pride; to subdue obstinacy; to temper authority with love, and implant reverence unstained by fear-who is sufficient for these things! None, none but those who, feeling their inadequacy, and relying on the promise, "ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find," take the empty chalice to the fountain of wisdom, and receive grace and strength from Him who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not.

Many women there are to whom middle life does not bring these duties and responsibilities. To such, however, God allots an occupation; for the peculiar mission of woman is to increase the amount of human happiness. If still members of the parental home, there is your sphere of duty; the accomplishments gained in earlier years may serve to cheer a father or amuse a brother; by sharing the domestic duties, you may relieve a mother or train a sister; or with gentle hand it may perhaps be your office to rock the cradle of declining age. Intellectual improvement should still advance; and in the retirement of home the virtues of forbearance, gentleness, kindness, and humility will find ample room to flourish and bear fruit.

If the control of wealth be yours, as God's almoner you have a fresh occupation; the poor ye have always with you; the ignorant need teaching, and the sick require aid. Have you then no employment save the embroidery-frame or the novel, the preparation for the evening's gaiety, or the routine of morning visits? Surely an Englishwoman may find more fitting occupation for her mind, body, and estate.

Years, even when well spent, bring on the period which all wish to attain, though few duly provide for it. To grow old gracefully, has been described as the most difficult of woman's tasks; yet it may be learned; and a graceful aged woman is a beautiful object. The active duties of life over, she has its stores to live upon, for they who in the spring-tide of existence sowed the precious seed, and amidst the cares of maturity tended the plant, will now reap the harvest of their careful cultivation of mind and heart. Knowledge and experience are theirs to bestow on others, and many will gladly seek it. Far more honourable and honoured is the aged lady who welcomes and entertains the occasional visitor by her own fireside, than she who, decked in the unappropriate garb of youth, or disguised by the meretricious hand of art, seeks a place in that gay world, where she is no longer welcome. Home still offers appropriate occupation for her feeble hands or her fainting sight; while for her heart and soul there are the retrospect of past mercies, and the hope of future glory. She is content till her

Heavenly Master shall call, and having finished the work allotted to her on earth, will rejoice to hear that gracious declaration, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

When God commanded Moses to erect the tabernacle in the wilderness, it was not the noble, the mighty, the scientific alone that were called to assist; "wise-hearted women had their appointed task. In the world's moral wilderness, it is the business of all to assist in rearing a spiritual tabernacle where God may be revealed in holiness and love. While the wise and mighty may frame the golden staves or cast the silver sockets for the Ark; to Woman is assigned the appropriate occupation of weaving into its ample curtains, the beauteous threads of happiness and peace. We need no higher office, no holier mission!

Let

it then be sanctified by the apostolic injunction; and whatsoever our hand findeth to do, let us do all TO THE GLORY OF GOD.

SONNET.

"Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls."-MATT. xi. 29.

OUR daily life is full of needless care;

We pierce ourselves with sorrows: we are blind,
Too blind to see the rest we toil to find.
What hidden griefs, and wounded feelings tear
Our foolish breasts, which pride engenders there :-
Our cruel pride! O, were we more inclined,
To copy Him of meek and lowly mind,
What holy peacefulness our hearts would share!
Oh, that I could, my Saviour, learn of Thee!
The weary
exile on his homeward way
From distant lands, looks not more anxiously
For his own homestead, than from day to day,
I languish for this rest, and long to be
Within the haven of a deep humility.

LYRICA.

DANGERS OF THE DAY.

No. 1.

ESTHETICS.

HE introduction of the above word into the English language is highly significant. It tells of civilization so advanced, that the sentiment of beauty, visible, audible, mental, or moral, has been minutely analyzed; and even that an approximation has been made to a code of laws developing the simple principles by which this sentiment is regulated.

God made everything beautiful in its season; He gives us all things richly to enjoy; and doubtless, as the transparent atmosphere finds its responsive agent in the power of vision,-so created beauty is divinely adapted to a divinely imparted sense of beauty, which it is therefore at once a duty and a pleasure to cultivate; and this cultivation is a prominent feature, and a prominent DANGER, of the present day.

If it be asked, how can that which is a duty, be a danger? I answer, it may be a danger, either as causing, by its DISPROPORTIONATE pursuit, the neglect of some higher duty-or as being itself MISUNDer

STOOD.

Now, without argument or declamation, I would suggest a few instances which my readers may test by the standards here suggested; requesting them first to note the ascending scale of true beauty; visible, audible, mental, moral.

I lately visited a small church restored with exquisite taste, and perfect knowledge of the Norman style. The morning sun shone through the gorgeous painting of the eastern window; on the tesselated pavement; on the carved oaken seats and screen; and on the beautiful font, chiseled in whitest stone; while the dark intersecting beams of the high-pitched roof scarcely attracted the spectator's gaze, which could not but dwell with admiration on the curve of the chancel-arch and the carved corbels beneath it. That church is indeed an almost perfect combination of visible beauty. Beauty of colour, form, proportion, harmony, is evident throughout; and I could there sit and muse, and be the better for so musing.

But is this a life for such mental indulgence? and if it were, would my musings be well-bestowed in striving to reach, and comprehend, and enjoy that earthly beauty, which at best is but a broken reflection on a troubled sea? I say not but that they might thus be well bestowed; but assuredly they might otherwise be better occupied ; and in this short life, we do not well, when we can do BETTER. Rather, then, would I recollect with thankfulness, the churches raised in other, and once heathen lands, than gaze on this; on the slave-vessels consecrated as places of worship at Sierra Leone; on the whitewashed edifices of the southern seas; the roomy but rude buildings so cheerfully erected by the Christian negroes of the West Indies; on the bamboo churches of the East; and on the modest building, which at Easter, in the present year, the Bishop of Jerusalem hopes to consecrate, on the hill of Zion. Rightly did Solomon lavish all visible beauty on the temple which once stood there; nor is it to be desired, that we should offer to the Lord that which doth cost us nothing. But it is a yet higher privilege to be permitted, as we are permitted, to be fellow-workers with God in building up that universal Church of which his Son is the chief corner-stone. Is not then our cultivation of the sentiment of beauty, disproportionate, and our perception of it false, (the REALITY, spiritual beauty, being overlooked in its TYPE, material beauty,) if, while there are not on the globe, missionaries in the proportion of one, to half a million of heathen souls, we lavish on tinted glass or fretted wood, the silver and the gold which would send them forth to labour in the whitening fields?

The name of Jenny Lind still rings in our ears; her portrait continually attracts our glance; her modesty and her genius still awaken our cordial approbation, and enthusiastic admiration; and, moreover, the very high remuneration which she receives in our provincial towns, still attracts our attention.

Now I am not about to depreciate her marvellous gift of art. Music is represented to us as one of the enjoyments of heaven; and though I do not believe that mortals of this, or of any other age, have ever heard from mortal lips, or by means of mortal agency, such tones, as once were heard by the "shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night," I have felt while listening to a sweet voice, to a rich cathedral chorus, to the mighty wind, or the gentle breeze, as if these were echoings of the ceaseless song on high. Besides, I am convinced that on a well-regulated mind, good music has a good influence; an influence, at once elevating and subduing; exciting and tranquillizing; and therefore I am far from desiring that the rich should cease to patronize and

foster music, or that the poor should cease to practise it; that the organs of our cathedrals, or the pianofortes of our drawing-rooms, should be silenced. But does it hence follow, that we should go to the cathedral for the sake of hearing the anthem? that "practising " should prevent young ladies from assisting in domestic duties; or that thirty shillings should be cheerfully given as the price of a song from Jenny Lind, and grudged to a local charity?

There is a witchery in great mental endowments which renders the name of a man of genius a talisman to all who know his works; and it would be easy to enumerate such names; the names of gifted men who can idealize, and present to our mental gaze beauties, which we at once recognize as such, though we have had before, none, or at least a very vague conception of their possible existence. Now I do not believe that there is one name of literary popularity, not to say, literary eminence, in whose works there is not some proof of such power; from whose writings genuine "beauties" might not be selected.

But are we therefore justified in reading all such works indiscriminately? Surely not, even by the law of taste; for if, in an æsthetic point of view, the defects of a work be greater than its beauties, it is more likely to injure than to improve; to mislead than to direct aright our perception of beauty; but if a writer sacrifice moral beauty to the supposed exhibition of mental beauty, that writer's idea of beauty is false, and his work, however great the genius it display, is pernicious to the extent in which moral beauty is thus sacrificed. Now, many fictitious works of the present day, being unquestionably thus faulty, are we justified in continuing the perusal of any such, when once we have become aware of the evil with which they are chargeable? Nay, even as it respects books perfectly unexceptionable in their rich stores of mental beauty, may we not ask, whether we are justified in abandoning ourselves without reservation, even to the perusal of such books? Time is the soul's wealth; a talent for which we must give account to Him who sees us in our studious hours, and who has appointed to us our time, and the place of our habitation; and the remembrance of the claim which our Maker has upon all our talents, will be our surest guide in the pursuit of even lawful and beneficial mental enjoyment.

I almost hesitate whether to say anything on the subject of MORAL BEAUTY; but since "there be virtues which, by reason of their undue growth, become vices," it may be well to suggest, for the private consideration of each one among us, the inquiry, whether, in our habitual conduct, we do not sometimes err, by sacrificing principle to inclination;