THE MORAL OF AN HOUR-GLASS.

COMING hastily into a chamber, I had almost thrown down a crystal hour-glass: fear lest I had, made me grieve as if I had broken it. But, alas! how much more precious time have I cast away without regret? The hour-glass was but crystal-each hour a pearl: that, but like to be broken-this, lost outright: that, but casually this, done wilfully. A better hourglass might be bought, but time once lost is lost for

ever.

Thus we grieve more for toys than for treasures. Lord! give me an hour-glass, not to be by me, but in me. Teach me to number my days. an hourglass to turn me that I may apply my heart unto wisdom.

Fuller.

No cloud can o'ershadow a true Christian, but his

faith will discover a rainbow.

A COMPLAINT.

THESE are the things that fret away the heart,
Cold, ceaseless trifles, but not felt the less
For mingling with the hourly acts of life.
It is a cruel lot for the fine mind,
Full of emotions, generous, and true,
To feel its light flung back upon itself-
All its warm impulses repell'd and chill'd -
Until it finds a refuge in disdain.

And woman, to whom sympathy is life,
The only atmosphere in which her soul
Develops all it has of good and true,
How must she feel the chill!

L. E. L.

THAT never-thinking, ever-reading plan, Fashion some patchwork garments for a man, But starve his mind.

P

Tupper.

SMALL THINGS.

LOVE delighteth in small things; it is best shown in those little acts of kindness that form the joy of life. We have thought, when considering the wonderful construction of many an obscure shell, or its molluscous inhabitant, that the Creator designed by such means to make known his love and guardian care over all that lives and moves.

His majesty and power are manifested in the storm and whirlwind, in pealing thunders and scorching lightnings; but His "still small voice" of love is heard, speaking, as it were, oft-times from the humblest of created beings.

Mary Roberts.

WHILE man is growing, life is in decrease,
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb;
Our birth is nothing but our death begun,
As tapers waste that instant they take fire.

Young.

THE PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

WERE one to make choice of a pocket-book of prudential maxims, of every-day use and salutary practicability, for the regulation of life, it should neither be the Enchiridion of Epictetus nor the poetical precepts of Theognis-nor the Dissertations of Antoninus nor the Golden Sayings of the Seven Sages of Greece; but the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. Familiarised as we are from infancy with this precious manual, seeing it vended at penny-cheapness by itinerant hawkers, and carelessly thumbed at old women's schools by the vulgarest of village children, we little consider that it contains within itself a treasure of wisdom, worthy of the name of the great Oriental Prince it bears. It is King Solomon's proudest trophy; it would do honour to the greatest monarch, the greatest philosopher, that ever existed. It comprehends, in compendious space, all the most

useful wisdom diffused throughout the voluminous dissertations, and moralities, and maxims of antiquity—the marrow, I may say, of the wisdom of all sages, and of all ages. Its rules for conduct are distinct and intelligible, without any sophistry; its observations on life strikingly just, without any refinement of speculation; its invitations to wisdom attractive, without any aim, artifice, or special embellishment. Even the memory, as subsidiary to the judgment, is assisted by the equally balanced and contrasted clauses into which each verse is, like the Hebrew poetry, for the most part regularly adjusted. So simple are the precepts, as to be comprehended even by the child; so profoundly wise, as to command the reverence and sanction of the man of years and experience.

Nor are

they addressed to one sect of philosophers, or to one people; they are of universal application, and of immediate, obvious, reference to human conduct and affairs: there is not a day, not an action in our lives, to which they cannot be squared and adapted; they are accommodated to every country, every age and stage of life, every profession and class of society, every diversity of civilization. The king and the beggar, the simplest rustic, the profoundest