"My lass, I can read your story, I think,

And I pity you from my heart:

There, I ain't goin' to ask who you are, poor child! So you needn't tremble and start!

'Tis enough for me that you're lying here,
And that you and your boy must part.

"But God 'll take care o' the boy, He will,
Though the road look dark and grim;
And He'll take you, too, to His pitying arms,
Where no tear those eyes shall dim;
And death will be but the gate o' life,
If you only trust in Him:

"For His mercies are above all His works

'Tis true, for He tells us so

And He gives to the heavy-laden rest
From their load o' care and woe;

And though our sins as scarlet be,

He can make them white as snow!

"Will you trust your pretty boy to me?
Ah! you shudder, and well you may.
I know I'm an old, stained, shameful man,
That has throwed his life away;

But I, too, had a mother once

Who taught her child to pray.

"I'll shield him, as a mother would do,
From sorrow and sin and strife;

And the Master, I know, will help us both
With His guiding mercy rife;

And the honest bread I earn for the boy
Shall sweeten and bless my life.

"It must rest with you, and only you,-
The choice shall be wholly thine;

But if you can trust the boy to me,
Only make me a sign."

She smiled, and tried to give me her hand,
And I knew that the boy was mine.

She died next day, with a perfect trust
In Him who alone can save;

And I carried her orphan boy in my arms
To his mother's parish grave;

And they that shed the only tears

Was a drab and a tramping knave.

The parson offered to take the boy:
He said as my heart was kind,
But mine was hardly the sort o' life
For a child to be consigned.

He was right, maybe, but I kep' to my trust,
And up and spoke my mind:

"Look here, sir," I said, "I'm bad right out-
Low, lazy, and drunken, and wild-

But I mean, please God, to begin afresh,
For the sake of this little child;
For I feel he was sent to help reclaim
The life I've wasted and s'iled."

So I took the boy and I went my way,
And I tried to keep my word;

I was helpless like o' myself, in course,
But the Master saw and heard;

And in teaching them baby lips to pray,
My own poor heart was stirred.

I got a place as a hostler fust

At Grantham, in Linkunsheer,

But the vagabone mood come back, and I liked The boy to be allus near;

So I just worked on till I'd saved enough

To buy this horgan here.

We're shy o' the regular lodging-kens,

And in decent houses lie;

And I'm saving a trifle, don't yer see,
To 'prentice him by-and-by.

I shall feel it lonely at fust, no doubt,
But the Master 'll still be nigh.

And so we jogs on, Willie and I:

I carries the horgan and plays,
And the browns fall fast in his little hat,
While the women fondle and praise.
God has been werry good to send the boy
To comfort the old man's days.

There, I must have tired you out, I'm afraid,
With my wearisome yarn and drawl;

But 'tis good to open yer heart sometimes,
And I'm glad I happened to call.

Come, Will, we must make for Chumpsford, lad;
So good-night, gentlemen all!

VOLTAIRE AND WILBERFORCE.-WM. B. SPRAGUE.

Let me now, for a moment, show you what the two systems-Atheism and Christianity—can do, have done, for individual character; and I can think of no two names to which I may refer with more confidence, in the way of illustration, than Voltaire and Wilberforce; both of them names which stand out with prominence.

Voltaire was, perhaps, the master-spirit in the school of French Atheism; and though he was not alive to participate in the horrors of the revolution, probably he did more by his writings to combine the elements for that tremendous tempest than any other man. And now I undertake to say that you may draw a character in which there shall be as much of the blackness of moral turpitude as your imagination can supply, and yet you shall not have exceeded the reality as it was found in the character of this apostle of Atheism. You may throw into it the darkest shades of selfishness, making the man a perfect idolater of himself; you may paint the serpent in his most wily form to represent deceit and cunning; you may let sensuality stand forth in all the loathsomeness of a beast in the mire; you may bring out envy, and malice, and all the baser and all the darker passions, drawing nutriment from the pit; and when you have done this, you may contemplate the character of Voltaire, and exclaim, "Here is the monstrous original!" The fires of his genius kindled only to wither and consume; he stood, for almost a century, a great tree of poison, not only cumbering the ground, but infusing death into the atmosphere; and though its foliage has long since dropped off, and its branches have withered, and its trunk fallen, under the hand of time, its deadly root still remains; and the very earth that nourishes it is cursed for its sake.

And now I will speak of Wilberforce; and I do it with gratitude and triumph,-gratitude to the God who made him what he was; triumph that there is that in his very name which ought to make Atheism turn pale. Wilberforce was the friend of man. Wilberforce was the friend of enslaved and wretched man. Wilberforce (for I love to repeat his

name) consecrated the energies of his whole life to one of the noblest objects of benevolence. It was in the cause of injured Africa that he often passed the night in intense and wakeful thought; that he counseled with the wise, and reasoned with the unbelieving, and expostulated with the unmerciful; that his heart burst forth with all its melting tenderness, and his genius with all its electric fire; that he turned the most accidental meeting into a conference for the relief of human woe, and converted even the SenateHouse into a theatre of benevolent action. Though his zeal had at one time almost eaten him up, and the vigor of his frame was so far gone that he stooped over and looked into his own grave, yet his faith failed not; and, blessed be God, the vital spark was kindled up anew, and he kept on laboring through a long succession of years; and at length, just as his friends were gathering around him to receive his last whisper, and the angels were gathering around to receive his departing spirit, the news, worthy to be borne by angels, was brought to him, that the great object to which his life had been given was gained; and then, Simeon-like, he clasped his hands to die, and went off to heaven with the sound of deliverance to the captive vibrating sweetly upon his ear.

Both Voltaire and Wilberforce are dead; but each of them lives in the character he has left behind him. And now who does not delight to honor the character of the one? who does not shudder to contemplate the character of the other?

THE WHITE SQUALL.-W. M. THACKERAY.

On deck, beneath the awning,

I dozing lay and yawning;

It was the gray of dawning,
Ere yet the sun arose;

And above the funnel's roaring,
And the fitful wind's deploring,
I heard the cabin snoring

With universal nose.

I could hear the passengers snorting,-
I envied their disporting,-

Vainly I was courting

The pleasure of a doze!

So I lay, and wondered why light
Came not, and watched the twilight,
And the glimmer of the skylight,
That shot across the deck;
And the binnacle pale and steady,
And the dull glimpse of the dead-eye,
And the sparks in fiery eddy

That whirled from the chimney neck. In our jovial floating prison

There was sleep from fore to mizzen,
And never a star had risen
The hazy sky to speck.

Strange company we harbored;
We'd a hundred Jews to larboard,
Unwashed, uncombed, unbarbered-
Jews black, and brown, and gray;
With terror it would seize ye,
And make your souls uneasy,

To see those Rabbis greasy,

Who did nought but scratch and pray;

Their dirty children puking;

Their dirty saucepans cooking;

Their dirty fingers hooking

Their swarming fleas away.

To starboard, Turks and Greeks were,—
Whiskered and brown their checks were,
Enormous wide their breeks were,-
Their pipes did puff away;
Each on his mat allotted
In silence smoked and squatted,
Whilst round their children trotted
In pretty, pleasant play.
He can't but smile who traces
The smiles on those brown faces,
And the pretty prattling graces
Of those small heathens gay.

And so the hours kept tolling,
And through the ocean rolling
Went the brave Iberia bowling

Before the break of day