any former

fresher through their tears than it had appeared at time; the flowers more fair and rich; the air more pure and balmy. It was their first and happiest home, and they were about to leave it for ever. The angel who was charged to lead them forth into the wilderness, gazed upon them with such pity as the blessed can feel for human woe. The fiery swords of cherubim, turning and blazing every way, went before them, towards the gates through which their course now lay.

"In either hand the hastening angel caught

Our lingering parents, and, to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappeared.
They, looking back, the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon:

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide;

They, hand in hand, with wanderings steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way!"

CAIN AND ABEL.

ADAM and Eve, being expelled from the Garden of Eden, were not left by the Almighty without guidance and comfort. Angels were sometimes their visitants; and in process of time two sons and two daughters were given them to lighten their sorrows, and assist them in making their lot, upon the still beautiful earth, a light and happy one. The names of their sons were Cain, the eldest born, and Abel, his brother.

There were then but six souls living in the vast world. How happy might they still have been! The earth scarcely needed tillage to produce its flowers, and fruit, and herbs, and grain. The flocks and cattle were abundant; the wild beasts kept afar from the habitations of the first family, subdued by that awe of man to whom the dominion over them had been given at the time of the creation; and the toil which had been denounced as man's punishment was so light as scarcely to be more than pastime. No sense of loneliness was felt; for besides that the visits of angels were frequent, the pleasures of society had never been known or understood.

The sisters of Cain and Abel were beautiful, affectionate beings, tenderly attached to their brothers and to each other,

and charming away every sorrow and affliction from their parents, who were not unfrequently sad to think of the blissful state they had forfeited, and the penalty thus imposed upon their children. It was long before they could summon sufficient resolution to tell the story of Paradise, and of their expulsion thence; and longer still, ere their tears ceased to flow at every mention or recollection of the happy innocence they had known before the serpent beguiled Eve into disobedience. Their sons and daughters comforted and reassured them; the daughters, by mingling tears with theirs, and by the tenderest caresses; the sons, by innumerable little acts of affection, testifying that their love was not diminished by the one fault of their kind parents.

The dispositions of the sons, however, as manhood was developed in them, appeared widely different from each other. Cain grew proud and wayward, yearning after the Paradise his parents had lost, and wicked enough to question the justice of the sentence by which he had been deprived of such a glorious heritage. Often, when he saw at eventide the fiery swords of the cherubim, which turned every way to keep the tree of life in Eden, would he repine at the fate to which he had been doomed, and curse the hour of his unhappy birth. It was with anguish and heaviness of heart his mother now began to look upon her offspring, dreading, as she did, accu