seated in the inmost recesses of the soul, unobserved by the passer-by, hidden even from ourselves, they remain sealed up till the domestic key unlocks them. Then they gush forth in one unremitting and perennial stream, making green the sear spots of earth.

Beautiful to the eye of mature life is the scenery of home-a cottage embowered in roses and honeysuckle, and looking out on green fields and waving forests-a garden with winding walks and shady bowers-a stream flowing by and losing itself in a valley perpetually green-birds singing in the branches of blooming trees, and children playing on the grass-plot, and running to meet you returning home, peeping with their bright eyes through the fence, and clapping their little hands for joy that you are come.

"This, too, shall pass away." Over all this bright scene there may fall a shadow deep and dark. Let but one of these little voices be hushed in death, and never to your ear will sound the music of nature so soft and sweet as before. Let but one of those light hearts cease to beat, and never again will your own be merry as before. Let but those bright eyes be closed, and the coffin's lid, and the heaped-up earth, shut out from them the light of heaven, and never again to your eye will the sunshine of earth be bright as before. There will seem to have passed from earth something beautiful which can never be restored.

When once, in the maturity of life, we have known sorrow- -when once the heart has been frozen by the cold sympathy of the selfish world-when once our hopes have been blighted by disappointment-when once the spirit. has been crushed by misfortune-when once the soul has been overwhelmed by bereavement, we never shall be again what once we were. For the sake of others we may smile as before, but when the smile is most cheerful

The world, however, may shall learn in time that

the heart may be most sad. know nothing of it; for we "every heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger meddleth not with its joy."

In the busy whirl of human life, we are hardly aware of the changes which are constantly passing over us. If, after an absence of years, we return to the home of childhood, we may become sensible of the transformation which we have undergone. I saw a man of mature age wending his way along the winding path he had often trodden from school, in boyhood's halcyon days, to the home of early life. A very happy child had he beenbuoyant in hope, elastic in mind, cheerful and irrepressi ble in spirit. His eye was not yet dimmed by age, nor his physical strength abated by time. He came to the play-ground of his childhood. He climbed the hill, from which he saw the lovely landscape whose beauties had never faded from his memory. He went to the spring gushing out beneath the rock, and drank one long, deep draught of the waters, sweeter to him than those of Parnassus, or Helicon, or Arethusa. He followed the brook meandering through the vale, and drew, as in youth, the wary trout from the deep waters. He sought the evergreen bower on the plain, and laid himself down and slept beneath the very same cluster of pines whose rustling leaves had often, by inimitable music, lulled him to repose in happier days. Yet all would not do. The wanderer's heart was sad. The changes of earth had passed over him. The bright and the beautiful had faded from his sight. The lovely of earth were sleeping wakeless, some in his seagirt native land, and others far away toward the setting sun. The gray-haired man arose, looked once more on the landscape of childhood, then turned away toward his forest home, despairing of ever again restoring the sweet fancies of other days.

We, too, ourselves, shall pass away. The places that know us will know us no more forever.

"Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor yet in the embrace of ocean shall exist
Thy image."

The morning shall come to earth, and the sun send forth his brightest beams, yet shall not the darkness that has gathered around thee be dispelled. Spring shall return, and the earth put on her new robe of green, and in place of the decaying stock shall come up the fresh flower.

"But when shall spring visit the moldering urn,

Or when shall day dawn on the night of the grave?”

It is often said that time is passing away. It is not, however, time, but the mutable and material relations of time that are evanescent. Time is a stream ever flowing, never resting, but it leads to the great, shoreless, bottomless ocean of eternity. This never passes away-never

never-never.

The

But

The material universe itself shall also pass away. heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll and disappear. The earth and all the works therein shall vanish. there shall be in place thereof a new heaven and a new earth, of spiritual and eternal fabric, and in which shall be gathered all of the good and true to dwell forever.

11*

SPRING.

SPRING, with its ethereal mildness, its budding beauty, and its gentle music of bee and of bird, is come again. The soft south wind fans the fevered cheek, and gently rustles among the branches of the old beech tree. The leaves are putting out, like beauteous childhood bursting into youth. The grass is green again. The wild flowers. bedeck the hill-side and sprinkle the sod of the valley. The bees are busily humming about the flowers and among the green leaves. The birds are chirping and hopping from sprig to sprig of the forest-trees. On the fence sits the robin, singing her plaintive monotone. On the bush the little sparrow chirps with a sweet though sad note. Perched on the topmost branch of the maple sits the mocking-bird, sweetest of nature's songsters, not inferior even to Philomel, pouring from her mellow throat sounds of entrancing melody. From the grove comes the moan of the turtle-dove, soft and sad.

Delightful is the return of spring. Happy the eyes that look on her in her beauteous drapery! Happy the ears that hear her joyous sounds! Beautiful is earth, reviving is the air, pleasant is the light.

Amid the gladness of nature my heart reverts to those to whom spring returns no more—to those who have been among us, once of us, but who now are sleeping in the grave, unawakened by the exciting sounds of a spring morning; unaroused by the morning bell that calls to prayer; unconscious of the soothing influence of the balmy breeze returning from the warm south-west; unmindful of the return of bird, and of flower, and of

morn. In deep, unbroken, undisturbed repose they lie, nor answer they, though we bow our face to their lowly bed, and call them long and loud. They wake not, though the sun rise and set in brilliancy over them. They slumber on, though the rains fall, the lightnings flash, and the thunders roll. The springing plant and blooming flower arouse no emotions in them. The leaves of autumn fall, and wither on their bosom, but bring to them no emotions of sadness. They heed not the coming of summer, with her gorgeous drapery; nor of autumn, with her yellow harvests, her falling leaf, and her thoughtful melancholy; nor of winter, though its blasts blow bleak and furious over them; nor of spring, though it bring joy and gladness to childhood, and to youth, and to manhood. To them all seasons and all earth's changes are the same. Spring after spring will return, summer after summer will come and be gone, autumn after autumn will clothe the fields in mourning, winter after winter will spread her white winding sheet over all the beauty and the bloom of earth, year after year will be numbered, generation after generation will sweep along, age after age will pass away, cycle after cycle will revolve, and yet they, the loved, the lost from earth, will sleep on. Their forms change. Their images fade from every thing but the heart of love. But enshrined, sacred in the heart of affection, is the memory of the beauteous and loved ones. Nor will we forget them; but we will love them still, till we ourselves follow them

"To the land which no mortal may know."