sweet were her assurances that she should leave us awhile longer on earth with childlike trust, knowing that our own souls needed to stay, and that the destiny of others needed it!  But the future seemed very near to her, and she saw us gathered around her in her everlasting home.  She grew weaker, and said her last words to us.  Throughout the last day she said but little, but often. her tender eyes were riveted upon us; they said “Farewell! farewell!” In the hush of the chamber, a faint, eolian-like strain came from her dying lips; it sounded as if it came from afar; then the angels were taking her to their companionship.  She softly fell asleep, resigning her worn-out body to us, and she entered heaven.  Ah! do we apprehend what a glorious event it is for the “pure in heart” to die?  We look upon the bride’s beauty, and see in the vista before her, anguish and tears, and but transient sunshine.  The beauty fades, the splendour of life declines to the worldly eyes that gaze upon her.  Deaf and blind are such gazers, for the bride may daily be winning imperishable beauty, yet it is not for this world.  A most sad and melancholy thing it seems when children of a larger growth judge their parents by their frail and decaying bodies, rather than by their spirits.  And more deeply sad still is it, when the aged learn through the young to feel that the freshness of existence has gone by with them.  Gone by? when they are waiting to be born into a new and vast existence that shall roll on in increasing majesty, and never reach an end!  Gone by? when they have just entered life, as it were!  The glory and sweetness of living is going by only with those who are turning away their faces from the Prince of Peace.  Sweet mother! she is breathing vernal airs now, and with every breath a spring-like life and joy are wafted through her being.  Mother beautiful and beloved! some sweet, embryo joy fills the chambers of my heart as I contemplate the scenes with which she is becoming familiar.  Dead and dreary winter robes the earth, and autumn leaves lie under the snow like past hopes; but what of them?  I see only the smile of God’s sunshine.  I see in the advancing future, love and peace—­only infinite peace!

GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.

IT is observable that the trivial services of social life are best performed, and the lesser particles of domestic happiness are most skilfully organized, by the deepest and the fairest heart.  It is an error to suppose that homely minds are the best administrators of small duties.  Who does not know how wretched a contradiction such a rule receives in the moral economy of many a home? how often the daily troubles, the swarm of blessed cares, the innumerable minutiae of arrangement in a family, prove quite too much for the generalship of feeble minds, and even the clever selfishness of strong ones; how a petty and scrupulous anxiety in defending with infinite perseverance some