journeying from the sun. To him, to me also, from sympathyshe seemed the enviable. She was about to be born-born into Immortality; while we, the living, were but ensepulchred in a world on which the shadows of night and death lay so heavy.

Who shall estimate the value, in such an hour, of that hope and faith which thus lead the parting soul to enter on its lonely journey with tranquillity? which enables the ear (as it were) already to catch, as we descend the dim passage between this world and the next, the sound of the key turning in the lock which shuts out from us eternal sunshine; the key of "Him who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens; of Him who Himself passed through the same "via dolorosa," but who, as His faithful disciples enter it, lovingly shows Himself at the gate which opens into Paradise, lets in on the ravished soul the streaming light of the everlasting day, and suffers it to catch glimpses of the ever-vernal scenes beyond?

"It is all a dream," says the Atheist. Then let me dream on, you fool! The dream is better than reality—this falsehood than the truth!

For what is your truth worth, most truth-loving Atheist, in that hour to which these poor souls had come, and to which all must come in a few short years of troubled joys, perhaps of hardly any joys at all?

Let us hold fast to our lie, my friend, if it be one: for it is infinitely better than an Atheist's verities. The time must come at last when the value of his theories must be tried; the one hour when only to have lived in happiness; if there be nothing further to hope, will inflict a pang for which that happiness is no compensation; how much less if there be not only nothing to hope, but everything to fear!

Yours ever,

R. E. H. G..

C

My sweet Cousin,

LETTER VI.

To Mrs. C R

London, 1839.

I have in vain tried to tell a lie for your sake, and say,— I condole with you.

But it is impossible. How can I, with my deep convictions that your little floweret, and every other so fading, is but transplanted into the more congenial soil of Paradise, and shall there bloom and be fragrant for ever? How can I lament for one who has so cheaply become an " heir of immortality"? who will never remember his native home of earth, nor the transient pang by which he was born into heaven! who will never even know that he has suffered except by being told so! Shall we lament that he has not shared our fatal privilege of an experience of guilt and sorrow? Is this so precious that we can wish him partaker of it? My cousin, those who die in childhood are to be envied and felicitated, not deplored; so soon, so happily have they escaped all that we must wish never to have known.

"Innocent souls, thus set so early free

From sin, and sorrow, and mortality."

Who can weep for them, as he thinks of the fearful hazards that all must run who have grown up to a personal acquaintance with sin and misery?

An ancient Greek historian tells us it was a custom among a people of Scythia to celebrate the birth of a child with the same mournful solemnities with which the rest of the world celebrate a fuperal. So intensely dark, yet so true (apart from the Gospel), was the view they took of what awaits man in life! The custom was fully justified, in my judgment, by a heathen view of things; and if it would be unseemly among us, it is only because Christianity has brought "life and immortality to light," and assures us that this world may become, for all of us, the vestibule of a better.

"You are very philosophical," you will say; "you talk very fine but you do not feel as you talk." Excuse me, my dear, I talk just as I have always felt ever since I came to a knowledge of Christianity and of human life; and often-yes, often in the course of my own (and let the thought be consolation to you, for how do you know that your little one might not have tasted the same bitter experience ?),—often in the course of my life, as I have looked back and seen how much of it has been blurred and wasted; what perils I have run of spiritual shipwreck; what clouds of doubt still often descend and envelope the soul; what agonies of sorrow I have passed through,—often have I cried, with hands smiting each other and a broken voice, "Oh! that I had been thus privileged early to depart!" - But you cannot imagine a mother echoing such feelings in relation to her own. child! Can you not? Come, let us see.

There was once a mother, kneeling by the bedside of the little one whom she hourly expected to lose. With what eyes of passionate love had she watched every change in that beautiful face! How had her eyes pierced the heart of the physician, at his last visit, when they glared rather than asked the question whether there yet was hope! How had she wearied heaven with vows that if it would but grant-"Ah!" you say, "you can imagine all that without any difficulty at all.”

Imagine this too. Overwearied with watching, she fell into a doze beside the couch of her infant, and she dreamt in a few moments (as we are wont to do) the seeming history of long years. She thought she heard a voice from heaven say to her, as to Hezekiah, "I have seen thy tears, I have heard thy prayers; he shall live; and yourself shall have the roll of his history presented to you." "Ah!" you say, "you can imagine all that too."

And straightway she thought she saw her sweet child in the bloom of health, innocent and playful as her fond heart could wish.

Yet a little while, and she saw him in the flush of opening youth; beautiful as ever, but beautiful as a young panther, from whose eyes wild flashes and fitful passion ever and anon gleamed ;

and she thought how beautiful he looked, even in those moods, for she was a mother. But she also thought how many tears and sorrows may be needful to temper or quench those fires ! And she seemed to follow him through a rapid succession of scenes-now of troubled sunshine, now of deep gathering gloom. His sorrows were all of the common lot, but involved a sum of agony far greater than that which she would have felt from his early loss; yes, greater even to her-and how much greater to him! She saw him more than once wrestling with pangs more agonising than those which now threatened his infancy; she saw him involved in error, and with difficulty extricating himself; betrayed into youthful sins, and repenting with scalding tears; she saw him half ruined by transient prosperity, and scourged into tardy wisdom only by long adversity; she saw him worn and haggard with care-his spirit crushed, and his early beauty all wan and blasted; worse still, she saw him thrice stricken with that very shaft which she had so dreaded to feel but once, and mourned to think that her prayers had prevailed to prevent her own sorrows only to multiply his; worst of all, she saw him, as she thought, in a darkened chamber, kneeling beside a coffin in which Youth and Beauty slept their last sleep; and, as it seemed, her own image stood beside him, and uttered unheeded love to a sorrow that "refused to be comforted ;" and as she gazed on that face of stony despair, she seemed to hear a voice which said, “If thou wilt have thy floweret of earth unfold on earth, thou must not wonder at bleak winters and inclement skies. I would have transplanted it to a more genial clime; but thou wouldest not." And with a cry of terror she awoke.

She turned to the sleeping figure before her, and, sobbing, hoped it was sleeping its last sleep. She listened for his breathing-she heard none; she lifted the taper to his lips—the flame wavered not; he had indeed passed away while she dreamed that he lived; and she rose from her knees, and was COMFORTED.

"Ah!" you will say- "These sorrows could never have been the lot of my sweet child!" It is hard to set one's logic against a mother's love; I can only remind you, my dear cousin, that it

has been the lot of thousands, whose mothers, as their little ones crowed and laughed in their arms in childish happiness, would have sworn to the same impossibility. But for you,—you know what they could only believe; that it is an impossibility. Nay, I might hint at yet profounder consolation, if, indeed, there ever existed a mother who could fancy that, in the case of her own child, it could ever be needed. Yet facts sufficiently show us, that what the dreaming mother saw, errors retrieved, sins committed but repented of, and sorrows that taught wisdom, always seen, and that children may, in spite of all, persist in exploring the path of evil" deeper and deeper still!" With the shadow of uncertainty whether it may not be so with any child, is there no consolation in thinking that even that shadow has passed away? For aught we know, many and many a mother may hereafter hear her lost darling say "Sweet mother, I was taken from you for a little while, only that I might abide with you for ever!”

are not

Remember Coleridge's "Epitaph on an Infant," and let it console you :

I have been writing to our charming cousin Mrs. Ra letter of condolence I can hardly call it; of congratulation, it ought rather to be called on the death of her little one. And