heard not before." "My ways are ways of pleasantness," said the Teacher, "and all my paths are peace.

So she led the little-one along in the wood, and at last she brought him to a very lovely valley which he had never seen before, and she seated him upon a grey rock, cushioned with soft fair moss, that looked like a filagree work of the brightest green; the sky above his head, as he saw it through the boughs of the tall trees, was bluer than the blue eyes of a babe, and clouds, some as white as snow, some of the rose's own colour, moved slowly across its untroubled face; a bright brook ran at his feet; it was so clear that you could see the milk-white pebbles lying on its sandy bottom, and fish spotted with crimson and with purple, glancing quickly, or slowly floating through the crystal waters; the trees were more beautiful than I can paint them to you.

* Prov. iii. v. 17.

There was the glory of the giant cedar, whose lowest boughs swept upon the soft turf, while his top-most branches seemed to be aiming at the sky; there was the oak, mighty in his knotted trunk, and yet adorned with shining acorns, like a maid with her jewels; there was the ash of the plain, with his plumes of pale green feathers, and the ash of the mountain, with his beads of scarlet ; the birch with his graceful waving boughs, and his stem silvered over with gleaming white; the aspen, whose fluttering leaves glittered in the sun-shine, and the poplar who shot up his lofty height, like a pillar, from the midst of the vale. The purple dew-berry was there; while the strawberry of the wood peeping forth, bright in his scarlet beauty, from among the green herbs, covered the ground; and the wild cherry hanging in dark bunches from the loaded boughs, and the fair wild raspberry, ripening among his delicate

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flowers, offered a pleasant refreshment. smiling little shepherd boy on an opposite bank, sat watching a fair flock of sheep, and playing upon his pipe; sweet thyme perfumed the air; gentle ringdoves gave their soft notes; nightingales sang their tenderest songs, and loveliest little squirrels, red, with breasts of white, sported in the boughs of the trees; while every now and again, the jay, with his streaks of bright blue feathers flew across the valley.

"I cannot tell to you one half the names of the sweet and beauteous flowers that grew all around. The wild rose, and the wild honeysuckle, twined up the stems of the trees, and the lily-of-the-valley drooped below; while the purple fox-glove, the blue harebell, the golden tormentilla, the curious and many coloured orchis, the starry pimpernel, the scarlet poppy, and the bright-eyed speedwell sprang up in graceful tufts at the foot of the