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as I returned slowly from a house where a gentleman who had once been a most intimate friend of mine, had been visiting. He came from Ireland: that circumstance alone would have made my heart glow to meet him; but more, he came from the abode of my youth-from the home of my childhood;—no, I could not meet him. All my recollections of Ireland are drawn from later years; there are some that lie low, low in the heart's secret channel; I could not draw them forth man must fulfil as a hireling his day; I am content to do it; a backward glance to the distant years of early youth, to that wildly happy period when I thought the world was all as bright as my own fairy paradise, would unfit me for the task. I would not if I could recal those days,-I would not if I could, again in the depth of our embowering woods revel in the luxuries of a fond and foolish fancy, and deem the mind that thought within me was as bright, as pure, as unsullied as the skies above me and the world without, which I knew nothing of, as good, as bright as either-I would not, if I could, stand again on our breezy heights, and watch the bright flash of the western sun strike on the white sail that broke the view of the wide-spread ocean; or linger to watch the moon-beams in broken lustre, dance over the rippling tide, and think as I have thought, and feel as I have felt, with all the fulness of untried feelings and all the exuberance of romantic unchecked imagination; for though if ever the term of happiness may be given to a state of mortal existence, to mine then it might be applied, I would not be thus happy again-it was a blissful delusion, but it was a delusion. The earth gave and the earth hath taken away, and oh! blessed, for ever

blessed be the name of the Lord that I can rejoice at its disappearance; the magic illusion gradually vanished, and since I left the enchanted bowers in which the first fifteen or sixteen years of a well-tried life were spent, I never yet found a juniper tree under which, like the wandering prophet, I thought to lay me down to rest, that a voice did not come to me saying, "What dost thou here? arise, for this is not thy rest!" And this is as it should be; the pilgrim ought not to linger on his path, nor the stranger on earth to seek therein a “continuing city."

Yet why then do I advert to the period I wish to leave in silence? simply because, since it became a part of my varied lot to put on paper the thoughts that float over the mind, I have always been accustomed to write in accordance with the feelings of the moment; most deeply have I always pitied the writer whose lively sallies and playful imagination have delighted numbers, while the heart, at the moment when the mind was unnaturally engaged in the composition of them, was bursting with grief, or tortured by distress and anxiety. The Christian writer can never be forced to this species of duplicity, and all my recollections of Ireland have been vividly recalled to my mind by some particular occurrence which brought the theme of each most prominently before me; thus I am now undesignedly carried back to memories from the deep pain of which all bitterness, at least, is taken away. Briefly, however, must I glance at the contrast presented in the story of two individuals, reflecting on which I penned the observations at the commencement of this paper.

The lovely banks of the Boyne, in one of the most beautiful parts of beautiful Ireland, are overhung

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by the woods of an ancient and magnificent mansion, wherein some of my earlier, and all of the years of my earthly, happiness were spent.

It was of this place I lately heard, and of one-a lovely and admired young woman-at least now emerging into womanhood, whose name I had not heard of for years, not until I heard that the beautiful child I had left there, was now moving gaily down the stream of life's pleasures; that she was, at least, in possession of that animal species of happiness which youth, health, joyousness, freedom from care, and the conscious admiration of friends, can bestow,that the world had given to her of its treasures, and she in return had given to it her heart. And then I thought of the companion of her childhood, and the contrast-oh! it was great.

The infancy of Emily was spent in that lovely place I have mentioned; she was born to a higher station in life than her of whom I have been speaking the parents of Lucy D. lived in a humble dwelling within the domains; in some respects, singularly similar, in others strikingly contrasted, it yields a melancholy interest at this distance of time to compare them. They were of the same age, both sweetly beautiful, of the same kind of beauty, and usually considered alike; the bright brown locks, the deep blue eyes, rose-tinted cheeks, ruby lips, and sparkling teeth of the little pair, are too, too faithfully represented by memory.

Emily was, as I have said, born to higher expectations; yes, in the truest sense she was, for though earth-born expectations sunk to the dust from whence they were taken, the hope that maketh not ashamed was her better birth-right.

These children spent the sweet summer's day within the same embowering woods, they hung their little necks with garlands of the same blue-bells, they sat on the same grassy seats, they played on the same hills:

"Twin flowers upon one stalk,"

they grew together during the pleasant hours of life's bright sun-shiny morning, their little barks were launched on the same calm stream, when all seemed to promise a gay and prosperous voyage, and the storm swept on, and the little vessels parted on the roughened current, and never, never, never joined in the same course again. Oh! that at the last the one haven may receive them!

By a series of those losses, or misfortunes as they are commonly termed, which at every period of the unhappy history of Ireland, have reduced some of its highest families to a state of almost poverty, and perhaps at the present, at least as frequently as formerly, the family of which little Emily was a member, lost almost the entire of their property, and in consequence left the country. The children parted; too young to feel grief or to calculate on their altered prospects.

There is nothing perhaps more common than a poor and proud Irish family; high connections and noble blood (and such seem very common in Ireland) do not do much to supply the daily wants of life, but alas! they often do much, negatively at least, to prevent the possessors from endeavouring to supply them by their own exertions. To struggle amid distresses and mortifications, without sufficient strength of mind to sink, or I should rather say, to rise; to act in accordance with the circumstances in

which we are placed, to struggle to maintain a higher ground, while all is sinking around us, instead of calmly taking our place on the same level with our circumstances; to fear the scorn of those who once courted our favour, or shrunk from the pity of those who once envied us, in short to be poor and to be ashamed of owning our poverty, to require assistance and shrink from the humiliation of assisting ourselves, is certainly among the most miserable of earthly conditions.

Perhaps such feelings might at first have existed among those of whom I write, and they ought to be tenderly treated, for they are the feelings of fallen humanity. Christians have not always shewn this tenderness even towards those to whom their benevolence has been extended, but He who voluntarily took on Him the form of a servant, and made himself of no reputation, can be touched with the feeling of even this our infirmity.

And He did more than feel, in this instance, for infirmity, for He breathed on the sufferers a portion of His Spirit, He fulfilled his promise, and the lofty looks of man were brought down, and the haughtiness of man was laid low, and the Lord alone was exalted in their hearts; and in place of that peace which the world had given them, he gave them that which the world could not take away; and then he bade them go and "take up their contentment in God's allotment," to be willing, if need be, to minister to their own necessities and daily to receive from him their daily bread-a double portion-that which perisheth, and that which endureth unto everlasting life. To each of them he gave a command,— "Work while it is called to-day; whatsoever thy hand

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