For many years she led a life of the utmost happiness, and then death deprived her of both husband and daughter.  Maria Theresa renewed her offers; but Carolina preferred to pass the rest of her days in solitude.  She accepted a small pension from the Empress, and retired to a small cottage at Vitry, near Paris.  After a quiet existence here for some few years more she passed away, without ever having regretted her refusal to rejoin the brilliant circle of a court.

VARIETIES.

CURIOUS FRESCO.

In the Carthusian Monastery of Garignano, a few miles from Milan, are some frescoes by Daniel Crespi, of Busto, which are said to be marvels of art and imagination.  One of them is grim enough, at any rate, and awful.  It represents a dead person rising from his bier, to announce to all whom it might concern that, although they were burying him in the abode of holiness, and were now adoring him as a saint, he was, as a fact, condemned to hell.

Perhaps one of our own famous modern divines was thinking of this fresco when he declared that one great source of surprise, to those who went to heaven, would be to find so many there they had not expected to see, and to miss so many they had thought to meet.

“No’ the day, honest woman!”

Dr. John Erskine, a well-known Scottish divine, was remarkable for his simplicity of manner and gentle temper.  He returned so often from the pulpit minus his pockethandkerchief that Mrs. Erskine at last began to suspect that the handkerchiefs were stolen by some of the old women who lined the pulpit stairs.  So both to baulk and detect the culprit she sewed a corner of the handkerchief to one of the pockets of his coat tails.  Half way up the pulpit stairs the good doctor felt a tug, whereupon he turned round to the old woman whose was the guilty hand, to say, with great gentleness and simplicity:—­

“No’ the day, honest woman, no’ the day.  Mrs. Erskine has sewed it in!”

A BRAVE WIFE.

In 1872 a storm overtook a Boston ship on the banks of Newfoundland.  The captain—­Captain Wilson—­had his shoulder-blade broken by the fall of a mast, and the first mate and part of the crew were at the same time disabled.

No sooner, however, had the captain been carried to his cabin than his wife, a woman of one-and-twenty, hurried on deck, told the men to work with a will, and she would take them into port.  The wreckage was cleared, the pumps manned, and the gale was weathered.  Then a jury-mast was rigged, the ship put before the wind, and in twenty-one days she reached St. Thomas.  After repairing damages there, finding her husband still helpless, the indomitable woman navigated the ship to Liverpool.

Captain Wilson was never able to resume work, and for seven years his brave wife supported him and their only child by working as clerk in a dry goods store.  Then he died, and Mrs. Wilson was deservedly appointed to a custom-house inspectorship by the American Government.