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"And now," said Mr. Gracelove," before we proceed to take a survey of the various beautiful and splendid objects that surround us, we cannot do better than pay a friendly visit to the larder of Mr. Robinson, the proprietor of the comfortable little inn called the 'Fish.' At the present moment," he continued, regarding his juvenile party with a playful inquiring look, "I am inclined to believe that an examination of its contents will be quite as interesting as a sight of Scale Force' in all its watery grandeur."

This appeal was instantly responded to without a single dissentient voice; and pursuing their way a few hundred yards further, they alighted from their horses at the door of mine host of the "Fish."

It was soon ascertained that, in addition to beef-steaks, they could be regaled with some delicious char, which had been caught in the lake a few hours before their arrival. The order was immediately given to prepare the repast forthwith, and, in the mean time, they sauntered about the vicinity, from every point of which the eye ranges on all that is delightful in

nature.

While the party were thus agreeably occupied, they were approached by a poor African, whose sable complexion, and subdued demeanour, powerfully arrested their attention. He carried in his hand a number of tracts, issued by that admirable institution, the Religious Tract Society, by the sale of which, and by begging, he procured a scanty and precarious subsistence. Mr. and Mrs. Gracelove made many kind inquiries with respect to the quarter of Africa from which he came, and the circumstances which had brought him to Cumberland.

The little history of himself was brief, and contained a recital of that hapless lot which has befallen so many thousands of his unfortunate countrymen. He stated his having been captured by men-stealers in his own country, excited by the fearful

avarice of the white man, and sold to the slave-dealers on the coast. After enduring the most cruel hardships, prior to the sailing of the vessel to her destination, and especially during the horrors of the "middle passage," he was happily rescued, he said, by one of the British Cruizers and brought to England. Since that period he had worked as a sailor on board of an English merchant vessel, and had recently been discharged at Whitehaven, the principal seaport in Cumberland. Being unable to obtain another situation, a benevolent lady, resident in that town, had given him a large parcel of tracts to sell about the country, by which, she told him, as he simply related her Christian expressions, "he might relieve his own necessities, as well as those of others of a still more urgent description, obtaining for himself the bread of this world, while he offered to them the bread of the world to come."

After commiserating the hard fate of this poor destitute African, they interrogated him as to his own knowledge of what the tracts contained which he was selling; and as to those better hopes of a happier existence, where there will be no slaves nor slave-dealers,-"There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor;"*-where "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain."+ After putting these questions, and receiving a more satisfactory reply than they could well have expected, Mr. and Mrs. Gracelove selected a dozen of his tracts, giving him five times their amount in value; with which the poor fellow, with tears in his eyes, and gratitude in his heart, like the Ethiopian of ancient days, "went on his way rejoicing."

*Job iii. 17, 18..

+ Rev. xxi. 4.

Acts viii. 39.

This little incident," said Mrs. Gracelove, as the poor black man departed from them, "is precisely of that nature which, if asked the question, I should have wished to have occurred in our morning's ramble. Nothing sweetens the enjoyment of pleasure half so much, as when we can unite with our own personal gratifications the higher moral charm of relieving the distress of a fellow creature, and thus making him, in some degree, participant in our own happiness. Bright and clear as is the sky, I must acknowledge that this simple circumstance has seemed to cast a purer gleam of sunshine over the landscape than it possessed before. And when we sit down to the dinner which is preparing, will it not give an additional flavour to the provisions placed before us, when we remember that we have supplied the craving wants of a wretched human being for whom Christ died, as well as for ourselves, though dark his countenance, and an outcast on the world's cold charity?

"My dear children," continued the tender-hearted mother, . "bless God that you were born in a Christian land, and of Christian parents; and let your fervent gratitude to your gracious Creator, for such an inestimable benefit, be exemplified in your earnest endeavours to communicate the grace of God to others less favoured than yourselves; while, at the same time, you administer relief to their temporal necessities.

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"But remember, my beloved children, how boundless is the sphere of action, and how few are the labourers. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.' Remember how many dark habitations,' scattered throughout this wide world, the plaguespots of heathenism,-are still unvisited by missionary zeal and love; unenlightened and unwarmed by the instruction and the charities of Christianity. Think what appeals are continually

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