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GOD'S PROVIDENCE INSCRUTABLE.

ler, only to be drowned at the end of it in that little ditch which calls itself a river-the Cam? By the Milton of Mr. John Purkiss, indeed, that modest stream would be hight “reverend Camus, footing slow, his mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge ;" and he would paint the river god incensed with his Nereids for letting the weeds catch the feet of the young Cambridge scholar and drag him to his death.

As it is, we must be content to have the story in prose, and have only hazarded these views to show that human life, however unconsciously, talks and acts poetry. And, indeed, the prose of the tale is full enough of sorrow without being put into elegiacs. Mr. Purkiss was a boy at the City of London School, when he gained the first Queen's Prize given at South Kensington. Then he carried off scholarships at the University of London and at Cambridge; and, going up to Trinity College, at the latter university he came out in 1864 Senior Wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman-illustrious triumphs that seldom go together; while the feats were capped by his gaining the three Mathematical Scholarships at the London University, and the gold medal. Attracted by such parts, Lord Granville offered the young Cambridge bachelor the vice-principalship of the new Royal College of Naval Architecture; and, after one session-his first and last-he was promoted to the principalship at twenty-three years, the youngest "principal" ever yet installed in the ranks of education. Here was a young recruit of Science, destined most assuredly to fight his way under her banner to new discoveries, new helps for mankind. Such a man could not have failed to become famous; faculties so admirable in youth must have borne noble fruitage in maturity. He repairs, however, to Cambridge to read for his degree, and walks from Grantchester along the Cam, to the bathing-sheds. His companions, inclined to have a swim, undress and plunge in, inviting him to follow. They hear the splash of his header, and think "it's all right;" but when they return down the stream again there are his clothes and hat in the bathing-shed, but nothing else. They scour the banks, they poke about with poles, they drag with hooks; by-and-by the weeds move unnaturally in one place, and the body of the young scholar is fished out. Who can understand these mysterious dispensations of Him who does not judge as we judge, nor spare what we value ?—who cuts down the young and splendid scholar in

the bloom of his mental power? Perhaps none so well as those who know that nothing is so vain as to demand a solution of the mystery. We are sure only of Providence; we must remain ignorant of its reasons and righteousness.

-London Daily Telegraph.

CORN FIELDS.

In the young merry time of spring,
When clover 'gins to burst;

When blue-bells nod within the wood,
And sweet May whitens first-
When merle and mavis sing their fill,
Green is the young corn on the hill.

But when the merry spring is past,
And summer groweth bold,
And in the garden and the field,
A thousand flowers unfold;
Before a green leaf yet is sere,
The young corn shoots into the ear.

But then as day and night succeed,
And summer weareth on,
And in the flowry garden-beds
The red-rose groweth wan,

And hollyhocks and sun-flowers tall

O'ertop the mossy garden wall.

When on the breath of autumn's breeze,
From pastures dry and brown,
Goes floating, like an idle thought,
The fair, white thistledown;
O, then what joy to walk at will,
Upon the golden harvest-hill!

What joy in dreaming ease to lie
Amid a field new shorn,

And see all round on sunlit slope,
The piled-up stacks of corn,
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest-fields of yore.

I feel the day; I see the field;
The quivering of the leaves;
And good old Jacob, and his house
Binding the yellow sheaves;
And at the very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream

And Boaz looking on ;
And Ruth, the Moabitess fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there

Again, I see a little child,

His mother's sole delight;
God's living gift of love unto

The kind, good Shunammite;
To mortal pangs I see him yield,
And the lad bears him from the field.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills,
The fields of Galilee,

That eighteen hundred years' agone,
Were full of corn, I see ;

And the dear Saviour take his way
'Mid ripe ears on the sabbath-day.

O golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem !-
The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,
To me are like a dream ;

The sunshine and the very air

Seem of old time, and take me there.

-MAR

ON LAW.

THE stateliness of houses, the goodliness of trees, hold them, delighteth the eye; but that foundation eth up the one, that root which ministereth unto nourishment and life, is in the bosom of the earth and if there be at any time occasion to search into it, is then more necessary than pleasant, both to them wh take it, and for the lookers on. In like manner t benefit of good laws all that live under them may delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and first orig from whence they have sprung be unknown, as to t part of men they are. But when they who with obedience pretend that the laws which they should corrupt and vicious, for better examination of their behoveth the very foundation and root, the highest

and fountain of them, to be discovered. Which because we are not oftentimes accustomed to do, when we do it, the pains we take are more needful a great deal than acceptable; and the matters which we handle seem, by reason of newness (till the mind grow better acquainted with them), dark, intricate, and unfamiliar.

And because the point about which we strive is the quality of our laws, our first entrance hereinto cannot better be made than with consideration of the nature of law in general.

All things that are have some operation not violent or casual. Neither doth anything ever begin to exercise the same without some fore-conceived end for which it worketh. And the end which it worketh for is not obtained, unless the work be also fit to obtain it by. For unto every end every operation will not serve. That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a Law. So that no certain end could ever be obtained unless the actions whereby it is obtained were regular, that is to say, made suitable, fit, and correspondent unto their end by some canon, rule, or law.

Moses, in describing the work of creation, attributeth speech unto God: "God said, let there be light; let there be a firmament; let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place; let the earth bring forth; let there be lights in the firmament of heaven." Was this only the intent of Moses, to signify the infinite greatness of God's power by the easiness of His accomplishing such effects, without travail, pain, or labor? Surely it seemeth that Moses had herein besides this a further purpose, namely, first to teach that God did not work as a necessary, but a voluntary Agent, intending beforehand and decreeing with Himself that which did outwardly proceed from Him; secondly, to shew that God did then institute a law natural to be observed by creatures, and therefore, according to the manner of laws, the institution thereof is described as beir g established by solemn injunction. His commanding those things to be which are, and to be in such sort as they are, to keep that tenure and course which they do, importeth the establishment of nature's law. This world's first creation, and the preservation since of things created, what is it but only so far forth a manifestation by execution, what the eternal law of

God is concerning things natural? And as it cometh to pass in a kingdom rightly ordered, that after a law is once published it presently takes effect far and wide, all states framing themselves thereunto; even so let us think it fareth in the natural course of the world: since the time that God did first proclaim the edicts of His law upon it, heaven and earth have hearkened unto His voice, and their labor hath been to do His will. "He made a law for the rain, he gave his decree unto the sea, that the waters should not pass his commandment." Now, if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubilities turn themselves any way as it might happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run its unwearied course, should, as it were through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way; the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture; the winds breathe out their last gasp; the clouds yield no rain; the earth be defeated of heavenly influence; the fruits of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mother, no longer able to yield them relief; what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?

Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power. Both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy. HOOKER.