that his words were like bunches of roses which fell over the walls of heaven upon Mr. Herbert before he entered. The last Sabbath of his life—and dearly did he love the Sabbath,-for he had written the beautiful words "O Day most calm, most bright, The fruit of this, the next world's bud, "The Sundays of man's life, Threaded together on time's string, More plentiful than hope."* On this last Sabbath, he called for one of his instruments, and taking it in his hand, proceeded with saintly joy to sing : "My God, my God, My music shall find Thee, And every string Shall have his attribute to sing." Soon after these sweetly touching strains there came the death stillness, and amid the soft trillings of celestial symphonies, he passed away to those higher harmonies which the God of harmony has Himself constructed. "Thus," says Isaac Walton, sung on earth such hymns and anthems as the "he *"Poems, Sunday," p. 72. angels and he and Mr. Ferrar are now singing in heaven." And may we not all take up the language of his biographer, and say, "I wish, if God be so pleased, that I may die like him." May we indeed have music in our souls at midnight! And may we, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, see the "shining ones, and hear the trumpeters on the other side of the river !" Mr. Herbert's was one of those cultivated and spiritual minds which would have fully appreciated the charming lines of Charles Wesley, who sings: "Mollify our harsher will; Each to each our tempers suit, By Thy modulating skill, Heart to heart as lute to lute : Sweetly on our spirits move; Gently touch the trembling strings; Make the harmony of love, Music for the King of kings!"* The Beautiful in Action is really the embodiment of the law of love that spiritual law which constrains us to do work for the good of others. The highest order of character is to be like our Saviour, and the highest form of human conduct is to imitate Him, as our great Example. We are often too calculating in selecting objects for our practical sympathy. When humanity suffers, we must pity and help. When an old and infirm woman in Newhaven saw some horses running away with a waggon and a little child in it, she hobbled after them as fast as she could; and when a cold, selfish man asked, "Is that your child?" "No," said she, "but it's somebody's, isn't it?" All honour to the * "Wesley's Hymns," Hymn 538. old lady for following the instincts of her maternal heart! And all honour to the poor widow of Iona, "whose cottage stood on an elevated ridge of a rugged and perilous coast, and whose heart was melted by the sight of wrecked vessels, and the wail of perishing human beings. She could not build a lighthouse, for she had not the means; but she thought, might not her lamp, if placed by her window, prove a beacon-light to keep some mariner off the coast? And all her life after, her lamp burned at her window during the winter nights, and the blessing of many a fisherman came upon her, who thus did what she could." We each have a light-let us hold it up to guide the track of our fellow-pilgrims; let it gleam out on the shadows, the billows, and the rocks, so that persons in peril may be saved from being wrecked on the shores of drunkenness, infamy, and eternal death. A few years ago, the beautiful in action was affectingly illustrated by the self-denying labours of Florence Nightingale in the hospitals of the East. And so gratefully were her services appreciated, that one who had felt her soothing presence said, with delicate feeling, "I kissed her shadow as it passed." Her lamp, her soft tread, and beaming sympathy brought memories of home, of mothers' and sisters' love; and the poor wounded and suffering men blessed her when they saw even her shadow as it flitted from chamber to chamber. Precious to a nation is such an example of true womanhood; and while she had a reward in the dumb but eloquent thanks of the sufferers, and in the grateful acknow ledgments of England, her services will be recognized and rewarded by Him who, in the compensations of the great tribunal, shall reward even a cup of cold water placed to parched and fevered lips. To minister to want, to sympathize with sorrow, and to dry the tears of mourners, is a work as noble as it is blessed—a work in harmony with the sublime Example of Him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and wipe away the tears of human grief. Christian sympathy and work do not demean the highest of the land. Earl Shaftesbury, the noble president of so many philanthropical societies, does not look less noble when wending his way down a dirty lane to a ragged school than when seated with the peers of the realm. He stoops, and rises into nobler manhood; his kind and Christian acts will embalm his memory. It would be a great discovery to transmute flints into diamonds, and to convert bars of iron into ingots of gold; but it is a greater thing to transform, even instrumentally, the germs of evil into fruits of righteousness, to stoop down to the depraved and wretched, and lay hold of them, and lift them up to a high and sunny level of truth and purity, of sobriety and happiness. And while the coronet and the crown may bend gracefully over the sufferings of the poor, and the jewelled hand be nobly employed in ministering to their wants, still the poorest and the humblest of us may help and comfort by kindly words and gentle sympathies. We have a noble Queen, who cares for the poor; who cares for the widow of a collier as well as for the widow of a duke; and it was with pain and indignation that we have heard of the unmanly attacks on the purest and most Christian of Queens. We quote with much pleasure the record of an incident in the ordinary life of the Queen, as furnished by St. James's Magazine : "It is, however, right to add that sorrow has not prevented Her Majesty from showing her sympathy with the humbler classes of her subjects. One special characteristic of Windsor, is the number of charitable institutions with which it abounds. Many of these societies have had royal founders, and nearly all of them royal patrons. But no sovereign who ever sat on the British throne has shown more interest than Queen Victoria in the well-being of the poor people around her magnificent castle. Many pages might be filled with instances of her beneficence to the sick and needy. Oh, sir,' said one poor asthmatical old man who was hobbling about with a stick, 'the Queen has been very good to me and my old missus-she has. I was laid up for weeks in the infirmary down there. She came, sir, and sat by my bedside, and asked all about me. This did me good; more than all the medicines did, and all the doctors. It made me feel a kind o' comfortable about here, you know, sir.' The old man laid his hand upon his heart. His emotion was genuine. Many other occupants of the sick beds in the infirmary could tell similar tales.” * And notwithstanding all the envy and malice of *"St. James's Magazine," Sept. 17, 1861. וי |