OSSIBLY in no country upon earth has Time effected greater improvements than in England. The history of our own country is no other than a narrative of the progress of the human mind in moral worth, in intellectual attainments, in personal comforts, in literary political and commercial greatness, and above all, in the religious tendencies of the majority of the nation.

us.

Once cruel superstition prevailed amongst

The time was when idolatry was the established mode of worship; the time was when human sacrifices were offered to false gods, and temples erected in this land to the honour of Apollo, of Diana, and of other heathen deities. The time was when slavery was recognised in the kingdom, and debts could be paid by the transfer of slaves or of cattle, at a price regulated by the laws of the State. The time was when parents sold their children and their kindred; the time was that the nation was so despised that the Romans advised their countrymen not to purchase the men of this island, even as slaves; and the time was when a governor was forbidden to marry a native.

There was a time in England's history when this country abounded in negatives-things the people had not-instead, as now, of possessives-things the people possess: for the men of England had no gardens, no corn-fields, no orchards, no books, no churches, no palaces, no museums, no ships, no docks, no sheep, no bread; when theft was a capital offence, and murder was not; when men used rings for coin, and brass and iron were the metallic currency; when men marked their time by nights, and not by days; when mental darkness covered the land, and cruelty and superstition prevailed among the people.

But time in its progress bids us regard our favoured isle in the sunshine as well as in the shade. Centuries have rolled on, civilizing and evangelizing our forefathers, expanding their minds, enlarging their store of know

sciences, and also the social duties of life; rousing them to invention, and leading them to turn to rich account the iron and the coal treasured in the bowels of the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, as a preparation for England's future greatness. England's future greatness. Time has urged her sons to cultivate the arts of peace, and to foster a commerce too great to be described. While the gold and silver of other empires have entailed poverty, the iron and the coal of England have conferred more wealth than Golconda's mines could bestow. Time has borne us onwards, daily improved and still daily improving; and now this once degraded race has become the greatest and the most highly civilized people that the world ever saw. They have extended their dominion over every quarter of the globe; their colonies girt the earth; they have scattered the seeds of mighty empires; they have called into existence, out of a few fishing boats, a maritime power which we are told would annihilate, in one quarter of an hour, the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa combined.

Nor is this all that constitutes England's greatness. In the science of healing, how vastly, how immeasurably superior the medical men of the present as compared with those of former times! Look also at the present means of travelling, contrasted with the past. We are no longer thirty days going from London to Edinburgh. No longer do we find men making their wills as a preparation for a journey to York; but Brighton is now the town residence of the City merchant, whose colleague may occasionally breakfast in London and sup at Perth-a distance of about five hundred miles; while another member of the firm, after breakfast, runs over to Paris, and returns to his friends next day; and, as if this were not enough, his neighbour, who was on 'Change on Monday, informs him that he was transacting business at Boston, and at New York on the Monday night following; and a young cadet of his household writes to say that he reached India in a month.

Look again at our modern correspondence.

“Haste, haste, Postman! for your life, haste!" but a simple address carries millions upon millions of letters, at a charge less than the horseman would have paid at the first turnpike-gate. Look also at the mechanical arts, and see how vastly improved and how usefully directed they are. So also in whatever promotes the convenience of life, how vastly the men of modern days excel! Behold our government unsurpassed, our monarch bearing a name beloved at home and revered abroad, and our statesmen the leaders of the world in political improvement. These are some of the benefits which time, in its progress, has conferred on our honoured and favoured land.

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But the advance made in religious light and privilege is, if possible, more remarkable still. A man is not now compelled to give a cartload of hay for a leaf or two of St. John's Gospel; nor would a copy of the Scriptures cost as much as an arch of London Bridge. Nor is it needful to transfer an immense estate to become possessed of a single volume, as did one of our early kings; nor would it be necessary to deposit a large quantity of plate, and add thereto the security of the leading nobles, to obtain the loan of one book; nor need our Bibles be chained to pillars in our churches, as was wont to be in olden times, seeing that a Testament can be procured for twopence, and the whole of the Sacred Scriptures for the outlay of sixpence.

The state of things has indeed changed for the better since the dark ages of England's ignorance and degradation. Superstition has withdrawn most of her absurd claims; and civil liberty is the recognised right of every Englishman. Everywhere education has made wonderful progress. Once scarcely gaining an entrance to the palace, the schoolmaster is now a cottage friend. We have none of our princes arriving at twelve years of age, and unable to read, as Alfred was at that period of life. We have no king summoned as a vassal to France; we have no barons who deem it needful to coerce the monarch for the protection of the people; we have no foolish king submitting to the Pope's interdict in his kingdom-that interdict forbidding burials,

ship. We have no calls made upon us for a king's ransom; we do not now extract a Jew's teeth in order to extract his money; we have no forced benevolence for the king's service; no deterioration of the coins of the realm, to enrich the chief personage. We have no proud barons, hurling their victims into dungeons filled with adders, snakes, and toads; we do not suffer men's hands and feet to be cut off for slight transgressions, nor a man's eyes to be torn out because he stole a hare. We have no kings now claiming the right of selecting husbands for ladies possessed of estates, and seizing the estate in the event of refusal; we have no member to rise up in the House of Commons, and declare that a justice of the peace was a creature that would set aside half a dozen statutes for the sake of half a dozen chickens.

We have no men dragged to the stake because they will serve God according to their conscience; we have no mother burnt for teaching her children the Lord's Prayer; we have no bishops incarcerated in a dungeon for holding opinions unsatisfactory to the monarch.

We have not 72,000 men executed in one king's reign, out of a population of four millions, as was said to be the case in the days of Henry VIII.; we have no longer 30,000 old women burnt for not being pretty, but charged with witchcraft; and the days of redhot ploughshares and molten lead are happily gone, though not forgotten.

Our penal laws are no longer written in blood; and the life of man is not now taken for offences which a fortnight's imprisonment would amply chastise.

We may therefore devoutly say, Thank God that the men who now rule over us would not commit such acts of atrocity, if they could; and they could not, if they would.

No civil wars destroy our ancient nobles and the flower of the nation, as in the days of the blood-red Rose. No pestilence destroys 68,000 persons in a few weeks, as in London in 1665; no fire devours 13,200 houses, 89 churches, besides colleges and public buildings, thus laying waste 400 streets, and driving 200,000 afflicted persons to find

in 1666, this gloomy picture. No famine now threatens, as in days past, to destroy 40,000 of the inhabitants by hunger.

Among the minor changes which time has effected, may be mentioned the exemption from illness caused by living for a great portion of the year upon salted meat, which arose from the want of knowledge on the part of our forefathers. They knew not how to turn their grass into hay, and were therefore compelled, in the autumn, to slaughter their oxen and salt the meat for the winter's consump. tion, because, having no hay, they were unable to provide provender for the cattle during the winter.

An eminent writer, speaking of the progress produced by time, gives this playful sum mary:-"Mankind, in the thirteenth century, knew not the heavens nor the earth, the sea nor the land, as men now know them. They made war without powder, shot, cannon, or mortars; and the mob made their bonfires without squibs or crackers. They went to sea without compass, and sailed without the needle. They viewed the stars without telescopes, and measured altitudes without barometers. Learning had no printing-press. The lover was forced to send his mistress a deal board for a love-letter. The richest robes were the skins of the most formidable monsters. They carried on trade without books, and corresponded without the postman. Their merchants kept no accounts; their shopkeepers no cash-books."

When we thus contrast the past with the present-without shutting our eyes to the need of greater advancement-may we not now look at our country, and ask in gratitude of spirit, Is not this noble land great in all that constitutes greatness? Of all ancient empires, that of Rome was the largest and the most powerful. At the height of its grandeur, Rome issued its imperial edicts for the government of one

hundred and twenty millions of subjects, and possessed a territory more powerful and more extensive than had ever yielded obedience to any of the kings of the earth. Yet pre-eminent as was Rome in its own glory, England at this moment is far more powerful and her territories far more extensive. Wherever the waters of the mighty ocean flow, there are to be found the ships of England-the mistress of the sea-bearing to distant lands the produce of the globe; and one-fifth of the inhabitants of the whole earth are under the mild and paternal government of the Queen of England.

Yet these great blessings of power, of possessions, and of people, constitute not the chief greatness of this kingdom. No; her brightest honour arises from the purity of her faith, and from the defence of those great principles which have given to conscience its sacred rights, to intellect its unshackled powers, and to devotion its spirit and its truth. To these may be added the bright examples, the out-door proofs, and the fireside evidence, that England's Christianity is active, benevolent, and expansive, leading her sons and her daughters, her pastors and her people, her senators and her princes, to plan and to work for the welfare of those who need a friend's relief, a father's counsel, or a mother's care. Therefore, in the Scriptural character of England's public worship, in the vitality of her godliness, in the activity of her faith, and in her general benevolence, we behold the true greatness of our country and the pre-eminence of our times. These things impart stability to the monarch's throne and we humbly trust, through the providence of God, abiding power to Great Britain's empire; and in this our national welfare may time produce no change, unless it be to make us more faithful to God and more useful to the world!

Going up hill, whip me not;
Coming down hill, hurry me not;
On level ground, spare me not;
Loose in stable, forget me not.
Of hay and corn, rob me not;

RETRO.

With sponge and water neglect me not; Of soft, dry bed deprive me not.

Tired or hot, wash me not;

If sick or old, chill me not;

With bit or rein, oh, jerk me not;

V. ENGLISH CARPENTRY.

T is allowed that England has carried the science of carpentry to greater perfection than any other country. The clever carpenters in the days of the Plantagenets some

times built churches entirely of timber, as we may see at Greensted, in Essex. More frequently, however, they were content to span the walls of stone churches with open timber roofs; or to cap them with wooden turrets, or delicate spirelets covered with cleft oak shingles, or otherwise; or to shade them with timber cloisters; or to fill them with elaborate screens, stalls, pulpits, and pews. They made bridges too of timber; notably, the first bridge over the Thames. But far more freely they employed their skill in dwellings. Very proud some of the old carpenters were of their work.-Builder.

How great a variety of things are con

store consists of tools of one sort or another to save labour; and the other half consists of articles of convenience or elegance, most perfectly adapted to every possible want of the builder or maker of furniture.

The uncivilized man is delighted when he obtains a nail-any nail. A carpenter and a joiner, who supply the wants of a highly civilized community, are not satisfied unless they have a choice of nails, from the finest brad to the largest clasp-nail. A savage thinks a nail will hold two pieces of wood together more completely than anything else in the world. It is seldom, however, that he can afford to put it to such a use; if it is large enough, he makes it into a chisel.

An English joiner knows that screws will do the work more perfectly in some cases than any nail; and therefore we have as great a variety of screws as nails. The commonest house built in England has hinges, and locks, and bolts. A great number are finished with ornamental knobs to doorhandles, with bells and bell-pulls, and a thousand other things that have grown up into necessities, because they save domestic labour and add to domestic comfort. many of these things really are necessities. M. Say, a French writer, gives us an example of this; and as his story is an amusing one, besides having a moral, we may as well copy it:

And

"Being in the country," says he, "I had an example of one of those small losses which a family is exposed to through negligence. For the want of a latchet of small value, the wicket of a barn-yard leading to the fields was often left open. Every one who went through drew the door to; but as there was nothing to fasten the door with, it was always left flapping, sometimes open, sometimes shut. So the cocks and hens and chickens got out, and were lost. One day a fine pig got out, and ran off into the woods; and after the pig ran all the people about the place the gardener and the cook and the dairymaid. The gardener first caught sight

sprained his ankle: in consequence of which the poor man was not able to get out of the house again for a fortnight. The cook found, when she came back from pursuing the pig, that the linen she had left by the fire had fallen down and was burning; and the dairy. maid having, in her haste, neglected to tie up the legs of one of the cows, the cow had kicked a colt which was in the same stable, and broken its leg. The gardener's lost time was worth twenty crowns, to say nothing of the pain he suffered; the linen which was

burned and the colt which was spoiled were worth as much more. Here then was caused a loss of forty crowns, as well as much trouble, plague, and vexation, for the want of a latch which would not have cost 3d."

M. Say's story is one of the many examples of the truth of the old proverb, "For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the man was lost."-Charles Knight.

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