for real. Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination, which has a long memory, and will thrive for a considerable time on very slight and sparing food. Thus it is, that it often attains its most luxuriant growth in separation and under circumstances of the utmost difficulty.

LE

ET the child have its fables; let the man or woman into which it changes, always remember those fables tenderly. Let numerous graces and ornaments that cannot be weighed and measured, and that seem at first sight idle enough, continue to have their places about us, be we never so wise. The hardest head may co-exist

with the softest heart. The union and just balance of those two is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a blessing to mankind. The Divine Teacher was as gentle and considerate as He was powerful and wise. You all know how He could still the raging of the sea, and could hush a little child. As the utmost results of the wisdom of men can only be at last to help to raise this earth to that condition to which His doctrine, untainted by the blindnesses and passions of men, would have exalted it long ago; so let us always remember that He set us the example of blending the understanding

and the imagination, and that, following it ourselves, we tread in His steps, and help our race on to its better and best days. Knowledge, as all followers of it must know, has a very limited power indeed, when it informs the head alone; but when it informs the head and the heart too, it has a power over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe.

I

LOVE these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.

A CHILD'S HYMN

HEAR my prayer, O! Heavenly

Father,

Ere I lay me down to sleep;
Bid thy Angels, pure and holy,
Round my bed their vigil keep.

My sins are heavy, but thy mercy
Far outweighs them every one;
Down before thy Cross I cast them,
Trusting in thy help alone.

Keep me through this night of peril,
Underneath its boundless shade;
Take me to thy rest, I pray thee,
When my pilgrimage is made.

None shall measure out thy patience
By the span of human thought;
None shall bound the tender mercies
Which thy holy Son has brought.

Pardon all my past transgressions,
Give me strength for days to come;
Guide and guard me with thy blessing
Till thy Angels bid me home.

UR love and fellowship began in

OUR

As

childhood, when life was all before us, will be resumed when we have proved it, and are but children at the last. many restless spirits, who have hunted fortune, fame, or pleasure through the world, retire in their decline to where they first drew breath, vainly seeking to be children once again before they die, so we, less fortunate than they in early life, but happier in its closing scenes, will set up our rest again among our boyish haunts, and going home with no hope realised, that had its growth in manhood -carrying back nothing that we brought away, but our old yearnings to each other -saving no fragment from the wreck of life, but that which first endeared itmay be, indeed, but children as at first.

IT is not surprising that the affectionate

heart of the child should have been touched to the quick by one kind and

generous spirit, however uncouth the temple in which it dwelt. Thank Heaven that the temples of such spirits are not made with hands, and that they may be even more worthily hung with poor patchwork than with purple and fine linen !

WE

WE are so much in the habit of allowing impressions to be made upon us by external objects, which should be produced by reflection alone, but which, without such visible aids, often escape us.

WE

E know that when the young, the beautiful, and good, are visited with sickness, their pure spirits insensibly turn towards their bright home of lasting rest; we know, Heaven help us! that the best and fairest of our kind, too often fade in blooming.

'OH!

H! who could hope, when the distant world to which she was akin, half opened to her view, that she would return to the sorrow and calamity of this! Rose, Rose, to know that you were passing away like some soft shadow, which a light from above, casts upon the earth; to have no hope that you would be spared to those who linger here; hardly to know a reason why you should be; to feel that you belonged to that bright sphere whither so

many of the fairest and the best have winged their early flight; and yet to pray, amid all these consolations, that you might be restored to those who loved you-these were distractions almost too great to bear. They were mine, by day and night; and with them, came such a rushing torrent of fears, and apprehensions, and selfish regrets, lest you should die, and never know how devotedly I loved you, as almost bore down sense and reason in its course. You recovered. Day by day, and almost hour by hour, some drop of health came back, and mingling with the spent and feeble stream of life which circulated languidly within you, swelled it again to a high and rushing tide. I have watched you change almost from death to life, with eyes that turned blind with their eagerness and deep affection. Do not tell me that you wish I had lost this; for it has softened my heart to all mankind.'

I TOLD them that nothing vanished from the eye of God, though much might pass away from the eyes of men. 'We were all of us,' says I, children once; and our baby feet have strolled in green woods ashore; and our baby hands have gathered flowers in gardens, where the birds were singing. The children that we were, are not lost to the great