fall down upon your knees, and, instead of repining at one affliction, will admire so many blessings as you have received at the hand of God.

You will say, perhaps, that one thing was all to you, and your fondness of it made you indifferent to everything else. But this, I doubt, will be so far from justifying you, that it will prove to be your fault as well as your misfortune. God Almighty gave you all the blessings of life, and you set your heart wholly upon one, and despise or undervalue all the rest is this His fault or yours? Nay, is it not to be very unthankful to Heaven, as well as very scornful to the rest of the world? Is it not to say, because you have lost one thing God has given, you thank Him for nothing He has left, and care not what He takes away? Is it not to say, since that one thing is gone out of the world, there is nothing left in it which you think can deserve your kindness or esteem? A friend makes me a feast, and places before me all that his care or kindness could provide: but I set my heart upon one dish alone, and, if that happens to be thrown down, I scorn all the rest; and though he sends for another of the same kind, yet I rise from the table in a rage, and say,

"My friend is become my enemy, and he has done me the greatest wrong in the world." Have I reason, madam, or good grace in what I do? Or would it become me better to eat of the rest that is before me, and think no more of what had happened, and could not be remedied?

Christianity teaches and commands us to moderate our passions; to temper our affections towards all things below; to be thankful for the possession, and patient under the loss, whenever He who gave shall see fit to take away. Your extreme fondness was perhaps as displeasing to God before as now your extreme affliction is; and your loss may have been a punishment for your faults in the manner of enjoying what you had. It is at least pious to ascribe all the ill that befalls us to our own demerits, rather than to injustice in God. And it becomes us better to adore the issues of His providence in the effects, than to inquire into the causes; for submission is the only way of reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in His will is the greatest duty we can pretend to, and the best remedy we can apply to all our misfortunes. * * * * * *

When young children are taken away, we are sure they are well, and escape much ill, which would. in all appearance, have befallen

Our

them if they had stayed longer with us. kindness to them is deemed to proceed from common opinons or fond imaginations, not friendship, or esteem; and to be grounded upon entertainment rather than use in the many offices of life. Nor would it pass from any person besides your ladyship, to say you lost a companion and a friend of nine years old; though you lost one, indeed, who gave the fairest hopes that could be of being both in time, and everything else that is estimable and good. But yet that itself is very uncertain, considering the chances of time, the infection of company, the snares of the world, and the passions of youth: so that the most excellent and agreeable creature of that tender age might, by the course of years and accidents, become the most miserable herself; and a greater trouble to her friends by living long, than she could have been by dying young.

Yet after all, madam, I think your loss so great, and some measure of your grief so deserved, that, would all your passionate complaints, all the anguish of your heart, do anything to retrieve it; could tears water the lovely plant, so as to make it grow again after once it is cut down; could sighs furnish new breath, or could it draw life and spirits from the wasting of yours, I am sure

your friends would be so far from accusing your passion, that they would encourage it as much, and share it as deeply, as they could. But alas! the eternal laws of the creation extinguish all such hopes, forbid all such designs; nature gives us many children and friends to take them away, but takes none away, to give them to us again. And this makes the excesses of grief to be universally condemned as unnatural, because so much in vain; whereas nature does nothing in vain; as unreasonable, because so contrary to our own designs; for we all design to be well and at ease, and by grief we make ourselves troubles most properly out of the dust, whilst our ravings and complaints are but like arrows shot up into the air at no mark, and so to no purpose, but only to fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

GOD GRACIOUS IN HIS JUDGMENTS.

BUT for myself, I bless God I have observed and felt so much mercy in this angry dispensation of God, that I am almost transported; I am sure highly pleased with thinking how infinitely sweet his mercies are, when his judgments are so gracious.—Jeremy Taylor on the loss of two children.

THE TWINS.

'T WAS summer, and a Sabbath eve,
And balmy was the air;

I saw a sight that made me grieve,
And yet that sight was fair:

Within a little coffin lay

Two lifeless babes as sweet as May.

Like waxen dolls which children dress,

The little bodies were;

A look of placid happiness

Did in each face appear:
And in the coffin, short and wide,
They lay together, side by side.

Their mother, as a lily pale,

Sat by them on their bed;
And bending o'er them told her tale,
And many a tear she shed;

Yet oft she cried amidst her pain,
"My babes and I shall meet again."

THE BITTER CUP DECLINED.

THE Cup of life just to her lips she prest, Found the taste bitter, and declined the rest: Averse, then turning from the face of day, She softly sighed her infant soul away.