with all its cares and passions in their bosomswith their children around their knees. For my part, I sit in the sun before my solitary house, and say, "What wait I for?" And yet, said I not that desire had forsaken me-that my spirit was profoundly tranquil? It is not so! A new thirst has seized me; I long to enter on the mysteries of a more mighty and invisible existence. I see the lark rise into the sky with a rapid wing, and a soul of triumphant music, and then sink again silently to the earth, and I exclaim, "Thou art like me! Fain would I soar up into the infinite universe, but this heavy body drags me down." I see the sun rise and set, and I cry, "Ah! thou art like me! Thou goest away only to reappear on the earth. Thou canst not travel in thy strength through the fields of thy kindred stars, nor can I follow my fellows into the spiritual regions." My heart is like a balloon, that once was bound to earth by many bands: my bands were friends, possessions, the affections of a wife; the endearments and prospective cares of children.-One by one, they have been loosened, a single cord detains me, and a tenfold impatience of departure has seized me. I tug at the restraining line with an angry impetuosity, and ask, "What wait I for ?"

I see it! I feel it! It is to learn the last hard lesson. It is to gather the last great pearl of

human life. It is to win the last great victoryvictory over the desperate wilfulness of nature; to put on the meek strength of invincible patience, that I may be borne into the last great life pure and passive, as becomes a child of eternity!

THE

FORTUNES OF ALICE LAW.

Of all the melancholy abodes of the poor and unfortunate, the depths of our metropolis, the lanes and alleys, involved in other lanes and alleys with the intricacy of the most artful labyrinth, where they herd together in crowded and yet unsocial misery, seem to me the most fearfully hopeless. Around them moves the never-ceasing stir, the single-aimed activity, of commerce; around them stand the ten thousand magnificent homes of opulence, where the children of dissipation live amid every bright enchantment of artificial exist

ence

Minions of splendour, shrinking from distress;

and they, unknowing and unknown, struggle on, removed from the observation of the powerful,

and, by their very multitude, from the sympathies of each other.

In this awful state of metropolitan society, the only hope of reaching the depths of poverty seems in the association of numbers; in dividing the mighty expanse into districts: and well is it that this has been done. Numbers of benevolent institutions have arisen, some taking under their care one kind of popular wretchedness, some another; and by such means the only light which falls into the darkness of these hidden regions of vice and woe is diffused. But still, what power shall grapple with an evil so enormous?-what scheme shall reach the need where thousands on thousands of strangers are for ever pouring into this swarming and almost boundless human hive, where the wicked secrete themselves in the very heap of moving life, and where the proud heart of the fallen seeks to hide from the searching eye of compassion?

These thoughts have been forced upon me by making some rounds with a friend-a member of a benevolent society-in the alley allotted for his visitation. The scenes and characters, the mingled loathsomeness of vulgarity, atrocity, and uncleanness, which I saw existing there, God wipe out from my memory! But the painful interest awakened by finding in this mass of vileness

and degradation instances of singular fortune and singular virtue may I never forget!

There is one story which I must relate. We entered a cellar beneath a dismal-looking shop. It was an abode of a single room; and such a one as is generally the most disgusting and depressing scene imaginable: but here I was instantly struck with the difference. All was clean and bright. The weather, though in summer, was showery, and a fire was burning cheerfully in the grate. The bed, neat and clean, stood in one corner, enveloped in its large checked curtains; every thing around had an air of comfort, which one would previously have said could not exist in such a spot. By the fire sate, in her elbow-chair, an old woman of a slight person, who rose actively at our entrance, and, with a manner that struck me in strange contrast with the sluggish stare of the generality of those we had visited, courtesied respectfully, and set us chairs. My friend took a seat without ceremony, requested me to do the same, and addressed the old woman in a manner which showed me that they were old and familiar acquaintances. I gazed upon her attentively, and was as much struck with the intelligence of her countenance, as I had been with the superiority of her address. The wrinkles of age, and, if I mistook not, the ravages of misfortune, darkened