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Do they find truth and honesty of mind, with all other Christian graces, flourish and abound? or does the strong religious meat which they supply rather fail to nourish their hearers in those qualities which the heathen called virtues, and with which the Christian cannot dispense? Is not even the aggressive temper which an increasing section of their body has of late years shown against the church, a sufficient indication that something is wrong in themselves? Wherever the house of prayer is turned into a nursery of sedition, or a theatre of declamation against all government and all old truth, there needs no audible voice, "Let us go hence;" we recognize the unmistakeable sign of the good spirit departing. We are here only saying what their own teachers in their best days would have said. Perhaps, indeed, the connection between their beginning and their present state is more intimate than we should have gathered otherwise than from

appears to be the case, it would be no slight evil for the sympathies which should unite rich and poor in the house of their heavenly Father, to be abruptly dissociated, and for the natural framework of a country to be, as it were, bisected into classes of diverse religion. However genuine may be the purely religious element of thought in the humbler frequenter of the meeting-house, he is withdrawn from many humanizing influences, and is tempted easily to acquiesce in misrepresentation of those superiors, whose kind intentions he has so little opportunity of learning by intercourse. Add the hardening effect of self-indulgent luxury upon one class, and the constant danger of passion couching itself in scriptural language among the other, and we divine how religion may be no longer the cord to bind, or the salt to purify, but the principle of discord to shiver society. There must be some-we do not doubt there are many-among the living teachers of Methodism and Dissent, who are quite capable experience. Even the characteristic strength of of feeling the force of such considerations. With their best men seems partly to have depended such men invective would be misplaced. We upon blazoning abroad those deep secrets of the would rather remind them of the spirit professed religious heart, which many others have expeby the masters and predecessors, whose principles rienced without asking for their expression any they believe themselves to inherit. If their object other ear than that of their heavenly Father. was to awaken, the church has been thoroughly Such a habit, aided by the eloquence of such awakened; if to reform, she is in great measure preachers as Bacon calls "vehement and zealous at least reformed; if they desired to strengthen, persuaders, and not scholastical," not only prothe inadequate though gigantic strength with tested vigorously against the faults of the age, but which she girds herself daily to her superhuman fired vast multitudes with a religious impulse, task of regenerating our huge masses of domestic barbarism invites them to come in and help her. Have they any prayers better calculated to cherish their devotion than the Liturgy which first called it into life? They believe that their sect had its origin in a protest against the profaneness of a latitudinarian age. We admit there are some reasons for that belief; but we contend that no impartial person will study the history which we have been sketching, and not conclude that those reasons have been much exaggerated. Were not, after all, the two principal faults of those old heathens of the church, drinking and Sabbath-breaking? Serious faults, it must be confessed; but one the universal fault of the age, and the other an error which admits of an opposite extreme. Has not Wales purchased her deliverance from these evils at a costly and unnecessary price? Has the improvement on these two points been accompanied by such a general tone of moral excellence, as might have been expected from a movement supposed to be especially blest by Heaven? We have no disposition to magnify what evil may exist, nor to accept as evidence the loose sayings of recrimination interchanged in a sectarian spirit. first love cools, and only the habit of extravaBut the men to whom we allude shall be them-gances which spring from it survives, that we selves our judges. We appeal-not only to the learn how incompetent are such human outbreaks shade of John Elias, whose old age complained to work the righteousness of heaven. There of the decay of sound preachers, and the increase may be such a thing as congealed fanaticism. of sin, and of God hiding his face-but to the Its better spirit fled, its residue may be only injuestimate which the most Christian-minded among rious in standing aloof from that communion themselves at this day would form of their own and instrumentality which divine Providence congregations. had given it as aids to work with.

which is supposed to have been necessarily of heaven. So far as the moral results justify such an inference, we have no objection to it; but if it depends in any degree upon assemblies moved to tears, or strong men shaken by agitation of conscience, we must remark, that in many ages and countries similar exhibitions have taken place without the aid of any form of Christianity. In India and Phrygia, at the old village festivals of Egypt, and amid the Mahometan pilgrimages to Mecca, not to mention the more singular tribes which have recently been described by Mr. Layard, the same passionate outpouring of human devotion may be traced. Especially it strikes us among the Donatists of Africa. It results in part from too keen a desire to commune with the Deity otherwise than in his acknowledged attributes. The physical and the spiritual act upon each other, until they are almost inextricably blended. Yet the very sincerity and fervor of such feelings, especially when working upon the facts and doctrines of a true revelation, are capable for a time of producing enormous effects. They work, as it were, with the strength of fever.

It is when the

Can,

after all, a gifted" cobbler work a parish? | Where she no longer needs our poor protection, How many hours can he spend daily in his school, And Christ himself doth rule. or in visiting from house to house? Can a constant In that great Cloister's stillness and seclusion, succession of men be expected, even among the By guardian angels led, regular teachers, with such fervor of devotion and Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, constancy of faith as to supersede the use of She lives, whom we call dead.

In those bright realms of air;

The bond which Nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild
embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

In our

But

And

a

fair

maiden, in her Father's mansion Clothed with celestial grace; beautiful with all the soul's expansion Shall we behold her face.

sound prayers or the necessity of fixed articles? Day after day we think what she is doing If their strength could rise above the Litany, would not their weakness fall immeasurably below Year after year her tender steps pursuing, it? Where are already those old Presbyterian Behold her grown more fair. congregations of which we read as formerly Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken existing in Wales? Does even a relic of them remain ? Into how many errors have their descendants degenerated? It must therefore be a subject for grave inquiry whether the masses of our Welsh population, under their present instructors, are practically good Christians, and will they long remain good subjects? May not the present religious aspect of the Principality be received as a proof that the doctrine and organization given by our Lord and his apostles to his church are best calculated to imbue men's minds with such well-grounded principles as are emphatically the salt of the earth? To adopt the language of our friends, may not Tekel here be written after Upharsin? Have not religious division and its fruits been tried in the balance, and been found wanting? It availed to throw a certain fervor into an hereditary reverence which it found existing; but it has not strength to perpetuate that reverence as a principle of moral action from generation to generation. Yet, if all these were absorbed to-morrow in the church, are her resources in Wales in any degree adequate to the work before her? Can she now either mitigate the evil they have done, or supply the good which they have left undone? We pause for any satisfactory answer to these inquiries.

RESIGNATION.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

THERE is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient! these severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,

But often times celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see out dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps

What seem to us but dim funereal tapers

May be Heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death! what seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,

Whose portals we call Death.

She is not dead-the child of our affection-
But gone unto that school

.

And though at times, impetuous with emotion
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean
And anguish long suppressed,
That cannot be at rest;

We will be patient! and assuage the feeling
We cannot wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.
Union Magazine.

Evangelical Melodies. London: Dalton.

We are sorry to have to condemn, without mitigation, a work of which the good intention is undeniable. But correct taste, no less than fitting reverence for religion, must be-we had almost said disgusted-with a volume where "Moore's Melodies" are parodied in evangelical strains, of which the following, from the caricature of "When in death I am calm reclining," may do for a sample:

If a stone on my grave reposes,

I pray you upon its surface write,

That he, the mouth of whose grave it closes,
Held free grace principles, main and might."

What do our readers think of,

There is not in the world a season more sweet,
Than is that when the Lord in the closet we meet ;
"The

66

or of Fly to the gospel-fly with me,' Christian's Tear," "One embrace at parting," addressed to Nonconformist brethren? The absurd contrast between the familiar strains of the original and the doggrel (as the author with rare selfknowledge almost confesses) of this volume, create associations anything but favorable to devout feeling in a Christian, and sure to be productive either of laughter or contempt in others. We know but one class who can find anything for themselves here those who think that poetry and music are snares of Satan. Not believing this, we can only regret, for the sake of that religion which wages no war against these gifts of the Divine hand, that exquisite songs have been turned into execrable productions, evangelical it may be, but assuredly not melodies.-Eclectic Review.

CHAPTER XIX.-A DISCOVERY.

IDA's mind was so engrossed by the painful and unexpected circumstances which had befallen herself, that she forgot Mr. Tyrrell and his pertinacious resolution to be introduced to Mrs. Chester, which had before occasioned her so much trouble. Mr. Tyrrell, however, had not forgotten it himself. After a long conversation with Frederick, in the course of which he confided to him the cause of his anxiety, and in some sort charged him with the conduct of an affair which seemed to be unavoidably withdrawn from his own hand, this troublesome and inexplicable Mr. Tyrrell fetched his book and his little boy, and went out for a stroll upon the terrace. This was, with him, a favorite mode of beguiling the hours; he was not a student and an enthusiast like Percy Lee, and though his intellectual capacity was of a high order, he was seldom to be found acquiring knowledge for the mere sake of the acquisition. With a definite object in view, for a limited time, for a special and sufficient purpose, he could work as hard as any man, but this not so much from love of the work as from desire for its end. He would have walked fifty miles for a wager; he would have declined ten for mere exercise and enjoyment. Therefore to him a stroll on a sunny terrace, with a fair landscape in view, breathing upon him all kinds of serene and soothing influences, a volume in his hand not profound enough to demand attention, yet significant enough to waken and suggest thought, and his child's ringing voice and bright laughter to set the thoughts thus aroused to a pleasant music of its own-to him this was perfect luxury.

to utter reproaches, or urge claims, or seek expla-
nations; he watched, waited, judged, and was
silent. You might have supposed him callous, or
singularly deficient in self-esteem, or miraculously
patient, but you would have been mistaken. No
man had a clearer or more definite view of what
he expected from others, or a keener and juster
sense of what he obtained. He was simply unde-
monstrative. You could never detect by his man-
ner that he had expected anything; you would
never have dreamed that he was disappointed; you
would suppose him perfectly self-dependent, with
an agreeable warmth which extended not many
inches below the surface, and a heart to which
attachments were unnecessary, though perhaps
pleasant. But, if he had once met with that
which was the unavowed object of his search, if
once the unuttered question of his spirit had been
answered by a full, firm, satisfactory "Yes;" if
he had once been able to confide, and approve, and
feel certain that he was beloved, the secret store
of affection which was ready to be unfolded would
have astonished the very person who called it
forth, by its power, its warmth, its tenderness, and
its completeness. His marriage was, in every
respect, unfortunate. He had been attracted by
Madeline's beauty, and interested by her genius,
and, perhaps, even by her faults; she was to him
a new character, and he studied her with a mixture
of curiosity, admiration, and disapproval. She
occupied both his time and his thoughts, and the
regret which he felt for those defects in her, which
seemed rather to result from wrong training than
from natural tendency to evil, sometimes amounted
to a desire to undertake their cure himself.
and circumstance might have ripened these begin-
nings into real attachment, but they certainly had
not done so when, from the mixture of motives
before described, he made her his wife.

Time

There was a great deal of temper in his first treatment of her; he felt himself to have been, in a manner, duped, and though he could scarcely suppose her to have been consciously accessory to this, he could not help, in some measure, visiting it upon her. He had all that strange indolence which is not unfrequently found in persons who have yet dormant within them an energetic and unconquerable will. He hated trouble; he shrank from anything like a scene; he would bear a great deal for the sake of peace, without, however, feeling at all peacefully disposed towards those who made him bear it. So, during the first year of his marriage, he stood still, watching, examining, recording in his heart all proofs or indications whether of good or evil, and unfortunately the balance was generally on the wrong side of the account. Calmly and bitterly he made up his mind

On this particular morning the thoughts which he was thus indulging seemed to be of a somewhat melancholy cast. Some passing look or gesture of the boy had recalled his mother, summoning up one of those sudden, living, real visions of the past, which sometimes spring upon us unawares, to overthrow in a moment all the barriers which we have been years in raising, to convict our patience of hollowness, and our resignation of falsehood. It was, doubtless, with no deep and bitter agony that Mr. Tyrrell had sorrowed for his wife's death; the light of his life had not gone out with her; she left no legacy of memories so tender that one dares not touch them; no pathetic vacancy that is ever craving to be filled, yet the filling of which would be profanation. Nevertheless, apart from the horror of her death and the painful character of their last interview, there had been a keenness in his regret which surprised himself, and which would scarcely have been credited by her whose sensitive and passionate nature, once convinced that he had never loved her as she loved him, had speedily exaggerated his coolness into to this new disappointment, and, deciding that love complete indifference, and scarcely stopped short was impossible, took refuge in duty. He told his of believing it to be hatred and contempt. He conscience that he had committed no fault against was a very proud man; proud not merely in out- her; he summoned up his will to obtain that she ward development of manner and character, but should commit none against him. Her indifference proud also in the solitude of his own heart and to his wishes, her defiance of his taste, were to conscience, which is far rarer. He was not one him irrefragable proofs that she did not really care

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for him, for he was accustomed to test all feelings withdrawal on his part deprived her of her by their fruits, and by those alone. She little strongest motive and surest help? It was in vain dreamed how her every word, look, and gesture, was adding syllables to the sentence of her condemnation. While she was with him his feeling was all bitterness, though of a quiet, proud, patient, kind; after her supposed death, it underwent little change. There was horror, there was a sort of cold grief, there was a feeling of undefined pain which he never analyzed, but he still said to himself that as a husband he was blameless, and that, if she would have allowed him, he could have loved her. Surely there can be no more certain proof that conscience is sick and feeble, than the fact that it will not admit the possibility of having given, while it scrupulously records that it has received, offences.

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that he repeated to himself that she never loved him, that her conduct proved it, that the fact was indisputable. Invisible truth is stronger than indisputable appearances. She forces her way, and if you cannot see her she shouts in your ears, and if you will not listen, she lays her cold strong hand upon your heart, and compels you to recognize her presence. One breath of her mouth shivers a whole edifice of arguments. Tyrrell could not help himself; proud as he was, and self-disciplined, and sinned against, he was forced to confess himself also as having sinned; and the pain which he had refused to analyze became keener and more intolerable, and the haughty spirit came down from its throne, and sat in sackcloth and ashes.

Of late, however, Tyrrell had begun to feel And now, as we have said, a passing glance of somewhat differently. Gradually and half un- the child's face had called up a quick, unbidden consciously his mind had acquired a habit of looking apparition of the mother's. There are times when back upon the period of his engagement and mar- the strongest will seats itself voluntarily in the riage, to the contemplation of which he had long car of the imagination or memory, and says, felt a natural and invincible repugnance. Some" There! I have contended enough; carry me of the attractions which Madeline possessed for him at their first introduction had gathered slowly around her memory, and in the twilight of the past they perhaps looked fairer than reality. That which is a scarped and rugged rock when you stand beneath it at noonday, looks like a rampart of frosted and glistening silver when the sea parts it from you and the sunset reposes upon it. The thought is perhaps too commonplace to require notice; it is commonplace as the truth and pathos of daily life, of which it is no inconsiderable element. So Tyrrell had begun to remember Madeline's gifts more vividly than he had perceived them, except perhaps during the first month of their acquaintance. Once or twice the thought had started up within him that the moulding of a noble nature had been in his hands; and when the question intruded itself, "How was this accomplished?" the answer did not involve so full and entire an acquittal of him as he had been wont to believe. From composed self-approval in the court of conscience, he passed to deliberate self-defence no inconsiderable step. He counted up the sins of his wife, he dwelt upon his own forbearance, but when he would have pronounced the verdict, "Not guilty," there was an unanswerable, though possibly an unreasonable whisper at his heart, that he might have made it otherwise. He could not but remember how boundless had been his empire over her; he could not but suspect that he had lost it, partly at least, by his own fault. He asked himself whether he had not first ignored the peculiar difficulties of her character, and then charged them upon her alone when he came in contact with them. There was an importunate vision before his mind's eye of the fair and noble development to which that character might have attained, if it had been guided by tenderness and fostered by Confidence. What right had he, after winning her affections, to stand aloof till she had proved herself worthy of his-when, in fact, that very

whither you will!" Perhaps the stronger the will, the more entire is this temporary self-abandonment, because it knows that at any moment it can resume the reins, and check the struggling coursers, and return upon its steps. It was such a time now with Tyrrell; he paced the terrace slowly, with downcast eyes, yielding himself without an effort to be bound in the fairy fetters of a reverie. The vision of Madeline rose up before him gradually, but with increasing distinctness, as though the portrait were being painted before his gaze. The form, the step, the bearing, had that peculiar combination of lightness and stateliness which was their living characteristic—the port of a queen, the motions of a sylph-soft drapery of snowy white enveloped the delicate limbs-every lineament of the pallid beautiful face was there; the deep steadfast eyes were lifted to his, and they were full as ever of life, of fire, of power and eloquence unutterable on the broad fair brow was a garland of water-lilies. It was Undine in her moment of return to earth, a picture strangely compounded of the mournfulness of the injured spirit, and the triumph of the conscious woman, more strangely still, and with a parallel too shocking to be endured, recalling and almost mocking her actual fate. Tyrrell passed his hand across his face, shuddered, and looked up; his eye fell upon an upper, open window in the house, in front of which he had paused; the curtains were drawn aside as if to admit a full current of air, and a lady sat, partly shrouded by their drapery, her elbow on the window-sill, her cheek on her hand, her face averted. He gazed upon her fixedly, as so often happens in deep thought, without knowing what he saw, and while he gazed she slowly turned her head, and first the profile was visible, cut like a cameo in pure transparent white, against the dark curtains of the bed behind her; and then the full face-the face of which he was dreaming! Thinner, and a little worn as if with the passage

My

As Ida's agitation increased he became calmer. He led her to a seat, and placed himself before her, still keeping her hand in his and looking earnestly in her face. Wild and impenetrable as was the confusion of ideas into which the last five minutes had plunged him; incapable as he was of finding a clue, of conjecturing an explanation, of forming a definite thought, much more of looking back upon past facts, sifting evidences, and admitting new unsuspected possibilities, he was yet conscious of an invincible determination to arrive at the truth, and that speedily; a determination strong enough to drive back and subdue the tumult of disorderly thoughts which surrounded it, and to keep them in check till it should be satisfied. Ida felt ready to faint and unable to speak; but his roused will had, as it were, laid a grasp upon her from which she could not escape, and her paleness, her trembling, her shrinking gaze, her broken, inarticulate attempts at speech were all answers more forcible than uttered words could have been.

of years and griefs, and shaded by an invalid cap am I sane? For God's sake, Miss Lee, if you which had fallen back and left bare the rich heavy know anything, tell it to me, for I could suppose braid of dark hair which descended upon either this to be the merest fantasy of delirium, and yet cheek-but still the same face, unforgotten, un- no argument can convince that it is not real. mistakeable, alive, and full of beauty! There reason is the fool of my senses." was a moment of incredulity, in which he marvelled at the vivid impressions of fancy, the absolute delusion, the miracle; but the vision was stationary, and Tyrrell gasped for breath, incapable of speech or movement, yet persuaded that a sound or a step would break the spell, and convince him that it was but a phantom of the senses which he beheld. The lady moved; she came closer to the window, and her face was seen in the clear, undeceiving, actual daylight; her very breath was almost audible as it heaved the folds of her white wrapping garment; he could have believed that he felt it warm upon his forehead; he marked the fall of a tear which hung an instant from the long dark eyelashes, and then dropped upon the cheek; and then she turned away and withdrew into the room, unconscious of his observation or presence. All this passed in less than a minute. Tyrrell could scarcely be said to recover himself, for his bewilderment was complete, and his agitation violent; but he recovered the power of action, and rushed into the house and up the stairs to the lobby, with which the apartment in which he had seen the apparition vanish communicated. He paused a moment, to make sure which door he should open; then grasped the handle with a mixture of terror and eagerness, but it turned in his fingers, and, as he started back, Ida issued from the room, and closed the door behind her before" and you know it.” he could prevent it.

"I am to believe, then," said he, with the suddenness of conviction after a painful pause, “I am to believe that the lady whom I have just now seen, and who calls herself Mrs. Chester, is-my wife," he pronounced the words with difficulty, and almost as if they were forced from him by some mechanical cause independent of himself,

Ida was absolutely silent. He dropped her "Mr. Tyrrell!" exclaimed she in a voice of hand and sprang towards the door of the room, irrepressible astonishment. but she interposed, with a movement more rapid than his own.

He was pale as death, his eyes fixed, his voice faltering, but he made a great effort, and answered her quietly, though with unnatural abruptness, "Whose room is this?"

"This room! Mrs. Chester's," she replied, looking wonderingly in his face, and answering mechanically.

He made an attempt to pass her, but she prevented him, exclaiming with a kind of terror for which she could scarcely account, but which his manner seemed to justify, "Pray, Mr. Tyrrellindeed, you must not ! She is ill, she has had brain fever, she must not be agitated."

"And why," replied he, commanding himself by a great exertion, and fixing his eyes steadfastly upon Ida's changing face, in which the blushes came and went twenty times in a minute; "why should an interview be so peculiarly agitating to her?"

Ida trembled and tried to speak, but could not. "Miss Lee," he continued vehemently, and regarding her with a wild, incredulous, bewildered expression, "I have seen this Mrs. Chester, as you call her, I have seen her at the window just now, quite clearly; do you know who she is Why do you change color and look so frightened? am I to believe impossibilities? am I dreaming?

"Mr. Tyrrell, have mercy!" she cried; "do not kill her, whatever her errors may have been. She does not even know that you are in the house; it is but two days since the delirium left her.”

He returned. He was now perfectly calm, and had assumed a strange sort of unnatural imitation of his ordinary manner, so polished, easy and self-possessed. He smiled as he answered her :-

"I am not unreasonable in my demands. You will allow that my position is rather peculiar— unusual, to say the least of it; and it is equally unusual that so young a lady as yourself should be concerned in such a matter as this. If you will have the kindness to answer my questions, plainly and truly, (excuse the stipulation,) I will make no attempt to force myself into that lady's presence. How your father, whom I thought my friend, and an upright man, will answer for the part which he has played in this deception, of which I have been the ridiculous and unsuspecting dupe, I must leave it to his conscience to decide. You must have a curious story to tell me ;-pray begin-I am all attention-quite a romance of real life, I suppose; the tyrant husband, and the runaway wife of whom one reads in novels."

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