a very butterfly playing in the sunshine, -all lost and stranded in stormy weather." Our grandmother had, in youthful years, before she married, been kind to a young girl distantly connected to her. Out of her own portion she has spared sufficient to enable this girl to marry, and proceed to Ceylon, where her husband was employed as superintendent of a coffee plantation. She died in her adopted country, after living there for eighteen years and never returning to England, or seeing her benefactress again. She had been the mother of one girl, who, marrying in Ceylon at the age of fifteen, also died, leaving a little girl, six years of age. Our grandmother kept up a regular correspondence with the husband of her cousin, who survived his wife many years. But so far from time effacing the remembrance of what she had done for his wife, Mr. Seaton suffered no opportunity to pass, that did not mark his desire to keep up the corre

spondence; costly presents of all kinds were being continually sent by him to LovelLeigh, and in the letters that passed between them, Mr. Seaton took every opportunity to engage Mrs. Lovel's interest for his little grand-daughter, who lost her father before she was fifteen.

Shortly after the date of the last paragraph quoted from my grandmother's journal, there is this entry:

"Received to-day from good Mr. Seaton a letter, advising us of the coming of a suite of drawing-room furniture, made of Calamanca wood. He is really too generous. I fancy from the description it will suit the octagon room, which I have always pleased myself by thinking should be the boudoir of my son's wife. Mr. Seaton talks of his declining health, and his anxiety about his grand-daughter, now seventeen years old. I think my dear Mr. Lovel must permit me to tell Mr. Seaton to be under no uneasiness about her; or

the rather, I will advise him to come to England with her. He says he shall be able to leave her a fortune of ten thousand pounds. Upon the interest of that they could live very well, and perhaps we may be able to furnish them with a house."

Four months after this we read as follows:

"My dear son, having lately shown symptoms of great weakness, partly the consequence of his rapid growth, and the long cold spring following a most severe winter, has been advised to take a sea voyage, by way of bracing his constitution. As we all of us naturally dreaded so great a separation, Mr. Lovel has hired a small yacht; in that Linton thinks to cruise round the coast of England, which his doctor pronounces as likely to answer the end he proposes; which, with the blessing of God, I pray for. He can turn his weakness into strength, if such be His good will.

"I had well-nigh wished myself a young

woman again, that I might have joined him, for the weather is now as genial as I ever experienced, and methinks a little straying from home has a mighty efficaciousness on the spirits. We that live at home are scarcely alive to the vast influence of this small island over the rest of the world. This sea-bound, densely-peopled land, so insignificant on the map, so infinite in its social relations-ubiquitous, for who can measure its shores or put a boundary to its possessions? -how we should love it! Next to being a Christian, I thank God I am an English woman, with a brave spirit to dare and do all that the Almighty may command and permit. Does this energy and life—so conspicuous in the English race-belong in a particular manner to islanders? It would be a good study to make out this theory from the history of other islands. Though my dear Mr. Lovel will have his answer ready:

"To the winds with your theory. If all

islanders are braver, more daring, more resolute than the inhabitants of continents, where are England's rivals? She ought to have many. Borneo, for instance, fifteen hundred miles in circumference, with fine rivers, iron, tin and loadstones in its mountains, and, what England has not, brilliant diamonds, and eatable birds' nests. But Borneo we will forego. Eight months of rain in the year would be quite sufficient to damp the most energetic race, though I believe the "Beaujus," as they call themselves, are upon the whole civilized people, compared with other savages. There is New Holland, New Zealand, Madagascar, one thousand miles long, and three hundred broad, spoken of by Pliny as Cernè, supposed to be the Menuthiasde of Ptolemy. Now this is an island with natural beauties and advantages that are generally scattered in units over other lands. Cascades rivalling Niagara, beauty of scenery that might belong to Italy, fertility of soil unknown in