6

Why bless you, my dear,' said Toby, pointing at the tower with his fork, and becoming more animated under the influence of dinner, 'how often have I heard them bells say, Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!" A million times? More !'

'Well, I never !' cried Meg.

BLACK

are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the sea of thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its dead. Monsters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, imperfect resurrection; the several parts and shapes of different things are joined and mixed by chance; and when, and how, and by what wonderful degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and object of the mind resumes its usual form and lives again, no man-though every man is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery—can tell.

THE

HE voice of Time,' said the Phantom, cries to man, Advance! Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater happiness, his better life; his progress onward to the goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period

when Time and He began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone-millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died-to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!'

I

SEE the spirit of the chimes among you!' cried the old man, singling out the child, and speaking in some inspiration, which their looks conveyed to him. 'I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. I see it, on the flow! I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another. I have learnt it from the creature dearest to my heart. I clasp her in my arms again. O spirits, merciful and good, I take your lesson to my breast along with her! O spirits, merciful and good, I am grateful!'

He might have said more; but, the bells, the old familiar bells, his own dear, constant, steady friends, the chimes, began to ring the joy-peals for a New

Year so lustily, so merrily, so happily, so gaily, that he leapt upon his feet, and broke the spell that bound him.

HAD Trotty dreamed ? Or, are his

joys and sorrows, and the actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere—none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end-endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy.

HAD my dinner, father,' said Meg, after a little hesitation, 'withwith Richard. His dinner-time was early; and as he brought his dinner with him when he came to see me, we-we had it together, father.' 'And

Richard says, father-' Meg resumed. Then stopped.

'What does Richard say, Meg?' asked

Toby.

'Richard

says, father-'

stoppage.

Another

'Richard's a long time saying it,' said Toby.

'He says then, father,' Meg continued, lifting up her eyes at last, and speaking in a tremble, but quite plainly, ' another year is nearly gone, and where is the use of waiting on from year to year, when it is so unlikely we shall ever be better off than we are now? He says we are poor now, father, and we shall be poor then, but we are young now, and years will make us old before we know it. He says that if we wait: people in our condition : until we see our way quite clearly, the way will be a narrow one indeed-the common way-the Grave, father.'

A bolder man than Trotty Veck must needs have drawn upon his boldness largely to deny it. Trotty held his peace.

And how hard, father, to grow old and die, and think we might have cheered and helped each other! How hard in all our lives to love each other, and to grieve, apart, to see each other working, changing, growing old and grey. Even if I got the better of it, and forgot him (which I never could), oh, father dear, how hard to have

a heart so full as mine is now, and live to have it slowly drained out every drop, without the recollection of one happy moment of a woman's life, to stay behind and comfort me, and make me better. . . . So Richard says, father; as his work was yesterday made certain for some time to come, and as I love him, and have loved him full three years-ah! longer than that, if he knew it !-will I marry him on New Year's Day; the best and happiest day, he says, in the whole year, and one that is almost sure to bring good fortune with it. It's a short notice, father-isn't it?-but I haven't my fortune to be settled, or my wedding dresses to be made, like the great ladies, father, have I ? And he said so much, and said it in his way; so strong and earnest, and all the time so kind and gentle, that I said I'd come and talk to you, father.'

HEER up! Don't give way. A

CH

ways !'

new heart for a New Year, al

...

'It's all true, all I've too just, too full of proof.

heard to-day; We're Bad!'

The chimes took up the words so suddenly-burst out so loud, and clear, and sonorous-that the bells seemed to strike him in his chair.