the short season of summer to live; and like many dying mothers, life seemed to uphold at fourscore and five by waiting till he should come. History is ceremonious as to what passed between them, but the parting was solemn and touching-like the event. will see me no more," said she. "My great age and disease warn me that I shall not be long in this world. But go, George, to fulfil the destiny which Heaven appears to assign you. Go, my son, and may Heaven's and your mother's blessing be with you always." Passing from that dear, pathetic presence, the President elect perhaps did not hear the plaudits of the people in the streets of Fredericksburg. He rode all day by the road he had come, and reached Mt. Vernon before evening, having exhibited his power of endurance at the age of fifty-seven by riding eighty miles in twenty-four hours. His good wife had made all ready; the equipages were at the door next morning, and leaving Mrs. Washington and most of the household behind, he set out for New York at ten o'clock on Thursday, the 16th of April, accompanied by Thomson and Humphries. The new State was waiting anxiously for its magistrate.-Exchange. WHAT PLEASES GOD. What God decrees, child of His love, The wisest will is God's own will; The truest heart is God's own heart, Oh! could I sing, as I desire, As a rule, children are in a great hurry to become boys and girls before their time; and boys and girls can hardly wait till they get to be young men and young ladies. Said a Christian mother to me lately, "Our son is so boyish. Instead of mingling with the youths of his age, he finds his pleasure in amusing the children. If only he would lay aside his boyish tastes, and become more manly" The good mother had no occasion for discouragement. Her son had better amuse himself a while longer with the innocent sports of his little nieces, than prematurely parade the streets with those of his own age. His companions may be never so respectable, home, with his parents, brothers, and sisters, is a far better place for the growing boy, just stepping over into manhood, than the amusements and associations in which most young people delight. Not that these are necessarily bad. Neither should the youth be violently imprisoned in a circle unsuited for his years. But if he has a fondness for home pleasures; if the large boy has a tender sympathy, a warm love for the little ones, and likes to romp and roll about with them, and finds great delight in their plays, for heaven's sake do not chide him for it. Too soon, far too soon, ordinarily, do young people lose the simplicity, sympathy, and artless piety of childhood. Blessed are they who never lose them. It is an erroneous notion that the piety of childhood will not suffice for later life. Must those, who, like Timothy, have been devotedly pious from early life, change their habits of religious thought and prayer when they are confirmed? So many seem to hold. At confirmation the person assumes and renews the promise made at his baptism in childhood, by his parents; so he renews and confirms, not renounces or condemns, his habits and life of piety thitherto formed at his confirmation, in so far as they were Christian. He who forgets or unlearns the prayers of his childhood, sustains an irreparable loss. On a visit to the old homestead, Dr. Harbaugh revisits the lumber room in the garret. We can picture him, with earnest mien, standing among a world of quaint and curious worn-out household relics. None so held his eye and heart as the old cradle. "There is one piece of furniture there in the corner of the garret, the sight of which touches me more strangely than all the rest, and awakens feelings of a peculiar kind. It is the cradle in which we all -the boys and the girls-were rocked in infancy. It is of the oldfashioned make, and never was capable of the long gentle sweep and swing of modern cradles. Broad and flat, with rockers well-worn, it hath little grace in its motion, but waddles clumsily like a duck. Yet sweet in it was the sleep, and pleasant were the dreams of infancy; and over no cradle, no, not in palaces, has a warmer mother's heart, or a more watchful mother's eye, ever hung and sighed, smiled, prayed and wept." As one advances in life, the heart holds on with increasing tenderness to the pious reminiscences of childhood. The room in which stood the little trundle bed, the corner of the room even, one fondly remembers-the side of the bed where he used to kneel in prayer, the room and the bed may both have been destroyed. But to the heart they live on. The corner, on the bench, behind the table, where the little boy used to sit at meals; where he used to bow his head, close his eyes, fold his hands, and in silence say his short prayer before meals as all the rest did-that corner lives on in faith and in memory, though in fact long since gone. In "Thorndale," an English work, the pious childhood of a genius is described in a passage of great beauty. He had never known his father. "A poor lieutenant in the (British) navy, he died of fever caught as his ship lay rotting off the coast of Africa," when the son was yet a child. His mother was a gentle, loving woman, "over whom early widowhood had cast a shade of melancholy." Her "piety was deep, and her faith undoubting." She knew nothing of the world beyond her little home. She, too, died early, and left her orphan boy to the care of her brother. He became a man of great mind-a free thinker. In the prime of manhood, he lost the simple faith of his early years, and cut loose from the moorings of his mother's faith. How sadly he longs for the lost peace and happy piety of his child-life: "Very singular and very pleasing to me is the remembrance of that simple piety of childhood; of that prayer which was said so punctually night and morning, kneeling by the bedside. What did I think of, guiltless then of metaphysics,-what image did I bring before my mind as I repeated my learnt petition with scrupulous fidelity? Did I see some venerable form bending down to listen? Did he cease to look and listen when I had said it all? Half prayer, half lesson, how difficult it is now to summon it back again! But this I know, that the bedside where I knelt to this morning and evening devotion became sacred to me as an altar. I smile as I recall the innocent superstition which grew up in me, that the prayer must be said kneeling just there. If some cold winter's night I had crept into bed, thinking to repeat the petition from the warm nest itself, it would not do! It was felt in this court of conscience to be an insufficient performance:' there was no sleep to be had till I had risen, and, bedgowned as I was, knelt at the accustomed place, and said it all over again from the beginning to the end. To this day, I never see the little, clean, white bed in which a child is to sleep, but I see also the figure of a child kneeling in prayer at its side. And I, for the moment, am that child. No high altar, in the most sumptuous church in Christendom could prompt my knee to bend like that snow-white coverlet tucked in for a child's slumber." A GREEN OLD AGE. The papers recently announced the death of Francis Guizot the distinguished French author and statesman. He was a life long member of the Reformed Church of France, and an active, zealous Christian. The following sketch of a visit to the dear old man will be of interest to the readers of the GUARDIAN. Francis Guizot (says "Appleton's Journal") passes, every month, a week at his house in Paris. It is a small, old-fashioned building, on the corner of the Rue Destouches and the Faubourg Saint Honore. M. Guizot bought this residence sixty years ago, and it is still one of the architectural relics of the age of Louis XIV., during whose reign it was built. Everything looks oldfashioned in it, and there is hardly a room but would furnish an excellent subject for a genre painter. I entered it the other day in compliance with a request from M. Guizot, who desired to ascertain from me some facts in regard to the literature of Spain during the sixteenth century. I found him seated in his truly unique library. Imagine a small, square room, furnished in true rococo style, and with two curious bay windows looking out upon a small garden laid out exactly as if Watteau had had a hand in it. All that was wanting was, that the venerable old man himself should be dressed in the costume of the eighteenth century, and the illusion that I had been suddenly transported into a scene of one hundred and twenty years ago would have been complete. But M. Guizot, although it was yet early in the morning, was already dressed in the faultless suit of black in which one always finds him, whether at his desk, in his family circle or in his “fauteuil" at the French Academy. He received me with the utmost kindness. Time has dealt gently with the grand old man. More than eighty-five years have passed over his head, and yet he stands erect, and his eyes, those wonderful eyes, which seemed to flash out a supernatural fire during his great speeches in the chamber, were as brilliant as if he were a youth of twenty. I congratulated him upon his good looks, and he said : "Yes, thank Heaven, I am in good health. I walk five miles every day, and I am a hearty eater. I don't think yet of dying," he added gaily. "I have so much to do yet. My History of Spain' is not half finished." |