strangely does their wild music sound as it breaks on the surrounding solitude. O! who can describe the beauties of this hour and this scene? The doe has gone to her grassy couch, and the birds are sleeping.

"The Mighty Being is awake.".

Wordsworth.

My dream was ended, and I sought my dwelling with a happy heart; thankful to God that he had implanted in my soul a love for all his grand and beautiful works.

THE EARLY CALLED.

"O, she was too beautiful to die. Is there any thing that darts through the world so swiftly as a sunbeam ?"

Landor's Pericles and Aspasia.

I HAVE seen a lovely flower open its petals in the dewy morning, and, as it shed its sweet smiles upon its companions, and filled the balmy air with fragrance, an invisible something caused it to droop from the parent stem, and in a little while it lay on the damp earth, -faded and soiled. And precisely such, was the fate of that young creature, whose memory I now commemorate.

Only three short summers did her Maker permit her to live in this wilderness world. She was the pride of her father, the joy of her mother, and the dear, dear playmate of

three sisters, her superiors in age, but not less gifted in personal and intellectual accomplishments. Often have I seen these four delicate children, on a Sabbath afternoon, kneeling around their father's chair, and heard them recite their catechism and prayers, with folded hands, and upraised eyes, and I have thought that at such an hour, the angels of heaven have paused in their hosannas, as if jealous of that bright possession of the earth. How often too, while passing their happy home, have I heard a merry peal of laughter, and, in the fulness of my heart, thanked the great Creator for these human flowers. A few weeks ago, they sported under the shadow of the elm before their cottage door, crowned with the rosebuds, and making melody in their hearts, even as the little birds around them. But alas! the scene is changed. Instead of the joyous smile and ringing laugh, three of those children are now clothed in the weeds of mourning, and a plaintive dirge is the only music in their home. The youngest one of them has gone to heaven. Her sister

spirits in heaven, bowed before the throne of God, and craved permission to call her hence, and therefore it is that she has left the earth.

I have just returned from the funeral. Most of the attendants had reached the house of mourning when I arrived. The father and mother and sisters of the deceased, were seated near the head of the coffin, all of them sobbing as if their very hearts would break; and need I say, that many an eye beside was moistened by the sorrowful and sympathetic tear? The coffin-lid was raised, and, one after another, the friends approached and took a farewell gaze of the unconscious dead. I could hardly realize, that the innocent being whom I had so often caressed and kissed, and sported with, was thus insensible to the genial atmosphere which surrounded her. There was no change in her features, save that her eyes were closed, and the paleness of marble was on her cheeks and lips. The same smile, the same dimple, the same curling hair were there, that had been hers in the vigor of life. A delicate white lily, and a rose-geranium leaf

were resting upon her bosom, fit emblems of her purity and loveliness. As I resumed my seat, this exclamation escaped the lips of the bereaved father, "O, how little space do we require after we are dead!" and the minister replied, "Ah, yes! and the rich and far-famed require no more than the poor and the obscure." These words found a restingplace in my memory, and I pondered them in my heart.

And now when all was still, the silver-haired minister knelt in the midst of that mourning company, and offered up to God a long, earnest, and appropriate prayer. It was a strange scene, that aged man kneeling beside the coffin of that little child. After this, the following words were sung, and the procession moved slowly to the burying-ground.

"Calm on the bosom of thy God,

Young spirit! rest thee now!

E'en while with us thy footsteps trod,
His soul was on thy brow.

"Dust to its narrow house beneath!

Soul, to its place on high!