I've seen a dearer light than thou, extinguished by the

shroud.

That cloud is edged with silver now; its gloom is webbed with gold;

The stars shine through it every where-a pearl in every fold!

Our Paper.

RUSH has just come in with the paper—our paper, damp from the press. I love a newspaper-a new newspaper, and like to be the first to open it. The articles, some how, seem fresher, and wittier, and wiser, before the small folio' rustles like husks; when it comes open silently, and you can fold it precisely as you wish, and it stays folded without murmuring. The smell of damp paper and good inknot musty ink-makes one fancy it was printed for his particular perusal, and no body's else.

So another candle is placed upon the stand, the arm-chair is wheeled boldly round in front of the fire, two letters' are snuffed from the candles, the paper is opened, and I begin to-think.

The Press! Orators have lauded, poets sung, but it has lost none of its wonder; it is still a marvel

a sermon.

and a mystery. Think of it! That a few quiverings of the empty air can float a thought or a feeling from mind to mind; that the blue breakers can throw up, as it were into the midst of a heart, a jewel of a hope, or fling a star of truth from the breast of a billow, into some darkened intellect, is quite strange enough for a fairy tale, and yet quite true enough for But that the footprints of thought can be made visible upon the snowy page-that they may be traced and retraced, when the Thinker is dead, and all but the enduring produce' of his mind, a dream-this is more wonderful still. The thought that one has cherished in his bosom, until it bears his own mental image, is stamped upon the wing of the newspaper, or the page of the volume, as it flutters from the press, and that thought finds access and hearing, where the man himself cannot venture. Perhaps he is awkward, deformed, a stammerer, and a subject of ridicule; perhaps his garb is coarse, and well-worn and patched; but there stands his Thought, in the drawing room, the hall, representative of the better part of him-graceful, elegant, arrayed in rich old Saxon, welcomed, listened to, admired every where. Perhaps he has never gone beyond the blue verge of vision, whereof his cradle was the centre;

but that thought of his, has been borne along earth's great rivers on panting steamers, and over God's great clearings by locomotives; even the lightnings have forgotten their thunders, and whispered the accents of his thought, as they flickered along the wire, from mart to hamlet, from hamlet to mart again. Perhaps he dies, and the swelling turf subsides above him like a weary wave, leaving no trace of his resting place, but that thought lives on. The paper is old and torn; it wears the yellow livery of Time; Time has made it his menial; but some eye shall see it when he is dead; some memory treasure, and some mind admire. Like the bird that went forth from the ark, it is returnless; the music of its wing is heard, when the knell for the palsied hand that sent it out, has died upon the air: it is immortal. Perhaps some nobler mind has divested it of its first array, and clothed it in cloth of gold, and transfigured and glorified, it still survives, but the same Thought still.

Mighty engine, is that PRESS, against time. The rattle of its machinery seems to me but the first audible footfall of thought, on its sublime out-going into the world; its mission unended, till the pitcher is broken at the last fountain of human thought, 'the

dust returning to the earth as it was, and the spirit unto God who gave it.'

Why, by the power of the Press, the steps of mortality itself are staid, and full-orbed intellects, at the word of this Joshua of iron, stand still, and the prayer of Telamon's mighty son, 'for light,' is answered.

I do not wonder that the impression of the first type, upon the printed page, was crimson. It was but the flushing of a new morning, that has dawned upon the intellectual world. Oh! in that black, unseemly engine, lies the world's great strength, and Time's most formidable foe.

LUCY, who is trying to 'pick up' a refractory stitch, breaks in upon my train of thought, just here, with, 'Any body married or dead?' Just like a woman! One death! Little LOUISE L

The ancients used to fancy the fountain of Arethusa could change age into immortal youth and beauty; and though the divinities of the fountain, the river and the forest, have passed away, there is something attractive in the fancy, and there is hardly one who would not rear it into a faith if he could

The fountain of Arethusa may, long ago, have intermitted, but the charm it used to wear, like Hope, is lingering still.

There are those who daily find that fountain, and are ever young; the beings that pass away in infancy; that are enshrined in memory; that smile on us with their gentle eyes, from away through the distant years; that never grow old, but remain children still, though the cradle that rocked, and the roof that sheltered, and the bosom that pillowed them, have mouldered away.

How could I help thinking so, when I read the brief record that a little being who had filled, we know, a large place in more hearts than one, had turned cherub? And I could not help thinking, too, that it is hardly a bereavement, after all, that one of all our treasures should grow immortal and changeless; one, of all our loves, should triumph over time, and shine like a star, amid the clouds of the world, with a constant and beautiful light.

!

Oh many a LOUISE, to-day, is linking earth to heaven; and who would make the number less? Without a tear, they are awaiting us just beyond the azure; ever young-ever the children we laid them