prayers. We are now old and greyheaded, and cannot expect long to live. O, Sir, pray for us, that our loins may be girded and our lights burning, and we like unto those who wait for their Lord. This I promised in the humble confidence that God would enable me to fulfil this last duty towards them. Again I shook them by the hand, and finally tore myself from them amidst their tears and blessings; assured that, if we never met thereafter on earth, we should be found together in that heavenly country where the redeemed from among men will be united, gathered from the four winds, thenceforth to separate no more—

"While years celestial roll their ceaseless round!"

"The evening had now considerably advanced. The crimson tinge on the mountains was becoming fainter and

fainter. Some fleecy exhalations alone, that seemed unwilling to retire from the splendour with which the last smile of day had invested them, lingered over the cerulean arch, now seen only like white specks as farther and farther the sun declined beneath the horizon; recalling to my recollection that beautiful passage of your pastoral poet

"For yet above these wafted clouds are seen,
In a remoter sky still more serene-
Others detatch'd in ranges through the air,
Spotless as snow and countless as they're fair;
Scatter'd immensely wide from east to west,
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.
These to the raptur'd mind aloud proclaim
Their mighty SHEPHERD's everlasting name;
And thus the loiterer's utmost stretch of soul
Climbs the still clouds, or passes those that roll,
And loosed imagination soaring goes

High o'er his home, and all his little woes."

"As I descended the hill, leaving the wood, my route conducted me

through fields of luxuriant grain, which rustled as I passed along, ripening for the sickle. Ah! thought I, the fields are indeed already white unto a harvest to be gathered by a higher hand. But, how few are the labourers! O thou, the Lord of the harvest, send forth thy servants and collect thy scattered flock, that there may be one fold under one Shepherd! O call, call in thy straying sheep! Let them hear thy voice, blessed Redeemer, and O commission thousands to feed thy lambs ! Order thou my goings, that I, an unworthy messenger of thy mercy, may never forget thy sacred injunctions, nor the object of my vocation- Thy glory in the good of man !' O grant, gracious Saviour, that I may persevere to the end, and be faithful even unto death!"

"O may my name, though o'er me lies no stone To blazen virtues which were not my own,

Live on the table of some heart engraved,

The fond memorial of a sinner saved!

Let there be one, who wandering through the gloom
Of the lone cypress that o'ershades my tomb,
Can say, while grateful tears bedew the sod,

'Here sleeps the man who led my steps to God!'"

CHAP. VI.

Hail, seraph hours, that from the circling chain
Of bright eternity! Ye magic links

Binding together life, and death, and man!
Why do ye fly so swift? Why wend away
Rapid as thought to dark Oblivion's realms,
Like insects fluttering with their silver forms
On the full bosom of some blushing rose,
Then thro' the golden air winging away
To higher worlds ?"

In such discourse, we had imperceptibly passed the last boundary of the woody range that protected the abode of those whom our hearts longed to see, and formed a shelter about it on that side whence the winds of winter swept downward with the greatest violence. And now the snow-covered piles of the Alps rose beside us in all their awful magnificence. We turned, and gazed silently upon them. Our minds were impressed with the power of that fiat which from nothing