parson.

'Pshaw! Clement, you talk as grave as a What have political victors to do with devotional praise? We leave such duties to the clergy?'

'And there is where you err, sir. Are the clergy the only people on earth accountable to God? are they more his children, or are they more deeply indebted to him than other of his creatures? If not, why is it thought sufficient that they alone are allegiant to his grace? Men are prone to think there is something too serious for them in religious acknowledgments; but if their gratitude be deep and serious, so should its expression be. It is every man's duty to be accountable to his Maker, and he who enters most deeply into the confidence of his God, most clearly evinces his affinity with him, and his own consequent dignity. But you will call this all prating piety. Let me beg of you then to think of your wife, wearing out in sorrow and hope deferred, of Ellen, spending her youth in oppressive toil for her livelihood, of Viola and Kathleen, so utterly dependantthink of all these, and then decide which is to be preferred, their happiness, or your own sensual gratification?'

( I will have resolution once, my dear young friend. I will not be at Wilson's to-night. I'll go and watch with poor Jerry; there will be more virtue if less pleasure in that.'

There will be more pleasure of the right kind, Mr. Clifford, a vast deal more, I predict.'

Clifford adhered to his resolution through the day, but when evening came, and he heard the rolling carriages, the shouts and laughs and hurried steps of people thronging to the feast, and saw the gleaming lights flashing brilliantly from the windows of the festival hall, temptation again assailed him. 'Is it not cowardly in me,' thought he, to fear to trust myself in the presence of the wine-bottle? have I not strength of mind to restrain my appetite? alas! experience, how humiliating is thy answer. O, must I, can I live in this degrading servitude-chained by duty or debased by appetite? How bitter, how wearisome is life! Is there no way to end it? Yes! my own hand can do it, I had almost said shall do it? What crime would it be? No loss to my family, no loss to the world—and a gain, yes, a gain to myself. It will be better than to live a sot-better than this

devouring thirst, this unconquerable passion for moral death. I will do it!'

While the unhappy man is indulging in this wild, impassioned soliloquy, we have occasion to change the scene to a small bed-room in his own dwelling. It was about the hour of eight, and Viola and Kathleen, wearied with their tedious walk in the morning, had retired to bed. Kathleen was locked in slumber; Viola was sitting, wakeful as the sleepless poet, close at her side, listening all enraptured to the melting music of a vicinal brook.

The window, which had been opened in the morning to ventilate the apartment, being shaded by a thick curtain, had escaped Ellen's notice when she waited on the little girls to rest, and Viola, who alone observed it, being too much rejoiced at the opportunity thus afforded her of enjoying the melody of the water, and the pure company of the moonlight, purposely forbore to mention it.

She lay silent, and apparently asleep, till Kathleen's deep respiration assured her there was little to fear from her observation, and then rising from her pillow and listening a few moments to the alluring voice of the liquid ele

ment, stepped lightly upon the floor, and throwing a little flannel shawl over her shoulders, drew aside the curtain and gazed out upon the ethereal moonlight, veiling in its pure transparency the tender dew-gemmed verdure of the wild shrubbery that bordered the swollen brook, and resting like the smile of a seraph upon the translucent waves that rolled up against the pebbly shore with a retiring murmur, and then, breaking into tiny fragments, fell upon the ear like the gurgling melody of many successive keytones.

At

Viola's eye brightened, her cheek glowed with the blush of excitement, and her coral lips. parted in a smile of deep and holy delight. such times her mental infirmity seemed rather lunacy than idiocy, and her ideas, so far as related to their minuteness of perception, and their utter absence of earthliness, were of perfect fairy-like delicacy. The window from which she was gazing was large and very low— scarcely two feet from the ground, and opening

Incited by an irre

upon a bank of soft earth. sistible impulse, Viola crept cautiously out upon the grassy slope, and, gliding like an air-sprite to the banks of her favorite stream, she secreted

herself in the recess of a rock-a sort of miniature grotto, tapestried with a budding clematis —and seating herself upon the earth, and drawing her little naked feet beneath her night-dress, she reclined her head upon her knee, and abandoned herself to her mystic reveries.

Her ear soon caught the sound of a hurried footstep, which continued to approach till it rested quite at her side. Believing it to be some one in pursuit of herself, she remained as silent and motionless as the rock which surrounded her.

A few words were indistinctly murmured, and in them she recognized the voice of her father. His language soon became more dis

tinct and coherent.

'Pure element of life, I have turned from thee in times past as a fool turns from wisdom. In the cup of death I have sought the elixir of human enjoyment. Poor simpleton that I was! that cup has been the poison of my earthly bliss-the pollution of my very heartsprings, and now I have come to thee for the last, the only remedy. I will baptize myself in thy waves; thou shalt be the cleansing Jordan to my soul-in thy crystal depths I will lie me