Cold, fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 2. Is there a murderer here? No:-Yes; I am : I love myself. Wherefore? for any good 3. I am a villain: Yet I lie, I am not. Fool; of thyself speak well :-Fool, do not flatter. 4. I shall despair.-There is no creature loves me: Nay, wherefore should they? since that I myself Methought, the souls of all that I had murder'd This speech of King Richard is, in my opinion, not merely one of the most difficult pieces to read or recite in our language, but the most difficult. It was made on Bosworth field, when Shakspeare's spectral illusions of king Richard's murdered victims, called ghosts, appeared to him, the shade of each of whom, pointed towards him, with a clay-cold, but unerring hand, and cried, in a voice which harrow'd up his soul, "Thou art my murderer, despair and die." When the ghosts vanished, he started out of his dream, and made the above speech, in which he acknowledges himself to have been a villain and a murderer. His name is, as queen Anne predicted it would be, "a by-word for tyranny." His speech should be commenced abruptly, and on a high key. The voice should fall to a low note on the second line. The fifth line, " Cold, fearful drops," &c., requires slow time and quantity. The questions which he puts to himself, require rising inflections; the answers he makes, falling inflections. Those portions of his speech in which he speaks of his crimes, require a high key, and great energy. THERE'S NOTHING TRUE BUT HEAVEN. 1. This world is all a fleeting show, The smiles of joy, the tears of wo, There's nothing true but Heaven. 2. And false the light on glory's plume, And love, and hope, and beauty's bloom 3. Poor wanderers of a stormy day, From wave to wave we're driven; HEAVEN. 1. This world's not "all a fleeting show, He that hath sooth'd a widow's wo, There's something here of Heaven. 2. And he that walks life's thorny way 3. He that the Christian's course hath run, Who measures out life's little span In love to God and love to man, On earth, hath tasted Heaven.-Anonymous. RELIGION. 1. While we are disposed to allow, to their full extent, the pleasures of literary pursuit, and the important advan tages of intellectual illumination, it must be confessed, that man has wants which nothing can supply, and woes which nothing can relieve, but the sanative influence of religion. 2. What can moderate anger, resentment, malice, or revenge, like the thought that we may ask God to forgive our trespasses only as we forgive the trespasses of others? What can quiet murmurings at our lot, like the deep sense of moral demerit which the gospel presses on the conscience? What can cool the burnings of envy, or allay the passions for renown, like a remembrance of the transi tory nature of all human glory? 3. What can produce resignation to the loss of friends, like a confident hope of meeting them soon in a brighter world? What can prompt to deeds of benevolence, like the example of Him, who, though he was rich, for our sakes, became poor? Is there any thing which can give steadiness to purpose, or stability to character, like an unwavering regard to the will of God? 4. Considerations of mere worldly policy, or interest, furnish no steady magnetic influence to give one uniform direction to all the plans and actions of life. Patriotism may fire the spirit with valor to sustain the onset of an invading foe, and bare the breast to the rushing tide of war :-but who can meet with unruffled temper, the thousand petty ills that life is heir to, like him whose aim is heaven? 5. What sublimity like moral sublimity, whether we regard the grandeur or permanency of its effects? What more sublime than the triumphs of a dying Christian when, in the midst of its decaying and crumbling habitation, the spirit plumes itself for its lofty flight, and departs in the buoyancy of hope, for the regions of eternal day? These are the gifts of Christianity. 6. But it is on man, in his social capacities, and political relations, that moral principle is destined to exert its most important influence. It is in society that man has power. It is in society, that virtue develops its benevolent tendencies, and that vice scatters fire-brands, arrows, and death. Has the example of vice wrought powerfully? so has that of virtue. Have many been beguiled to their destruction by the enticings of the sinful? multitudes have been allured by the persuasions of the good, to fairer worlds on high. Alva Wood. This extract is from Rev. Alva Wood's discourse at his inauguration, as President of the Transylvania University, October 13, 1828. He succeeded Dr. Horace Holley. GOD'S INCOMPREHENSIBILITY. 1. While the spirituality of God's nature places him beyond the reach of our direct cognizance, there are cer tain other essential properties of his nature, which places him beyond the reach of our possible comprehension. Let me instance the past eternity of the Godhead. One might figure a futurity that never ceases to flow, and which has no termination; but who can climb his ascending way among the obscurities of that infinite which is behind him? 2. Who can travel in thought, along the track of generations gone by, till he has overtaken the eternity which lies in that direction? Who can look across the millions of ages which have elapsed, and from an ulterior post of observation, look again to another, and another succession of centuries; and each further extremity is this series of retrospects, stretch backward his regards on an antiquity as remote and indefinite as ever? Could we, by any number of successive strides over these mighty intervals, at length reach the fountain-head of duration, our spirits might be at rest. 3. But to think of duration, as having no fountain-head; to think of time, with no beginning; to uplift the imagination along the heights of an antiquity, which hath positively no summit; to soar these upward steeps, till, dizzied by the altitude, we can keep no longer on the wing; for the mind to make these repeated flights from one pinnacle to another, and instead of scaling the mysterious elevation, to lie baffled at its foot, or lose itself among the far, the long-withdrawing recesses of that primeval distance, which at length, merges away into a fathomless unknown; this is an exercise, utterly discomfiting to the puny faculties of man.-Chalmers. This extract is from the works of Rev. Thomas Chalmers, LL. D., of Edinburgh, on "Natural Theology." MISSIONARY HYMN. 1. From Greenland's icy mountains, Roll down their golden sand; Their land from error's chain. 2. What though the spicy breezes |