ild too
should be shortly taken from this world, and that he might be with her
in a better. He died--when, a short time after his death, the child,
who was in perfect health, came rushing into the presence of her
mother, from a little room which looked out upon a court, but from
which there was no entrance to the room--she came rushing to her
mother, calling out--"Oh, papa, papa! I have seen papa in the court,
and he called me to him. I must go--open the door for me--do, mamma! I
must go, for he called me." Within twenty-four hours that child was
dead. Now, said H--l--r, I knew this to be a fact, as well as I ever
knew any act, for our families were like one family. Sweet image of
infant and of parental love!--let us excuse the prayer, by that of the
ancient mother, who, when her sons dragged her chariot to the temple,
prayed that they might receive from the gods what was best for
them--and they were found dead in the temple. How beautiful is the
smile of the sleeping infant! "Holds it not converse with angels?" the
thought is natural--ministering spirits may be unseen around us, and
in all space, and love the whispering speech in the ear of sleeping
innocence; there is visible joy in the face, yet how little can it
know of pleasurable sensations, communicable through this world's
objects? How know we but the sense must be deteriorated, to make it
serviceable for the lower purposes for which in part the child is
born?--as the air we breathe must have something of poison, or it
would be too pure for mortal beings. Look down some lengthening valley
from a height, Eusebius, at the hour of twilight, when all lands,
their marks and boundaries, grow dim, and only here and there the
scant light indicates lowly dwellings, shelters of humanity in earth's
sombre bosom, and mark the vast space of vapour that fills all
between, and touches all, broods over all--can you think this little
world of life that you know by having walked its path, and now see so
indistinguishable, to be the all of existence before you? Lone indeed
would be the world were there nothing better than ourselves in it. No
beings to watch for us, to warn us, to defend us from "the Power of
the Air:" ministering spirits--and why not of the departed?--may be
there. If there be those that in darkness persuade to evil--and in
winter nights, the winds that shake the casement seem to denote to the
guilty conscience the presence of avenging fiends--take we not peace
an