Nor is their music less grateful to him, the poor disappointed home-wanderer, whose heart has become engulphed in the sand-storms of this desert world, and to whose bosom joy is a stranger. To him, with hopes extinguished, affections blighted, and happiness banished, without a home and lone in the world-to him, in the calm evening hour, when the Village Bells have rung their cheerful harmony in his listening ear, no sound has been more welcome, or ever possessed over him a greater influence for all the purposes of good, soothing every turbulent, and strengthening and encouraging every good and praise-worthy feeling, as retracing his solitary steps, he has involuntarily exclaimed

"Those evening bells-those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells,

Of youth, and home, and that sweet time,

When first I heard their soothing chime!"

It not only shows the effect of their timehonoured powerful tones upon the mind and upon the heart, but establishes the firm conviction, that we are all the creatures of circumstances, that kindness and mercy should be the rules of our lives, and that it is better to be wrong on the side of forgiveness than on the

side of harshness and severity. "We all know what we are ;-but-we don't know what we may be !"

Pleasant, indeed, through all the seasons of the year, is the tuneful chime of the Village Bells. The sound of their sober melody brings upon its wings feelings and associations of a peculiar and of an interesting character. The thoughts of home and of kindred-the days of youth and of joyousness, before the world had cast its cares and its shadows upon our earthly pilgrim path-the marriage vow, and all that has followed in the long swell of the tide-wave of time-the consciousness that we, too, are hastening onwards to share the fate of those who have gone before us in all preceding years, and to mingle our dust with that of theirs-are brought to our remembrance by their welcome sound. But the Village Bells rather put aside all melancholy and painful feelings, and awaken those of placid joy and of sober gladness. They diffuse through the mind feelings as harmonious as their own hallowed melody, as it is wafted through the peaceful valley, and over the face of river or lake, or even beyond the wooded mountain, to scenes of gentle and unobtrusive snugness, and to spots of quiet and brooding

security, amid the pleasures of domestic peace, the performance of household duties, and those fair pictures of home enjoyments, whose chief and most attractive features are found in pure and deep affection, in the right disposition of the heart and of the mind, and in those many virtues which are the most lasting because the least ostentatious, and the most endearing because they belong peculiarly to home.

Blessings-ten thousand blessings rest upon these fair home scenes and bright home virtues of our own beloved country! Far distant be the day when they shall be either marred in their security or dimmed in their lustre ! Otherwise, the warm feelings which gush from the inmost fountain of the heart would die away as the song of the bird of night, unheard, in the solemn depths of the midnight woods— the willow might again entwine the strings of the harp-captivity might lead us captive—and we should sing no more the songs of our own fair land-thus:

THE VILLAGE BELLS.

I.

"The Village Bells are ringing;

Their music swells afar!

The village girls are singing

Their hymn to the evening star.

The rills are louder sounding;

The beetle hummeth by; And many a heart is bounding

To share the lover's sigh.

But one thing wants this gentle scene-
The dark-eyed maid, the sweet KATHLEEN.

11.

The bee hath gone to his dwelling;
The flower hath closed its eye;
The whispering woods are telling
Of all but KATHLEEN's sigh.
The moon is gladly beaming;

The wood-dove sinks to rest,
Where the silver light is streaming;

And all but I are blest.

For one thing wants this gentle scene,—

She comes !-my own, my sweet KATHLEEN."

THE WOOD SIDE.

Ac as he out of London wente in a tyde,
A gret erl him kepte ther in a wood side.
The sweetest spotte of all.

R. GLOUCESter.

No lyf holy as dremytes

Than wonnede wyle in wodes.

PIERS PLOUHMAN.

Here also playing on the grassie greene,
Woodgogs, and satyres, and swift dryades,
With many fairies oft were dancing seene.

SPENCER. Virgile, Gnat.

AMID the many delightful scenes with which rural life abounds, in whatever direction the attention of the close observer is turned, there are few fraught with greater beauty, with more enticing loveliness, and with more harmonious contrast, than those which are presented at the Wood Side-along the margin of those magnificent masses of foliage which are piled up to a height not only commanding an extensive view of the surrounding country, but forming