shade has _womanized_ the bold brow of Madge, and her red lip
has a more subdued tint. She, the care-defying, laughter-breathing,
untamable Madge, has known not only the refining power of love, but the
chastening touch of sorrow. She has given a lovely infant back to the
God who gave it, and is thus linked to the world of angels. But she has
treasures on earth still dearer. She leans on a strong arm and a true
heart. Let them pass on. They, too, are happy.

My dear father! He is younger and handsomer than he was two years since,
for happiness is a wonderful rejuvenator. His youth is renewed in ours,
his Rosalie lives again in the cherub who bears her name, and in whom
his eye traces the similitude of her beauty. Father! never since the
hour when I first addressed thee by that holy name, have I bowed my knee
in prayer without a thanksgiving to God for the priceless blessing
bestowed in thee.

There is one more figure in this sea-side group, dearer, more
interesting than all the rest to me. No longer the wan and languid
wanderer returned from Indian shores, worn by remorse, and tortured by
memory. The light, if not the glow of health, illumines his face, and a
firmer, manlier tone exalts its natural delicacy of coloring.

Do you not perceive a change in that once dark, though splendid
countenance? Is there not more peace and softness, yet more dignity and
depth of thought? I will not say that clouds never obscure its serenity,
nor lightnings never dart across its surface, for life is still a
conflict, and the passions, though chained as vassals by the victor hand
of religion, will sometimes clank their fetters and threaten to resume
their lost dominion; but they have not trampled underfoot the new-born
blossoms of wedded joy. I am happy, as happy as a pilgrim and sojourner
ought to be; and even now, there is danger of my forgetting, in the
fulness of my heart's content, that eternal country, whither we are all
hastening.

We love each other as fondly, but less idolatrously. That little child
has opened a channel in which our purified affections flow together
towards the fountain of all love and joy. Its fairy fingers are leading
us gently on in the paths of domestic harmony and peace.

My beloved Ernest! my darling Rosalie! how beautiful they both seem, in
the beams of the setting sun, that are playing in glory round them! and
how melodiously and pensively, yet grandly does the music of the
murmuring waves harmonize