ADVANTAGES OVER OTHERS. Oh! where is a land The tribute of praise For crowning with goodness My earliest days. Lord, all that I have thou hast granted to me, SHALL Uncle William tell you a sin which he often deplores? It is ingratitude. When he considers the rich and varied blessings bestowed by the hand of his heavenly Father, though he is sinful and utterly unworthy of the least of them, he often laments his hard ness of heart. Well Well may he stand ashamed and confounded in the presence of that God, who "delighteth in mercy." And now I want to ask you, my young friends, if you are free from the same evil? Do you dwell on the blessings you enjoy till your heart warms, and your eyes fill at the remembrance of the Divine goodness, and praise is ready to gush from your lips? Stop now a few moments, and do not read any more till you have given a faithful answer. Ah! you find much reason to condemn yourselves; I thought you would. Be, then, concerned to guard against ingratitude in future. Let the goodness of God daily and hourly affect your hearts. How great are the dangers to which some are exposed! In certain parts of the East voracious animals prowl about, eagerly making human beings their prey. Military troops in India usually move with a host of camp followers, many of them having families, and these are accompanied by numbers of young children at the breast; in some parts of India, especially in Oude, all these are kept in constant alarm, by the wolves which overrun that country. A wolf, on entering a camp or village, proceeds silently and cautiously; he prefers an infant child, and always seizes it by the throat, thus preventing it from giving an alarm, and enabling him, from the hold he takes, to bear away the infant readily. In this way he will carry it through crowds, rushing forward on the first alarm. Often, when closely pursued, especially if struck by a stick or stone, he will drop the child; but if it be not immediately taken away, the wolf will turn to the spot, and snap it up again. When a wolf is seen by the sentinels, who dare not fire among such crowds of people, a general shout and pursuit take place; and yet the wolves are so bold, that three or four children are carried off, or, at least, seized and dropped, in one night. Many are taken from the very arms of their mothers, though covered with quilts, and surrounded perhaps by a dozen persons. So subtilely does the wolf proceed, that often a child is taken from its mother's breast, and is not missed till the morning, when the parent first becomes acquainted with her loss. The cries of the bereaved mothers cannot be described; they distress the feelings of all around during the day, and at night, I suppose, destroy the rest of all who have the least pity for the sufferers. There are perils of very different kinds to that which arises from prowling wolves. Let us look, then, at another fact. The banks of the Rhone are in most places precipitous, but the ground becoming occasionally less steep, allows the formation of soil, and when this is too steep for the husbandman, it becomes richly clad with the larch. The hardy Switzer, however, if he can plough up or delve into such a spot, eagerly seizes it, and soon makes it into a garden. In the midst of this he builds a cottage of dark red logs of larch, which have been so often admired. To connect these eagle-nest patches together, as Captain Basil Hall calls them, bridges are thrown across the ravine; and to supply the people with bread, mills are built as near as they can be to the edge of the stream. Thus," he says, "wherever it is possible amongst the Alps for the foot of man to plant itself, little villages start up, enriched by gardens, and decked by the church steeple, which never fails to meet 66 the eye in a Swiss community, however small or however poor, or, I may add, however exposed it may occasionally be to the ravages of such a debacle, or mountain torrent, as swept out the poor valley of the Dranse in 1818." This popular writer has described the results of this catastrophe, as he beheld them, and of which the following is a condensed account. Many houses had been swept away, and all that remained showed that they had been invaded by the flood, which, even where the valley was widest, had risen to the height of ten feet. Higher up, the torrent had been much deeper. All the hedges, garden walls, and other boundary lines and landmarks, were buried under one mass of substances which had been reduced to powder. In every house there lay matter several feet in thickness, through which passages were obliged to be cut along the streets, as we see roads cut in the snow after a storm. On that side of every building which faced up the valley, and against which the stream was directed, there was under all a pile of large stones, then a layer of trees, with their tattered branches lying one way, |