that no constitutional disturbance seems to ensue, and yet it works effects that sooner or later become manifest in the individual, and through the community.

We accuse Drink of causing much disorder among us, and most truly. Its first action of rendering its victim unconscious, gives evil an immense advantage. In this state, men and women surrender without resistance, and sin on to any further extent, almost without suffering; but "Sensation Reading, true to its nature, conducts its votaries, wide awake and sentient, into mischief; with every variety, of mental torture, they are led from step to step, and, but too often, experience in reality, the exquisite miseries their imaginations are cultivated to enjoy. To make a stand against this species of intoxication, intellectual and moral, is an act of mercy to our generation, and the effort is worthy of our greatest philanthropists. Women, whose sex is peculiarly liable to fall under its sway, should deeply interest themselves to prevent its spread. It disgraces their intelligence in the eyes of men, and, therefore, every woman is concerned to remove it; it distracts females from their proper occupations, and, therefore, to every man it is of consequence to get rid of it.

As a means towards this end, it would be well to mark "Sensation Reading" "Dangerous." This is as necessary as the legal enactment compelling the druggist to put "Poison" on his deadly commodities; and it is needful for precisely similar reasons. Injurious reading, like its chemical representative, has no external indication of its nature understood by the unlearned; the skilful student must affix for them the name upon its surface. The tales running like wild-fire through our libraries and reading rooms, and issued by our fruitful press, ought to have their proper characters announced on their title pages. The gentle word, "sensation," may remain a generic term, but a numerous family should receive the true cognomen of "Intoxicating Reading," and should be taken with reservation; while it is earnestly recommended, that all who recognize the article in question should circulate information about it.

True education should embrace such training of mind as would rectify the abuses connected with cheap literature, and it is the absence of this that procures such an immense consumption of an adulterated kind. In order to interfere in some measure with its overflow, it is essential, that concurrently with its vitiating stream should run the corrective supply of good publications. The great utility of cheapening wholesome reading cannot be too much insisted on, for the same sum of money for which the bad can be bought, should be sufficient to purchase the good; and at one penny all that can make wise should be diffused, or the readers of publications at that price will be delivered over to the enemy. Every serial, then, having for its

object the benefit of this class, must come down to its range. Nor let it be thought that there is any loss in publishing at low rates, although it must be admitted that there is pecuniary risk. It is probable that none of the periodicals recognized as the organs of religious teachers or social reformers make money, but it is not their primary intention to do so; with them this object is quite secondary; their work has a nobler aim; and it is the glory of our day that many are willing to engage in it, on those terms. Already, they have done a great deal, and they will yet do more, for every fresh sheet they give to the wind is a help to the ark of our faith, which looks for victory over all error, through its own triumphant exaltation.

S. M.

A

pure life-purely run-
A crown of glory early won!

As she lay on her couch, so cold and white,
There beamed from her face a heavenly light.

The stainless spirit as it passed away,

Left its seal behind it in that bright ray

With flowers bestrewn-her cross on her breast-
She lay in a deep and glorified rest.

A pure life-purely run

Oh, Christ! Thou leddest such an one!
As we gave the dear form to mother-earth,

And pray'd that the soul in its heavenly birth

Might be met by white-rob'd angels and saints-
The winter day, pale, wan, and faint-

Burst into glory of sunshine and light,
And told of her spirit in regions bright.
Feb., 1864.

M. M. H.

XX. THE RECORD OF A VANISHED LIFE.

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It is the afternoon of a hot, full summer day. I am sitting in the garden arbour, my favourite retreat; the westering sun is slowly declining towards his setting. There is a languid and drowsy splendour in the still, rich hour, like the afternoon sleep sinking in soft, dusky shadow upon the warm, brown beauty of Cleopatra, as the heavy eyelids droop, while blood tinges the conscious cheek, and a half smile circles the red lips, she knowing dreamily through falling sleep that Antony is lying all agaze. It is far in the country. Behind my garden are no houses, except about a mile off, to the right, an old white farmhouse, with dark brown wooden beams. Close round the lonely farm cluster rolling woods, but straight away below my garden stretch the bare and billowy hills, which merge into wild down and moorland, until they swell up into high cliffs, round whose base frets and thunders the great sea.

How many,

The scene and place are well known to me. many times, since I first came to live in this village, and this cottage, have I sat in this arbour and gazed upon the dear familiar scene! The old look back: they live much in the past. If they look forward it is not to life, but beyond life. And in this arbour, where now I sit, an old and lonely man, wifeless and childless, I rest and muse through many a solitary hour, while the shadows of the past, the spectres of memory, rise around me, and flit before my dreaming eyes. It seems to me that I have lived very, very long. At times all memory grows shadowy and confused, a sort of conscious dream. I have a dim, far-off recollection of what I myself once was. It seems as if I remembered some one that once lived, but who has long been dead. The thoughts of the young are, and should be, active and full of purpose. They have time before them in which to shape glowing thought into clear, noble action. With the old it is different. They have no time before them-no action more to do. They are but sinking gently downwards towards the realms in which human thought and action ripen into full fruition. But their life is lived. They have neither time nor space in which to work out further purpose. Their bolt is shot, and they have but to mark calmly where it falls. Hence, the old sit often, as I do now, in dreaming reverie, in musing meditation. In a young man such idle contemplation would be waste, while to the old man it is but a sad enjoyment of his waning powers. Musing thus, I fancy that my name is sometimes called aloud by voices that have long been silent; a hand "that can be clasped no more," steals gently into mine; eyes that have long since ceased

to shine, flash brightly or gaze tenderly upon mine; but for a second only; for a brief, sweet second only. They vanish again into mystery, and darkness, and space. But they are there, somewhere I feel that they exist, and I know that I shall again behold them where we shall part no more, where the tears are wiped from all eyes, and where the weary are at rest. I am ready to go to them.

Soundless and still, like dancers before the eyes of a deaf man, the spectres flit and float. Old loves, old sorrows, former ambitions, former disappointments, once so keen and bitter, now mellowed by time and distance, and by fading life powers, whirl through my quiet brain in memory's phantom dance. Dreaming thus, this sunny afternoon, my promise to you, Herbert, rose into my mind. I had often told you that I would, some day, do what you had so often urged me to do, and jot down some hasty record of a life which must so soon cease to be. I can begin the task to-day. Once begun it must be pressed forward, for I may not have long to stay, and I would fain meet your wish ere I go hence and be no more seen. You, my dear nephew, who have been to me, since the death of my poor boy, almost as a son, you have a right to ask of me this labour of love. You have heard something of that part of my life which was passed before yours began; but it was a theme I did not always care to speak about, even to you, and your knowledge is disjointed and fragmentary. I can confess more freely, knowing that you will not read what my hand traces until that hand shall be stiff and cold. The record will, I know, interest you for my sake; but even apart from that, no sincere memorial of a human life can be without some value and some lesson. There was a something meant even by my life. This narrative may enable you to discern what it was. I have found it at times difficult to determine.

No single soldier, engaged in the heady struggle of his individual fighting, can see much more of the action than the smoke, and dust, and conflict around him. Perhaps no man can see and understand fully his own life. My life may, perchance, have been meant as a lesson for other lives: if so, this brief and hurried record may tend to the fulfilment of its object. Half in pain, half in pleasure, do I commence my task. I find it difficult to begin: I have to think back so far; to awaken feelings so long dead. Who, in his age, can relive in his childhood? How wide, how very wide, is the great gulf between !-a gulf filled, too, with so much that obstructs the view. It is only by glimpses and snatches that we can recall the vanished feelings of the long ago. I cannot do it as I would wish. I think, trying to bring back the first thoughts and feelings that I remember stirring within me. Vain. Oh, God! I cannot feel again how I felt when first my life was new in time!

I start, then, with a failure. I see that I must circumscribe my plan. Very brief must be my confession of a life which seems so long to me. I can do little more than suggest; you, Herbert, must read between the old man's lines.

There is a little picture of me, painted when I was four years old. Think, if you can, that that was the grey old uncle; and let the picture help the words, as I begin.

My father was a merchant, and at one time, a successful one. He made a great deal of money and lived in corresponding style. He did not advocate people living up to their means, but he fully believed that the future would yield him a large fortune, and thought himself justified in keeping up his position in society. He thought highly of business; both from an innate liking for the pursuit itself, and because it gave him wealth, power, and consequence. He despised, by comparison, all other pursuits, and had a special contempt for literature and art. He was somewhat hard and shallow of nature, but was gifted with a strong will. His affections were not strong; he was devoid of imagination, and required from his own mind no higher powers of intellect than those necessary for success in trading life. Success of the sort he desired, he attained; and he was as contented with the general scheme of the universe as men of his happy limitations usually are. His nerves were good, and his digestion excellent. Without being at all kind, he could hardly be called unkind. It was difficult to love and difficult to dislike him. He married, strange to say, an artist's daughter. My mother brought him money; brought him indeed a sum which, at the time he married, was considerable in his eyes. Although an artist's daughter, she had no artist feeling: the artist temperament lay dormant in her, to be transmitted to her unhappy son. The high gift, beautiful always, but so sad when its possessor is surrounded by all the powers and influences which war against the beautiful and noble, was the only possession she bequeathed to her elder child. She was a confirmed invalid, not unkindly, but peevish, weak alike in health and character. The marriage was not happy. There was nothing congenial in the character, and but little tolerance in the conduct of husband and wife; and without congeniality or tolerance, there can be no wedded happiness. There were incessant quarrels, leading at last, to almost complete estrangement. Both are long dead; and it is not for me to unveil their quarrels or to decide upon their disputes: enough, that they were unhappy, and their home miserable. It was a home without light or warmth, without love or intellect, and my childhood was full of bitter experiences and painful associations, the effects of which have lasted throughout my life. We never outlive wholly the effects of an unhappy home in childhood-we never quite outgrow the influences which saddened our early youth.