tainty which attaches to the particular acts of life, It shows a careless word prolific of highly beneficial results, bringing joy to many hearts. In like manner, a careless word may do evil. Hence, we never know the real importance of our own acts. We cannot judge which of them will be most influential. A truth that invests every detail of life with moral grandeur, and demands the liveliest attention to our minutest actions.

Permit me, young lady, to ask you how you are to wield this tremendous element of power, with benefit to others, unless you do it by the aid of Divine grace? How can you consecrate it to goodness, unless the Almighty Spirit of goodness imparts the power? How can you attain the wise thoughtfulness, the lofty aim, the unselfish motive, the resolute will, so essential to right influence, unless from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of love, wisdom and purity? How can you, so weak, so thoughtless, so inexperienced, safely guard and rightly expend, this priceless treasure, in your own unassisted strength? It is impossible! You could as easily create an

archangel with a word, as to rightly exert your influence without the religion of Jesus Christ. Reject him, and retributive justice will write anathema on your influence. You shall feed on its terrible fruit forever. As a spectre, with your name written in distortion on its face, it shall stand before you. It shall draw the curtain of your couch when you sleep, and extend you an ice-cold hand. It will stand before you at the hour of death, and thrust aside your last prayer. It will stand upon your grave in the resurrection, and at your side when God shall judge you. But, by embracing Christ, the will, the motive, the power to consecrate your influence to beneficent ends, will be given you. You will move as an angel of goodness on earth. Your influence, living

after your death, will remain

"A rill, a river, and a boundless sea,"

upon whose waters numberless trophies shall be borne, to adorn your triumph when you take your place among the victors in the kingdom of God.

*See Schiller.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TRUE SPHERE OF WOMAN.

HE heroic achievements of che shepherdess of Domremi, JoA OF ARC, are no doubt familiar to my young reader. Her imaginary inspiration; her enthusiastic persistence in the execution of her supposed mission; her daring courage, as, armed cap-a-pie and mounted on a fiery warhorse, she led the embattled hosts of France to victory; her success, her sincer

ity, her melancholy fate,-have awakened your wonder, your admiration, and your pity. Her romantic elevation from the peasant's hut to the palaces of kings, her brilliant but brief career, her astounding influence over proud ecclesiastics, haughty nobles and great princes, her unquestionable and suc

cessful patriotism, are written indelibly upon your imagination. But I am bold to presume that, with all your surprise at her deeds, you have never really loved her character Not that there is nothing lovely in it; but her masculine attitude casts so deep a shadow upon her more womanly qualities, you feel constrained to withhold your love. You cannot sympathize with a woman warrior. Her position, as a military leader and combatant, unsexes her before your feelings, and you rank her with the anomalies of your sex.

On the contrary, you can contemplate the character of HANNAH MORE with a truly affectionate regard albeit she too was a patriotic defender and savior of her nation. You can contemplate her amiable spirit, heaving with anxious concern at the dangers which hung over her country, at a period when revolution and anarchy threatened its institutions. You can study her mind laboring to discern a method by which she could aid in warding off the impending danger. You can witness her studious labors with the pen, and read her earnest appeals to the loyalty

and good sense of the English people, through her popular tracts. You can trace the success of these appeals in the altered feelings of thousands toward the government, and in the constitutional and peaceful reforms subsequently brought to pass in that country. You can hear her named, by the voice of Fame, as having been one of the principal instruments of saving the nation, but no repugnant feeling rises in your breast toward her. You can admire her talents, her patriotism, wonder at her success, and, withal, you can ardently love her character. While Joan of Arc lives in your imagination, Hannah More occupies a place in your affections..

For this difference in your feelings, you are not responsible. Your repugnance to the character of Joan of Arc, and your affectionate regard for that of Miss More, are alike instinctive. They both flow from the constitution of your nature. They are not peculiar to your own mind, nor to your own sex. There are few, if any, minds uninfluenced by peculiar opinions, that would not be similarly affected at once, by an impartial view of these two characters.