the development of their hearts. We owe them cheerfulness; youth requires it. This may cost us an effort; we may often feel tempted to multiply and protract domestic squalls: we must beware; if prolonged they will produce a storm."

WEARING VELVET INDOORS.

"We should wear our velvet indoors,' i. e., give those nearest to us the chief benefit of gentleness.

"How many, alas! put on their velvet to go out into the world, and consider that anything will do to wear at home. Politeness is their court dress, and they will exchange it for a dressing-gown when they return home. But how beautifully consideration and respect harmonize with family affection. How they dignify all the intercourse of old and young, masters and servants, relations and friends, and how infallibly they remind us of all that is due to woman! How thoroughly politeness may claim the title of 'good fellow!' and 'good fellows,' in my creed, are rare now-a-days; and, whatever may be said, they are not of the class who put themselves at their ease at the expense of all around them, especially of their own household; who come home as they would enter an inn, throw themselves into an arm-chair, attend to their own concerns, or smoke, without troubling themselves to notice father or mother, wife or child; who will attend to nothing but their appetite at table (which would be disturbed by conversation); and who, finding at last that there is really more freedom in their club than at home, end by deserting the latter; and yet they are thoroughly content with themselves, and, considering their life irreproachable, boastfully style themselves 'good fellows.'

"Let us only be so; and this cannot be without goodness, as the very word implies. Do you deserve the name when you begin the day without a tender greeting to every member of your family, without informing or concerning yourself as to their health, or interesting yourself in what interests them-without encouraging, consoling, guiding, or helping them, just as though you saw them not, or as though they were not there; when you end the day, in which you have had as little as possible of their society, without addressing them more than an absent Good night,' while nevertheless you pretend to love them?

THE HUSBAND'S AUTHORITY AND THE WIFE'S EQUALITY. "The importance of a real authority is manifest from the first day. It is one of the fundamental conditions of tenderness, happiness, progress. There is a hierarchy in marriage, though at the same time a hierarchy of equals. The man sees in his wife a helpmeet unto him; thus the harmony of duties is maintained, authority is penetrated with affection, obedience and dignity are united.

"Such an obedience has its grandeur. The wife who would look upon it as a yoke would compromise both her own happiness and the happiness of those belonging to her. How noble, on the other hand, is the position of the woman who is subject, who loves her position, who obeys joyously and lovingly! One whom I will not name has said: 'Love subdues our moral liberty without annihilating it.'

"The Family owns no slaves; those who would incline to regard the submission of woman as slavery must have forgotten their mothers. I know few things more lovely or more sweet upon earth than domestic government, when it is what it ought to be. The husband has the final decision, but nothing is decided upon by him which has not been tenderly and seriously debated by them both; the authority he exercises is far more recognized by his wife than contended for by himself.

"Such are the wonders of the Divine Institution; it has harmonized submission with liberty. Weaken one or the other, and you fall into a miserable state; dissensions, contending claims, complaints, recriminations, and it may be, absolute failure. No more unity, no more respect, I need not say no more love. Whether the wife carries the day (to her cost), or whether the husband realizes (to his cost also) his ideas of despotism, both are degraded; marriage has given place to a far different association, for marriage has been undermined at its foundation, its constituent elements have been tampered with; it cannot exist without authority and equality.

"And I must not be misunderstood on this point. I insist that these two principles be maintained openly, loyally, in the very light of day. An equality established in an under-hand manner, an influence Counsels manoeuvred for, is unworthy of the name.

true.

of a contrary kind have been too often given to women; they have been too often informed that a position difficult to maintain avowedly may be secured by tactics; they have had recommended to them a compliance, very far from honourable to my mind, inasmuch as it savours of stratagem. There is a spurious morality in this, against which it would be impossible to protest too strongly. Let us above all things be I can understand certain weaknesses. I can understand certain minds, in difficult positions, the result of their own ambitions, ending by falling into deceit. I can understand Madame de Maintenon suggesting to women proceedings to which she had such frequent recourse herself, and enjoining upon them that in their dependent position gentleness is the best way to carry their point.' But our model is a different one, and we draw our inspiration from higher sources. We consider duty. Now duty does not accommodate itself-it does not yield in order to be accepted. The duty of the wife is to recognize fully, simply, and joyously, the authority of her husband; the duty of the husband is to recognize fully, simply, and joyously, the equality of his wife. Thus, and thus only, will be established that dependence in equality of which the pagan world had never dreamed, and which forms the very key-stone of marriage according to the Gospel."

I will Help Thee." By the Author of " Homely Readings," &c. London: W. Macintosh. An excellent Tract for the New Year.

Turning to the East at the Creed. By THOMAS C. PRICE, M.A., Vicar of St. Augustine-theless, Bristol. London: W. Macintosh. The author proves that this is a superstitious custom, unscriptural and unauthorized by the Church of England. On one page we notice the following statistics of directions given in the service books of the Church of Rome for a single mass :

"Directions for folding and unfolding the hands 65 crossing of books, persons, &c. 58 kneeling, slight bows, and pro

found bows..

..

incensing of persons, altars,

90

host, books

53

folks. He keeps things to himself. It would, may be, have been better for him if he had spoken out more. However, that's past and gone now. He'll never speak much again, it's my belief."

"And he wants to see me?" Margaret asked again, for, except for one especial reason of her own, she felt no drawing towards the man. "Would it do for me to go now, should you think?"

The woman repeated her words—" The sooner the better." But still Margaret hesitated, for it was already late in the afternoon, and who could tell what the man might want, or how long he might detain her?

Margaret looked at her watch, and the woman, guessing her difficulty, offered to take any message she might like to send to her friends, as she was going on an errand to the town. She was at present, she said, in attendance upon James, and must be quick back again, when, if night had closed in, she could either see Margaret safely home herself, or find some one to take charge of her.

So the two parted, and Margaret pursued her way to the fisherman's cottage, wondering as she went what he could possibly have to say to her. Before arriving at the place the day was so far spent that long shadows had begun to stretch far along the shore from every point of cliff or projecting headland, while the little hollow, with the boats and nets and baskets and the two lonely cottages, appeared enveloped in a kind of twilight gloom.

Within the cottage where James Halliday was now lying in helpless and hopeless endurance, there reigned a darker, deeper gloom than that which prevailed without, for no kind hand was near to light his dim candle or to stir the smouldering fire.

Margaret said, mentally, as she stood for a few minutes just within the door of this miserable abode in order that her eyes might accommodate themselves to the absence of light, "Did no one ever love this man, I wonder. Harry Dunlop felt kindly towards him, why should not I?" Suddenly she bethought herself of that reason

which people said Harry had for his kindness, and her cheek flushed in the darkness until she felt it burn. Then, as suddenly thrusting the thought from her, she went forward. It was Margaret's habit to go forward, not backward, when goaded by a painful thought; and to some of us it would make a world of difference now if we had always done this.

"Who's there?" said a voice from the inner room, for the man had heard a step approaching, and knew that it stopped at the outer door.

"It is Margaret Courtenay," was the simple reply.

"All right," said the man, with an attempt at animation which passed in a moment, subsiding into a low moan.

"I am afraid you are very ill," said Margaret approaching nearer, and at the same time a little touched by this evidence of weakness and suffering in one whom she had never seen otherwise than independent, strong, and sometimes rude.

He did not reply, and with a true woman's instinct Margaret set about to improve the circumstances of both by groping for a candle, which she lighted at the expiring fire.

What to do next was rather a perplexing thought, for the dim light only served to make manifest the awful spectacle of what seemed to be a dead or dying man. But Margaret, placing the candle on a deal table in the outer room, and still keeping a considerable distance from the person she addressed, said quietly," I received a message from the woman who nurses you saying that you wished to see me. Have you anything particular to say, or do you want anything that I can bring you?"

"I don't want anything," was the abrupt reply. "At any rate, I don't want any of their physic, nor their preaching neither. They are not the things to do me any good."

"And yet both are good in their way."

"I don't know what their way is, unless it be to make a poor man like me more ill and more miserable than he was before."