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a stranger to care and sorrow, and passed his days in innoOften does the fond idea recur; often the pleasant period return. It will add much, my young friend, it will add much to the pleasures of reflection, if you have it in your power to recall to mind, that your early days were not only innocent, but useful, and devoted to the service of your Creator. To look back on a life, no season of which was spent in vain; to number up the days, the months, and the years, spent in the service of God, will be inward rapture, only to be felt. This will cause the evening of life to smile, and make your departure like a setting sun.

I shall conclude with one consideration, which I hope will have weight; and that is, if you seek God now in the days of youth, you are certain of success. Go out in the morning of youth, and you are sure to gather the manna of everlasting life. God himself will bend from his throne, and teach your spirits to approach unto him. They who seek him early shall find him, and shall be guarded from evil on his holy mountain.

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VERSE, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where HOPE clung feeding like a bee,
Both were mine! LIFE went a Maying
With NATURE, HOPE, and POESY,

When I was young!

When I was young! ah, woful when!
Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body, that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aëry cliffs and glittering sands
How lightly then it flashed along!
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide;
That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind and weather, When YOUTH and I lived in 't together!

Flowers are lovely, Love is flower-like,
Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O the joys, that came down shower-like,
Of FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, and LIBERTY,
Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? ah, mournful ere,

Which tells me, Youth 's no longer here'
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
"Tis known that thou and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond conceit;
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled;
And thou wert aye a masker bold:
What strange disguise hast now put on,

To make believe that thou art gone!
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size;
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought! so think I will,
That Youth and I are house-mates still!

INFANTINE INQUIRIES.

'TELL me, O mother! when I grow old,

Will

my hair, which my sisters say is like gold,
Grow gray as the old man's, weak and poor,
Who asked for alms at our pillared door?
Will I look as sad, will I speak as slow,

As he when he told us his tale of wo?

Will my
hands then shake, and my eyes be dim?
Tell me, O mother! will I grow like him?

'He said-but I knew not what he meant-
That his aged heart with sorrow was rent.
He spoke of the grave as a place of rest,
Where the weary sleep in peace and are blest;
And he told how his kindred there were laid,
And the friends with whom in his youth he played;
And tears from the eyes of the old man fell,

And my sisters wept as they heard his tale!

'He spoke of a home, where in childhood's glee

He chased from the wild flowers the singing bee,
And followed afar, with a heart as light

As its sparkling wings, the butterfly's flight;

And pulled young flowers, where they grew 'neath the beams
Of the sun's fair light, by his own blue streams :

Yet he left all these, through the earth to roam!
Why, O mother! did he leave his home?'

'Calm thy young thoughts, my own fair child!
The fancies of youth and age are beguiled;

Though pale grow thy cheeks, and thy hair turn gray,
Time cannot steal the soul's youth away!

There's a land of which thou hast heard me speak,
Where age never wrinkles the dweller's cheek;
But in joy they live, fair boy! like thee;

It was there the old man longed to be!

'For he knew that those with whom he had played,
In his heart's young joy, 'neath their cottage shade ;
Whose love he shared, when their songs and mirth
Brightened the gloom of this sinful earth;
Whose names from our world had passed away,
As flowers in the breath of an Autumn day;
He knew that they, with all suffering done,
Encircled the throne of the Holy One!

· Though ours be a pillared and lofty home,
Where Want with his pale train never may come,

Oh! scorn not the poor with the scorner's jest,
Who seek in the shade of our hall to rest;
For He who hath made them poor may soon
Darken the sky of our glowing noon,

And leave us with wo, in the world's bleak wild!
Oh! soften the griefs of the poor, my child!'

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THE Kirk of Auchindown in Scotland stands, with its burial-ground, on a little green hill, surrounded by an irregular and straggling village, or rather about an hundred hamlets clustering round it, with their fields and gardens. A few of these gardens come close up to the church-yard wall, and in Spring-time, many of the fruit-trees hang rich and beautiful over the adjacent graves. The voices and the laughter of the children at play on the green before the parish-school, or their composed murmur when at their various lessons together in the room, may be distinctly heard all over the burial-ground, - —so may the song of the maidens going to the well; — while all around, the singing of birds is thick and hurried; and a small rivulet, as if brought there to be an emblem of passing time, glides away beneath the mossy wall, murmuring continually a dream-like tune around the dwellings of the dead.

In the quiet of the evening, after the Elder's funeral, my

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