enthroned where perfect day,
In brightest beams of glory, play
Around thy radiant throne;
Where angels strike celestial lyres,
And seraphs glow with sacred fires,
Address'd to thee alone.

Still may thy providential care,
With blessings crown the circling year,
Each human ill restrain:
O, may thy truth inspire my tongue,
And flow through all my varying song,
And shine in every strain.

Give me the calm, the soft serene,
Of summer, when it glads the scene,
And scatters peace around;
Bless'd image of the happy soul.
That does the heav'n-born mind control,
While conscious joys abound.

That this may be my bounteous share,
Ascends my ever constant prayer
To Thee, all-perfect Mind!
O, aid me in the gen'rous strife,
Through each inconstant scene of life,
To all thy ways resign'd.

CHAPTER II.

The scenes that once so brilliant shone are past, and can return
no more to cheer the pensive heart; and memory recalls them with
a tear; some lowering cloud succeeds, and all the gay delusive
landscape fades.

While Alida remained at the village school, surrounded by the festive
scenes of childhood, and pursuing her studies with assiduous emulation,
with the hope of meriting, in future time, the praises of her fond
parents, an unforeseen misfortune awaited her that no human foresight
could have power to arrest.

The health of her mother had been long declining, and her illness at
this time increased so far as to render medical assistance useless, and
baffled the skill of the ablest physicians. A trial so new, so
afflicting, and so grievous to her youthful mind, to lose one of her
honoured parents, and to be unexpectedly summoned to her parental home
to receive the last benediction of a beloved mother, and at this early
period of her life to be deprived of her kind care and protection, was
unfortunate in the extreme.

Every anxious solicitude and responsibility now rested alone upon a
widowed father, who mourned deeply their common bereavement, while he
felt conscious that all his fatherly care and caresses could never
supply to Alida all the necessary requisitions that she had unhappily
lost in so dear and interested a friend. When he observed her spirits
languish, and the tear frequently starting in her eye, and her former
sprightly countenance shaded with the deep tinges of melancholy, he saw
that the cheerfulness and gaiety of her natu