by their own lips, of eternal separation from God, and from the glory of His power; and what is their Amen, but the seal which they themselves set to their own damnation !

But how blessed is this werd in the lips of God's children. It is the same which is heard in heaven. Though not so full of the same mighty sense, we humbly say it after them. By it we close every petition on the way. In the last one we utter we shall hear it sounding in unison with theirs before the throne of God and the Lamb. There not here—will our Amen be fulfilled in all its richness of meaning. Then, as we never can here, will we set our seal that God is true. Then will every petition of our Lord's prayer be turned into praise, and our Amen will follow the song of Moses and the Lamb. And let all who are truly bound in faith and hope for this glorious consummation, give glory to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, saying, Amen and Amen.

THE BUTTERFLY'S REVENGE.

AN ugly caterpillar once uplooking

To a humming-bird, in gorgeous colors gleaming,
Thns said to him, her furry throat upcrooking:

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Despise me not, though painful now my seeming
In shape and guise and movement of each feature,
And thou art such a bright, celestial creature."

The rainbow birdling scorned to make replying,
And gave the wretched insect's love its dooming.
In grief and birth the poor grub writhed as dying,
And soon a butterfly, in splendors blooming,
Uprose from out the slough the proud one hated,
In dazzling hues, with wings of wonder mated.

The humming-bird, unconscious of this changing,
Above a bush of roses red was hovering,
When lo! appeared our gay one in her ranging.
The hummer, smit with love, himself recovering,
Began to sigh a sweet and melting ditty,
And pleaded first for love, and then for pity.

The butterfly said: "Vain thy suit and urging;

For I remember well, though thou forgettest,

That when from lowliness I was emerging,

Thou spurnedst her on whom now thy heart thou settest.
By thee, when low and homely, I was scorned;

Now thee I scorn, with magic charms adorned."

THE FOUR WEAPONS.

THE brave man tries his sword, the coward his tongue:
The old coquette her gold, her face the young.

1858.]

The Gay Dreams of Youth.

THE GAY DREAMS OF YOUTH.

BY OLD HUMPHREY.

349

It is said that "men are but children fully grown ;" and if I were to be asked in what childish amusements they mostly indulge, I would say, in the game of bubble-blowing. We begin to blow our bubbles early in childhood, and we keep it up, with little intermission, to old age.

With what delight does the young urchin gaze on the glittering globe of soap and water that he has fairly launched into the air, while standing on a wall! There it goes! mounting up with the breeze that blows, and again descending low. One moment as high as the house, and at another almost touching the ground. Onward! onward it holds its course, escaping every danger, till, at last, it busts as it strikes against the edge of a tombstone in an adjoining churchyard.

The bubbles of our after years, too, bear a strong family likeness to those of our childhood. Some burst as soon as blown. Some vanish suddenly in the air; and if any of them mount over the churchyard wall, they are sure to disappear among the tombs.

"Wishing" is a losing game to all who play at it; and yet who is there that altogether refrains? I never heard of but one man who could say, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." Phil. 4: 11.

Let us take a stripling from among the many who are, at this moment, banqueting on the airy food of future greatness; who are, in other words, engaged in bubble-blowing, and enter for a moment into his golden dreams. It is true, he may be poor; but the Rothschilds were not always rich, though at last they amassed millions. He has heard of Whittington, a poor friendless lad, quitting London with his bundle in his hand, and turning back again to wealth and renown, beckoned by the bells ringing out musically, as he fancied the words,

"Turn again, Whittington,

Thrice Lord Mayor of London."

Why, it is very possible that some day he may be as great a man as Whittington, who had only a cat with which to make his fortune. Not, that he has, at present, any very bright prospects before him in real life; but that only renders the more bright the vision of his fancy.

Well, then, it is a settled thing with him that he will be a merchant, and sail the seas in a ship of his own, carrying out beads to barter with Africans for ivory and ostrich feathers; and bales of cloth to exchange for gold. There is no preventing his future prosperity; he will soon become rich, in his own imagination, and ride in a coach and six!

And now the bubble is at its height ! Poor fellow what a pity that he cannot keep it in the air! Alas! down it must come, breaking against the very ground. The poor lad works at a trade, marries early has a large family; his health fails him, his friends forsake him; want springs upon him like an armed man, he becomes sick and infirm, and he receives his bread from the hand of charity.

Or, suppose his youthful dream to be of another kind: his bubble, though equally frail with that I have already blown from him, may take a different direction. He is studious and fond of books, and it may be that he is poetical. Say that the ballad of the Children in the Wood, or John Gilpin, first lures him to the flowery pathways of poesy. He reads, grows abstracted and imaginative, and "mutters his wayward fancies" as he goes. Goldsmith wins him, Cowper and Montgomery delight him, Gray fires him, and Byron works him up almost to frenzy, and it is well if not to moral evil. Like a ship with no ballast and much sail, he pursues his course. He yearns for an earthly immortality. There have been Shakspeares, and Miltons, and Ossians and Homers! Why may there not be again? What a delightful thing to publish a volume of unrivalled poetry; to be lauded by reviewers, to be sought by booksellers, to be courted by the great, and to be highly estimated by the world! Thus he goes on wasting his life in unprofitable dreams; but see! the bubble bursts at last. He has feasted his mind, and famished his body; unable to conform to the common-place usages of life, or to perform its duties, he is crushed by trouble With an intellect superior to those around him, he is the proverb of the wise, and the butt of the foolish : and, perhaps, ends his day in a lunatic asylum. There may be many, whose sober habits and reflections may think this picture overdrown. I have some reason to think the contrary.

Or, perhaps, he has read books of travels and wondrous adventures by sea and land, and is resolved to travel. Why should not he, as well as others, do something wonderful?-ascend Mount Blanc, go down the crater of Vesuvius, and measure the pyramids! How delightful, after wandering in strange lands like Mungo Park, encountering lions in the desert like Campbell, and delving into the mummy pits of Egypt like Belzoni, to return home with the real Indian tomahawks, bows and arrows, and scalping-knives; with snakes from Africa, fishing tackle from the South Seas, birds of paradise and humming birds, monkeys and

macaws.

The stripling may have heard the stormy music of the rattling drum, and gazed upon the gay attire of the recruiting sergeant. He may have "heard of battles," and been fired with the love of victory and fame.

Strange it is, that when the would-be warrior sees before him the prancing war-horse, and the bannered host, that he cannot see the agonies of the dying, and the mangled heaps of the slain! Strange, that when he hears, in imagination, the neigh of the charger, the clangour of the brazen-throated trumpet, and the roar of cannon, that he cannot hear the agonizing groans of the wounded soldiers, nor the heart-rending wails of the widow and the fatherless! Yet so it is! selfishness and sin, and carnage, are crowned with glory.

But the stripling will blow his bubble. He ponders the page that sets forth the victories of Cressy and of Agincourt, of Blenheim and of Waterloo. He gazes on the marble mouuments of renowned heroes, and becomes a soldier! nay, more; he is famed for courage, rises in rank, and his fondest wishes are realized.

But are these gay dreams less vain because they have been partly fulfilled? The stripling has become a hero, with a scar on his forehead and a pair of epaulets on his shoulders. But there is something yet that

1858.]

The Gay Dreams of Youth.

351

remains to be told: besides these things, he has a galling wound that the surgeons have pronounced incurable; and a ball in his body that annoys him, yet cannot be dislodged! And when alone in the midnight. hour, he heaves a sigh, for he cannot but reflect that he might have led a more useful life in pursuing peace than in following war; in being a preserver, rather than a destroyer of his species.

Have I said enough? Old Humphrey has been a blower of bubbles, a dreamer of dreams, through the better part of his days; let him then run his length on the gay dreams of youth.

He

Or, suppose him to have read the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and the voyages of Captain Cook, and to have fallen in love with the sea. He has met a jack tar in his holiday clothes, and gazed with admiration on his long-quartered shoes, blue jacket, and snow-white trousers. has seen him pull out of his pocket, carelessly, a handful of copper, silver, gold, and pig-tail tobacco. "Oh, it is a fine thing to be a sailor!" he thinks, "to wear clean clothes, to play the fiddle, to dance on the deck, and to have plenty of grog and prize money! Nothing in the world like being a sailor!"

And now comes thronging in his midnight dream a ship's crew of lighthearted seamen, a jovial band of jack tars. He hears their songs, he sees them in their well-rigged ship, ploughing through the foaming waves, with dolphins, and porpoises, and flying fish around them, and a clear blue sky above their heads.

He goes on blowing his bubbles, till he has had enough of stormy petrels, glittering icebergs, sharks, and shore-crabs, whales, and walruses; sea-weed, sword-fish, and coral rocks; and then wrecks himself on an uninhabited island, that he may give, on his return home, a wonderful account of his dangers and his toils, which will soon become stale even to his own ear.

Such are the gay dreams of youth, and most of us have indulged in one or other of them. I know one who has indulged in them all; ay, more than all! and what was the end of his sunny visions? What has become of the gleams of glory that dazzled his youthful fancy in by-gone days? Let the tear that has fallen on the paper, on which I note down these observations, be his reply. The bubbles of his childhood are burst ; the fond dreams of his youth and his manhood are passed away; he has seen the hollowness of them all, and has been made willing to exchange the empty dreams of time for the realities of eternity.

If he knows any thing of his own heart, there is nothing in the honors, the riches, and the wisdom of this world, that for one moment he would put in comparison with the well-grounded hope of everlasting life. Put together all the renown that mankind has to bestow: pile up the crowns and sceptres of the earth; eap high its gold, its costly gems, and glit tering diadems, and they will be as dust in the balance, if weighed against the hope of eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

SOME men live as if they were poor all their lives, in order to be wealthy at their decease-or rather, as if they wished to carry their riches with them.