tions. He belongs to the physical and to the spiritual, to the visible and to the invisible, to the temporal and to the eternal. Amazing creature, Who shall explore the labyrinths of thy nature? Who shall explain the enigmas of thy history? Who shall fathom the depths, or scale the heights of thy destiny? He only who called thee into existence, and who has made thee the reflection of His own immortality. In His light we discern thy subtle nature, thy varied capabilities, and thy lofty destiny. And shall we scorn His teaching? That were "high treason" against the Majesty of heaven. And shall we confound the distinctions of things, and level the ethereal spirit with the dust? That were to raise our fratricidal hand against the brotherhood of man. No, precious, priceless spirit, we dare not thus dishonour thee. Thy retrospections and thy anticipations, thy hopes and thy fears, thy joys and thy sorrows, thy projects and thy pursuits, proclaim thee superior to the dull clod, and destined to pass the narrow limits of earth, and to expatiate in the immeasurable fields of immortal existence there thy god-like powers will be fully developed, and thy capabilities of observation, enjoyment, and action, will find ample scope and appropriate objects.

Stretch forth thy pinions, O "bird of Paradise!" shake off the dust of this vain world, and prepare to take thy flight to the realms of boundless being and blessedness.

W. JONES.

IT was a sad night, a wailing, sighing, sorrowful night. The cold bleak wind was storming and raging mercilessly through the streets of the great city. It was late, and in many homes tender mothers were bending over little beds, carefully arranging the warm coverlets over little forms, and imprinting kisses on the closed lids of tiny sleepers. But there were other mothers, as tender and loving, who had just such treasures-little bodies with souls but lately sent from the Great Father-who heard that dreary wind, and answering it with sighs, looked with anguish upon loved ones they could not shelter from its blast.

And that same cold wind, how it strove to enter those splendid mansions; and failing, how it raged and stormed; and hasting through narrow lanes and gloomy alleys, burst with a shriek of triumph into that miserable old tenement with the broken windows and decaying blinds! It burst in, rushed up and down the narrow, creaking stairs, and at last, by many a gaping hole, came with its cold, damp breath into that dismal room.

There is a feeble fire there to receive it; and the little flames-not vigorous, merry little flames, but timid blue, fainting ones-shudder and almost expire at the rough salute of their visitor.

but

A single candle, with its feeble glare, just makes darkness visible; this were too great a luxury, were it not that, without its aid, yon weary woman could not finish that dainty piece of work, for which she hopes on the morrow to obtain pittance sufficient to sustain two sad lives a little longer in a world of misery.

On the straw by the flickering fire is stretched the slight form of a dying boy. The years of happy children are reckoned by Summers: four Winters might have passed over the head of this child of the poor-this only son of a widowed mother. Hunger and cold had made sad havoc in that childish face, and consumption had wasted the infant form, and the weary look of one old in sorrow was stamped upon the youthful features. He had lain long in troubled sleep, moaning, as if even in dreams he were fighting the cares of life anew. But now the lids slowly rise from those blue eyes, and a feeble voice cries, in imploring accents, "Dear mother, I am very hungry." The mother pauses-tears blind her eyes. If her idolised child could but have nourishing food and cordials, he might revive, and with returning

strength resist the stern destroyer. But she knows, and is wild with anguish at the thought, that she has nothing, and can procure nothing, till she receives the scanty reward for the article on which she must toil all the weary night. She has laboured long, but, ah, how willingly would she coin her heart's blood, as she meets the glance of those wishful eyes! But she tries to smile.

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"Willy," she says, "to-morrow I shall have money; bright, beautiful money, and you shall not be hungry then. To-morrow, dear Willy, only to-morrow," and she tries to smile again. Then Willy repeats hopefully To-morrow," and closing his eyes again, wonders if the Father in heaven heard him when he prayed that morning, "Give us this day our daily bread." To-morrow, how distant it seems to the hungry child. And the wind sobbed and moaned and came more gently in at the broken panes.

Then, after a while, when the boy seemed to sleep again, the mother paused in her weary work, and mourned with heavy sighs, and groans of mortal anguish; and the wind caught them, and hurrying away, left them at the window of a noble house. The rich sleeper within started and woke, and thought it was a strange night, and the wind had a very uncomfortable sound. In the morning he would see to those shutters, and stop their dismal creaking. "Why, it made one think of-" but he had buried his head beneath the luxurious coverlet and forgotten all. And the mother wept on till her watchful ear caught the restless motion of her child, and then the wishful words, "Is it to-morrow yet, mother?"

She clasped him in her trembling arms, but spoke not. Then the child seemed troubled, and the spirit wandered. Strange, unmeaning words burst from his lips; but ever and anon he lisped "To-morrow!" sometimes inquiringly, then hopefully, then mournfully. But this was soon over. The little form grew quiet, and the mother, looking by that dim light, saw the beautiful spirit so glorious in the large eyes, that she knew it was ready to take flight. There was a smile of recognition about the mouth, a world of love in the eyes, a whispered "To-morrow, dear mother!" and death opened the casket, while God reclaimed the jewel.

The solemn bells with brazen tongues tolled far and near the requiem of the midnight hour, and Willy's "to-morrow had begun. The wind sobbed itself to rest with low wailings, while in that lonely room knelt a a stricken form, striving to think, mid the tumultuous heavings of its bitter woe, of the Good Shepherd who now carried another lamb in His bosom to the " green pastures, " and "beside the still waters," where he should hunger no more, neither thirst any more, and of that angel Willy, whose never ending "to-morrow" had dawned so gloriously in the land."

"better

PORTRAIT GALLERY.

THE PRINCE AND THE SCHOLAR,

PRINCE ALBERT-SKETCHED BY AN AMERICAN ARTIST.

Prince Albert is personally not only one of the least objectionable, but without question the most accomplished specimen of German importation which England has seen. We have already dwelt on the fine qualities of his moral nature, and that variety of attainments which is the result of his intellectual aspiration. As a husband, father, citizen, and philanthropist he certainly stands at the head of all foreign-born, and furnishes an example worthy of the imitation of even the best native-born Britons. He is now thirty-six, and has grown of late more fat and grave than when he came to England. Although carefully guarding himself against that vacuity of mind produced by court idleness, by constant literary and

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artistic occupation, and severe attention to the education of his children, and against that obesity of body which is another of its accompaniments, by frequent out-door exercise and coquetry with agricultural pursuits, yet the intellectual occupation is not sufficiently intensified by that peculiar nerve-straining eargerness which stirs the brain of the professional and business man, and the physical exercise is too much neutralized, not by intemperate, but high living, and a certain delicate proclivity towards epicureanism, to crystalize on his features that peculiar mental buoyancy which, however much subdued by the predominance of the phlegmatic element in his constitution, yet gave him on his first appearance in England a certain intellectual glow perceptible in most German youths fresh from Bonn and Heidelberg. This, however, soon collapses into a rather berry heaviness, where the intellectuality springs more from outward influences than from inward purpose of the mind. Albert's intellectual glow has vanished, though his intellectual vitality has not. His countenance has become rather heavy, his eyes have lost their German fullsouledness, his hair almost wholly-fled; and, certainly, in his present form, he rather conveys to our mind the idea of one of those highly-cultivated, but rather thin-brained gentleman of high breeding and much leisure, with whom the capitals and fashionable country towns of Europe abound, rather than that of a happy and contented consort of the Queen of England. It is but just to the Prince to say that this rather joyless heaviness of appearance proceeds from a certain consciousness of inferiority of position, and somewhat of an affected modesty which grows out of it. It is only when he smiles that his face assumes a genial expression of refined jollity, with somewhat of the flavour of the highest mark of German wines about it. But when in repose there is a certain lassitude of attitude and inertness of expression about him which is too unnatural in one of his highly-cultivated condition of mind not to be traceable to the very natural and painful suffering he feels in being deprived of all opportunity of obtaining that he most covets-influence upon his fellowmen, strong practical influence and prestige. He always looks to us as if to say "With all this pomp of station and rank I am but a martyr. Of my best points the world knows and can know nought." Such feelings, if harboured for years, always send their reflection to the features, like physiognomical traitors, the pressure within of higher aspirations. Let us add that Prince Albert bears this deprivation of what is given to other men with such meek and gentle resignation as to inspire the deepest interest and regret for his anomalous lot. And he exhibits such an unwavering regard for the feelings of those around him, and is so full of kindness of heart and generous sympathy with all those who are poor and suffer, whether they appeal in the tattered garb of the beggar or the more moving form of the struggling artist, and he possesses, in addition to this elevation of soul and goodness of heart, so many various natural and acquired attainments, that we cannot close our picture without offering a tribute of respect to the many admirable qualities which entitle Prince Albert, as the range of mankind runs, to be considered and esteemed as an accomplished, highly-respectable, and good man.

A MORAL SKETCH-HAZLITT, DESCRIBED BY DE QUINCY.

Whatever is-so much I conceive to have been a fundamental lemma for Hazlitt-is wrong. So much he thought it safe to postulate. How it was wrong might require an impracticable investigation. You might fail for a century to discover; but that it was wrong he nailed down as a point of faith that could stand out against all counter-presumptions from argument, or counter-evidences from experience. A friend of his—it was a friend wishing to love him, and admiring him almost to extravagance,

who told me, in illustration of the dark sinister gloom which sat for ever upon Hazlitt's countenance and gestures, that involuntarily, when Hazlitt put his hand within his waistcoat (as a mere unconscious trick of habit) he himself felt a sudden recoil of fear, as from one who was searching for a hidden dagger. Like "a Moor of Malabar," as described in the Fairie Queen, at intervals, Hazlitt threw up his angry eyes and dark locks as if wishing to affront the sun, or to search the air for hostility. And the same friend on another occasion described the sort of feudal fidelity to his belligerant duties, which in company seemed to animate Hazlitt, as though he were mounting guard on all the citadels of malignity under some sacramentum militaire by the following trait-that if it had happened to Hazlitt to be called out of the room, or to be withdrawn for a moment from the current of the general conversation by a fit of abstraction, or by a private whisper to himself from some person sitting at his elbow, always on resuming his place as a party to what might be called the public business of the company, he looked round him with a mixed air of suspicion and defiance, such as seemed to challenge every body by some stern abjuration into revealing whether during his own absence or inattention, anything had been said demanding condign punishment at his hands. "Has any man uttered or presumed to insinuate," he seemed to insist upon knowing" during this interregnum, things that I ought to proceed against as treasonable to the interests which I defend?" had the unresisting irritability of Rousseau, but in a nobler shape, for Rousseau transfigured every possible act or design of his acquaintances into some personal relation to himself. The vile act was obviously meant, as a child could understand to injure the person of Rousseau, or his interests, or his reputation. It was meant to wound his feelings, or to misrepresent his acts, calumniously or secretly to supplant his footing. But, on the contrary, Hazlitt viewed all personal affronts, or casual slights towards himself, as tending to something more general, and masquing under a pretended horror of Hazlitt the author, a real hatred deeper than it was always safe to avow for those social interests which he was reputed to defend. 'It was not Hazlitt whom the wretches struck at, no, no; it was democracy, or it was freedom, or it was Napoleon, whose shadow they saw in the rear of Hazlitt and Napoleon, not for anything in him that might be really bad, but in revenge of that consuming wrath against the thrones of Christendom for which (said Hazlitt) let us glorify his name eternally."

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Yet Hazlitt, like other men, and perhaps with more bitterness than other men, sought for love and for intervals of rest, in which all anger might sleep, and enmity might be laid aside, like a travelling dress after tumultuous journeys

"Though the sea horse on the ocean,

Own no dear domestic cave;

Yet he slumbers without motion,
On the still and halcyon wave.

If on windy days the raven,
Gambol like a dancing skiff;
Not the less he loves his haven
On the bosom of a cliff.

If almost with eagle pinion

O'er the Alps the chamois roam;
Yet he has some small dominion,

Which, no doubt, he calls his home."

But Hazlitt, restless as the sea-horse, as the raven, as the chamois, found not their respites from storm; he sought, but sought in vain. Domicile he had not, round whose hearth his affections might gather; rest he had not for the sole of his burning foot. One chance of regaining some peace,

or a chance that he trusted for a time was torn from him at the moment of gathering its blossoms. He had been divorced from his wife, not by the law of England, which would have argued criminality in her, but by Scottish law satisfied with some proof of frailty in himself. Subsequently, he became deeply fascinated by a young woman in no very elevated rank, for she held some domestic office of superintendence in a boarding-house kept by her father, but of interesting person, and endowed with strong intellectual sensibilities. She had encouraged Hazlitt; had gratified him by reading his works with intelligent sympathy; and, under what form of duplicity it is hard to say, had partly engaged her faith to Hazlitt as his future wife, whilst secretly she was holding a correspondence, too tender to be misinterpreted, with a gentleman resident in the same establishment. Suspicions were put aside for a time, but they returned and gathered too thickly for Hazlitt's penetration to cheat itself any longer. Once and for ever he resolved to satisfy himself. On a Sunday, fatal to him and his farewell hopes of domestic happiness, he had reason to believe that she whom he now loved to excess had made some appointment out-of-doors with his rival. It was in London; and through the crowds of London Hazlitt followed her steps to the rendezvous. Fancying herself lost in the multitude that streamed through Lincoln's-inn-Fields, the treacherous young woman met her more favoured lover without alarm, and betrayed too clearly for any further deception the state of her affections by the tenderness of her manner. There went out the last light that threw a guiding ray over the storm-vexed course of Hazlitt. He was too much in earnest, and he had witnessed too much to be deceived or appeased. "I whistled her down the wind," was his own account of the catastrophe; but in doing so he had seared his own heart-strings entangled with her "jesses." Neither did he, as others would have done, seek to disguise his misfortune. On the contrary, he cared not for the ridicule attached to such a situation amongst the unfeeling, the wrench within had been too profound to leave room for sensibility to the sneers outside. A fast friend of his at that time, and one who never ceased to be his apologist, described him to me as having become absolutely maniacal during the first pressure of his affliction. He went about proclaiming the case, and insisting on its details to every stranger that would listen. He even published the whole story to the world, in his "Modern Pygmalion." And people generally, who could not be aware of his feelings, or the way in which this treachery acted upon his mind as a ratification of all other treacheries and wrongs that he had suffered through life, laughed at him, or expressed disgust for him as too coarsely indelicate in making such disclosures. But there was no indelicacy in such an act of confidence growing as it did out of his lacerated heart. It was an explosion of frenzy. He threw out his clamorous anguish to the clouds, and to the winds, and to the air; caring not who might listen, who might sympathize, or who might sneer. Pity was no demand of his; laughter was no wrong: the sole necessity for him was to empty his over-burdened spirit.*

HUMAN DISCOVERY AND REVEALED TRUTH. Though the Bible is not a revelation of science, it may be expected to be free from error, and to contain, under reserved and simple language, much concealed wisdom, and turns of expression which harmonise with natural facts, known perfectly to God, but not known to those for whom at first the revelation was designed.

This expectation is just; and in both respects the Bible presents a striking contrast to the sacred books of heathen nations.

* What an affecting sketch of the moral wanderings of one of the finest minds the nineteenth century. How true is it, that, Religion alone, is the sheet-anchor of the soul.-Editor.