of doctrine, of discipline, and of politics-a clergyman who is the avowed head of a school of writers who, as I think, dwell far too strongly on that lust of the eye and pride of life which Christians, "muscular" or otherwise, have authority for condemning,-put into the mouth of one of his fictitious characters-an old woman singing at her wheel these exquisite lines :

"When all the world is young, lad,

And all the trees are green,

And every goose a swan, lad,

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad!
And ride the world away!
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

"When all the world is old, lad,

And all the trees are brown,

And every sport is stale, lad,

And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take thy place there,
The maim'd and spent among ;-
God grant you find one face there

You loved when all was young."

Surely we have in these two verses given to us, in simple, tender fashion, the philosophy of life. Even the late Mr. Thackeray, whose week-day preachings were not so remarkable for their tenderness to frailty as for the iron truth with which they branded sin, made one of his characters, a bankrupt, braggart, cheating, lying Irishman, declare that he always felt more affectionate when he was in trouble. This scoundrel had robbed his mother, and was habitually guilty of a thousand petty and degrading sins; but the chastening hands of sorrow and of time exerted their usual influence, even over a nature coarse and bad as his, and the longing for some one to whom his good as well as evil qualities were known was the touch of nature connecting him, though at a long interval, with honesty and repute. Depend upon it, when the regal beauty, whose infinite variety age could not wither nor custom stale, looked back regretfully to her life in Egypt, and dwelt upon its wit, its dalliance, and its strife, her yearning for the face she "loved when all was young ran through and tinted with a still more sombre hue the bitter contrast between the present and the past. The faces of most of the dear friends the contents of this little room bring before me have not been gazed on save by the mind's eye for years. Many of them have gone into the house appointed for all living. Neither the history nor present surroundings of others are known to me; yet they all speak with an eloquence fiction could not reach, and leave not unpleasing melancholy at my heart.

me with a softened and "All the days of my

appointed time I will wait till my change come," wrote the most sorely tried of the patriarchs of old; and in the case of all thoughtful men gratitude for abundant mercies and continued blessings must always be predominant when reflecting on life, its trials, deprivations, shortcomings, and rapidly approaching end.

And now, dear reader-dear to me in proportion to the interest you feel in these hints and revelations of my inner life,-let me for the moment say farewell. It has been said that if any man would truthfully set down, and in simple language, his private history, he would add an interesting and instructive book to the library of mankind. It can only be on similar grounds that such prosings as these can be acceptable at all. I have even heard of people who think it wrong for any one to write about themselves, and of others who think it wrong for a clergyman to publish at all. These latter critics consider men of my cloth as sermon-preaching machines, and regard the production of aught more secular as subversive of the laws of order and the fitness of things. Others again would have you believe -as if the soul and heart could be always in a state of tension -that because you smile at trifles, take a sympathetic interest in men's pursuits, and even view their errors with something of Christian toleration, you have no right to write seriously or think tenderly out of canonicals. But what Montgomery happily termed, in his "Pelican Island,"

"Labour, the symbol of men's punishment,
Labour, the secret of men's happiness,"

is so sweet to the accustomed hand, that I suppose we penmen would continue to weave our ideas into words, even if we were certain of censure and averted looks as the penalty of publication. It pleases me to think that several of those who know and love me will easily recognize the writer of the foregoing, and that from study to stable, and from ivy-covered porch to churchyard, I shall be accompanied by at least some readers who will recognize familiar ground, and appreciate the feeling under which this essay was penned. We read that when Nabal was very drunken his heart was merry within him; but that the next morning, when the wine was gone out of Nabal, his heart died within him and he became as a stone. Happily for such of us as have drunk the wine of life, and who have before us only its lees, our hearts need neither die within us nor become cold. Our days for boisterous merriment are over, but if we have not forsaken the fountains of living water to hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water, our impulses are as tender, and our joyful faith stronger and more pure than when half intoxicated with the sweet scents, bright hues, and smiling faces besetting us in the morning of life. And this sums up the contrast I promised myself

to draw between then and now.

The fire in the grate before me is almost out; the shadows on the wall have assumed sterner and more fantastic shapes; poor Stephen has been in three times to ask me, with sleepy and half-petulant significance, "if I rang;" the moon has travelled half round the old church opposite, and its reflection on the railed-in tomb has changed its side; the solitary baying of a distant farmhouse dog is the only sound breaking the silence of the night; the desk-lamp before me shows flickering signs of dissolution, and everything around seems to whisper that "after work" should come repose. Taking the hint, I slowly fold up the closely covered sheets of paper, throw down my pen, and, followed by the snoring little terrier at my feet, pass up the quiet stairs and through the dark and slumbering house to rest.

ON THE WATCH-TOWER.

I.

WATCHMAN, what of the night?

The enemy's camp-fires blaze:
Over plain and valley, a falcon's flight,
I see the lines of lurid light

Veil'd by a smoky haze.

II.

There's the flash of a signal-fire!

And lo! through the midnight black, The stir of a multitude, moving nigherAnd the terrible escalade grows higher, As our sleepless foes attack.

III.

Watchman, what of the night?
That peril has pass'd away:

But still be ready for truth to fight,

Though the morning star in the East shines bright, We are not safe till day.

IV.

Still must this lonely tower

By my patient feet be trod,

Till the utter defeat of Satan's power,

When the siege is raised at the sunrise hour

By the angel hosts of God.

MAY-DAY.

BY THE REV. I. R. VERNON, M.A.

MAY-DAY! The glow of the mere word! "It is not always May;" no indeed, nor when May comes is it always just what we expected it to be. The May-day of the poets and the May-day of ordinary experience are held now-a-days to be two distinct things. "May has set in with its usual severity." This has been a jesting saying; and, indeed, the bitter east wind does often blight the trust of the confiding primroses, and white-clad pear trees, and rose-robed peach espaliers, and silver-arrayed cherry boughs; driving mortified mankind back to warm under-waistcoats, and winter socks, and linsey-woolsey gowns. Ah, those old Mays, so we talk, ever fancying the past and the future (especially the past) better than the present. Those old Mays, they were different, we think, from those that come to us now. And truly we must not venture to affirm that we can often match with reality the following exquisite description of the old ideal May :"All the land in flowery squares,

Beneath a broad and equal blowing wind,

Smelt of the coming summer, as one huge cloud,
Drew downward; but all else of heaven was pure
Up to the sun, and May from verge to verge,
And May with me from head to heel. And now,
As though 'twere yesterday, as though it were
The hour just flown, that morn with all its sound
(For those old Mays had thrice the life of these)
Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze,
And, where the hedgerow cuts the pathway, stood,
Leaning his horns into the neighbouring field,
And lowing to his fellows. From the woods
Came voices of the well-contented doves;
The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,
But shook his song together as he near'd

His happy home, the ground. To left and right
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills;

The mellow ousel fluted in the elm;

The redcap whistled; and the nightingale

Sang loud, as though he were the bird of day."

There but that sounds almost more like June than May now-adays. It makes one feel inclined to lean upon a stile and enjoy for an hour or two the mere fact of living; that feeling

"When life is sweet, we know not why,"

and hearts, even in their autumn, become spring-like with the spring.