The canary bird is five inches in length, of which the tail comprises two inches and a quarter. Sometimes the female is not easily distinguished from the male; but the latter has generally deeper and brighter colours, the head is rather thicker, the body is more slender throughout, and the praise. How easy love makes every thing, when we know the love of God! That is a sweet direction : "In every thing give thanks; by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, &c." There is more divinity in that verse than in all the fathers. It is a bit of gold which enriches. They talk of the gold of California; but the gold of that land (the heavenly Canaan) is good.-Rev. E. Bickersteth. Poetry. temples and space around the eyes are always of HYMNS FOR THE SUNDAYS IN THE YEAR. a brighter yellow than the rest of the body. In selecting a bird, those are best which stand upright on the perch, appear bold and lively, and are not frightened at every noise they hear, or every thing they see. If its eyes are bright and cheerful, it is a sign of health; but, if it keeps its head under the wing, it is drooping and sickly. Its song should also be particularly noticed ; for there is much difference in this respect. But, as it often depends on the particular taste of the purchaser, no directions can be given for its application. In respect to the notes of these birds, there is much difference. Some of them have very fine notes; but, if the song is not fine, they can be educated by being placed with another, which is a good singer. They catch the tones of other kindred songsters with considerable facility; hence, among the best singers there is a material difference in the song, which depends mainly on the bird with which they have been educated. In some countries the nightingale is employed as a master musician to a whole flock of canaries; and it is this which gives some foreign birds a different tone of voice from those bred in this country. In teaching the canary bird to sing, it is usual to take him from his comrade, and place him in a cage alone. This is covered with a cloth; when a short simple air is whistled to him, or played on a flute, or a small organ. In this manner, by repeating the tune five or six times each day, especially mornings and evenings, he will learn to sing it. But it will frequently require five or six months before he will retain the whole tune. Canary birds sometimes hatch their young every month in the year; but more commonly they breed only in the spring, summer, and fall months. After the young birds are hatched, the old ones are fed with soft food, such as cabbage, lettuce, chickweed; also with eggs boiled hard, and minced very fine, with some dried roll or bread containing no salt, which has been soaked in water, and the water pressed out. Rapeseed, or the seed of the turnip, is much used for their food. Up to the twelfth day the young birds remain almost naked, and require to be covered by the female; but, after the thirteenth, they will feed themselves. When they are a month old they may be removed from the breeding-cage. It is a curious fact that, when two females are with one male in the same cage, and one female dies, the other, if she has not already sat, will hatch the eggs laid by her co-mate, and rear the young as her own. The Cabinet. THE LAW OF LOVE.-I am very happy in God's love... I have so many mercies, I ought to be full o BY JOSEPH FEARN. (SUGGESTED BY SOME PORTION OF THE SER VICE FOR THE DAY). (For the Church of England Magazine.) EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY*. "And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant."—(1st lesson for morning) EZEK. XX. 37. "TIS the voice of the Saviour Their Guide and their God, To pass 'neath the rod. "I have seen how they wander, And sealed with my blood, Be it thine, then, my spirit, And, since Christ thus for sinners Let our terrors and doubtings For ever depart. And they own the sweet purpose To pass under the rod. * See note to Hymn for the Third Sunday after Trinity. London: Published for the Proprietors, by JOHN HUGHES, 12, Ave-Maria Lane, St. Paul's; and to be procured, by order, of all Booksellers in Town and Country. PRINTED BY ROGERSON AND TUXFORD, THE ESQUIMAUX. (Habitations in the Arctic Regions.) THE Esquimaux are a nation inhabiting the most northern countries of America. They occupy Labrador, the coasts of Hudson's Bay, the shores generally of the Arctic ocean, also Greenland and the islands towards the pole, so far as they are habitable. The Esquimaux rarely exceed five feet in stature. Their heads are large; their faces broad and round, with high cheek-bones. Their mouth is large, and lips thick. Their nose is small, the eyes black and deeply seated. Their hair is long, lank, and jet-black. Their hands and feet are small. Their bodies are square and robust; the shoulders broad and the chest high. Their complexiou is olive: their beards they pluck out as soon as any appears. The dress of the Esquimaux is well adapted to the rigour of their climate. They wear a kind of shirt made of the skins of birds, with the feathers innermost, over this a garment inade of rein-deer or other fur: their outer clothes, of seal-skin, No. 969. fit closely round the neck, with a hood to draw over the head and reach to the knees. The men's are plain at bottom : the women's are longer and terminate in two flaps, the one behind being the longest. Mothers have a kind of wide bag on their back, to hold their children. The richer Greenlanders sometimes substitute woollen stockings and caps for those of seal-skin. When they travel they have an overcoat of smooth black seal-skin, which is waterproof. Their holidaydresses have the seams ornamented with strips of leather, either white or dyed red. The Esquimaux live in houses in winter, in summer in tents. The Greenlanders' habitations are constructed of large rough stones, the walls being about six feet thick, with layers of earth and sod between the stones: they are twelve or eighteen feet in length, and ten or twelve in breadth, and are entered by a long low vaulted passage, through which it is necessary to creep; this passage excludes the access of the cold air. On each side the entrance are two windows made of semi-transparent skin; and the walls and roofs "Every one has heard of the horrors of an Esquimaux existence, sucking blubber instead of roast-beef, train oil their usual beverage, and a are lined with old tent and boat coverings. Along the whole length of the inside is a raised bench about a foot high, covered with skins; and the house is divided by skin partitions into sepa-seal their bonne-bouche; the long gloomy winter rate apartments, each of which is generally oecupied by a family. By each partition stands a lamp made of steatite, supplied with whale or seal oil, and a wick of moss. By this lamp the place is lighted and heated. Over it they suspend a kettle of the same material, in which to dress their food; and above it is also a rack for drying clothes. At first these houses are tolerably comfortable; but, as the winter advances, the heaps of bones and fragments of skins which accumulate, together with the process of preparing their sealskins, render the interior disgusting. The progress of the gospel has, however, in this respect as in every other, tended to civilize and improve. The converted natives are taught habits of cleanliness. Their summer tents are of a suitable size; and each family occupies a separate tent. These are made of poles fastened into a stone foundation, and covered with double seal-skins, often lined with those of the rein-deer: the door, serving also for a window, is made of a thin, semi-transparent skin, ornamented with needle-work, and fringed with blue or red cloth. The Esquimaux of Labrador build their winter houses of solid blocks of frozen snow, of vast size and thickness, which they cut out with their long knives, and pile one upon another, with a plate of ice for a window, gradually narrowing them as they advance to the top, in a sort of dome shape. The missionary efforts among the Esquimaux in Greenland and Labrador have been almost exclusively made by the Moravians: much good appears to have been done, and many brought to the knowledge of the gospel of Christ. A notice of the present state of the Esquimaux by one of the officers who has lately visited the polar regions may well conclude this paper. "The Esquimaux appeared all comfortable and well to do, well clad, cleanly, and fat. Most of them had moved for awhile into their summer lodges, which consist of little else than a sealskin tent, clumsily supported with sticks. They were more than sufficiently warm and the number of souls inhabiting one of these lodges appeared only to be limited by the circle of friends and connexions forming a family. The winter abode-formed almost underground-appeared decidedly well adapted to afford warmth, and some degree of pure ventilation, in so severe a climate, where fuel can be spared only for culinary purposes; and I was glad to see that, although necessity obliges the Esquimaux to eat of the oil and flesh of the seal and narwhal, yet, when they could procure it, they seemed fully alive to the gastronomic pleasures of a good wholesome meal off fish, bird's eggs, bread, sugar, tea, and coffee. "The clothing of the natives is vastly superior to anything we could produce, both in lightness of material, and wind and water-tight qualities; the material, seal and deer-skin, and entrails, manufactured by the women; their needles of Danish manufacture; their thread, the delicate sinews of animals. We gladly purchased all we could obtain of their clothing. spent in pestiferous hovels, lighted and warmed with whale-oil lamps; the narrow gallery for an entrance, along which the occupant creeps for ingress and egress. This and much more has been told us; yet, now that I have seen it all-the Esquimaux's home, the Esquimaux's mode of living, and the Esquimaux himself—I see nothing so horrible in one or the other. "The whaler from bonnie Scotia, or busy Hull, fresh from the recollections of his land and home, no doubt shudders at the comparative misery of these poor people; but those who have seen the degraded Bushmen or Hottentots of South Africa, the miserable Patanies of Malaya, the Fuegians, or Australians of our southern hemisphere, and remember the comparative blessings afforded by nature to these melancholy specimens of the human family, will, I think, exclaim with me that the Esquimaux of Greenland are as superior to them in mental capacity, manual dexterity, physical enterprise, and social virtues, as the Englishman is to the Esquimaux*.” MISSIONS AT HOME. No. XXVIII. "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love (chrity), it profiteth me nothing."-1 COR. xiii. 3. DANGERS OF THE PRESS. "The activity and diligence with which the agents of popery, infidelity, and immorality distribute the productions of the pope's and infidel press are almost incredible. Many shops are open in London, not only on or dinary weekdays, but also on the Lord's day, ex pressly for the sale of these publications. In one not very large district in Manchester, six such shops are open on all the seven days of the week. In Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greenock, and the other large towns of the kingdom, not only are there shops where these demoralizing works may bẹ bought, but there is also an active distribution of infidel publications going on. We have been told that in Exeter, not long ago, an infidel tract was dropped into every letter-box, and that, on inquiry, it was found that this was the doing of e band of infidels in that city, who had associated together for the purpose of disseminating their principles. In the west of Scotland-and we have no reason to suppose that the practice is confined to that part of the country-hawkers, carrying wares and merchandize about the country, have been found to be agents in distributing infidel and corrupting tracts, leaving them with the families to which they sell, that otherwise would have had no opportunity of coming into contact with them. A gentleman told us that, in the neighbourhood of the Crystal Palace, a French tract, of the very vilest description, was put into his hands; thus show ing that the agents of evil have not failed to take advantage of the gathering of the nations, but were then and there actively plying their unhallowed work of ruining souls, and stirring up man Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal by Lieut. Comm. S. Osborne. London, Longmans, against God. agency, so very active and unwearied, pervading every part of the country, and operating on every class of society, ought there not to be a similar Christian agency as active, as unwearied? Shame it were that love to God and souls should be a less powerful principle than hatred of God and truth. It is not every wicked man who has his hatred of all good so intensified as to make him an apostle of sin; but the love of every child of God should be so real and strong as to engage him to make some distinct effort for God's glory, and the good of his fellow-men. The means employed for the circulation of the profane and the corrupting should all be pressed into the service of the instructive, the purifying, and the exalting. Let there be societies for the circulation of sound, pointed tracts. There are already many such societies; let their number be increased till they are found in every one of our towns throughout the land. Is there any such society in the town where the reader of this resides? If not, let him use his influence to have one forthwith established; if there be, let him give it his warm support. Let every individual Christian do something in the way of distributing tracts. That is a way of being useful within the reach of all: the richest and the poorest can both do it. And those who have some portion of this world's substance should make it a point to place sound, searching tracts at the disposal of the poorer brethren, to be by them given away. And, borrowing a leaf from the book of the infidel, it were well to stock the basket of the poor hawker with a supply of suitable tracts, to be sold or given away in his or her wanderings. Then, no Christian, zealous for God and truth, should ever travel without a supply of tracts for distribution. God's people should get into the habit of this. Some of them approve of it, but often when travelling fail to practice it, through sheer forgetfulness. The thing should be universal, and, in this locomotive age, it might be made a prodigious instrument for good" (Stirling, Prize Essay). Now, if there be an infidel | ability are concerned. Low places of drinking will be erected; and then will follow a gathering round of pickpockets and every species of dissolute characters. 9. If we seek to imitate France and Italy, by substituting pleasure for religion on the Lord's day, we must expect that a sabbathbreaking population will become as easily given to change and revolutions as our continental neighbours. 10. There cannot be, by the company's own statements, any pecuniary necessity for it. The Great Exhibition has paid well, although it was never opened on the Lord's day. Why open it now? In short, we are on the brink of a precipice. The question of opening the London postoffice on the Lord's day called forth much feeling. If we had not triumphed then, most serious evils would quickly have been introduced. First the servants, then the clerks, and by-and-bye the partners would have been at the countinghouse on the Lord's day. Fear of competition would have been urged as an excuse: 'I would not go, if others would not, and thus start equal on the Monday morning.' Much ridicule was cast upon those who spoke of the fine end of the wedge being introduced; but it would have been strictly in point: it has been in the case of the railways. Who, at the outset, for one moment contemplated monster excursion trains, advertised to start from London Bridge and the Great Western on Easter Sunday and Whitsunday? But, if the Crystal Palace is open on the Lord's day, there will be no fine end of the wedge, but its broad end at once. It would be one great deluge: the floodgates opened, a vast tide of ungodliness will rush in, and no company will have power to say, 'Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further.' Let us hope that her majesty the queen, and prince Albert, who have the welfare of the Crystal Palace much at heart, will use their high influence to prevent so glaring a departure from the good old custom of England, and so glaring a violation of the law of God. Let us hope that the whole bench of bishops, and the whole of the clergy and ministers of religion, of all denominations, will exert all the influence they possess. There are many sound-hearted Christians, and many more who love peace and good order in this realm. There are many who know that good servants, and honest apprentices and journey men, loyal subjects, good husbands and good wives, and obedient children, are not made by sabbathbreaking: these will do all that in them lies to prevent this fearful inroad upon all the home charities of the Christian sabbath" (The Renewal of the Crysta! Palace, Houlston and Co.). THE CRYSTAL PALACE, AND THE SABBATH.-"1. We have sabbath desecration enough by steam-boats, railway trains, opened shops, omnibuses, and conveyances of all kinds. The million are already bribed by 'cheap excursion trains' to forsake the house of God and their homes, and thousands are already enslaved to work on the Lord's day for the pleasure or profit of others. 2. Every one of these evils will be increased a thousand-fold if the Crystal Palace is opened on the Lord's day. Not only will trains convey the sabbath-breaking people to the exhibition, but allurement will thus be held out to other lines to open excursion trains to London. Omnibuses and cabs almost without number will then ply to the London-bridge terminus. The passengers must be conveyed back; and thus a perpetual transit to and fro will disturb the peace of the metropolis throughout the whole of that sacred day. 3. A great addition to the railway force must needs be made, and the police multiplied to keep order both in and out of the Crystal Palace. Thus the number of habitual sabbathbreakers will be greatly increased. 4. The villages surrounding the locality, wherever it be, will be next to ruined, as far as peace and respect Among SCRIPTURE READERS' SOCIETY. other testimonies to the value of this society is the following from an incumbent, for whom it has provided a scripture-reader: "It would be impossible to say how much benefit has resulted from the lay agency afforded by this society. Much of it is hidden from us, and will perhaps remain hidden till the great day. And yet fruit is continually being made manifest even now. Infidels have forsaken their infidel lectures to hear the word of God in his own house. Drunkards have exchanged the sabbath dram for the sabbath reading. Swearers have left off blaspheming God. Thieves have been awed in their evil course. And, amid all the outward work, souls, it is believed, have been made, in Christ, a new creature'." Another clergyman | his regret that such an accusation should be writes to the society: "There is a marked change in the manners and conduct of many families, who have manifested the most grateful thanks for the Christian visits of the scripture-reader. This has been peculiarly the case where individuals were laid aside by illness, and were unable to read. ... A man and his wife have recently become communicants through my reader's visits. The man, who had been a noted drunkard, has now for several months been adorning his profession with a holy and consistent walk. A short time since he told me, 'Sir, what I suffered in my conscience after Mr. B*** visited me, and I got over my drunken bouts, no tongue can tell. I am unable fully to express what I feel-inward peace, through the blood of Christ; and, besides this, my family mercies and blessings have also in creased; so that I am like a man in a new world. Now, all the instruction which I received at school, when a boy, comes fresh before me." And his wife added: O, sir, I never spent such a happy Christmas as the last in all my life.' This man has since induced several others to attend our weekly cottage lectures." IRELAND.-St. Patrick's Bell.-"The people of Mayo and Galway, who frequented the Reck to perform penance in large multitudes, in days now happily gone by, believed it to be endued with miraculous virtue. The legend connected with it is to this effect: St. Patrick, in his contest with the great enemy of mankind, forced him and his angels to conceal themselves in the bodies of all the serpents and venomous animals with which the island then abounded. The saint, standing on the mountain of Currawn Achill, saw them collected on the summit of Croagh Patrick, and instantly bounded across Clew Bay, a distance of eight or ten miles, and left the impress of his foot on the spot where he alighted. No sooner had he reached their quarters than he sent the old serpent writhing into the abyss with a whack of his bell, and his whole crew after him with the mere sound of its marvellous tongue. The bell, which was thus the instrument in freeing the country from all toads, snakes, &c., was bequeathed by the saint to his faithful servant and follower, one Gallagher, whom he commanded to transmit it as an heir-loom to his remotest descendants. The late possessor of it assured me that these directions had faithfully been observed, and that it had reached him in uninterrupted descent from the original proprietor. It was believed universally that, if any person had the hardihood to take a false oath on the bell, his head would instantly be turned round upon his body. In confirmation of this opinion, I was gravely told the following tale: Many poor cottiers, living at the foot of the mountain, had their sheep unaccountably stolen from them, night after night, and were unable to discover the chief. They strongly suspected a widow woman, who never was without a mutton-chop, and yet had no ostensible mode of gaining a livelihood. To ascertain the truth, they waited on the priest, when it was agreed that Mr. Gallagher and his bell should be sent for, that all doubt might be removed. On his arrival, the bell was placed on a gorgeous cushion, and the priest, bearing it aloft, proceeded to the woman's cabin, and, on entering, expressed | brought against her. She declared her innocence, |