before, and a new rose is just opening on his rosebush.

There goes pussy too, racing and scampering, with little Ellen after her, in among the alleys and flowers; and the birds are singing in the trees; and the soft winds brush the blossoms of the sweetpea against his cheek; and yet, though all nature looks on him so kindly, he is wretched.

Let us now change the scene. Why is that crowded assembly so attentive-so silent? Who is speaking? It is our old friend, the little disconsolate schoolboy. But his eyes are flashing with intellect, his face fervent with emotion, his voice breathes like music, and every mind is enchained.

Again, it is a splendid sunset, and yonder enthusiast meets it face to face, as a friend. He is silentrapt-happy. He feels the poetry which God has written; he is touched by it, as God meant that the feeling spirit should be touched.

Again, he is watching by the bed of sickness, and it is blessed to have such a watcher! antici. pating every want; relieving, not in a cold, unin terested way, but with the quick perceptions, the tenderness, the gentleness of an angel.

Follow him into the circle of friendship, and why is he so loved and trusted? Why can you so easily tell to him what you can say to no one else besides? Why is it that all around him feel

that he can understand, appreciate, be touched by all that touches them?

And when Heaven uncloses its doors of lightwhen all its knowledge, its purity, its bliss, rises on the eye and passes into the soul, who then will be looked on as the one who might be envied-he who can, or he who cannot feel?

THE SEMPSTRESS.

"Few, save the poor, feel for the poor;
The rich know not how hard

It is to be of needful food

And needful rest debarr'd.

Their paths are paths of plenteousness,
They sleep on silk and down;
They never think how wearily
The weary head lies down.

They never by the window sit,
And see the gay pass by,

Yet take their weary work again,
And with a mournful eye."

L. E. L.

HOWEVER fine and elevated, in a sentimentai point of view, may have been the poetry of this gifted writer, we think we have never seen any thing from this source that ought to give a bet ter opinion of her than the little ballad from which the above verses are taken.

They show that the accomplished authoress possessed, not merely a knowledge of the dreamy ideal wants of human beings, but the more pressing and homely ones, which the fastidious and poetical are often the last to appreciate. The sufferings of poverty are not confined to those of the common, squalid, ev

ery-day inured to hardships, and ready, with open hand, to receive charity, let it come to them as it will. There is another class on whom it presses with still heavier power: the generous, the decent, the self-respecting, who have struggled with their lot in silence, “bearing all things, hoping all things," and willing to endure all things, rather than breathe a word of complaint, or to acknowledge, even to themselves, that their own efforts will not be sufficient for their own necessities.

Pause with me a while at the door of yonder small room, whose small window overlooks a little court below. It is inhabited by a widow and her daughter, dependant entirely on the labours of the needle, and those other slight and precarious resources, which are all that remain to woman when left to struggle her way

through this bleak world alone." It contains all their small earthly store, and there is scarce an article of its little stock of furniture that has not been thought of, and toiled for, and its price calculated over and over again, before everything could come right for its purchase. Every article is arranged with the utmost neatness and care; nor is the most costly furniture of a fashionable parlour more sedulously guarded from a scratch or a rub, than is that brightlyvarnished bureau, and that neat cherry tea-ta

ble and bedstead. The floor, too, boasted once a carpet; but old Time has been busy with it, picking a hole here, and making a thin place there; and though the old fellow has been fol lowed up by the most indefatigable zeal in darning, the marks of his mischievous fingers are too plain to be mistaken. It is true, a kindly neighbour has given a bit of faded baize, which has been neatly clipped and bound, and spread down over an entirely unmanageable hole in front of the fireplace; and other places have been repaired with pieces of different colours; and yet, after all, it is evident that the poor carpet is not long for this world.

But the best face is put upon everything. The little cupboard in the corner, that contains a few china cups, and one or two antiquated silver spoons, relics of better days, is arranged with jealous neatness, and the white muslin window-curtain, albeit the muslin be old, has been carefully whitened, and starched, and smoothly ironed, and put up with exact precision; and on the bureau, covered by a snowy cloth, are arranged a few books and other memorials of former times, and a faded miniature, which, though it have little about it to interest a stranger, is more precious to the poor widow than everything besides.

Mrs. Ames is seated in her rocking-chair,