suppressing the hilarity of the gay, and dignifies the timidity of the young without removing its winning grace. Female manner, itself, is of all things the most indescribable, and it would be vain to attempt a minute description of an influence so vanishing and rare upon its thousand changes. There is a nameless something, however, running through female manner-found wherever it is delicate and lovelysomething that is not reserve nor coyness, but is like a soft shadow in a picture, or a mist upon still water, or a half transparent drapery upon a figure of grace-something, I know not what, which breathes through every motion and sentiment of its possessor, and without which, to a refined taste, there can be no loveliness and no delicacyand this, vanishing and rare and indescribable as it is, is the invariable gift of religion-the result, I had almost said the test, of its inward influence. It flits through the expression of the face like a shadow, and comes at times over the brightness of the eye, and affects without checking every change of color or motion. It is not delicacy but a phantasm of something like it that is purer; it is not softness, or cheerfulness, or sweet temper, but a refinement of all these an indefinable essence of a grace as lovely as it is nameless. How many women have I seen, who, but for the want of this single quality, were among the brightest and best of their sex! How many, who, possessed of beauty and talent and every polite accomplishment, passed on unadmired, no one could tell, though every one felt, why— denied the meed which others, far less beautiful and talented and accomplished than themselves, were winning, and totally unsonscious of a deficiency which was too subtle to be explained, and which, when nature has denied it, religion alone can supply!

And yet this is but its outward show. Its effect upon the character is far more important, and of a far severer beauty. The heart of woman seems the natural home for religion. From the even and

secluded nature of her pursuits there is much less to defile its native temple in the soul, and a readier openness to its entering light. It has a peculiar affinity with every quality that is desirable in her character. It is infused like a bright color into all her native virtues; and her powers of pleasing as well as of usefulness are enhanced incomparably. That unwearied patience, which makes sickness almost a pleasure with its tender assiduities-that meek submission to self-denial and want-that strange tenacity of affection that holds on through all sorrow, and all adversity, and grows only brighter with trial that up-bearing, cheerful, elastic temper, which, in joy and sorrow is alike ready to contribute to the comfort of those to whom it owes love and duty, and to whom it is as essential and welcome as the daily and blessed light-all these religion deepens and exalts and purifies. There is, besides, a kind of fervor of character which alone can be given by this principle-an enthusiasm that is not ani

mal spirit or imagination, but which, looking on the object of its love and their linked interests as bearing upon an immortal destiny, and treasuring up every affection as a seed that is to expand and blossom hereafter, invests it with a dignity that involves every feeling and thought, and gives every token and impulse of tenderness an earnest truth, which nothing merely of this world can equal or resemble. This is much to owe to a single principle. But religion enters still deeper into the lot of woman. There are periods of change and contrast peculiar to her sex, and over the operation of which she has no control, which try her character severely, and for the favorable result of which there is no certain reliance but in religion. Educated, if in the fashionable classes of society, upon principles which nourish to its utmost growth the strong love of admiration, there comes a time, and that early in life, when she must abandon it. Living almost exclusively for pleasure while her character is forming, and, if beautiful, used to a devotion from those about her which is like the anticipation of magic to her wants, there comes a time when she must forget it suddenly and wholly, for duties which cannot be disregarded or put by. Entering upon marriage with visions of romance in her eye, and a belief in the undying delicacy and unwasting fervor of the love that won her-feelings not the less in the heart that they are hidden and unexpressed-she finds earlier or later that her own affections are both finer and deeper, and that what was the very life of her heart, was but the holiday idleness-the way-side accident of his. Add to this the most trying circumstance of all-one that is surprisingly forgotten in the usual estimate of female allotment— the committing utterly and irremediably to another the whole treasure of her worldly happiness, and standing aside without the influence of a breath upon its destiny-abiding the issue, it may be of rashness or incompetency, it may be of desperation-and this without the relief of active occupation that makes it a comparative happiness to himwithout anything but the bitter weed of patience to allay the mordent tooth of a passive anxiety. These are things that sweep like a whirlwind the channel of a woman's life. There is nothing in her habits or education which prepares her for their violence. What is to ensure her that the stream will return to its wonted flow? What is there that is born of fashion, or amusement, or even enthusiasm, that will govern the broken courses, and lead back the disturbed waters of feeling. What is to prevent it from settling into stagnant apathy, or wasting itself among weeds and darkness? I answer-nothing but the principle of which I have spoken--nothing but the elevating, tranquillizing, strong-hearted spirit of Religion!

There are other influences emanating from religion, no less worthy of mention. But I have said enough to suggest them to your mind, and I will leave them to your own profitable musings. I should like

to ramble with you over its thousand topics-to talk of the diminishing influence of its high attainments upon the poor pursuits of the world, and the consequent easy practice of the virtues-to tell you how it passes, like a silver nerve, beautiful but strong, through the whole machinery of life, staying the leaning weaknesses of our nature and shining brighter amid the rust of care-and I should love to go back with you to our early days, and trace the effect of its comprehensive morality, and recal the dignifying influence of its impressive and sublime mysteries. We should pass thus a pleasant, and, I trust, not unprofitable hour; but there is a limit to all things, and there must be a limit to this.

I AM THERE.

THEY sit not all alone around

The dear remembered hearth,

Where our glad childhood's earliest sound
Went forth upon the voice of mirth;
Though far, a wanderer from that ring,
My name no gladsome lips may share,
Love yet can touch a secret spring-
A thought and I am there.

They go not forth alone who stood
Around my flowery way,

When flood, and vale, and hill, and wood,

Responded to our noisy play;

For every one has written spells

Upon the lonely heart-and where
One of those fond companions dwells,
I think-and I am there.

They go not up alone to meet

The hallowed Sabbath morn ;—
The sound of their delightful feet
Is ever o'er my memory borne ;
And, when my fickle spirit rose

First on the breath of ardent prayer-
Though seas and nations interpose-
Each Sabbath I am there.

They sleep not all alone, who sleep
Where all our loved ones rest;
No oftener do the dewdrops weep
Upon the earth above the breast

super

ANY one who is at all conversant with seamen, knows that stition forms a striking feature in the character of that numerous and useful class. Men of iron frames and nerves of proof, who shrink

not

"When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests bow,"

are known to give credence to such tales of supernatural horror as 'the Flying Dutchman' and others that have not half the claims of that romantic legend upon the imagination. Have you been upon the ocean on a starlight night, with a few clouds hurrying along the sky, dark and swiftly, and the sea rough, but black as ink, and fathomless? On such a night, have you marked a group by the vessel's side, earnestly attentive to some tarry veteran, as with that low and almost whispered tone that is in such admirable keeping with the subject, and which seems to imply a belief in the old proverb, that " a certain character" is always nearest when we are talking of him, and with that accent and look of implicit belief in what he is saying which gives the supernatural its climax of effect, he doles forth the experience of some brother of the craft in nautical demonology? And if you became interested in the story, as the contagious influence of the scene and its associations will surely make you, and caught the sighing of the wind, as it traversed the melancholy waste; and the fitful song of the look-out in the top as it swelled and died on the breeze, like the accompaniment of a spirit of the air, you have felt most powerfully, despite your skepticism, the cold fingers of

superstition creeping upon your heart. Though your countenance
may have worn the forced smile of incredulity, my life on it, you did
not shake off that icy grasp so easily. Your dreams, for a night, at
least, were of chimeras dire; and that mysterious tone and melan-
choly song have haunted you since. It would seem, that, removed
from the haunted precincts of the churchyard, the abbey and desert-
ed castle" her ancient soli ary reign"-superstition would not stop
with the shore, nor seek ner prey upon the solitude of the ocean.
But she "can call spirits from the vasty deep," and the dead are
strewed upon its bottom like pebbles. But were it not so, and were
its sands sown with pearls instead of corpses, disdaining the natu-
ral law of associations she could call up a creation of non-descript
monsters, like the incongruous visions of an incubus, or the hideous
abominations of Hindoo worship. Such, generally, is the character
of nautical superstition-wild as the domain over which it broods,
unsystematised as the beings whom it rules with despotic power.
The demonology of the landsman seldom seeks any other spirits
from the shades, than those of departed men.
Ón the wave,
all fear of them vanishes, and the spirits, which even ghosts are said to
dread, bear immediate rule. And why? There rise no monuments
on the watery plain to tell," Hic jacet," or to tether the spirit that
has flown. Crime leaves no record there but in the living hell within
the bosoms of its authors. The waves mourn, and sweep over the
pirate's bloody track, and who shall point to the spot where the deed
was done?

"Man marks the earth with ruin: his control
Stops with the shore,"

nor does there exist upon the wide blue sea, one solitary memento, to give to any act of his, whether good or ill, a local habitation. But the ocean-the glorious ocean, is full of poetry; and poetry and superstition are gathered from the same field, by the same minister, Imagination. The materials for each are the same, and take their shape and color after entering the mind, like the different modifications which light undergoes in eyes of different constructions; forming, on the retina of one, a confused and incongruous spectrum, and of another, a beautiful and faithful copy of all the objects of vision. Whether the fearful beauties of the deep, its flashing waters, and its clouds that brush the firmament like the sweep of mighty wings kindle in the soul the extatic dreams of poesy, or the living horrors and grovelling fears of superstition, depends altogether upon the character of the mind, and the light which has been shed upon it by education.

Once, poetry and superstition were nearly synonymous, and exerted a united influence upon the minds of men. Witness the fictions of