claws, than the Forester attacked him with a huge club, and killed him.

MORAL. Untimely love produces misery.

APPLICATION. Love is the most universal of all sentiments. It visits alike the old and the young, the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, the wise and the simple. When resulting in marriage, it is the herald of increased happiness or the precursor of untold misery.

Marriage is with us

The holiest ordinance of God: whereon
The bliss or bane of human life depends.
Love must be won by love, and heart by heart
Linked in mysterious sympathy, before

We pledge the married vow: and some there are

Who hold that, ere we enter into life,

Soul hath with soul been mated, each for each
Especially ordained.

This fable is well calculated to teach us that so important an event as marriage, on which the happiness of a life depends, ought not to be enterprised or taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, wantonly, but in a spirit of caution, and of affection founded on sufficient knowledge and mutual respect; so that there be no after sorrow, nor late repentance.

May Heaven so smile upon this holy act,
That after hours with sorrow chide us not!

Love, like the bee, its sweets can bring;
Love, like the bee too, leaves its sting.

THE STAG DRINKING AT THE POOL.

A STAG, drinking at a pool which reflected his shadow in its clear water, began to regard his shape with much admiration. "Ah," says he, "what a glorious pair of horns are there! How gracefully do these antlers adorn my forehead! Would that my feet were only fair as my antlered brow!" While he was thus meditating, he was startled by the sound of the huntsmen and hounds. Away he flies, and, using his nimble feet, soon distanced his enemies. But shortly after, entering a dense copse, his horns became entangled in the branches, the hounds overtook him, and pulled him down. "Unhappy creature

that I am!" he exclaimed; "I find those horns, on which I prided myself, to be the cause of my undoing; and those limbs that I despised might have secured my safety."

MORAL. Beauty and folly are often companions.

APPLICATION.

Peace has her victories,

No less renowned than war.

The saying may be as faithfully referred to the power of beauty. It always has, and ever will have, its triumphs. The records of all history bear attestation to its wide-spread and powerful influence. Every heart acknowledges its power; but, at the same time, the possession of beauty is a dangerous gift. Unassociated with that prudence which is its best safeguard, and severed from that virtue which is necessary to its honourable reputation, it becomes a snare and a source of misery. Such is the moral to be deduced from this fable. The Stag lost his life as a sacrifice to those antlers which excited admiration from himself and others; while the limbs which he despised might have insured his safety. The useful is to be preferred to the ornamental, the solid excellences of the mind to the charms of personal beauty.

Beauty is an idle boast:

To day it's yours; to-morrow, lost.

A STAG, roused out of his covert in the forest, and driven hard by the hounds, made towards a farm-house, and, seeing the door of an ox-stall open, entered therein, and hid himself under a heap of straw. One of the oxen, turning his head about, asked him what he meant by venturing himself in a place where he was sure to meet with his doom. "Ah!" says the Stag, "if you will not betray me, I shall do well enough; I intend to make off again the first opportunity." Well, he staid there till, towards night, in came the herdsman with a bundle of fodder, and never saw him. In short, all the servants of the farm came and went, and not a soul of them found him out.

S

Nay, the bailiff himself came and looked in, but walked away no wiser than the rest. Upon this the Stag began to return thanks to the good-natured oxen, protesting that they were the most obliging people he had ever met with. After he had paid his compliments, one of them answered him gravely, "Indeed, we desire nothing more than to have it in our power to contribute to your escape; but there is a certain person you little think of, who has a hundred eyes; if he should happen to come, I would not give a straw for your life." In the mean while, the master himself came home from a neighbour's, and, because he had observed the cattle to fall off in their condition of late, he went up to the rack, and said aloud, "Why did they not give them more fodder?" Then casting his eyes downward, "Hey-day!" says he; "why so sparing of the litter? more is wanted here. And these cobwebs-but I have spoken so often, that unless I do it myself,"—thus, as he went on prying into every thing, he chanced to look where the Stag's horns lay sticking out of the straw; upon which he raised a hue and cry, called all his people about him, killed the poor Stag, and made a prize of him.