necessary. The Bible itself enjoins obedience to such distinctions. But many as the differences are of wealth and power, there are points of universal assimilation, and it is well if we can meet and allow them on ground so holy. The humiliation which we were else weak enough to feel-perhaps to scorn-is not difficult in the presence of Him to whose glory our loftiest pride is dim and insignificant. We are willing, there, to uncover our heads, and stand side by side with the humblest creature that can pray; and often when the hymn ascends or the low response is murmured, the comparison between ourselves and some prostrate child of poverty is irresistibly humiliating. I know no more beautiful trait in the Providence of God. It is like a golden thread running through the whole fabric of life, connecting with the purest of common sympathies, the rich and the poor, the high and the lowly. Every Sabbath that brings them together under the same roof reminds them anew of their mutual relation. The connecting link is brightened, and the charities of the rich are stirred and vibrate to the same touch that awakens the "effectual blessings of the poor." The most attractive of the lesser influences of religion is that upon female character and beauty. Its effect upon the former is generally allowed, though still, rather as an abstract truth than a rule of practice; but upon the latter it is far from being properly appreciated. It is not too much to say that every possible manner and every cast of feature is improved by it, and that, not to the eye of the religious enthusiast only, but to every eye that can take pleasure in beauty. From the vivid esprit of the belle to the shunning eye and blushing timidity of the school-girl, and this without changing or suppressing one essential characteristic, there is no form of loveliness that religion does not heighten and adorn. I am far from referring now to any look of sanctimoniousness or unnatural gravity-farther still from commending that entire forgetfulness of every other duty, and that fanatical exclusiveness to religion to which the enthusiastic nature of woman sometimes leads her. I would have no innocent feeling suppressed, no timely mirth checked, no gaiety, or motion, or impulse, that a young heart may yield to without awakening a blush, fettered or stayed. I would have no restraint whatever put upon the manner, save such as her own chastened feelings and natural taste dictated and approved; but leaving it entirely to its native and beautiful impulses, I would have a sense of God's presence seated in the heart-a mild but deep sentiment of religious obligation pervading every hour of amusement as well as of duty-a remembrance that is neither a positive thought nor a possible forgetfulness-a floating consciousness of religious obligation-habitual and constant. I do not know that I can describe the effect of such a feeling. It differs with the thousand differences of manner and beauty. It softens without suppressing the hilarity of the gay, and dignifies the timidity of the young without removing its winning grace. Female manner, itself, is of all things the most indescribable, and it would be vain to attempt a minute description of an influence so vanishing and rare upon its thousand changes. There is a nameless something, however, running through female manner-found wherever it is delicate and lovelysomething that is not reserve nor coyness, but is like a soft shadow in picture, or a mist upon still water, or a half transparent drapery upon a figure of grace-something, I know not what, which breathes through every motion and sentiment of its possessor, and without which, to a refined taste, there can be no loveliness and no delicacyand this, vanishing and rare and indescribable as it is, is the invariable gift of religion-the result, I had almost said the test, of its inward influence. It flits through the expression of the face like a shadow, and comes at times over the brightness of the eye, and affects without checking every change of color or motion. It is not delicacy but a phantasm of something like it that is purer; it is not softness, or cheerfulness, or sweet temper, but a refinement of all these an indefinable essence of a grace as lovely as it is nameless. How many women have I seen, who, but for the want of this single quality, were among the brightest and best of their sex! How many, who, possessed of beauty and talent and every polite accomplishment, passed on unadmired, no one could tell, though every one felt, whydenied the meed which others, far less beautiful and talented and accomplished than themselves, were winning, and totally unsonscious of a deficiency which was too subtle to be explained, and which, when nature has denied it, religion alone can supply! And yet this is but its outward show. Its effect upon the character is far more important, and of a far severer beauty. The heart of woman seems the natural home for religion. From the even and secluded nature of her pursuits there is much less to defile its native temple in the soul, and a readier openness to its entering light. It has a peculiar affinity with every quality that is desirable in her character. It is infused like a bright color into all her native virtues; and her powers of pleasing as well as of usefulness are enhanced incomparably. That unwearied patience, which makes sickness almost a pleasure with its tender assiduities-that meek submission to self-denial and want-that strange tenacity of affection that holds on through all sorrow, and all adversity, and grows only brighter with trial that up-bearing, cheerful, elastic temper, which, in joy and sorrow is alike ready to contribute to the comfort of those to whom it owes love and duty, and to whom it is as essential and welcome as the daily and blessed light-all these religion deepens and exalts and purifies. There is, besides, a kind of fervor of character which alone can be given by this principle-an enthusiasm that is not ani mal spirit or imagination, but which, looking on the object of its love and their linked interests as bearing upon an immortal destiny, and treasuring up every affection as a seed that is to expand and blossom hereafter, invests it with a dignity that involves every feeling and thought, and gives every token and impulse of tenderness an earnest truth, which nothing merely of this world can equal or resemble. This is much to owe to a single principle. But religion enters still deeper into the lot of woman. There are periods of change and contrast peculiar to her sex, and over the operation of which she has no control, which try her character severely, and for the favorable result of which there is no certain reliance but in religion. Educated, if in the fashionable classes of society, upon principles which nourish to its utmost growth the strong love of admiration, there comes a time, and that early in life, when she must abandon it. Living almost exclusively for pleasure while her character is forming, and, if beautiful, used to a devotion from those about her which is like the anticipation of magic to her wants, there comes a time when she must forget it suddenly and wholly, for duties which cannot be disregarded or put by. Entering upon marriage with visions of romance in her eye, and a belief in the undying delicacy and unwasting fervor of the love that won her-feelings not the less in the heart that they are hidden and unexpressed-she finds earlier or later that her own affections are both finer and deeper, and that what was the very life of her heart, was but the holiday idleness-the way-side accident of his. Add to this the most trying circumstance of all-one that is surprisingly forgotten in the usual estimate of female allotment— the committing utterly and irremediably to another the whole treasure of her worldly happiness, and standing aside without the influence of a breath upon its destiny-abiding the issue, it may be of rashness or incompetency, it may be of desperation-and this without the relief of active occupation that makes it a comparative happiness to himwithout anything but the bitter weed of patience to allay the mordent tooth of a passive anxiety. These are things that sweep like a whirlwind the channel of a woman's life. There is nothing in her habits or education which prepares her for their violence. What is to ensure her that the stream will return to its wonted flow? What is there that is born of fashion, or amusement, or even enthusiasm, that will govern the broken courses, and lead back the disturbed waters of feeling. What is to prevent it from settling into stagnant apathy, or wasting itself among weeds and darkness? I answer-nothing but the principle of which I have spoken--nothing but the elevating, tranquillizing, strong-hearted spirit of Religion! There are other influences emanating from religion, no less worthy of mention. But I have said enough to suggest them to your mind, and I will leave them to your own profitable musings. I should like to ramble with you over its thousand topics-to talk of the diminishing influence of its high attainments upon the poor pursuits of the world, and the consequent easy practice of the virtues-to tell you how it passes, like a silver nerve, beautiful but strong, through the whole machinery of life, staying the leaning weaknesses of our nature and shining brighter amid the rust of care-and I should love to go back with you to our early days, and trace the effect of its comprehensive morality, and recal the dignifying influence of its impressive and sublime mysteries. We should pass thus a pleasant, and, I trust, not unprofitable hour; but there is a limit to all things, and there must be a limit to this. I AM THERE. THEY sit not all alone around The dear remembered hearth, Where our glad childhood's earliest sound My name no gladsome lips may share, They go not forth alone who stood When flood, and vale, and hill, and wood, Responded to our noisy play; For every one has written spells Upon the lonely heart-and where They go not up alone to meet The hallowed Sabbath morn ;- First on the breath of ardent prayer- They sleep not all alone, who sleep Which, silent now and breathless grown, Cattskill, July 20. And go I forth alone? Oh, no! The silence of my way Is not the solitude of wo; For night by night, and day by day, A MYSTERY OF THE SEA. G. super ANY one who is at all conversant with seamen, knows that stition forms a striking feature in the character of that numerous and useful class. Men of iron frames and nerves of proof, who shrink not "When the battle rages loud and long, are known to give credence to such tales of supernatural horror as the Flying Dutchman' and others that have not half the claims of that romantic legend upon the imagination. Have you been upon the ocean on a starlight night, with a few clouds hurrying along the sky, dark and swiftly, and the sea rough, but black as ink, and fathomless? On such a night, have you marked a group by the vessel's side, earnestly attentive to some tarry veteran, as with that low and almost whispered tone that is in such admirable keeping with the subject, and which seems to imply a belief in the old proverb, that " a certain character" is always nearest when we are talking of him, and with that accent and look of implicit belief in what he is saying which gives the supernatural its climax of effect, he doles forth the experience of some brother of the craft in nautical demonology? And if you became interested in the story, as the contagious influence of the scene and its associations will surely make you, and caught the sighing of the wind, as it traversed the melancholy waste; and the fitful song of the look-out in the top as it swelled and died on the breeze, like the accompaniment of a spirit of the air, you have felt most powerfully, despite your skepticism, the cold fingers of |