rather than a contrast, to her moral or mental worth.

Religion, far from disparaging elegance, gives new motives for its cultivation. The religious woman should endeavour to increase her influence that she may turn it to the best account: and, in this view, she will not consider what is ornamental as unworthy of her regard. She will cultivate it as a means of persuasion, and will study to be agreeable, were it only from a desire to recommend her principles.

Christianity is itself full of grace. It is a refiner as well as a purifier of the heart: it imparts correctness of perception, delicacy of sentiment, and all those nicer shades of thought and feeling which constitutes elegance of mind. Why, then, should piety and inelegance be associated? Or why should an absence of the graceful characterise religious persons so often, that awkwardness and even vulgarity are regarded by many as the usual concomitants of extraordinary seriousness?

On

Women of piety should not give occasion to such a reproach. They are not more devout because they are ungraceful, nor more heavenly minded because they are deficient in taste. the contrary, they imbibe more deeply the spirit of their lovely religion, when they carry its charm into the detail of life, when they are fascinating as well as faithful, and agreeable as well as good.

DOMESTIC PEACE.

COLERIDGE.

TELL me, on what holy ground
May DOMESTIC PEACE be found?
Halcyon daughter of the skies,
Far on fearful wings she flies,
From the pomp of sceptred state,
From the rebel's noisy hate.
In a cottage vale she dwells,
Listening to the Sabbath bells!
Still around her steps are seen
Spotless HONOUR's meeker mien,
LOVE, the sire of pleasing fears,
SORROW smiling through her tears,
And, conscious of the past employ,
MEMORY, bosom-spring of joy.

QUIENING.

FROM SKETCHES, SCENES, AND

NARRATIVES."

THIS national lament (now half obsolete) is, in general, protracted, boisterously loud, and renewed from interval to interval: but, in the present instance, was chastened and subdued to a most heart-touching expression of melancholy. Rude as the custom may seem, it is one of great

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antiquity; and the figurative language the peasantry sometimes use, in raising this wail, is truly astonishing. It is even said that the late John Philpot Curran first became fired with the ambition of eloquence, from some wild address he heard to the dead in his boyhood.

The following account of the custom, and specimen of an extempore effusion uttered by a professional Quiener, although taken from the notes to a work of fiction, are perfectly correct; and may be acceptable to the British reader, in a day when Ireland excites so much interest.

"The custom is evidently derived from the East, and was the constant practice of the Greeks, who (it may be conjectured) borrowed it from the Hebrews, (whose custom it was,) as may be proved by reference to the Old Testament, where it is recorded of David having raised a lamentation for Abner, 2 Samuel iii. 33, 34.

"The authority of the prophet Jeremiah also confirms this practice, who gives his lamentations over Jerusalem, in imitation of those accustomed to be delivered over the dead by their friends.

"THE LAMENT OF MORIAN SHEHONE OVER MISS MARY BOURKE.

(Literally translated from the original Irish.)

"SILENCE prevails; it is an awful silence. The voice of Mary is heard no longer in the valley.

Yes, thou art gone, O Mary! but Morian Shehone will raise the song of woe, and bewail thy fate.

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Snow-white was thy virtue: the youths gazed on thee with rapture; and old age listened with pleasure to the soft music of thy tongue.

"Thy beauty was brighter than the sun which shone around thee, O Mary! but thy sun is set, and has left the soul of thy friend in darkness.

"Sorrow for thee is dumb, save the wailings of Morian Shehone; and grief has not yet tears to shed for Mary.

"I have cried over the rich man's grave; but when the stone was laid upon his grave, my grief was at an end: not so with my heart's darling, the grave cannot hide Mary from the view of Morian Shehone.

“I see her in the four corners of her habitation, which was once gilded by her presence.

"Thou didst not fall off like a withered leaf, which hangs trembling and insecure: no, it was a rude blast which brought thee to the dust, O Mary!

"Hadst thou not friends? Hadst thou not bread to eat, and raiment to put on? Hadst thou not youth and beauty, Mary? Then mightest thou not have been happy?

"But the spoiler came and destroyed my peace: the grim tyrant has taken away my only support in Mary!

"In thy state of probation thou wert kind

hearted to all, and none envied thee thy good fortune. O! that the lamentations of thy friends -O! that the burning tears of Morian Shehone could bring back from the grave the peerless Mary.

“But, alas! this cannot be: then twice in every year, while the virgins of the valley celebrate the birth and death of Mary, under the wide-spreading elm, let her spirit hover round them, and teach them to emulate her virtues.

"So falls into the depth of silence, the lament of Morian Shehone."

IMITATION OF PSALM CXXXIX.

HOGG.

DWELLER in heaven, and Ruler below,
Fain would I know thee, but tremble to know;
How can a mortal deem how it can be

That being cannot be, but is present with Thee! Is it true that Thou sawest me ere I saw the morn?

Is it true that Thou knewest me before I was born?

That nature must live in the light of thine eye?— This knowledge for me is too great and too

high!