spirit--our
thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, according to
the most approved principles of association--and a fine proportion has
been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some noble
tree, which--although here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown
its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further
gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregularities in the
umbrage--is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature
working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent object! equal to an
old castle, on the cliff above the cataract. Woe and shame to the
sacrilegious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let
the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find
shelter or shade under the calm circumference of its green old age.

TALE OF EXPIATION.

Margaret Burnside was an orphan. Her parents, who had been the poorest
people in the parish, had died when she was a mere child; and as they
had left no near relatives, there were few or none to care much about
the desolate creature, who might be well said to have been left
friendless in the world. True that the feeling of charity is seldom
wholly wanting in any heart; but it is generally but a cold feeling
among hard-working folk, towards objects out of the narrow circle of
their own family affections, and selfishness has a ready and strong
excuse in necessity. There seems, indeed, to be a sort of chance in the
lot of the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the eye of Christian
benevolence falls at the very first moment of their uttermost
destitution--and their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, terminate
with the tears shed over their parents' graves. They are taken by the
hands, as soon as their hands have been stretched out for protection,
and admitted as inmates into households, whose doors, had their fathers
and mothers been alive, they would never have darkened. The light of
comfort falls upon them during the gloom of grief, and attends them all
their days. Others, again, are overlooked at the first fall of
affliction, as if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretchedness with
which all have become familiar, no one very tenderly pities; and thus
the orphan, reconciling herself to the extreme hardships of her
condition, lives on uncheered by those sympathies out of which grow both
happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees to the constant