it to be irresistible. He saw her toiling with an earnest eye to simplify and adapt the precepts of wisdom to the comprehension of a child of eight summers, or cheering her to playfulness by merry music, or, with a mixture of maternal pride, wreathing fresh vine-leaves among her luxuriant, golden curls.

It was thus that Ælius Marcellus, the favoured relative of an emperor, the unmoved idol of the more ambitious beauties of Rome, became the willing captive of an artless Athenian maiden. His letters to his mother gradually assumed the colouring of the image that absorbed him. If he began a synopsis of the lectures of the philosophers, it suddenly diverged to Myrtis; his praise of the perfect language of Greece took the name of Myrtis as a key-tone; and if he attempted a description of that architecture which the world will never be too old to admire, it was transformed into an encomium on Myrtis. He was surprised at the ease with which his thoughts arrayed themselves in a Grecian garb. Conversations with Myrtis, in which he was as frequently indulged as the somewhat reserved courtesies of Athens admitted, untwisted the idiom of a foreign dialect, and taught it to run smoothly o'er the lip,' as the accents which a mother softens for her babe. And, apart from the necromacy of love, he who would so conquer the difficulties of a new language as to speak it with fluency and grace, should seek the society of educated females, for with them is the colloquial affluence of their mother tongue, and the clew that most readily guides a stranger through its labyrinthine refine

ments.

While Ælius Marcellus was sounding the depths of a passion which, as yet, his lips uttered not, she who inspired it had not even advanced so far as to assign its true name. All her life she had been sighing for a brother. She supposed herself to have found one. In the loneliness of early childhood, and amid the sorrows of orphanage, she had painted fraternal intercourse as the fulness of bliss. She believed, in her crystal singleness of heart, that her new happiness sprang from this adopted relationship, and rejoiced to see the little Alethea greet their brother, at every interview, with the overflowing warmth of an affectionate heart. One evening, Elius Marcellus entered with a troubled countenance. He had received tidings of the dangerous, perhaps fatal, illness of his mother. Tears started to the eyes of Myrtis. Memory turned to the death-bed of her own parents, and her sympathies were strongly moved. The young Roman added that his immediate return was required, and that the period of his absence from his studies in Athens was uncertain, and might be protracted. Tears now gushed from an unexplored source, and blushes of a stronger tint than the maiden had yet known suffused both cheek and brow at finding herself addressed by a fonder name than that of her sister, and feeling that it awoke a true echo in her heart.

The discoveries of that parting hour were priceless and indelible. Yet, to describe love-scenes is but a losing office. He who attempts it is unwise; for the dialect of love, counting speech impotent, is especially ill represented on paper; as if it were possible that light, in its most subtle transmission, should borrow or bow to the stammerings of sound. Love, scorning so slow a medium as language, except the eye be interpreter, is indignant at the tardier ministry of the pen. The words of lovers dilated upon the dead page, are, like the shorn locks of Samson, stripped of their talisman and scattered to the winds. Yet, in the few tones of that Athenian maiden, when her heart first awoke to self-knowledge and to reciprocity, there was a treasure which her lover felt the world were poor to purchase. It was with him on his journeyings as a spell, annihilating distance and neutralising fatigue. He best loved the lonely valleys, where he might repeat its sweetness unheard, and the hermit cell by night, that he might invoke it as the tutelary goddess of his repose. He arrived at the eternal city like one travelling on the wing of dreams. His mother, the noble Annia Cornificia, lay in the last stages of a fatal disease. She had

caused it to be concealed from her son as long as hope remained, and summoned him only to receive her parting counsels and benedictions. Yet the declining flame of life, revivifying and feeding on the affections, lingered for a time on the verge of the grave, cheered by the kind attentions and filial piety of her earthly idol. He passed almost his whole time by her bedside, striving to assuage her sufferings, and receiving, when she was able, her directions respecting the fortune which had been intrusted by his father to her care. The emperor, whose presence in her last extremity she greatly desired, was still absent from Rome, engaged in the wars of Germany.

While these mournful duties occupied Elius Marcellus, there remained with the bereaved Myrtis an interminable void. He whom she had long loved as a brother, and more than a brother, without being conscious of it, whom she had just permitted herself to regard as the dearest of all earthly objects, seemed to have taken away with them the life of life. Demetrius, prizing him as a scholar and a friend, and the affectionate Alethea, were incessantly talking of him; while she whose heart was most interested seldom trusted to her voice the utterance of his nanie. There was about his image a sacredness which she reserved for the hours of solitary meditation, when she might embalm it with such tears as do not cover the face. Yet that chemistry in which the most perfectly balanced minds are the best adepts, gradually taught her that the duties of benevolence contain a balm for sorrow. She sought out with increased zeal the poor and afilicted, and, in distributing consolation, derived comfort. Among her pensioners was an aged man, who had held in her father's household the rank of steward. His intelligence and fidelity caused him to be considered by her parents less as a servant than a friend, and his grateful attachment was unbounded. He was now, in his childless age, the inmate of a small tenement connected with the garden of Demetrius, where it was convenient for Myrtis daily to visit him, and cheer the langour of his decline. Her attentions to this lonely and worthy retainer now redoubled, as it became obvious that his span of life rapidly decreased.

'Myrtis, I am not well pleased,' said the little Alethea, that you sometimes go to see poor Proclus without me, and that you stay so long. I love him as much as you do. And what is that book which I wake at midnight and find you reading? and why do you hide it so carefully away? Sister, sister, you never used to have secrets from ine. And now that our brother is gone, you ought to be kinder to me than ever, and not begin to shut me out of your heart.'

Myrtis hasted to reassure the little trusting being, reproaching herself that she should thus have grieved her, for she found that in her dreams she sometimes convulsively sobbed out complaints mingled with the name of Proclus.

One morning the sound of heavy steps was heard advancing toward the inner apartment, and Demetrius entered, with more of agitation than his calm philosophy, and his still calmer nature, were wont to indulge. Following him was the proconsul of Athens, to whom he said, in hurried tones, Will there never be an end of slanders? Behold the noble maiden whom you so unjustly suspect. Is it necessary that here, in the very home of her protector, she be insulted by the question, whether she be a Christian?'

"There needs not this clamour,' replied the proconsul. It is sufficient if the lady simply indicate whether she will sacrifice to the gods.'

'What an indignity is this doubt of her piety! Think you she could be thus faithless to her long line of ancestors, to her teachers to herself? Instructed in our most ancient rites, would it be possible to adopt an odious heresy, which is but of yesterday? Myrtis, daughter, will it please you by a single word to dismiss the proconsul?'

Thus invoked, the maiden arose. Her slight but perfect figure seemed to assume new height and majesty. There was no fading of lip or cheek, as she firmly pronounced, I am a Christian.'

The philosopher stood as if the blast of heaven had dried up his spirits. He listened, gasping, for some recantation. He feared to speak, lest there might be a repetition of those fearful words.

At length, overcome with agony, he fell prostrate and powerless, and the proconsul, with a glance of triumph and of scorn, departed. Newly clothed with deputed authority, he was eager to turn it to the best advantage. The single prominent blemish in the character of Marcus Aurelius was severity to the Christians. Mild and forbearing to all besides, he seemed to concentrate the whole bitterness of the Portico to pour it upon the Cross. The governors of the subjugated provinces found the most direct road to his favour lay through the persecution and punishment of that sect which was 'everywhere spoken against.' This new proconsul, a bold man and a bad, was neither insensible to such ambition, nor averse from the machinery which it involved.

Our next scene is in the prison at Athens. It was thronged with habitants. In one of its cells was a fair young creature, and a child ever near her-inseparable as the shadow from the substance. By their side was seen a hoary-headed philosopher, whose 'beard descending, swept his aged breast.' He came with early morn, and late departed. Incessantly he argued of the antiquity and omnipotence of the gods of Greece, and condemned the madness of those who followed the Crucified. But the beautiful being whom he addressed spake with a gentle yet clear voice of the hope that was in her, or read to him from a hallowed page in which was the reason of that hope; and every evening he bade farewell with a paler and more troubled brow.

One day he announced to her that he had obtained permission, though not without difficulty, that she should visit the cell of Proclus; for age and sickness had been no protection against his being torn from his humble home, and subjected to the rigours of imprisonment. Breathing gratitude for a liberty so long sought in vain, she took the hand of Alethea, and followed Demetrius and the guard who accompanied him. The old man lay on a little straw in the corner of his narrow cell. His eye, dim with the gloom of the prison, and with a deeper darkness which had begun to settle upon it, saw not who approached him. But those sweet low tones that he loved called back the life-tide to his marble features.

'Art thou here, angel of mercy? Once more art thou by the side of the poor old man, thou who art so soon to be an angel indeed? Often since I have lain here, have I wept to think that in the beauty and flush of life thou must be cut off. But it was a thought of earth. I ought to have remembered, and given thanks, as I now do, for the portion that awaits thee, for the blessing, and the glory, and the honour, and eternal life."

'Bless me also, good Proclus,' said Alethea. 'I too am standing by thy bed. I read in the book of the true God with Myrtis, and she teaches me to worship him.'

'Ah! art thou here, youngest scion of my master's house? What a doom for thee, thou lamb reared in green pastures, beside the still waters! I pray thee come nearer, that I may lay my hand on thy head, and name over thee the name of Jesus. Who will raise this dead hand for me, and place it among the curls of that beautiful one whose welcome to this sad life was the bosom of a dying mother?' Blessed saint,' said Myrtis, 'from whom I first heard the hope of immortality, how can I comfort thy soul in its passage? Shall I read for thee from the book of our faith, or sing a hymn to the Redeemer ?'

'Fain would I listen to thy voice,' said the dying man, 'for it is melody. But now I may not stay. They call me. My soul exults. I come. Is there yet one drop of water, sweet one? The last want of this poor clay. Moisten my parched lips, that I may go with singing unto Him who loved me, who gave himself for me;' and, with a faintly warbled strain of praise, the soul of that old man went upward.

The mind of Myrtis was prepared by its own structure, as well as by its high culture, for a more consistent be

lief than the mythology of her country afforded. The very philosophy by which it had been refined taught it to seek for some more stable foundation. Her simple and severe rectitude was confused by the countless deities naturalised at Athens, where it was said to have been easier to find a god than a man.' Her purity revolted from the rites of' gods, partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust.' Plato led her to the gate of truth, and taught her to breathe the pure atmosphere that surrounded it; a humbler hand was appointed to open that gate for her, and light and radiance flowed through its portals, and she became a faithful wor shipper.

By the bedside of the lonely retainer of her family, where she went in the ministry of her single-hearted benevolence, she was first initiated into the rudiments of Christianity, and gained a gift of inestimable value-a copy of the sacred Scriptures. This was her daily study. The faith derived from it she received in humility, and was ready to maintain with fortitude. Yet martyrdom, which holy men counted as a crown, and enthusiatic devotion some times too eagerly coveted, was not, to her gentle spirit, an object of ambition. To renounce life just as a newlyadmitted love had given it the colouring of Eden, could not be desired. Her young heart, won by the noble Marcellus, his heart, beating, as it were in her bosom, she weighed for him and for her the claims of this world and the next; and her constant supplication, amid her prison solitude, was, that her Father in heaven would reveal her duty, and gird her to unswerving obedience.

Once, while the philosopher sat gazing in silent affliction upon the sisters, the massy bolts of the prison were suddenly withdrawn, and Ælius Marcellus entered. Astonishment, dismay, and indignation, convulsed his noble features for a moment; but love, like the lightning flash, dispersed all their cloudy symbols. Myrtis vainly strove to give utterance to the emotions that oppressed her. Sensation forsook her, and her brow, paler than marble, drooped over her lover's shoulders. But the deadly faintness was short. The long fringes of her dark eyes unclosed, and a tint, like the young rose-leaf, started to her cheek, still deepening and spreading, till the very snows of her temples caught its trembling suffusion. Then, in tones like the varied melody of a fresh-tuned lute, she hastened to relieve his anxiety, whose breath seemed to depend upon her own, and to cheer the bewildered spirits of her sister and their foster-father. Supported by Elius Marcellus, and with Alethea seated at her feet, a conversation of the deepest interest commenced.

The philosopher felt the kindlings of a hope to which he had been long a stranger. The agitation of Myrtis, who, amid all other remonstrances, had remained serene and passionless, proved to him the omnipotence of her love. Retiring to the extremity of the cell, he enveloped his head in his garment, and prepared, by an elaborate orison to Minerva, to accelerate the victory which he predicted. Notwithstanding the fervour of his devotions, the accents of the speakers sometimes arrested his attention or lingered upon his ear. The tones of the Roman were, at first, as one who complains, or, perhaps contends but with the consciousness of wearing invincible armour. The response was tender and subdued, yet musical as the windharp swept by the 'sweet south-west.' Then there was a tide of manly eloquence, rushing like a river which surmounts every barrier when the spring rains have swollen it. For my sake-for my sake, seemed the burden of every argument, and it was echoed in the sobbing of a child, for my sake, too, dearest sister.' Demetrius blessed the youth in his aged heart, and began a prayer of thanksgiving to Pallas, with vows of a costly libation. At length the Roman was silent, and, supposing him to have destroyed the last defences of that stubborn faith which all the weapons of philosophy had assailed in vain, he removed the robe from his face, and looked up. But the evidence of the eye overthrew the exultation which the more obtuse ear had fostered. She, whom he had so long pictured to himself as the listener, convinced, confuted, repentant, was speak

ing with an upraised, soul-lighted eye. He knew that it was not of earth that she spoke; for such holiness as of a seraph would not then have settled upon her countenance. Her hand rested upon the open page of a book which she had drawn from her bosom. Every trace of earthly passion had faded from her features, and her whole soul seemed to pour itself forth as an essence of truth and power, and such love as hath root fast by the throne of God.

The young Roman leaned his head upon his hands, with every lineament of entranced attention. Deep sighs burst from his bosom, like the dividing of the soul from its terrestrial companionship. The maiden, bending tenderly toward him, pointed on the page which she held, to the words, I am the resurrection and the life.' He covered his eyes with his hands, but tears gushed through his fingers like those large rain-drops that herald the tempest. Starting from his seat, he strained her in one short agonised embrace, and rushed from the cell. The philosopher hastened after him, amazed at such abruptness, yet dreading to decipher the cause.

'Sister, dear sister,' said Alethea, clinging round the neck of Myrtis, Ælius Marcellus will return no more. I know it. His heart is broken. But I will never leave you. No; we will die together;' and she sobbed out her deep love as the nursling pours its griefs into a mother's bosom.

Alethea, beloved one, go forth and breathe the fresh air. A prison cell suits ill with the free spirit of childhood. The flush is fading from your cheek, and your fair flesh wastes away;' and she folded the dove-like child in her

arms.

'Myrtis, I do not wish to go. The gardens are changed. Your voice is no longer there. The turf is neither green | nor beautiful. The oleanders do not look as they once did, and my white cyclamen has a tear in its eye as it puts forth its feeble buds.'

'Little Alethea, Demetrius will lead you to see how our birds fare, and our bees. You shall bring me word again. The comfort of the humblest insect that God has made should be dear to us. In the health and industry of those innocent creatures you shall once more be glad. I will leave them to your care, and my amaranths.'

The fair child kneeled by her sister, and hid her face in her lap. She was silent for a few minutes. Then, raising her head, she said, calmly and solemnly, 'Speak no more to me of the charge of birds, and bees, and flowers. I shall die with you. Never more will I press you to live, and cease to be a Christian; for now I know that it gives you pain. I love the same Jesus Christ that you love. Tell me more of him, that I may love him better. Then, while I stand up to die with you, I shall wear the same smile that makes your brow like the angels', when you kneel and pray for me.'

It has been mentioned, that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius was engaged in wars with the Quadi and Marcomani. They involved a long absence from Rome, and many hardships. The barbarians succeeded in shutting him up between the mountains and themselves. The heat of summer, the privations of an uncultivated region, and the most distressing thirst, annoyed and discouraged his army. Forced, under these adverse circumstances, to meet the enemy, the Roman cohorts might have whitened with their bones the wilds of Germany, and scarce a survivor have escaped to tell their fate. They invoked the gods of their nation, and the boasted idols of Egypt in vain. At length, a legion of Christian soldiers knelt on the arid battlefield, and besought help of Jehovah. A plentiful and blessed rain, which fell as the conflict began, and which the famishing soldiers caught in their helmets and the hollow of their shields, so invigorated them, while the tempest, with thunder and lightning that followed, so terrified the barbarians, that victory declared for those who, but a moment before, seemed ready to yield without a struggle.

Even pagan history scruples not to connect this wonderful event with the prevalent prayers of those Christian

soldiers, enforced, as they were, to follow the fortunes and share in the battles of a persecuting emperor. She bestowed on them the distinctive name of the thundering legion;' thus perpetuating at once her gratitude, and the terrible voice from Heaven that discomfited the barbarians. They were permitted to have a thunderbolt engraven on their shields-a coat of arms of high and peculiar heraldry. The beautiful Antonine column, boldly resisting the tyranny of time, still preserves the scenery of that remarkable occurrence, among other imperishable records of Roman glory.

At evening, the emperor sat in his tent, revolving the wonderful deliverance of the day, and thanking the gods to whose interposition he ascribed it. He mused, also, upon the evils of war, which drew him from his palace and his people, to do deeds from which his better nature revolted, and to forego that philosophical retirement which declining years rendered still more dear. The reverie was disturbed by tidings that a young Roman, apparently charged with urgent despatches, claimed admission to the imperial presence.

The next moment, Elius Marcellus was at his feet. After salutations of surprise and reverence, he received permission to unfold the cause for which he had thus dared long travel and an enemy's land. As he proceeded, the brow of the emperor grew stern, and darkened.

'Would that thy first meditation had not been for one of that race, whom duty to the gods requires me to humble, perhaps to extirpate. A Christian maiden! What has she to do with the son of the noble Marcellus, the nephew, perhaps the heir of him who wears the imperial purple ?'

Again he listened to the suppliant, till his lofty forehead lost its painful contraction, and his classic features resumed their native cast of contemplative thought.

'The Christians have ever been represented to me as disaffected to our laws, and leaders of tumult and rebellion. Yet I am not ignorant that there are in my army some of their soldiers who have done good service in this very war. To-day they knelt upon the field of battle, and prayed their God for succour, and lo! the elements came to our rescue, and Heaven's thunderbolts discomfited the barbarians. My heart even now swells with gratitude to them. Thou knowest that I seek to show justice to all men. What is thy petition ?'

'A mandate to the proconsul of Athens, overruling this doom of death which he purposes to inflict.'

"By my decree have the governors of the provinces punished the Christians. How shall this discrepancy be reconciled ?'

"Thy noble and just nature has been deceived by the falsehood of those who hold the Christians in abborrence, or by their avarice coveting the gains of confiscation. If they have now proved themselves faithful in camps, and brave amid the disasters of war; if, through their prayers, the legions have been rescued, an emperor, so generous to foes, will not surely withhold from his own soldiers the approval due to them and honourable to himself.'

Marcus Aurelius paced the tent in silence and agitation. Then, fixing on his nephew eyes that seemed to read the soul, he said, 'Art thou a Christian P'

Colour rushed to the brow of the young man, as he half indignantly replied, No, I have ever abjured the gods of Rome. At my last interview with her for whose sake I thus venture to implore thee, I sought vehemently to draw her from what I deemed delusion and madness. But I love that maiden better than my own soul. If she must perish, trample, I pray thee, on my life as a rootless weed, for henceforth I am nothing to Rome or to thee.'

The emperor, still hesitating, murmured, half audibly, half in self-communion, Did I not sanction the doom of Polycarp, and of Dionysius, and of the multitudes whose blood saturated the valleys of Gaul?'

Marcellus, pressing his hand in both his own, exclaimed, If an old man, weary of life, took only one step toward his grave; if an enthusiast, greeting martyrdom as the crown of earthly glory, eagerly seized that crown; if those who were represented to thee as ripe for insurrection, and

departed with curses on their lips for the baffled proconsul. The next gathering of a throng in that amphitheatre was for a different purpose-the triumphal entry of Marcus Aurelius into Athens. The car of the emperor was attended by his conquering legions, whose invincible might Greece well remembered, and could too feelingly attest. Captives, torn from the German wilds, with dejected countenances and wild elflocks, swelled the pageant of the victor. He was welcomed by all that Athens could devise of pomp or of music, of procession or of praise. Flowers were strewn as he passed, and clouds of incense ascended as to a god. Since the entrance of Adrian, to whom the Eleusinian mysteries were revealed, Athens had beheld nothing so imposing. She hoped to receive from Marcus Aurelius such benefactions as were then heaped upon her; and the splendid edifices which Adrian had erected, especially his library, with its alabaster roof and its hundred columns of Phrygian marble, glowed with the richest wreaths and echoed to the rarest minstrelsy.

own.

But peculiarly did philosophy regard this festival as her Never before had she seen one of her own votaries robed in imperial purple, and wielding the sceptre of the globe. With all her boasted indifference to earthly pomp and pride, she might have been forgiven the quickened step and flushed brow with which she threw her garland at his feet. Especially did the disciples of Zeno lift up their head with unwonted dignity. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was a brother of their order, an adept in their lore. His constant favour had distinguished them, his eloquent pen maintained their tenets. The point of precedence was therefore, on that memorable day, conceded to the scholars of the Portico; but pressing near them, and with more of heartfelt joy in his demeanour, was a Platonist, the silver-haired Demetrius. Regarding the emperor as a beneficent deity, he poured forth a tide of scarcely audible gratitude.

Yet he, to whom every eye was lifted, bent his own with serene earnestness on a single group. There knelt at his feet a lordly Roman, and a graceful female, enveloped in a veil, to whose side clung a beautiful child. The vast multitude listened in breathless attention as the youth broke silence.

'Emperor! Sire! Behold the maiden for whom I besought thee. Since we last met, a change hath passed over me. I am no longer able to resist the truth. I have embraced the faith that once I condemned. I am a Christian. To whatever punishment thou shalt adjudge, we submit ourselves. If our doom be death, suffer us to share it together, that together we may be with the Lord.' He who was thus addressed, bending from his lofty seat, united the hands of the lovers; and Marcus Aurelius, the heathen and the Stoic, sanctioned, not without a tear of tenderness, the bridal of Christians.

THE YOUNG MAN'S COUNSELLOR.

TRUTH.

TRUTH is the first of moral virtues. Modified, it is veracity in language, sincerity in manner, honour in conduct; it is blended with every good quality, and is the basis of a respectable character. With truth in the heart and in the deportment a man walks through life, with open and frank demeanour, confiding in his own integrity, and in the honour of mankind.

Dissimulation, deceit, falsehood, are the progressive forms of the same vice; whoever yields to dissimulation is prepared for falsehood. To prevent the last, guard against the first, since the one leads to the other; and, taking prudence for your guide, let the simplicity of truth breathe through your language, and pervade your whole deport

ment.

An individual, who, under the influence of self-love, is guided by dissimulation, in his language utters not what is agreeable to truth, but what is agreeable to his wishes and interests. Another individual, who has been accustomed

to fictitious narrative, regards truth unadorned with indifference; to him it must be embellished, and in its embellishment it loses its very essence.

The exaggeration of self-love and the adornment of fancy are dangerous to the sensibility of the moral faculty. The habits, when new, may be corrected by resolution, but when confirmed, their correction, from the illusive shapes they assume, is most difficult, if not impracticable. The one is deemed the wisdom of discretion, the other, the result of a lively and superior intellect.

There is a kind of pleasantry which deals in fiction merely for amusement, without the least design to deceive. This species of humour is opposed by strong objections. It may rise into habit, usurp the place of truth; and one may deem himself a man of veracity when he has fairly abandoned the character.

If a man at one time uses the language of fiction, and at another time the language of truth, with the same se rious countenance, we have no certain criterion by which to distinguish them; and, in such a case, to hesitate about his veracity, whether he is in jest or in earnest. is the first advance to deprive him of all claim to credibility.

A person trained to artificial politeness, which is hollow and deceptive, often sacrifices truth and sincerity to the conventional art of pleasing. One who has a sincere love for truth, and desires inflexibly to adhere to it, from the kindliness of his nature, may use complimentary language not in strict accordance with truth. By knowing the cause of error, if one is wise, he will shun its effects.

A man is of unquestionable integrity, but he has a confused kind of memory, and his ideas in language are sometimes destitute of precision and truth. Against this trait of character be particularly on your guard. Observe and think with close attention, and state your notions and opinions the clear with the simplicity and modesty of conviction; the doubtful with the diffidence and candour of dubiety.

You may conceal your sentiments when concealment is required; but truth on no account permits you to falsify them. Cunning is the disguise of weakness, selfishness, and depravity. A man of upright and honourable principles knows no dissimulation, he knows only the restraints of prudence and virtue.

Maintain your good principles with undeviating rectitude; and, if you fall into error, with the manly openness of a virtuous mind declare the truth, even should it be against yourself. Such conduct, reduced into habit, secures peace of mind, and establishes one of the most honourable characters of social life-a man who never knowingly told an untruth.

FILIAL OBEDIENCE.

Obedience to parents is an injunction enforced by na ture and affection, by man and his Creator. The observance of the duty is universally honoured by mankind, and it is declared to be good and acceptable to God.

Blessings are promised to those who honour their father and mother, and wo is denounced against those who slight their authority. Filial obedience is the happiness of the offspring, the joy of the family, the order and concord of society. The duties of the domestic home are modified and expanded into the duties of social and public life.

A youth, who, by his disobedience and vice, pierces with sorrow a parent's heart, shall have his own pierced with compunction, when, perhaps, he can weep only with unavailing regret on the parent's grave.

When parents pass from life, a dutiful son will often revert in memory to the home of his youth, and among all his reminiscences, none will shed a purer serenity over the soul than the reflection that, by his affectionate attentions, he soothed their declining years.

PROMISES.

Promise with discretion, but when you do make a promise faithfully fulfil it. Nothing is more characteristic of wisdom than discretion in making promises, and nothing