking a walk in the morning, when all nature seems awaking from the sleep of the night, when the air, so sweet, so fresh, so pleasant, seems to make everything rejoice, the dew that adorns every green leaf, and every blade of grass, with its beautiful pearly drops, and hangs like a living diamond from every flower, that opens its lovely leaves, as if to invite the dancing sunbeams to play upon it. You may have seen and admired these beautiful dew-drops; but do you know by what wonderful manifestation of divine power they are made to quiver and glisten on nature's carpet of green? If not, I will try to tell you as simply as I can.

I have no doubt you have often felt the heat that a red-hot piece of iron throws out after it is taken from the fire : this is called the radiation, or throwing out of the heat; all bodies do so, more or less. This is one of the causes, as I will presently show.

The second cause is evaporation; that is, changing water into steam by heat. Now when the sun shines very hot on the earth, a great deal of water from the rivers is changed into vapour or steam; this ascends, and when high enough forms clouds; but a great deal of it remains suspended invisibly in the air.

Whilst the sun shines the heat is very slowly

radiated; but as soon as the sun sets the heat is thrown off rapidly, so that the crust of the earth, becoming cool, gradually cools the air; and this condenses the moisture, that is, separates it from the air, and causes it to descend in exceedingly small drops, and this is the dew. By a simple, yet wonderful contrivance of the Almighty, not a drop of dew is lost; for the grass, trees, and flowers, radiate the heat quicker, and consequently get cool sooner, than the earth, and attract all the moisture; thus we may see every patch of green covered with its pretty sparkling drops, when there is none to be seen on the pathway or the road.

Who could have planned such a simple contrivance, so in accordance with nature, but He who clothes the lilies of the field, and causes the grass to spring up in its season?

H. M. R.

MY FIRST CABINET. CARBON. (Continued from Vol. II., page 372.) Although Allan says * that the diamond is an anomalous substance, yet it must be placed beside your specimens of plumbago, because it differs from it only in the arrangement of the atoms of which it is composed. It is remarkable for being generally found in alluvial rocks, that is, those

clayey formations produced by the deposition of - rivers; while other gems are discovered always - embodied in rocks congenial with their own nature.

There is found in Derbyshire, the south of Italy, abundantly in Persia and in the Birman Empire, a black bitumen, called mineral caoutchouc, from its resemblance to Indian-rubber. In its fluid state it is petroleum, or rock-oil, or naphtha. In some parts of the north of Asia, and on the shores of the Caspian sea, the ground is so saturated with this bitumen that it will easily take fire ; it emits a blue flame; and from this circumstance the substance became an object of worship, and the ancient Elamites were degraded by the name of Persees, or fire-worshippers.

There is a spring in the Appennines from which is collected twelve pounds of naphtha each week; it is found in the sea near Vesuvius. Sometimes it is white, yellow, red, and black; there is also a petroleum spring in Kentucky in North America.

You know that coal is supposed to have been originally wood, the remains of vast tracts of forests, and that it is procured from mines underground, and that there are numerous varieties of coal; but you' may be satisfied with distinguishing three of the principal for the present. The first is that the most recently formed, half carbonized, in which you may see something like splinters of wood. Large trees have been found in the Dudley mines; and even in the Welsh coal, which has no | gas, there are evident traces of foliage, fern-plants,

and twigs.