may be
profitable, though we have not all of us a large Genie-gift of
Imitation as he had. With him the excess of this power took a very
natural turn, for though he possessed through its aid, considerable
facilities for music and the study of languages also, the course of
events led him irresistibly to what is usually called "the fine arts."
And if the old dream of the royal chariot and the twelve jet black
horses was never realized to him, a higher happiness by far was his,
when some years after, he and his Mother stood in the council house of
his native town; she looking up with affectionate pride while he
showed her a portrait of the good young King which had a few hours
before been hung up upon its walls. It was the work of Joachim
himself.

DARKNESS AND LIGHT.

_The darkness and the light to Thee are both alike_.

Far away to the west, on the borders of the Sea, there lived a lady
and gentleman in a beautiful old house built something like a castle.
They had several children, nice little boys and girls, who were far
fonder of their Sea Castle, as they called it, than of a very pleasant
house which they had in a great town at some distance off. Still they
used to go and be very merry in the Town House in the winter time when
the hail and snow fell, and the winds blew so cold that nobody could
bear to walk out by the wild sea shore.

But in summer weather the case was quite altered. Indeed, as soon as
ever the sun began to get a little power, and to warm the panes of
glass in the nursery windows of the Town House, there was a hue and
cry among all the children to be off to their Sea Castle home, and
many a time had Papa and Mamma to send them angrily out of the room,
because they would do nothing but beg to "set off directly." They were
always "sure that the weather was getting quite hot," and "it _must_
be summer, for they heard the sparrows chirping every morning the
first thing," and they "thought they had seen a swallow," and "the
windows got so warm with the sunshine, Nurse declared they were enough
to burn one's fingers:" and so the poor little things teazed
themselves and everybody else, every year, in their hurry to get back
to their western home. But I dare say you have heard the old proverb,
"One swallow does not make a summer;" and so it was proved very often
to our friends. For the Spring season is so changeable, there are
often some soft mild days, and then a cruel frost comes again, and
p