degree the love of those into whose intimate society Providence has thrown them.

It is stated by Dr. Livingstone, the celebrated explorer of Africa, that the blow of a lion's paw upon his shoulder, which was so severe as to break his arm, completely annihilated fear; and he suggests that it is possible that Providence has mercifully arranged, that all those beasts that prey upon life shall have power to destroy the sting of death in the animals which are their natural victims. I do not believe that this power is mercifully assigned to beasts of prey alone, but that the misfortunes that assail our limbs and forms, in whatever shape and at whatever time they may come, bring with them something which lightens the blow, or obviates the pain, if we will accept it. There is a calm consciousness in every soul, however harshly the lion's paw may fall upon the body which it inhabits, that it is itself invulnerable-that whatever may be the condition of the body, the soul cannot be injured by physical forms or forces.

Physical calamity never comes with the power to extinguish that which is essential to the highest manhood and womanhood, and never fails to bring with it a motive for the adjustment of the soul to its conditions. The little boy whose "Hail Columbia” has been ringing in my cars all day, accepted the conditions of his life, and the sting of his calamity has de

parted. It is pleasant to say to him, and to all the brotherhood and sisterhood of ugliness and lameness, that there is every reason to believe that there is no such thing in heaven as a one-legged or a club-footed soul-no such thing as an ugly or a misshapen soul-no such thing as a blind or a deaf soul-no such thing as a soul with tainted blood in its veins; and that out of these imperfect bodies will spring spirits of consummate perfection and angelic beauty-a beauty chastened and enriched by the humiliations that were visited upon their earthly habitation.

I

HAVE been watching a family of kittens, engaged

in their exquisitely graceful play. Near them lay their mother, stretched at her length upon the flagging, taking her morning nap, and warming herself in the sun. She had eaten her breakfast, (provided by no care of her own, but at my expense,) had seen her little family fed, and having nothing further to attend to, had gone off into a doze. What a blessed freedom from care! Think of a family of four children, with no frocks to be made for them, no hair to brush, no

shoes to provide, no socks to knit and mend, no schoolbooks to buy, and no nurse! Think of a living being with the love of offspring in her bosom, and a multitude of marvellous instincts in her nature, yet knowing nothing of God, thinking not of the future, without a hope or an expectation, or a doubt or a fear, passing straight on to annihilation! At the threshold of this destiny the little kittens were carelessly playing; and they are doubtless still playing, while I write. They have no lessons to learn, they do not have to go to Sunday-school, they entertain no prejudices, except against dogs which occasionally dodge into the yard; and I judge, by the familiar way in which they play with their mother's ears, and pounce upon her tail, that they are not in any degree oppressed by a sense of the respect due to a parent. Cat and kittens will eat, and frolic, and sleep, through their brief life, and then they will curl up in some dark corner and die.

I remember that in one of the late Mr. Joseph C. Neal's "Charcoal Sketches," he puts into the mouth of a very sad and seedy loafer the expression of a wish that he were a pig, and a statement of the reasons for the wish. These reasons, as I recall them, related to the freedom of the pig from the peculiar trials and troubles of humanity. Pigs do not have to work for a living; they undertake no enterprizes, and of course fail in none; they eat and sleep through a pe

riod of months, and then come the knife and a grunt, and that is the last of them. Now I suppose this thought of Mr. Neal's loafer has been shared by millions of men. Not that everybody has at some time in his life wished he were a pig, but that nearly everybody who has had his share of the troubles and responsibilities of life, has looked upon simple animal carelessness and content with a certain degree of envy. It is not necessary to go among brutes for instances of this animal content. It can be found among men. Who does not know good-natured, ignorant, healthy fellows, who will work all day in the field, whistle all the way homeward, eat hugely of course food, sleep like logs, and take no more interest in the great questions which agitate the most of us, than the pigs they feed, and that, in return, feed them? Who has not sighed, as he has seen how easily the simple wants of certain simple natures are supplied? I remember an old man who quite unexpectedly was drafted into the grand jury, which sat in the county town less than ten miles distant from his home; and this was the great event of his life. He never tired of talking about it— (never tired himself, I mean,) and a stranger could not carry on a conversation with him for five minutes, without hearing of something which occurred when "I was in Blanktown, on the Grand Jury." It is doubtful whether Napoleon ever contemplated a victory with