flower; the arms of the giant elm are stretched forth to embrace a flood of radiant splendour; gushes of melody are heard through the thick foliage; the waters are rehearsing their holy noontide hymn; and all is peace, and splendour, and harmony, throughout the delicious valley. "Our Lady's Well" is within a bowshot. Besides the gushing fount, sits a little girl-a monitor in the neighbouring Sunday school. A pitcher, which she had previously plunged into the bright water, is placed before her she is arranging a nosegay of wild-flowers, a present for her younger sister; and as she is completing the blooming treasure, the feelings of her little heart gush through her lips as she repeats-"Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." And as she ties together the many stems with a cord of tall rye-grass, she continues her little snatches of song : "Whither is my beloved gone? I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine. Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah-comely as Jerusalem—terrible as an army with banners. I am the Rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As an apple-tree among the trees of

the wood, so is my beloved to me. My beloved spake and said, Rise up, my love, and come away. For lo! the winter is past, and the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." So saying, in the exuberance of her lone heart's joy, she seizes her burthen, and is soon lost to the sight amid the dense foliage. Countless blessings rest upon that beautiful child! These go with her; but she leaves behind an impression unasked, uncalled for, more deep, more endurable, than was ever made by a thousand ancient homilies, or a thousand modern task-read sermons; increasing, at the same time, the feeling of reverence which belongs to the ceaseless, to the brightgushing Wells of our own beloved country.

FIELD FOOTPATHS.

Tho wente I forthe on my right honde,
Down by a little pathe I fond
Of mintes full and fennell greene.

CHAUCER.

The air of some o'ergrown wood,

Or field footpath, is the boys' food.

SUCKLING.

IT is said, that it is "the highest act of man's faculty that produces a book. It is the thought of the man-the true thaumaturgic virtue, by which man works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a thought." True! Thought has accomplished all the visible works of man -the city, the pyramid, the temple, the palace, down to the cottage and the wigwam-everything in art, in science, in literature, the handmaidens of refinement-the heralds, alas! of

imbecility, decrepitude, decay, desolation. But "the trail of the serpent is over them all." The pyramid may catch the first ray of morning and the last beam of evening. Enduring through ages of empires, it may seem to smile at time, and to defy its power:

"Let not a monument give you and me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops."

tenant: the monu

The battle of the

Truly and it is a sorrowful truth the tenement outlives the ment becomes a ruin. elements-the withering sweep of the lightning's fiery wing, with its accompanying death-peal the slow, snail-like march of unerring decay, leaving behind the traces of its progress-the hell-like yawn of the earthquake fiend: these do their work. Upon the tangible works of man-his temples, his palaces, pyramids, monuments, columns-the foot of time is placed, and will eventually crush them with a horrid crash-stone-blocks, arches thickribbed, roof and roof-tree, king-post, queenpost, beams, rafters, and all. Is all human glory, then, so perishable, so mortal? Do all the labours of man share the same fate?

Verily-No! The highest effort of man's faculty, it is said, is the production of a book -a book in the true sense of the word. The book outlives the pyramid -from Homer, Virgil, Horace, and the rest from Dante, Tasso, Petrarch-from Chaucer to Shakspeare, down to Wordsworth and his compeers, to Moore and Byron, the book still remains.

The great Persian conqueror, Cambyses, the plunderer of temples, the slayer of the Egyptian god Apis, may have had a monument; so may many of the great-even from Semiramis down to George the Fourth of England. But Shakspeare, for instance, has a MILLION OF MONUMENTS. The sacred temple may hold ONE. But he has a monument in every clime, in every land, in every library, in every house, in every heart. This immortality is transmitted from sire to son, from generation to generation, and will continue to be so transmitted, even after the ploughshare has passed over the great metropolis of this mighty empire, and Stonehenge is deemed the more perfect ruin. There is no true immortality but in the use of the printing types. Shakspeare himself was conscious of this. He