the aged lady's eyes; they were not however bitter tears, but tears of tender joy, wept in the sweet assurance that her precious ones were with their Redeemer. They seemed to speak of the amazing goodness of God in enabling her, in her state of bereavement as to all natural ties, to enjoy the perfect peace and contentment which she almost constantly experienced; and in raising up for her, as he had done, the kindest and most faithful friends, in the simple family with which she had lodged ever since she had been a widow.

The bells rang on, and with them seemed to run the train of her thoughts. What person capable of feeling the influence of any sweet musical strain has not been disconcerted, and found all his thoughts thrown into perplexity by its changing or its ceasing? Another change in those bells might have broken the chain of meditation in the old lady's mind; but they did not change till those meditations had reached a point, beyond which even the regenerated nature, whilst yet connected with the mortal body, never can attain, though there are many things relating to what God hath prepared for them that love him, which eye hath not seen, nor has ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man to conceive; and yet which are revealed by his Spirit to such as have been brought to believe in him.

Although no change was rung upon the iron tongues in the steeple, yet, as the old lady turned a corner of the road, their music sounded no longer as coming from behind her; it seemed to be before her; and then it was, that her mind was moved to stretch forward to futurity, and to contemplate the glorious life already enjoyed by those who had died before her in the faith, and entered into the rest prepared for them in their Saviour. The sound of the bells was rendered even more tender in this place by its passage over a vast sheet of water in the park; the whole scene, above and below, was gleaming with the golden rays of the declining sun, and the heart within the breast of the solitary walker was as brightly peaceful as the green haunts of the dappled deer within the park. Suddenly there was a ceasing of the peal; for a second the bells were still; and then they were all struck at once, producing a sudden report like the discharge of ordnance.

The old lady started, the report was repeated several times; and then appeared in the road the forerunners of a mob hastening from the town towards the principal lodge of the park, which was at some little distance on the way by which the old lady had come.

There were persons riding, and others running; all seemed more or less intoxicated or excited, all had favors of the same bright color in their hats; some carried flags, some shouted, and others panted for breath.

The old lady drew up close to the paling, and was now glad of her stick to support her trembling limbs. The throng increased; boys and girls, and even women were running in the crowd; these made more noise than the men, and there were dogs also; where in the country can crowds gather, where there are not dogs?

Presently, there was the noise of wheels, and the old lady could discern a carriage at some distance. As it came nearer, she saw that the people had taken out the horses, and were dragging it along. Around the carriage the mob was thicker, and the flags were more numerous. The vehicle was open, and contained two ladies dressed with emplumed hats and sparkling ear-rings and brooches, who were smiling and bowing to the people on each side of them.

Two gentlemen were standing on the carriage-seat in front, they had their heads bare and their faces flushed, and were waving their hands in return of the loud salutations of the mob.

The old lady knew that the principal of these, was the son of her friend, and at the same time distinguished amid the din, that the mob was crying out, Bleville for ever! Bleville for ever!

She also heard Mr. Bleville thank the people, and promise them wherewith to drink his health.

The carriage passed on, and with it the chief of the crowd, but behind came a band of music-not such music as that to which the venerable widow had but now been listening, but loud and harsh, and discordant; and after this band, some stragglers brought up the rear, in whose discourse she made out the cause of all that she had seen and heard.

Mr. Bleville had just obtained a cause in the county-courts, by which his possessions were nearly doubled to him.

"May these possessions be blessed to the child of my old friend!" were the words which the old lady murmured to herself, as she proceeded towards the cottage.

The sounds of the passing pageant had died away before she entered the cottage. There she found the person she came to visit, lying in a dying state upon her bed. She had been watching and waiting for the lady for some hours, and her first words were,

"Oh, come, and tell me more of my God, my Saviour; I have nothing, and I want nothing now but Christ!"

A little grand-daughter was the only person left in the house with the old woman, for the child's parents had gone out to their daily work.

The old lady had no desire to enter into an account of what she had seen in the road, to one whose thoughts, by the divine blessing, had already fled beyond the things of earth. She therefore took her place at once by the bed; and whilst she moistened the lips of the old woman with the jelly she had brought, spoke to her of Him, who is the only hope of the children of Adam.

The sun had dipped its golden orb beneath the horizon, when the dying woman's son and daughter arrived. They all knelt to pray by the bed of the sick, and then the man accompanied the old lady on her return home; he was to bring back some things needful for his mother. "You cannot go alone, madam," he said to the lady, "the whole road from the town to the lodge, is scattered over with the rabble, many of whom are in liquor, and many ready to fight for they know not what."

As the good laborer had said, parties of drunken persons were scattered the whole way; the lady's lodgings were at the end of the town most distant from that by which the carriage and the mob had come out, and her shortest way was across the park; the man undertook to guide her carefully, so she took his arm, and felt safe in his company.

But in this passage through the park, had she required more proofs, she might have found many, to convince her that worldly prosperity, compared with that peace which God alone can give, and which the Father never gives but through the Son, is but dross in comparison with the purest gold: the way which the cottager led was over the lawn in the front of the mansion. The excited and half drunken populace had come upon that lawn, close to the house, and were demanding more beer, whilst Mr. Bleville, evidently in fear, was addressing them from a balcony over the front door, bribing them to leave the place under the promise, that several of the small beer houses in the town should be open the next day to those who went home quietly. But when the sun arose the next morning on the park, numbers were found still lingering about the house, having by their noise and even threats, kept every person within the mansion in sleepless terror all night.

But neither these or other alarms reached the old lady in her quiet

room.

Having finished this little history, which is one amongst a million of instances that might be brought forward from experience, of the real enjoyment of those to whom the peace of God has been vouchsafed, and of the precarious nature of earthly prosperity, I proceed to ask you, my young readers, which of these you would prefer?

And yet I scarce dare ask it, for I so much fear the answer. Would not many amongst you say, "let me try the prosperity; and if I do not find that it satisfies, why then I hope that God will give me the peace? M. M. S.

"I WANT TO SEE."

I Do not remember ever to have heard or read a more affecting use of these four words, than during a passing visit to the Blind Institution, at Boston, Massachusets, in the spring of last year. There is in that institution, a poor child, whose name and singular history are well-known even on this side of the Atlantic, from the fact of her being blind, deaf, dumb, and almost without the faculty of smelling.* She is, nevertheless, cheerful and intelligent, and has made such progress in the usual branches of education, that she can not only read, but write fluently and correctly. A slip of paper being handed to her, in my presence, she inscribed on it in pencil, with her own hand, the short, but touching paragraph here given in fac-simile.

i want to see deut

し

and dum and u b b n d ju bi u bo u ne in hambfund buuru

bridgman

*A full account of Laura Bridgman is given in our volume for 1841, pp. 207, 233, 265.

You will not read it, I dare say, as rapidly as she wrote it: its purport is

"I want to see deaf, and dumb, and blind Julia Brace in Hartford, Laura Bridgman.”

Poor Julia Brace, as you will suppose, is another child similarly affected, whose case has excited nearly equal interest with that of Laura Bridgman.

Had this expression been written down by any child blessed with the use of all her faculties, but still yearning for communion with one of her old associates, or with some other child of congenial spirit, there would have been in it something to stir the feelings, or awaken the sympathies of our common nature, but coming as it did, from a poor, afflicted little creature, laboring under such accumulated and painful visitations as the loss of sight, speech, and hearing-from whom "wisdom was shut out," not by one entrance only, but by many; it told upon my heart in a manner that was inexpressibly affecting; and made me more than ever grateful for my own mercies, and humble at the thought that I had made of them so little and such unprofitable

use.

sion.

I want to see! wrote the poor blind child of Boston. No doubt, that in her inmost soul she felt the power of that expresThe loss of one of God's best blessings had made her exquisitely sensitive to its value, and yet it is a common-an almost universal blessing-of which thousands, and tens of thousands, think but lightly. Startling as such a fact may seem, I could point out amongst my own limited acquaintance, many who, if we may judge by their actions, or rather, their inaction, really do not want to see! Some shut their eyes through ignorance, some through indolence, some through prejudice, and others from a variety of causes, not the least common of which is the pride inherent in the unrenewed heart of man.

I want to see! is not their language; for they do not know or care how many things deserving their attention are above, around, and underneath them. If the mind have not been led out-and this is the meaning, both in letter and spirit, of the word education-it will lie coiled up within itself, useless, because uninformed; and inactive, because it has no curiosity to know anything either about itself, or the world around us. When God