ceptible trace upon the calm, pale cheek over which they were not long permitted to flow.

Philip had promised well, and what was better still, he had told the whole truth. Happy was it for him, and happy for all the family, that he had formed an attachment which was in all respects so calculated to strengthen his better resolutions, and to excite in him a taste for higher and purer enjoyments. Philip had promised well; but perhaps he had been a little too ready to pledge himself by solemn oaths to reveal to his brother everything connected with his future life. Already, indeed, a long letter had been written by him for his brother's inspection, so circumstantial and minute in its details, that Robert, under any other circumstances, would have smiled at its boyish simplicity. Such details, he thought, were not very likely to be kept up, and he would have felt more confidence in the continuance of this kind of intercourse had it been less particular and minute.

On the other hand, the fears which had so crowded upon Robert Clifton's mind as to plunge him at first into a state of the lowest depression, had not entirely disappeared. The same anxiety for his brother still hung about him, and it was the more painful because of a stern determination to which he still held—and he told his brother that he did so-a determination that if Philip fell again into his former habits, and fell again with all the inducements which he now enjoyed for becoming a better and a wiser man, Miss Linden should not be allowed to enter blindly into a connection so fraught with ruin and misery. Robert himself would feel it his duty to lay open the truth, so that both the young lady and her father should know that they had been honestly dealt with, in being made fully aware of the grounds on which they had to calculate for the future.

Whenever the subject presented itself

All this while, Robert Clifton was suffering physically, as thousands are suffering besides him; and hence a host of apprehensions thronged upon him, growing, as it were, spontaneously out of every subject connected with himself, and with those in whose welfare his happiness was bound up. A journey, a voyage, a ramble amidst mountain scenery, but especially an occupation congenial to his nature, would have enabled him to throw off half these anxieties, and to bear the other half more lightly. Deprived of these natural and wholesome restoratives to mental health, he was still not left without his consolation. Heaven kindly sent him, as already stated, a gentle but unconscious monitor in the young girl, who now became dependent upon him for almost daily lessons in the art to which she so perseveringly, and now so hopefully, applied herself.

Easily won over by the respectful attentions of Robert Clifton, Mrs. Maitland had yielded her consent to his proposal of being her daughter's regular instructor in the art of drawing. And though at first, as a question of etiquette, the mother made a point of being present at these lessons, she soon learned to trust the grave, thoughtful young man, to teach her daughter during those early hours of the day when it would have been too great a sacrifice for her to have risen for the purpose of keeping watch over any one.

Robert and his pupil were similarly circumstanced in this respect. Neither had a moment of time to call their own, except early in the morning and late at night. Immediately after a seven o'clock breakfast, then, the lesson began; and after her return home in the evening, Mary practised upon what she had learned.

"How strange!" said Mary. "Why so?"

'Strange that an art, which I fancy would make me quite happy if I possessed it, should be cast aside by you as utterly worthless!"

"And yet it may be so; for what should I do with your music, for instance?" "Oh! gladden your own soul with it, to be sure, as I do. Do you never feel hungry after something which the dry details of life do not afford?"

"Yes, but I never thought that music could satisfy that hunger."

"Perhaps not in itself; nor would drawing satisfy me. But there is so much to be done with both-with everything, in short, which we can do. Why, only think! Your drawing, in its veriest shreds and fragments, in its waste and refuse, has been the means of helping me to a situation, without which I must have begged, or rather borrowed, which I take to be much worse. Your drawing has been the means of opening to me-not only a new resource for living, but a new life. You cannot think how rich I feel in my new possession. Look here! Whoever would have thought that in one short month I should have made a picture like this? Nay, do not laugh. My sheep are all pigs, to be sure;

and
my distant objects come forward, and
stand before the near. But what of that?
I see why they do so, and therefore I shall
manage better in time. And then there is
such infinite amusement in creating, shap-
ing, and adjusting one's objects, for ever.
Oh! never again, as long as you live-
never again regret that God gave you this
gift, nor throw it aside as worthless."

"I do not think I ever shall."
"But you speak coldly."
"Do I speak coldly?"

"Yes; and I want you to know and feel all the great happiness which you have been the means of bestowing upon meby your skill in drawing, I mean,

course."

of

"Oh! I perfectly understand that." "You ought first to understand a little

of the distress in which this new happiness found me. But hush! I must not let my mother hear me speak of distress. Do you know, I had risen with the sun, morning after morning, to try what I could do. I had taken a small, delicate engraving, and endeavoured to copy that. Oh! you never saw such miserable work as I made of itso miserable, that it cost me many bitter tears; and yet I had a very urgent reason for wishing to accomplish the end which you have placed within my reach. It is indeed kind of you to take such pains with a poor helpless girl like me; but if you knew what that reason of mine was, I don't think you would regret your kindness. Oh! Mr. Clifton, all men are not like you!"

"I hope not. I hope there are many better men in the world than I am."

66

"Ah! but there are many worse men, too,-selfish men there are, unprincipled men, who take advantage of poverty, and weakness, and want of friends. But I don't want to think or speak on subjects of this kind. It makes me think less than I ought of the pleasures and advantages which I enjoy, and less of the goodness of God, and his power to preserve and keep us amidst all dangers."

"There are others beside yourself, who need to forget the galling and humiliating cares of life, in order that they may remember God, and thank him more continually for his goodness."

"Is it possible, Mr. Clifton, that you are tempted in this way, to remember what can do you no good to think of, and to forget what would cheer and comfort you under every trial?"

"Indeed there is no one more troubled in this way than myself. I might almost say no one more guilty."

66

"You have your cares and trials then, as well as myself?"

"Indeed I have. I sometimes fancy rather more than my proper share of them."

"But you are not poor, like me."

"There are degrees of poverty. I am the oldest of my family, and I have many to provide and care for."

"Out of some great business, is it,some business that does not always go on well?"

"You have exactly guessed the case."

12

A

in the contemplation of God's dealings with and for themselves, to the exclusion of those larger, wider, loftier, and more benevolent views which an enlightened study of the Holy Scriptures is calculated to inspire."

"I should be sorry indeed to fall into this selfish way of thinking. It would be very shocking-very unlike the kind of Christianity which the Saviour came to @teach-very unworthy of the salvation which he purchased for us."

1 "Like many other points of Christian duty and experience, these views of the character and attributes of God, and of chis dealings with his creatures, may be just and true in themselves, and even essential to the great work which has to be transacted between the soul and its Maker; but yet, taken singly, and dwelt 2 upon exclusively, they may, as I have said, be fraught with danger, though possibly not so to you." "I hope not."

"I hope not, and I believe not."

"It is so pleasant, so consoling, to gather into a lonely heart like mine, all that I can lay hold of from such thoughts as these."

"Yes, gather them, and hoard them as your richest treasure. Next to the words of inspiration, they are so to you, and to thousands."

"What else, as I said before, is there for me of comfort or support in the life I am leading? What else, as I pace the streets of this great city, and see its wickedness and its shame. Oh! sir, I know a great deal more about the wickedness of the world than girls of my age generally know. I am sometimes even able to render a little help, though it must, you know, be in a very small way. Often I have called the attention of the police to what they would scarcely have seen themselves, as in the case of our poor servant, whose history I think you know. Once, too, and that was a memorable time, I found a lost child-only think, a poor child utterly lost in London! A wicked nurse, I believe, had forgotten it, or at all events, had left it to the mercy of strangers, and it was just on the point of being claimed by a woman who had no right to it. But I stuck to it the child was not hers, and by my perseverance, the poor

little thing was at last restored to its own mother. Oh! sir, London is a very wicked place."

"Too wicked, I am afraid, for either you or me to reclaim it.”

"No doubt it is; but we can each of us do something."

"How long have you gone out in this unprotected manner."

"For three years and a half, and I am not yet one-and-twenty. At first I was very much afraid, particularly when rude men spoke to me, as they did sometimes then-now they never do; in order to keep my heart from quite sinking, I made a little prayer, and to this day the words of that simple prayer are a great comfort to me. I used to wish that I could close my eyes, and so walk blindfold through all that I did not want to see. Now I wish rather to relieve the suffering, than not to see it; and I think, sometimes, if I were one of those rich ladies rolling in their carriages, with their footmen and fat spaniels, what I would do!"

"I wonder what you would do?" "I think I would first endow an institution in which wicked men should be confined, and kept from ruining their families as well as themselves."

"Ah! my good philanthropist, I am not quite sure that your little prayer would not really do more good than all your schemes for the correction of bad men, or the improvement of the human race in general."

"One thing I know-my little prayer is far more likely to be breathed, than my fine schemes to be executed. But, how I am talking and taking up your time! Pray forgive me."

"I have not to forgive, but to thank you, and I do so with all my heart; I have no one else to exchange a word with on subjects of this kind."

"Nor I; for if I should begin to speak to my poor suffering mother about the comfort or the necessity of prayer, she would either think I was going to die, or that I must be very miserable indeed to feel the want of such support; and then she would bemoan her luckless fate again, until I should bitterly repent of having spoken." Speak to me then as often as you like in this way. It will do me good without doing you harm."

I hope not; and I hope you believe me when I say that if I had thought you were, I never never-would have talked to you as I have done."

"Let us meet then, whenever we do meet, with a perfect understanding."

"I know what you mean-an understanding that we are each to do the other good, not harm. But why do you smile?" "At the idea of anyone doing harm to you."

"Oh Mr. Clifton, you don't know-but I will not speak on such subjects. That at all events does me harm."

"No. We will speak of what brings hope, and strength, and confidence for the future. This I fancy is what we are both needing. I am sure I am."

"But you must not look in that way when you speak of the future. And now that I think of it, I am sure you have not been well lately. My mother thinks, and Jane thinks, too, that you are looking pale, and thinner, and they say you eat nothing."

"If they had added that I have almost

been far wrong, and yet I do not feel ill." "Shall I tell you what you want?" "Yes, do."

"For your body, you want a good long ramble in the country."

"And for my mind?"

"Ah! it is not for me to minister to a mind diseased. One half at least of what your mind is wanting would come back with your improved bodily health." "And the other half?"

"Would be much improved by dwelling on the bright side of things, instead of the dark side only."

"But there are some things which have no bright side."

"There I differ from you. I do not believe there is any human lot that has in it nothing pleasant, except only the lot of the wicked. It is right, you know, that guilt should make all dark around us. We ought to rejoice rather than murmur at that?"

"But I speak of situations where there is no positive guilt, or guilt only of some other persons for instance, situations such as yours or mine."

"Oh! do not speak of yours and mine in that dark way. I implore you not to make me see my own situation so."

"But unless I may sometimes speak to you out of my shadow, how am I ever to get you to turn me about so that I may bask in your light?"

"This will never do. Time is flying. I shall be too late. Never mind, I will ride to-day. You must listen to me this once. Suppose now I admit so much as that I was very miserable, and that I ha even a right to be miserable on the morn ing when I came to the conclusion that I really could not draw-that it was of no use making the attempt, and that consequently I must give up the hope on which my heart was set. Well; my foolish tears attracted your attention—your scattered drawings attracted mine. My tears were the result of misery-your half-destroyed drawings were the same. Now, look at the issue I have found, through this means, a kind tutor willing to instruct me in the art of drawing."

"And I?"

"Good morning. I hear a carriage at the door."