her arms around her sister's neck with the air of one who knows not what to say. Presently she perceived that Adelaide was weeping.

'I cannot think,' she said at last, 'that your Herbert was foolish even in his love. He did not love you blindly, any more than you loved your little Bertie blindly. You would not have been indifferent to a fault in him. But let his affection for you have been ever so strong, it was nothing to the love the Father has for the child, the Elder Brother for the little sister. If the lower love excuses you, the higher does undoubtedly, and will yet speak comfortably to you.'

But the higher Love is just,' said poor Adelaide.

'Just and yet a justifier,' replied Hilda, reverently. 'That you should behave yourself quietly is as much, perhaps, as is at present required of you. It is as much as we, at any rate, have a right to look for; and you are, dear, quiet and very childlike.

'How good you are to me! I had imagined you, for all your kindness, saying to yourself: "It is time that Adelaide roused herself; she broods and gives way more than is good for her." You know that we used to consider you the strongminded woman of the family, Hilda.'

Hilda drew a short, quick breath, as if she had been inadvertently touched on a tender point.

"The Hand that has chastened you has not all these years left me to myself, Adelaide, or the strong would not have brought forth sweetness.'

Adelaide understood the allusion. Earlier in life Hilda had been harsh in her judgments and overbearing in her family relations; yet she was generally allowed to be a fine character. The Hilda of to-day was finer, however, than the Hilda of whom Adelaide had been so proud, and yet against whom she had on occasion been extremely irritated. They had had their quarrels, and Hilda's admission brought them to mind.

'You must have thought me very selfish,' said Adelaide, because I have never since I came home entered into your past troubles; but I have had no heart to enter on subjects which have been the burden of many a letter and of many an earnest prayer. O, Hilda, what a selfish thing sorrow is! They wrong prosperity who represent it as so much more dangerous than adversity. When I was happy in husband and child and home, I would have resented the imputation of selfishness. I wanted every one to be as happy as I was; but now I feel so cold and shut up to my own grief.'

'It is not an ordinary one; yet, Ade

laide, you have this solace: your dear ones have been removed; they have not been denied to you. You are the mother of a blessed child in heaven, and twelve of the best years of your life have been passed by the side of the man whom your heart taught you to prefer to all other. Thank God for all that intercourse, and let your mind dwell upon all that was glad and ennobling in it, as shut up in a sickroom you might beguile the time by travelling in imagination through all the beautiful landscapes you had ever visited.'

Alas! the thought of the possession only brings home to me the magnitude of the loss.'

And yet,

"'Tis better to have loved and lost,

Than never to have loved at all,”* said Hilda, with a slight tremulousness in her voice. And to love, and to have and to lose, cannot be so hard as to lose without having.'

I believe you are right,' said Adelaide. "You think that we are like children, who, crying for something that they cannot be trusted with, are pacified by being allowed to hold it for a little time.'

'Exactly; it is having it withheld altogether that seems to me so exceeding bitter.'

'And that, my poor Hilda, has been your lot. Strange that a heart so slow to surrender as yours, could be won, in all seeming, only to be disappointed.'

'Everything conspired to work the desolation,' said Hilda. I had no sooner been glad because of the gourd than it withered, yet I had no reason to be angry because of the gourd.'

'I wonder that you are so quiet.'

I was not quiet; at first I raged; but I am very quiet now. Howbeit, Adelaide, if I could have had twelve such years of my life to look back upon, as you have had; the sweetness of the draught would have reconciled me to a great deal of bitterness at the bottom of the cup.'

'Dear Hilda, you do well to remind me of my mercies. Don't think that I have set myself not to be comforted because I do not more easily appropriate the comfort that is given.'

'I do not; and do you not be evermore imagining that we are so ready to judge you.'

My conscience is my accuser, and when Mrs. Woodly was here yesterday she said something that I know was aimed at me.' 'I know,' said Hilda.

Yes, she asked me very pointedly if it was not bad for me to go to the Dingle so much. She had seen me passing so many times, and thought I ought to have company.'

'She sits so much at her window that it is not likely she ever misses you,' exclaimed Hilda.

‘And then when you were all talking about that poor Mrs. Evans, and wondering whatever she would do with all those little children dependent on her, and her husband's affairs found in such unexpected confusion, she said it was all the better for her, that she would be stimulated to action and would not give way to the brooding and melancholy other women so unfortunately indulge in after their husbands are taken. It made me reflect whether really, if the strong hand of Necessity had been laid upon me, compelling me to work for the things that belong to this life, I should have been any better for it. In my heart of hearts I believe I should not. I might have done wonders with a little child to live for, but without-well, I might knit and sew, and perhaps put stitches in enough to keep me out of the almshouse; but I could not engage in any higher work, let the emolument be what it might.'

'In such deep depression it would not be possible.'

So as I can't go to Sunday-school, or take a district, or engage in active work for the Lord, I am determined to work for His poor with my needle. You shall give me the work to do and be my almoner. In time I may be able to occupy what small talent He has given me; but at present-O, I hope I may not be condemned for doing nothing better than a little sewing!'

The sound of an advancing step caused her to rise hastily from her careless position at Hilda's feet. Hilda lighted the lamp and drew the blinds just as the servant entered with a letter for Mrs. Forrester.

'What peculiar handwriting!' she said; for the long tremulous letters and the horizontal black dashes caught her attention. Yes, it is from Ralph Holyoke, one of the best friends my Herbert ever had.'

The sisters read it together. It was not the first that Mrs. Forrester had received from Mr. Holyoke since her husband's decease; but to the first she had not replied. Now the writer congratulated her on being at home, and expressed a hope that he might soon hear from her. Would it be painful to her to furnish him with such little incidents of his lamented friend's declining days as were not too sacred to be shared with another fragments of that converse which to those privileged to enter into it had always been a rich spiritual and intellectual feast? The anxiety to have some of these dear memories of him which led him to proffer this request would not impel him to urge it. Mrs. Forrester was

to be guided by her own feelings. He thought there was something more of a melancholy pleasure than of pain in chronicling the last words and looks of those who had passed away from us, leaving the memory of past years a richer scroll for all they had inscribed upon it. And, he added, apart from his close friendship with the beloved departed one, he was in a position to enter peculiarly into the sorrow of his chief mourner, for his own dear Annie was slowly sinking under the same disease, and the fellowship of suffering had made her anxious to know all she could of Mr. Forrester.

'When I look at my little ones, so soon to be motherless,' wrote Holyoke, 'I have a heavy heart. But you, who have recently graduated in the school of adversity, will know both my feelings and hers. I wish we could have you with us for awhile.'

'It is not to be thought of,' said Hilda, in answer to a look of enquiry from Adelaide's eyes. But shall you write him the kind of letter he wishes, dear?'

'Most certainly I shall,' said Adelaide. 'It can revive nothing that is not ever present. I shall begin to-morrow and write slowly and carefully, for I should like to give Mr. Holyoke all the satisfaction I can. Somehow I feel as if I ought to go to Annie; but what good could I do her? I have no spirit, and should only add to the depression.'

The letter expanded into a manuscript containing matter enough for a pamphlet. The epistolary style is generally the easiest to a woman's pen, for there is no inspiration to a confiding nature like the sense that it is telling its story in a sympathizing ear, and even the thought of making effort for another was consolatory to the writer in her morbid consciousness of general good-for-nothingness.

Mr. Holyoke was highly gratified by the touching memorials his shy request had elicited. To confide them to his own desk was like burying a talent in a napkin; so, having obtained permission from his correspondent, he sent abroad a pithy record of a life whose length could not be measured by the subtraction of the date of birth from the date of death.

Relapsed into a state of passive endurance, Adelaide had many a misgiving as to her duty to Ralph Holyoke's afflicted wife, Was the mere expression of sympathy enough? Might not the poor sufferer have an unspoken yearning for her help in this time of need? Yet her apathy was like the sleep of the trespassers on the 'enchanted ground'; she could not shake it off.

'If Mr. Holyoke knew the dejection I

have sunk into he would not wish to have me near her,' she consoled herself with saying. If he knew what the sound of a child's voice is to me, and how hard I find it to break the silence, or to smile, he would never wish to bring me into contact with a sensitive invalid and a brood of little children. Such a test I dare not, I will not, encounter.'

So strongly did the voice of duty speak, that she mistook it for that of the Holyokes, and thought they urged her. Her mother suggested that they knew nothing definite of Mrs. Holyoke's state. Perhaps she was not too weak to make a journey by easy stages, and might be persuaded to visit them. Change of air was highly beneficial to consumptive patients. To be taken away for a time from her little family and be well nursed by experienced people, might prolong her life. For Adelaide's sake and for her own they would do everything for her that could be done.

Adelaide wrote, therefore, inviting her, but with a painful misgiving lest inability to accept such an invitation should make it appear hollow and unmeaning. Mr. Holyoke, however, gave her full credit for sincerity, though in reply he said, 'I see you do not realize my Annie's weak

ness.'

This letter increased Adelaide's remorse for her unwillingness to go to her, but it did not overcome it. They did not think hardly of her. They knew that she was crushed, and both perhaps imagined her to be influenced by motives of which she had become entirely oblivious. But a few weeks after, there came an appeal to which Adelaide could not remain inexorable : 'My dear wife is worse. If you can come to us, do.'

Her sisters took on themselves all the arrangements for the journey, remarking to each other while they did so that perhaps the visit to that house of mourning might take Adelaide out of her own troubles. Adelaide, however, only felt as if there was required of her a very hard thing. How could she, who had failed to appropriate the Divine consolation, bring it home to other hearts ?

The journey was long, and had to be performed in stages. The scenery through which she passed was beautiful, and its soothing influences penetrated her mind till the brooding melancholy was insensibly softened into a sweet serenity.

Then the very fact of being put out of the quiet tenor of her home-life energized her, so that when she arrived at her destination she appeared brighter and better than she had done since she ceased to make effort for her husband's sake.

The last stage of the journey was made with Mr. Holyoke, who had come to meet her. The morning air was delightful, and filled with the song of birds. The haw thorn blooms scattered lavishly their luscious perfumes. The vital breathing of that blessed Spirit, Who brooded over the dark waters, and is ever upholding what was brought out of chaos, might easily be dis cerned by the spiritual mind. And did He not apply the Father's words of promise and good cheer to these hearts which had known nights of weeping and anticipated many more such nights? Whatever of the former things was dark and gloomy would pass away. The Lord God would wipe

the tears from off all faces.'

S was a retired nook in South Wales. The scenery around was lovely, and the breeze blew into it fresh and strong from the sea. Yet its cove-like situation screened it from east wind and north.

'I feel as if I were in a new world,' said Adelaide.

Adelaide found the invalid dressed and laid on a sofa in her own room, near a window that commanded a view of the bay. The children spoke with hushed voices, as if habituated to the restraint that their mother's invalid condition imposed upon them. They had rather a forlorn look.

The tears came into Adelaide's eyes. She could not find much to say to the children, but she would try to devote herself to their mother. Ŏ, how hard for her to have to leave all these dear ones!'

Their mother said simply, 'O, I wish that you were coming here for good!'

'It would not be desirable,' said Adelaide. I am not what I was when you knew me. I have grown very apathetic and good-for-nothing and selfish. However strongly I may wish to rouse myself, I cannot; neither is the power given in answer to my prayer.'

But she did not look so apathetic. A little transitory excitement had lightened the deep sadness of her face. Annie's eye rested lovingly on it. It had associations for her tender and sweet, and it was quiet a rest to her to look at it.

The invalid was usually very languid in the morning; but towards evening a hectic flush came in her face, the tone of her mind was exhilarated, and she talked a freely as the cough and her shortening breath would allow. She asked Adelaide many questions about Mr. Forrester, after she had ascertained that she could bear to speak of him, and told her what strength and hope she had derived from the memorials. She never wearied in telling Adelaide of her own husband's goodness and unselfish devotion to her. Her long affliction had thrown a heavy burden on

him. To the children he had been father and mother both, and yet he had never neglected his pulpit and pastoral duties. Adelaide was sure that he deserved all the tribute a wife's affection could pay.

'No one knew better than Herbert,' she said, 'how good he was to the very core.' One evening, after Annie had restlessly changed her position several times on the couch, and it had been difficult to please her in the arrangement of the pillows, she said: 'Adelaide, I must speak to you. I must tell you what I have so wanted to.'

'Well, dear! What hinders ? '

'A foolish fear and delicacy hinders; but I am hastening to solemn realities and ought not to dread naming things belonging to the past, that I shall so soon have done with. In heaven they "are as the angels of God:" they "neither marry, nor are given in marriage."

'What has put your mind on that track?' said Adelaide, not a little bewildered.

'Many things. The pain of leaving my children, for one-not that they come nearer to my heart than their father; but he is a man, and will carry his cross like a man, and he has his strong confidence in God to fall back upon. Now a little child suffers and knows not what ails him, and these dear ones will miss me and know not what it is they miss.'

'Then it might be worse for them if they were older. Try not to fret about them, love. You have God and one of the best of earthly fathers to leave them to.'

'And yet children need a mother. And sometime, as much for their sake as his own, Ralph may bring some good woman to his home, who will be all to him that I have been and more, but less to the children.'

'You should not encourage such an apprehension,' said Adelaide, tenderly. It is as dangerous as it is painful. It will rob you of your peace.'

'I could not have given it words but for one thing, Adelaide. I know that he

whom I love better than all the world, would never have sought me if he could have had you.'

'Hush, dear!' remonstrated Adelaide, in a distressed tone. You know we were all thrown together under peculiar circumstances, and it is foolish now to attach importance to a passing fancy. The secret never passed my lips.'

'O, but I knew! and Ralph and I have had no secrets. That, after we were married, gave me no pain; our love grew out of so much that was solemn. He was instrumental in my conversion. With you I took sweet counsel, and so it was I looked up to both so much, that I could bear even to remember that his preference had been for you. It seemed quite natural.'

'You were better adapted to him than I,' said Adelaide.

'I cannot see it. Your affection for Mr. Forrester blinded you to Ralph's merits, and without daring to hope that he could ever take his place in your heart, Adelaide, I know that marriages, based on a quiet love and esteem, and made as in the sight of God, are often very happy. Union of spirit grows. So, dear, if after I have been asleep awhile, Ralph should ask you to be his life-companion and mother to our children, I wish I could think you would acquiesce. For my children's sake I could be more resigned to go now, if you would give me a little hope that this sweet day-dream might be realized.'

Adelaide trembled from head to foot. It was hard to refuse the dying, yet she could not say solemn words lightly for the mere sake of pacifying.

'You have asked of me a very hard thing, Annie. I am deeply touched by such an expression of your confidence in me. What offices of friendship I have to bestow are little worth commanding; but according as your husband or children require them they shall be forthcoming. I cannot promise more, dear. I am too broken-spirited to take grave responsibilities upon me.'

Life of the Rev. Samuel Romilly Hall. By Thomas Nightingale. With Copious Extracts from his Diaries and Letters. London: Wesleyan Conference Office.The name of Samuel Romilly Hall is enshrined in loving memory in many hearts, and a written memorial of him has been eagerly looked for, and will be hailed by thousands. It was fitting that it should be

the work of one who knew and loved him well. He has been judiciously left, to a great extent, to speak for himself, in the glowing records which tell of his wonderfully rich experience, in the diary of his early religious life; and afterwards by his charmingly, natural and straightforward but thoughtful and instructive correspondence. Mr. Hall was an exemplification of sanctified

intensity of spirit. The perusal of his biography will be a spiritual feast to all who serve the same Master with a spark of the same zeal. Christian Ministers especially should give this Memoir an earnest perusal, and a place in their libraries beside the Lives of Bramwell, Stoner and Thomas Collins.

This Memoir reveals fine and delicate traits in the character of Samuel Romilly Hall: tenderness, considerateness, deep, intense and tenacious affectionateness, along with highly sensitive honour; qualities well known to all who enjoyed any approach to intimacy with him, though hidden from others by his strong, sometimes stern sense of duty.

Boston Monday Lectures. With Preludes on Current Events. By Joseph Cook. Student's Edition, with a Copious Analytical Index. Transcendentalism, Orthodoxy, Biology, Heredity, Conscience. London: R. D. Dickinson. 1879. This is a handy edition of these well-known Lectures, with a serviceable index. Mr. R. D. Dickinson has previously published them in other forms; we prefer the present to any of them. We have already noticed the series on Biology, Heredity and Conscience. The remarks we now make have reference to the two series on Orthodoxy and Transcendentalism, though some of them are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to all the Lectures.

Mr. Cook's Lectures are distinguished by clearness of thought, aptness of illustration, vigour and boldness, and by studied candour. The Lecturer has spent years in quiet, methodical preparation, and has been favoured by Providence with such a varied and thorough training as falls to the lot of few. Travel has expanded his mind and stored it with pleasing imagery; long residence at German universities, and private friendship with their most celebrated professors have rendered him familiar with the most modern thought and the latest discoveries of science; wide and persistent reading has given him a sufficient acquaintance with theologians, poets and philosophers, English, classic and European; while experience as a Pastor and Evangelist has taught him sympathy with men, and deepened his conviction of the infinite value of real religion. Withal, Mr. Cook has the courage of his opinions; and he asserts them with a pugnacious and rather egotistical dogmatism that his rigorous dialectic and his avowedly polemical purpose atone for and in part justify.

'Orthodoxy' and 'Transcendentalism' are devoted to a lengthy and thorough examination of the doctrines of Theodore

Parker and his school, which are much more powerful in America than with us, though in this country they have their influential representatives. Mr. Cook

conducts his examinations in the name of exact science, and panses comparatively seldom to test his results by the Bible, though they invariably agree with the inspired standard. The Lecturer insists especially on three points-the reasonableness of the doctrine of the Trinity, the absolute necessity of the Atonement, and the final permanence of moral character. We have weighed his arguments carefully and tried every link of the chain, and we are quite satisfied as to their general jus tice and trustworthiness. Now and then we can scarcely approve the shape of a link, and more frequently-but still seldomthe way in which it is displayed; but they are all strong and will bear the strain put upon them. In the formal propositions concerning the Trinity we should have preferred the Godhead' as a substitute for 'God'; and we have noted an incautious expression or two, verging towards denial of the true personality of Each of the Three; but Mr. Cook's meaning is unquestionably orthodox. So, again, sometimes he seems to identify conscience with the Holy Ghost in a rather dangerous fashion; but the error, if any, is purely verbal. Junior students of theology will find these Lectures really helpful in their treatment of the most perplexing confusions of modern rationalism, and the wisest might learn something from them, if only in the art of putting things.

The Preludes on Current Events have often little or no connection with the subsequent discourse. When they trench upon politics they are sure to rouse more or less of disagreement, and we at least wish they had been spared us. But some of them possess a high value for both their spirit and their matter. The winsome earnestness with which the logician and debater approves the work of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and thanks God for it, and the wise counsel about religions conversation may be instanced in point; nor can we refuse a word of commendation to The Right Direction of the Religiously Irresolute,' though we might take some minor exceptions to it. The mottoes prefixed to the Lectures are often very happy, particularly the selections from Eschylus.

The wider the circulation of the Boston Monday Lectures, and the more careful the study of them, the better. We should like to see them often upon our Probationers' Book Lists.

Three Sermons on the Evidences of Christianity. Thoughts on the Dura