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From Chambers' Journal.

LIKINGS OF THE UNLIKE.

613

opposition of qualities which might be supposed to be its bane.

AMONGST the perversities of fortune bewailed by by one pretty woman towards another, is usually The indifference or repugnance so often shown Thomson, is her "joining the gentle to the rude." accounted for on the ground of rivalry. But we It must be a misfortune for the gentle to enter up- so often see similar results where rivalry is not preon such an alliance, if the qualities of the opposite sumable, that I believe it may be owing to some party are so extremely rough as to be a constant deeper spring of feeling in our nature, of which offence to good taste and good feeling. But I am the sentiment of rivalry is only one of the outward prepared to contend that, within a certain limit, as- appearances. It will be found that two pretty wo sociations of this kind are advantageous, and that, men will be more apt to like each other, if they when our inclinations are free, we instinctively are of different styles of beauty: the one fair, per seek them as more agreeable than any of an oppo-haps; the other dark. This shows that it is not site kind. The remark extends to other qualities competition for admiration which wholly animates than those of gentleness and rudeness; in fact to them. So, also, they will form a friendship if personal associations of every kind. It appears to be a law of our nature, that we should find a solace and satisfaction in connexion with qualities which we ourselves do not possess; and that whatever we are ourselves largely endowed with, that do we shrink from in others.

View the operation of this principle even in our earliest days. Those pairings for which children are remarkable, both within the domestic circle and in the more miscellaneous assemblages at school, do not, as a rule, take place between individuals alike gentle, alike dull, alike energetic, alike brilliant. No: the clever boy finds a mysterious pleasure in the society of some unfortunate dunce, in whom the multitude can see no attractions of any kind. The active irrepressible spirit of the class he who is always fighting, or playing tricks, and with whom the master has ten times more trouble than with any other boy under his carethis precious youth never assorts with any similar Boanerges or Ajax; he is found to be devoted to some tame, quiet boy, remarkable for his total inability to fight, and who, on the other hand, indifferent to companions of his own stamp, clings to the wild fellow as to something which vastly helps and comforts him. Even where a boy may display somewhat dangerous qualities, it not unfrequently happens that one the very reverse-a jacketed Sir Charles Grandison-finds a strange fascination in his society, and likes him, with all his faults, better than he does any contemporary of merely passable character.

they be different in manners, temper, and deportmutual regard where there is both a community of ment. In some rare instances, there may be a beauty, and of temper, and deportment; but always, in such cases, some striking discrepance wil lively and talkative, the other being gentle and be detected in another quarter. Only one will be grave, demure or languishing, as the case may be. The friendship will then be founded not on the general parity, but the one disparity. The rule will still hold good.

election of the other sex. Fully sure may we be Let us suppose two such friends exposed to the that the man who loses his heart to the one, wil see no charm in the other. Your grave or re served, silent or sensible, stupid or timid wooer. invariably takes to the bright animated beauty, who will talk for herself and for him; the gay, goodward his sallies with a passive smile, and love the humored, rattling suitor, prefers her who will resound of his voice rather than her own. Happy for us that it is so! If the grave, silent man were to prefer a woman of like characteristics, what a stupid pair, what a sombre household would be theirs! If he of the social, volatile temperament could only find charms in one gay and witty as himself, which of them would be disposed for the sober forethought, the quiet daily duties, indispensable to the domestic comfort of married life?

determine, whether in mental or personal characIn this latter relation, it is only difficult to teristics husbands and wives are most often found

scientific wife? Or rather, what sort of woman does he choose? Why, one who probably never opens a book, but who will see that his friends are well received, that his servants do their work, that the baker's bill is not overcharged, nor the leg of mutton over-roasted. So much for the cant of mental congeniality.

Some fair readers of this paper have probably to differ. What man of deep learning and science, received their education at a boarding-school. I for instance, ever takes to himself a learned and put it to all such to recall the prettiest, brightest, most accomplished of their companions-she who was the star of the school, the pride of the mistress, the glory of the dancing-master, and the extolled of every other teacher whose province was the outward and ornamental. Now, there is such a thing as jealousy; but I do not think it will wholly account for what is found in the history of this school-paragon, that she hardly ever forms an attachment amongst the other young ladies of a showy character, but almost invariably selects for her friend and confidante one who, with perhaps a fair endowment of good sense, is notably quiet and unpretending, possessed of solid, and not of showy qualities; in short, the perfect antithesis of herself. It is curious, in such a case, to see the one lively, clever, restless, perhaps irritable, while the other is so much the reverse. Often it hardly appears a friendship at all-the one chafing, as it were, against the dulness of the other; this other, again, to all appearance suffering much from the impatience of her companion. And yet they never separate; so that we cannot doubt that it is a real friendship, the very fitness of which rests in that

ludicrous contrasts continually meet our view! For In personal attributes, what striking, what often example, how seldom do little women find favor in the eyes of little men! On the contrary, take one of these latter, the most meagre, insignificant, unhappy-looking as to all outward bearing, and then turn to the portly, jolly, smiling dame to whom he has united himself! Look at another, to whom nature has tried to make amends for want of height by such a liberal share of breath and rotundity, as gives him much the tout ensemble of a squat decanter or a beer barrel. If you hear such a man talk of his wife, be prepared to see one of those tall, slender, gossamer figures which some people designate graceful and elegant, and others liken to lathe and thread-paper.

That little women are almost always the admired

and chosen of tall men, is, I believe, generally ad- agree well, and promote the general hilarity, exmitted. The taller the husband, it would almost amine them narrowly, and you will discover some appear that the more kindly does he look down great difference between them-one perhaps a upon feminine diminutiveness. There is also a biting satirist, the other a good-natured humoristcharacteristic gentleness in great robust men. so that the apparent exception only confirms the How often, therefore, do we meet a man of tower-rule. Assuredly, two wits, both alike of either ing stature linked to a female hardly reaching his the first or the second kind, never yet were seen to elbow, and are told, moreover, that he is the most spend an hour amicably together. And if two attentive and obedient of husbands! This does humorists of the other kind were brought together, not, however, apply to your majestic race of men it is ten to one that they would afterwards speak indiscriminately. All of them have, beyond doubt, of each other as the perfection of dulness. a prepossession in favor of little wives; but it is not all who choose to be governed by them.

Reverting to matrimonial alliances, some interesting consequences arise from the principle of conHow seldom do we see a very handsome man traries on which partners are usually chosen. married to a very beautiful woman! Never, we Where an alliance of this kind has been happy-to might say, except in the pages of a novel, where which it is equivalent to say, where it has been the hero and heroine must have of course their founded upon affection-it will be found that each rightful portion of personal charms. On the con- party has a certain degree of preference for such trary, we often behold these latter united to down- of the children as resemble the other. A father of right ugliness. But then there is wealth, or tame character, who has chosen an energetic wife, worth, or talent in the opposing scale, which is will best love the children who, like her, are enalways observed to be the influential one; for mere ergetic. If he has a beloved partner of complexion beauty-by which we mean a faultless regularity and general aspect very diverse from his own, he of figure and features-is almost invariably accom-will be apt to make favorites of the children who panied with that complete insipidity which requires resemble her in these respects, while comparatively to be acted upon by a nature stronger than, and indifferent to such of the young people as are superior to, its own. We far oftener see it allied copies of himself. It is doubtless from a similar to this characteristic than to affectation and con- principle that fathers are observed generally to preceit; these belonging to a different, and inferior fer their daughters to their sons. The man-nature class of pretenders. delights in the feminine gentleness, because its own opposite.

Our principle may be said to be developed in every friendship, partnership, and coalition volun- Perhaps it might not be thought very fanciful to tarily formed between those who have to act to- suggest a final cause for all this seeking of oppogether on the stage of life. There may be equality sites, in the need that has been contemplated for as regards outward station and abilities, but never producing a diffusion of all the various qualities of can there be resemblance in disposition or intellec-families, of races, and of human nature generally, tual characteristics. In every era of man's existence the principle is inherent. We see it in the mere schoolboy or college youth, and we perceive it in the different classes and callings of life, civil or military, where mankind are thrown into collision, and the individual pretensions of each are tested.

throughout the constitution of society. Sir Walter Scott, who had a great deal of a natural kind of philosophy, arising from the observation of his sagacious mind, makes some remarks to nearly the same purpose, with which I shall conclude my lucubrations. "As unions," he says, "are often formed betwixt couples differing in complexion and In our sentimental faculties generally, it will be stature, they take place still more frequently befound that any one which becomes prominent in the twixt persons totally differing in feelings, tastes, in character, shrinks from the active exercise of the pursuits, and in understanding; and it would not same faculty in others. For instance, a person be saying perhaps too much to aver, that twopossessing much of the venerative principle, does thirds of the marriages around us have been connot like to be made an object of worship. He is tracted betwixt persons who, judging a priori, we comfortable while allowed to look up to his great should have thought had scarce any charms for men; but make a great man of himself, and he be- each other. A moral and primary cause might be comes uneasy. Flattery, and a great show of easily assigned for these anomalies in the wise disdeference, are to such a man unusually distasteful. pensations of Providence-that the general balance It is for the very same reason that one possessing a of wit, wisdom, and amiable qualities of all kinds large endowment of the opposite quality-self-es-should be kept up through society at large. For teem-shrinks from another like himself. In like what a world were it, if the wise were to intermanner the acquisitive man has always a great dis-marry only with the wise, the learned with the like quite irrespectively of pecuniary detriment to learned, the amiable with the amiable, nay, even himself to become a subject for the exercise of the handsome with the handsome! And is it not acquisitiveness in others. It is an old and familiar evident that the degraded castes of the foolish, the remark, that those who are much given to jesting ignorant, the brutal, and the deformed (compreat the expense of their fellow-creatures, exhibit a hending, by the way, far the greater portion of peculiar dislike to be made the subject of jokes by mankind,) must, when condemned to exclusive inothers. This, I am persuaded, is from no ultra-tercourse with each other, become gradually as sensitiveness of nature connected with the jest- much brutalized in person and disposition as so loving character, but a curious reflex action of the many orang-outangs? When, therefore, we see leading faculty, causing it to be as painful in the the gentle joined to the rude,' we may lament the passive, as it is agreeable in the active voice. fate of the suffering individual, but we must not Hence it is that your noted wits never shine in the the less admire the mysterious disposition of that company of men like themselves, and a dinner-wise Providence which thus balances the moral party where an effort has been made to bring a plurality of them together, usually proves a failure. If it ever be found that two witty men do

good and evil of life; which secures for a family, unhappy in the dispositions of one parent, a share of better and sweeter blood transmitted from the

From Chambers' Journal.

THE PROBABLE.

turned with a very considerable fortune. He now wished to clear himself with his old mistress; ascertained that she was living; purchased a diamond ring of a considerable value, which he determined to present in person, and clear his character, by telling his tale, which the credit of his present position might testify. He took the coach to the town of

other; and preserves to the offspring the affection- | part of the country where his mistress resided-to ate care and protection of at least one of those from the neighboring town with a ring, which required whom it is naturally due. Without the frequent some alteration, to be delivered into the hands of a occurrence of such alliances-missorted as they jeweller. The young man went the shortest way seem at first sight-the world could not be that for across the helds; and coming to a little wooden which Eternal Wisdom has designed it-a place of bridge that crossed a small stream, he leant against mixed good and evil-a place of trial at once and the rail, and took the ring out of its case to look at of suffering, where even the worst ills are che-it. While doing so, it slipped out of his hand, and quered with something that renders them tolerable fell into the water. In vain he searched for it, even to humble and patient minds, and where the best till it grew dark. He thought it fell into the holblessings carry with them the necessary alloy of low of a stump of a tree under water, but he could embittering depreciation. not find it. The time taken in the search was so long, that he feared to return and tell his story, thinking it incredible, and that he should even be suspected of having gone into evil company, and gamed it away, or sold it. In this fear he determined never to return-left wages and clothes, and IT has now become a trite remark, that truth fairly ran away. This seemingly great misfortune often brings before us "things stranger than fic-was the making of him. His intermediate history tion." The reason is, that when a man writes fic-I know not; but this, that after many years' abtion, he has to keep near a particular level of gen- sence, either in the East or West Indies, he reeral probability, based on an average of occurrences and situations such as we arrive at in the course of our experience in actual life. The reader holds him as under an engagement to give things at about this average; if he goes much above it, he is condemned as resorting to a silly expedient, in order to work out an effect, or escape from a difficulty. Thus, for example, when he brings home a rich uncle from India exactly in time to save a virtuous family from ruin, he is thought to be merely resorting to a trick of his trade; and yet we know that rich uncles do come home occasionally from India, and may well find things at sixes and sevens among their friends. One or two such events in the course of his three volumes may be allowed the moralist; but if he indulges much more frequently in out-of-the-way occurrences that serve his general design, he is thought a decidedly clumsy artist. Yet nothing can be more certain than that, in actual life, series of events do occur, all of which are greatly beyond that medium line which constitutes our ideal of the probable. As an example, a man will at once be overtaken by insolvency, by illness, by the losses of children, by a burning of his house, and all this in an abrupt or sudden manner, after many years of quiet, comfortable existence, unmarked by any such incidents. Or a considerable number of relations will die in the course of four or five years, and open a succession to wealth and title to an individual who originally had no expectation of it. There are, indeed, some conjunctures in actual life of so singular a nature, as to mock the highest flights of the human imagination.

I speak of those events as singular against the occurrence of which there is a great number of chances. For example, we are told in Brand's History of Newcastle, that a gentleman of that city, in the middle of the seventeenth century, dropped a ring from his hand over the bridge into the river Tyne. Years passed on; he had lost all hopes of recovering the ring, when one day his wife bought a fish in the market, and in the stomach of that fish was the identical jewel which had been lost! From the pains taken to commemorate this event, it would appear to be true; it was merely an occurrence possible, but extremely unlikely, to have occurred. A similar incident was lately recorded, with all the appearance of seriousness, in a popular miscellany. "Many years ago a lady sent her servant-a young man about twenty years of age, and a native of that

"The Pirate," chapter xiii.

and from thence set out to walk the distance of a few miles. He found, I should tell you, on alighting, a gentleman who resided in the neighborhood, who was bound for the adjacent village. They walked together, and in conversation, this former servant, now a gentleman, with graceful manners and agreeable address, communicated the circumstance that made him leave the country abruptly many years before. As he was telling this, they came to the very wooden bridge. There,' said he; it was just here that I dropped the ring; and there is the very bit of old tree into a hole of which it fell-just there.' At the same time he put down the point of his umbrella into the hole of the knot in the tree, and drawing it up, to the astonishment of both, found the very ring on the ferrule of the umbrella." Here also was an occurrence against which, one would have previously said, the chances were as one to infinity. It was one of those things which we see to be most unlikely, yet must acknowledge to be possible, and, when wellauthenticated, to be true.

There is a class of double occurrences, or coincidences, which serve to illustrate the same principle. How often will we hear a name or a fact mentioned, which we had previously never once heard of, and yet that name or fact will once come under our notice, from a totally different quarter, ere two days, or even one, have passed! For example, not a week before the penning of these remarks, a gentleman alluded, in conversation with me, to a Russian plant which is supposed to be of a partly animal nature, and to be in a kind of animal form, with which it chanced that I was unacquainted. Two hours after, consulting the Penny Cyclopædia on the subject of the barometer, my eye lighted on the next ensuing article-" BAROMETZ, a singular vegetable production, of which, under the name of the Scythian lamb, many fabulous stories are told. It is, in reality, nothing but the prostrate hairy stem of a fern called Aspidium Borometz, which from its procumbent position and shaggy appearance, looks something like a crouching animal, &c." Or two

*Blackwood's Magazine.

persons, associated in our minds, but widely apart | ing of the vessel was anticipated. Strange to say, in life, will, by letter or visit, cast up in the same the description of the behavior of the passengers day. For example, I have received in one evening, was an exact reflection of that in Crabbe's poem, letters introducing strangers from two cousins living as if the writer had been reading that composition a in different countries, and from neither of whom I short while before, and had copied it; or else the had previously received any communication for sev-poem was so true to nature, that an actual occureral years, except a single letter of introduction rence unavoidably resembled it. The identity was from one of the parties about three months pre- perfect, even to the particular of gentle women viously. One day, proceeding to a place of busi- maintaining a quiet and resigned demeanor, while ness where I have duties to attend to, I passed a strong men were frantic with vain terror. This gentleman whom I recollected having met at a will clearly appear from the following passage in the country-house ten years previously, but had not report, which I had the curiosity to search out in seen since. We formed two out of three guests the file of the paper in which it originally appeared: entertained by a family consisting of three persons, "In a few moments, and the crowd of human all of them considerably advanced in life. I was beings collected on board, who had just before been aware that two of our entertainers were since dead. radiant with gayety and good humor, changed into a With a mind full of the recollections which this wretched, terrified, and helpless mass, among whom gentleman's face excited, I entered the office, and every moral quality of the mind might be discerned there sat, waiting for me, to consult about a small brought out into frightful relief, from the sternest matter of business, a lady, the survivor of the fami- of stubborn endurance, to the lowest point of pusilly of our host, and whom also I had not seen since lanimity and despair. There was no distinction of the dinner-party. On interrogation, I found that age or sex; men howled and ran about frantic like she had come there that day, without the least women; and women were there, young and beautiknowledge of the proceedings or whereabouts of ful, who exhibited to the full the calmness of moral the gentleman whom I had just seen in the street. heroism."-Edinburgh Courant, October 3, 1844. Like myself, she had never once seen him since the day when we had all met ten years ago.

The following is a still more striking instance. In the early part of October, 1844, I was taking an excursion with a friend in Northumberland. Stopping for an hour at Morpeth, to refresh our horse, we asked for a newspaper to while away the time; but were told that the papers of that day had not yet arrived. I therefore resorted for amusement to a miniature copy of Crabbe's Borough, which I had put into my pocket for this purpose, selecting it from many books purely on account of its conveniently small size. The section of the poem on which my attention became engaged, was that in which occurs a striking description of the alarm occasioned to a pic-nic party when, in the midst of their enjoyments on a low sandy islet, usually covered at high water, they were informed that their boat had, by negligence been allowed to float away, leaving them a prey to the rising tide, unless they should be rescued by a passing vessel, which was not likely. The most forcible part of the description of the forlorn party, is that in which the behavior of various persons is put into contrast:

"Had one been there, with spirit strong and high,
Who could observe, as he prepared to die,
He might have seen of hearts the varying kind,
And traced the movement of each different mind :
He might have seen that not the gentle maid
Was more than stern and haughty man afraid;
Such, calmly grieving, will their fears suppress,
And silent prayers to mercy's throne address;
While fiercer minds, impatient, angry, loud,
Force their vain grief on the reluctant crowd."-&c.

Immediately after I had read this passage, the wait-
er put the Sun of the preceding evening into my
hands. It contained an extract from an Edinburgh
paper, giving an account of an accident which had
happened a few days before to the Windsor Castle
steamer, on her passage from Dundee to Leith with
a large pleasure party, which had been witnessing
the departure of the queen from the former port,
after her short residence at Blair-Athole. The
vessel had been allowed to strike on the Carr rock,
when instantly music and dancing were exchanged
for alarm and terror, as the almost immediate sink-

The day after, I went to attend service in St. Nicholas' church, Newcastle, full of the recollection of the covenanters entering the town after their victory over Charles I. at Newburnford, in 1640, when Alexander Henderson preached a sermon on the text, " And the Lord said unto my lord, sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." Imagination could not resist bodying forth the scene of two hundred years ago-a stern puritan army, flushed with their first victory, listening grimly to an application of this sublime promise, amidst the long-withdrawing aisles of this noble old pile. So possessed in mind, it was absolutely startling to come suddenly, in the readings of the day, upon this very text-" The Lord said unto my lord," &c. This looked like being persecuted with coincidences.

One might say that, if real life gives such striking phenomena as these, while fiction is forbidden to use them, records from actual life ought to be far more interesting, even to the readers for mere excitement, than any of the effusions of fancy. And it really does seem far from unlikely that, if the former were chronicled with fidelity, they would be apt to run romance entirely out of the market.

The wonder, after all, remains, that events, against which there are so many chances, should occur so often as they seem to do. Let us consider what probability actually is. An able philosopher of our century thus speaks of it:-"It is to the imperfection of the human mind," he says, "and not to any irregularity in the nature of things, that our ideas of chance and probability are to be referred. Events which to one man seem accidental and precarious, to another, who is better informed, or who has more power of generalization, appear to be regular and certain. The laws of the material world have the same infallible operation on the minute and the great bodies of the universe; and the motions of the former are as determinate as those of the latter." He adds, that every particle of water or air has described from the beginning a trajetory or path determined by mechanical principles, and which is therefore knowable," and would be an object of science to a mind informed of all the

*On inquiry, it appears that the writer of the report had not previously read the passage in the Borough.

to be observed that the total number of acts, movements, and occurrences of every kind in life must be much greater, even in the case of the most quietliving people, than at first sight appears. If this truly be the case, instances of coincidence must bear a much smaller proportion to the entire mass than we are apt to suppose; that is the same thing as to say, that the frequency of their occurrence is more apparent than real. Again, amidst the multitude of the things which pass unobserved and unremembered, there may of course be many occur

original conditions, and possessing an analysis that would follow them through their various combinations. The same," he continues, "s true of every atom of the material world: so that nothing but information sufficiently extensive, and a calculus sufficiently powerful, are wanting to reduce all things to a certainty. Probability and chance are thus ideas relative to human ignorance. The latter means a series of events not regulated by any law that we can perceive. Not perceiving the existence of a law, we reason as if there were none, or no principle by which one state of things deter-rences of facts and other particulars, which we bemines that which is to follow."

Unable to discover or follow the laws by which events of this nature are determined, we can nevertheless reduce them to calculation in a particular way. All are familiar with the throwing of dice. There being six sides, any of which may be uppermost, the chance of throwing the die with a particular side, say the ace, uppermost, is one-sixth. With two dice, the chance of throwing two aces is 1-36th: as each face of the one die may be combined with any face of the other. Thus we learn that, "when any event may fall out a certain number of ways, all of which, to our apprehension, are equally possible, the probability that the event will happen, with certain conditions accompanying it. may be expressed by a fraction, of which the numerator is the number of instances favorable to those conditions, and the denominator the number of the possible instances." Now observe, in a couple of dice there are but thirty-six combinations; but what would be the denominator of a fraction which should express the little likelihood of my being engaged in reading Crabbe's account of the distressed pic-nic party, at the moment when a newspaper was approaching me, containing an account of a similar occurrence, expressed almost in the same terms! One can see in a moment the possibility of such an event; but he cannot help thinking, at the same time, that thousands of lives were likely to have passed without its occurring in one of them. It seems difficult to reconcile the frequency of such coincidences, which is matter of familiar observation to all, with the idea of our philosopher, that all secular events might be reduced under fixed laws, if we only could trace the series in their mutual dependency.

Some considerations will, nevertheless, occur to bring such events into at least an approximation with our ideas respecting fixed laws. In the first place, there are what may be called extenuating circumstances. These we usually discover when we look narrowly into particulars. For example, the scriptural text already quoted, being a portion of the 110th Psalm, had a chance of occurring in the usual readings of the Psalter equal to about one in sixty-two (the Psalms being divided into so many portions for reading during the month.) Then it is repeated no fewer than five times in the New Testament. In the portions of Scripture appointed for the daily lessons throughout the year, chapters containing this passage occur no fewer than thirteen times. This obviously added very considerably to the chance that, on attending worship in the St. Nicholas' church for the first time I should hear Henderson's text repeated. Thus the total likelihood was not so little as one would, on a cursory glance, imagine. It is, in the second place, * Playfair's Works, iv., 424.

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lieve to be new to us when they occur collisively: thus the apparent first of the two instances may be the tenth, or twentieth, or hundredth, instead of the first. All of these considerations undoubtedly tend to bring the supposed supernaturality towards, if not wholly into, naturality. If so much can be accounted for from what we know, let us add some further unknown quantity for what we do not know, and then perhaps little, if any, difficulty will remain.

THE WATER-LILY.

BURTHENED with a cureless sorrow,
Came I to the river deep;
Weary, hopeless of the morrow,

Seeking but a place to weep;
Sparkling onwards, full of gladness,
Each sun-crested wavelet flew,
Mocking my deep-hearted sadness,
Till I sickened at the view.
Then I left the sunshine golden
For the gloomy willow-shade,
Desolate and unbeholden,

There my fainting limbs I laid.
And I saw a water-lily

Resting in its trembling bed, On the drifting waters chilly,

With its petals white outspread. Pillowed there, it lay securely,

Moving with the moving wave, Up to heaven gazing purely, From the river's gloomy grave. As I looked, a burst of glory

Fell upon the snowy flower, And the lessoned allegory

Learned I in that blessed hour:Thus does Faith, divine, indwelling, Bear the soul o'er life's cold stream, Though the gloomy billows swelling, Evermore still darker seem.

Yet the treasure never sinketh,

Though the waves around it roll,
And the moisture that it drinketh,
Nurtures, purifies the soul.
Thus aye looking up to heaven
Should the white and calm soul be,
Gladden in the sunshine given,

Nor from the clouds shrink fearfully.
So I turned, my weak heart strengthened,
Patiently to bear my woe;
Praying, as the sorrow lengthened,
My endurance too might grow.
And my earnest heart beseeching
Charmed away the sense of pain;
So the lily's silent teaching

Was not given to me in vain.

Chambers.

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