A MOTHER'S GRIEF.

A Sketch from Life.

BY THE REV. THOMAS DALE.

To mark the sufferings of the babe
That cannot speak its woe;

To see the infant tears gush forth,
Yet know not why they flow;
To meet the meek uplifted eye,

That fain would ask relief,
Yet can but tell of agony,-
THIS is a mother's grief!

Thro' dreary days and darker nights,

To trace the march of death;

To hear the faint and frequent sigh,

The quick and shortened breath;

To watch the last dread strife draw near,

And pray that struggle brief,

Though all is ended with its close,

THIS is a mother's grief!

To see, in one short hour, decayed

The hope of future years;

To feel how vain a father's prayers,
How vain a mother's tears;

To think the cold grave now must close

O'er what was, once, the chief

Of all the treasured joys of earth,—

THIS is a mother's grief!

Yet, when the first wild throb is past
Of anguish and despair,

To lift the eye of faith to heaven,
And think, "" my child is there;"-
THIS best can dry the gushing tears,
THIS yields the heart relief;
Until the Christian's pious hope

O'ercomes a mother's grief!

ON AN HOUR-GLASS.

MARK the golden grains that pass,
Brightly, through this channeled glass;
Measuring, by their ceaseless fall,
Heaven's most precious gift to all!
Pauseless-till its sand be done-
See the shining current run;
Till, its inward treasure shed,
(Lo! another hour has fled !)
Its task performed,-its travail past,—
Like mortal man, it rests at last!

Yet, let some hand invert its frame,
And all its powers return the same;
For all the golden grains remain,
To work their little hour again!

But who shall turn the glass for man,
From which the golden current ran;
Collect again the precious sand,

Which time has scattered with his hand;

Bring back life's stream, with vital power,

And bid it run another hour?

-A thousand years of toil were vain,

To gather up a single grain !

J. M'C.

THE LADY OF BEECHGROVE.

A SKETCH.

BY MISS MITFORD,

Author of "Our Village."

THOSE who live in a thickly inhabited and very pretty country, close to a large town,-within a morning's ride of London, and an easy distance from Bath, Cheltenham, and the sea,-must lay their account, (especially if there be also excellent roads and a capital pack of fox hounds,) on some of the evils which are generally found to counterbalance so many conveniences;-such as a most unusual dearness and scarcity of milk, cream, butter, eggs, and poultry-luxuries held proper to rural life,-a general corruption of domestics, and-above all—a perpetual change and fluctuation of neighbours. The people in this pretty H** shire country are as mutable as the six-months denizens of Richmond or Hampstead;-mere birds of passage, who "come like shadows, so depart." If a resident of ten years ago were, by any chance, to come here now, he would be in great luck if he found three faces of gentility that he could recognise. I do not mean to insinuate that faces, in our parts, wax old or ugly sooner than else

where; but, simply, that they do not stay amongst us long enough to become old,-that, one after another,they vanish. All our mansions are let, or to be let. The old fashioned manorial Hall,-where squire succeeded to squire from generation to generation,-is cut down into a villa or a hunting lodge, and transferred, season after season, from tenant to tenant, with as little remorse as if it were a lodging-house at Brighton. The lords of the soil are almost as universally absentees as if our fair county were part and parcel of the sister kingdom. The spirit of migration possesses the land. Nobody, of any note, even talks of staying amongst us, that I have heard, -except a speculating candidate for the next borough; and he is said to have given pretty intelligible hints that he shall certainly be off unless he be elected. In short, we, Hshire people, are a generation of runaways!

As "out of evil cometh good," one pleasant consequence of this incessant mutation has been the absence of that sort of prying and observation, of which country neighbours used to be accused. No street even in London was free from small gossiping. With us they who were moving, or thinking of moving, had something else to do; and we,-the few dull laggards, who remained fixed in our places, as stationary as di.. recting posts, and pretty nearly as useless,—were too much accustomed to the whirl to take any great note of the passers by.

Yet, even amidst the general flitting, one abode