with all her attendants and attributes, cut out in Spanish wood with infinite delicacy and art. Higher still was Jupiter, holding a court of the celestial bodies, his own august head touching the ceiling, while the lowest gods of all were just within my reach. On either side of the mantel-piece were deep recesses, which held on their ebony shelves specimens of every description of china, arranged in order, from the cumbrous old Plymouth crockery up to the most delicate porcelain, including works of art that our father would point out to us as matchless, one set in particular, of Sèvres, on every cup of which was an enamelled portrait worth fifty guineas, and the saucers were enriched with jewels. The teapots, ewers, and sugar basins were interlaced with bars of gold banded together with a jewel.

We admired while we wondered at the genius and expense bestowed on that which was useless. They were too costly and

fragile to be touched, yet bearing the form of service. This incongruity was of use, in preparing us for discords in most things, rousing within us the desire to extract melody or good under any combination. As yet we were unconscious of the necessity, for our lives had flowed with the noiseless calm of a broad and pleasant river, hitherto unruffled by the slightest breeze. Like the roses with which my sisters had laden themselves, we existed in sunshine and fragrance, and had neither tasted nor experienced the bitterness of neglect, or the pang of disappoint

ment.

As the zephyrs blew in and out of the casements, they sent the perfume of the roses in pleasant gushes through the room, and the soft low laughter of my whiterobed sisters was fitting music to accompany them. They decorated each other with the prettiest buds, until their faces peeped out from beneath the crimson

crown, flushed with the rosy shadow, and their own blushing happiness.

Pictures such as these engrave themselves even on the most childish mind, and are recalled in after years, as if it was the remembrance of some happy dream.

The quaint antique beauty of the room, the fair slender girls, rose laden, the profusion of flowers, their perfume, with summer sounds and air coming in at the windows, and a sort of golden hue of sunshine over all, awoke in my heart a sudden burst of pleasure. With such feelings is born simultaneously the desire to share this pure delight with others. I wondered if my sisters, older than I, had ever experienced this perception of beauty, opening also a fund of awakening consciousness that the world contained vast treasures of them, and the goodness of God to give us such pleasures, with the perception to enjoy them. My mind revelled in a sort of fantasy, and soared up to the kingdom

in which our mother dwelt, asking of my reason if she abode in lovelier scenes, or richer beauty, or was heaven only so much fairer than earth, in that we should there meet to part no more. Did she look down from unfading summer, and behold her children experiencing a moment of immortal happiness, to prepare them for partaking of it evermore with her? For the sensation of youth, health, and happiness, with the keen perception of good things, gives an elasticity and radiance to the heart, that takes it straight up to the throne of that Being "who has Truth for his Body, and Light for his Shadow." We taste what we may be, and in tasting refine our nature. How felicitous is that natural piety which experiences no sensation without an uplifting of the soul either in gratitude or praise, a piety that comforts because it is ever there, gaining strength from copious overflowings, a piety that is spontaneous, impulsive, prompted by the very richness of its spring!

Blessed with the gift of godliness, nothing passes unheeded. There is a carefulness in such characters not to displease, as there is the strong desire to please. In nothing do they dwell alone, but live in a state of brotherhood with all. Their ideas of life and its duties are not bound by a circle, but they rather consider the dominions of love and usefulness to be infinite as the sea, and their duties countless as the sand on the shore. Capable of every affection, they cannot understand the natures that are only interested in what centres in themselves.

"Greatness," my father taught us, "is natural to the soul of man. His upright stature should be token of the uplifting of his thoughts."

"Make your religion, my children," he would say, "the Pole-star to guide you over hills of difficulty, and to beckon you up the dark valleys of doubt and superstition. Let it not be in your hands a stern and unrelenting