and floating. No one dares disturb the happy denizens of this favourite retreat of King Frederick William the Third.

Getting away from the cares of state and the stiff formalities of the palace, he often used to spend a quiet hour here at the end of the day. An account of one of the evenings thus spent, written by a pious clergyman who was present, has been preserved. He describes the royal pleasure boat gliding along the river; and we may see, under its canopy, the serious and stern face of the king, at times smiling gravely at the bright and cheerful conversation of the gentle lady at his side. They have reached the island, and the sun is casting long rays through the tall trees, and the king and his queen are seated within the walls of a beautiful little summer-house. Then one of the company, Bishop Eylert by name, takes out a manuscript from his pocket and reads a short discourse he has composed on the Christian life; his text, Ruth's declaration of love to her mother-in-law. As the sermon closes, the band is heard playing the psalm—

"In all my ways I'll seek the Lord."

And now the moon is up, and a solemn peace steals over nature and into every soul. The last sounds of the music have died away upon the waters, but the air seems filled with heavenly harmonies. The king and queen sit hand in hand, and every heart exclaims, "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." The king is the first to rise. Looking at the queen with intense affection, he says, "Ah! Louisa, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

What drew out the soul in that sad and silent man, and clothed him with a beauty and a grace far beyond

royal robe and golden crown? What made him so much more sympathetic with God and man, and therefore so much more a king? The springs of that influence were on high, but it came through the gentle and pious queen. It was she who crowned her husband with his truest crown, and helped him to be a real king amongst men.

One picture more from her life, and we see her a crown to her husband in adversity.

In the opening years of the present century, Europe was like a vast prairie on fire. The man who made the earth to tremble had gone forth, and Germany lay in chains at Napoleon's feet. Prussia was at his mercy; its army defeated, almost destroyed; Berlin, the capital, was garrisoned by French troops, and the royal family was driven to the frontier. Adding insult to injury, the conqueror had stooped to defame the character of the queen. Finally, on the raft of Tilsit, the French and Russian emperors met to map out Europe to their liking, and the unfortunate king of Prussia, stripped of his power, attended to hear his fate.

During all these trials Queen Louisa maintained her faith. When all was lost she wrote to her father: "I am sustained by the belief that we are not the sport of blind chance, but are in God's hands and led by his providence, even through darkness into light, for He is light."

One evening, a courier brought her a letter from the king her husband. When she had opened it, she said, "A great sacrifice is required of me. I trust I shall have strength to perform it. The king wishes me to go to Tilsit to see the emperor." And she went, like Queen Esther, to plead the cause of her people.

Arrived at Tilsit, Napoleon sent a magnificent state carriage, drawn by eight horses and surrounded by dragoons, to escort her. We can imagine how her

heart sinks within her at the sight of this mocking splendour. But she forgot her own feelings in her anxiety to support her husband in this hour of trial. The king was calm, reserved, proud. "Stiff," Napoleon savagely declared, "stiff as an unbroken horse." The conqueror himself felt awkward. He carried a riding-whip in his hand, which he kept on switching, and alternated between courtliness and rudeness. At first he tried a compliment, but it was quietly rejected. Then he roughly asked, How the king could venture to begin a war with him after he had conquered more powerful nations? The pride of the monarch and of the emperor were only increasing the irritation of each other. The queen, with a prayer to God for help and guidance, interposed, and tried by gentleness to overcome the anger of the victorious soldier. "A soft answer turneth away wrath." Gradually she led the conversation away from politics, and spoke to him of his wife and other subjects likely to interest him. The emperor gradually forgot his irritation, and it is said that he promised the queen, at her intercession, that he would grant her request and restore Silesia to her husband.

Three years afterwards she died of a disease of the heart, aggravated, if not brought on by this and other trials.

She did not live to see the answer to her prayers or the reward of her efforts; but she never ceased to look for it. The time came at last. The invader was finally driven from Germany; and King Frederick William-having first returned thanks to the righteous Judge of all the earth-repaired to Charlottenburg, where she was buried, and laid his laurel wreath on Queen Louisa's tomb, as if to say it was hers, who had been the crown of his life and the glory of his reign.

The Old Book-Mark.

T was pressed between the leaves of a Bible; it had

been there very many years undisturbed. The Bible was on the middle shelf of an old book-case

with glass folding doors, which were always kept locked. The key of the lock was on a ring in William Westwood's pocket, and kept bright by friction with others.

William Westwood was a well-to-do farmer, somewhat past middle age. He farmed his own acres-three or four hundred of them-and lived in a picturesque old farm-house, in a secluded valley, which, in spring, summer, and autumn, was rich and beautiful with pasture land, corn fields, nicely clipped hedges, and woodlands; for Mr. Westwood was a good farmer. Now, however, it being winter, the entire prospect from his parlour window was snow, nothing but snow,-snow in his stack yard, more than a foot deep, and rapidly becoming thicker; snow on his barn and cart house and stable roofs; snow on all the fields and hedges and woods. Their owner was kept in this day, a little against his will, by the snow without, which was falling fast.

William Westwood was a bachelor-partly from circumstances, partly by choice. In his young days he was engaged, as it is called; and the marriage was to have taken place on a certain New Year's Day; oh! so many years ago now. But it never did take place. The young lady who would otherwise have been his wife, was taken ill in the previous autumn. The sickness was-to use the words of Scripture -"unto death;" and the day that would have seen William a happy bridegroom, witnessed his convulsive grief over the open grave of his darling Mary. William was a strong minded man, and a man of strong principle; but he suffered fearfully; and though after a time he recovered from the shock he had received, he never afterwards thought of marrying. If his friends ever ventured to speak of his loneliness, or to hint to him that he would be happier with a companion than as a solitary man, he cut them sternly short with,

"I am married already; my wife is awaiting me. I shall go to her, though she cannot return to me."

William Westwood was very restless on this day of enforced idleness, or rather, inaction, of which I am telling. He did not like being long indoors at any time; and on this particular day of the year, of all others—for it was New Year's Day-he would rather have been anywhere else than in his own comfortable house. He was not sentimental; he was not given to nurse his sorrow, now so many years old, though he did not care to forget it, much less its object and cause. But he had been accustomed to keep this anniversary day in especial gloom and mourning; he would have set this down as a weakness.

He was alone in his room, booted and spurred, with his overcoat thrown over the back of a chair, ready to be put on. For at breakfast time he had made up his mind to have a ride somewhere. But after that the snow came down faster and faster, till he compelled himself to countermand the order he had issued to his man respecting his riding horse; and, instead of riding, he kept up some sort of action by pacing his room steadily, from east to west, and then from west to east, pausing at times to look out at the window.

Westwood was not a great reader; few farmers are great readers. Not because they are more deficient than others in intellect and taste; but plainly, the active life and bodily exercised required of a yeoman, and the sedentary habits of a student, are incompatible. At any rate, so far as Westwood is concerned, his reading powers were mainly kept up by a newspaper which came to hand three days in the week; a monthly magazine devoted to agriculture, and a quarterly review. I should have said his secular reading; for Westwood was, if not a devout, a formal reader of the Biblean old Bible which, with one or two books of a religious character, lay always on the side-board, ready for Sunday.

I cannot tell what impulse seized the solitary man when, after continuing his monotonous walk, varied only by occasional pauses to look out at the window, or to replenish the