The first time he saw Agnes bending like a flower in the slanting evening sunbeams by the old gate of Sorrento, while he stood looking down the kneeling street and striving to hold his own soul in the sarcastic calm of utter indifference, he felt himself struck to the heart by an influence he could not define.  The sight of that young face, with its clear, beautiful lines, and its tender fervor, recalled a thousand influences of the happiest and purest hours of his life, and drew him with an attraction he vainly strove to hide under an air of mocking gallantry.

When she looked him in the face with such grave, surprised eyes of innocent confidence, and promised to pray for him, he felt a remorseful tenderness as if he had profaned a shrine.  All that was passionate, poetic, and romantic in his nature was awakened to blend itself in a strange mingling of despairing sadness and of tender veneration about this sweet image of perfect purity and faith.  Never does love strike so deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature; there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its interlacing fibres.

In this case it was not merely Agnes that he sighed for, but she stood to him as the fair symbol of that life-peace, that rest of soul which he had lost, it seemed to him, forever.

“Behold this pure, believing child,” he said to himself,—­“a true member of that blessed Church to which thou art a rebel!  How peacefully this lamb walketh the old ways trodden by saints and martyrs, while thou art an infidel and unbeliever!” And then a stern voice within him answered,—­“What then?  Is the Holy Ghost indeed alone dispensed through the medium of Alexander and his scarlet crew of cardinals?  Hath the power to bind and loose in Christ’s Church been indeed given to whoever can buy it with the wages of robbery and oppression?  Why does every prayer and pious word of the faithful reproach me?  Why is God silent?  Or is there any God?  Oh, Agnes, Agnes! dear lily! fair lamb! lead a sinner into the green pastures where thou restest!”

So wrestled the strong nature, tempest-tossed in its strength,—­so slept the trustful, blessed in its trust,—­then in Italy, as now in all lands.

MAIL-CLAD STEAMERS.

Exposed as we are to treason at home and jealousy abroad, it becomes the policy as well as the duty of our country to prepare with promptitude for every contingency by availing itself of all improvements in the art of war.  Superior weapons double the courage and efficiency of our troops, carry dismay to the foe, and diminish the cost and delays of warfare.  The match-lock and the field-piece in their rudest form triumphed over the shield, the spear, and the javelin, while the long-bow, once so formidable, is now rarely drawn, except by those who cater for sensation-journals.  The king’s-arm and artillery of the last war cannot stand before the Minie rifle and Whitworth cannon