illness of one short week, they felt that they had depended too much upon a human friend.

"We needed this lesson," the old man said to her weeping mother and her son; "and hereafter we shall know, and we shall own, the divine compassion of a dispensation, which now comes down so heavily upon us, that our hearts are almost crushed beneath it. She has been, although we knew it not, an idol in this household; and the Lord has taken her to Himself, and, in the blank and the silence of that void which she has left, we must listen to His voice. He whispers, 'Lean on me; I must be all in all to those who love and follow me.'

But though the good old clergyman was enabled to speak thus, and to point out to them and to himself the wisdom and the mercy of his Heavenly Father's rod, he had almost sunk beneath the blow, and his illness had commenced soon after her funeral. Up to that period, though gradually failing, from the natural infirmity of advanced age, he had scarcely known a day's illness through his long life.

The bishop and his young companion entered the church-yard; and, as they walked onward to the church door, once or twice he stopped to read the inscriptions on the tomb-stones which were nearest

to the path. They were unlike the epitaphs that are commonly met with in a country church-yard; and he learnt, on expressing his opinion on the subject, that the aged vicar had established it as a rule among his flock, that no inscription should be placed over the grave of a departed relative, which had not been first submitted to his approval. They were, indeed, mostly chosen or written by himself, and were usually some simple but striking verse of Holy Scripture.

They stopped at the church door while the youth unlocked it.

"Was this a near relation?" said the bishop, as his eyes rested for a moment on a plain marble tablet upon the wall of the church; but he checked himself in what he felt to be an unguarded inquiry.

The altered tone of his companion's voice, the tears that rose suddenly to his eyes, as he replied, "It is placed to mark my mother's grave," showed how deeply he had felt her loss.

The bishop did not turn the conversation. "I do not ask you to forgive me for an unguarded question; you know I would not hurt your feelings," he said, as he affectionately pressed his hand. "Come and sit down beside me," he added, when they had entered the church, "and speak to me of your mother.

I see from the inscription that a year has not yet passed since she was taken from you; and I am sure, from the few words of Holy Scripture which are inscribed beneath her name, that she was one of whom her son can speak, even when sorrowing, with rejoicing." They were the few well-known words of the Apostle―his own blessed experience—

66 TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST, TO DIE IS GAIN." "And now," he afterwards said, "that you have spoken to me about your mother, tell me something of yourself, of your future prospects, of your hopes and wishes."

"We are poor," replied the youth, "and my grandfather has little to depend on, beyond the income of his living, which is small. I have a trifling annuity, which was settled on my mother and on me, for our lives; but should my grandfather be the first to die, then she of whom we both think more than of ourselves, would be left in utter destitution. cannot, therefore, touch any portion of that money; and after some affectionate opposition on her part, and because she saw that I could not be happy if she did not consent to my request, my dear grandmother has agreed to receive it, should she be the survivor."

"And what are your future plans? asked the bishop.

"My father," he replied, "had a cousin in London, to whom he showed much kindness during his lifetime. He is a thriving tradesman now, in a wholesale business in the City. I wrote to him, to ask for some employment in his establishment; and about a week since I received his reply. He can give me a place which, in the eyes of the world, would be deemed a humble one, and which, I fear, I regarded at first as degradation; but I thought of a maxim of my mother's, that no office, however lowly, can degrade an upright man, and no rank, however lofty, can exalt an ignoble one. There is another situation open to me, more to my liking, but in which I see but little prospect of my being able to realise anything like an honorable independence, the place of usher in the large school at Notley. I believe, therefore, it is decided that, in the course of a few weeks, I shall go up to London, to enter into the service of my kindhearted cousin."

"You have not told me of your wishes," said the bishop; "you need not hesitate to speak to me without reserve; I feel the interest of a sincere friend for you, not only for the sake of your honored

grandfather, but for your own.

wishes."

Tell me your

"I had made up my mind not to think of them," said the youth gravely; "and I have long ceased to speak to any one on the subject. No illusion is now ever made to it at the vicarage; but your kindness demands a reply. I had hoped to enter the ministry of our Church; and not long before my mother's death, my going up to Cambridge, as a sizer, was talked about. I did not then know how humble our means were; but I have since learned that my dear mother had arranged to receive, as her pupils, two little girls, the daughters of a gentleman in this neighborhood, and to devote the sum she was to receive yearly, to my college expenses. Divine Providence has ordered it otherwise."

"Your education, then," said the bishop, "was with a view to the Church?"

"Yes," replied Herbert; "if, at the expiration of my college life, it appeared that my call was plain, and my qualifications suitable,—not otherwise."

"May God bless, and continue to direct you, my dear young friend," said the bishop. "Circumstanced as you at present are, I fully concur with you, that you have made the right decision; you are right,