before the Emperor; he is about to finish his days by martyrdom; his departure is at hand, the crown of the righteous is reserved for him; behold him on the confines of two worlds; in this which he is about to leave, ready to be beheaded, as a malefactor, by the orders of Nero; in that which he is going to enter, crowned as a just man by the Lord of lords; in this, abandoned of men; in that, welcomed by angels; in this, needing a poor cloak to cover him; in that, covered with the righteousness of the saints; clothed upon with his heavenly tabernacle of light and joy; so that mortality is swallowed up of life."

Ah, rather than object to such a passage, thereby to deprive the Scriptures of their infallibility, we should there recognize that wisdom of God, which, so often by one single touch, has given us instructions, for which, without that, many pages would have been necessary. We should adore that tender condescension, which, stooping even to our weakness, is pleased, not only to reveal to us the highest thoughts of heaven in the simplest language of earth, but also to offer them to us under forms so living, so dramatic, so penetrating, often compressing them in order to render them more intelligible, within the narrow space of a single verse.

It is then thus that St. Paul, by these words thrown at hazard even into the last commission of a familiar letter, casts for us a rapid flood of light over his ministry, and discovers to us by a word, the entire life of an Apostle; as a single flash of lightning, in the evening, illuminates in an instant, all the tops of our Alps; and as persons sometimes show you all their soul by a single look.

SECRET DEVOTION.

I LOVE to steal awhile away
From every cumbering care,

And spend the hours of setting day
In humble, grateful prayer.

I love in solitude to shed

A penitential tear,

And all his promises to plead,
Where none but God can hear.

I love to think on mercies past,
And future good implore,
And all my sins and sorrows cast
On him whom I adore.

I love by faith to take a view

Of brighter scenes in heaven:

Such prospects of my strength renew,
While here by tempests driven.

Thus. when life's toilsome day is o'er,
May its departing ray

Be calm as this impressive hour,
And lead to endless day.

FRAGRANT MEMORIES.

BY THE EDITOR.

"And there were old remembrances of days,
When, on the glittering dews of orient life,
Shone sunshine hopes, unfailed, unperjured then;
And there were childish sports, and school-boy feats,
And school-boy sports.

And thousand recollections, gay and sweet,

Which, as the old and venerable man

Approached the grave, around him, smiling, flocked,
And breathed new ardor through his ebbing veins,
And touched his lips with endless eloquence,

And cheered and much refreshed his withered heart.
Indeed, each thing remembered, all but guilt,
Was pleasant, and a constant source of joy."

POLLOCK.

SOME say it is a good thing to be fondly attached to things that are old, and some say it is not. We do not wish at present directly to take either one side or the other in this war of ages. We try to cultivate charity and good nature. Still we confess that our feelings are somewhat decidedly with the old. We have read that our first parents did not do very well by chiming in too readily with the new. Then, too, it falls in with one of the commandments, to love at least our old fathers and mothers; and, we suppose, the spirit of this law would favor a reasonable amount of respect and deference to our uncles and aunts, if not even the old people generally. Then we can conceive how, by "the law of development," as they say in a certain school of thinking-this same feeling might extend to old houses, old churches, old graveyards, old tunes, old truths, old customs, and other old things "too tedious to mention."

One way in which this kind of taste manifests itself with peculiar strength in us is in our love for old books. We do not mean old books in the widest sense, though we have somewhat of that taste also, but we have reference to our own old books-those which we have had longest about us. Hence we carefully keep all the books we have brought with us from our childhood-those that are thumbed in spite of the "thumbpaper," and have their leaves turned down at the corners, in defiance of the "mark," and the "rule of the master," that this same thing "should not be done in school." We have also our "English Reader," and our first "Geography," which so vastly enlightened us in regard to the size of the world, and the number and the queer manners of many of its inhabitants. We also still possess our old "cyphering book," and our "first grammar;" and then the other books in the line forward and up the ever-increasing steep of science, where at each new bound,

"Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise."

Unfortunately some of our old books are lost! This is owing to the fact, which we have no doubt accords with the experience of many of

our readers, that we had not as much sense when we were younger than we modestly think we have now. Hence we were not as careful in preserving our old school books as we now wish we had been. In consequence of this our youthful folly, our writing book, in which we made our first "strokes and hooks" is gone forever! Alas, what a price we would give to look on its face again. There was the beautiful copy line of "the master" at the top of the page. With what wonder did we use to look at that specimen of astonishing skill. What boy dare entertain the hope of ever writing "like the master!" Then there comes the first line of "hooks and strokes." They are pretty well made; but why?examine closely and you will see that they are drawn over pencil strokes made by "the master." You can count exactly how far this pencil copy goes; then commence the original ones, the crooked and uncertain lines of which show that "every beginning is hard," as it is in the proverb. After a few lines are written-we ought to say marked-"the master" comes round, makes a few smooth ones again, takes the hand of the boy and guides it in making a few more, and then with, "be careful," leaves the tyro to work his way into the mysteries of letter-making. Now see how his ambition is newly roused! See how he puts down his face close to the paper, and turns it sideways, and moves his mouth with the pen, against the positive instructions of "the master." In his earnestness to do it well he has forgotten himself. But alas! they get worse and worse. See! towards the bottom of the page-what are those? They look no more like the "hooks and strokes" of the copy than Hebrew looks like English. The progress to worse and worse is owing, in part, to the boy's discouragement, but partly also to the too early development of his private judgment; for, it is easily seen that, after he got half way down the page, he looked no more at the copy, but at his own lines which were nearer the line on which he was writing. Since our boyhood we have known many who committed far more serious follies by losing the true copy out of sight, and trying to imitate their own crooked imitations. As the boy forgot, or disobeyed, "the master's" rule directing him to "look at the copy," so these older children do not heed the saying of wisdom: "Those measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves, are not wise."

As we said before, our copy book is lost. These are only our recollections of it. What would we give to have it back! but this cannot be. Those blotted pages, over which many hours of childish anxiety and sorrow were spent have long since returned to their elemental dust. Peace to their ashes! or, as the learned say, "Requiescat in pace!"

The same fate which has overtaken our "copy-book, has also carried away our old "spelling-book."

"We ne'er shall see it more!"

We do not remember the author. That was a small matter to us in school days. Authors were to us a kind of imaginary beings, so far removed from the common walks of life, that we never expected to look upon the like, and consequently we concerned ourselves little about them. The contents of the book are, however, fresh in our memory. There were the spelling columns which commenced with "baker, brier, cider." Then, a little farther on, was "crucifix" for several years we used to

get that far by the time school left out in the spring, beginning again at "baker" the next fall. At length, however, we reached the picture of "the old man, and the rude boy on his apple tree stealing apples." This was an advance, indeed! Now we could begin the next fall at "crucifix"-"baker" having been left far behind, for "the smaller scholars," who were "less advanced." From "crucifix" we could reach "the names"-passing the "country woman with her pail of milk," the "mice and the cats," the "farmer and the lawyer," the "two travelers and the bears," "Jack and the bird's nest," and all the intervening mysteries of learning. At length the "grammar" was reached-not Kirkham's, but the one in the spelling-book, beginning "Ale, malt liquor." "Ail, to be sick," and so on. To be able to 'spell all the grammar," was the highest point to be reached this side of the "English Reader." This once accomplished, then farewell spelling-book. Farewell "smaller boys." Farewell "baker, crucifix, old man and rude boy." Farewell ye shuffling bears, and unfortunate Jack in hunt of the bird's nest! These little things were all left behind; and we looked back upon the "little fellows in the spelling-hook" with the same feelings of general condescension as those college students entertain towards the preparatorian. To be in the English Reader" had its effect upon a boy's standing generally. It was felt even at noon in "tossing up for ball." The importance conferred on this advance was duly appreciated in its bearing upon a boy's general talent.

use.

But we have wandered slightly. This spelling book we say is lost, and sorry we are for it. What is worse, it is out of print, and out of Alas, for the times! or as the learned say, "O tempora, O mores!” If that precious book is now still to be seen any where outside of “menory's mellowing glass," it must be in some old chests, book-cases, or garrets. How gladly would we send The Guardian one year to any one who would send us a copy of that "dear book" as the Germans say, that it might have a place in our library as it has in our heart and memory. Let some friend try our sincerity.

Our story is not without its wisdom. We seriously believe that parents ought carefully to encourage their children to preserve the relics of their childhood, and school days. Those are fragrant memories which hang around these fragments saved from the wrecks of time. They are golden links which bind the present, and the ever-nearing future, to the past. Thy aid in keeping alive the home-feeling; and will open to the heart in after life many little fountains of a purer joy than the present can give. The poet never said a truer word, than

Heaven lies about us in our infancy;

and every thing that, in after life, will carry us back to that golden time is worth preserving.

LOOK ON THIS PICTURE, THEN ON THAT.-I have subdued the nations of the earth-is there no other world for me to conquer.-Alexander the Great.

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.—St. Paul.

NEVER DESPAIR.

DIODOTUS the Stoic was the preceptor of Cicero in Greek literature and geometry, and, as that great philosopher himself informs us, lived many years in his house after becoming blind, giving himself to philosophy more assiduously than ever, and even continuing to teach geometry; a thing, says Cicero, which one would think scarcely possible for a blind man to do, yet would he direct his pupils where every line was to be drawn just as exactly as if he had had the use of his eyes. This was nothing, however, to what Saunderson did, who directed his pupils how to draw figures not only which he did not see, but which he had never seen. DIDYMUS of Alexandria, who flourished in the fourth century, is known only as a theological writer; but we are informed by St. Jerome, who was his pupil, that although he lost his sight at five years of age, he distinguished himself at the school of Alexandria by his proficiency not merely in grammar, rhetoric, logis music, and arithmetic, but in the remaining two of the seven departments then conceived to constitute the whole field of human learning, geometry and astronomy, sciences of which remarks the narrator, it is scarcely conceivable how any knowledge should be obtained without the assistance of the eye. Didymus, like Saunderson, pursued his study by employing persons to read for him. One of his disciples, Palladius, remarks, that blindness, which is to others so terrible a misfortune, was the greatest of blessings to Didymus, inasmuch as, by removing from him all objects that would have distracted his attention, it left his faculties at much greater liberty than they otherwise would have been for the study of the sciences. Didymus, however, does not seem to have been himself altogether of this opinion, since we find it recorded that when St. Anthony, who, attracted by the report of his wonderful learning and sanctity, had come from the desert to pay him a visit, put to him the question, "Are you grieved that you are blind?" although it was repeated several times, Didymus could not be prevailed upon to return any other answer than that he "certainly was," greatly to the mortification of the saint, who was astonished that a wise man should lament the loss of a faculty which we only possess, as he chose to express it, in common with the gnats. The old Greek philosopher, Democritus, who is said by some authors to have actually put out his own eyes in order that he might the better fit himself for the study of philosophy, would have presented a spectacle more to the taste of Anthony.

NICASIUS DE VOERDA, OF NICAISE OF VOURDE, taught the canon and civil law in the University of Cologne in the fifteenth century, and is said to have possessed extraordinary erudition both in literature and science, although he had been blind from his third year. He was wont to quote with great readiness the books of which he had acquired a knowledge only from having heard them read by others.

To these instances we may add that of the COUNT DE PAGAN, who was born in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and has been accounted the father of the modern science of fortification. Having entered the army at the early age of twelve, he lost his eye before he was seventeen, at the siege of Montauban. He still, however, pursued his profession with unabated ardor, and distinguished himself by many acts of brilliant courage.