MINOR PROPRIETIES IN PLACES OF WORSHIP. AN American traveller, writing to the editor of the Christian Watchman, makes some remarks respecting the conduct of congregations with whom he worshipped in the metropolis of England, which may afford salutary hints to some of our own countrymen, as well as to those for whose use they were originally designed. DURING a late visit to Europe, I passed five sabbaths in the English metropolis, and attended public worship at different places, and with several denominations. Some things in their services I did not greatly admire; with others I was favourably impressed, and I would respectfully mention them for the consideration of your readers. 1. When the people enter their pews, they at once engage, for one or two minutes, in silent prayer. Episcopalians knelt for the purpose; dissenters bowed their heads against the front of the pew. This gave to the whole scene an air of solemnity befitting the day and place. 2. They have their pews as well supplied with Bibles as with hymn-books; and when the scriptures were read from the pulpit, each hearer took a Bible and followed the reader. And when the text was named, or, in the course of the sermon, a passage of scripture was cited, all would turn directly to the place, and observe, not only the passage, but the connexion. 3. I saw many persons, mostly young, taking notes of the discourses, and therefore giving a fixed attention, as if unwilling to lose a single thought. 4. The congregations were remarkably quiet and attentive. Preaching of moderate worth was listened to without any indications of restlessness or contempt. 5. When the benediction was concluded, the minister and people remained for half a minute in silence. Not a pew door was opened, not a hat or glove taken, not a foot moved. 6. They were exceedingly moderate in leaving the house. In no instance did I see the aisles crowded. They seemed willing to wait for one another. 7. Gentlemen retired from the house of God as respectfully as from the house of a friend; they did not put on their hats until they reached the door. 8. After retiring from the sanctuary, gentlemen as well as ladies went home. The post office was closed, and no letters or papers were delivered on the sabbath. THE DYING CHILD'S REQUEST. BY JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ. To the Editor of the Baptist Magazine. SIR,-The beautiful thought expressed in the following lines was uttered by a Sunday scholar when dying. The fact was narrated in the report of the Sheffield Sunday School Union, read at the annual meeting a fortnight since. I referred to it in a speech at the meeting, and expressed a wish that it might be embodied in verse; our valued and beloved friend Montgomery being in the chair. The next day I was obliged by the accompanying note and lines, which I send together for insertion in your miscellany, because of the piety and poetry of both. I am, Sir, yours respectfully, Sheffield. C. LAROM. DEAR SIR,-I have taken your hint, but have endeavoured simply to transfer into metre the dying child's request in her own sweet words, as nearly as the form of verse would allow, and so far as I could command it. The circumstance itself is so beautiful and so touching that to embellish would be to profane it. A flake of snow falling upon an infant's cheek is not more pure, delicate, and inconvertible without damage. From the Hymn Book published by the Jubilee Sub-Committee of the Baptist Missionary Society. REVIEW S. Information relative to New Zealand. Com- The Fifth Report of the Directors of the New How to Colonize: the Interest of the Country Ir is not without pain that we think of the readiness with which some of our readers will turn to this article. Letters from various quarters have led us to believe that the thought of emigration has forced itself of late on many reluctant minds, and that solicitude for correct information respecting the state and prospects of other regions is more prevalent among our countrymen now than at any former period. They speak of general and increasing distress, of overwhelming cares and anxieties beneath a constrained placidity of countenance, of unavailing economy and unrequited industry, of diminishing capital, of decreasing trade, and of the startling disclosures of the bankrupt lists. One proposes the formation of a Christian emigration society; another wishes to know whether aid can be obtained to enable him to remove his family to some place where he thinks his difficulties would be fewer than at home; another asks direction to the most eligible of the various lands to which Englishmen may migrate ; and minister after minister speaks of the poverty of his friends and the inability of the church of which he is pastor to continue to him a salary, already below his necessities, inquiring for fields of labour open to preachers of the gospel in other regions. We cannot contemplate this state of things without sorrow. Much suffering must have been endured before our countrymen could have been brought to this; and much we fear remains before them. There are advantages pertaining to a long established social system which cannot be enjoyed in a new country. There are conveniences in the routine to which we have been habituated, which would be missed greatly in a different state of society. There will be evils of which we have no adequate conception to be experienced in a new position, and privations that we cannot realize, arising from the loss of customary advantages, the existence of which has scarcely occurred to our thoughts because they are so common and have hitherto seemed to attend us naturally and necessarily. Yet the reluctant emigration of British Christians may perhaps be one of the means by which unsearchable wisdom has designed to secure the dissemination of truth throughout the earth, and hasten the diffusion of that leaven that shall "leaven the whole lump." At all events it is proper that information should be given, applicable to the cases of inquirers, important in its bearings on the welfare of others if not of the reader himself, calculated to prevent disappointments and unwise decisions, and having reference to the spiritual as well as the temporal interests of future emigrants and their households. New Zealand has one advantage over other colonies which will be felt at once to entitle it to attention. Its climate is peculiarly suitable to an English constitution, resembling in some respects that of our own country, but being rather bears a general resemblance to Great Britain in size and shape; and there is no other land in the southern hemisphere so nearly resembling it in situation. "The New Zealand group consists of two large islands, called the Northern and Southern, a smaller island, called Stewart's, to the extreme south, and several adjacent islets. The group extends in length, from north to south, from the 34th to the 48th degree of south latitude, and in breadth, from east to west, from the 166th to the 179th degree of east longitude. The extreme length exceeds eight hundred miles, and milder. Its temperature is remarkably equable; seldom rising above seventy degrees, Farenheit, or sinking below forty-five. In winter mornings, occasionally, a thin film of ice is seen upon shallow pools, but it does not remain; and though some of the mountains are above the line of perpetual snow, snow seldom falls and never lies upon the plains. It is said to be quite free from those oppressive, feverish heats, which prevail in the middle of the day at Sydney, from those pestilential winds which are the terror of the inhabitants of New South Wales, and from the long droughts the average breadth, which is very variable, is which frequently ruin the hopes of the about one hundred miles. The surface of the South Australian farmer, Mr. Petre, the islands is estimated to contain 95,000 square length of whose sojourn there gives miles, or about sixty millions of acres, being a weight to his testimony, and who is territory nearly as large as Great Britain, of about to return thither as a colonist, which, after allowing for mountainous districts says, "All that has been said or written and water, it is believed that at least two-thirds of the extraordinary healthiness of this are susceptible of beneficial cultivation. Even place has been borne out by experience. without assuming any extraordinary degree of I believe that every temperate and well- fertility, New Zealand is thus capable of mainconducted person in the colony is en-taining as large a population as the British isles, tirely free from disease of every description." tance of Queen Charlotte's Sound, on the southern shore of Cook's Straits, from Sydney and Hobart Town, is, in round numbers, about 1200 miles; from the New Hebrides and which, however, it far surpasses in respect to soil and climate. This fine country was first It is no small recommendation of New seen by the Dutch navigator, Tasman, in 1642, Zealand also, that it is free from danger- but as he never landed, supposing it to form ous reptiles and beasts of prey. No part of a great southern continent, the honour snakes or venomous creatures of any de- of its discovery belongs to Captain Cook, who scription have hitherto been seen. Fea- first proved it to consist of islands, by circumthered songsters, however, animate the navigating the group, and surveying the coasts woods, and various kinds of wild fowl with such remarkable accuracy that the surveys are represented as delicious. In the have been relied on up to the present day. lakes and rivers eels are found, and Captain Cook was the first to appreciate the mackarel, soles, cod, salmon, oysters, advantages derivable from the mere geographiand other fish abound on the coasts. The cal position of New Zealand, which is the land natural productions of the earth are tim-nearest to the antipodes of England. The disber of various kinds and prodigious magnitude, fern root which exuberates on the plains, and flax, or the Phormium tenax, which grows so freely and in such excellence that the present settlers anticipate great advantage from its cultivation, believing that it will become the great staple article of their commerce, and be for many years to come so profitable that it will not be expedient to invest capital in the production of any other commodity for exportation. There are extensive tracts of land on which fruit trees and vegetables introduced from Europe appear to grow freely, and there appears to be satisfactory evidence that New Zealand is fitted by nature for the production in abundance of three articles which have always been regarded as the symbols of wealth and plenty, namely, corn, wine, and oil. Viewed on the map New Zealand Friendly Islands about the same; from the Islands, 3600; from South Australia, 1800; The natives have long been known to Europeans as savages of great ferocity. The present number is about 100,000, by far the largest portion of whom reside in the northern part of the northern island. Among them agents of the Wesleyan and Church Missionary Societies have laboured for some years, and according to the publications before us with great success. "The missionaries have, in fact, accomplished Bible and other books have been translated into their language, and many have learnt both reading and writing, and the elements of arith a revolution in New Zealand, and have pre- "Dr. Lang assures us, that the best helmsman on board a vessel by which he once returned to England, was Toki, a New Zealander.' 'Nothing,' says Dr. Lang, 'could divert his attention from the compass, or the sails, or the sea: and whenever I saw him at the helm, and especially in tempestuous weather at night, I could not help regarding it as a most interesting and a most hopeful circumstance in the history of man, that a British vessel of four hundred tons, containing a valuable cargo and many souls of Europeans, should be steered across the boundless Pacific, in the midst of storm and darkness, by a poor New Zealander whose fathers had, from time immemorial, been eaters of men.' "When among civilized people, either in England or in New South Wales, they have accommodated themselves, with wonderful facility, to the habits of civilized life, and have even excited surprise by the propriety and gentleness of their manners. Nothing, it is said, meets with a more ready sale at the missionaries' stations than a cargo of soap and English blacking. The natives enter largely into commercial transactions, in the sale of flax, timber, potatoes, and pork, with the ships that visit their coasts; and such is their credit, that some of them have been trusted with £1500 worth of goods. "At the missionaries' stations their moral character is said to be greatly improved; it is so far certain, that they observe Sundays with decency, and exhibit propriety of behaviour during divine service. The influence of the missionaries among them is so great, that they have occasionally succeeded in preventing hostilities between rival tribes. The missionaries are regarded as the harbingers of peace and good order, and when they pay occasional visits to distant villages, they receive assistance from the natives, who are anxious to receive them. Before the arrival of the missionaries they had no written language; but several portions of the A missionary of the Wesleyan Society, after living among them many years, in writing to a friend in 1837, speaks highly of their capacity and intelligence, and represents them as fully convinced that European settlements on their shores would be beneficial, provided their own rights and independence were secured. He adds, "But there is another view of the subject to be taken, and that view exclusively concerns those who contemplate the transplantation of themselves and families to the shores of New Zealand. I mean their personal safety. This, I think, is satisfactorily answered by the fact, that since the first residents took up their abode in New Zealand, in 1814, up to the period I left the island to return to this country, not one single instance which I can recollect, or have heard of, has occurred, of any European or any other foreign settler, having lost his life. Instances of plunder have occurred, in which a loss of property has been sustained; but in most cases, when this has taken place, the persons who have sustained loss of property have been in fault. This, however, has not invariably been the case, as some cases of oppression have occurred on the part of the natives of a very aggravated character. Such cases have been rare, nor are they likely to occur again, even should no British colony be established on the island."--p. 77. According to the European law of nations, the Queen of England has an indisputable title to the sovereignty of New Zealand, founded upon the possession taken in the name of George III. by the discoverer in 1769, and upon the exercise of numerous acts of sovereignty in them at subsequent periods. It received however but few marks of attention from Englishmen till the year 1825, when a commercial company was formed in London under the auspices of the late Earl of Durham, which despatched two vessels to New Zealand and acquired land in different parts of the northern island. Many of the missionaries have also become landowners, and by their farming improvements and commercial enterprises are said to have benefited themselves as well as the natives. Some of the catechists of the Church Missionary Society possess very extensive tracts of country, employ many |