"God's name be blessed!" said E. looking upwards with patriarchal grace, "His mercy be praised for this one gift, that having endowed me with the heart to love, I am not left in the wide world to mourn in loneliness that unencountered one, for whom our Human Nature yearns ;-in whose absence, if deeply felt, the craving of Solicitude knows no appeasing, but supplicates the boon, with plaint fathomless as the source of life and holy as the hope of heaven! Of the bosom's better instincts, the least despoiled of its divine simplicity is, methinks, the pure longing to lavish our heart's wealth upon a child; and even where, as here, the strong paternal bond is wanting, the great Father of love doth sometimes implant a principle exotic, whose tendrils intertwine and wreathe around their object with such tenacity and tenderness, that stronger I can hardly conceive to originate in man the Parent. Once-lang syne-I might have cherished the hope of closer ties, and did cherish; and e'en now, encompassed by the goodness of an overflowing Hand, this scarce-resigned heart is apt to repine at what the Father willed not; and stirs to re-invest with the irksome mantle of mortality a spirit which-thanks to the Finisher of our Faith-it is my confidence as that I live, is enrolled among that blissful band from whose faces GOD hath for ever wiped away all tears. There is a stanza of Campbell that moves deep feelings in me like a heaving flood when I think of it, for in its solemn plaintiveness I hear again that angel's breath, while lingering at the portal of the City whose dwellings have their light and joy from the countenance of the Lamb: 6 Clasp me a little longer, on the brink Of fate, while I can feel thy dear caress; And when this heart hath ceased to beat, oh! think, And let it mitigate thy woes' excess, That thou hast been to me all tenderness, And Friend to more than human friendship just. O! by that retrospect of happiness, And by the hopes of an immortal trust, God shall assuage thy pangs when I am laid in dust.'” COLLOQUY II. CHAPTER IV. "And sure there seem of human kind Some born to shun the solemn strife; Some for amusive tasks designed To soothe the certain ills of life, Grace its lone vales with many a budding rose, Call forth refreshing shades, and decorate repose." SHENSTONE. THERE were three souls in the sanctum at Ivy Lodge on a laughing day in merry May. The Church, by a rather affecting process, quite apart from necromancy, has since resolved those three into two, after an honest and straight-forward fashion, on which one needs not to be over-explicit. I have before hinted at this "catastrophe." That eulogistic description in detail which it might have been excellent gratification to attempt for E.'s god-daughter, as such, would be |