or, there's Emily-I dare say it's very good for her."

Emily's preference of coffee, however, rendered this little plan for her good of no avail; so Mrs. Arundel, after a running fire of muttéred remarks on some people's obstinacy, and other people's not knowing what was good for them, ended by eating the egg herself. Indeed, as she afterwards observed to her friend Mrs. Clarke," she wanted strengthening quite as much as any of them." In truth, In truth, poor Mr. Arundel had suffered a complete martyrdom of remedies: ground-ivy tea, hartshorn jelly, rhubarb biscuits, &c. were only a few of the many infallibles that had nearly driven the complaisant apothecary out of his smiles, and Mr. Arundel out of his senses.

Though it was Sunday, Mrs. Arundel had always some household arrangements to make; and for the next half hour-excepting that twice every thing in the room had to be moved to look for her keys, which all the while were in her own pocket-Emily and her uncle were left to the uninterrupted enjoyment of conversation, whose expression was affection, and whose material was confidence. Ah! how pleasant it is to talk when it would be impos

sible to say whether speaking or listening is the greatest pleasure. Still, Mr. Arundel saw, and saw with regret, that Emily returned not home the same as she went. The narrative of the young carries its hearer along by its own buoyancy-by the gladness which is contagious; but Emily's recital was in the spirit of another age-there lay a fund of bitterness at her heart, which vented itself in sarcasm; she spoke more truly, more coldly of pleasures than suited her few years-surely, it was too soon for her to speak of their vexation and vanity.

But the bustle and hurry which always preceded Mrs. Arundel's going to church-for which she was always too late-put an end to their conversation, and they hurried across the fields her aunt only interrupting her account of how tiresome it was that Mr. Arundel would take nothing that did him any good,

and of what a deal of trouble she had had with him, by incessant inquiries if Emily could hear the bell, which, near as they were to the church, no one could avoid hearing, if it were going. Most of the congregation were seated before they arrived, and Emily had no time to look round for familiar faces, ere Mr. Morton's

deep sweet voice impressed even the most thoughtless of his listeners with somewhat of his own earnest attention.

to

"It is good for me that I have been afflicted," may be said in many senses, but in none so truly as in a religious one. It is our own weakness that makes us seek for support-it is the sadness of earth that makes us look up heaven. Fervently and confidingly did Emily pray that day; and who shall say that such prayers are vain? They may not be granted; but their faith has strengthened the soul, and their hope is left behind: and if the feelings of this world did intrude on her devotion, they were purified and exalted by thoughts of the world to come.

Amid the many signs of that immortality of which our nature is so conscious, none has the certainty, the conviction, of affection: we feel that love, which is stronger and better than life, was made to outlast it. In the memory that survives the lost and the dear, we have mute evidence of a power over the grave and religion, while it holds forth the assurance of a blessed re-union, is acknowledged and answered from our own heart. We stand beside the tomb, but we look beyond it

and sorrow is as the angel that sits at the gates of heaven.

Many kindly greetings awaited Emily in the churchyard-the more cordial, perhaps, that the givers were inferiors; for, with the exception of the apothecary's lady, who was thinking that Miss Arundel, just from London, ought not to have come to church in a large strawbonnet; Mrs. Smith was one of those quickeyed persons who take a pattern, or something like it, at a glance ;—and the lawyer's feminine representative, an expansive and comely dameone who looked little accustomed to act, still less to think, but with the scarlet-shawled (it was July), silk-bonneted air of one well to do in the world—and truly, as the husbands of these ladies could have witnessed, those have a thriving harvest who reap from human sickness and sin; -with these exceptions, the whole congregation belonged to the order of the respectable rather than the genteel-though that word is now so ramified in its branches 'as to include far more than our most speculative ancestors ever dreamed of in their philosophy. But those now assembled decidedly belonged to what a patriot from the hustings would call that inestimable class of indivi

duals"—or, as Goldsmith entitles them," their country's pride"-from which we beg leave to differ" the peasantry."

Not that we are in the least detracting from a body of people whose honesty and industry we are most ready to acknowledge when we find them; but, thinking as we do, that the watchword of the day," amelioration," could never be better put into action than for the benefit of this very class-when we consider the want and want is the parent of more crime than even idleness, that root of all evil, as our copy-books assure us-the ignorance, often almost brutality-the discontent, so sadly justified by toil, so unredeemed by aught of higher hope the mornings of hard work—the weekly evenings of dispute-and the Sabbath evening of drunkenness ;-truly, a country which considers such a race as "her pride," is deplorably in want of something to be proud of. Let any one who indulges in such mischievous (we say mischievous, where these reveries take the place of remedies) visions of rural felicity, spend a week in the house of any country justice. The innocence of the country is very much like its health-a sort of refuge for the destitute the poet talks of its innocence, from not