which are changing around you in every hour of every day be nothing better in your estimation than the shadows which they really are. Let not your eye devour all things indiscriminately and at once. If you seek for wisdom in the volume of nature, fly not, like a child, from one gay picture to another, but read it slowly, page after page, letting the moral, that lurks underneath even that which seems merely intended to amuse, become deeply engraved upon your memory. Employ this happy gift with prudence and self-possession, and reserve the full abandonment of its power to that promised time, when it shall be called to look upon light that fades not, hues that change not, and forms which shall never be dissolved.

To compensate, my dear young friend, in some degree, for this long letter of counsel, I will, in my next, desire your attention for a tale which may furnish an illustration of the advantages which the sense is capable of conferring.

CHAPTER IV.

The Kelp-Gatherer.

THE stranger who wanders along the terrific masses of crag that overhang the green and foaming waters of the Atlantic, on the western coasts of Ireland, feels a melancholy interest excited in his mind, as he turns aside from the more impressive grandeurs of the scene, and gazes on the small stone heaps that are scattered over the moss on which he treads. They are the graves of the nameless few whose bodies have been from time to time rejected from the bosom of the ocean, and cast upon these lonely crags to startle the early fisherman with their ghastly and disfigured bulk. Here they meet, at the hands of the pitying mountaineers, the last offices of Christian charity-a grave in the nearest soft earth, with no other ceremonial than the humble peasant's prayer. Here they lie, uncoffined, unlamented, unclaimed by mourning friends, starting like sudden spectres of death from the depths of the ocean, to excite a wild fear, a passing thought of pity, a vain inquiry in the hamlet, and then sink into the earth in mystery and in silence, to be no more remembered on its surface.

The obscurity which envelopes the history of those

unhappy strangers affords a subject to the speculative traveller on which he may give free play to the wings of his imagination. Few, indeed, can pass these deserted sepulchres without endeavouring for a moment to penetrate in fancy the darkness which enshrouds the fate of their mouldering tenants; without beholding the progress of the ruin that struck from beneath the voyager's feet the firm and lofty fabric to which he had confidently trusted his existence-without hearing the shrieks of the despairing crew, and the stern and horrid burst of the roused up ocean, as it dealt the last stroke upon the groaning timbers of the wreck, and scattered the whole pile far and wide, in countless atoms, upon the boiling surface of the deep. And, again, without turning in thought to the far-away homes, at which the tale of the wanderers was never told-to the pale young widow that dreamed herself still a wife, and lived on from morn to morn, in the fever of a vain suspense-to the helpless parent, that still hoped for the offices of filial kindness from the hand that was now mouldering in a distant grave; and to the social fire-side, over whose evening pastimes the long silence of an absent friend had thrown a gloom that the certainty of woe or gladness could

never remove.

Among those nameless tombs, within the space of the last few years, the widow of a fisherman, named Reardon, was observed to spend a great portion of her time. Her husband had died young, perishing in a sudden

storm, which swept his canoe from the coast side into the waste of sea beyond it; and his wife was left to inhabit a small cottage near the crags, and to support, by the labour of her hands, an only child, who was destined to inherit little more than the blessing, the virtue, and the affections of his parent. The poor widow endeavoured to procure a subsistence for her boy and for herself, by gathering the kelp which was thrown upon the crags, and which was burned for the purpose of manufacturing soap from its ashes; while the youth employed his yet unformed strength in tilling the small garden, that was confined by a quickset hedge at their cottage side. They were fondly attached, and toiled incessantly to obtain the means of comfort, rather for each other than for themselves; but, with all their exertions, fortune left them in the rearward of her favour. The mother beheld, with a mother's agony, the youthful limbs and features of her boy exhibit the sickly effects of habitual privation and habitual toil; while the son mourned to see the feebleness of premature old age begin to steal upon the health and vigour of his parent.

In these difficulties, a prospect of certain advantage and probable good fortune induced the young man to leave his mother and his native country for some years. The distresses and disturbances which agitated that unhappy land pressed so heavily upon the fortunes of many families of the middle, as well as the lower rank,

that great numbers were found to embrace the opportunity of improvement which the colonization of the New World held out for their advantage. Among those who emigrated was the family under whom the Reardons held their little cottage; and with them it was that the young man determined to try his fortune in a happier region. Having arranged their affairs so as to secure his widowed parent against absolute poverty, they separated with many tears, the mother blessing her son as she committed him to the guardianship of Providence, and the son pledging himself to return to her assistance as soon as he had obtained the means of providing her the comforts necessary for her old age.

His success, though gradual, was complete. The blessings of the young Tobias fell upon the work of his hands, and his industry, because well directed, was productive, even beyond his expectations. Instead of lingering, like many of his fellow-exiles, in the seaport towns, where they were detained by idleness, and that open-mouthed folly which persuades men that fortune may be found without the pain of seeking, young Reardon proceeded at once into the new settlements, where human industry is one of the most valuable and valued commodities. In a little time, he was enabled to remit a considerable portion of his earnings to his poor mother, and continued, from time to time, to increase his contributions to her comfort, until at length the abundance of his prosperity was such, as to enable him