the world our personal being, as it were an untuned harp of many strings. About each of those wondrous instruments are ever busied God's messengers, the angels of His providence, and the ministering spirits of His grace. One after another, the tangled and jarring strings are brought into place and tone. First one, and then another, is made to answer to God's harmonies around us. As years pass on, the Divine Spirit touches them with a wider sweep and a firmer hand, till at last the confusion is reduced, the work is completed, and the instrument is taken into the choir of heaven, where not a note jars in the expression of everlasting truth. But all this is according to each man's measure. In one, there may be a thousand answering_notes; in another, but ten; in another, but five. Yet, many or few, these are the real possessions of a man in life: these his tokens of progress: these his own treasures, of which neither time nor eternity can rob him. And according to these, so is the man. In feeling, in sympathy, in power for good, he is as he has grown to be. Ask the poor victim of suffering and pain where lies the charm in that face, pale and wan, and with no outward beauty, which above all others he loves to see bending over his bed, and ministering to him. Others bring gifts; she, it may be, can bring none others speak many words of studied kindness; she, perhaps, speaks but little and seldom but there is that in the calm face, in the ordinary casual word, in the quiet and gentle help, which is better, and more precious, and more powerful, and more beloved, than all on earth besides. Yes; that face has known sorrow: that sympathy, flowing so still, comes from the deep fountains of personal suffering; that one, having suffered, knows how to succour them that suffer-she is gifted with a power which angel never inherited, and which the Son of God left heaven to obtain.

HUMOROUS PROSE SELECTIONS.

CHRISTMAS. (Charles Dickens.)

By kind permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall.

ON Christmas-eve grandmamma is always in excellent spirits, and after employing all the children during the day in stoning the plums, and all that, insists, regularly every year, on Uncle George coming down into the kitchen, taking off his coat, and stirring the pudding for half an hour or so, which Uncle George good-humouredly does, to the vociferous delight of the children and servants. The evening concludes with a glorious game of blindman's-buff, in an early stage of which grandpapa takes great care to be caught, in order that he may have an opportunity of displaying his dexterity.

On the following morning, the old couple, with as many of the children as the pew will hold, go to church in great state leaving Aunt George at home dusting decanters and filling castors, and Uncle George carrying bottles into the dining-parlour, and calling for corkscrews, and getting into everybody's way. When the church-party return to lunch, grandpapa produces a small sprig of mistletoe from his pocket, and tempts the boys to kiss their little cousins under it-a proceeding which affords both the boys and the old gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather outrages grandmamma's ideas of decorum, until grandpapa says that when he was just thirteen years and three months old, he kissed grandmamma under a mistletoe too, on which the children clap their hands, and laugh very heartily, as do Aunt George and Uncle George; and grandmamma looks pleased, and says, with a benevolent smile, that grandpapa was an impudent young dog, on which the children

laugh very heartily again, and grandpapa more heartily than any of them.

Suddenly a hackney-coach is heard to stop, and Uncle George, who has been looking out of the window, exclaims "Here's Jane!" on which the children rush to the door, and helter-skelter down stairs; and Uncle Robert and Aunt Jane, and the dear little baby, and the nurse, and the whole party, are ushered up-stairs amidst tumultuous shouts of "Oh, my!" from the children, and frequently repeated warnings not to hurt baby from the

nurse.

A hesitating double-knock at the street-door, heard during a momentary pause in the conversation, excites a general inquiry of "Who's that?" and two or three children, who have been standing at the window, announce in a low voice, that it's "poor Aunt Margaret". Upon which, Aunt George leaves the room to welcome the new comer; and grandmamma draws herself up, rather stiff and stately; for Margaret married a poor man without her consent. The air of conscious rectitude, and cold forgiveness, which the old lady has assumed, sits ill upon her; and when the poor girl is led in by her sister, pale in looks and broken in hope—not from poverty, for that she could bear, but from the consciousness of undeserved neglect, and unmerited unkindness-it is easy to see how much of it is assumed. A momentary pause succeeds; the girl breaks suddenly from her sister and throws herself, sobbing, on her mother's neck. The father steps hastily forward, and takes her husband's hand. Friends crowd round to offer their hearty congratulations, and happiness and harmony again prevail.

As to the dinner, it's perfectly delightful-nothing goes wrong, and everybody is in the very best of spirits, and disposed to please and be pleased. Grandpapa relates a circumstantial account of the purchase of the turkey, with a slight digression relative to the purchase of previous turkeys, on former Christmas-days, which grandmamma corroborates in the minutest particular.

Uncle George tells stories, and carves poultry, and takes wine, and jokes with the children at the side-table, and exhilarates everybody with his good humour and hospitality; and when, at last, a stout servant staggers in with a gigantic pudding, with a sprig of holly in the top, there is such a laughing and shouting, and clapping of little chubby hands, and kicking up of fat dumpy legs, as can only be equalled by the applause with which the astonishing feat of pouring lighted brandy into mincepies, is received by the youngest visitors. Then the dessert!-and the wine!-and the fun! Such beautiful speeches, and such songs, from Aunt Margaret's husband, who turns out to be such a nice man, and so attentive to grandmamma! Even grandpapa not only sings his annual song with unprecedented vigour, but on being honoured with an unanimous encore, according to annual custom, actually comes out with a new one which nobody but grandmamma ever heard before; and a young scape-grace of a cousin, who has been in some disgrace with the old people, for certain heinous sins of omission and commission-neglecting to call, and persisting in drinking Burton ale-astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by volunteering the most extraordinary comic songs that ever were heard. And thus the evening passes, in a strain of rational good-will and cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbour, and to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the treatises that have ever been written, by half the philosophers that have ever lived.

THE "OLD GIRL'S" BIRTHDAY.-(Dickens.

By kind permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall.

A GREAT annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr. Joseph Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitæ, ex-artilleryman and present bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration of a birthday in the family.

It is not Mr. Bagnet's birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that epoch in the musical instrument business, by kissing the children with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is thinking about it,—a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so by his mother having departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection into their mother's name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. Perhaps his exalted. appreciation of the merits of the old girl, causes him usually to make the noun-substantive, Goodness, of the feminine gender.

It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions are kept with some mark of distinction, but they rarely overleap the bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich's last birthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing upon his growth and general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on the changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism; accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two, What is your name? and Who gave you that name? but there failing in the exact precision of his memory, and substituting for number three, And how do you like that name? which he propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and improving, as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a speciality on that particular birthday, and not a generic solemnity.

It is the old girl's birthday; and that is the greatest holiday and reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet's calendar. The auspicious event is always commemorated according to certain forms, settled and prescribed by Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet being deeply convinced that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest pitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth himself very early in the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is as invariably taken in by the vendor, and