THE POOR MAN'S DAY. BY EBENEZER ELLIOTT. "Hail Sabbath! thee I hail, the Poor Man's Day !"-GRAHAM. Sabbath holy! To the lowly Still thou art a welcome day: When thou comest, earth and ocean, Shade and brightness, rest and motion, Help the poor man's heart to pray. Sun-waked forest, Bird that soarest O'er the mute empurpled moor, Throstle's song that stream-like flowest, Wind that over dew-drop goest, Welcome now the wo-worn poor. Little river, Young for ever,— Cloud, gold-bright with thankful glee,— Happy woodbine, gladly weeping,— Gnat within the wild-rose keeping,Oh that they were blest as ye! Sabbath holy! For the lowly, Paint with flowers thy glittering sod. For affliction's sons and daughters, Bid thy mountains, woods, and waters Pray to God, the poor man's God. From the fever Idle never, Where, on Hope, Want bars the door;From the gloom of airless alleys, Lead thou to green hills and valleys Plundered England's trampled poor. Pale young mother,— Sisters toiling in despair, Grief-bowed sire, that life-long diest,White-lipped child that sleeping sighest,— Come and drink the light and air! Tyrants curse ye, While they nurse ye, Life for deadliest wrongs to pay; Sabbath's Father! Would'st thou rather Some would curse than all be blessed? If thou hate not fruit and blossom, To the oppressor's godless bosom Bring the Poor Man's Day of Rest, With its healing, With his feeling, With his humble trustful bliss. With the poor man's honest kindness Bless the rich man's heart of blindness, Teach him what Religion is! THE TEMPLE OF NATURE. BY DR. CHATFIELD. Man can build nothing worthy of his Maker: The wond'rous world, which He himself created, Its altar, earth; its roof, the sky untainted; Sun, moon, and stars, the lamps that give it light; Its choir, all vocal things, whose glad devotion The face of Nature its God-written Bible, Hence learn we that our Maker-whose affection Thus by Divine example do we gather That every race should love alike all others; O, thou most visible, but unseen teacher, Are seen and read in all that thou performest, If in the temple Thine own hand hath fashioned, If, fearing Thee, I love thy whole creation, THE SNOW-STORM. BY PROFESSOR WILSON. In summer there is beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the wayfaring man who sits down for an hour's rest beside some little spring that flows unheard through the brightened moss and water-cresses, feels his weary heart revived by the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny spots of verdure smile towards him from among the melancholy heather-unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lamb, starts half alarmed at his motionless figure-insects large, bright, and beautiful, come careering by him through the desert air-nor does the Wild want its own songsters, the gray linnet, fond of the blooming furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to Heaven above the summits of the green pastoral hills. During such a sunshiny hour, the lonely cottage on the waste seems to stand in a paradise; and as he rises to pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses it with a mingled emotion of delight | and envy. There, thinks he, abide the children of Innocence and Contentment, the two most benign spirits that watch over human life. But other thoughts arise in the mind of him who may chance to journey through the same scene in the desolation of winter. The cold bleak sky girdles the moor as with a belt of ice-life is frozen in air and on earth. The silence is not of repose but extinction and should a solitary human dwelling catch his eye half-buried in the snow, he is sad for the sake of them whose destiny it is to abide far from the cheerful haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy, by poverty held in thrall, or pining away in unvisited and untended disease. But, in good truth, the heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered from its countenance; and before we can know what the summer, or what the winter yields for enjoyment or trial to our country's peasantry, we must have conversed with them in their fields and by their firesides; and made ourselves acquainted with the powerful ministry of the seasons, not over those objects alone that feed the eye and the imagination, but over all the incidents, occupations, and events, that modify or constitute the existence of the poor. I have a short and simple story to tell of the winter life of the moorland cottager-a story but of one evening-with few events and no signal catastrophe-but which may haply please those hearts whose delight it is to think on the humble under-plots that are carrying on in the great Drama of Life. Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful peat-fire one winter evening, in a small lonely hut on the edge of a wide moor, at some miles distance from any other habitation. There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-laboures, who found work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which were rent-free, with their little garden won from the waste. But one family after another had dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all fallen into ruins, except one that had always stood in the centre of this little solitary village, with its summer walls covered with the richest honey-suckles, and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens. It alone now sent up its smoke into the clear winter sky--and its little end window, now lighted up, was the only ground star that shone towards the belated traveller, if any such ventured to cross, on a winter night, a scene so dreary and desolate. The affairs of the small household were all arranged for the night. The little rough poney that had drawn in a sledge, from the heart of the Black-Moss, the fuel by whose blaze the cotters were now sitting cheerily, and the little Highland cow, whose milk enabled them to live, were standing amicably together, under cover of a rude shed, of which one side was formed by the peat-stack, and which was at once byre, and stable, and hen-roast. Within, the clock ticked cheerfully as the fire-light reached its old oak-wood case across the yellow-sanded floor-and a small round table stood between, covered with a snow-white cloth, or which were milk and oat-cakes, the morning, midday, and evening meal of these frugal and contented cotters. The spades and the mattocks of the labourer were collected into one corner, and showed that the succeeding day was the blessed Sabbath-while on the wooden chimney piece was seen lying an open Bible ready for family worship. on The father and the mother were sitting together without opening their lips, but with their hearts overflowing with happiness, for on this Saturday. night they were, every minute, expecting to hear at the latch the hand of their only daughter, a maiden of about fifteen years, who was at service with a farmer over the hills. This dutiful child was, as they knew, to bring home to them "her sair-worn penny fee," a pittance which, in the beauty of her girlhood, she earned singing at her work, and which in the benignity of that sinless time, she would pour with tears into the bosoms she so dearly loved. Forty shillings a year were all the wages of sweet Hannah Lee-but though she wore at her labour a tortoise shell comb in her auburn hair, and though in the kirk none were more becomingly arrayed than she, one half, at least, of her earnings were to be reserved for the holiest of all purposes, and her kind innocent heart was gladdened when she looked on the little purse that was, on the long-expected Saturday-night, to be taken from her bosom, and put, with a blessing, into the hand of her father, now growing old at his daily toils. Of such a child the happy cotters were thinking in their silence. And well indeed might they be called happy. It is at that sweet season that filial piety is most beautiful. Their own Hannah had just out- | But have you not seen, husband, that God always grown the mere unthinking gladness of childhood, makes the orphan happy? None so little lonesome but had not yet reached that time, when inevitable selfishness mixes with the pure current of love. She had begun to think on what her affectionate heart had left so long; and when she looked on the pale face and bending frame of her mother, on the deepening wrinkles and whitening hairs of her father, often would she lie weeping for their sakes on her midnight bed-and wish that she were beside them as they slept, that she might kneel down and kiss them, and mention their names over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom before she had only loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With gushing tenderness was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence. She had discerned the relation in which she, an only child, stood to her poor parents, now that they were getting old, and there was not a passage in Scripture | that spake of parents or of children, from Joseph sold into slavery, to Mary weeping below the Cross, that was not written, never to be obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart. The father rose from his seat, and went to the door, to look out into the night. The stars were in thousands-and the full moon was risen. It was almost light as day, and the snow, that seemed encrusted with diamonds, was so hardened by the frost, that his daughter's homeward feet would leave no mark on its surface. He had been toiling all day among the distant Castle-woods, and, stiff and wearied as he now was, he was almost tempted to go to meet his child-but his wife's kind voice dissuaded him, and returning to the fireside, they began to talk of her, whose image had been so long passing before them in their silence. as they! They come to make friends o' all the bonny and sweet things in the world, around them, and all the kind hearts in the world make o' them. They come to know that God is more especially the Father o' them on earth whose parents he has taken up to heaven-and therefore it is that they, for whom so many have fears, fear not at all for themselves, but go dancing and singing along like children whose parents are both alive! Would it not be so with our dear Hannah? So douce and thoughtful a child—but never sad nor miserable— ready, it is true, to shed tears for little, but as ready to dry them up and break out into smiles!--I know not why it is, husband, but this night my heart warms towards her beyond usual. The moon and stars are at this moment looking down upon her, and she looking up to them, as she is glinting homewards over the snow. I wish she were but here, and taking the comb out o' her bonny hair and letting it fall down in clusters before the fire, to melt away the cranrench." While the parents were thus speaking of their daughter, a loud sugh of wind came suddenly over the cottage, and the leafless ash tree, under whose shelter it stood, creaked and groaned dismally as it passed by. The father started up, and going again to the door, saw that a sudden change had come over the face of the night. The moon had nearly disappeared, and was just visible in a dim, yellow, glimmering den in the sky. All the remote stars were obscured, and only one or two faintly seemed in a sky that half an hour before was perfectly cloudless, but that was now driving with rack, and mist, and sleet, the whole atmosphere being in commotion. He stood for a single moment to observe the direction of this unforeseen storm, and then hastily asked for his staff. "I thought I had been more weather-wise.-A storm is coming down from the Cairnbraehawse, and we shall have nothing but a wild night." He then whistled on his dog-an off to meet his daughter-who might then, for ought he knew, be crossing the Black-moss. The mother accompanied her husband to the door, and took a long frightened look at the angry sky. As she kept gazing, it became still more terrible. The last shred of blue was extinguished-the wind went whirling in roaring eddies, and great flakes of snow circled about in the middle air, whether drifted up from the ground, or driven down from the clouds, the fearstricken mother knew not, but she at last knew, that it seemed a night of danger, despair, and death. "She is growing up to be a bonny lassie," said the mother; her long and weary attendance on me during my fever last spring, kept her down awhile but now she is sprouting fast and fair as a lily, and may the blessing of God be as dew and as sunshine to our sweet flower all the days she bloom-old sheep-dog, too old for his former labors-and set eth upon this earth." "Ay, Agnes," replied the father, we are not very old yet-though we are getting older and a few years will bring her to woman's estate, and what thing on this earth, think ye, human or brute, would ever think of injuring her? Why, I was speaking about her yesterday to the minister as he was riding by, and he told me that none answered at the examination in the Kirk so well as Hannah. Poor thing-I well think she has all the Bible by heart-indeed, she has read but little else only some stories,-too true ones, of the blessed martyrs, and some o' the auld songs o' Scotland, in which there is nothing but what is good, and which, to be sure, she sings, God bless her, sweeter than any laverock." Ay-were we both to die this very night she would be happy. Not that she would forget us all the days of her life. Lord have mercy on us, James, what will become of our poor bairn!" But her husband heard not her words, for he was already out of sight in the snowstorm, and she was left to the terror of her own soul in that lonesome cottage. Little Hannah Lee had left her master's house, soon as the rim of the great moon was seen by her others' sorrow. At last she could no longer dis- It was now that her heart began to quake with fear. She remembered stories of shepherds lost in the snow,-of a mother and child frozen to death on that very moor,—and, in a moment, she knew that she was to die. Bitterly did the poor child weep, for death was terrible to her, who, though poor, enjoyed the bright little world of youth and innocence. The skies of heaven were dearer than she knew to her, so were the flowers of earth. She had been happy at her work,-happy in her sleep,-happy in the kirk on Sabbath. A thousand thoughts had the solitary child,—and in her own heart was a spring of happiness, pure and undisturbed as any fount that sparkles unseen all the year through in some quiet nook among the pastoral hills. But now there was to be an end of all this,-she was to be frozen to death-and lie there till the thaw might come; and then her father would find her body, and carry it The tears were frozen on her cheeks as soon as shed,-and scarcely had her little hands strength to clasp themselves together, as the thought of an overruling and merciful Lord came across her heart. Then, indeed, the fears of this religious child were calmed, and she heard without terror the plover's wailing cry, and the deep boom of the bittern sound But that low prayer was heard in the centre of eternity, and that little sinless child was lying in the snow, beneath the all-seeing eye of God. She had now reached the edge of the Black-moss, which lay half way between her master's and her father's dwelling, when she heard a loud noise coming down Glen-Scrae, and in a few seconds she felting in the moss. "I will repeat the Lord's Prayer." on her face some flakes of snow. She looked up the And drawing her plaid more closely around her, she glen, and saw the snow-storm coming down, fast as whispered, beneath its ineffectual cover: "Our a flood. She felt no fears; but she ceased her song; Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name,— and had there been a human eye to look upon her thy kingdom come,-thy will be done on earth as it there, it might have seen a shadow on her face. She is in Heaven." Had human aid been within fifty continued her course, and felt bolder and bolder every yards, it could have been of no avail-eye could not step that brought her nearer to her parent's house. see her-ear could not hear her in that howling darkBut the snow storm had now reached the Black-ness. moss, and the broad line of light that had lain in the direction of her home, was soon swallowed up, and the child was in utter darkness. She saw nothing The maiden having prayed to her Father in Hea but the flakes of snow, interminably intermingled, ven-then thought of her father on earth. Alas! and furiously wafted in the air, close to her head; they were not far separated! The father was lying she heard nothing but one wild, fierce, fitful howl. but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk The cold became intense, and her little feet and down in the drifting snow, after having, in less than hands were fast being benumbed into insensibility. an hour, exhausted all the strength of fear, pity, hope, "It is a fearful change," muttered the child to her- despair, and resignation, that could rise in a father's self; but still she did not fear, for she had been born heart blindly seeking to rescue his only child from in a moorland cottage, and lived all her days among death, thinking that one desperate exertion might the bardships of the hills. "What will become of enable them to perish in each other's arms. There the poor sheep!" thought she,-but still she scarce- they lay, within a stone's throw of each other, while ly thought of her own danger, for innocence, and a huge snow drift was every moment piling itself youth, and joy, are slow to think of aught evil be. up into a more insurmountable barrier between the falling themselves, and thinking benignly of all liv-dying parent and his dying child. ing things, forget their own fear in their pity for There was all this while a blazing fire in the cot brought his own meal to him among the hills—and he now found that though he had never talked to her about love, except smilingly and playfully, that he loved her beyond father or mother, or his own soul. tage—a white-spread table-and beds prepared for the family to lie down in peace. Yet was she who sat therein more to be pitied than the old man and the child stretched upon the snow. "I will not go to seek them--that would be tempting Providence-I will save thee, Hannah," he cried with a loud sob, and wilfully putting out the lamp of life. No! I or lie down beside thee in the snow-and we will will abide here and pray for their souls!" Then, die together in our youth." A wild whistling wind as she knelt down, looked she at the useless fire went by him, and the snow-flakes whirled so fiercely burning away so cheerfully, when all she loved around his head, that he staggered on for a while in might be dying of cold-and, unable to bear the utter blindness. He knew the path that Hannah must thought, she shrieked out a prayer, as if she might have taken, and went forwards shouting aloud, and pierce the sky to the very throne of God, and send stopping every twenty yards to listen for a voice. He with it her own miserable soul to plead before him sent his well-trained dogs over the snow in all direcfor the deliverance of her child and husband. She tionr-repeating to them her name," Hannah Lee,” then fell down in blessed forgetfulness of all trouble, that the dumb animals might, in their sagacity, in the midst of the solitary cheerfulness of that bright-know for whom they were searching; and as they burning hearth-and the Bible, which she had been looked up in his face, and set off to scour the moor, trying to read in the pauses of her agony, remained he almost believed that they knew his meaning, clasped in her hands. (and it is probable they did.) and were eager to find in her bewilderment the kind maiden by whose hand they had so often been fed. Often went they off into the darkness, and as often returned, but their looks showed that every quest had been in vain. Meanwhile the snow was of a fearful depth, and falling without intermission or diminution. Had the young shepherd been thus alone, walking acrosss the moor on his ordinary business, it is probable that he might have been alarmed for his own safety--nay, that, in spite of all his strength and agility, he might have sunk down beneath the inclemency of the night Hannah Lee had been a servant for more than six months-and it was not to be thought that she was not beloved in her master's family. Soon after she had left the house, her master's son, a youth of about eighteen years, who had been among the hills looking after the sheep, came home, and was disappointed to find that he had lost an opportunity of accompanying Hannah part of the way to her father's cottage. But the hour of eight had gone by, and not even the company of young William Grieve tould induce the kind-hearted daughter to delay setting out on her journey a few minutes beyond the time pro-and perished. But now the passion of his soul carmised to her parents. "I do not like the night," said William-there will be a fresh fall of snow soon, or the witch of Glen Scrae is a liar, for a snowcloud is hanging o'er the Birch-tree-lin, and it may be down to the Black-moss as soon as Hannah Lee." So he called his two sheep-dogs that had taken their place under the long table before the window, and set out, half in joy, half in fear, to overtake Hannah, and see her safely across the Black-moss. ried him with supernatural strength along, and extricated him from wreath and pitfall. Still there was no trace of poor Hannah Lee-and one of his dogs at last came close to his feet, worn out entirely, and afraid to leave its master-while the other was mute, and, as the shepherd thought, probably unable to force its way out of some hollow or through some floundering drift. Then he all at once knew that Hannah Lee was dead-and dashed himself down in the snow in a fit of passion. It was the first time that the youth had ever been sorely tried-all his hidden and unconscious love for the fair lost girl had flowed up from the bottom of his heart—and at once The snow began to drift so fast, that before he had reached the head of the glen, there was nothing to be seen but a little bit of the wooden rail of the bridge across the Sauchburn. William Grieve was the most active shepherd in a large pastoral parish-the sole object which had blessed his life and made he had often passed the night among the wintry hills him the happiest of the happy, was taken away and for the sake of a few sheep, and all the snow that cruelly destroyed-so that sullen, wrathful, baffled, ever fell from Heaven would not have made him and despairing, there he lay cursing his existence, turn back when Hannah Lee was before him; and as and in too great agony to think of prayer. "God," his terrified heart told him, in imminent danger of he then thought, has forsaken me, and why should being lost.—As he advanced, he felt that it was no he think on me, when he suffers one so good and longer a walk of love or friendship, for which he had beautiful as Hannah to be frozen to death?" God been glad of an excuse. Death stared him in the thought both of him and Hannah-and through his face, and his young soul, now beginning to feel all infinite mercy forgave the sinner in his wild turbu the passions of youth, was filled with frenzy. He had lence of passion. William Grieve had never gone seen Hannah every day-at the fireside-at work-to bed without joining in prayer-and he revered in the kirk on holidays-at prayers-bringing sup- the Sabbath-day and kept it holy. Much is forgiven per to his aged parents-smiling and singing about to the human heart, by him who so fearfully framed the house from morning till night. She had often it; and God is not slow to pardon the love which |