will venture to say that in the domestic circle he was exceedingly happy and beloved. As to the minute peculiarities of his creed, or the shibboleth of his party, we will not enquire; Mr. Smith was a Christian, and manifested the truth of the religion he professed "both by his preaching and living.”

But it is time that our acquaintance should again speak for themselves.

Bless good Mr. Nehemiah! What are we doing to forget Nehemiah? a native of Clifton, and once, the village Surgeon, too. And yet, much as we love the warmhearted man, and often as we have seen him, standing by the bedside of some poor abandoned one, in his Quaker's coat and broad brimmed hat,-the truth and earnestness of his nature speaking out, even in the quaint peculiarities of his phraseology-he is, precisely, one of those characters, which we dare not take it upon ourselves to delineate, any more than we would attempt to paint sunshine, Mr. Nehemiah is no sculptured saint upon a pedestal, but a man—a living man, with hopes, and fears, and infirmities, such as this mortal flesh is heir to; and moreover, with certain badges of humanity in the shape of a brown coat without a collar, &c. Still our busy imagination has so associated him with mighty enterprises, and holy achievements, that he appears to us as the "Great-heart" of his own generation, sent to conduct our many "Little-faiths" through their "valleys of Baca" and "Forgetful-greens," to the "Celestial City,"

Good Mr. Nehemiah! Peace be unto him. It might

be that with him Nature and Providence have alike dealt so very gently, that his beaming smile sits upon him with the same sunshiny placidity, with which we venture to say he received his mother's kisses in infancy, and his mild blue eyes are yet a beautiful index of the calm unruffled spirit that reigns within him. It might be that his path through life has hitherto been undisturbed, and his child-like spirit never awed by violence, or subdued by sorrow; and that he is going to Heaven, as it were, with his bark in full sail, all firm, and right, and beautiful, as when he left the port, and the winds are soft and propitious, and the ocean of life is calm, and the blue horizon around him and above him is unsullied by a single cloud. It might be so, we say, but our friend Nehemiah was a Christian, and a philanthropist ; and we leave it for you to determine whether any have attained to true moral greatness and strength of character, who have not drunk deep of the cup of life's bitterness, and been baptised with the baptism of sorrow.

CHAPTER III.

"A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side,
Far from resort of people that did pas
In traveill to and fro a little wyde
There was an holy chappel edifyde."—

Now, it happened, that on the evening of that identical twenty-ninth of May, on which our bride and bridegroom were talking over their friends at Clifton, as they walked together in the grass-grown lane behind the corn-fields, that, as if reciprocally, the worthy Rector of Clifton and his lady were discussing their friends in the lane, or as they imagined in London-certainly not beneath the soft blue evening sky, and amid the beauties of nature, though the sun shone as merrily, and the landscape was as green in Clifton as in Warwickshire-but within the four corners of an attic nursery, and surrounded by their five busy, buoyant, prattling little Smiths.

Here, in the third or fourth story of the Rectory, for reasons which Mrs. Smith had explained at some length to her husband, but which, we believe, may be summed up, at once, in the fact that the twenty-ninth of May was a holiday at Clifton, and she had allowed the servants to go and see somebody's menagerie, the lady was detained with the children. And, she had told them the story about poor King Charlie climbing into an oak, &c., at least half a dozen times, and was just beginning

it again, when Mr. Smith found it necessary to come up stairs, to announce the arrival of a personage of no less importance than the milk-man. Contemplating a speedy retreat to his study, the Rector of Clifton remained standing, and held his pen in his hand; but Mrs. Smith prevailed upon him to stay, for at least one minute, while she rehearsed a certain report, which had already obtained almost universal credit in the village, no other than that Miss Agnes Fleetwood, Mr. Fleetwood's only sister, had become the wife of Mr. Wallace Arnold.

"It is village gossip-it is nothing but village gossip," said the Rector, at the same time stooping to kiss a little flaxen headed Smith, who was waving a branch of budding oak, and babbling out that he was King Charlie. "But, Fanny, dear, there is the milk-man below."

Now, Mrs. Smith knew very well that new milk is the essential aliment of babes like hers, but yet, at that moment, she could have wished the milk-man anywhere else but at the kitchen door of the Clifton Rectory; and turning to her husband, she suggested that he should take the milk himself.

Mr. Smith looked wonderfully distrustful of his own powers. Perhaps he thought that taking the milk signified nothing short of appropriating to himself, in one copious draught, the contents of the huge tin can. He shook his head, and declared with the most consummate gravity, that the thing was impossible. As the necessary alternative, Mrs. Smith told him that he must "take baby;" and baby, white frock, white cap, and red coral -we dont know how to describe him better-was com

mitted to the care of the Rector, while his wife ran down stairs and disposed of the milk.

Presently Mrs. Smith returned to the nursery and resumed her charge, but looking at once gloomy and thougtful, and as if, as the Rector expressed it, it were dull November instead of May. "What do you think that gossip of a milk-man told me at the door?" she said. "I hear a great deal and say nothing, you know, Mrs. Smith,' he began-and, Oh! Leonard! look what you have done." She seized the pen from her husband's hand, and sending it fluttering and shaking from the room window to the grass-plat below, pointed with her finger to the infant's white frock. It was certainly defaced with four distinct marks of blue ink. Mr. Smith remembered that he had seen some salts of lemon, or patent scouring drops, somewhere in a closet in his study, and was preparing to go and seek them, when his wife eagerly recalled him. "Never mind the ink, Leonard, never mind the frock, washing day will come in its turn; but poor Agnes Fleetwood, they say that she was married yesterday, and to that man. They say so at the Hall, Leonard.”

"Then I should think that it is quite correct," said Smith.

"You should!-Well, if she do marry him, she will forfeit my respect, and affection, and every thing. I shall have done with her. I dont think that I'll speak to her."

"Now you are talking at random," said the Rector, in his own quiet tone and manner, " I am sure you don't