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mild, expressive, free, and full blue eye possessed for him, even then, young as she was, an unaccountable witchery. I remember he said to me one day that, when he thought of Janette, strange ideas entered his mind of heaven and of angels, who he fancied must be beings of exceeding beauty, forever singing there. And then he would ask Janette to sing, for, as she would be an angel, he felt sure hers must therefore be the melody of angels; for he was a sensible child-too much so for one of his age. How often have we remarked that his head was too old for his shoulders, or his brain too large for his head! Well, Janette was the star of his destiny, and a fatal destiny it has been; he seemed to live only in her, as though her heart governed the throbbing of his own. But little Janette died-died just when her loveliness began to unfold. We saw that she drooped; that her step lost its lightness-her eye its brightness. Death had commenced his work near some vital part, and ere we could discover the cause of the change, she was gone. I was with her when she died. Robert stood by me, with the little hand of Janette in his own, which was scarcely larger, watching the suffering child. Poor boy! it was his first introduction to a death bed, and he looked bewildered, as though he felt that something dreadful was about to happen-but he knew not what. He could not realize the idea that the loved companion of his childhood was about to leave him forever; and it was only when she gently drew him toward her, and whispered, "Robert, I'm going to die," that he seemed to suspect the truth. He then threw himself on the bed in a burst of sorrow, and when he again looked up she had ceased to suffer. That was a painful and solemn scene, my children, and I can't help weeping now, when I recall it."

Mr. Bray seemed much moved, and it was many minutes before he resumed. We all sat in breathless attention, anxious to hear the remainder of the story, and fearing to change our position lest we should break the charm it had thrown around us. After a while he continued: "We had little difficulty in removing Robert from the room, for he was totally helpless, and remained seemingly uuconscious of everything for several weeks after the funeral. He, however, gradually recovered, and one day surprised his mother by asking her to take him to the grave of Janette. She did so, and from that time until the winter had fairly set in, he visited it daily, planting flowers around and upon it, and making it the parterre it appears at present. It was remarked, however, as the days shortened, that a change came over poor Robert; his mind was not right;

and, although for several weeks we sought to console his afflicted mother with the assurance that it was not so, it became at length too evident to be concealed. Erom morning till night he would sit at the porch of the door, as though watching for something, and as evening came on would burst into tears, and saying, 'There is no sunbeam on her grave now,' creep to a corner of the room and sigh himself to sleep. At this time, you remember, he suddenly disappeared; the physician thought it best to send him to an asylum, as by proper treatment he might recover. So he went to a public establishment, where he was kindly treated; but the nature of his lunacy left little hope of a permanent recovery, for it was a melancholy madness, which is seldom cured; and no treatment could restore his reason. Throughout the dull wintry days he watched for sunbeams, and when they came not, he wept; but as the spring opened, and they became more frequent, he appeared less melancholy, and so continued to improve as the we ther brightened. Then he desired to be at home again, and at length his wish was complied with, and he came back; better certainly, but still a poor shattered thing. Poor Robert! his mind is like the summer flowers-it lives only in the sunshine, and droops when his rays are withdrawn. Such, my children, is the history of your little schoolmate. He is now with us once more, for this is the season of sunbeams; but his health is failing fast, and the flowers he has planted in the church-yard will soon probably bloom over his grave; then the dark shadows of his life will have passed away; and in heaven there is no winter to make poor Robert crazy."

Mr. Bray ceased, and we all remained silent for several minutes; his eyes were closed, and his lips moved as if in prayer. When he at length arose we followed him, and all seemed instinctively to turn toward the church-yard. The grave of Janette was in one corner of it; and for the greater portion of the day lay in the deep shade of some overhanging willows; indeed it was only when the sun had reached a certain part of the heavens in his downward course, that a small opening permitted his rays for a short time to brighten the simple mound. Robert needed no dial to discover the hour when this occurred, and never failed to be there, watching for it with intense anxiety. As we drew near the spot we saw him busily employed with his flowers, trimming some and carefully transplanting others. We remarked, too, that many of them had been removed from the grave of Janette and placed by the side of it; we knew not why, at the time-but it seemed as though he had a presenti

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ment that he should soon be beneath them. did not disturb him, but quietly passed in another direction.

It was in the afternoon of a day in the early autumn, and Robert and I were strolling across the fields; he was leaning on me, for he had become so weak as to be unable to walk far without help. For several weeks he had been confined to the house, from no particular disease, however; but it was evident that he was gradually passing away; and as his physical strength failed, his mind became proportionably stronger. There was no indication of his relapsing into lunacy; but he grew more gentle--more ethereal; so unlike anything earthly, that it seemed as though he had prematurely put on immortality.

It is painful to watch the slow approach of death to the young-the buds of hope and promise sinking into the cold embrace of the grave; but in this case regret was lessened by the melancholy circumstances attending his fate. Indeed, death was far preferable to the semi-existence he had known. On this day he had asked me to take him near the church-yard--to look once more on the grave of his childhood's love. As we drew near the place a change became visible in his appearance, and, looking up at the sun, he said, "The sunbeam will soon be on the grave, and it will very soon be on mine."

"Why," I said, "are you always thinking of sunbeams? It would be better to discourage such thoughts."

"Discourage the thought of Janette!" he said, looking at me, reproachfully; "she is the sunbeam of my thoughts-she is the sunbeam itselfit has been all a night to me without it. They thought me mad, but I was not mad. I felt that it was one weary, weary night-and I longed for the morning to break. Are they all mad who watch and pray for the day-spring? It is coming now. I know it-I feel it. It was whispered to me when I last sat by Janette's grave-it spoke in the sunbeam that, like me, loves the spot-the last farewell beam that kisses the rose which blooms over her heart. Tell me not to think no

more of sunbeams; I have lived and I shall die in a sunbeam."

There was a melancholy tenderness in his voice that went to the heart, and mine was so full that I could not reply. So we walked on in silence until we reached the gate, when he felt exhausted, and sat down, completely overcome with fatigue. The change that I had before observed in his looks became more apparent; I was too young to understand the indications, or I might have known that death was placing a mark on his victim. After a few minutes he spoke, but it was scarcely above a whisper. His desire was to reach the grave, and after much difficulty I placed him on his favorite spot; and, becoming alarmed at his increasing weakness, ran back to his mother's cottage; and, having told her where he was, hastened to the house of Mr. Bray, and we went back together. His mother was already there, and was sitting on the grave with Robert's head in her lap. Alas! how great a change had taken place in that short time!

It was proposed to convey him home, but he looked so imploringly as he asked them to let him die there, that a reluctant assent was given, and I was dispatched for the clergyman.

The sun was just descending behind the willow trees, and throwing his beams through the opening opposite the grave, when I returned with the minister.

The dying boy beckoned me to his side, for his mother was weeping bitterly; and, pointing to the sun, and then to a particular spot near him, whispered, "Move me there!" They did so, and the minister knelt by him and prayed. He seemed to watch him with much anxiety, and once whispered, "It will soon be there." At length the shadows on the grave increased, the sunbeams gradually withdrew, and as the last one lingered on the rose that grew above the heart of Janette, he gave me one look and faintly smiling died, as he had predicted, "in a sunbeam."

HAIL, thou inexhaustible source of wonder and contemplation! Hail, thou multitudinous ocean, whose waves chase one another down, like the generations of men; and, after a momentary space, are immerged forever in oblivion! Thy fluctuating waters wash the varied shores of the world, and while they disjoin nations, whom a nearer connection would involve in eternal war, they circulate their arts and their labors, and give health and plenty to mankind. How glorious, how awful, are the scenes which thou displayest! whether we view thee when every wind is hushed, when the morning sun silvers the level line of the horizon, or when its evening track is marked with flaming gold, and thy unruffled bosom reflects the radiance of the over-arching heavens! or whether we behold thee in thy terrors, when the black tempest sweeps thy swelling billows, and the boiling surge mixes with the clouds, when death rides in the storm, and humanity drops a fruitless tear for the toiling mariner whose heart is sinking with dismay! And yet, mighty deep! it is thy surface alone we view! Who can penetrate the secrets of thy wide domain? What eye can visit thy immense rocks and caverns, that teem with life and vegetation? or search out the myriads of objects whose beauties lie scattered over the dread abyss? The mind staggers with the immensity of its conceptions, when it contemplates the flux and reflux of thy tides, which, from the beginning of the world, were never known to err.

BY REV. SAMUEL

IRENEUS PRIME.

FRAGRANT and fresh are the memories of that country parish in which I was born, and where I grew up toward manhood, and where I should like to die and be buried. As I grow older, and the frosts of life's winter cover me, and I think that the clods must soon lie on me, I begin to feel as one of the early pastors of a New England city did when he saw his end approaching. He had been settled, in early life, over a parish some miles distant, and his heart was bound up in that people of his charge, as with a first and only love; and he begged his friends to carry him back and let him die there. They told him that he was too weak to be moved, and that he would be injured by the exposure; but he would listen to no arguments; he would go and die where his heart was, and they put a bed into a cart, and the old, dying pastor on the bed, and carried him home, and he was laid in his grave.

There is no place like home; and there is no home but where the young heart has made itself a haunt, and gathered its warm affections as in a garner. You may go the world over, and get the riches and honors that the earth gives, and bring them all about your new habitation, and call it home, and think you are happy in it; but the heart will yearn for the homely house, and the green hillside, and the murmuring brook, and the pine grove, and the pleasant walks of childhood and youth; they are all fresh and perennial, and will never be forgotten while memory is true to her precious trust.

Of course there were all sorts of people in that country congregation; and I have thought I should find a melancholy pleasure in taking my pen and drawing sketches in ink of some of them, as they now appear to me, after the lapse of so many years.

I must say something of the place itself, the church, the pastor, and the ways of doing things up there; and then I shall be ready to speak of the people, and the scenes of varied interest which I have passed through, and which have been witnessed in that retired but eventful place. I shall try to avoid the mistake of sup

posing that everybody else takes the same interest in matters personal to myself that I do; and shall therefore avoid many incidents that have a charm to me, but others may not regard of any importance. There is, however, a "touch of nature" about scenes in the country that makes us brothers, and there are facts in the annals of the old town that will reach a chord in all hearts that love nature, and the way they do things a couple of hundred miles from the city.

The town of Ellington is in the northern part of the state of —; and must have been cold in winter and cool in summer; a place where a hardy race of men and fair women may live, and the manly virtues with brave constitutions flourish, more freely than we find them in sunnier climes. The mountains lie around it as they do about Jerusalem; and the glorious illustration in the Psalms was always read with peculiar force from the pulpit of the old yellow KIRK, as many of the Scotch people loved to call it, in memory of old times in a far away land. A pleasant stream, by way of dignity called the river, wound its way among the hills, and watered the lovely meadows of that charming valley; the fine farms stretching up from its banks to the sides of the hills, and even these were year by year becoming cleared by the ascending husbandmen, who found the soil more profitable for corn than timber.

Those were honest, good men, those farmers, and they feared God and honored Him in their ways. One of them I have in mind this moment; a good man and true, whose uprightness became a proverb, and it was common to hear the remark when one would assure another of his own integrity in dealing, "I will be as fair in this matter as Mr. Norton would be," and this was one of the strongest guaranties. There was a short crop of corn one season, (not a very rare occurrence in that northern climate,) and the price of the article rose considerably in market. Mr. Norton sold to those who would transport it to the city, and took the market price, but to the poorer people, the day-laborers and others around him who had no more ability to meet the increased price than they had to meet a harder

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winter, he put the grain as in former years, and made no merit or mention of it. He did it as a matter of course, and would have thought very meanly of himself if he had taken advantage of the necessities of his neighbors. Very many will say this is nothing; but very few would have done as farmer Norton did, however they may undervalue the generous way of the farmer when they see it in another. But, speaking of farmer Norton brings to mind, and I would not have forgotten, if I had forgotten him, that there was a daughter of his, whose loveliness and fate have made a deeper impression on the pages of my memory than almost any other of the young people of Ellington. We were young together, and my first memories of her are when we went to the district school and stood up in the same class to recite. That was the way up there, however strange it may sound to those who have no other idea of the mode of education than a fashionable boarding-school offers. Ellen Norton was a fair girl and a smart one; so that in the class where we took our places according to merit, those who recited best were up at the head of the class, and the order of the rest exhibited their comparative success; so Ellen had a double advantage. She was a general favorite, and every one wished her to be above the rest, and she was so bright a scholar that she would easily have taken the lead in spite of the best of them. I was very fond of being next to the head, when she was quite there. No doubt I studied all the more for that, so that it was a good thing for me that Ellen was smart, as it served as a stimulus to me, that ambition to be above the others would not have supplied.

Then I remember Ellen grown up to seventeen, at a prayer-meeting, thoughtful and serious; and on the way to her home one evening, she told me that she had been thinking much of death lately, and the need of religion whether we live or die. It was wonderful to me that one so young, so innocent and lovely, should talk of dying, and more that she should want to be any better. I told her so. How she sighed as I spoke! It seemed as if I had pierced her heart with a sud

den pang. "You know," she said, "that we have sinful hearts, and that we are inclined to evil. I have struggled against the inclinations of mine; but I feel that it is very, very wicked, and that while it remains so, I cannot enjoy God nor heaven."

This was all strange to me, for though I had heard the gospel in the old kirk, and had been trained up in the straitest sect of the orthodox, I had never felt as this gentle girl now felt, and I

reasoned very properly that if one of so much purity and loveliness of character was accusing herself of sinfulness, there was far more reason for me to be thinking of my own condition. And Ellen hinted at this necessity, not by way of the contrast with herself, which my own conscience was making, but from a strong desire, which she was not ashamed to express, that I should set out with her to seek the pearl of great price. I hope we both found it; and for many years of time, I know not how they reckon in heaven, Ellen Norton has been in glory, an angel there; and if they are the brightest and happiest in heaven who were the purest and best on earth, she must be among the nearest to the throne.

She was nineteen when her health failed. Her friends thought she was growing more beautiful, as the blushing rose faded from her cheeks, and the lily took its place. She was not less cheerful, and she was even more active in her walks of usefulness, which she took like an angel of mercy among the abodes of the poor and the sorrowing. "Blessings on you! a thousand blessings on you!" it was common for them to say as she gave them her fair hand on rising from her knees to take leave, and when the door was closed they would add with a sigh, "but she is too good for this world; she won't live long."

This is a common saying in the country among the humbler classes, who have the pleasing superstition that the Latins expressed in the sweet line, "Whom the gods love, die young." We have all noticed it: not that early virtue ripens for the grave; but when God will take a flower to bloom in his garden, he transplants it in the morning, in the dew of its youth. He trains the young for his service and enjoyment, and then takes them to his presence, where there is fullness of joy. Ellen was thus trained. Her heart was all alive to the wants of others; and in the cottages of the poor, and especially among the sick, she loved to be like him who went about doing good. It was a sight that I am sure the angels lingered over, and God himself contemplated with delight, when Ellen Norton stood up in the aisle of the church, and was received as a member of its holy communion. In the summer season, the windows and doors of the church were open, and the pleasant air was softly finding its way through the aisles; a calmness like that of heaven rested on the minds of the simple, pious people gathered there, and Ellen, alone in front of the sacred desk, stood up, in her beauty and gentleness, so pure, so lovely; and when she answered the solemn questions proposed to her by the man of God, and gave the promises he required, a vision of glory passed over her brow, as