some darling child, whom God hath taken to himself? These are no days of miracle, but dost thou not know that thy child shall rise again from the dead? Let thine own heart be given to God, and then thou shalt meet thy darling one, never to be separated.

PASSAGES.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

ECCL. I. 17.

ASK of the dreams which come to bless

Life's early and unsullied hours;

Which scatter o'er its wilderness

Their golden sunshine and their flowers :-
Ask why their magic whispering

Of hope and promise to the heart,

Breathing in balm, like winds of spring-
Why do they all so soon depart?

Earth has no light which lingers on,
When time's triumphant surge goes by;
How soon the magic hues are gone
That flush in childhood's cloudless sky.
The hues of joy! their spring-like glow
Is like a sunbeam on the wave:

enable him to bring the soul of the child back to its deserted body. Directed by the Lord, to whom he had looked for counsel, he laid his own warm bosom on the cold body of the child, kissed his cold lips, and sought by every means to impart to the body the animal warmth of his own body, and it was with inexpressible delight that he found the body of the child grow warm. But still there was no life. In the spirit of prayer, he walked to and fro for a time, and then tried the process again, and then was he cheered with signs of returning life; and soon did he see those eyes on which the death-seal had been set open once more to the light of life. God had heard his prayers: 'Gehazi, call this Shunamite.' On the instant she rushed into the room, and the prophet gave to her arms her living son, restored by the power of his God, in answer to the fervency and faithfulness of his prayers.

With a gratitude too full for utterance she fell at the prophet's feet, and then 'she took her son and went out' to indulge, in the privacy of her own apartments, those hallowed and indescribable feelings which none but a mother knows. We presume not to intrude on that privacy.

Is there a mother who has deigned to read this narrative, and has that mother wept on the bosom of

N

Ere grief comes forth her pall to throw On pleasure's chill and lonely grave.

Fame, youth, and hope of earthly bliss,
How quickly are their visions fled !
And the heart broods in loneliness,
Above the slumbers of the dead:
Friends, kindred sink in that lone sleep
Which must to all in darkness come,
When death's cold pinions oversweep
The voiceless chambers of the tomb.

Ask, of that blest and blessing king
Who reigned in proud Jerusalem,
Why o'er the joys that earth could bring
He poured the mournful requiem?
All hopes were his ;-all that the earth
Could bring to bless his longing soul:
The hours of love—the songs of mirth—
The race that led to honour's goal.

He basked in the luxuriant light
Which beams from woman's kindly eye,
And health and peace and visions bright
Came to his spirit, wild and high;