meeting, where sorrow and joy were so completely blended; still he was alive!-he was come home!— he might yet live to comfort and cherish her old age! Nature, however, was exhausted in him; and if anything had been wanting to finish the work of fate, the desolation of his native cottage would have been sufficient. He stretched himself on the pallet on which his widowed mother had passed many a sleepless night, and he never rose from it again.

The villagers, when they heard that George Somers had returned, crowded to see him, offering every comfort and assistance that their humble means afforded. He was too weak, however, to talk-he could only look his thanks. His mother was his constant attendant, and he seemed unwilling to be helped by any other hand.

Poor George Somers had known what it was to be in sickness, and none to soothe; lonely and in prison, and none to visit him. He could not endure his mother from his sight; if she moved away, his eye would follow her. She would sit for hours by his bed, watching him as he slept. Sometimes he would start from a feverish dream, and look anxiously up until he saw her bending over him, when he would take her hand, lay it on his bosom, and fall asleep with the tranquillity of a child. In this way he died.

The next Sunday I was at the village church; when, to my surprise, I saw the poor old woman tottering down the aisle to her accustomed seat on the steps of the altar.

She had made an effort to put on something like mourning for her son; and nothing could be more touching than this struggle between pious affection and

utter poverty; a black ribbon or so-a faded black hankerchief—and one or two more such humble attempts to express by outward signs that grief which passes show. When I looked round upon the storied monuments, the stately hatchments, the cold marble pomp, with which grandeur mourned magnificently over departed pride, and turned to this poor widow, bowed down by age and sorrow at the altar of her God, and offering up the prayers and praises of a pious, though a broken heart, I felt that this living monument of real grief was worth them all.

I related her story to some of the wealthy members of the congregation, and they were moved by it. They exerted themselves to render her situation more comfortable, and to lighten her afflictions. It was, however, but smoothing a few steps to the grave. In the course of a Sunday or two after she was missed from her usual seat at church, and before I left the neighborhood I heard, with a feeling of satisfaction, that she had quietly breathed her last, and had gone to rejoin those she loved, in that world where sorrow is never known and friends are never parted.

IRVING.

A

AWFULLY LOVELY PHILOSOPHY.

FEW days ago a Boston girl, who had been attending the School of Philosophy at Concord, arrived in Brooklyn, on a visit to a seminary chum. After canvassing thoroughly the fun and gum-drops that made up their education in the seat of learning at which their early scholastic efforts were made, the Brooklyn girl

began mquire the nature of the Concord entertain

ment.

do

"And so you are taking lessons in philosophy! How

you like it?"

"Oh, it's perfectly lovely!

It's about science, you

know, and we all just dote on science."

"It must be nice. What is it about?

"It's about molecules as much as anything else, and molecules are just too awfully nice for anything. If there's anything I really enjoy it's molecules.".

"Tell me about them, my dear. What are molecules?"

"Oh, molecules! They are little wee things, and it takes ever so many of them. They are splendid things. Do you know, there ain't anything but what's got molecules in it. And Mr. Cook is just as sweet as he can be, and Mr. Emerson too. They explain everything so beautifully."

"How I'd like to go there!" said the Brooklyn girl, enviously.

"You'd enjoy it ever so much. They teach protoplasm, too, and if there is one thing perfectly heavenly it's protoplasm. I really don't know which I like best, protoplasm or molecules."

"Tell me about protoplasm. I know I should adore it."

"'Deed you would. It's just too sweet to live. You know it's about how things get started, or something of that kind. You ought to hear Mr. Emerson tell about it. It would stir your very soul. The first time he explained about protoplasm there wasn't a dry eye in the house. We named our hats after him. This is an

Emerson hat. You see the ribbon is drawn over the

crown and caught with a buckle and a bunch of flowers. Then you turn up the side with a spray of forget-menots. Ain't it just too sweet? All the girls in the school have them."

'How exquisitely lovely! Tell me some more science."

'Oh, I almost forgot about differentiation. I am really and truly positively in love with differentiation. It's different from molecules and protoplasm, but it's every bit as nice. And Mr. Cook! You should hear him go on about it. I really believe he's perfectly bound up in it. This scarf is the Cook scarf. All the girls wear them, and we named them after him, just on account of the interest he takes in differentiation.'

"What is it, anyway?"

"This is mull, trimmed with Languedoc lace—' "I don't mean that-that other."

'Oh, differentiation! Ain't it sweet? It's got something to do with species. It's the way you tell one hat from another, so you'll know which is becoming. And we learn all about ascidians too. They are the divinest things! I'm absolutely enraptured with ascidians. If I only had an ascidian of my own! I wouldn't ask anything else in the world."

"What do they look like, dear? Did you ever see one?" asked the Brooklyn girl, deeply interested.

‘Oh, no; nobody ever saw one except Mr. Cook and Mr. Emerson; but they are something like an oyster with a reticule hung on its belt. I think they are just heavenly."

"Do you learn anything else besides?"

"Oh, yes. We learn about common philosophy and logic, and those common things like metaphysics; but

the girls don't care anything about those. We are just in ecstasies over differentiations and molecules, and Mr. Cook and protoplasms, and ascidians and Mr. Emerson, and I really don't see why they put in those vulgar branches. If anybody beside Mr. Cook and Mr. Emerson had done it, we should have told him to his face that he was too terribly, awfully mean." And the Brooklyn girl went to bed that night in the dumps, because fortune had not vouchsafed her the advantages enjoyed by her friend.

LAST PRAYER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.

[T was the holy twilight hour, and clouds, in crimson

IT

pride,

Sailed through the golden firmament, in the calm evening-tide,

The peasant's cheerful song was hushed by every hill

and glen,

The city's voice stole faintly out, and died the hum of

men:

And as night's sombre shades came down o'er day's resplendent eye,

A faded face, from a prison cell, gazed out upon the

sky;

For to that face the glad, bright sun of earth for aye

had set,

And the last time had come to mark eve's starry coronet.

Oh, who can paint the bitter thoughts that o'er her spirit stole,

As her pale lips gave utterance to feeling's deep control