penetrating things as could proceed only from one on the borders and confines of eternal glory.'

One of the latest of his precious counsels which is recorded was to 'his dear friends, to get an interest in the blessed LORD JESUS CHRIST.'

Of this diminished family two sons remained, bearing the naines of the children of Rachel-Joseph and Benjamin. The destroying angel stayed his hand, and the lenient influences of time, and the balm of GOD's Holy Spirit, healed the wounds that he had made.

Joseph Eliot had assumed the charge of a church in Guilford, Conn. The difficulties of change of place, and the obstructions presented to travelers in those days, rendered his removal to a different State a grave circumstance in his native home. Letters were welcomed as now they might be from a distant land, and a visit was an achievement; for there were dark forests, and rough roads, and scarcely fordable streams to be surmounted. But the parents knew that he had an attached people, and a faithful wife and little ones, like the olive plants, around his table. They were already advanced and somewhat wearied in the vale of years. Yet he was to go to rest before them. They saw him laid low with their buried treasures, and bowed themselves mournfully, though unmurmuringly, over the dead.

The youngest, Benjamin, the mother's darling, and the one who, perhaps, most resembled herself in person and in heart, was still spared.

Still she sat peacefully and lovingly by the side of her heavenly-hearted husband. More than fourscore years had passed over them. Their minds were unimpaired and their charities in action. Life to them was pleasant with hallowed memories and hopes that never die. The scenes of by-gone days gleamed before them as through the soft, dreamy haze of an Indian summer, the woes divested of their sting, and the joys sublimated. They spoke to each other of all that they had borne with the same humble gratitude. This love of their old age seemed like that of angelic

natures.

It

Yet not useless were they, nor forgotten. No one was weary of them. The tender attentions of their daughter-herself a woman in the wane of years, but cheerful and vigorous were unwearied and beautiful. was supposed that she had overruled, in the prime of life, allurements to form a home for herself, that she might devote her life to her parents, and comfort them for the children they had lost. Doubtless her filial piety brought its own high reward.

Sometimes the venerable pastor ascended the pulpit, and in a voice enfeebled, though still sweet, besought his flock to love one another. Still to the arm-chair of his aged wife, where by the bright wood-fire and the clean hearth she sat, came those who suffered, and she gave medicine for the sick and food to the hungry.

Thither also came the poor forest children, no longer lords of the soil. Humbled in heart and sad, they found Christian welcome. They were told of a country where is no sorrow or crying, and urged to make the KING of that country their soul's friend. They loved him who had toiled to give them the Bible, and had baptized their children, and laid their dead in the grave with prayer. They loved her who had smiled so kindly upon and pitied their sick babes, as though they were her own. Their

dark brows were furrowed with sorrow as they marked the increasing infirmities of their white father and mother; for they said, 'When these go to the land of souls, who will remember us poor Indians?'

For more

It was the great grief of Eliot, then approaching his eighty-fourth year, to see his heart's companion fading away from his aged arms. than half a century she had clung to him, or hovered around him, like a ministering angel. In the words of the prophet, he might have said, 'I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness to a land not sown.'

He would fain have hidden from himself her visible decline. Yet, day after day, he saw the light from heaven's windows beam more and more strongly upon her brow, and felt that she was to reach home before him. He who had borne all other trials firmly had not strength, to take a full prospect of this. He could not willingly unclasp his hand from hers and lay it in the cold grasp of the King of Terrors. His prayer was that, if it were possible, they might go together down through the dark valley of the shadow of death, and up to the great white throne, and HIM who sitteth thereon.

But her hour had come, and in that, as well as in all the duties of life, she was enabled to glorify GoD. Serenely she resigned the burden of this failing flesh, and entered a world of spirits. The desolate mourner-husband, it would seem, had never before fathomed the depths of grief. She who had been not only his help-meet but his crown, whom he had so long prized and cherished, rejoicing in her good works and in the honors she received, had gone and left him alone.

'GOD,' says a contemporary writer, ' made her a rich blessing, not only to her family, but to the neighborhood; and when at last she died, I heard and saw her aged husband, who very rarely wept, yet now with many tears over her coffin, before the good people, a vast confluence of whom were come to her funeral, say, 'Here lies my dear, faithful, pious, prudent, prayerful wife. I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me. And so he followed her to the grave, with lamentations beyond those with which Abraham deplored his aged Sarah.'

Touching and eloquent eulogium! and justly deserved. Equally so are a few lines from the pen of the apostle himself; which, though only intended as the simple record of a date and a fact, are embalmed with the tears of the heart:

In this year, 1687, died mine ancient and most dearly beloved wife. I was sick unto death, but the LORD was pleased to delay me, and retain my service, which is but poor and weak.'

The sympathy of his flock was freely accorded to the smitten shepherd; for each one felt that the loss which bowed him down was their own. The popular affection was signified in a beautiful and somewhat unique form a vote to erect a ministerial tomb; and a unanimous and quaintly expressed resolution, 'That Mrs. Eliot, for the great service she hath done this town, shall be honored with a burial there.'

Sincere tribute from honest hearts, more to be coveted than the plumed hearse and all the splendid mockery of wo. So, to the keeping of that tomb wherein man was never yet laid,' were intrusted the mortal remains of that saintly woman, whose consistent example of every duty

appertaining to her sex and sphere will be remembered through future generations. Scarcely had three more winters cast their snows upon the earth, ere the companion of her days was laid by her side, of whom it might have been said, as of a blessed man of old, 'that eighty-and-six years he had served his LORD and SAVIOUR, who did not forsake him at his last need.'

ABOUT THE SEX.

BY AN EX-LOVER.

I.

WE think of WOMAN with a kind of shame-
We seem to understand her but in part;
And we may fetter, but we cannot tame,
The wild and wayward instincts of her heart.

II.

Wild in its friendship, whose capricious kindness
Is hard to earn, and easy to offend;
Wild in its love, whose persevering blindness
Is a caprice we may not comprehend.

III.

We worship in her what we cannot know;
The innocence, so quick to take alarm,
That seems to shrink and palpitate, as though
The shadow of impurity were harm.

IV.

She is so delicate, so weak and pliant,

Yet her soft hand, with its electric thrill,
Though laid upon the shoulder of a giant,
Would leave him only strength to do her will.

V.

Her witchery has brought the wise and great
To open shame; her glance has kindled war;
And many a pilot at the helm of state

Has steered to ruin by that wandering star.

VI.

We must for ever trust her-ever doubt her;
And, while our being has so brief a span,
Must find existence, with her or without her,
A choice of lives too difficult for man.

A SEQUEL TO SAINT LEGER.

Τίς δ' οἶδεν εἰ τὸ ζῆν μέν ἐστι κατθανεῖν,

τὸ κατθανεῖν δὲ ζῆν.

WHO knows but life is death, and death is life?

Doch im Erstarren such ich nicht mein Heil,

Das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes Theil.

YET not in firmness does our safety lie;
Trembling's the best part of humanity.

'Do you know,' said Josephine, in a subdued tone, as we walked slowly across the meadow, 'that to me Nature and Time seem at an eternal warfare; Time effacing and destroying, Nature producing and making new? How many evidences of the contest do we behold around us!' 'Of what were you thinking?'

'Of the mouldering chapel and the crumbling stone which guard the remains of those once active,

'BUT silent now, and sunk away:'

and of the scene about us; the verdure, the foliage, the cataract which leaps from rock to rock, the river, the valley, the everlasting hills, the round earth itself, which even now seems breathing at our feet. Thousand-voiced, do not all these hail the great PRODUCER and SUSTAINER?' 'And our hearts?'

"There, Nature preserves her freshness perpetual, if we are but true to her; if we are not, our hearts grow old and earthly, and so Time, the destroyer, does his work, even in them.'

'You are a philosopher.'

'I am not. I can find no philosophy which pleases me; and unless we are pleased, how can you expect us to be satisfied?' continued my companion, suddenly changing her tone to a gay one. 'Nay, philosopher I am none.'

'A proper test. An abstraction will hardly pleasure your sex, I know, and you are very frank to admit it.'

'And why should I not be frank?'

'Surely; why not?'

'Only your sex dare not avow so honestly, fearing you may make yourselves ridiculous.'

'We have not that privilege.'

'No, indeed; it is your province to be very wise, very profound, and very unmeaning.'

And yours?'

'To be none of these.'

'And are you then so easily understood? I'

'Hallo, there which way are you walking? Do you not see that in

that direction you from a distance.

will never reach your calêche?' cried a stentorian voice

We both turned, and beheld Dr. Lindhorst standing in the road near our carriage, and perceived that we were indebted to him for the friendly caution. We immediately changed our course, and were presently close upon him.

6

'Ah! I have made you hear me at last,' cried Dr. Paul, as we came up. It is strange that the sound did not reach you; it went precisely in the direction with the wind;' and the Doctor saluted my companion affectionately, while he gave me a cordial greeting. It is you, then, my little Josephine, who are pointing out objects of interest to our English friend. I suppose you have been across the meadow to view the situation of the strata in the hill which slopes so suddenly down. It is remarkably curious; full of different species of chamites, ostracites, globosites, selenites, strombites, and other similar petrifactions. I am glad, Josephine, you remembered my direction, or you would scarcely have found them. I assure you the locality affords the best specimens this side of Berne. The stream, which rises farther up, and pours through the cleft of the rock yonder, is a curious spectacle. Do you know there are persons so foolish as to contend that the cleft was produced by the continual trituration of the water? Now, I admit that water, or indeed any liquid, may, by continual dropping, wear away stone- non vi, sed sæpe cadendo-but running water is quite a different affair. It is very ridiculous to suppose it produces any such wonders. The clefts and the valleys are caused by great commotions in nature, and the streams, seeking their level, flow through these, wearing gradually a larger course and a wider channel. By-the-bye, were you not intending to return to your carriage? were going quite out of the way when I called you.'

'By accident, we deviated from the path,' said I.

You

'Which is a thing,' returned Dr. Paul, 'I sometimes do myself, when solus; but I can hardly understand how two should happen at the same time to make the same mistake: it is a coincidence, a singular coincidence. Now I think of it,' continued the Doctor, where are your specimens ?' 'To tell you the truth,' said Josephine, 'we did not'

'Exactly; you thought best to make sure first of the locality. But this is always dangerous. You often lose an invaluable specimen by some person's stepping in before your next visit. Did I not discover, in the hill which rises above Musingen, the celebrated ostracite, which weighs nearly twenty pounds, and which now adorns the cabinet of my friend Dr. Wyttenbach, at Berne? but thinking it would be safe for the next eight-and-forty hours, I clambered over the mountain. When I came back-it pains me to think of it, although it was thirty years ago-that magnificent fossil was gone. My friend happened to be out the same day, took a similar route with myself, stumbled on my ostracite, and, being a more sensible man than I, secured the prize. I never made a second mistake of that kind; and let me impress it on both of you, always to take possession of what you find.'

'It seems to me,' said I, 'that your friend should have given up the ostracite to you, by virtue of first discovery.'

6

'There you wing him and me,' replied Dr. Paul. Wyttenbach learned