inspiration. I had the inspiration; a man; it met me as I crossed the threshold and entered into youth. Then he fell passionately, as is the habit of noble natures who have indulged in weakness, to despising himself, calling the heart a coward, and shaming the reason for arguing against its own most sacred lights and oracles.

Yet irresolution, passion and weak misgivings all fled, when, entering the drawing-room, the two sisters met him with a mute, inquiring look. At dinner the old squire rallied the absent-minded youth,-the self-indulgent father idolizing the handsome son, and hoping soon to behold his old friends and neighbors at a merry marriage-feast. When, after their retirement for the evening, the fond mother asked the husband if he had noticed a grave, melancholy look in their boy's countenance, the jolly knight, chucking the dame under the dimpled double chin, gave way to laughter, "Not he. The young fellow was assuming dignity. It was always the way with the Bloomfields in the courting season. He recollected coming home on a similar occasion, sitting in the same place at the table, and putting on the same air of manly importance, when his father had rallied him. It ran in the family. Aye, twenty-five years from that time, with Charlie's son sitting in the same place, Charlie himself, at the head of the table, while a new generation of the Bloomfields surrounded it, would behold the gay young fellow sipping at his sherry with a philosophical air and taking soup majestically, as their boy had just done.

The elderly couple had done their best to spoil the only son and heir; pride of their eyes, idol of their hearts. Fair as was the promise of his youth, the tares were lurking amidst the springing wheat. The petted, pampered boy, the high-spirited, adventurous youth, threated to become a man of burning passion and of determined will. Gentle, ever gentle, to the fond mother, and a gallant knight to the sisters who leaned upon the manly arm, the delicate and

exquisitely moulded frame was still the habitation of a Power which sometimes spoke in tones that made those who heard it tremble.

The youth grows up at home, the father never suspects what is lurking in the boy's breast, the mother even but in part divining the quality of his genius, the fashion of the faculties, the end and purpose of the destiny. Tender sisters laugh at the bursts of boyish enthusiasm. Perhaps, a stranger among his kin, they wonder blindly at the first, faint tokens of the force that is to shape a nation's destiny, the thought that is to grow at last into world-wide philosophy, to revolutionize science, to enkindle a second youth upon the faded cheek of art, to stir nation against nation, or to link great empires in bonds of stable peace.

We have witnessed the youth who left his father's home in the morning, intent on wooing a beautiful singing bird to come and rest within his bosom, and warble there with gay and festive song, returning as one who in the path had met and held communion with an angel. All slept in the household, but the young heir who paced the garden walks, now lightly feathered with flakes of snow. The seven years of waiting melted away, sparkling at last like a dew drop on the pure threshold of an eternity of wedded happiness, first found on earth, but consummated in the endless years of Heaven. "Aye," exclaimed the youth, "she cherishes no illusion. This is my destined mate, for the same high purpose descends to both of us. Why do I love her? What is it in me that loves? Oh, Marian! it is thy pure spirit, calling to its companion, drawing me as a planet that seeks to lead from chaos and dull night its own appointed and kindred star."-Yet why that long drawn sigh? The night grew chill, a cloud came over the young moon; it dropt below the horizon veiled in mist; sweet vesper followed it. The wind sighed as if to echo the

suspiration of his breast. Then came temptation, deliberation and decision.

Reason, or a better power, that makes of reason its throne, now calmly presented, one by one, the crosses that must be borne, the trials that must be met, the weeds to be uprooted from the garden beds of the heart, the discipline to be exacted of the ease-loving mind, a father's disappointment and anger, the tearful pleadings of a mother, the ridicule of friends,-and then no more dreaming in these lovely woodlands, no more weaving of aerial palaces in the mind's loom chamber; for daily associates those from whom the refined taste might shrink repulsed, poor, toiling men, care worn and slatternly women, the sick, the vicious, the unfortunate of every degree.

The young man's heart sank within him and he felt "I cannot bear this burden." Then the great vision of the cross and One stretched upon it whose wan face irradiated the night and filled the darkness with noonday, the cross with all its sacred symbols, and the thought of who He was who suffered thus, and why He suffered, and how He arose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, and giving His servants charge to preach the Gospel, declared, 'Lo, I am with you always to the end of the world,'—it rose: it grew to be a vast, embodied majesty in his mind's sight. The young head was bared; the breast heaved; sinking on the bended knee, the earnest, pleading voice exclaimed, "Oh, God! who didst vail Thyself in human shape to conquer the world's sin and wretchedness, take me; do with me as seemeth good. I thought to undertake this in my own energy. Without Thee I am but as one of these dry leaves crushed under foot."

So Ridley and Latimer prayed, and went, in the morning, to the blazing faggots, clothed and perfumed as a bridegroom to the bride. So that God-fearing priest, John Wesley, when the cry of hopeless millions broke upon the soul's

ear, calmly emerged from his communion chamber to the work that lit the dark places of the Isles with household pentecosts. Thus the crisis passed. God called him. No music dropped audibly from circling stars that watched the scene; yet true souls may well divine that the innumerable company of the faithful were glad that another was found to stand, where saints and martyrs had fought the battle of good against evil, in days before.

Troubles drop down upon families, often, like Summer frost upon the gay parterre. The sun sets in bright gold; the moon sails through clear azure; there is no wind to shake a peal of elfin laughter from some dew-dripping blossom's painted cup. Death nips the flowerets for all that. In the morning the crisp frost betrays a season's blight.

Frost fell that winter eve on the indoors garden at Wingate Hall. Calmly and bravely, in the quiet of her own room, at an early hour of the ensuing day, holding his mother's hand the while, the quiet, resolute young man told the story of his courtship; how Love came to his heart and planted there; how the tiny budlings peeped above the soil, growing at last to be flowers of paradise; how sweet birds came to make the branches glad with unearthly melodies; how he lay down to dream beneath the tree of the garden, and saw in sleep

"The Queen of that lovely place,

The soul of the blossoms, their fairest grace," hovering to crown the brow with myrtles; and how he woke to clasp an airy nothingness, while the Spirit of the Frost contemplated the night's ruin, the leaves all fallen, the buds all blasted, the birds dead upon the boughs.

The gentle mother sighed, yet wondered; for passion vents itself, when disappointed, in windy sighs, and gusts of grief, and railings, and curses, content at last to dash its idol from the shrine and grind the features all to powder beneath the foot.

Then the young man narrated the reasons that Marian assigned for this present rejection of his suit; told how, in place of the mortal love which had vanished from the breast, the glorious immortal had followed; how his life was transfigured in the light of sacred Duty; how, for five long years, unsuspected, all that was good and noble within him had seemed responding to a divine call to preach God's word; how, fearing to bring a cloud upon his father's face, a shadow upon the family circle, this guiding oracle had been neglected, till, as youthful passion drooped its wing and sank to sleep amidst the blighted dream-flowers of the breast, a star was shining above in the mind's sky,- the star of faith and love,-the star of the cross, leading him on to offer the wise man's gift of all life's precious things, at His feet, who once was found in the manger of Bethlehem.

The dame had hoped another future for her son. Misled by the world's standard,-its false standard of greatness, it was an easy matter to contemplate the lowly toil of the self-sacrificing priest as better fitted for the child of poverty than for the youthful heir of fortune and an old name. But the girlish enthusiasm returned as the latent fervor of the orator, the burning words of the servant of the temple, gathering strength sentence by sentence, and issuing from the young man's lips, marshalled themselves in fiery sentences around her.

Oh, foolishness of preaching! which no art can imitate; which no philosophy can unravel; which copes against the roused force of all earth's dangerous illusions, and strips away, fold after fold, the cloudy curtains of the Unseen Land;-gift which God sends; which, if rightly used, is made the agent in revolutionizing character and reclaiming human brutes from the carnage of their kind; which, if abused, blasts the brow as with unutterable fire; which comes to the lowly and to the learned alike, and, swayed