UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 125 



tinian, interfere with the desires of the heart ; 

 they knew that human thoughts are not cog- 

 nizable by human tribunals ; but it was a com- 

 mand which naturally came from Him who both 

 can and will ' bring every work into judgment, 

 with every secret thing, whether it be good or 

 whether it be evil.' How finely," continued my 

 uncle, " has our Saviour commented on this com- 

 mandment, in his Sermon on the Mount ! It 

 is not the mere outward observance of the law 

 that he inculcates, but the inward principle of 

 obedience ; it is the word of the law written in 

 our hearts." 



23rcZ. The circumstance that Caroline told us 

 lately, of the children on the desert island, in the 

 Mississippi, naturally led to some conversation 

 about that prodigious river, and the countries 

 through which it flow's: 



We looked at its course to-day, in my uncle's 

 large maps of North America. He shewed us 

 an account of it in Morse's Geography, and he 

 made us observe, that taking in all its windings, 

 it is upwards of a thousand leagues in length; 

 that it passes over twenty degrees of latitude ; 

 and, after joining with the Missouri, and receiving 

 a multitude of smaller streams, though many of 

 them are navigable for hundreds of miles, it 

 pours its united waters into the Gulf of Mexico. 



M 3 



