THOMAS DAVIS.

"There is nothing can please a man without love; and if a man may be weary of the wise discourses of the Apostles, and of the innocency of an even and private fortune, or hates peace, or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of Paradise; for nothing can sweeten felicity itself but love; and when a man dwells in love, then the breasts of his wife are pleasant as the droppings upon the hill of Hermon; her eyes are fair as the light of heaven; she is a fountain sealed, and he can quench his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay his sorrows down upon her lap, and can retire home to his sanctuary and refectory, and his gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and things." JEREMY TAYLOR.

In a world of bustle and anxiety, it is sweet and refreshing to hear, ever and anon, the song of peace and the hymn of faith; they cheer and exalt the depressed spirit; they gladden and raise the sorrowful heart.

"Songs from the Parsonage "-the very name is charming. To us it is associated with the following scene- -The shadows of night were fast hastening down, when we stood gazing upon an ancient church and its burial ground: it rose upon a gentle slope, while a fine row of lofty elms formed a suitable background; the rooks cawed-the winds moaned through the luxuriant

foliage; all else was silent. Opposite these stood the pretty rectory, enshrouded by a clump or two of fine dark firs; its jet-black timbers on a ground of puret white, its green ivy mantling the walls, its crimson roses, its starry clematis, its struggling woodbine, its old-fashioned windows, formed one of the sweetest homes we ever saw. Between the parsonage and the church were four large fish-ponds, on whose sides grew some noble sycamores. It was like the creation of some poet's fancy; the domestic retreat of his lovelit imagination; it was the realization of some dream: on tree, and flower, and house, and water, and church, there was a calm, unruffled quietude. The shades deepened and deepened; the twilight became dimmer and dimmer; the beautiful scene became every moment more indistinct; the solitude and the loneliness increased; every object sank away in the darkness; the winds dropped, the cawing of the rooks ceased: suddenly the moon peered above the horizon, and, oh! how exquisitely serene were all things; "no stir of air was there, not so much life as on a summer's day robs one light seed from the feathered grass." The tower, the roof of the cottage, the tree-tops were silvered by its radiance. We stood and gazed; how strikingly still! But a sound arose; it was a holy hymn; it seemed the divinest music, and our eyes were filled with tears as it brought to our mind the hallowed eventides of our own hearth and our own beloved ones.

The poems are in perfect keeping with their title, and are worthy of a minister of the apostolic English church: they are somewhat similar to the beautiful strains of the good George Herbert. The versification is correct, and often elegant.

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How full of confiding trust is this:

Oh! how profoundly tranquil is the peace
Of him whose mind, my God, is stayed on thee!
The storm may come, and earthly hopes may cease,
And all that once was full of joy, may be
Lost and for ever; but while he may see
Thine arm directing, let the storm beat on;
It will not pass unheeded: but shall he
Tremble and murmur, upon whom hath shone,
From the glad Son of Righteousness, a ray
Showing the pathway to a home above,
Where that same hand ere long shall wipe away
His every tear, which now doth smite in love?
No: from his heart he prays, Thy will be done,
And even in grief can feel Thy will and his are one.

And this, suggested by a vase of flowers, is not less beautiful:

How fair must be the flowers of Paradise,

Earth's to surpass in beauty! With what skill

Must heaven have formed and blent their wondrous dyes,
When upon these the eye can gaze until

All is a dream of loveliness; and still
With every closer gaze new beauties rise,
Anew to please, to charm, and with surprise,
Devout as deep, to animate and fill !
Oh! for a seraph's wings to flee away!
To mount and bathe in beauty and in love-
Love as it glows beneath a heavenly ray,

And beauty as it blooms in climes above:

To dwell where God that decks the earth with flowers,
Himself for ever dwells amid celestial bowers.

With this the mind sympathizes: for who has not stood in calm, deep thought before these stars of earth, and mused on Paradise, its blushing flowers, its enchanting sweetness, its perfect stillness, its tall, majestic cedars, its lofty pines, its clear waters, its blissful pair? Scenes of Eden's unruffled peace have broken in upon us, and we have gazed delighted on its orient mornings and its dewy evenings; its gales have wafted to the sense the odoriferous perfume of its garden; the

music of its rivers has sounded on the ear; the liquid notes of its nightingales have arisen upwards and floated onwards; the benignity and hallowed felicity of its newly created inhabitants have thrown over the enchanting spot a deeper and a more delicious beauty, and we have been subdued into a gentle-we will not say sadness, for we have a "higher happiness than theirs; a happiness won through struggle with inward and outward foes, the happiness of power and moral victory, the happiness of disinterested sacrifices and wide-spread love, the happiness of boundless hope, and of' thoughts which wander through eternity.' Still there are times when the spirit, oppressed with pain, worn with toil, tired of tumult, sick at the sight of guilt, wounded in its love, baffled in its hope, and trembling in its faith, almost longs for 'the wings of a dove, that it might fly away,' and take refuge amidst the shady bowers,' the ' vernal airs,' the roses without thorns,' the quiet, the beauty, the loveliness of Eden."

We wish, too, in these moments that we were some subtler essence, material and yet spiritual, that our souls might commingle with the perfumes of flowers; become the sweet scent, and yet retain the consciousness of distinct and separate being-atom united to atom; incorporated with the rich odour, and yet retain the sense of our own individual life. Thus may it be in the happier clime: in our tenderest embraces we may pass into the object of our love become one with it—in form and shape to appear but one, and yet have all the vividness of a self-existence.

We love flowers, because they tell us of Paradise; we delight to look on their blossoms, because they remind us of friends; every one is enwreathed with

some sweet though pensive association; every gem sparkles with a tear: we gaze upwards on the stars, and think of the departed; we gaze downwards on the flowers, and it recals the past; both are intimately connected with bygone years; our childhood wove the We love web, and our manhood has kept it sacred. it; we cannot part with it; our heart has wrought out a golden casket of imperishable workmanship, and within we have placed it with fondest care. The stars of heaven and the stars of earth are our mementoes of affection: those grace the black, ebon vault of midnight; these, the beautiful planet of our own; but both shall fade, and with them our pensive thoughts and feelings. Eternity shall flow in, crowned with a chaplet of the immortal amaranth; it will bloom and blossom under the immediate radiance of the throne; Eternity will roll, roll on, but it shall spread its petals to the sun without change and without decay; the twilight of melancholy shall pass away, as some morning mist, before the brightness of that resplendent clime; the rose will be without a thorn, the heart without a sigh; the gentle gales will sweep onwards, bearing all-delicious scents to far-off worlds; then shall man's soul be pure and spotless as the Everlasting.

But the joyous lark, the fairy butterfly, the whispering woods, the soft breezes, all remind us of Paradise and heaven: the former is faded and gone, the latter is yet our own. Every bud, and every tree, and every brook, and every insect, and every bird tell us of the better land; and the throbbing and quenchless spirit of man gives reality to the fact; the grandeur and the loveliness of nature ever feedeth the stirring flame,