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the gold that ever was mined? If we had had thousands of thousands, would we not have filled up her grave with the worthless dross of gold, rather than that she should have gone down there with her sweet face and all her rosy smiles?" There was no reply; but a joyful sobbing all over the room.

"Never mind the letter, nor the debt, father," said the eldest daughter. "We have all some little things of our own -a few pounds-and we shall be able to raise as much as will keep arrest and prison at a distance. Or if they do take our furniture out of the house, all except Margaret's bed, who cares? We will sleep on the floor; and there are potatoes in the field, and clear water in the spring. We need fear nothing, want nothing; blessed be God for all his mercies."

Gilbert went into the sick-room, and got the letter from his wife, who was sitting at the head of the bed, watching, with a heart blessed beyond all bliss, the calm and regular breathings of her child. "This letter," said he mildly, "is not from a hard creditor. Come with me while I read it aloud to our children." The letter was read aloud, and it was well fitted to diffuse pleasure and satisfaction through the dwelling of poverty. It was from an executor to the will of a distant relative, who had left Gilbert Ainslie fifteen hundred pounds. "The sum," said Gilbert, "is a large one to folks like us, but not, I hope, large enough to turn our heads, or make us think ourselves all lords and ladies. It will do more, far more, than put me fairly above the world at last. I believe, that with it, I may buy this very farm, on which my forefathers have toiled. But God, whose Providence has sent this temporal blessing, may he send wisdom and prudence how to use it, and humble and grateful hearts to us all."

"You will be able to send me to school all the year round now, father," said the youngest boy. "And you may leave the flail to your sons now, father," said the eldest. "You may hold the plough still, for you draw a straighter furrow than any of us; but hard work for young sinews; and you may sit now oftener in your arm-chair by the ingle. You will not need to rise now in the dark, cold, and snowy winter mornings, and keep thrashing corn in the barn for hours by candle-light, before the late dawning."

There was silence, gladness, and sorrow, and but little sleep in Moss-side, between the rising and setting of the

stars, that were now out in thousands, clear, bright, and sparkling over the unclouded sky. Those who had lain down for an hour or two in bed, could scarcely be said to have slept; and when, about morning, little Margaret awoke, an altered creature, pale, languid, and unable to turn herself on her lowly bed, but with meaning in her eyes, memory in her mind, affection in her heart, and coolness in all her veins, a happy group were watching the first faint smile that broke over her features; and never did one who stood there forget that Sabbath morning, on which she seemed to look round upon them all with a gaze of fair and sweet bewilderment, like one half conscious of having been res cued from the power of the grave.

LESSON LXXIV.

The Grave Stones,-A Fragment.-JAMES GRAY.

THE grass is green and the spring floweret blooms,
And the tree blossoms all as fresh and fair
As death had never visited the earth;
Yet every blade of grass, and every flower,
And every bud and blossom of the spring,
Is the memorial that nature rears
Over a kindred grave.-Ay,and the song
Of woodland wooer, or his nuptial lay,
As blithe as if the year no winter knew,
Is the lament of universal death.
The merry singer is the living link

Of many a thousand years of death gone by,
And many a thousand in futurity,—

The remnant of a moment, spared by him
But for another meal to gorge upon.
This globe is but our fathers' cemetery-

The sun, and moon, and stars that shine on high,
The lamps that burn to light their sepulchre,
The bright escutcheons of their funeral vault.
Yet does man move as gayly as the barge,
Whose keel sings through the waters, and her sails

Kythe* like the passing meteor of the deep;
Yet ere to-morrow shall those sunny waves,
That wanton round her, as they were in love,
Turn dark and fierce, and swell, and swallow her.
So is he girt by death on every side,

As heedless of it. Thus he perishes.

Such were my thoughts upon a summer eve,
As forth I walked to quaff the cooling breeze.
The setting sun was curtaining the west
With purple and with gold, so fiercely bright,
That eye of mortal might not look on it-
Pavilion fitting for an angel's home.

The sun's last ray fell slanting on a thorn
With blossoms white, and there a blackbird sat
Bidding the sun adieu, in tones so sweet
As fancy might awake around his throne.
My heart was full, yet found no utterance,
Save in a half-breathed sigh and moistening tear.
I wandered on, scarce knowing where I went,
Till I was seated on an infant's grave.

Alas! I knew the little tenant well:
She was one of a lovely family,

That oft had clung around me like a wreath
Of flowers, the fairest of the maiden spring-
It was a new-made grave, and the green sod
Lay loosely on it; yet affection there
Had reared the stone, her monument of fame.
I read the name I loved to hear her lisp-
'Twas not alone, but every name was there
That lately echoed through that happy dome.
I had been three weeks absent; in that time
The merciless destroyer was at work,
And spared not one of all the infant group.
The last of all I read the grandsire's name,
On whose white locks I oft had seen her cheek,
Like a bright sunbeam on a fleecy cloud,
Rekindling in his eye the fading lustre,
Breathing into his heart the glow of youth.
He died at eighty-of a broken heart,
Bereft of all for whom he wished to live.

Kythe or kithe; Show, used here as a neuter verb: The oldest English poets use it actively. "Ne kithe hire jalousie."-Chaucer.

LESSON LXXV.

Stanzas written at Midnight.—D. MOIR.
'Tis night and in darkness the visions of youth
Flit solemn and slow in the eye of the mind;
The hope they excited hath perished, and truth
Laments o'er the wrecks they are leaving behind.
'Tis midnight—and wide o'er the regions of riot
Are spread, deep in silence, the wings of repose;
And man,
soothed from revel, and lulled into quiet,
Forgets in his slumbers the weight of his woes.
How gloomy and dim is the scowl of the heaven,
Whose azure the clouds with their darkness invest;
Not a star o'er the shadowy concave is given,

To omen a something like hope to the breast.
Hark! how the lone night-wind uptosses the forest!
A downcast regret through the mind slowly steals;
But ah! 'tis the tempest of fortune that sorest

The bosom of man in his solitude feels!

Where, where are the spirits in whom was my trust,
Whose bosoms with mutual affection did burn?
Alas! they have gone to their homes in the dust,
The grass rustles drearily over their urn:
While I, in a populous solitude, languish,

'Mid foes that beset me, and friends that are cold;
Ah! the pilgrim of earth oft has felt in his anguish,
That the heart may be widowed before it is old!
Affection can sooth but its votaries an hour,

Doomed soon in the flames that it raised to depart;
And, ah disappointment has poison and power
To ruffle and sour the most patient of heart.
Too oft, 'neath the barb-pointed arrows of malice,*
Has merit been destined to bear and to bleed;
And they, who of pleasure have emptied the chalice,
Have found that the dregs were full bitter indeed.
Let the storms of adversity lower; 'tis in vain-

Tho' friends should forsake me, and foes should combineSuch may kindle the breasts of the weak to complain, They only can teach resignation to mine:

For far o'er the regions of doubt and of dreaming,
The spirit beholds a less perishing span;

And bright through the tempest the rainbow is streaming,
The sign of forgiveness from Heaven to man!

LESSON LXXVI.

Slavery.-Cowper.

O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not coloured like his own; and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me,
to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;

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