sometimes prevented the course of active life. Now conscience, so often overborne and stifled by the fierce clamors of appetite, or the fell swoop of ambition, reässerts and vindicates its rightful ascendancy; now heaven draws nearer as earth recedes; now the soul awakes, and prepares itself for the great transformation so visibly approaching. The Orientals are juster than we in their instinctive and universal deference to Age, deeming "length of days" in some sense a token of Divine approbation and favor. Manifestly the soul, which steadily nears the confines of the celestial mansions, ought to catch something of that glory which fills their atmosphere and radiate it, even though dimly, through its dial-plate, "the human face divine." But Age is not merely "a savor of life unto life," -it is a revealer of the foul deformity of evil, as well as of the essential loveliness of good. The eagerness and inexperience of youth may entreat a mitigation of sentence for deeds which even they cannot excuse; the tempestuous whirl of active middle life may cloud or distort our perceptions of the moral character of many acts which a calm scrutinizing would exhibit as unworthy and culpable; but a vicious Old Age-an Old Age of decaying, but still domineering appetites of silvered locks not venerable of leisure without reflection, and loneliness without God of serenity devoid of dignity, of Far respect and self-esteem-surely, this is among the saddest sights of a misguided, sin-sick world. better an early and nameless grave than an Old Age of punishment without repentance and vice without shame. "How to Grow Old Gracefully" is the title of some one's book, which I have not been impelled to open. The name is abundantly suggestive; the book could hardly add anything which our own thoughts, if we give them scope, may not indicate. To grow old gracefully, I should say, we must begin by living virtuously and usefully. We need not care for graces, nor think of self at all; each noble aspiration, each worthy act, will set its seal upon the visage. No one needs an assurance that the old age of Fenelon, of Wordsworth, of Hannah More, of Miss Edgeworth, was beautiful. Had Washington lived a hundred years he would have been to the last the most dignified and commanding American. Franklin at eighty was still young in feeling and in heart. Many die older than he did who have have seen less than fifty summers. Who imagines that Mrs. Fry ever could, that Fanny Forrester ever can, become an old woman? Is it well to desire and pray for length of days? I would say, so long as our mental faculties remain essentially undecayed, it is well, it is desirable to live. The love of life is not a blind, irrational instinct, but has as its base a just perception that existence is a blessing, and that, even in this "vale of tears," its joys outweigh its woes. And besides our terrestial course prepares and shapes us for the life that shall succeed it, which will be, to a great extent, a continuation, or second edition, of this, with corrections and improvements. Doubtless, Infinite Mercy has means provided whereby the millions to whom this life was a blank shall nevertheless be prepared for bliss in the next; and I trust even those who have misused and culpably squandered this stage of being will yet be ultimately fitted for happiness in another. But opportunities wasted can never be regained; the memory of past unworthiness must ever be humiliating and regretful to the redeemed soul. In vain does Joseph, revealing himself in Egypt to his treacherous brethren, entreat them to "Be not angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life;" the views of God needed no vindication, while theirs do not receive any. I apprehend that flagrant transgressors (and who is or is not of this number, who shall here say?) will ever feel consciousness of inferiority and self-reproach in the presence of those who walked worthily on earth. that a retrospect of their darker hours can never be joyful nor welcome to Judas or Magdalen. So long as we may grow therein in wisdom and worth, it is well, it is desirable, to live, but no further. To my view, insanity is the darkest, the most appalling of earthly calamities; but how much better is an old age that drivels and wanders, that misunderstands and forgets? When the soul shall have become choked and smothered by the ruins of its wasting, falling habitation, I should prefer to inhabit that shattered tenement no longer. I should not choose to stand shuddering and trembling on the brink of the dark river, weakly drawing back from the chill of its sweeping flood, when Faith assures me that a new Eden stretches green and fair beyond it, and that the baptism it invites will cleanse the soul of all that now clogs, clouds, and weighs it to the earth. No-when the windows of the mind shall be darkened, when the growth of the soul here shall have been arrested, I would not weakly cling to the earth which will have ceased to nourish and uphold me. Rather "let the golden bowl be loosed and the pitcher broken at the fountain;" let the sun of my existence go down ere the murky vapors shroud its horizon; let me close my eyes calmly on the things of earth and let my weary frame sleep beneath the clods of the valley; let the spirit, which it can no longer cherish as a guest, be spared the ignominy of detention as a prisoner; but, freed from the fetters of clay, let it wing its way through the boundless universe, to wheresoever the benign Father of Spirits shall have assigned it an everlasting home. THE DREAMER AND HIS DREAMS. BY T. B. THAYER. STRANGELY now the Northern Morning And its fearful banners flashing Gazing out upon the pageant, How it brings me back the past, O the lofty heights that lifted Through the distance in those days, And the world be filled with praise." First of all the Battle vision Blazed upon my boyhood day, Plumes and pennons, swords and lances, |