MORNING.

HUES of the rich unfolding morn
That, ere the glorious sun be born,
By some soft touch invisible

Around his path are taught to swell ;

Thou rustling breeze so fresh and gay
That dancest forth at opening day,
And brushing by with joyous wing,
Wakenest each little leaf to sing ;—

Ye fragrant clouds of dewy steam
By which deep grove and tangled stream
Pay, for scft rains in season given,
Their tribute to the genial heaven ;-

Why waste your treasures of delight
Upon our thankless, joyless sight;
Who day by day to sin awake,
Seldom of heaven and you partake?

Oh! timely happy, timely wise
Hearts that with rising morn arise !
Eyes that the beam celestial view,
Which evermore makes all things new!

New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove;

Through sleep and darkness safely brought, Restored to life and power and thought.

New mercies, each returning day,
Hover around us while we pray;

New perils past, new sins forgiven,

New thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven.

If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,

New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be
As more of Heaven in each we see :
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Shall dawn on every cross and care.

As for some dear familiar strain
Untired we ask, and ask again,
Ever, in its melodious store,
Finding a spell unheard before;

Such is the bliss of souls serene,
When they have sworn and stedfast mean,
Counting the cost in all, to espy
Their God, in all themselves deny.

Oh could we learn that sacrifice,
What lights would all around us rise!
How would our hearts with wisdom talk
Along Life's dullest, dreariest walk!

We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbour and our work farewell
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky:

The trivial round, the common task
Would furnish all we ought to ask:
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us, daily, nearer God.

Seek we no more; content with these,
Let present rapture, comfort, ease,

As Heaven shall bid them, come and go :--
The secret this of rest below.

Only, O Lord, in Thy dear love
Fit us for perfect rest above;
And help us, this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray.

J. KEBLE.

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH A LIFE OF LABOUR.

It was twenty years last February since I set out, a little before sunrise, to make my first acquaintance with a life of labour and restraint; and I have rarely had a heavier heart than on that morning. I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and, woful change! I was now going to work at what Burns has instanced, in his 'Twa Dogs,' as one of the most disagreeable of all employments,—to work in a quarry. Excepting the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among rocks and woods, a reader of curious books when I could get them, a gleaner of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange all my daydreams, and all my amusements, for the kind of life in which

men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil!

The quarry in which I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or frith rather, with a little clear stream on the one side, and a thick fir wood on the other. It had been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet, and which at this time was rent and shivered, wherever it presented an open front to the weather, by a recent frost.

A heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from above, blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon blistered my hands, but the pain was by no means very severe, and I wrought hard and willingly, that I might see how the huge strata below, which presented so firm and unbroken a frontage, were to be torn up and removed. Picks, and wedges, and levers, were applied by my brother-workmen ; and, simple and rude as I had been accustomed to regard these implements, I found I had much to learn in the way of using them. They all proved inefficient, however, and the workmen had to bore into one of the inferior strata, and employ gunpowder.

The process was new to me, and I deemed it a highly amusing one: it had the merit, too, of being attended with some such degree of danger as a boating or rock excursion, and had thus an interest independent of its novelty. We had a few capital shots: the fragments flew in every direction; and an immense mass of the diluvium came toppling down, bearing with it two dead birds, that in a recent storm had crept into one of the deeper fissures, to die in the shelter. I felt a new interest in examining them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a