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blight; but over some characters, habit is phers may dispute the question, whether we more powerful than impulse; and we often inherit or acquire our mental faculties? continue to serve, and suffer from those we whether they are developed in prominences love, long after the life of our affection has upon the skull, or exist only in operations of been extinguished. In this manner, Arnold | mind apart from matter? I am no philoso

pher, and, therefore, I leave these difficult points to those who feel better qualified to unravel the mystery of our being, not without fervent desires after that state of exis

"There is nothing," said she, one day, during a long ramble by the sea-shore, "which I dislike so much, as the mere act of finding fault, when accompanied by that peevish and ❘ uncharitable spirit which too often prompts us to say to those who are smarting under the consequences of their own folly or misconduct, You should not have acted thus, you knew what it would lead to-it is all your own fault. But it sometimes becomes necessary, that we should retrace the errors both of ourselves and others, in order that we may not fall into the presumptuous absurdity of self-exculpation, nor charge God foolishly."

was accustomed to bear with Agnes when she thought it right to remark upon his conduct, as he would have borne with no one else; and she seldom failed to thank him both by words and looks for the kind forbear-tence, where, I trust, we shall be better preance he had shown her. pared to receive and understand the truth. "Looking at human nature through the medium of my own dull senses, and I would humbly hope with the assistance of some better light, I am disposed to think, that the tendency of which you speak, whether originating in bodily conformation, or early bias of the mind, has been appointed by Providence as your especial temptation or means of discipline; the difficulty to which you may find countless promises to apply,--the enemy against which you are to arm yourself with the weapons of Christian warfare. Few persons, I believe, have arrived at the conclusion of even a well-spent life, without being able to confess that their course has been beset by one evil propensity above all others. Misanthropy has been yours, arising out of what you call constitutional melancholy; and until you can prove that you have made systematical resistance against it, by perseverance, patience, and prayer, I can never join with you in thinking, that you have been harshly dealt with, or that God has not been merciful to you as well as to the rest of his creatures."

"Reason as you like, Agnes," replied the misanthrope, "you never will convince me that the cup of life has not been prepared for me with peculiar and especial bitter

ness."

"Think, for one moment, Arnold, of what you are saying. You are accusing the Almighty of injustice and malevolence."

"I presume not to penetrate into the designs of Providence, nor to say, even if my existence should be overshadowed with tenfold gloom, that such a destiny would be inconsistent with that wisdom which I am not able to comprehend."

"But your feelings belie your words, and while you feel that divine mercy is not united with divine wisdom, you cannot love your Heavenly Father as you ought."

"And yet, when I recall my past life, I see nothing but a series of disappointments attendant upon all I have ever hoped or desired. From the brotherhood of man, I selected one friend-and one only --"

"For what did you select him?-Not for his noble independent character, but for his servile pretence to sentiments and feelings

"Was I not born with a constitutional ten- like your own. You might persuade yourdency to sadness?"

"Precisely in the same way as a thief may say, that he is born with a constitutional tendency to take what is not his own. Philoso

self, that this apparent resemblance was sympathy, that connecting chain of kindred interests and associations; but, he who finds his friend resemble him only in the worst parts

of his own character, may certainly suspect that he has made a wrong choice, and with nothing more substantial to calculate upon, may certainly anticipate deception and final disappointment. With regard to your misplaced charity and kindness, the same arguments would very justly apply, and I regret that you should not have made the experiment elsewhere."

"Agnes, you are a cool reasoner, and a strict judge. What have you to say to that melancholy circumstance which has sealed my doom, and made me for life the most miserable of men?"

"My dear cousin, I would not willingly speak on this subject, but in words of the deepest tenderness and sympathy; yet since we have entered upon it in the spirit of impartial discussion, and since there is no alternative but to throw the blame either upon you as an accountable being, or upon that which you call destiny, but which must eventually be referred to the Author of our being; I scruple not to say, that in contract- | ing this alliance, you were guilty of the greatest imprudence of your life. Far be it from me to touch with too much freedom a character whose every feature has now become sacred to us through suffering. I have never met with any one more lovely, seldom with one more calculated to inspire affection; but look into your own heart, and ask what sympathy could possibly exist between two beings so differently constituted, or how it was possible that you could minister to each other's happiness?

"Marriage, like all other social engagements, is not merely an appropriation to ourselves of what we desire to possess. It is a mutual compact, in which much must be contributed on both sides to render it productive of real satisfaction. It is not my wish to lift the veil which is very properly drawn over the secrets of domestic life, nor to pronounce upon what might have been conceded, palliated, or reconciled; the grand error was in the first determination you made to unite yourself to one whose disposition, tastes, and habits, were so totally different from your

own, that I should suppose it almost impossible for any circumstance to occur in which you would think or feel together."

"And yet you, who were the monitress of my early years, never gave me one word of warning, when you saw me risking the happiness of my whole life upon one fatal cast!"

"Arnold, you cannot surely need to be reminded how ineffectual my warnings hitherto had been, and how impracticable I had ever found it, even in the most trivial instances, to change your ill-chosen mode of thinking and acting. Besides, so distant as I then wasso ignorant of the circumstances by which you were influenced-what right had I to interfere? I was astonished, it is true; yet I knew not then how rashly you were acting. But let us leave the past, dear Arnold, to be visited only when we are disposed to doubt the good providence of God, and would say, in the presumption of our hearts, 'I have not merited this stroke."

"Then, upon what subject, may I ask, would you please to expatiate, with such a companion by your side? Tell me what the future has in store for me! Look at my household gods, and say if they rule not with the sceptre of destruction?"

Agnes was, indeed, at a loss: whether she stretched her prophetic view over the future, or looked with more scrutinizing eye upon the present. To the gloomy and determined misanthrope the one was as barren in prospect as the other was sterile, cold, and unfruitful in possession.

"You make me no reply," said Arnold"you do well to be silent. You have known me too long to mock my ear with the words of consolation."

"I have, indeed, lost the power to light again the little beacon of hope which you have so often extinguished-and, with that power, the presumptuous thought that I might, in some way, assist to pilot you through the storms of life: but remember, that the beacon fire which is lighted by a hu man hand is, at best but an emanation from the fountain of eternal light, which no tempest of this nether world is able to extinguish,

and which may shine upon the bosom of the stormy ocean, or the brink of the quiet grave -that the warning voice of man is but like the cry of the shipwrecked seaman amongst the rocks and shoals, while the arm of Omnipotence is able to roll back the fury of the foaming waves, to stay the lightning, and hush the pealing thunder, and lead forth the despairing seaman into the harbour of everlasting rest!"

Years passed on, and the misanthrope remained unchanged, except that a deeper gloom was added to his despondency-a more intolerable sense of wretchedness to his despair. As the fresh glow of early life subsided, one kindly feeling after another ceased to warm his heart, until the last and longest cherished, the pleasure he had ever found in the companionship of his best friend, was gone for ever.

Agnes had become the happy wife of Walter Percival, whose active and energetic character was well calculated to assist and forward all his plans of usefulness. Together they supported the declining health of a devoted mother, whose unfailing cheerfulness fully repaid their assiduity and care: together they visited the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, watching over the feeble, comforting the forlorn, and directing the blind and erring wanderer how to obtain an entrance into the strait and narrow way: and having lived for others more than for themselves, they were permitted to partake together of that cup of earthly enjoyment which never was, and never will be, held out to those who would snatch it with unhallowed hands-who would demand, as a right, what is only granted as a boonwho would stand unbidden at the marriage feast-who would ask for the ten talents, after having lost the one.

Years passed on, and Lady Forbes was still faithful to her trust, watching, with maternal solicitude over the mental darkness of her benighted child.

often say, when Agnes remonstrated with her upon her too constant and unremitting attention. "Time is fleeting, and silvery hairs are warning me that I have not much to lose. Spare me not, Agnes, for I would not spare myself. I know that nothing I can now do will obliterate the past; but when I reflect upon the mercy and forbearance of a Divine Providence, who bore with my selfish idolatry so long, and at last set before me a higher duty and a better hope, I am not willing that one hour should pass by in which I may be found to have forgotten the mighty debt I owe. You yourself have taught me that we are unable to purchase heaven by our good actions; but all the efforts of the longest life to obey the Divine will are due from us, in gratitude for the countless mercies we have received. Of my life, one half, at least has been wasted: you, who have ever been my best monitor, should not hinder me in laying my offering of autumn fruits upon the altar."

"You will not take my mother away," said Ida, pressing the hand of Lady Forbes upon her burning brow; "no earthly power should separate a mother from her child.

This was one of the lucid intervals in which the poor sufferer enjoyed the luxury of weeping; and her tears fell thick and fast, as she told, in broken accents, how her young heart had often pined for a mother's love.

"They were kind to me in Scotland," she continued-"kind to soothe, and flatter, and caress me-but a mother might have been kinder still: she might have told me when I did wrong, and I should not have resented it from her. No! no! we will not be separated-we will live together, and I will try to be less selfish than I have been. My own dear mother! my best friend! what can I do now to serve you?”

"You shall sing to us, Ida."

"I will sing to you a hymn that Kenneth Frazer taught me yet not a hymn exactly, but something that calls back my better thoughts, when I am forgetting to be grate

"I have much to atone for," she would ful."

The spring flowers know their time to bloom; The summer dews to fall;

The stormy winds to rise and come

At winter's dreary call;

The nightingale knows when to sing
Her midnight melody:

The stranger bird to stretch her wing
Far o'er the distant sea.

The silent stars know when to raise
Their shining lights on high;
The moon to shed her silver rays
From out the azure sky;

The sun his chariot wheels to roll

Toward the golden west;

The tides to flow from pole to pole;

The foaming waves to rest.

Thus wide creation owns a power Supreme o'er earth and seas,

That portions out some fitting hour

For all his will decrees.

Then while of nature's works the prime, Man boasts his nobler call,

Shall he, ungrateful, own no time

To thank the Lord of all?

THE PAINS OF PLEASING.

Defend me, therefore, common sense-say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up!

CHAPTER I.

"Do you think the good lady of this house will ask us to sit down, Charlotte ?"

"I think she ought," was the reply, as two fair damsels took their stand upon the clean stone step of a plain brick dwelling.

They had been engaged the whole morning in collecting subscriptions for the Bible Society, and had not yet found their reward. Amongst the inhabitants of the small country town in which their circuit lay, some had regarded them with suspicion, some had attacked them with reproaches, and few had offered them a seat; until, wearied with their task, they determined to take advantage of the first tolerable-looking mansion for that rest which even virtuous exertions require.

"This long delay promises but a cold welcome," said one of the young ladies, as the slow movements of slippered feet were heard along the passage.

With much apparent difficulty the key was turned, and the door being partially opened by a wrinkled hand, an old woman, whose years might have entitled her to a place of rest in this world, at least, but who was evidently still tortured with household anxieties, stood before them, as if to impede their entrance.

"Does Mrs. Irvine live here?" asked one of the ladies.

The woman made no reply; but turning deliberately round, opened the door of a

COWPER.

small parlour, wide enough for them to

enter.

"Nothing but old women," thought the damsels, as they observed the figure of a person little inferior in years to their silent conductress, seated by the fire. There was nothing peculiar in her dress or countenance, and when she begged them to be seated, it was as much with the indifference of one who has grown familiar with the world in its most ordinary character, as one who has acquired the ease and complacency of fashionable life. She was, however, too well bred to ask her visitors the purpose of their coming; and after a few common-place remarks, they sat and whispered together, or rather talked over, in an under tone, the adventures of the morning, as if no one had been present.

"What had we best do with the money from Mary Staines?" asked one.

"Give it to the treasurer at once," was the reply.

"I think not. It would certainly be more just; but don't you think it would offend dear Mr. Drawnover.

"Mr. Drawnover has nothing to do with it, that I know of; and yet it might be dangerous to displease him, he seems disposed to be so liberal."

Difficulties seemed to increase around these sapient agents of reformation; and so warm were they in the contest between justice and the liberal Mr. Drawnover, as not to notice the change which had taken place in

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