VIRTUE AND VICE.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

I SAW the virtuous man contend
With life's unnumbered woes;
And he was poor without a friend,
Press'd by a thousand foes.

I saw deceitful Passion's slave,
In gaudy trim, and gay;

His course seem'd pleasure's placid wave
His life a summer day.

And I was caught in Folly's snare,

And join'd her giddy train;

But found her soon the nurse of care,
And punishment, and pain.

There surely is some guiding power

Which rightly suffers wrong; Gives Vice to bloom its little hour,

But virtue, late and long.

THE MOTHER TRIED.

BY S. C. HALL.

"OH! blessed is my baby boy !"
Thus spoke a mother to her child;
And kissed him with excess of joy,—
He looked into her face, and smiled.

But, as the mother breathed his name, The fervent prayer was scarcely said, Convulsions shook his infant frame, The mother's only hope was dead!

Yet, still, her faith in Him she kept,
In Him who turned to grief her joy;
And still she whispered as she wept,

"Oh! blessed is my baby boy!"

THE CHILDREN OF ALSACE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF 'SELWYN."

Του may number among the many advantages to which you are born in this privileged age, that you know but by tradition the first French Revolution. Seated around the cheerful Christmas hearth, in the bosom of happy families, it may heighten your sense of blessings to be reminded that parents, tender and affectionate as those by whom you are cherished, were then torn from firesides peaceful as that you now surround, and doomed to death, merely for fearing God and honouring the King, as our holy religion enjoins us to do. When you are told that in a Christian country it was once a crime to possess education, and death to be a minister of God,-that wealth was but a quicker passport to that scaffold from which poverty was no safeguard, and youth and innocence no

protection, do not your young hearts still their joyous beating, and does not your blood run cold with horror at the thought of times so wicked and so awful? But remember that they had, like other tempests, their purposes of providential utility in the counsels of Him who "maketh the wrath of man to praise Him." Most of the few bright pages which redeem those dreary annals are hallowed by the name and actions of woman; and you will learn with pleasure, that even children acquired, amid the perils and hardships of those dear to them, premature sagacity and heroic devotion. Whenever, my dear friends, you are tempted to think yourselves too young for benevolent exertions, remember, that in a cavern of the ruins of K- —, a persecuted and amiable old man owed life, and the means of supporting it, for eight months, to the unwearied perseverance and presence of mind of two children under thirteen years of age.

It was in the dreadful times I have just mentioned, when the mere possession of rank and property exposed to death individuals of all ages, that a good old gentleman, living in a small village at the foot of the Vosges Moun

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tains, received information from a quarter he could not hesitate to confide in, that his life was in great danger, and instant flight his only reAt the age of seventy, with delicate health, recluse habits, and no family to assist in his escape, poor Monsieur N. knew not whither to turn for advice or protection. At length he bethought himself of applying to the husband of an old and faithful servant, on whose gratitude he had strong claims, though well aware that he was not free from the cruel revolutionary principles of the day, and knowing how often these triumphed over every better feeling of human nature. With difficulty the aged fugitive reached the dwelling of his once obsequious dependent, (whose wife had been. some time dead), and he fortunately found there only his two children, George, a boy of twelve, and Henrietta, a girl of ten years old, who, while they received with all the warmth of childish affection their aged benefactor, knew their father's character and sentiments too well to be able to afford him any encouragement to throw himself upon his mercy. Reduced to extremities by this disappointment, it pleased' Providence to suggest by the mouths of these