Although there are but few experiments in common between the deaf and the blind, I am able to sympathize fully with this eminent deaf author in the intense desire he feels to hear the sweet voices of his children.  There is no other object this side of heaven I so ardently wish to see as the faces of my family.  A feeling sometimes comes over me akin, I fancy, to the impotent rage of a caged lion, who vainly tries to break his prison bars and gain his liberty.  The moral certainty that I must finally leave this world of beauty without having enjoyed many of its highest blessings and purest delights often oppresses—­so oppresses me, that I can only find relief in prayer for grace to say—­“Thy will be done, O God.”  I hear the merry voices of my children, know their step, figure, contour of their heads and faces, and in my day dreams I see them around me, full of life and health, fun and frolic, and I know their little hearts are full of love for me; I know, too, God has given them to me as some compensation for other blessings he has withheld.  Let me trust, then, in His great mercy, that in the far future I may see the faces of my dear ones in the light of eternity; of her who gave me birth, but whose fond look of affection and yearning tenderness I was never able to return; and the face of her who is now to me even more than a mother, who helps me to bear my many burdens with Christian patience and fidelity.  Then, if I am permitted to behold the glorified face of Him who hath redeemed us, I shall rejoice that I have lived and suffered, and wept and wept, and prayed that I might dwell with Him forever.

INVOCATION TO LIGHT.

BY MRS. HELEN ALDRICH DE KROYFT.

Oh, holy light! thou art old as the look of God and eternal as God.  The archangels were rocked in thy lap, and their infant smiles were brightened by thee!  Creation is in thy memory.  By thy touch the throne of Jehovah was set, and thy hand burnished the myriad stars that glitter in His crown.  Worlds, new from His omnipotent hand, were sprinkled with beams from thy baptismal font.  At thy golden urn pale Luna comes to fill her silver horn, and rounding thereat Saturn bathes his sky girt rings, Jupiter lights his waning moons, and Venus dips her queenly robes anew.  Thy fountains are shoreless as the ocean of heavenly love; thy centre is everywhere, and thy boundary no power has marked.  Thy beams gild the illimitable fields of space, and gladden the farthest verge of the universe.  The glories of the Seventh Heaven are open to thy gaze, and thy glare is felt in the woes of the lowest Erebus.  The sealed books of heaven by thee are read, and thine eyes like the Infinite can pierce the dark veil of the future, and glance backward through the mystic cycle of the past.