child. The remembrance is yet dear to my memory, of his young voice, gay as the song of a lark-his small step on the stair, his impatient speed when eagerly trotting to my room every morning, and the few broken toys he left behind, which are all that remain now, to assure me that his presence was not a dream.

I had the self-denial not to move the dear boy's young and very excitable feelings, when we took leave, by betraying all the sorrow I felt, yet he gazed with childish surprise, and more than childish emotion, at my agitated countenance. When he threw his arms round my neck to ask the cause of my grief, I hastily turned away, while my eyes overflowed with tears, such as childhood never sheds and could not understand. He departed, and never more have I heard that young voice, nor seen that countenance, so very lovely and so very dear, but his memory remains to me sweet as the gale that has passed over a fragrant meadow, or over a garden of flowers.

Robert Bouverie! many friends have gathered round you since!-none who ever loved you more. Years have passed away, and I blame you not that all is long since forgotten-that the very memory has been swept into oblivion, of those days so dear to my own recollection, when I alone had your young affections-when I alone shared in your

amusements, consoled your sorrows, and united with you in your devotions. While a breath of life remains, my prayers shall attend on your riper years. It matters not that you never can know the heart that seeks your well-being-nor the voice that draws down blessings on your head. Let them be poured like a flood of light upon your path, and let me still remain to you unseen, unnoticed, and unknown.

With joy behold the judgment day.'

TIME is said to soothe all sorrows, and when time can do no more, eternity throws wide its portals, for suffering mortals to enter. There among the blessed no enemy intrudes and no friend is ever rejected. At every tick of the clock, a human soul, in some part of the world, leaves its earthly tenement, to enter the presence of God, and the great clock of time will soon probably strike its last hour for me. There is something so grand, solemn, and impressive in the mystery of death, that to myself it often seems strange when I hear of some having gone through its awful reality, who seemed fitted only for the frivolities of life. A degree of dignity attaches to my recollection of the most heedless and worldly trifler,

when I consider that his immortal soul has been summoned into the presence of its Maker, and that that he has passed through that scene of death which I anticipate with unutterable solemnity.

There are persons of such butterfly minds, that it becomes almost impossible to connect them with our ideas of death or immortality; and it sometimes diminishes my own awe of that solemn change, to think that they have encountered it; but as death is the only event perfectly certain to every created mortal, the surest way to rise above its terrors, is not only diligently to prepare, but often to contemplate it in solitude, as well as in active attendance on the last hours of others.

The future seems as visibly present to my mind sometimes, as the past, while I daily anticipate, with a sort of awful pleasure, its coming realities. The world, dear as it once was to me, in its kindest affections and best enjoyments, must be mine no more; but when I lay down my life, it shall be with gratitude for having possessed it so long. There are persons wearied of life as a tired child longs for sleep, but well do I know that the being dissatisfied with this life, and thinking this world not good enough for us, is no pledge of our being prepared for a better. I look forward, however, in the confident hope that He who has watched over

me so long, will at last mercifully blunt the arrow that brings me to rest.

It is the penalty of long life, to survive all our contemporaries, and many, many whom we little thought to lose while we lived ourselves. Some of those who set out in life when I did attained for a time the utmost height of human felicity; but they are gone. Some gained the highest intellectual honors; and they are no more. Somé, too, had boundless wealth, but before any of these seemed to have found time for beginning the enjoyment of their success, they were hurried to the grave. We are forbid in Holy Scripture to pry into the decrees which shall hereafter decide the infate of others; but however much they all had to engross their affections, I would fervently hope that many, or all, who thus gained the whole world, did not lose that which is worth a thousand worlds. Many an exemplary Christian too, has gone before, not like others, away from the objects for which he had lived, but to begin his full enjoyment of them, and to him the best part of his life was the last. Then the smoke turned to flame, not the flame to smoke. The Christian gradually feels more and more interested in meditating on the character of God, his wonderful mercy, his boundless power, and his infinite wisdom, till at length he becomes more assimilated in holiness to his Divine Master,