shrink; books, pictures, music, anything, any object which has passed through the medium of mind, and has been in a manner humanised, is felt as an intrusive reflection of the busy, weary, thought-worn self within us. Only Nature, speaking through no interpreter, gently steals us out of our humanity, giving us a foretaste of that more diffused disembodied life which may hereafter be ours. Beautiful and genial, and not wholly untrue, were the old superstitions which placed a haunting divinity in every grove, and heard a living voice responsive in every murmuring stream.

This present Sunday I set off with the others to walk to church, but it was late; I could not keep up with the pedestrians, and, not to delay them, turned back. I wandered down the hill path to the river brink, and crossed the little bridge and strolled along, pensive yet with no definite or continuous subject of thought. How beautiful it was-how tranquil not a cloud in the blue sky, not a breath of air!" And where the dead leaf fell there did it rest; " but so still it was that scarce a single leaf did flutter or fall, though the narrow pathway along the water's edge was already encumbered with heaps of decaying foliage. Everywhere around, the autumnal tints prevailed, except in one sheltered place under the towering cliff, where a single tree, a magnificent

lime, still flourished in summer luxuriance, with not a leaf turned or shed. I stood still opposite, looking on it quietly for a long time. It seemed to me a happy tree, so fresh and fair and grand, as if its guardian Dryad would not suffer it to be defaced. Then I turned, for close beside me sounded the soft, interrupted, half-suppressed warble of a bird, sitting on a leafless spray, which seemed to bend with its tiny weight. Some lines which I used to love in my childhood came into my mind, blending softly with the presences around me.

"The little bird now to salute the morn
Upon the naked branches sets her foot,
The leaves still lying at the mossy root,
And there a silly chirruping doth keep,

As if she fain would sing, yet fain would weep;
Praising fair summer that too soon is gone,
And sad for winter, too soon coming on!"

Drayton.

The river, where I stood, taking an abrupt turn, ran wimpling by; not as I had seen it but a few days before,-rolling tumultuously, the dead leaves whirling in its eddies, swollen and turbid with the mountain torrents, making one think of the kelpies, the water wraiths, and such uncanny things,—but gentle, transparent, and flashing in the low sunlight; even the barberries, drooping with rich crimson clusters over the little pools near the bank, and reflected in them as in a mirror, I remember vividly as a part of the exquisite loveliness which seemed to

melt into my life.

For such moments we are grate

ful: : we feel then what God can do for us, and what

man can not.

Carolside, November 5th, 1843.

“IN

71.

N the early ages of faith, the spirit of Christianity glided into and gave a new significance to the forms of heathenism. It was not the forms of heathenism which encrusted and overlaid the spirit of Christianity, for in that case the spirit would have burst through such extraneous formulæ, and set them aside at once and for ever."

Q

72.

UESTIONS. In the execution of the penal statutes,

can the individual interest of the convict be re

G

conciled with the interest of society? or must the good of the convict and the good of society be considered as inevitably and necessarily opposed? — the one sacrificed to the other, and at the best only a compromise possible?

This is a question pending at present, and will require wise heads to decide it? How would Christ have decided it? When He set the poor accused woman free, was He considering the good of the culprit or the good of society? and how far are we bound to follow His example? If He consigned the wicked to weeping and gnashing of teeth, was it for atonement or retribution, punishment or penance? and how far are we bound to follow His example?

I

73.

MARKED the following passage in Montaigne as most curiously applicable to the present times, in so far as our religious contests are concerned; and I leave it in his quaint old French.

"C'est un effet de la Providence divine de permettre sa saincte Eglise être agitée, comme nous la voyons, de tant de troubles et d'orages, pour éveiller

par ce contraste les âmes pies et les ravoir de l'oisiveté et du sommeil ou les avait plongées une si longue tranquillité. Si nous contrepèsons la perte que nous avons faite par le nombre de ceux qui se sont dévoyés, au gain qui nous vient par nous être remis en haleine, ressuscité notre zêle et nos forces à l'occasion de ce combat, je ne sais si l'utilité ne surmonte point le dommage."

"THEY

74.

HEY (the friends of Cassius) were divided in opinion, some holding that servitude was the extreme of evils, and others that tyranny was better than civil war."

Unhappy that nation, wherever it may be, where the question is yet pending between servitude and civil war! such a nation might be driven to solve the problem after the manner of Cassius- with the dagger's point.

"Surely," said Moore, "it is wrong for the lovers of liberty to identify the principle of resistance to power with such an odious person as the devil!"