in the vista before her, anguish and tears, and but
transient sunshine. The beauty fades, the splendour of life declines
to the worldly eyes that gaze upon her. Deaf and blind are such
gazers, for the bride may daily be winning imperishable beauty, yet
it is not for this world. A most sad and melancholy thing it seems
when children of a larger growth judge their parents by their frail
and decaying bodies, rather than by their spirits. And more deeply
sad still is it, when the aged learn through the young to feel that
the freshness of existence has gone by with them. Gone by? when they
are waiting to be born into a new and vast existence that shall roll
on in increasing majesty, and never reach an end! Gone by? when they
have just entered life, as it were! The glory and sweetness of
living is _going by_ only with those who are turning away their
faces from the Prince of Peace. Sweet mother! she is breathing
vernal airs now, and with every breath a spring-like life and joy
are wafted through her being. Mother beautiful and beloved! some
sweet, embryo joy fills the chambers of my heart as I contemplate
the scenes with which she is becoming familiar. Dead and dreary
winter robes the earth, and autumn leaves lie under the snow like
past hopes; but what of them? I see only the smile of God's
sunshine. I see in the advancing future, love and peace--only
infinite peace!

GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.

IT is observable that the trivial services of social life are best
performed, and the lesser particles of domestic happiness are most
skilfully organized, by the deepest and the fairest heart. It is an
error to suppose that homely minds are the best administrators of
small duties. Who does not know how wretched a contradiction such a
rule receives in the moral economy of many a home? how often the
daily troubles, the swarm of blessed cares, the innumerable minutiae
of arrangement in a family, prove quite too much for the generalship
of feeble minds, and even the clever selfishness of strong ones; how
a petty and scrupulous anxiety in defending with infinite
perseverance some small and almost invisible point of frugality, and
comfort, surrenders the greater unobserved, and while saving money,
ruins minds; how, on the other hand, a rough and unmellowed sagacity
_rules_ indeed, and without defeat, but while maintaining in action
the mechanism of government, creates a constant and intolerable
friction, a gathering tog