obtained possession of his Bible, and perhaps of other books, and possibly been enabled to form some idea of the length of his imprisonment, some anticipation of his future fate. His mind had, however, been too much excited to be laid to rest. He could not sleep; and after many vain attempts to turn his attention from recent events, he rose from his couch. His cell was dark, and it was with some difficulty that he found the door, and made his way out to the parapet. The moon had set, but the stars shed a glimmering light below, so that he could just distinguish the woods from the hills, and trace the course of the river as it watered the valley. The breeze blew cold; but its coldness refreshed him; and the perfect stillness, being natural to the hour, oppressed him less than on the preceding day, when it seemed strangely combined with glowing sunshine and fertile fields.

"I have often," thought Helmer, "looked on a scene like this at the same hour, and in solitude as complete. Why, then, with feelings so different? Because I was free? What is there in freedom which changes the face of nature, and brightens the aspect of every object? What was freedom to me?"

He paused in the consciousness that liberty of action had in his case been abused. Helmer was much addicted to study. His days and nights had been passed among his books; and while his heart was tender, his spirit devotional, and the Gospel was acknowledged as his rule of life, his enjoyments had been selfish, and his intellectual improvement pursued as an end rather than a means. This conviction now pressed upon him.

What," he asked himself, "is the purpose of my existence, of every man's existence? To promote happiness by the means, and according to the law, communicated by God. These means I have possessed, and this law I have

acknowledged; but this end I have not pursued. By temperament I am compassionate; in imagination I am a philanthropist; yet I have done less for my race than the mechanic who provides for the daily comfort of his neighbours. When I have heard the passing bell, I have been wont to speed the spirit on its way by an inward prayer. But for the living I have done nothing. When I have seen the gay multitude assembled for the feast and dance, I have made curious inquisition into the secrets of every heart. I have speculated on the concealed joy and bitterness, I have watched the ebb and flow of passion, I have pondered the past conflicts and future destiny of each: but all this has been for myself, and by no effort of mine has victory been ensured in any such conflict; no spiritual nakedness has been clothed by my charity, no feeble exertions supported by my assistance. Here no passing bell is heard; here no voice of revelry will incite me to meditation; yet I may live to as much purpose as I have hitherto lived - nay, to more, if my solitary helplessness should enable me to form a truer estimate of the objects of existence, and hasten the practical conviction to which I must at length arrive, that selfishness is guilt, however fair and however honorable may be the disguise which it assumes."

He meditated long on the influences under which his tastes and habits had been formed. They had been unfavorable. Literary ambition had been excited and gratified at college. The admiration of his early friends, the devotedness of an only sister who prided herself in him, and ministered assiduously to his wishes, entire freedom from worldly anxieties, and the early severing of almost every domestic tie, had all tended to centre his affections in himself, and to incline him more to contemplation than to action. He was now conscious of having indulged a most ill-founded pride in his peculiar tastes, and a contempt as

groundless for what he believed the ignobler pursuits of less refined minds. As he watched the stealthy approach of day till a shower of light from an opening cloud gleamed on a reach of the winding river, he remembered how often he had looked down from the heights of contemplation with a contemptuous pity on the sleeping world; how self-complacent had been his feelings when he believed that his was the only waking eye which watched the approach of day, the only ear which was open to the greeting of the morning; forgetting the purposes for which the alternations of light and darkness are ordained, and deaf to the lesson which they teach, that action is the law of happiness, and self-forgetfulness a prime condition of enjoyment. "If," thought Helmer, "I might justly congratulate myself on my sensibility to the beauty of nature, I should have gone abroad again at noon-day to learn humility. Wherever I should have seen a mother tending her infant, a father earning his children's bread by the sweat of his brow, the nurse humoring the waywardness of sickness, the wise condescending to the ignorant, the virtuous bearing with the follies, and striving to remove the miseries, of mankind, I might have interpreted a lesson of reproof."

In such a conviction as this, humbled, but certain of having gained a new insight into a familiar truth, Helmer closed the first day of his imprisonment in sleep.

No

For many succeeding days, he was compelled to depend on his own resources for the employment of his mind. human face did he behold but that of his jailer; and no sound reached his ear but the periodical grating of his prison-door, and the gruff and brief replies to the questions he asked.

He had now time for meditation on every subject of thought, and the worlds of matter and mind were ransacked for objects of speculation; memory was adjured to yield

up long-buried treasures of lore; and imagination was indulged till the most beautiful of waking dreams became wearisome. Meanwhile, a most important change had begun to work. To Helmer himself it appeared strange that solitude and anxiety should enlarge the mind and expand the affections. Yet so it was. The train of thought in which he had been first interested was still the predominant one; and as all influences combine to feed a ruling passion, all circumstances have a tendency to recall and strengthen a prevailing association. While questioning his reason concerning the causes and tendencies of all events within the scope of his observation, he became more strongly convinced that the discipline to which he was now subjected was intended to rectify his estimate of human duty, and to transfer his religion from the imagination to the affections. He longed to consult once more the book of spiritual life; but he was obliged to be content with the records which were preserved in his memory. He was amazed to find how scanty they were, while he perceived with equal wonder how deeply significant was every sacred aphorism, and how beautiful every fragment of evangelical wisdom. With greater astonishment still did he awaken to a sense of the nature of prayer, when used as a means of action, and not only as an excitement of sensibility. This was now his sole mode of exertion for others, and it was valued accordingly. When, wearied with anticipating his own fate, and dreading the effect of a concentration of his affections on himself, he looked round and saw himself cut off from communication with his kind, and felt that there was nothing for his hand to do or his voice to utter for the benefit of his race, prayer was an inestimable resource. If, as he might reasonably believe, his petitions were heard, many who never knew of his existence, may be enjoying the benefit of his intercessions; and the igno

rant, whose mental eye is intensely fixed on the dawnings of wisdom, the oppressed, who is learning to stand erect, the wavering, whose best purposes are acquiring stability, may one day recognise a benefactor in the solitary prisoner whose sole communication with them was through the world of spirits.

After many months, when the long winter was past, and the western breeze had once more come to fan the prisoner's cheek and revive his spirit, a living creature fixed its dwelling near him. Helmer had observed the remains of a swallow's nest in a "coigne of vantage" which projected from the battlement. He hoped, and not in vain, that the pair would return and build in their old haunt. They came, and he watched with the deepest interest the progress of the work. It was nearly finished, when a violent hail-storm came on, in the evening, when Helmer had left the battlement for the greater warmth of his cell. The whistling of the wind, and its rushing sound along the parapet, reminded him of the swallows, and in the fear that the newly-cemented nest might be destroyed, he went out to see if by means of hat and handkerchief a sufficient shelter might be afforded to the birds. While he was thus employed, the jailer entered, and, for once, began a conversation by wondering that the gentleman should choose to be abroad in such a storm, and run the risk of having his light extinguished. When Helmer explained his reason, the man laughed, and said it was well for the birds that they built so near a person who liked to take care of them. Helmer thought of “the young ravens which cry," but he only said, "It gives me pleasure to help any living thing, but particularly of my It would make me happy to help you, if you could but show me the way." The man stared. Helmer went on with an eagerness and an incoherence, of which he was afterwards ashamed, to entreat that if the man was

own race.