range, and classify, and estimate, thy gifts! our love, our beauty, our peace, our soul's repose-First, last, most worthy of the highest bidder, in the great mart -one with another, pitiless.

So the days went on-Rumour was very busy, blowing hot and cold with that mouth of herschasing each bubble with another as frail; and bursting both with a new puff of her inconstant breath; and people came to stare, and wonder, and shudder over the place: the gossips glorying in the verification of their prognostics, and the new glamour of horror thrown about sweet Birdiethorn.

None that saw it ever forgot that solemn funeral which passed along the moss-covered road to the old church of Piert's Rest, where wife and husband are to lie side by side for evermore.

The two coffins, the sad history connected with them, the pale, grave boy, sole mourner-for Crump, good Crump, who had done so much, was laid, an unwilling prisoner, on a bed of sickness-and though half the village followed, he alone wore mourning dress.

The grave, so unusual in its width-the solemn service-the deep-tolling bell-the thoughts that, even to these rude minds, must come, not unmixed, we may believe, with something of remorse that they had not been quite the neighbours they might, to the poor human clay lying there.-The calm still evening -just in such they all remembered to have seen her, sitting with her work awaiting him upon that stone"Aye, just there it was, not two feet away-dear heart, so it was!"

The boy thought of it, too, perhaps, and of another who should have held his hand, and looked, with him, the last, into their long home. "God help him!" said they—" how he cries, poor lad!"—and they wept; perhaps all; it is so hard not to weep in sympathy.

No; that burial would not be soon forgotten, even had it not been marked by the great equinoctial gale that rose that night, when the tides rolled higher than ever they had been known in the memory of man, and completely destroyed the pretty garden of Birdiethorn.

66 Will you come with me, and have a cup of tea ?" asked the man of obsequies, as he took from little Philip the melancholy symbols he had worn.

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No, thank you, sir," he replied; "I don't want any tea; I am not going home yet."

CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.

IN THE OLD CHURCH.-OUT AT SEA.-FALSE BELLS.

"I have no place to flee unto, and no man careth for my soul." "Every one of these darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret-every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of death itself, is referable to this."-CHARLES DICKENS," Two Cities."

HOME!-where was his home?

God knows it is a question might trouble many a heart, which does not care to lift the veil of self-woven deceit that hides it, even from itself.

What is home? I pass by luxury and splendour, with their ungratified desires and unfulfilled ambition; but what else makes it?

Ease-comfort-plenty-willing service-respectand the righteous world's esteem ?

Well-answer you, my friend—to whom each year has brought new ties, and fresh prosperity-whom the great "They " instances for your happy "home."

You think, no doubt, your fate a solitary one; who would so gladly lay down all, even to the memory of it but for the companionship of a being formed in harmony with yourself-but to walk God's universe hand in hand with one, whose eyes and brain and heart should read it with you, whose voice should but echo your soul's inmost aspirations, whose heart find utterance on your lips—the visible sunshine of whose pre

sence only should fill the dull blank your life knows, yet gives no name to-and make of the simplest shelter and the humblest fare a life-long "home."

Aye! how glibly the mouth learns to betray the conscience!" Home," it says, and smiles-"Home!" where the heart is not, the eyes lighten not,-where the soul shrivels and pines, and the grave of all high thought and feeling is dug!-where love-like a poor bird whose natural sustenance is not understood by its owner-droops, sickens, faints; and, I had said, dies, but that he is immortal.

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'Home," this!-Make me a home of metal; of wheels, and cogs, and bells, and tunes, and imagesand wind it up each twenty-fourth hour-and it shall go, I warrant, and strike, and chime, and play the symphonies, and keep its time withal-aye, quite correct-what more would you have? The automatons come out, go in, and act, all so perfect-a model "home."

And so is yours, dear madam; all your five hundred friends biting their fingers off, in admiration of your new walnut suite, &c. &c.-your perfect toilettesyour unimpeachable dinners-your fine, generous husband-your sweet children-all alike the theme of admiration-what a home! what a model!—

Eh!-What!-A humble room; a desk inkstained; some well-worn quills and written sheets upon it; a much-used easy chair, and low footstool-neither empty-a face upturned to listen; eyes, looking down, down, into other eyes, answering out of depths, never ending is this her picture of a "home ?" For this would she give all ?-aye, and your envy and admi

ration, oh world! beside! But days come and gothings are.

You too, sir! in the home your own industry has reared; the ease that is almost luxury; your showy wife, her grand connexions, her clever children. Some twenty years ago you were not what you now are not in any sense. A something seemed to die out when you parted from her. It was not your worse self, either. She understood you-was proud of you-how if you had married her ?-mere moneygrubbing had not then contented you, perhaps-and your "home ?"—Ah, well! no more. Let fall the veil over the dwindled, inmost, better self-God alone knows the rest!

"Solitary case!-singular mischance!"—so say you, and you, and you.

"Beautifully clean your place is, dear! One might eat off any part of it!"—

"My goodness, gracious!" (Soliloquitur)" she wouldn't say so, if she saw the slut's hole in the kitchen."

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Splendid design! Sublime view! House and grounds perfect! Light, and sunshine, and peace, everywhere!"

But you don't see the skeleton closet; and you are thinking what a cruel fate it is that you should be so much worse off than your neighbour, having such a bugbear in your home.

Which, begging pardon for the digression, brings me back to little Philip, who, at least, cannot labour under any deception as to the quality of his home, seeing he is absolutely destitute of any.