MAXIMS FOR PARENTS.

First give yourself, and then your child, to God. It is but giving Him His own. Not to do it, is robbing God.

"Give not heedless commands, but when you command, require prompt obedience.”

"Cultivate sympathy with your child in all lawful joys and sorrows."

"Pray with and for your child, often and heartily."

Never deceive, or break a promise to a child.

Encourage all attempts at self-improvement.

HOME INFLUENCE.

HOME JOYS.

"Sweet are the joys of home,
And pure as sweet, for they,
Like dews of morn and evening come,
To make and close the day.

The world hath its delights,
And its delusions too!

But Home to calmer bliss invites,
More tranquil and more true.
The pilgrims step, in vain

Seeks Eden's sacred ground;
But in Home's holy joys, again
An Eden may be found.

A glance of heaven to see,
To none on earth is given;
And yet, a happy family

Is but an earlier heaven."

JOHN BOWRING.

NO. II.

Story of a Mother's Lobe.

A HIGHLAND widow left her home early one morning, in order to reach, before evening, the residence of a kinsman who had promised to assist her to pay her rent. She carried on her back her only child, a boy two years old. The journey was a long one. I was following the same wild and lonely path when I first heard the story I am going to tell you. The mountain-track, after leaving the small village by the sea-shore, where the widow lived, passes through a green valley, watered by a peaceful stream which flows from a neighbouring lake; it then winds along the margin of the solitary lake, until, near its further end, it suddenly turns into an extensive copse-wood of oak and birch. From this it emerges half-way up a

rugged mountain side, and entering a dark glen, through which a torrent rushes amidst great masses of granite, it at last conducts the traveller, by a zig-zag ascent, to a narrow gorge, which is hemmed in upon every side by giant precipices. Overhead is a strip of blue sky, while all below is dark and gloomy. From this mountain-pass the widow's dwelling was ten miles off, and no human habitation was nearer than her own. She had undertaken a long journey indeed! But the rent was due some weeks before, and the sub-factor threatened to dispossess her, as the village in which she lived, and in which her family had lived for two generations, was about to be swept away in order to enlarge a sheep-farm. Indeed, along the margin of the quiet stream which watered the green valley, and along the shore of the lake, might even then be traced the ruins of many a hamlet, where happy and contented people once lived, but where no

sound is now heard, except the bleat of a solitary sheep, or the screams of the eagle, as he wheels his flight among the dizzy precipices.

The morning when the widow left her home gave promise of a lovely day. But before noon a sudden change took place in the weather. Northward, the sky became dark and lowering. Masses of clouds rested upon the hills. Sudden gusts of wind began to whistle among the rocks, and to ruffle with black squalls the surface of the loch. The wind was succeeded by rain, and the rain by sleet, and sleet by a heavy fall of snow. It was the month of May-for that storm is yet remembered as the "great May storm." The wildest day of winter never beheld flakes of snow falling heavier or faster, or whirling with more fury through the mountain-pass, filling every hollow and whitening every rock! Weary, and wet, and cold, the widow reached that pass with her child. She knew that a mile