diant canopy; on either side rose in sublime magnificence mountain and hill. Warmed with her walk, Emily had thrown her bonnet back off her face; and leaning against a branch of the tree, which served as an arm to the rural sofa, was sunk in deep meditation. Mrs. Villaret, after gazing long in wondering silence on the works of her Redeemer's hands, took from her pocket a little hymn-book, which was her constant companion, and read aloud some verses, of which the following may be considered a pretty accurate translation:

Sweet the moment, when benignly
Jesus sets the prisoner free :
Sweet the season, when divinely
Smiles the Lord of life on me!

Sweet the hour, what time I hear him
Touch my spirit's slumbering strings!
Thousand, thousand thoughts endear him,
While the heavenly descant rings:
"Come, my ransom'd! Long I sought thee
'Mid the world's delusive maze:

With my pour'd-out soul I bought thee-
Fly, then, fly her fatal ways!

"In my Father's house are treasures,

Ever-during, ever-new:

In my joy, serener pleasures—

Pleasures, veil'd from mortal view.

“Come, then ; lo! thy sun's declining:

Clouds of crimson streak the west:
See! the last ray round thee's shining,
Welcome to thy Saviour's rest!"

"A favourite hymn of mine," said Mrs. Villaret, as she closed the book, and laid it on the seat beside her: and a deep pause ensued, as if they were each meditating on the words of consolation they had just heard. At length, Emily broke the silence;

"The songs of Zion sound sweetly in a pilgrim's ears; like the rush of waters to the hart heated in the chase. Here, our harps are often hung on the willows; and, feeling ourselves strangers in a strange land, we are glad to sit down and weep."

"Yes," replied Mrs. Villaret, "had we nothing more durable in prospect beyond the transitory things with which we are conversant, how dreary would our journey be! Surrounded as we are by every temporal blessing, and encircled with the rich varieties of nature, how comfortless and desolate would be our condition amidst all, had we not a hope to lean upon, which shall

endure not only when we ourselves have bid adieu to time, but when this earth which we inhabit, and those heavens which we now contemplate in their glory, shall have passed away?"

"Ah! this spot is fair, indeed," rejoined Emily with a sigh, as she looked around her: "but, as you observe, what would it be, could we cling only to its perishable loveliness. True, this is an attractive, but it is a fading, scene. Every bud that opens, every leaf that falls, speaks with a voice of warning :—

Arise, and depart, for this is not thy rest!' The blossom opens only to decay-the severed leaf is already withered, and dead. Such is man. He cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not."

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Truly," replied Mrs. Villaret; every thing we see is pregnant with instruction. The grass, for all flesh is as grass :' the trees, for as their foliage dies and is renewed, so do the generations of mankind replace each other that lake, for as, when agitated by a

tempest, wave on its bosom succeeds to wave, so must we remove for others; that river too, for

"How unremittingly its waters glide

Silent, but lapseful, to the boundless sea,
Like earthly years into eternity!"

these hills and mountains, all are monitory; for the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed,"

"I was just thinking," said Emily, after a pause," when you began to read, of the benignity of that hand which has been, I might almost say, so lavish of its bounties. to this favoured retreat. The island-poet has given us a description of Eden, which is in many respects not inappropriate to our beloved Switzerland; but more particularly to that recess from which we command the variegated prospect before us.

"Translations," she continued, "seldom do justice to their originals; and our language, is, perhaps, unequal to the expression of that combination of grace and energy, majesty and simplicity, which characterizes Milton. As you are an admirer of the great

Epic bard of modern times, I need offer you no apology for a quotation, which is at once so beautiful, and so applicable to this our second Eden:

"With mazy error under pendant shades
Ran waters, visiting each plant, and fed

Flowers worthy of Paradise, which nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain;
Both where the morning-sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierc'd shade
Embrown'd the noontide-bowers.

"Thus was this place

A happy rural seat of various view :

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm ;
Others whose fruit burnish'd with golden rhind

Hung amiable-"

"This," said she, interrupting her quotation, "we cannot boast. But that river," inclining her hand towards the Rhone, which appeared through a vista up the valley, "mingles not with the ocean, ere even this part of the description is exemplified.*

* At many places in the vicinity of the different embouchures of the Rhone, Marseilles in particular, oranges and lemons are found growing in abundance. At Nice, which is not very distant, they attain to great perfection,