windows in the basement and ground floors, will readily suggest themselves as the parts of a house most requiring to be guarded. The situation for the alarum, its adjustment at night, the protection which may be thought necessary for internal doors of rooms, or passages, must, of course, depend on the habits, pursuits, and duties of each family. Whatever be the size of a house, and wherever situated-in the midst of a town, or far off from all other habitations-thus much is certain: at a comparatively trifling cost, it can be so guarded that at whatever part an attack be made, or however quietly it be commenced, the depredator will himself give instant notice of his approach; alarming the household before the most expert "craftsman" shall have had time to effect an entrance.

THE "ALARM."

THE Rev. Dr. Hill, of America, once said, "I have abundant cause for interest in the plan of circulating good and pious books. I left my mother when I was a youth, but not before her instructions, which I received from her beloved lips, had made a deep impression upon my mind; an impression which I carried with me to college, where there was not, then, one pious student. There I often reflected, when surrounded by young men who scoffed at religion, upon the instructions of my mother, and my conscience was frequently sore distressed. I had no Bible, and dreaded getting one, lest it should be found in my possession. At last I could stand it no longer, and therefore requested a particular friend—a youth whose parents lived near, and who often went home, to ask his pious and excellent mother to send me some religious books. She sent me "Alleine's Alarm," an old black book, which looked as if it might have been handled by successive generations for one hundred years, when I got it.

"I locked my room, and lay on my bed reading it, when a student knocked at my door; and although I gave him no answer, dreading to be found reading such a book, he continued to knock and beat the door until I had to open it."

He came in, and seeing the book lying on the bed, he seized it, and examining the title said, "Why, Hill! do you read such books?"

I hesitated; but God enabled me to be decided, and to answer him boldly, but with much emotion.

The young man replied with deep agitation, “Oh, Hill! you may obtain religion, but I never can. I came here a professor of religion, but through fear I dissembled it, and have been carried along with the wicked, until I fear that there is no hope for me."

He told me that there were two others who, he believed, were somewhat serious. We agreed to take up the subject of religion in earnest and seek it together. We invited the other two, and held a prayer meeting in my room on the next Saturday afternoon. And O! what a prayer meeting! We tried to pray, but such prayer I never heard the like of. We knew not how to pray, but tried to do it. We tried to sing, but it was in a suppressed manner, for we feared the other students. But they found it out, and gathered around the door, and made such a noise, that some of the officers had to disperse them.

So serious was this disturbance, that the President, the late excellent Rev. John B. Smith, had to investigate the matter at prayers that evening, in the prayers' hall. When he demanded the reason of the riot, a ringleader in wickedness got up and stated that it was occasioned by three or four of the boys holding prayer meeting, and they were determined to have no such doings there.

The good president heard the statement with deep emotion, and looking at the youths charged with the sin of praying, with tears in his eyes, he said, "Oh, is there such a state of things in this college? Then God has come near to us. My dear young friends, you shall be protected: you shall hold your next meeting in my parlour, and I will be one of your number!"

We had accordingly, our next meeting there, when half the college attended, and then began that glorious revival of religion which pervaded the college and spread into the country. Many of those students became ministers of the gospel. The youth who had brought me "Alleine's Alarm" from his mother, was my friend, the Rev. C. Still. And he, who interrupted me in reading the work, my venerable and worthy friend, is now president of a college in the West.

SCIENCE FOR TENDER CAPACITIES.

SINCE the receipt, many years ago, of a pamphlet, entitled, "Astronomy Simplified," we have not been so completely and hopelessly mystified, as by our late attempt to get through the Rev. David Williams' "Science Simplified." Happily, how

ever, its author has assumed the character also of reviewer, and saved us some little trouble in estimating its pretensions to acceptance.

"The author of Science Simplified,' &c. hopes that he has presented to teachers of youth of both sexes a manual containing a fund of invaluable knowledge, unequalled for variety and extent, and condensed into the smallest possible compass that can be devised, and that, too, at a moderate cost; that he has verified the truth and application of the sententious and emphatic apothegm-multum in parvo-a store-house in a nutshell; and that his little volume will be found to contain the most interesting and instructive portions of numerous and expensive tomes."

'Unequalled,' 'invaluable,' a very miracle of condensation, and moderately cheap, Mr. Williams' little volume, taken at his own valuation, ought certainly to secure for itself an unlimited sale, especially as nothing of the kind seems on the same good authority, ever to have been published before. The very idea, indeed, of such a thing is claimed as a creation of our author's.

In our notable schemes of education, the propriety and obligation of imparting to the youthful mind habits of inquiry and investigation, of thought and reflection, seem never to have entered into the conception of their broachers; and the erroran error fundamentally and emphatically calculated to incapacitate the mind for the contemplation and discovery of truth -is faithfully and tenaciously observed by the supporters and upholders of those schemes. No rational and thinking person can therefore be surprised at the result, that in the greater part of our population the powers of the mind are allowed to become waste and unproductive."

Another extract from the author's review of this little work; and then we may, perhaps, presume to give our own opinion: "Among its other advantages over the old method of ver

biage and profuse dissertation-of book-plodding and bookporing-it will not only smooth and enliven, shorten and facilitate the approach to the temple of science and the fountain of philosophy, but it is peculiarly and emphatically adapted to bring down the arcana or mysteries of science and philosophy to the simplest and the tenderest capacity."

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With simplest' and 'tenderest' aliment, therefore, concocted from the "arcana" of science and philosophy, Mr. Williams undertakes to supply the juvenile public, e. g.—“ How is blood produced?-By the digestion of the various dead and inert animal and vegetable substances ingested into the stomach, and their conversion into an animalized and a vitalized fluid qualified to enter into the current of the blood, which is thus transmuted into living solids and fluids, by the process of assimilation to the existent solids and fluids of the body."

According to Mr. Williams' statement, such wordy technicalities as these, constitute the only real education abroad in the world. Our Boards, Colleges, Classes, Schools, Schoolmasters, Professors, Lecturers, Authors-all the instruments and paraphernalia of education-National, British, and Infant School systems, as well as Private Seminaries-are sadly, hopelessly, at fault, dealing only in "incongruous shreds and patches of learned litter and lumber." All honor then to the bold man who undertakes to set them right!

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Learning, and learning's laws lay hid in night,

"Till Williams grasped the pen-and all was light."

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But we have yet a more serious charge, than that of arrogance, against our author. We believe some of his facts' to be no facts at all; some of his questions, improper for the young; some of his reasons, very unreasonable; and many of his definitions far less exact than we have a right to expect from one assuming so high a standing in the educational world.

What, for example, can be less logical than the following: "Why do birds and quadrupeds annually moult and cast their hair? To replace the feathers and hair lost in the course of the year."

Birds, then, it would appear, lose their feathers once a year, because they have been losing them every day; and put them off only by way of putting them on!

Again-"Why are certain animals, birds and insects, as bears, the fat dormouse, swallows, bees, flies, &c. enabled to preserve life during the winter months while in their torpid state?Because the heat of their blood scarcely exceeds that of the temperature of the surrounding air."

Why are birds and insects excluded from the category of animals; why do not all cold-blooded creatures live through the winter; and in what way does the comparative coolness of the blood" preserve life?"

Is it an indisputable fact, that live toads have been found in the very centre of large blocks of stone or marble? (p. 30.) We very much doubt it, though it has been so often affirmed.

But to graver matters. Is there nothing of an atheistical character in this question and its answer?

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"In what does life or the vital principle consist ?—In the mutual and sympathetic action and reaction of all the important functions (the respiration, digestion, absorption, circulation, and secretion) of the various organs comprising the animal machine, viz., the brain, the heart, the lungs, &c. That the vital principle-or, to adopt the beautifully paraphrastic language of Scripture, the vivifying element by which we live, and move, and have our being,'-consists in the assemblage, the harmonious action and reaction, and the bond of union of those organs, is unquestionable, although cases are recorded in medical annals, in which the brain has been seriously disorganized without affecting the vital princple: the heart has been wounded without causing death; and persons have lived for many years, though subject to extensive structural disease of the lungs."

We have always regarded Life as the inspiration of the Almighty-as a principle infused by God himself into every creature born into the world. "Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created: Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to the dust." But our author confounds the vital principle with its development. Life produces "the mutual and sympathetic action (but not the re-action) of all the important functions;" but it exists prior to, and independently of, such action. Mr. Williams, indeed obscurely admits this, when speaking of "the vivifying element in which we live, and move,