this hawthorn blossom-whence came it? Last year, a mound of clay was piled up along the side of the field, to form a bank, into which was inserted a row of as unsightly sticks as could well be seen: and I know that at the root of the stick decomposition took place, and nothing was there but black earth, cold damps, and vegetable corruption. Yet it can be proved to demonstration that from them arose this object, glorious in the perfection of visible beauty, without a trace of the combination of disagreeable things whence it sprang. I know that instrumentally the sun in the firmament, and the balmy air of spring, wrought the change: and shall I concede to the weak creatures of an Almighty Hand, a power which I deny to that unrestrained Omnipotence? No, most lovely preacher; my heart is not so closed against the delicious promise, illustrated by such a type; and while the Lord in his word says to me, "Thy brother shall rise again," no less surely does he, in his work, show me that what shall rise is the same in very deed, yet with a body given to it of the glory of which we can form no more conception than he who had never beheld a flower could have formed of what should spring from the stick thrust into the ground last year. With this in prospect, I can venture, yea, delight to look back; and while fondly dwelling on the early scenes of our thoughtless days, can say of each, it was a link in the chain of endless mercies wrought by everlasting love. If the strength of undivided affection adds a pang to the keen sense of irreparable loss, still the good far overbalances the evil. It led to willing service and to fervent prayer, while either could avail him; it infuses zeal and perseverance into duties fulfilled for his cake, and in his stead, towards objects once most dear to his heart. There is scarcely a recollection interwoven with the flower of May that does not furnish an encouragement, and feed the hope which maketh not ashamed, by opening more and more the faithfulness of him who hath promised. Is the contemplation one of early enjoyment, unmingled with a tear, unchecked by a frown, when all went well with me even as, in the blindness of the natural heart, I desired it to be? I read in that retro spection the necessity for subsequent chastisement, and learn to adore the love that followed me through every perverse and wilful track, applying the scourge, until the wanderer, brought home to the fold, desired to stray no more. Does the image of my companion rise before me, in all the countless combinations that cannot be forgotten? I ponder on the mercy that watched and warded every danger and led him through the successive battle fields of a protracted warfare, untouched by hostile arm, while many a comrade fell before his eyes, and armies were mowed down beside him. A work was to be wrought in him, and God would glorify himself, alike by prolonging life in the midst of hourly perils, and by terminating it in the moment of peace and security. The artist's skill is never so highly appreciated as when he has succeeded in pourtraying an object beloved by ourselves: should not the glorious workmanship of the Most High call forth a song of louder praise, when his renewing power has stamped with the impress of immortal life a soul naturally dear to us as our own? We should not hear so many idle changes rung on the perverted word idolatry, as applied to the indulgence of our natural affection—or, at least, we should not so much heed them, if we marked the stimulus thereby given to intercessory prayer, and thankful acknowledgment on behalf of our brethren. "Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee!" was the ejaculation of parental love; and at the end of more than thirty-six centuries we see the still unconquered Arab enjoying the fulfilment of God's gracious answer to that prayer. Fearfully and wonderfully made as we are in every respect, there is nothing more astonishing to me than the phenomena of memory. An event occurs, or a remark is made, and for years the circumstance is forgotten; it seems to be utterly blotted out, and consigned to oblivion, but it remains, with all its associations, so faithfully preserved that when unexpectedly recalled it comes not alone-it brings a host of touching recollections, aggravating, perhaps, the bitterness of loss, while it soothes the bereaved bosom by adding to its store of ideal treasures, and melancholy delights. The only things that we seem able utterly to forget are God's mer- | pay more regard than we do, is this: that cies and our own sins; for all besides, we every thing has its bright side-sin only have a ready place in that amazing organ, memory. I cannot put the hawthorn blossom by for any flower that blows. Its very profusion endears it, meeting me in every path with a joyous smiling aspect, like that which it commemorates; and marking the most beauteous season of the year, and disappearing when all seems to promise a long reign of flowers. And what shall supply its place? The wildrose of the edge is fair, but too evanescent; the straggling honey-suckle is sweet, but it wants the sprightly grace of the May-flower. I must not repine, surrounded by so many varied gifts of the same bounteous hand, because one is taken away but though I may not repine, I cannot forget. The Lord gave, and I blessed his name for it: he resumed the boon, and I was able to bless him for that also, because I knew it to be best, since he willed it; and I knew also that he took away, not cast away, the treasure of my heart. It was not scattered to the wind like the petals of a flower, but gathered into the garner as winnowed wheat, reserved for the Master's use. Can we look abroad upon this world of storms, and regret that our harvest is safely housed? Can we hear the frequent voice of sorrow and sighing and lament that some beloved object has gained the place where they are compelled to flee away? The ripening berries of the hawthorn bush, reserved as a winter store to feed the little birds of heaven, read a lesson from the very stalks where those sweet blossoms smiled. They tell me of a nobler purpose in the works of God than selfish man would appoint: and the small portion of his ways that we may now discern is but a part of that vast and uniform design which shall, hereafter, be fully unfolded, to the joy of his people and the glory of his name. excepted. Within the range of a small neighbourhood, often of a single family, we meet with individuals whose mode of viewing the ordinary occurrences of life is so dissimilar, as often to invest the same event or circumstance with two characters, as distinct as sunshine and gloom. A naturally cheerful and sanguine temper will find in almost every thing somewhat to be pleased with; a truly spiritual one something for which to be thankful: and when both are united, the joyousness that abounds is delightful-to its possessor at least-while the command, so hard to some mourning spirits, "Rejoice always," is anything but a grievous one. A cold, dreary, leafless spring, succeeded by a sudden burst of summer, is a fruitful theme to those whose favourite point of view is not the fairest side. "Here we are transferred at once from the rough blasts of the north-easter to hot scorching rays, without any gradations of temperature. No spring showers, no light and genial zephyrs, no succession of plants in their season, but a rude, abrupt jump from the muffs and boas of February to the gauzes of July. How miserable!" So sighs one portion of the gentle community; while the other exclaims, "What a rare collection of sweets and beauties seldom grouped together! The lilac and laburnum mingling their blossoms with the rose. Spring has worn a sombre mantle, only that her younger sister might sparkle for once doubly gay in her borrowed gems. We are like voyagers, wafted on with unconscious rapidity from a frigid to a genial clime, forgetting in the brilliant beams around us the shivering discomfort of last week; or only remembering it to enhance the delight of basking beneath such a sky." Which of these parties is the wiser, it might be presumptuous to decide: but the latter unquestionably is the more happy. Not far from my cottage door grows a shrub, or rather a tree, of sunny character and beauteous aspect, on which I cannot look and be sad. It is one of the many graceful things that spring up, spontaneously, in the wilder tracks of our English garden; and the person who can pass it by unnoticed is more difficult to please than I am. The BROOM, with its irregu lar stem, its capricious twists, and wild, straggling shoots, thrown out, as it were at random, yet never failing to form a wand of striking elegance, marked by the small, but exquisitely-shaped blossom of deeply shaded yellow-this Broom seems quite a character among the trees; and when I study that character, I find its prominent points to be independence, decision, vigour, and a beauty alike profuse, unique, and eccentric. Let it be remembered I am not speaking of a shrub, such as the gardener permits, here and there, to attain a certain height for the diversifying of his well-tutored array: but of a tree, some eight or nine feet high, rampant in healthful freedom, and stooping with patriarchal dignity to touch my head as I pass below. The Yellow Broom was always a favourite with me; and all its associations were sunshiny like its blossom. They are not the less so now, that, having found a very fitting antitype for it, I am obliged to look far beyond the tops of much higher trees towards his present abode. His memory will, indeed, bring a tear to the eye, but never unaccompanied with a smile from the gladdened heart. What he was to me and hundreds more, can never be forgotten by us: what he is in the full enjoyment of all that his soul long panted after, forms a contemplation most delicious to those who know how in this tabernacle he groaned, being burdened. Burdened with much suffering from bodily infirmity with more anguish of spirit, from the clearness of his views on the subject of England's waning star. It would be idle to throw a flimsy veil over the person alluded to unworthy of the name of Howels, to shrink from inscribing it, even on this humble page. I had a dread of running after popular preachers, and was also, in some measure, infected by prejudices, the holders of which, like myself, knew not the man whom they dispraised. Accordingly, my first visit to Long-acre chapel was made rather in compliance with the usage of the family whose guest I then was, than from choice. It so happened that in the morning's discourse he uttered a sentiment at once so just and so little calculated to flatter his hearers, that it completely riveted my attention. He said that of all characters, he knew none more deeply to be commiserated than a young man of piety, talent, and eloquence, placed in one of the metropolitan pulpits: for that surrounded by an admiring London congregation, and greeted with their applauding eulogies, he would soon find himself in the plight of a man embraced by a bear-crushed by the animal's deadly clasp, and stifled with its poisonous breath. "This minister," thought I, as the energetic denunciation reached me, "can hardly be in the habit of prophesying smooth things to his flock." I secretly wished that he would take up a subject on which I was, at the time, much exercised: the extraordinary proceedings then commencing among the followers of Mr. Irving. I was gratified: the untold wish was fulfilled; on that same evening Howels fully entered upon the question; and God made him the blessed means of so far settling my mind that, even under circumstances of peculiar trial and temptation, it never again wavered. The delusion was revealed under the strong light of opposing truth; and the snare so effectually broken that it could not be repaired. From that time I cannot tax myself with having sought for other teaching, when Long-acre was within my reach. Many a walk have I taken, of three or four miles, through all the varieties of an inclement winter, to partake of its good things: for I never deemed the privilege of his, or any other ministry, an excuse for entering a carriage on the Lord's day. I never added the weight of my body to the burdens so cruelly and unlawfully laid on cattle, to whom the Lord has graciously extended the boon of the seventh day's rest. For this I desire to be most thankful, for the temptation was certainly great; and there was no lack of plausible evasions, suggested by friends who, having persuaded themselves, would fain have persuaded me also, that they were guilty of no inconsistency in riding to church to hear God's prohibition against their so doing-nor of trifling with Him in prayer for grace to keep a law which they had made deliberate preparations for breaking within an hour afterwards. I have alluded to the bodily sufferings of our valued pastor: they were great and grevious. If his flock had known what he sometimes underwent, whe preparing their Sabbath feast, they would even have preferred to remain unfed. But he was then to use his own beautiful comparison, "an out-door servant, exposed to wind and rain." Rough, indeed, were the gales that shook, and pitiless the torrents that overwhelmed that uncomplaining servant: and often, while his acknowledged singularities provoked the good-humoured smile, or furnished an excuse for the mocking laugh, in the many circles where he formed a frequent topic of discourse, the object of their free remarks was lying stretched out on the hard floor of his retired lodging, seeking, in that position, a temporary relief from racking pain, brought on by unreserved devotion to his duties, efforts far beyond his physical strengthand pleading with God for their souls. Exquisitely alive to every touch, he writhed where another would not have winced from the rough contact of spirits less acutely sensitive: while the unaffected lowliness of his character, joined with a delicacy that few could appreciate, threw a veil over feelings that a more common mind would have gloried in parading before men. Modern refinement sometimes questioned concerning him, as it does respecting the yellow Broom, whether a plant so simply natural, so meet to grace the wild heath, was adapted to shine among its fantastic selections: and similar was the result. The eye of true taste never failed to recognize in the one, as in the other, a cluster of living gold, not to be vied with by one of a hundred aspirants. For this delicacy of body and susceptibility of mind the days in which my beloved friend shone as a light among us were too exciting. Within a short space of time, he saw the glory of his adored Redeemer sullied by the creeping in, to the very bosom of the church, of a heresy, alike subtle, seductive, and ruinous. To Howels it was horror unspeakable, it was anguish intolerable, to hear of a whisper breathed against the sinless nature of the holy, harmless, undefiled ONE, who was all his salvation, and all his desire. He entered not upon that controversy in the spirit of a theological disputant, coolly selecting his weapons to combat an error; but as a disciple, combining the love of John with the zeal of Peter, anxious to throw himself between his beloved Lord and the shame and spitting wherewith his enemies assailed Him. The fiery torrent of awful reproof that sometimes burst from his lips on this subject was not the studied language of a well-stored head, but the overboiling of a heart inflamed with holy indignation, ready to exclaim, "The rebukes of them that rebuked Thee have fallen upon me.” How many his faithful and fervent exhortations were the means of preserving from that snare, cannot be computed; I can only answer for myself, that I was one for whom, in this respect, his labour was not in vain in the Lord. But another cause-if it may be called another-was dear to him as his own soul; the cause of Christ, as involved in the Protestantism of our country. His peculiar gift might be said to be the discerning of spirits: he could detect Antichrist under any disguise, and never failed to expose and denounce him, whether appearing as the open denier of our blessed Lord's proper divinity, or as the more specious impugner of his spotless humanity. But the papal Antichrist was never out of his keen view. Whatever prey his vigilant mind had started to run down, that great mystery of inquity could not escape. The very soul of John Philpot, or of Rowland Taylor, seemed to have passed into his body: and when the flagon of England's growing iniquity was replenished from the golden cup of the accursed harlot, received into a God-defying alliance with our ungrateful, apostatizing state, it is well known that Howels' life nearly fell a sacrifice to the intensity of his grief and indignation; and when he had so far subdued the bitterness of excited feelings as to venture on an allusion in the pulpit to what was then past recall, those who heard him, and they alone, might form some judgment as to his anticipations of what should follow upon that flagrant national sin. I cannot dwell on this subject, for it burns my very heart, even as it burnt his: but this I may say, that if, through the good hand of my God upon a most weak and worthless instrument, these poor pages are ever made serviceable to the sacred cause of Protestantism, I would desire to thank Him, that in the order of his providential dispensations he sent me to sit under the ministry of his dear servant, William Howels. The principle had indeed taken very deep and strong root in my mind before I was thus privileged: but at Long-acre was the lesson learned of a bold, unhesitating, uncompromising avowal before men and in despite of man, of my own convictions. To the very last did our teacher maintain his loud protest against the abomination that maketh desolate, standing where it ought not: and I pray for grace, at my humble distance, so to follow his example, that power to wield a pen may be vouchsafed to me no longer than while that pen is guided to bring before the eyes of my beloved country women the exceeding iniquity of even a tacit connivance at the rapid overspread of that desolating abomination. Howels does not now lament that he wrought so diligently, bearing the burden and heat of the day: the in-door servant, housed and sheltered, and caressed in his Lord's presence, regrets not that he met the blast, and bided the pelting storm while tending the flock on a dreary waste. did not prize him half enough, nor were within any measure so thankful as we ought to have been. He brought us a message, and left it, though like a shadow, the beloved messenger departed from our sight. We shall yet know more fully than now we do that there hath been a prophet among us. The Lord mercifully spared him the anguish of witnessing the rapid fulfilment of his own reluctant predictions. He saw the cloud, when no bigger than a man's hand-the hand that signed away our national faith-and knew that the sky would shortly be overcast, and a torrent descend, not to refresh a parched land, but to deluge and ravage a guilty one. He girded up his loins, and was taken away from the evil to come, to a place where the joyousness of his unfettered spirit knows no cloud, no doubt, no fear; where he dives unchecked into the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God; and sees, what before he was enabled to believe, how in despite of Satan and his thousand wiles, all things are working together for the glory of his heavenly king, and the good of those who love Him. CHAPTER XXV. THE WIDOW'S TALE. Decision is a noble thing: it formed the crown of Howels' character. His sole object was to glorify God, and a more decided course no man could take than he did in pursuit of that object. My yellow Broom-tree seems resolved to rise as high, to spread as wide, and to put forth as many blossoms as it possibly can. To this is owing its dissimilarity from the more timid shrubs of its extensive race. It is not, 1 grant, so well drilled as they, nor so trim in outer aspect; but it is a tree, while they are only bushes-it shel- To write on Flowers appears no diffiters my head, when they can but please cult task when the whole earth teeming the eye and compels me, whenever I with them presents one gorgeous carpet gaze on it, to look towards heaven. Alas! of rich dyes and exquisite design. On the how often do we stop short of that mark, present occasion it is only difficult from when delighting in the plants we love. the overpowering emotion that accompaEven Howels had those among his con-nies the contemplation-the bewildering stant hearers to whom his eloquence delight with which I look abroad upon the afforded an intellectual feast, without reaching their hearts, or influencing their lives; and how many whose consciences bear them testimony that such was not their case, have to lament, with me, over their comparative unfruitfulness, while tended and watered by his careful hand! We were sometimes accused of idolizing him, just as I am taxed with making an idol of my garden. It is untrue: like the beauteous flowers and juicy fruits, we received him as a gift from God! but we glowing scene. The flowers are scattered around me in wild profusion, always sweet, always pleasant to my eye: how much more so now, when every one that I look on has its root fixed in the green sod of dear Erin, and the welcome, which they smile upon me is the "cead-millefailthe" of that hospitable land! Years have rolled by in lengthened exile, until I verily thought I was never more to gaze upon her fair fields, never more to taste the balmy breath of her zephyrs-but, |