I asked Pat what he would think of bread and tea every morning and evening, to which he very sensibly replied that it wasn’t fit for him nor the likes of him! but that a cup of tea and some bread would be very agreeable to them every Sunday evening, especially so to his old mother, who would think a little tea now and then a great comfort. As to meat, he would like that once or twice a-week, but was not so unreasonable as to wish for it oftener. As long as the potatoes and the milk stood to him, he had no reason to complain! Then what _are_ comforts? I again asked myself. Returning home, I called at the house of a dying widow whose character I had long respected. She was very poor, but always contented, though she could hardly be said at any time to have enjoyed what are considered the blessings of this life. I asked her if she wanted anything that I could send her--any little comforts. The word excited her languid spirit. “I have wanted for nothing,” said she, “that was really needful for me; and now, O God! ‘_thy_ comforts delight my soul.’” After a little time she said, “Blessed be the God of all comfort;” and again, “I am filled with comfort.” These words gave another turn to my thoughts: the subject was placed in a new point of contemplation. Let my reader now in his turn, entering into the widow’s application of the term comfort, ponder upon the question, “What is comfort?” and I am much mistaken if he does not discover that it is something which the world cannot give. * * * * * MALARIA.--It is not a mere theory, but a well-founded opinion, that all the destructive epidemics that have afflicted this globe have had their origin in malaria, which in a cold climate has produced typhus fever, in a more temperate one plague and yellow fever, and within the tropics cholera, each modified according to the idiosyncratic state of the sufferers. A few examples may be enumerated. Ancient Rome was subject to frequent epidemics, generally caused by inundations of the Tiber; but in the year 81 of the Christian era, after a severe rainy season succeeded by intense heat, the mortality was so great as to carry off 10,000 citizens daily. It is narrated by historians that the year 1374 was marked by a comet, by excessive rain and heat, and succeeded by the most dreadful mortality that we have any record of, and by which two-thirds of the human race were destroyed in a very brief period; many places were entirely depopulated; 20,000,000 died in the east in one year, 100,000 perished in Venice, 50,000 were buried in one graveyard in London, grass grew up in the streets of cities hitherto most populous, and people fled in boats and ships to sea, regardless of property and friends. * * * * *