HERE is a handsome | tery for many days past, and of condrawing-room in cealment from the children of the Brook Street, and household. the rooms are all brilliantly lighted, with the exception of one, which has been a room of mysDECEMBER, 1868. This was the library, a noble room with a deep recess, in which a Christmas-tree stood with its heavily laden branches, awaiting the mo N ment when the torch should touch the tiny tapers, and bring to light the gifts for the children. And the children sat around the long dining-table, with cousins and friends, uncles and aunts, and the father and mother looking on them with pride. Tea seemed a long meal, for there was much to be done this night. After the Christmas-tree was to be a dance, and the servants were to sup in the hall; and there would be plenty of mirth and music and frolic, both in parlour and kitchen. It was a happy group externally, but there was a shadow on the mother's soul, a burden on her spirit; not all her flock were there. The mother's heart! it is a worldly one; but it is still a mother's, and it is very, very full to-night. In a little chamber, in a distant part of the house, her youngest boy lies dying. This Christmas Eve would be his last, and the little feet that but a year ago moved so merrily in the game and in the dance, were soon to be cold in death. Vainly do the little sisters run to his bedside, with his share of the spoils from the Christmas-tree; vainly has the mother made his gifts the costliest, and not one is there that envies the sick child his share. He takes them in his thin hand, looks at them with a faint smile, and mournfully lays them down again. He wants something more-something better. His heart is full, he feels he is dying, and he cannot yet rejoice that the Saviour is come. He knows so little of Him; that little so feebly. What to him are all these merry-makings, those loud exulting bells? He turned his head wearily and sighed. Nurse wishes he would sleep, but he is not sleepy, he says; he would be quite willing to be left with Bessie, Would Bessie sit by his side? She had been there but a short time, the poor weaver's daughter, and Mrs. Hall thought she ran a great risk in taking a factory girl, even though the clergyman's wife did vouch, not only for her respectability, but her piety. It seemed, however, as many apparently small events in life do, that Bessie's residence in the rich man's family was God-appointed, She came ostensibly to help the nurse and the housemaid; to make herself, in short, generally useful; but the sick child took a fancy to her pleasant, intelligent face and gentle voice, and for some days past no one could soothe him in his restlessness so well as Bessie, So nurse went down and left poor Willie and the young servant together, and the servants' hall was soon ringing with laughter. Willie lay very quiet, but he begged the presents might be taken off the bed, they made him sad to look at, and he hid his face. Bessie was on the point of answering when the under housemaid came in and said that Bessie's sister Rachel wanted to see her; she had brought the shirts home, and asked to be paid. What was to be done? Mrs. Hall was in the drawing-room with company. Had Bessie 8s., the price of the work? Alas! no; Bessie's purse was empty. The child heard the whisper, and saw the distress on Bessie's face; and he heard the housemaid, too, a kind girl, relate the great strait they were in for want of the money, and Rachel's earnest request that the case might be represented to Bessie's mistress. Indul The child had a kind heart. gence had, in his days of health, made him a little wayward and selfish, but what to him was money now? He had had 10s. given him that very night, in a little purse. It was the only gift that had caused him pleasure, though books and toys to more than four times that value were lavished upon him. "Take the 10s., Bessie," he said when he understood the case; "and if mamma pays me again I will pay you. No bread since the morning, and there's my jelly! See, I have not touched it-I can't eat; take Bessie's mother my jelly." Tears filled the girl's eyes, and when Rachel received the coin, grateful tears, you may be sure, filled hers, and she returned to the comfortless upper chamber which was her home, thankful and happy. Bessie hastened back to the boy. He looked tired, and complained of the music, but, most of all of the bells; they seemed so useless, he said; "why did they ring so?" She told him that the bells rang to remind us of that glad event which, more than 1,800 years ago, brought the angels from heaven to declare it; and then she related, with simplicity, but with something of poetry too, the beautiful story of the humble shepherds, who, as they watched their sheep on those Galilean fields, heard a heavenly voice, and saw a heavenly light. The boy listened, but Bessie feared he listened rather as to a tale than to a great truth in which he had any interest, but she was wrong. Willie turned his dark blue eyes upon her as she knelt by his bed, and said, "A week or two back I didn't know I wanted a Saviour. I think now that I do. I think I like to hear the bells, but I would rather hear the angels." Bessie looked at the little sunken face, and her heart told her his wish would soon be fulfilled. He sank to sleep with the thought of glad tidings in his ear. He did not slumber long. Whilst Bessie ran down for a few minutes to tea, nurse took her place. He innocently referred to the subject of his conversation with Bessie, and said how happy he felt on this Christmas Eve, to think that Jesus had come. He should soon die; didn't nurse think so? She said she feared he would, but that God loved little children when they were good, and he would be sure to go to heaven. "Aye, nursie, but who are good?" he asked, quickly; "because God's Bible says, "There is none that doeth good,' and that is why Jesus came; and if I go to heaven, Bessie says that it won't be because I'm good, but because Jesus has been good for me, Oh, I am glad He came, so glad. This is the best Christmas Eve I ever knew." The nurse hid her face and wept ; and Bessie, who had by this time rejoined them, could not but wonder, in her simple way, that doctrines which have occupied so much of men's time in arguing and disputing about, little Willie should have understood on his dying bed, and have received so joyfully. But she remembered the Saviour's words, "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." Christmas Eve was drawing to a close. In many a house besides the Halls' dancing and mirth went on even into the Christmas morning. In a few solitary chambers prayer and thanksgiving were ascending to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who withheld not His only Son, but delivered Him up freely for us all; and these few in their closets had the happiest and the holiest Christmas Eve. The poor family in the weaver's garret lay down to rest that night, one of them, at least, thanking God less for temporal provision than for His unspeakable gift, and Christmas day dawned bright and clear, alike on the thoughtful and the prayerless. The child welcomed it in with his simple aspirations of praise. He had slept at intervals through the night, but Bessie had never left him. He reminded her, she said, of a little brother she had once lost, and she clung to him as closely as he clung to her. There was something of the love of a parent and child between the two; Willie loved her who had led him to the Saviour, and dearly did she love him who was so willing to go to Him on whom all her hopes and trust were fixed. He was weaker, but not apparently worse; he loved to listen to a verse of a hymn, or, better still, of the Bible. "Does God say that?" was his usual question, when Bessie repeated some simple text. He liked to hear her tell of the Sunday school, where she had been taught to love that Bible; of her gentle teacher there, and of the pains she used to take with all her young scholars; of the quiet Sunday afternoons, when she gathered them together before the time for service arrived, and talked earnestly to them of the solemn act in which they were so soon to be engaged. All this had influenced Bessie, she said, and she should ever have to thank God for her Sunday school days. Willie wished he had been to such a school, he said, but it mattered little now. He should soon be in heaven, and there he should learn everything of Jesus, he supposed. The old year was drawing to a close, and so was the child's young life. Both the nurse and Bessie saw a change on the eve of the new year, but the doctor had not thought him worse that day; had spoken even of weeks, and thought certainly he would last some little time yet. But he was mistaken, Willie was to spend the first day of the new year in heaven. Father and mother were called a little before midnight to see him die. He could only whisper that he was happy; happy, not because he had been good, but because Jesus had come down from heaven. He told them to think of him next Christmas day, because this last had been the happiest in his whole life, and perhaps they would think of the Saviour too. Then they thought his mind wandered a little. He murmured something about the shepherds on the plain, and the angels coming; and when Bessie whispered, "Fear not," he smiled, turned his head on the pillow, and with that smile which an angel's hand might have stamped on his face he went to sleep. The new year was begun in heaven. FUNERAL OF RASOHERINA, QUEEN OF MADAGASCAR. (Concluded from page 258.) HE funeral ceremonies carpet. The preparations are now commenced at three completed. Presently the wailing o'clock in the afternoon commences, indicating the procesof Tuesday, the 14th sion has moved. In a few moments of April. We were it emerges from the lower room of most kindly provided with a raised the great palace, headed by the platform, as were also the members Prime Minister carrying his revolver of the French Roman Catholic reversed, and clad in his official Mission, who attended with their dress, with a rich crimson robe emspecial commissioner. You will broidered in gold over all. He is please imagine a large space, nearly immediately surrounded by officers square, covered with some ten of the palace; then comes the bier, or twelve thousands of human with the body, which is wrapped in beings all squatted on the ground, silk lambas projecting at each end; Iwith shaved heads and shoulders the bier itself is decorated with the exposed; on your right is the Silver rich capes and robes of the late queen House, a little to the north of which embroidered in gold, pinned to its are the tombs of Radama, and the curtains, with all the taste of the new place of sepulture. Behind you Regent Street milliner. It is borne rises the large palace; immediately by some thirty men on a strong in front the northern entrance to the frame, which is covered with crimpalace yard, the military line the son baize. From the top of its four eastern boundary; while near the corners are ribbons of different centre of the living, orderly mass of colours, held by four members of human beings rises alternately two the Government; the crown is placed military bands, each playing plain- on the projection made by the corpse tive airs or psalm tunes. A number in the front of the bier. Here we of men stretch themselves through pause to mark an advance in civilithe south-west gateway into the zation. The body was not carried crowd so far as the tomb. Their over oxen, as was the case with object is soon apparent; they pro- Radama I., nor over women, as was ceed quickly to cover with unbleached that of the persecuting Queen Ranacalico the space the procession is to nalona; it was borne by the side of occupy. No sooner done than hun- the weepers, and not over any one of dreds of mourners prostrate them- them. Slowly it moves forward, selves upon it. The inclined plane and on nearing the tomb, the Prime up to the tomb is next covered, and Minister discharges the four barrels on its summit, immediately before of his revolver on the ground. It is the door of the tomb, tressles are borne up the inclined plane, and placed and covered with a Turkey rested on the tressles; the officers of |