HERE was, about thirty years ago, a very

beautiful child. Everybody said of her, "How beautiful she looks!" And she did look very beautiful. At school the other girls were struck with her beauty. She was beautiful all over, and had beautiful hair, beautiful eyes, a beautiful face and figure; her very feet were beautiful. But although the loving Christ had made this beauty, the beautiful girl would not travel on the same line with Christ's love. She turned aside on a line of her own. She would go where pride and vanity and scorn of others were. As she grew up into womanhood, there grew up in her heart pride in her own beauty. She said to herself, "I am more beautiful than Jane, or Mary, or Margaret by my side." She ceased to love Jane and Mary and Margaret. She did not care to remember that Christ might love them dearly. She cared neither for Christ nor them. She cared only for herself. It was herself she admired and worshipped. As she looked at herself in the glass, she said, "I am more beautiful than my sister, more beautiful than ever my mother was." As she said

ness.

such things, love for her sisters and her mother took flight and left her heart. She could no longer love mother, sisters, or school companions. The poor, vain, empty soul of her loved only herself. Her beauty was her snare, and took her away, first from Christ, and then from human love. But then came God's wrath upon her wickedShe became a fine lady, had a fine house, a coach, many servants, had the same hair and eyes, the same face and figure. But somehow the beauty had all departed. She was no longer beautiful. Mary, Jane, and Margaret, and all her sisters, had grown up to be very beautiful; there was a quiet harvest-evening-like beauty still resting on the face of her mother; but nobody thought the proud daughter beautiful. People spoke of her as haughty, unfeeling, and hard, but never more as beautiful. The path she chose to travel on seemed good to herself; but the end of it was death. For want of a loving heart in it, her beauty had died. And as for admiration or love, she had neither the one nor the other, from man or woman, from angel or God.

HERE are many English birds which, we doubt not, are unknown to most of our readers, but they all know the sparrow. It is the commonest and tamest of English birds. Mr. Knapp gives the following account of this bird: "The natural tendency that the sparrow has to increase will often enable one pair of birds to bring up fourteen or more young ones in the season. With peculiar perseverance and boldness they forage and provide for themselves and their offspring; will filch grain from the trough

of a pig, or contend for its food with the gigantic turkey; and if scared away, their fears are those of a moment, as they quickly return to their plunder; and they roost protected from all injuries of weather. I have called them plunderers, and they are so; they are benefactors, likewise, seeming to be appointed by nature as one of the agents for keeping from undue increase another race of creatures. In spring and the early part of summer, before the corn becomes ripe, they live on insects, and their constantly-increas

ing families require an increasing supply of food. We see them every minute of the day in continual progress, flying from the nest for a supply, and returning, on rapid wing, with a grub or a caterpillar, and the number captured by them in the course of these travels is very great, keeping under the increase of these insects, and thus making ample restitution for their plunderings and thefts. When the insect race becomes scarce, the corn and seeds of various kinds are ready; their appetite changes, and they feed on these with undiminished enjoyment.

Birds are capable of showing much affection. The following letter appeared in one of the London newspapers a month ago, written by a clergyman, concerning the affection of sparrows :

"The rectory of Christ Church, in the island of Barbados, West Indies, where I resided, is prettily situated amidst trees, on a hill overlooking a fishing village, where the waters of the sea, on a clear summer day, are of all colours of green, and where the tropical heat is softened down by a constant land breeze. This is just the abode suited to birds, and consequently the neighbourhood abounds in sparrows. Being alone at the time, many of the sparrows soon struck up an acquaintance with me, and were among the first to make their appearance in the most unceremonious manner at the breakfast table. One of them, however, more familiar than the rest, seemed determined that I should adopt it as a pet. By degrees I induced it to pick bread crumbs out of my hand. Our acquaintance gradually matured into unsuspecting friendship, and ended at last in positive love, as the sequel will show. "Lengthened time rolled on, and every day the sparrow was my constant companion. If I was in my study, it was there. If I was reading in the drawing-room, it was perched on the tip of my boot. If I did not rise by daylight, it would come in at the window, left open purposely for its convenience, and

flutter upon my body, begging, as it were, that I would attend to its early wants. And more than this. I missed the bird for a while, and grieved, thinking that it had fallen a prey to some voracious cat, or to the gunshot of some wayfaring traveller. Every day I went to the accustomed window and called it by name (for I had given it the name of 'Dick'), but no Dick appeared. I persevered, however, in loudly calling for it, as it knew my voice well; and after an absence of some weeks, I one morning observed three sparrows flying directly towards me. I held out my hand as usual, and they alighted on the palm of it. To my agreeable surprise, there was Mr. or Mrs. Dick (I know not which) with two well-fledged olive-branches, which were handed over to me for adoption. This is not all. Mrs. Dick-for from her affection I shall assume it was the mother bird-resolved to build her nest another time nearer home, and repeatedly came to me with a straw in her beak, evidently hoping that I would be her assistant architect. Finding that I declined the task, she selected a rose-tree, which I could easily touch from my bed-room window, and there entwining three of the tallest branches, she built (as birds only can build) a beautiful nest. From this time she continued to commit her fledglings, as a matter of course, to my care.

"But here comes the climax. The time drew near for me to leave the West and to join my family in England, where I am now. It seemed as if my sparrow, by instinct, amounting almost to reason, suspected my movements. Perhaps there was something lonely and strange in the appearance of the rectory, the greater portion of the furniture having been removed; but be it what it may, Mrs. Dick, although she lived unfettered in the trees, and had the range of the atmosphere, would scarce quit my presence; and, mirabile dictu, on returning home one moonlight night, I found the loving bird

N page 41 we have the picture of a coastguardsman. What is a coastguardsman? says some little boy. Well, he is a person appointed to watch all ships which pass that part of the coast where he is stationed with a view of preventing any goods being landed which are liable to pay duty. In days gone by almost everything that was brought to England had to pay duty-that is to say, the owners of the ships had to pay a certain amount to the English government. And in those days many little ships used to try to land their cargoes in boats on some part of the coast where

there was no custom-house, and thus escape paying the import duties. But in our time there is scarcely anything pays duty except tea, tobacco, and spirits. Coastguardsmen are, however, to be seen on many parts of the coast. They are furnished with a very powerful glass, by which they can see vessels at a long distance; and if they see a vessel which they think is a smuggler, they report the fact to the captain of a coastguard ship, who follows it. Were it not for these coastguardsmen, no doubt spirits and tobacco would be landed on various parts of our coast without paying duty.

HE streets of London in midday impress a countryman with the idea that all mankind is come up to town, and all pushing and thronging the place where he happens to be. Go where he will, the restless, moving mass surrounds and bewilders him. One ruddy-faced swain from green fields and rural homes, when visiting London and riding on the top of an omnibus down Cheapside, became greatly excited, and several times pulled at the driver's collar, begging him to stop until the other carriages had passed by, or all his horses would be crushed, the 'bus smashed to pieces, and every one of the passengers killed. Another stepped into a draper's shop, saying to one of the assistants, "Is the Queen coming this way, or something important going to take place, that there are so many folks about?" And a third turned into Temple Court "until the crowd had gone past." A commercial city, numbering three million human beings, engaged in earnest, active life; some striving for bare existence;

others for moderate means; many to accumulate wealth, and all working at high pressure, does seem to thoughtful beholders like a huge seething caldron on the tempesttossed ocean.

Which is London ? is often asked. Is it about Westminster Hall, Charing Cross, the Strand, the Bank, the Post Office, Ludgate or Holborn Hill? The answer to this question would much depend on the person addressed. Politicians would say the Houses of Parliament; bondholders, Lombard Street; booksellers, Paternoster Row; the mayor and aldermen, the Mansion House; the lawless and reckless would include Newgate.

And certainly Newgate is one prominent feature of the great metropolis; without it there can be no true picture. We know the flattering artist would keep it in the shade, but it must be included; and my purpose is to turn aside from the noise of wheels, the dazzle of shops, the throng of the multitude, and talk with the silent inhabitants enclosed behind the huge dead walls of