them beautiful words our Passon always said upon entering; and she couldn't be put out of it that peace did come to that house from the first moment them words was spoke inside the door. 'Twasn't much that I cared for these things at that time," pursued Silas ; "I was young and carnal, and thoft a fine deal more of them nice slices o' meat that turned out o' Mrs. Nelly's basket. Likely they had their weight with father, too; for when he comed 'pon the recovery, and began to feel leary and rawning, I don't know what he would have done else. He wasn't in no club, and his pride presarv'd us from applying to any parish; so he couldn't in reason but feel thankful to them as broft such timely succour. What a frame he was, to be sure! No better than a notomy-he who had been a proverb for strength and statter. If you was to have met him on the road, coming along with his pair from the mine, you would say to once, Him's the cappen.' You young ladies, I'll wage, is good Bible-scholars, and can mind where 'tis spoken respecking o' King Saul, how that from his shoulders and upward, he was higher than any of the people. 'Twas 'zackly the case with father; and that 'twas got him the nick-name o' Saul. His own punctual name being Silas; but he always answered to Saul.

The first day he was able to leave the house arter the fever, (the sun was shining bright for all 'twas winter,) mother watched 'un all the way down the road, for 'twas the way to the alehouse; and when she couldn't see him no longer, she catched up her PrayerBook, and shut herself into the chamber: I couldn't then tell why, -now I can. So on father tottered, fent and frail as he was, till he comes within sight o' the public. He could just catch a glimmer o' the chimbley smoking away, and two or three o' his old bottle companions fluttering about the door, like flies about a tracle-cask. Howsumever, he had no thofts of going there hisself. The Passon's words, so frequent heard o' late, still kept sounding in his ears. You'll find them, ma'am, in yon Prayer-Book, wi' the leaf turned down."

At Silas's request, I read aloud the beautiful intercessory prayer, beginning, "Hear us, Almighty and most merciful God and SAVIOUR." At the conclusion he exclaimed with vivacity,

"Yes, them is the very blessed words, and well did father know and feel that the ALMIGHTY had hearkened to his prayer, had restored his health;' and was it in order that he should spend it in the service of the devil, did he think? Well, on he went, prusing it over. 'And yet,' thinks he, what harm could a pint do me?—just one pint? I wouldn't take a drop more. May be 'twould restore my strength for labour: a man must get his living.' And so he goes on, like the ox to the slaughter-house. But, as GOD's goodness would have it, 'twas needful for him to pass the Church; there was no other road. The Church door happened to

be abroad that day, 'pon account of S. Paul's convarsion. Feeling of hisself by this time murely ready to sink into the arth with weakness, father entered the sacred porch, thinking only to rest a bit; but there came to his ears a voice that had never spoke to him but in words of love, and pleading, and prayer,-how could he help just stapping inside, and harking to what that kind voice might be telling about? There might be some word of comfort for him; who could say?-some sweet message of mercy. And so it was: the first thing that met his ears was, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?' Them was the words of Evensong that came in due course o' reading. But poor father was much crushed in heart and frame, and meeting of the Passon's eyes fixed start upon him as he spoke them, they seemed unto him no other than a message from heaven direct.

"As if he had been shot down that minute, so he dropped down upon his two knees in the pew nighest to the door; and in that poster his reverence found him when the service was ended. The congregation had gone out, (they was soon numbered in them days -only the school-children and the Passon's own family, and maybe one or two humble souls beside). And then your blessed father spoke kindly to the poor penitent, and would ha'e helped 'un up from his knees, in pity to his weakness; but no such thing. There he was, and there he would stay; the bare, cold stones, says 'a, was only too good for such a sinner as he had been. There he was, and there he would stay the livelong night; there, in view of that baptismal font whose blessed mark he had blotted and defiled,—in view of that altar 'pon whose steps he had kneeled by the best o' wives, and afterwards broken her heart,-where the blessed elements had been offered, and, as it were, held to his lips time after time, and he had slighted and made scorn of them. There was no turning of him from his purpose; so well you might think of moving the tower over his head."

In vain, Silas went on to say, his kind Pastor urged on the penitent the feeble state of his bodily frame, hardly cecovered from a dangerous illness; or, finding that ineffectual, strove to alarm his fears by suggesting whether the silence and solemnity of the sacred building, with its surrounding graves, might not, amid the darkness and solitude of night, materially affect his nerves. His remarkable reply was to the effect, that "if all the inhabitants of those graves should gather round to accuse him, they could tell him nothing worse of himself than he knew already."

Religious influence apart, this Saul-or, more properly Silas Tregloan must have been a man of surprising fortitude and tenacity of purpose, to have remained there, as it seems he did, through that long winter night, kneeling on the cold bare stone; and hardly less surprising was it that he escaped without any injurious consequences to his health. But, as Silas devoutly observed,

"The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity," especially when the healing influence has passed over his wounded conscience.

But the stipulated ten minutes had now expired; and as the moon kept her appointment, we were obliged to take our leave, promising to come again for the sequel of the story. Not the next day, Silas said, for my brother had promised then to administer to him the Holy Communion, and he liked to have a quiet mind before and after; but if we would be pleased not to leave it later than Thursday, as 'delays were dangerous, 'specially with dying men.'

We should have had a most enjoyable homeward walk,

('The cold round moon (look'd) deeply down’

on our crisp path,) but for the old, sad drawback,—poor Helen's untoward mood.

"You are not well, my love?" said her mother, seeing her take up her bed-candlestick, without the usual parting kiss or word of kindness; "let me light it for you."

"O yes, I am quite well," she replied, shortly, pushing by the kind, extended hand. I could see she was at once touched and provoked by her mamma's confiding tenderness. The tears of vexation rushed to her eyes, the blush of pride to her cheek. How I longed to whisper in her ear Willy's favourite couplet! But false shame prevailed. I have heard the confession of a fault ludicrously likened to the taking a dose of rhubarb. The more you linger and look, and smell, and sip, the more difficult the achievement becomes: a desperate resolution to gulp it down at once, robs it of half its distastefulness. It required but the strong effort of a moment,-a mental struggle, a glancing prayer,—and the dear child's arms would have been twining about her mamma's neck. Then would the confession have been comparatively easy that she did not merit such tenderness, for that she had violated a strict command; had talked over the interdicted pamphlet, till it seemed scarcely a step further to look into the forbidden pages; and finally, had listened while another read the specially prohibited article. All this would have been said and done, but for the intervention of pride,—that perfidious ally, who, while professing to lead us to glory, betrays us into the hands of shame. Dear, erring child! she had let the happy moment for confession go by, and henceforward every hour will but increase her difficulties.

Æschines commending Philip, king of Macedon, for a jovial man that would drink freely, Demosthenes answered, "that this was a good quality in a sponge, but not in a king."-Plut. in vit. Demost.

Saint Augustine tells us of a bookseller, who, out of ignorance, asked for a book far less than it was worth: "But the buyer," saith be, (meaning himself,) " gave him the full value thereof."-Old Book.

THE DEPARTED WARRIOR.

"For, behold, the LORD, the LORD of Hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay of the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator."-Isa. iii. 1—3.

"In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death."-Prov, xii. 28.

"His Grace the Duke of Wellington expired at half-past three this afternoon, at Walmer Castle."

With these never-to-be-forgotten words, an evening paper of the 14th of September, of the year of Grace 1852, ushered into the world the afflicting news of the demise of "the greatest man of our age,-the greatest military commander of any age or nation, the man whose fame has, for half a century, filled the civilized world, restored by his matchless achievements from thraldom and anarchy,-England's greatest son,-the man who had exhausted nature as he had exhausted glory,—the man whose name can have no plural, and whose exploits can have no parallel," and whatever else the eulogistic terms may be in which the press, the world, and the preacher of the Word of GOD have thought it just and right to speak of him.

There is something touching in the contemplation of a great nation mourning for one individual person.Surely, there is enough in this to make the shrewdest unbeliever give credence to the undeniable fact of GoD's speaking to men, from time to time, in divers manners; to remind them of their nothingness and of His glory,-of their perishable nature and of His everlastingness, of time and eternity. Wonderful, indeed, are the ways in which GOD in mercy appeals now and then to the heart of man, to awaken him from his state of moral and religious lethargy; to bring home to him, so to speak, the incontestable verity of his being dust, and that unto it he must return, soon or late that the space of time allotted to him on earth is but limited; that the glories of this life are as evanescent as the things that give rise to them, and the circumstances which occasion them; and that man's main business here is but to prepare for mansions not made by hands that are subject to decay and corruption.

:

Who has not experienced the sadness which at times steals over the heart, as we watch the setting of heaven's visible glory

-the sun? although, owing to daily experience, we are able to predict, with the utmost mathematical nicety and precision, the exact time of his return or rising again. And how much deeper must be our sorrow, when we reflect, that the friend we have loved and almost doated on,-that the man we have revered for his nobility of mind, and other manly and Christian virtues,-if once gone, is gone for ever; and that for him there is no return. We may go to him, but he never will come to us. The sod which covers his ashes will soon or late enshrine ours likewise; but between him and us, while in the flesh, there is a gulf which must for ever separate us. Time and eternity have little in common; corruption cannot sympathise with incorruption; neither can mortality with immortality. Would that men had a memory for this most solemn truth! Would that men had a thought for the warning, that now is the "accepted time!" Would that men did profit by the calamities which befall from time to time the fallen race of man, one of which at this moment has visited our beloved island home! Would that men were wise, so as to learn from the past how to prepare for the future! But, above all, would that men remembered, that life is at the best but " a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away!' Solemn and awful seem these thoughts, as they flash across the mind like summer lightnings; would that their light were less evanescent,-more like that light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day! Ask the bier the lesson it teaches, and the answer will be-Memento mori! Ask the urn, and the green sod, and the marble monument the lesson they teach, and the answer will be," Learn how to die; for all flesh is grass, and the goodness thereof is as the flower of the field." Indeed, man's physical and moral nature is subject to many great and serious ills at all times. In the very hour of his birth he commences to die; death, as it were, appears to watch over him; and hence, living he decays, decaying he lives. With every breath he draws, he pays nature part of the debt he owes her, he approaches a step nearer to his grave, until, having ceased to breathe, he becomes death's prey. The whole state of man on earth is one of transition; it is, so to speak, a time given him to prepare to meet the One, Who is all Justice, as He is all Love and Perfection; in Whose dwellings no grief, no corruption is known; where sorrow finds no resting-place; where joy reigns for ever; where everlasting peace awai isthe weary traveller.

Let us, then, as "wise men," pause, and inquire whether we may not derive a lesson from the irreparable loss we have just sustained; whether the friend and benefactor, “the mighty man and the man of war, the cunning counsellor and the eloquent orator," we have lost, has no word of instruction for us; whether