and which may shine upon the bosom of the stormy ocean, or the brink of the quiet grave -that the warning voice of man is but like the cry of the shipwrecked seaman amongst the rocks and shoals, while the arm of Omnipotence is able to roll back the fury of the foaming waves, to stay the lightning, and hush the pealing thunder, and lead forth the despairing seaman into the harbour of everlasting rest!" Years passed on, and the misanthrope remained unchanged, except that a deeper gloom was added to his despondency--a more intolerable sense of wretchedness to his despair. As the fresh glow of early life subsided, one kindly feeling after another ceased to warm his heart, until the last and longest cherished, the pleasure he had ever found in the companionship of his best friend, was gone for ever. often say, when Agnes remonstrated with her upon her too constant and unremitting attention. "Time is fleeting, and silvery hairs are warning me that I have not much to lose. Spare me not, Agnes, for I would not spare myself. I know that nothing I can now do will obliterate the past; but when I reflect upon the mercy and forbearance of a Divine Providence, who bore with my selfish idolatry so long, and at last set before me a higher duty and a better hope, I am not willing that one hour should pass by in which I may be found to have forgotten the mighty debt I owe. You yourself have taught me that we are unable to purchase heaven by our good actions; but all the efforts of the longest life to obey the Divine will are due from us, in gratitude for the countless mercies we have received. Of my life, one half, at least has been wasted you, who have ever been my best monitor, should not hinder me in laying my offering of autumn fruits upon the altar." "You will not take my mother away," said Ida, pressing the hand of Lady Forbes upon her burning brow; "no earthly power should separate a mother from her child. This was one of the lucid intervals in which the poor sufferer enjoyed the luxury of weeping; and her tears fell thick and fast, as she told, in broken accents, how her young heart had often pined for a mother's love. Agnes had become the happy wife of Walter Percival, whose active and energetic character was well calculated to assist and forward all his plans of usefulness. Together they supported the declining health of a devoted mother, whose unfailing cheerfulness fully repaid their assiduity and care: together they visited the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, watching over the feeble, comforting the forlorn, and directing the blind and erring wanderer how to obtain an entrance into the strait and narrow way: and having lived for others more than for themselves, they were permitted to partake together of that cup of earthly enjoy-kinder still: she might have told me when I ment which never was, and never will be, held out to those who would snatch it with unhallowed hands-who would demand, as a right, what is only granted as a boonwho would stand unbidden at the marriage feast-who would ask for the ten talents, after having lost the one. Years passed on, and Lady Forbes was still faithful to her trust, watching, with maternal solicitude over the mental darkness of her benighted child. "They were kind to me in Scotland," she continued-" kind to soothe, and flatter, and caress me--but a mother might have been did wrong, and I should not have resented it from her. No! no! we will not be separated-we will live together, and I will try to be less selfish than I have been. My own dear mother! my best friend! what can I do now to serve you?" "You shall sing to us, Ida." "I will sing to you a hymn that Kenneth Frazer taught me—yet not a hymn exactly, but something that calls back my better thoughts, when I am forgetting to be grate "I have much to atone for," she would ful." The spring flowers know their time to bloom; The summer dews to fall; The stormy winds to rise and come At winter's dreary call; The nightingale knows when to sing The stranger bird to stretch her wing The silent stars know when to raise The sun his chariot wheels to roll Thus wide creation owns a power Then while of nature's works the prime, Shall he, ungrateful, own no time To thank the Lord of all? THE PAINS OF PLEASING. Defend me, therefore, common sense-say I, COWPER. CHAPTER I. "Do you think the good lady of this house will ask us to sit down, Charlotte?" "I think she ought," was the reply, as two fair damsels took their stand upon the clean stone step of a plain brick dwelling. They had been engaged the whole morning in collecting subscriptions for the Bible Society, and had not yet found their reward. Amongst the inhabitants of the small country town in which their circuit lay, some had regarded them with suspicion, some had attacked them with reproaches, and few had offered them a seat; until, wearied with their task, they determined to take advantage of the first tolerable-looking mansion for that rest which even virtuous exertions require. "This long delay promises but a cold welcome," said one of the young ladies, as the slow movements of slippered feet were heard along the passage. With much apparent difficulty the key was turned, and the door being partially opened by a wrinkled hand, an old woman, whose years might have entitled her to a place of rest in this world, at least, but who was evidently still tortured with household anxieties, stood before them, as if to impede their entrance. small parlour, wide enough for them to enter. "Nothing but old women," thought the damsels, as they observed the figure of a person little inferior in years to their silent conductress, seated by the fire. There was nothing peculiar in her dress or countenance, and when she begged them to be seated, it was as much with the indifference of one who has grown familiar with the world in its most ordinary character, as one who has acquired the ease and complacency of fashionable life. She was, however, too well bred to ask her visitors the purpose of their coming; and after a few common-place remarks, they sat and whispered together, or rather talked over, in an under tone, the adventures of the morning, as if no one had been present. "What had we best do with the money from Mary Staines ?" asked one. "Give it to the treasurer at once," was the reply. "I think not. It would certainly be more just; but don't you think it would offend dear Mr. Drawnover. "Mr. Drawnover has nothing to do with it, that I know of; and yet it might be dangerous to displease him, he seems disposed to be so liberal." Difficulties seemed to increase around "Does Mrs. Irvine live here ?" asked one these sapient agents of reformation; and so of the ladies. The woman made no reply; but turning deliberately round, opened the door of a warm were they in the contest between justice and the liberal Mr. Drawnover, as not to notice the change which had taken place in the whole aspect of the old lady, their sole auditor; until, arriving at the crisis of their dispute, one of them positively asserted that her plan would be the most equitable. The old woman then rose from her chair, and, fixing a keen look upon the other, laid her withered hand upon her arm, and exclaimed, "And can you hesitate ?" An electric shock would scarcely have occasioned greater convulsions in the form of the fair disputant. riness or pain. I had friends-I had fortune I had all that renders life desirable, and have been assailed by few of its most trying calamities; yet has disappointment been my daily portion, and sorrow the companion of my path. Tears more than time have worn these furrows on my cheek-I am not so old as I am wretched!" A long pause ensued, during which the sufferer appeared to be struggling with some mental agony. Restless, but silent, she sat with both her hands pressed violently upon her forehead, and her head bent forward as if beneath the weight of severe affliction. It seemed as though the floodgates of memory were thrown open, and the deluge that poured in brought nothing along with it but "Wrecks, and the salt surf weeds of bitterness." It was strange to behold one who had so nearly finished her course-one who had approached the confines of eternity-thus agitated by the recollection of former years. It was not, however, with fruitless effort that she endeavoured to regain her former composure. She cleared her voice, and smoothed her forehead, and, rising from the posture of humiliation, in a calm and collected manner resumed the thread of her discourse. "Listen to me!" continued the ancient dame, drawing her youthful companion to the window. "Behold yon sun, the great source of light and life! Were he to consult the inclinations of man, where, think you, would he shine? When the city dame walked forth, she would beg that the splendour of his beams might be turned away, in mercy to her lily skin; while, at the same time, the husbandman would implore the blessing of his rays, to ripen the harvest of his hope; and the sportsman would curse his mid-day heat; while the prayer of the aged and infirm would arise from the abodes of wretchedness, that some portion of his warmth and brightness might illuminate their humble dwellings: but yon glorious luminary, drawn by the hand of mercy, and directed by the councils of wisdom, goes on "I said that I had spent a long life in the his heavenly way undeviating, giving beauty service of my fellow-creatures. Well might and gladness to the earth-to the industri- I quote the memorable words of the dying ous labourer, the morning light-to the Cardinal, and say, 'That had I served my flowers and fruits, the mid-day heat-to the God half as sincerely as I have served my worn and the weary, the calm of evening friends, He would not have left me thus.' and to the wide realm of nature the repose I said that I had served my fellow-creatures; of night! but what was my motive? If kind offices, "You wonder at my earnestness and and willing gifts, and charity, and good will warmth. Look upon me; and if your youth--if patient suffering, and unmurmuring subful eyes shrink not from a sight so abject, contemplate the being before you. I have spent a long life in the service of my fellowcreatures, adapting myself to their various moods and temperaments, labouring to make myself beloved—and my reward has been a lonely and desolate old age. Not one of all those to whose happiness or amusement I have contributed would now seek me in this lowly habitation, to soothe my hours of wea mission, may entitle me to the name of Christian, I, indeed, have been a follower of Christ. But, let me ask again, what was my motive? With kind services I sought to purchase friends, amongst whom I might live, the centre of a charmed circle-friends, whose partial love might screen my faults and foibles, even from my own observation; with gifts I conciliated those whom my humour sometimes offended; with charity I bought the poor, that my step might be welcome in the cottage of the needy, and my countenance hailed as the harbinger of joy. To every creature in the universe my heart naturally overflowed with benevolence. I was patient, too, by nature, and never hesitated to suffer in the cause of another, when certain that suffering would be known and appreciated. To submit, without resistance, was a part of my creed-and verily, I had my reward; for all that I did and endured (and truly there was enough of both) was without any reference to a higher object than that of making myself beloved: and I am the more willing to lay my own errors before the world, because the character at which I aimed is one that too frequently passes under the designation of amiable, and, as such, is held up to admiration, while concealing, beneath a cloak of loveliness, a selfish and ignoble mind. "Should either of my fair friends be running heedlessly upon the shoals where I have suffered shipwreck, it may be worth her while to listen for a few hours to the detail of circumstances tending to the developement of those feelings which have made me what I am feelings, which have been a constant source of disappointment and humiliation for threescore years-feelings, which still pursue me to the brink of the grave, and occupy that place in my heart where higher thoughts should reign supreme. "Raise not your expectations to the heights of romantic interest: mine has been the common lot of mortals-my character unmarked by any extraordinary traits. The narrative to which I call your attention is that of a mis-spent, but, in great measure, an inoffensive life, displaying none of the extremes of vice or virtue, good fortune or calamity. Perhaps, were I inclined to look with partial eye upon the past, I might be able to recount no trifling number of actions commendable in themselves, and which, had they originated in a love of God, and devotedness to his service, might have been held as memorials in my favour; but which, having nothing for their object, save the transient applause of fickle friends, have passed away from my remembrance with the worthless stimulus by which they were excited. "Alas! my young friends, it is only that heaven-born benevolence, which regards all human creatures as the children of one Universal Father, that can prompt us to true Christian charity and love. It is only by first desiring to serve God, that we can ever effectually serve mankind. "But I detain you, and the hour is late. Come to me to-morrow evening, if you are at leisure, and have no more agreeable employment, and you shall listen to the story of an old woman." CHAPTER II. FAITHFUL to the appointed hour, on the following day the two young ladies seated themselves at the fireside of their venerable friend, who commenced her simple narrative without farther introduction. I was born to that station in life which entitled me to all the indulgences and advantages that a reasonable mind could desire. My mother died early, and my father, being fully engaged with the business of a bank, in which he was an active partner, an older sister and myself were sent, during the usual term of education, to a fashionable boarding-school, and afterwards left to the uncontrouled formation of our own tastes, and the regulation of our own conduct. For my sister this was all sufficient, as her regular, methodical, and even temperament secured her against any temptation to deviate from the customs most approved in society. At first, I thought that her immoveable stability of character arose solely from apathy of feeling; but I learned in time, to respect the substantial reasons she was able to give for everything she did; and after experience taught me that she had all along been acting upon principle. She had |