in me, Flora, to interrupt your gaiety with what you will call my melancholy remarks? O remember, my beloved child, that I have lived too long in the world, and seen too many of its sorrows, to forget that those who cannot find a time to think, to pray, and to prepare for death, must find a time to die: and shall that time come suddenly on you? shall it find you sleeping? God forbid! I cannot, indeed, compel you to see these awful subjects in their true light; but I can, I must intreat, implore you, instead of saying peace, peace, when there is no peace,' before the day of grace be closed, to prepare to meet thy God;' lest you be left at the last in bitterness of spirit to cry out, The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved.'"

Flora was affected even to tears, but she was prevented from expressing her feelings by the entrance of a servant. He handed Percy Seyton a letter.

"From Colonel Thornton," cried Percy; tearing it open, and throwing his eyes rapidly over it.

"A recall, I hope," said Mrs. Ellars. "You hope, aunt!"

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Forgive me, my dear Percy, for saying I hope; forgive me for preferring your solid good to your present pleasure; forgive me for forgetting my own gratification, in my anxiety to promote your real happiness. But shall I confess the truth? I think London is too light a soil for you to thrive in. The theatre and the assembly-room will not prepare you even to be a soldier of this world; and will certainly unfit you to serve under the Captain of your salvation against sin, the world, and the devil; and yet, this you were sent into the world by your Creator to do; this you have vowed to accomplish; and for the neglect of this, if it be neglected, you must finally

account."

"And would you require me to give up all the pleasures of the world, aunt?"

No, Percy; not its pleasures, only those amusements which usurp the name: at such conduct the world indeed, as it is called, may laugh, but its laugh will soon be over, and if

it were not, the world's laugh is worse in idea than in reality."

"I could never see any good done by singularity," observed Percy.

"Believe me, Percy, the danger of being singular is less than you imagine: you will have precedents enough; need I go further your friend Irwin ?"

than

"O! Irwin is positively a phoenix, aunt.”

6

"I hope not; but if he were, is it not better to walk with a single companion, or even to walk alone in the right way, than to follow a multitude to do evil? There is no good done by singularity' is a maxim of the world, and it bears the stamp of its parent; had this been just reasoning, the Apostles had not been compared to a city set on a hill,' or the Philippian disciples shone forth as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.""

6

Percy yawned. "Upon my honour, aunt, between Ellen and you I have been so crammed with the Bible to-day, that I fear I shall have a surfeit."

Mrs. Ellars paused for a moment, and then said, "It appears strange to me, Percy, that you who are such an enthusiast in the sublime and beautiful of human productions, should be unable to relish the magnificent language of holy writ."

I

"I have no taste that way, aunt; it all depends on taste, you know unfortunately I have none, and all the preaching in the world will not create it." Fonun ased

"True, Percy," said Mrs. Ellars; "preaching alone will do nothing: I must try the effect of prayer," she added meekly.

1

Percy was struck." I am a pert puppy, dear aunt, but that I need not tell you, for you know it; but I am sorry I am a puppy, and that I may tell you, for I am sure you do not suspect it."

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My poor boy," said the benevolent woman; "I believe I know you better than you know yourself. May God Almighty," she added, tenderly laying her hand upon his head," increase in you that necessary knowledge."

CHAP. III.

MRS. ELLARS had been early taught in the school of affliction what many who have wandered on the earth for threescore years and ten have never learned, that," the friendship of this world is enmity with God." She had been married young to one who seemed amiable, and was for a time the tenderest of hussbands; but the quiet and retired temper of his wife accorded not with his gay pursuits; and when he found that he could not compel her to join in his vain search after happiness, she was neglected and despised: contempt soon grew to aversion; and her friends deeming a separation necessary four years after her marriage, found her children fatherless, and herself a widow, in all but name: he who should have supplied the place of the husband and the father was wasting his time, his forytune, and his health, in scenes of senseless riot, forgetting every tie which bound him to his God and to his fellow-creature; and striv