If we believe in the divine origin of the commandment, the Sabbath is instituted for the express purposes of religion. The time set apart is the "Sabbath of the Lord;" a day on which we are not to work our own works, or think our own thoughts. The precept is positive, and the purpose clear. He who has to accomplish his own salvation, must not carry to tennis courts and skittle grounds the train of reflections which ought necessarily to be excited by a serious discourse of religion. The religious part of the Sunday's exercise is not to be considered as a bitter medicine, the taste of which is as soon as possible to be removed by a bit of sugar. On the contrary, our demeanour through the rest of the day ought to be, not sullen certainly, or morose, but serious and tending to instruction. Give to the world one half of the Sunday, and you will find that religion has no strong hold of the other. Pass the morning at church, and the evening, according to your taste or rank, in the cricket-field, or at the Opera, and you will soon find thoughts of the evening hazards and bets intrude themselves on the sermon, and that recollections of the popular melodies interfere with the psalms. Religion is thus treated like Lear, to whom his ungrateful daughters first denied one half of his stipulated attendance, and then made it a question whether they should grant him any share of what remained.--_Quart. Review._ * * * * * POCKET BOOKS. Among the works under this denomination for 1829, we notice two, which from their almost indispensible utility, deserve the name of _Hardy Annuals_. The first is _Adcock's Engineers' Pocket Book_, and contains tables of British weights and measures, multiplication and division obtained by inspection, tables of squares and cubes and square and cube roots, and mensuration; tables of the areas and circumferences of circles, &c.; the mechanical powers, animal strength, mills and steam-engines, treatises on hydraulics, pneumatics, heat, &c., and on the strength and heat of materials. To these are superadded the usual contents of a pocket book, so as to render the present volume a desirable vade-mecum for the operative, the manufacturer, and engineer. One of Mr. Adcock's most popular illustrations will not be uninteresting to the reader:-- _"Force of Gunpowder."_--"If we calculate the quantity of motion produced by gunpowder, we shall find that this agent, though extremely convenient, is far more expensive than human labour; but the advantage of gunpowder consists in the great rarity of the active substance; a spring or a bow can only act with a moderate velocity on account of its own weight; the air of the atmosphere, however compressed, could not flow into a vacuum with a velocity so great as 1,500 feet in a second; hydrogen gas might move more rapidly; but the elastic substance produced by gunpowder is capable of propelling a very heavy cannon ball with a much greater velocity."