THE PEARL OF DAYS.

AN is not left, even in this state of existence, like the lower animals, to draw his chief happiness from the indulgence of his appetites, or to be led by the blind, but unerring impulse of instinct,

to his chief good. He is endowed with reasoning powers and moral sentiments, which require to be enlightened and exercised, in order to their proper direction and healthful development. His happiness is as inseparably connected with the cultivation and exercise of the faculties of his mind, as it is with the healthful development and proper exercise of his bodily organs. We meet with abundant proof of this in the state of savage tribes, who shelter themselves in clay-built hovels, wrap themselves in the skins of beasts, and obtain a precarious subsistence from the scanty produce of the uncultivated ground, or the flesh of wild animals. If we compare their means of sustaining life, their sources of enjoyment, their religious worship, their daily habits, and their daily labours, in a word, their whole state, with the state of a

civilized and enlightened community—even could we bring ourselves to look upon man as merely an intelligent and improvable animal, formed exclusively for this present life-we are irresistibly led to the conclusion, that whatever tends to elevate or refine his nature, to give to his reasoning faculties and his moral sentiments a controlling power over his appetites and propensities, is of vast importance to his well-being. It guards him from evils to which, while his animal nature is left without due restraint from his higher faculties and sentiments, he is exposed, opens to him sources of enjoyment, and discovers supplies, of which, while his intellectual nature is uncultivated, he is incapable of availing himself.

The labour to which, in the present state of society, the majority of the working population of our country is subjected, in

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order to obtain their subsistence, is of that incessant and tasking nature, which, when the daily hours of toil are closed, leaves the system too much exhausted for mental application or intellectual enjoyment. Hence, among those of the labouring classes who are not led by religious principle to avail themselves of the opportunities for self-improvement which the weekly rest affords, find, with comparatively few exceptions, low and degrading pursuits the principal sources of their amusement; while their highest enjoyments are derived from the gratification of their appetites and propensities. Nor is this strange; no one who has for any considerable length of time been subjected to severe and unremitting toil, whose employment called for the exertion of his muscular power till real fatigue ensued, will deny, that, while in such a state, man is equally in