Oh! much may be done by defying
The ghost of Despair and Dismay,
And much may be gained by relying

On Where there's a will there's a way."

Should you see afar off that worth winning,
Set out on a journey with trust,

And ne'er heed though your path at beginning
Should be among brambles and dust.

Though it is by footsteps ye do it,

And hardships may hinder and stay,

Keep a heart and be sure you go through it,
For "Where there's a will there's a way."

-Miss Eliza Cook.

LXVII. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.

THE scene of the following anecdote is laid in a drawingroom in Paris. One of the company was showing a gold medal which had been awarded him, and which was worth five thousand francs. The medal passed from hand to hand, and when, half an hour afterward, the owner asked for it again, it could not be found. Every nook and corner was searched, but in vain.

All

This sudden disappearance produced considerable agitation in the company, which was select but numerous, and finally some one proposed that every one should be searched, the men by the men and the women by the women. the persons present eagerly signified their assent, with the exception of a single individual, who was presented that very night for the first time in the house. This man declared very calmly, but very decidedly, that he could not consent to be searched. The effect these words produced may easily be imagined. It was no longer doubted that he was the robber, and the gentleman who introduced him was more dead than alive.

The master of the house was about turning the supposed thief into the street, and the owner of the medal was about entreating the company to forget the circumstance, when a lady having risen from her seat, lo! the missing medal suddenly fell out of one of the flounces of her dress, into which it had accidentally slipped and buried itself. The sensation produced by the sudden denouement was prodigious. A cry of joyful surprise resounded throughout the room. The individual suspected of the theft was de

clared innocent.

Renouncing the stoical calmness, verging on indifference, which had hitherto characterized his demeanor, "This," said he, "gentlemen, is the explanation of my conduct, which doubtless seemed to you inexplicable. If I would not consent to be searched, it was because I was a stranger to every one present, with one exception, and because, by a strange coincidence-so strange that no one would have believed it possible—I had on my person a medal exactly similar to the one that was lost."

He then produced the medal, which, if it had been found on him, would have ruined him a quarter of an hour before, but which was now but an additional proof of his innocence. This incident is but another proof of the uncertainty of human judgment.

LXVIII.-GOODNESS OF GOD.

THE light of nature, the works of creation, the general consent of nations, in harmony with divine revelation, attest the being, the perfections, and the providence of God. Whatever cause we have to lament the frequent inconsistency of human conduct, with this belief, yet an avowed atheist is a monster that rarely makes his appearance. God's government of the affairs of the universe, an acknowledgment of his active, superintending providence

over that portion of it which constitutes the globe we inhabit, is rejected, at least theoretically, by very few.

That a superior, invisible power is continually employed in managing and controlling, by secret, imperceptible, irresistible means, all the transactions of the world, is so often manifested in the disappointment as well as in the success of our plans, that blind and depraved must our minds be to deny what every day's transactions so fully prove. The excellence of the divine character, especially in the exercise of that goodness toward his creatures which is seen in the dispensation of their daily benefits, and in overruling occurring events, to the increase of their happiness, is equally obvious.

Do we desire evidence of these things? Who is without them in the experience of his own life? Who has not reason to thank God for the success which has attended his exertions in the world? Who has not reason to thank him for defeating plans, the accomplishment of which, it has been afterward seen, would have resulted in injury or ruin? Who has not cause to present him the unaffected homage of a grateful heart for the consequences of events, apparently the most unpropitious, and for his unquestionable kindness in the daily supply of needful mercies ?

LXIX. THE INFLUENCE OF LIFE.

WHAT a difficult thing it would be to sit down and try to enumerate the different influences by which our lives have been affected-influences of other lives, of art, of nature, of place and circumstances; of beautiful sights passing before our eyes, or painful ones; seasons following in their course; hills rising on our horizons; scenes of ruin and desolation; crowded thoroughfares; sounds in our ears, jarring or harmonious; the voices of friends, calling, warning, encouraging; of preachers preaching; of people in the

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street below, complaining and asking our pity. What long processions of human beings are passing before us! What trains of thought go sweeping through our brains! Man seems a strange and ill-kept record of many and bewildering experiences. Looking at one's self-not as one's self, but as an abstract human being—one is lost in wonder at the vast complexities which have been brought to bear upon it; lost in wonder, and in disappointment, perhaps, at the discordant result of so great a harmony. Only we know that the whole diapason is beyond our grasp; one man can not hear the note of the grasshoppers; another is deaf when the cannon sounds. Waiting among these many echoes and mysteries of every kind, and light and darkness, and life and death, we seize a note or two of the great symphony, and try to sing; and because these notes happen to jar, we think all is discordant hopelessness. Then come pressing onward, in the crowd of life, voices with some of the notes that are wanting to our own part-voices tuned to the same key as our own, or to an accordant one, making harmony for us as they pass by. Perhaps this is in life the happiest of all experience, and to few of us there exists any more complete ideal. And so, now and then in our lives, when we learn to love a sweet and noble character, we all feel happier and better for the goodness and charity which is not ours, and yet which seems to belong to us while we are near it. Just as some people and states of mind affect us uncomfortably, so we seem to be true to ourselves with a truthful person, generous-minded with a generous nature; life seems less disappointing and self-seeking when we think of the just and sweet unselfish spirits, moving untroubled among dinning and distracting influence. These are our friends in the best and noblest sense. We are the happier for their existence-it is so much gain to us. They may have lived at some distant time, we may never have met face to face, or we may have known them and been blessed by their love; but their light shines from afar, their life is

for us and with us in its generous example; their song is for our ears, and we hear it and love it still, though the singer may be lying dead. Some women should raise and ennoble all those who follow after-true, gentle and strong and tender, whom "to love is a liberal education," whom to have known is a blessing in our past. Is not the cry of the children still ringing in our ears as when the poet first uttered her noble song? —Miss Thackeray.

LXX.-SHORT SELECTIONS.

WORDS.

WORDS are the soul's embassadors, who go
Abroad upon her errands to and fro;
They are the sole expounders of the mind,
And correspondence keep 'twixt all mankind.
They are those airy keys that ope (and wrest
Sometimes) the locks and hinges of the breast.
By them the heart makes sallies; wit and sense
Belong to them; they are the quintessence
Of those ideas which the thoughts distill,

And so calcine and melt, until

They drop forth into accents; in whom lies
The salt of fancy, and all faculties.

CALM.

How calm, how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour, when storms are gone,
When warring winds have died away,
And clouds, beneath the glancing ray,
Melt off and leave the land and sea
Sleeping in bright tranquillity ;
When the blue waters rise and fall,
In sleepy sunshine mantling all;

And even that swell the tempest leaves,
Is like the full and silent heaves
Of lovers' hearts, when newly blest,
Too newly to be quite at rest.

-Howel.

-Moore.