as,

the exercise of its graces, upon the influence of the Holy Spirit. According to this persuasion, I may very reasonably affirm, that it was not God's pleasure that I should proceed in the same track, because he did not enable me to do it. A whole year I waited, and waited in circumstances of mind that made a state of non-employment peculiarly irksome to me. I longed for the pen, as the only remedy, but I could find no subject; extreme distress of spirit at last drove me, if I mistake not, I told you some time since, to lay Homer before me, and translate for amusement. Why it pleased God that I should be hunted into such a business, of such enormous length and labor, by miseries for which He did not see good to afford me any other remedy, I know not. But so it was; and jejune as the consolation may be, and unsuited to the exigencies of a mind that once was spiritual, yet a thousand times have I been glad of it; for a thousand times it has served at least to divert my attention, in some degree, from such terrible tempests as I believe have seldom been permitted to beat upon a human mind."

The last letters of Cowper are inexpressibly sad. Writing to Lady Hesketh, he says: I shall never see Weston more. I have been tossed like a ball into a far country, from which there is no rebound for me. There, indeed, I lived a life of infinite despair, and such is my life in Norfolk. Such, indeed, it would be in any given spot on the face of the globe. I go down the torrent of time, into the gulf that I have expected to plunge into so long. A few hours remain, but among those few not one is found a part of which I shall ever employ in writing to you again. Once more, therefore, adieuand adieu to the pen for ever. I suppress a thousand agonies, to add only, W. C." It was at this period that he wrote those pathetic and never-to-be-forgotten poems, "To Mary," and "The Castaway."

SOUTHEY.

A bough overladen with fruit breaks by its own weight, and Robert Southey was a bough overladen with fruit.

He was apprehensive of cerebral disease for many years, and he once wrote to Grosvenor Bedford: "If I did not vary my pursuits, and carry on many works of a totally different kind at once, I should soon be incapable of proceeding with any, so surely does it disturb my sleep and affect my dreams if I dwell upon one with any continuous attention. The truth is, that though some persons, whose knowledge of me is scarcely skin deep, suppose I have no nerves, because I have great self-control as far as regards the surface; if it were not for great selfmanagement, and what may be called a strict intellectual regimen, I should very soon be in a deplorable state of what is called nervous disease, and this would have been the case any time during the last twenty years."

But his quiet way of living, his ascetic habits, temperance, and serene religious feelings, preserved him from the terrors he apprehended, even to old age. But the storm came at last, and pitilessly too, making a dismal wreck of his existence. It was brought about by overwork and over-anxiety; for his wife, his amiable and beloved companion for a long period of years, became insane, and was taken to a Retreat, and the old poet, overtaxed with study, and weighed down with sorrow, then received a shock from which he never recovered. It was at this time that he wrote that invaluable work, the Life of Cowper. Had Robert Southey written nothing besides, he would still have been beloved by the student of literature, for a more sympathetic work is rarely to be found. Southey felt that he had not lived in vain, and once remarked: "I have this conviction, that, die when I may, my memory is one of those which will smell sweet, and blossom in the dust."

Robert Southey peacefully sleeps among the poet-tuned lakes of Grasmere and Windermere. There were tender regrets when he ceased to be, and hallowed memories cluster around his grave. His memory, as he himself prophesied, "smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust."

There are, then, dark ways, leading no

one can see whither, that lie very near
the celestial regions, and breathe of their
aroma. Happy he, who, schooled in re-
ligious experience, can say in life's trials:
"I know thy wondrous ways will end
In love and blessing, thou true Friend,
Enough if thou art ever near!

I know, whom thou wilt glorify,
And raise o'er sun and stars on high,

Thou lead'st through depths and dark-
ness here."

You have read the dreadful tragedy in Charles Lamb's history-how that his sister, under many afflicting circumstances, put a period to their mother's life. Elia may have written more brilliantly, but never more tenderly and philosophically, than in the closing lines of the following monody:

"Thou shouldst have longer lived, and to

the grave

Have peacefully gone down in full old age; Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs.

We might have sat, as we have often done, By our fireside, and talked whole nights

away,

Old time, old friends, and old events recalling,

With many a circumstance of trivial note, To memory dear, and of importance grown. How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear!

"A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee. And yet, in all our little bickerings, Domestic jars, there was I know not what Of tender feeling that were ill exchanged For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles

Familiar whom the heart calls strangers still.

"A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man, Who lives the last of all his family!

He looks around him, and his eye discerns The face of the stranger, and his heart is sick.

Man of the world, what canst thou do for him?

Wealth is a burden which he could not bear;

Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act;

And generous wines no cordial to his soul. For wounds like his, Christ is the only

cure.

Go, preach thou to him of a world to come, Where friends shall meet and know each

other's face;

Say less than this, and say it to the winds."

IN Bethlehem the Lord of glory,
Who brought us life, first drew his breath;
On Golgotha, O, bloody story!
By suffering broke the power of death.
From western shores, all danger scorning,
I traveled through the lands of morning;
And greater spots I nowhere saw,
Than Bethlehem and Golgotha.
Where are the seven works of wonder
The ancient world beheld with pride?
They all have fallen, sinking under
The splendor of the Crucified !

I saw them, as I wandered spying,
Amid their ruins crumbled, lying;
None stand in quiet gloria
Like Bethlehem and Golgotha.
Away, ye pyramids, whose bases
Lie shrouded in Egyptian gloom!
Eternal graves! no resting places,
Where hope immortal gilds the tomb.

Ye sphinxes, vain was your endeavor
To solve life's riddle, dark for ever,
Until the answer came with awe
From Bethlehem and Golgotha.
Fair Rocknabad, where ever blowing
The roses of Schiraz expand!
Ye stately palms of India, growing
Along her scented ocean-strand!
I see, amid your loveliest bowers,
Death stalking in the sunniest hours.
Look up! To you life comes from far,
From Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Thou Ca'aba, half the world, benighted,
Is stumbling o'er thee, as of old;
Now, by thy crescent faintly lighted,
The coming day of doom behold;
The moon before the sun decreases,
A sign shall shiver thee to pieces,
The Hero's sign! "Victoria,"
Shout Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Let rays of light, on all sides streaming,
Dart onward, like apostles gleaming,
Till all mankind their light shall draw
From Bethlehem and Golgotha.

With staff and hat, the scallop wearing,
The far-off East I journeyed through,
And homeward, now, a pilgrim bearing
This message, I have come to you:
Go not with hat and staff to wander
Beside God's grave and cradle yonder!
Look inward, and behold with awe
His Bethlehem and Golgotha.

O, heart, what profits all thy kneeling,

Where once He laid his infant head?
To view with an enraptured feeling
His grave, long empty of its dead?
To have Him born in thee with power,
To die to earth and sin each hour,
And live to Him-this only, ah!
Is Bethlehem and Golgotha.

CHAPTER I.

"BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, April 30, 185-. "MY DEAR SISTER-I send you a slave, like the paladins of yore, in the good old days of chivalry. He is neither Moor nor Turk; though, in faith, I believe that he is something of a Turk, since he is a deist and fatalist.

Come, can you guess his name? Victor de Presle, my alter ego, my captain of the Foreign Legion; the brave man who has saved my life on three great occasions, without counting the little ones. And then as to gravity, my pet, you will find him quite your equal. He is geologist, archæologist, and I know not what beside.

What will you give your brother, say, in exchange for his homage?

Ah! I forgot; De Presle is almost dead, what with fever and the grape of those beggarly Russians: in short, he would have been quite so, if it had not been for me. Our hospitals are full to overflowing; and he has, properly speaking, been turned out of doors on the pretext that his native air alone can cure him. Fine fellows are these physicians with their

native air! Victor would be very much puzzled to know where to find it. He was born a little everywhere: in the first place, in the East Indies, where his mother brought him into the world; then his father, a mad traveler, dragged him from the pole to the equator, from America to Africa, among the red skins and the black skins, until the honest man left his bones with his wife and son, in some Hottentot kraal. The poor woman, aged before her time, went to England to die. Victor was in his fifteenth year. Reared, as the books say, in the rude school of adversity, he has bravely confronted misfortune, as you will see, my pet, from his bearing.

Now draw near to my aunt, and shout to her, through her trumpet, not to be frightened. Victor is gentler than a lamb; he will hold three dozen skeins for her on his strong hands in case of need.

As to you, little cousin Max, my good collegian, don't go to getting bayonets in your head! You are to be an engineer, remember. In these times, it puts more money in your pocket, and less bullets in your brain.

Put Presle in the lodge, the cottage at the end of the orchard. He will make no noise; he will pass his time in drawing, reading, and dreaming, for he is a dreamer, and you shall see him only when you please. Besides, the Russians have not so far killed him that he has no legs left; they will serve him to roam over the mountains.

By the way, I wish that you would convert this man. My pet, the task is worthy of your great heart. Victor is ready for anything; the breach is made; fire, cannon! thunder, bombs!

Miss Camille, do not frown. Stop! in two months, or three at most, I shall be at home; I shall take my pretty Camille in my arms, imprint a warm kiss on her little mouth, and defy her, Aunt Lise, Mademoiselle Bourgoin, and old Michel to prove that I am not the most devoted of brothers, the most trusty of nephews, and, consequently, the best of Christians. "EDGAR."

Camille frowned, just at the place that her brother had predicted, shook her head, shrugged her shoulders, and again took up the letter. While she is reading it anew from beginning to end, let us look about

us.

This young girl, slender and proud, with raven tresses, who rests her brow on her hand, while her large dreamy eyes interrogate the pages which tremble slightly in her fingers, is Camille.

The quaint apartment in which we behold her, an ancient oratory of the Benedictine fathers, who formerly inhabited the monastery, arched, octagonal, a little turret, embowered in thickets of a century's growth, is her chamber-a nest suspended amidst the leaves.

Three or four little windows look out upon three or four different points of the horizon. On the east are the Alps with their snows; on the north vistas of foliage; and on the south, roofs-do not laugh— fine old jagged roofs, with their peaks and their valleys, their defiles and their precipices, their chimneys looking like strong castles, their heraldic weathercocks, their arrows and needles, a world

in themselves, as was the fashion in the days of our fathers.

Close by rises the Jura, stretching forth its crests, dotted here and there with the moving shadows cast upon it by the clouds, fringed with firs on the brows, black with forests on the declivities, and sprinkled with châlets whiter than pearls among the meadows.

Martens flutter about the little windows and utter their shrill cries. Outside, finches, linnets, nightingales, and thrushes have built their nests in the heart of the thicket, where they sing from dawn to twilight. Even the night speaks of happiness, love, spring-time, and the approaching summer.

On leaning from the casement, we see on a level with our eyes the tops of immense aspens, trembling with the passing breeze; the thick, golden crests of the maples; and the walnut-trees, with their knotty branches, spotted with light velvet moss; while overhead we behold the eternal azure of the heavens.

Camille had often looked out on these

sights. Often, standing at the little casement, her flexible bust leaning from the turret as if she would have floated in space, she listened to the brook below as it rippled among the pebbles in the shade, the mother-birds talking to the little ones in their nests, the first twitter of the young birds just awakened to the light, and the nameless sounds which rise from the fields night and day; then, lifting her eyes, she plunged her glance into the fathomless depths of the skies, amidst the luminous atmosphere and the fleeting clouds.

Was she praying or dreaming? Who can tell the emotions of a youthful Christian soul, solitary, ardent, moved with vague tenderness, burning with faith, and agitated with undefined hopes and fears?

This morning, Camille did not dream. The letter refolded, she rose, frowned again, shook her little white finger, and put her hand on the bolts of the door; the rusty hinges creaked, and a winding staircase unrolled its long spiral curves before her, down which she lightly bounded, four steps at a time.

CHAPTER II.

AUNT LISE, good soul, was quietly scated in her little drawing-room, occupied in taking up the meshes of a formidable petticoat, at once her glory and her torment, designed to clothe the poorest woman in the village, little suspecting that at that very moment a bullet, shot from Sebastopol, was about to make a breach in her life such as shake the firmest edifices. In front of her was her work-table, on which lay a great Bible in large type. Perched upon a high chair, for she was of small stature and somewhat round-shouldered, she glanced, sometimes at the meshes which her delicate hands netted with great difficulty on the ivory needle, and sometimes at the open pages of the old Bible. Her fingers then dropped from the needle and followed the lines of the text, which she murmured to herself; and her countenance-an humble countenance, neither young nor beautiful-lighted up with such lustre; there was such sweetness in the expression of her blue eyes, and such a joyful submission in her contemplative attitude; her lips, withered by age, expanded with so youthful a smile, that, at the mere sight of her, the heart was moved with softened respect.

Since she is there, wholly occupied with her soul and her poor, let me sketch you her portrait in a few strokes; the more so as, should she perceive that we were looking at her, she would spring up startled and hasten to hide in the most obscure recess of the manor-house.

As you see her with her sixty winters, Aunt Lise has preserved more ingenuousness of soul than many others at twenty. Her life has been passed in obscurity. I know not whether she had a youth, neither does she. A family catastrophe threw upon her hands the two children, Edgar and Camille. She clasped them to her breast and loved them with all the tenderness of her heart. One has become what you have seen him, a brave and hairbrained lieutenant. Aunt Lise sighs, for he is her Benjamin-she sighs and says "God will find him." The other, Camille, gives her nought but happiness.

Nevertheless, the thought of Edgar, if more painful, brings more smiles to her lips.

Aunt Lise is deaf. Her ear-trumpet which she uses as little as possible, travels the world over, chased by old Michel, the major - domo and footman, an antique piece of furniture, idolatrous of his mistress and intoxicated with the modest family honors.

Aunt Lise hears little and talks not much more. She lives on meditation and labor, and rules her household with gentleness. It is not certain, indeed, whether it is she that rules it; every one has a hand in it, beginning with Mademoiselle Bourgoin, the housekeeper, an imposing personage of fifty autumns, strictly honest and extremely intractable.

In small matters, Aunt Lise acknowledges Mademoiselle Bourgoin's authority, and yields to her, but not in great ones. In the presence of these, she suddenly grows to their level. In the few critical events of her life, Aunt Lise has never been seen to falter. An absolute and irretrievable forgetfulness of herself--such is the secret of her strength. She possesses another, moreover: to the threats of the future, to the convulsions of the world, she opposes the words, pronounced in her calm voice, "The Eternal reigns!" and no sooner has she uttered them than an indescribable tranquillity diffuses itself over her countenance.

Aunt Lise has acuteness, or rather divination. At times a furtive tear, or a smile imbued with sweetness, tells the suffering that some one understands and loves them.

Extremely active in her time, fatigue has grown on her with age. She leaves the young to act. Nevertheless, she still keeps up her share of activity-sympathy, prayers, and good counsel, when occasion offers. But these occasions are becoming rare, for Aunt Lise is growing more and more deaf.

Her energy and generosity of soul may be recognized from the fact that her life is never embarrassed by the cowardice of love. She goes straight forward, forgetful of her happiness and disdainful of the