young persons, neither in themselves unamiable, doing infinite injury to each other, by too much assimilation in propensities that required a counterbalance.

The sense of this evil tendency has driven thousands into solitude: better taught of their danger than of their duty, they have fled when they should have fought, and sheltered themselves in the cloister from a struggle they ought to have maintained. And with us, I believe, an unsocial and repulsive temper is not seldom the offspring of a similar perception; while the fault has been our own, in abstracting only bitterness from a root that bears alike the honey and the gall. An unsocial temper is the last thing I should advise you to cultivate on your entering into life: such a disposition is most likely to be an unhappy, and certain to be a proud one. The independency of others and sufficiency to itself which such a spirit assumes, if it be affected, is usually attended with irritability and secret discontent; because while it affects indifference to others, it is secretly mortified that the world takes it at its word, and leaves it to its loneliness--if it be real, its accompaniments are self-preference, high-mindedness, and contempt. You had better begin the world with too good an opinion of mankind than otherwise it will make your disposition simple, open, and confiding; and the experience that sets you right, though it be sometimes painful, will bring with it neither shame nor self-reproach. At the same time there is an immense deal of good to be learned, and evil to be avoided, by discrimination of character and the exercise of judgment and good sense, not in the choice of your associates only, but in the manner of your intercourse with those whom it does not rest with you to seek or to avoid. On this I have many things to say to you-as it regards those who are above you and below you, as well as those whom you meet on equal terms. But as a wide and general rule, I would advise you, that though in the mass you know men to be evil, in an individual you have no right to suspect evil till you see

it, consequently no right to despise or repel any body till you know for what. Nothing is to me more offensive than the distance and incivility with which many young people always meet strangers-explained by themselves to be because they do not know if they shall like them. It might be as well to know some reason why they should not like them, before they refuse them the attention courtesy requires, and simple benevolence would suggest. You have learned as an axiom in your childhood, written from the top to the bottom of your copy books, that men are deceitful-and you thence conclude it safest to begin with trusting nobody till you know them. If by trusting you mean confiding any material interest to their keeping, that you would scarcely be induced to do to a stranger-but if you mean that unsuspicious trust which expects good will and feels it, till it has reason to do otherwise, I can by no means agree with you. You would be like the knight-errants of old, who wandered about full-armed in time of peace, and couched their lance at every harmless traveller they met. Supposing there is in the nature of man such portion of selfishness as induces us to exercise deception on each other when we can serve our own purposes by doing so; yet, if you consider how few persons can get any thing by deceiving you, and how few will take the trouble of deceiving you for nothing, I think you may venture, at least till you are of more consequence in the world, to indulge that unsuspicious openness, so beauti ful and natural in youth, that takes for good what seems good, and kindly receives whatever seems kindly meant. You may deceive yourself, it is true-and it may be doubted whether the greater part of the deception we complain of having suffered at the hand of others, be not of our own working. If I present to you a silver coin and you choose to think it gold, the fault is yours, not mine, nor does it follow that my silver was alloy. If you think that every one who evinces pleasure in your society, would of course devote their whole lives to you

-that every one who commends you, takes you for a perfect being in whom they can never after find a fault -that all who in the common intercourse of society show a disposition to please and serve you in small matters, will on any great occasion sacrifice their own desires to yours, you will be deceived, most probably— but you have not a right to charge them with the deception-they might be honest, nor wish to pass their coin for more than it was worth-but you chose to take it at an ideal value, and so deceived yourself. Would you thence conclude that congenial society, or honest commendation, or trifling services, are things of no value? Receive it as established truth, that man is a self-indulgent, self-preferring creature, from whom great sacrifices are not to be expected-they will occur sometimes, the beautiful eccentricities of his accustomed course, to be admired, but not counted on: thus you will not subject yourself to unreasonable disappointments. But encourage meantime the belief, I am persuaded not a false one, that the beings surrounding you, and living in such varied connexion with yourself, all peculiar ties apart, do in general mean you well, would rather do you good than harm, and have more pleasure in pleasing than in paining you. The disproof of this that you may have to suffer in the malice, and mischief, and injustice of a few, will be an easy purchase of the confidence, kindness, and urbanity with which you will live amongst them.

HYMNS AND POETICAL RECREATIONS.

"When thy father and mother forsake thee, then the Lord shall take

thee up."

YES, and they may forsake—the friends of youth
Who long have proved their fondness and their truth;
The mother-who has watched thine infant sleep,

Smiled when thou smiledst, and wept to see thee weep

She, who in grief for thee forbore to grieve,
And e'en had courted death, that thou might live:
The father-who had long, with tender pride,
Nourished the plant that blossomed at his side;
Witnessed the "putting forth thy leaves"-and then
Taught thee to cling around the parent stem;
Who hailed thy infant smiles, and o'er thy cares
Scattered the dew-drops of a parent's tears;
The friend-on whom thy soul had oft reposed,
When the dark shades of sorrow round thee closed,
Who shared thy joys, and e'en to bring relief,
Would take the bitterness of all thy grief;
Yes; these may all forsake-a wanderer now,
Roaming with "outcast" stamped upon thy brow,
Thy path in bitterness of soul tread o'er-
Thy last hope wrecked on disappointment's shore;
Then "shall He take thee up"-and 'mid thy woe,
The "mantle of his love around thee throw;"
Guide all thy steps through life's bewildering road,
Teach thee to cry, "My Father and my God"-
Support thee 'mid the sorrows of the way-
His word thy solace, and his arm thy stay;

Tell thee thy sins are pardoned-that the tree

Which stood on Calvary's mount, was reared for thee-
That there the purchase of thy life was paid,
That there atonement for thy guilt was made;
And when the "conflict of the way" shall cease,

His hand shall dry thy tears, and thou shalt rest in peace.

O THAT my God, the God of peace, would speak
Peace to my spirit, as with wondering gaze,

And often with a faith perplexed and weak,
I look upon this world's intricate maze.

It is not here that I can comprehend
The way of God, too little understood,
Where evils so mysteriously blend

With all Jehovah once pronounced good.

Scarcely arises my imperfect cry,

But thou art bending from thy lofty throne; Art pleased to manifest thy presence nigh, Breathing a peace which is indeed thine own.

H. N.

O that my soul more truly rendered thee
The glory due to thy most holy name,
Which thou art ever beaming down on me,
In truth and love unchangeably the same.

As days, and years, and passing seasons roll,
Still, O my God, let thy sweet peace be mine;
And may thy servant, body, spirit, soul,

Devotedly in love and truth be thine.

VERITA.

THE AZALEA AND THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.

A LILY, the sweetest, the fairest, the purest,

Was modestly drooping one day o'er its bed-
No beam of the morning had kissed its pale cheek,
Or left on its brightness one faint blush of red.

No rude wind had blown o'er its low sheltered dwelling,
Nor passenger slackened his step for its sake-
No summer-bee found it, and nothing had touched,

Save the pure, pearly dew-drop that hung on its cheek.

It chanced that this Lily beheld o'er its head,

A flower of scarlet so brilliant, so gay

It seemed that the sunbeam that kissed it was cold,
Compared with the flush of the cheek where it lay.

To the full beam of mid-day it opened its flowers,
Nor sought in the foliage, or shelter, or shade;
Each gay gilded insect of summer was there,

And blithe on its branches the butterfly played.

The pride of the garden, the boast of the bower,
In garments of gladness so brilliantly dressed;
Full many a passenger loitered before it,

And rifled a flower to place on his breast.

The Lily beheld it, and whispered "Fair Flower,
"It grieves me to see thee thus gaily arrayed;
"Delighting to flourish where all may behold thee
"In beauty so proudly, so boldly displayed.

"So high, so unsheltered, so brilliantly clad,
"For ever exposed to the passenger's gaze—
"There comes not an eye but it looks on thy flowers,
"There comes not a lip but it speaks of thy praise."