reverence groped for its object in that chaos like a child in a darkened chamber seeking for its father. Standing over his grave I could have recognised him. I could have found him all alive again in every street; and on my play grounds his presence would have answered to my apprehension, whereever I turned, if only he had not been there there as he was. I could, I think, have borne the shock of all natural change. The even rush of years would have left some noble traces to adorn the ruin; a second childhood would have preserved some symmetry in decay; but, he remembered. me, and had forgotten himself! Like the chieftain of a clan, he was naturally a foster-father to the children of his early friends. This, too, was extinguished. He had lost the habit of that respect, the consciousness of its mutual claims, and the sympathies and demeanor of the relation.

Why does the church pray for deliverance from sudden death? The battle-field is the fittest death-bed of the soldier. When "it is finished," let the strong struggler give up the ghost, that the body may not become the grave of the soul, nor the holy ones see their own corruption.

Before this strong man became incapable of active, useful life, his relations to it were divorced, and his great energies were left to prey upon themselves. He was not born to rust but to wear out; and when society refused his services and repelled his participation, the appetites, which had been suspended and controlled by half a century of intense engagement in worthy offices, resumed their importunities; the vices of youth displaced the proper dignities of age, and the offended witnesses of his fall lost their confidence in human virtue, by the shocking exhibition of its weakness.

I did not reproach him for his infirmity. It was not his fault, but the fault of a wretched meagreness and meanness of conditions which could not hold such a mind and heart to

their highest uses and noblest capabilities to the end. I date his death at the period of his discharge from public duty; there justice sets up his monument, and its broad shadow covers all that lies behind it.

ELIZABETH BARTON.

I HAVE a story to tell, not to make. It is true to a thought-true as my senses received it into my feelings and reflections and I am very sure that it has suffered no distortion or exaggeration there.

The occurrences are now twenty years old; the locality is middle Pennsylvania, in a narrow valley, lying between. two of the easternmost ridges of the Alleghany Mountains.

I had just finished the usual term of medical study, and attended one course of lectures at Philadelphia. Of the experiences common to my tribe, I had my average—an exhausted purse, and a disappointment in a love affair. Under the compulsion of these, and the notion that a little practice of my own, with its attendant responsibilities (for which, I believe, I was better prepared than usual), would be fine training for my last session at the Medical College, I planted myself at a + roads" in the centre of a good settlement. A grist mill, saw mill, distillery, smith shop, and retail variety store, did the business of the neighborhood; a weekly mail brought us our letters and newspapers; and I undertook the health of the vicinity, that is to say, of a region of hill and valley forty miles in compass.

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A mile below us, on the stream that watered our pretty valley, there stood a long, low-roofed, rough-built, onestory stone house, which was called the "Union Schoolhouse." Its primary use was for the instruction of the children of the district; but as it was the only public building in the neighborhood, it was used occasionally for all sorts

of public meetings, and on Sundays regularly, under some tacit agreement, by half-a-dozen sects, for preaching and social worship. There, about noon on a summer Sabbath, might be found, at the time I speak of, the persons whom I wish to introduce to the reader's acquaintance; and, assuming that everybody knows enough of the general character of such audiences to answer our present purposes, I will content myself with describing particularly only three or four persons in the congregation, whom we are concerned to know more intimately. They are not the only notewor thy people of fifty or sixty present; for life is not so poor in variety and interest among our mountains, but I cannot pause in my narrative now to illuminate its margins with gratuitous portraiture.

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The clergyman is entitled to our first attention. This is the first year of his ministry. He is a stray slip of Virginia aristocracy, who has found scope for his enthusiasm of religious sentiment, and opportunity for his generosity of self-denial, in circuit preaching through a mountain range. of three hundred miles' compass, which he must traverse once every month, preaching, on an average, once every day and twice on Sundays." He is marked by better education, better manners, and more refinement than the men among whom he ministers; but he subdues his tastes and conforms his general demeanor to the coarse conditions of his work, with all the devotion, but happily, none of the pretence of a martyr. In good truth, he is very much out of place in this rude region, except for the rare spirits, one in a hundred or a thousand, who, perchance, may apprehend him. But he came among us in such singleness of heart and cordial devotedness of spirit, that he is as much disguised, to selfish and superficial people, as a prince in temporary banishment. And he would have it so, for he wants the

discipline of such duty; and the concealment of his accustomed style of life is necessary to the free working of the experiment.

The congregation felt that indefinable something in him which distinguishes the gentleman-bred, but missing all the pretence and mannerism, which, in their idea, marked it, they generally accepted him at his own modest estimate, and the secret of his family and fortune escaped the gossips. He accepted his hundred dollars a year, made up by some thirty little congregations, as composedly as if he needed such a pittance, and he took the hospitalities of the circuit ́as contentedly as if their best was something quite agreeable to him.

Not unfrequently the position of the preacher in this rugged region is a matter of ambitious aspiration, notwithstanding the rudeness of the people, and the hardness of the work; for some of our mountain clergy are the coarsest men within the boundaries of the brotherhood; but often-very often the service is a sacrifice of rich sensibilities and a dedication of fine talents to the most repugnant forms of duty. Such was the person, and such the attitude to his work, of our friend, the Rev. George Ashleigh. It were well for our new world if the ministerial office were generally filled by such men as he.

Among the women belonging to this society there were two girls, whose characters were brought well enough to the surface by the events of my story to allow the hope of adequate presentment.

Nancy Barton's general character was strength and style. Her religious impulses were very active, her social sentiments free and strong, and her selfish feelings, also, sharp and importunate. She was defective in imagination proper, but the life of passion warmed and strengthened her thoughts