my pocket, began, with a melancholy air, to turn over the leaves. I noticed, however, as he was turning, thât certain letters, blazed with suns, so that, though the print was fine, I could read particular passages at a great distance. The apostle began to wave his hand and step backwards. Why,' said I, 'has the impartial one denied to me that ocular demonstration, which he afforded to the first disciples?' He held up the Bible, and I saw blazing in lines of fire, these words: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one arose from the dead.' 'Alas!' said I, 'is there no way for me to obtain a firmer faith?' He held up the book, and I saw shining as before-' If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.' The apostle still kept receding, though the letters were as large and as intelligible as before. He was now almost beyond my sight, retiring behind a rock, which was about to intercept him from my view. Stay,' said I,' stay, and do not leave me so unsatisfied; speak once and let me hear. Why has not the same evidence been vouchsafed to me, as to the earlier Christians? Why has not my sight increased my faith?' The apostle then threw down my book, and I read on a blank leaf, these words, which vanished as I read them, and were never seen in the faintest trace afterwards: 'Idle doubter, why do you complain? You have your peculiar difficulties; we had ours.

We saw the miracles, but

we saw not the brighter proofs of the influence of Christianity, through a series of ages, on the heart. We had the prejudices of education to encounter, and to tear the most cherished opinions from the centre of the soul. The best miracle is a renovated heart. So, doubter, purge thine eyes, and there is light enough.' I looked up, and the apostle was gone; and the evening winds, through the shades of midnight, were sighing over the sea of Gennesaret.

THE PURITAN.

No. 12.

Believe it not:

The primal duties shine aloft, like stars;
The characters that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers;

The generous inclination, the just rule,

Kind wishes and good actions and pure thoughts-
No mystery is here; no special boon

For high and not for low, for proudly graced
And not for meek of heart. The smoke ascends
To Heaven as lightly from the cottage hearth
As from the haughty palace.

Wordsworth.

THE poor and the rich meet together in our world, as the rose and the thorn grow on the same bush. My aunt Hannah was wont to say, when she came home from some splendid mansion to her father's humble, but certainly not uncomfortable abode, "I have been to the wrong place to-day; it is more profitable to visit those below us than above us. With the rich we learn to murmur, and from the poor we

may take a lesson of contentment." Hence, I suppose, to find this needed lesson, she was sometimes accustomed to visit the poor-house.

The Bundleborough alms-house stood at the foot of a high hill, which fenced it, if not from the cold Septentrion blast, yet from Eurus and Argestes loud. It was built of a pale dirty brick, and I can seem to see its fan-placed tiles over its windows, forming a semiarch, which seemed to laugh at the rules of Gothic or Grecian architecture. All alms-houses are alike; and Crabbe has described its interior and local condition exactly. It stood, there

"Where the putrid vapors flagging play,

And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
There children dwell, who know no parent's care,
Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there;
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless' bed,

Forsaken wives, and mother's never wed;
The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they,
The moping idiot and the madman gay."

One morning, after my aunt had spent the previous afternoon at Squire Wilson's, by far the genteelest family in our neighborhood, she received the news that a young woman was sick in the poor-house, whose intelligence and good morals seemed to bespeak that she was one of those unhappy characters, who have fallen from refinement to poverty, and was now left friendless and sick, to die, neglected and alone.

She went; and I begged to accompany her; and we found the sick and suffering victim, in a little stived room, smelling strongly of oakum, in which were two other beds, and a compound of all the villanous smells, calculated rather to destroy health, than to restore the sick to health again. There were six people crowded into the same room-one old woman with a cancer; an old man with a sore leg; an Irish damsel with her illegitimate child: no fresh air, which I consider as the best of medicines; no sweet and cooling breeze visited the feverish blood, in this stived and polluted apartment; but on a little flock-bed, separated from the rest by a blanket suspended on two forks, lay one of the loveliest and most patient forms, that ever was resigned by disease, to the mouldering arms of death.

Sarah Liddell, (for this was her name,) was rather small of stature, of a slender frame, with a cheek, which a hectic flush had by no means robbed of its beauty; with an eye, though impaired by disease, still bright and expressive; and with one of the softest voices that ever melted on the human ear. When we saw her, she was in her twenty-seventh year; a period when a woman's beauty is thought to have reached that maturity, which is on the point of decay. On the whole, I thought her the handsomest woman I had ever seen. She had beauty; the highest beauty; the beauty not only of color and form, but of expression. But alas! what is beauty, when united