liarly associated with Miss Hamilton, that he had come to identify the purposes of his life with hers, and to feel himself peculiarly commissioned to work out for her the intentions of her heart. So, when the appointment reached him, it neither surprised nor flattered him; it seemed so naturally to follow the strong presentiment that had for years lived like an oracle in his heart.

His first impulse was to visit his old friend, and inform her of his destination, that she might instruct him in regard to the character and station of Eugene more fully, that he might be better prepared to carry out his purpose of counteracting the evil she had so long deprecated.

She was at the country seat, where he had first met her, and where slumbered the beautiful dust of the beloved Alice, and this was an additional incentive, for his heart as fondly turned to this shrine now as in the first days of his bereavement.

He leisurely pursued his way over the hills, so fresh and bright in his boyhood, living over again the days of early romance, calling up the associations that had aided in unfolding his character, reverting to the wild airy schemes which once floated through his brain like the semblance of some far off realities, till he half began to imagine that the past, with its phantoms, was more real than the present, with its glories. Then he asked his heart whether it had fully carried out all its pledges to that Spirit who had promised ever to watch his path and guide and guard his way? How much of strength we often gather from communings with former times! As he called up the past, to see what account it could render, he began to accuse himself of having exercised too great a share of interest in foreign philanthropy, while those social evils that had cast their shadows upon the lives of those around him, which had even cost the life most dear, and the happiness of one so highly honored, remained unrebuked.

As he thus musingly pursued his way, he pledged himself that, while he remembered all lands, and sought to redress their wrongs, he would not, for a moment, turn aside from that one great purpose of his heart, the amelioration of the condition of the poor of England. Their ignorance, their poverty, and the vice that almost inevitably flowed from their depressed condition, should not pass him by unheeded.

It was late in a beautiful autumnal afternoon that he reached Sir Arthur's. There had been some changes, but no distinguishing feature was materially altered. The eldest son, and heir to the landed estates and honors of the family, had married a woman of rank, to suit the ambition of his father; but left to his own free choice, he would have preferred the daughter of the old housekeeper, the sunny-haired playmate of his childhood. He had lived a cold, dull, passionless life, and as no children had followed this union, he had turned from that mere appendage to family vanity, a wife of rank, to the more congenial fellowship of huntsman and hounds, and was now considered one of the greatest sportsmen of the country.

Sir Arthur, worn out by the cares that he had so earnestly coveted, was now a capricious invalid, looking for his only real happiness to the still placid and beautiful face of his devoted sister Anna. Time had sprinkled a few gray threads among her soft brown tresses, and the bloom on her cheek had become less fresh and bright, but her heart was still the same gushing fountain of truth and love.

She met Henry Vinton, now the known and honored, with the same kindly welcome that she had extended to the playmate of her nephew; and he, as he gazed into that face, so changeless because of its unchanging purity, almost felt that he, too, was unchanged, and that the wheels of time had been stationary.

That evening, when the silvery moon cast its subdued radiance upon the scene, Henry and Aunt Anna again repaired to the grave of Alice, and lived over the years of their past existence that had intervened since they last visited this consecrated spot. Here Henry informed her of his destination, and recalled the confession she had made to him years before.

He found her heart still unchanged in its passionate interest for the being who had stirred its first deep fountains, but there were fear and loathing mingled with the remembrance of the warrior who had returned to claim her hand.

But there was no murmuring. She had sought out a purpose indicated by this strange destiny, and she firmly believed in its fulfillment. "Why," said she, "should our lives have in them no significance,

because we are weak and obscure? To us is committed earth's highest mission-that of love. The warrior may trample humanity in the dust, and the statesman may bind it there with chains, but love, even the love of weak woman, will emancipate and heal those bruised and bound. It is spiritual might that achieves the only true victories that are won. I have often looked at you in your glorious career, and recalled the secret of your strength, the love and the prayers of the crushed heart of a dying girl; and I have said: God uses human passions for the accomplishment of his most holy purposes.'

Your mission to India will be fraught with good, with great good, 1 feel assured, for in it I see the fulfillment of those earnest aspirations that for years have filled my heart. O, how my soul thanks God that the earnest prayers of his creatures are had in continual remembrance before him. And when you meet a war-worn, gold-cankered heart, lauded by the world because he has, with his sword, carved his way to the eminence on which the world crowns her heroes, whisper to him that a human heart still beats for him, that human lips still pray for him the holiest prayer of love. O, it is terrible to think of him, as growing old, the white locks stealing straglingly over his sallow brow, and no kind hand to lead him,-no heart to entice him upward."

Henry could not find words in which to utter the sympathy of his heart for this living martyr to a love too lofty to suffer itself to meet with an earthly requital, and taking the hand of his friend in his, he joined in her silent tears over the more than buried hopes of nearly half a century. "And here," thought he, "is an evidence that we need more to reform our own customs at home, than those abroad. India free from misrule, and my life, with its efforts, is England's, for England's poor and perishing, who cry out, not for bread alone, but for all the higher concomitants of intelligent existence."

Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.

THOUGHTS-THOUGHTS;

NOTHING BUT THOUGHTS.

Original.

BY FRANCES D. GAGE.

"I HAVE had my feelings deeply touched to-day," (said a friend to me) "never having been up to the capital before, I visited the penitentiary this morning. There is much to pain the heart there,—and tho' it is a great improvement on the old systems, there is room for improvement still, there are powerful exactions yet. That terrible lock-step,-is it necessary?—can it be, that the preservation of society, or the reformation of the criminal, require that soul-withering degradation?

But it was not of that that I designed to speak. It was to tell you a story, Kate, a story which I wish you to remember.

About six weeks ago, a prisoner was sentenced at our county bar, to be imprisoned for a term of years in the State penitentiary. Once he was a respectable man and the father of a family, sober and industrious, and well to do in the world. But his wife died, and his children were

scattered.

Poor and ignorant, his associations were naturally with those who congregated in the shops and public houses. He had no home now to lure him to its fire-side, no wife to beckon him away from temptation, no children to draw him, by innocence and glee, from the haunts of vice. Restless and alone, he wandered to and fro, till the damning draught of the licensed grog-seller found its way to his lips. He was tempted and fell. The daily earnings of his toil-worn limbs went into the licensed rum-seller's pocket. Too weak to resist alone, with none to help him— yes, they, the licensed dealers in "the fire of death," kindled its blaze in his brain, and he paid them partly in kind, by kindling a fire in their barn. In a moment of maniac phrenzy, he did the deed, which, in his hours of soberness, would have startled him with horror. And there I saw him to-day-a bowed and stricken old man, a convict, debased and degraded, shut out from all the sympathies of life, doomed to toil with

busy hands, early and late, eating the hard bread of necessity, and sleep-. ing within the sound of creaking grates, iron bolts, and clanking chains. And where are they who bade him swallow the maddening draught ?— Where are they who, in the sight of God and men, have paid for the privilege of selling a man that which converts him into a demon ?At home with their families; received by the world as honorable men and good citizens, while he, their victim, writhes under his crushing load of guilt and wrong.

I knew that I should see the old man, as I went my rounds, and I knew too that it was against the rules of the prison to speak to a convict without permission. But when I found him, I could not pass him ;my head bowed unconsciously, and my eye and lip spoke a recognition. The flippant young turnkey reproved me harshly, as if human laws could break the great chain of affection and love which God has woven with the fibres of every generous heart.

Yes, Kate, I bowed to that stricken and chained old man, debased by his appetites, degraded by crime, branded by the laws, and cast out from society, yet a man still; a man born in the image of God, a man with a pulse of love beating in his bosom, as tried and tempted amid life's cares and trials, even as myself. And as his sunken eye flashed out its recognition, what a world of thought, of woe unutterable, came up in that one hurried glance! He was winding balls; and thoughts—thoughts of the past rushed over his spirits, till he forgot his place, forgot his rule, forgot every thing but the man-heart within. He dropped his ball, rushed after us, and asked permission to speak with me. The conductor warned him to his seat, and we passed on.

At the door I met the Superintendent, and requested of him permission to converse for a few minutes with my old neighbor. The request was promptly granted. The old man came, and with quivering, soulswelling earnestness, poured out his heart. Where were his children? where his sister? how was his friend? Every neighbor was remembered; and while big, hot tears of shame and misery coursed down his face, he unburthened his bosom. He did not feel that his crime was equal to his punishment, and yet he felt that he had sinned, sinned deeply, hideously; sinned in touching and tasting the unholy thing; all else, was