uate such abuses of human rights and perversions of the truth, as grow out of the doctrines and policy of the Romish Church.

1 left Rome in haste, having heard that the vessel in which I expected to take passage from Leghorn was ready to sail. A few days before leaving, I wandered at evening on the Pincian Hill. From it the eye commands a most imposing view of the whole city and the soil around, so thickly sown with stirring reminiscences. It is a wonderful view. Opposite you is the Vatican, crowned with its famous edifices. To the left are the Capitoline and the Quirinal, from one of which arises the tower of the Capitol, and from the other an immense palace of the Pope. As the sun went down, the domes and turrets of the city reflected his glory, and grew radiant with his parting smile, while the Tiber flowed on as he did ages ago, and yellow as of old. I lingered here for a long time, roused from my reverie occasionally by the passing of a group of lazy priests or fullrobed ecclesiastics, or attracted for a moment by the crowds of gay and pleasure-seeking, who frequent this delightful resort at evening. Among them were representatives of almost

every nation, and round us were mementoes of almost every period of time.

I close my letters to you from Rome, very conscious of their imperfections and defects. There is many a splendid church and palace, many a monument of art, and many interesting relics of ancient times, of which I have said nothing. The fountains of the modern city are worthy of a special notice, and the villas where art and nature have united to gather the most enticing charms, and where pleasure -if wealth, and taste, and luxury could secure it-might make its chosen home. But under the outward glitter of wealth, and superficial gaiety of hundreds who seek Rome to mingle in the circles of pleasure and fashion--amidst the endless appliances of luxury and the fascinations of art-after all, how little solid, substantial pleasure is experienced. With everything earth can administer to satisfy the longings of the heart, how few are at ease. It was so with the gay and pleasure-seeking of the ancient city. It has always been so. The soul of man asks for something more, and without it, famishes in the midst of abundance.

GENTLE reader, you whose heart has often softened, your eyes moistened, and your warm sympathies gushed forth at the mention of imaginary woes, come with me to an institution as yet but little known, but which is destined to stand among the most noble of the benevolent enterprises of our land, and let me read with you some pages in the voluminous details of sadness and sorrow, which each day there unfolds.

Do you see the inscription over the door-way? "Home for the Friendless,"-most justly named. Here are gathered those whom want, destitution and death have left homeless and friendless, exposed to suffering and danger. The blessed doors of this institution "stand open all the day" to the virtuous poor, aiding the desti

tute and deserving mother, whom death, or worse, perchance drunkenness and vice, have robbed of her natural aid, by furnishing a home for her little ones, where they may be saved from vicious influences; receiving even from the prison door the helpless infant, whose abandoned mother is there incarcerated for crime; and gathering from the damp cellar and dilapidated garret, the little suffering ones, and holding them in safe and happy keeping, until kind hearts and pleasant homes among the benevolent and good open for their reception. Here, too, many a daughter of Erin, whom destitution has driven from her native isle, or who has been tempted from her home by the prospects of high wages and fine clothes, comes with a heart sickened by hope deferred, and wrongs

inflicted, to tell her piteous tale, and find a willing ear, a sympathizing heart, and efficient aid. "Och!" said a weeping girl, as she entered this asylum; "Och! but my heart is sore, lady. It was mony a weary mile I walked with an empty stomach and a beating heart, with never a kind word said til me, before I came til your home. Not mony's the day since I came with a kind brother from my own home in Ireland, but he sickened and died, and then there was none to care for me, the homeless stranger.

"They told me should I come to this city, I would find work and a home, and I did come, but it was sorrow and woe to my poor heart. They told me of one Michael McRee, who knew my people at home, and it was to him I went, hoping to have a place to lay my head, until such time as I might find some place to earn my bread; but och! sorra me, afore the light of the morning, I must take me to the street for protection from the drunken brawls of the house, and sore as my lone heart was, it was comfort to find a place for my head in the friendly watch-house. I did sleep, and for a little forgot my sorrow, but when the mornin' came, my heart died, with nowhere to get a bit o' bread, and none to listen with belief to the truth I was tellin'. All day I wandered from house to house, askin', do you want ever a girl? and when the night came there was no shelter for my weary head, but the watch-house; and so went three dreadful days and nights, and sure 'twas kind angels whispered me, 'Come to this Home and find shelter,' for they told me in one more day I would be committed as a vagrant, and then, och! what would become of my carácter, and where could I spend the rest of my life, but among thieves and villains ?"

Reader, would you know the sequel of this unembellished tale? Let us take a short sail, and call at a neat, tasteful little dwelling in close proximity to a country church. We may arrive there at the hour of morning prayer, for God is worshipped in this pleasant cottage. Spring birds are carolling their morning song, and the fragrant briar and honey-suckle are exhaling their sweets, as if they too would send up a quiet tribute of gratitude to the Author of their loveliness; and within, among the kneeling group, is the heroine of our simple truthful sketch. Forsaken of father and mother, the Lord has taken her up, and her lot is cast with a family where not only her physical wants are abundantly supplied, but her intel

lectual and moral interests most kindly regarded.

May I consider you interested, dear reader, and ask you to walk with me in the environs of our sister city, Brooklyn? We will call at a thrifty farm-house, nestled away under a lofty elm by the road-side. Inclosed within a neat white paling are fruit trees of every variety, and most luxuriant growth, spreading their broad limbs or towering in graceful beauty, as if vieing with the elm in rendering the seclusion of this pretty homestead more complete. Hark! do you hear a merry laugh? or do you see a sylph-like figure gliding about among the foliage and flowers which grace this pretty inclosure? If so, 'tis doubtless little Emma Ithe adopted daughter of the thrifty farmer.

Christian principle, affectionate hearts, and more than a sufficiency of worldly goods, combined with beauty of situation, and every external embellishment-what could be wanting here as a contribution to comfort and enjoyment? Ah! "No bird was singing in that bower." The merry song, the ringing laugh, the innocent prattle of childhood, was seldom heard within that too quiet dwelling. There were none to say "papa, mamma," to claim parental indulgence, to give or receive the affectionate caress; and these lone ones asked, Where may we find one to fill this void in our hearts and our house? where one to smooth our pillow in age, to weep when we are dead, and to inherit what we leave?

They visited the Home, if perchance among the orphans and friendless there they might see some bright eye or winning smile, to light them in their search for one to love and be beloved. The little group of some twenty or more rescued ones was ranged before them, and as they sang in thrilling strains a parody on the Hutchinsons'" family song,"

"We're a band of children, In our dear happy home,"

the benevolent hearts of our friends of the farm dilated with mingled emotions of gratitude and love, and they were ready in the fullness of awakened interest, to clasp the whole group to their hearts, and bear them to their hospitable home.

The eye ran from one smiling face to another, wholly at a loss how to make a selection where all were so winning and worthy. But

there was a chord in that woman-heart, sympathizing with maternal love; and the consciousness that a pair of large lustrous eyes were gazing upon her with more than wonted interest and affection, roused that sympathy, and she drew the little charmer to her bosom, and asked, "Will you go with me to a pretty home among the trees and flowers, where you will have a father and mother who will love you, and care for all your wants, and make you their own little daughter?" We may not say what bright visions rushed in hasty panorama, before the eyes of that little one's soul. Until she had found a refuge at the Home, she had known only neglect, abuse, and exposure to vice and misery. She was found by a benevolent lady, clinging to a miserable wretch in woman-form whom she called mother, and to whom, because otherwise shut out from all human sympathy, she clung, amid the degradation and debauchery which had made her an inmate of the city prison.

The little loving heart, amid all these opposing influences, still remained unscathed, and nestled in its hiding place, looked warily out beneath the silken lash and falling lid, as if dreading again to come in contact with vice and obscenity, but ready to leap forth at the call of kindness and affection. Already, under the influence of gentle moral and mental discipline, had this little one begun to make distinctions between the present and the past, and on her hoping heart she had probably drawn some faint lines of prospective happiness; but birds. and flowers, green fields and refreshing streams, had filled no place in her landscape of the future. She was scarce apprised of the existence of a God-made country, so richly embellished with the bright and beautiful; but the night of moral and intellectual darkness, in

which her mind had been enveloped, was fast passing, and its shadows fleeing away.

The beamings of benevolence, the smiles of Christian love, like the morning's dawn, most sweetly told of the approaching day, and the glad heart of the little innocent, hitherto pressed and schooled amid want and suffering, bounded forward to a strange maturity of thought and feeling. The rush of earnest inquiries concerning that new home, its occupants, its privileges, its pleasures, was quite bewildering to those who had so recently stepped into the parental relation. They could not realize how mind ripens and at times attains to an alarming precocity of development, under the severe pressure and rough training which this little one had endured. Shrink not, gentle reader, from our little protégé, and feel that the circumstances of her birth and infant training must render her unlovely. Not so; she was beautiful, and her beauty was of no ordinary character. Her large expressive eye told most touchingly of a soul within. The image of God still lived and glowed in that "human face divine," and could you see her now, that she has been several months with her doatingly fond parents, you could have no other feeling than perfect delight. Her symmetrical form so beautifully developed, her face beaming happiness and content, her mind instinctively shrinking from low associations, and as the result of religious instruction, breathing sentiments of love to her fellow creatures and reverence for her Maker; all the past must be absorbed in the one feeling of joy and gratitude, that one so lovely had been brought under such hallowed influences, and that Christian benevolence had found so blessed a field for its self-denying labors, as the Home for the Friendless. C. M. S.