the pale, serene, pensive one before you. And you might have read in the latter, as in the pages of a book, a sweetly mournful narrative of the past.

"Well, Miss Howard, I have some good news for you," said the affectionate Helen, drawing nearer to her teacher. "You see we are to have some company to-morrow evening. Only a few intimate friends, however, and our new sister will play for them. They say it is a perfect luxury to hear her; and you know she has had the very best teachers in the old world, and then she has such wondrous musical talent. Now, I want you to come here to-morrow night. Mamma said I might invite you."

"Thank you, dear Helen," and the teacher's fingers smoothed down the bright locks of the child. "I should very much enjoy hearing your sister's execution; but you know all the company will be strangers to me, and—”

"Don't, please don't, say no, Miss Howard," interrupted Helen. "You must come; indeed, I shan't like it at all if you don't."

Miss Howard smiled at her pupil's earnestness, and that smile was a tacit consent.

At last the doors sprang widely back, and the recent traveling party entered the room. Every eye turned toward it. It was composed of some half dozen individuals; but among these were three which attracted universal attention.

They were the newly married pair and the uncle of the young bride. The lady was not tall, and she looked almost fragile as she leaned on the arm of her husband. But her face was a very sweet one, with its blue eyes, and brown hair, and the smiles breaking about her lips. You could not wonder that her husband and her uncle looked down so proudly and fondly upon her as she received the congratulations of her guests, with that rare grace of manner which native refinement and foreign cultivation had given her.

Miss Howard's eyes followed the course of the lady up the room. She was now free to do this, for Helen had left her side. Mrs. Winship's

face, her eyes, and very smile had something familiar in them. The teacher could not identify them with any that had been gathered into her memory, and yet she felt she had met that countenance before.

It was not long before the lady was urged to take her place at the piano, for all the guests were impatient to hear her voice. She complied gracefully, and a few moments later her song broke the silence that had come over the room. It electrified the listeners. Those clear, rich, warbling tones flowed and floated around them, a wave of exquisite harmony, and sweet tears came unconsciously to the eyes of the guests. Mrs. Winship's power did not unsist in the skill of her execution, though that was certainly rare: it lay in her voice-that voice whose ravishing sweetness reminded you of the songs of seraphs. As she ceased Helen came up to Miss Howard, who had sat all this time in her corner in a kind of delicious trance. "Come," she said, “I don't want you to stay here any longer. Sister Mary's going to play again, and this time you must see as well as hear her;" and, by virtue of her relationship, she pushed herself and her reluctant teacher through the group that had gathered round the piano.

"Don't she look pretty?" said the admiring Helen in a stage whisper to her teacher.

The bride heard her, for she looked up at both with a smile; but as her eyes met those of Miss Howard a change came into them. There was an eager, puzzled expression for a moment on her face, and then a sudden light dawned into it. She sprang from her seat, and held out both her hands, exclaiming joyfully, "Minnie Howard, is this you?"

In an instant it was all made plain. "Miss Farnham!" broke involuntarily from Minnie's lips, and a quick rush of olden memories brought the tears to her eyes.

Mrs. Winship saw them. "Come with me," she said, drawing her arm around Minnie's waist, and bowing her apologies to the wondering company, she led her up stairs to her own room.

There they sat down together, and Mrs. Winship said, "I have never forgotten you, Minnie, nor those kind words of yours, when there was no friend to care for, no voice to encourage me. I am rich now, and the world honors me; but my heart is the same that it was in those days when I sat stitching away the weary hours for my bread at the Winters's. You have suffered, Minnie-I can see that in your face. Tell me of your past as once I told you of mine."

And Minnie Howard briefly related all-how

her uncle had failed and died, how her friendsAda Winters among the first-had deserted her, and how at last she had been compelled to resort to music teaching in order, if possible, to obtain a living.

"Minnie," and Mrs. Winship again drew her arms around her friend, "our Father knew best the discipline that we needed; and I often think I should never have taken so gratefully, so prayerfully, as I do all this love and prosperity, if he had not first led me through the valleys of poverty and suffering. You shall be friendless no longer, dear. I can repay your gift a hundred fold. Will you live with me? and we will be happy together."

And Minnie answered only with a burst of grateful tears.

"Dear me!" said Ada Winters, with a sigh of chagrin, as she laid down a letter she had just received from the city. "To think how that little dress-maker of ours has come up! In the first place having such a fortune fall to her, and then marrying into one of the first families in New York! Minnie's living with her, too! I wish now I had not slighted her so after her uncle died. If one could only look into the future, and see what persons would become, so as to know how to treat them!"

O Ada Winters, how many there are who, like you, never learn that the "good doing" brings its own exceeding great reward. In this world, unlike Minnie, we seldom find any other recompense; but up there shall we see the works done here merely for the love of God and of humanity are the great jewels with which time has dowered our eternity.

"LIFT UP YOUR HEADS, O YE GATES."

BY MISS SERENNA BALDWIN.

LIFT up, lift up your heads, ye gates,

Ye everlasting doors;

A royal company awaits

To tread your golden floors.

"And who is he that bids unfold

The portals of the sky,

And lift the everlasting doors,

For such a company?"

The Lord, the Lord, the conquering King,
And crowns his pathway pave;
Both Death and Hell have yielded up
Their captives from the grave.

Lift up, lift up your heads, ye gates;
Ye doors be lifted high;

The King of glory shall come in
With all his company.

"Who is this King of glory-who,

That would come in to reign?" The Lord, the Lord, the mighty God, With his attending train.

All flowing like a robe of light,

The raiment white they wear
In graceful folds across the breast,

Clasped with the morning star.
And glorious, like the Son of God,
"A name," and the white stone,
Of hidden manna they shall eat,

And with him share the throne. Clouds of sweet incense round them float, And music fills the air;

With harps, and songs, and palms they come,
And crowns of life they wear.

He comes, he comes, the conquering king,
With all his glorious train:
Lift up, and he shall enter in,
For evermore to reign.

THE SUN.

BY JAMES PUMMILL.

FAR in the dim, untrodden west
The glorious sun retires,
And sends across the bending sky
His fast-retreating fires!
See how the distant mountains catch
The glories of his beams,
And bright beneath his dying ray
The mountain torrent gleams!
Farewell, departing orb of day!
The dewy twilight hour,
At thy last sigh, with pensive eye,
Weeps in her starry bower:
Another world, bright-beaming orb,
Receives thy cherished light,
And we are soothed in slumber by
The beauties of the night.

Farewell! but not forever thus:

The stars shall burn awhile, And thou shalt wave them from the sky, And on the mountain smile:

The birds and glowing streams shall hail With joy the opening day,

And dews shall leave the weeping flowers To mingle in thy ray.

But there are souls who yester eve

Beheld thy fading beams,
That dwell not on the earth to-day

Entranced with sunny dreams;
Thy car no more to them shall sink
In Thetis' watery bed:
To them are lost thy rising rays;
For they are with the dead!

THE SEA.*

BY REV. T. M. EDDY, A. M.

THE omnipotence of the Creator is almost vis

ibly imaged by the ocean. Its depth, its breadth, its ceaseless roar, its long, deep swell, proclaim a power above all human thought. In its storm-voice we ever hear the same language addressed of old to Abram, "I am ALMIGHTY GOD."

The majesty of God is also preached by the ocean, and none save the poor, benighted, and soul-besotted Atheist denies it. So illimitable and so chainless!

It has also been called the emblem of his eternity. Tyre was once the mistress and center of commerce; but, as she sat in her defiant glory upon the eastern shore of the Mediteranean, old Ocean rolled on. Beneath the hand of prophetic destiny, Tyre sank, and Alexandria became what Tyre had been; and still old Ocean changed not. Venice succeeded Alexandria; change came again, and the imperial crown of Commerce was worn by Lisbon; then succeeded Holland, and then arose London, the proud queen; but still, "caring for none of these things," old Ocean shook his hoary locks and chanted his mighty song. Soon will the diadem be borne across the main, transferred from London to New York; thence will it be borne westward to deck the brows of San Francisco; thence, moving with the Gospelfor it does move with that-once more will it change, and, crossing the Pacific, find a home in redeemed China or Christianized India, and thus complete the circuit of the world; but still, rolling on in solemn pomp, will Ocean remain the same. It has hymned the birth and death of almost countless nations; the rise and fall of Jerusalem, of Tyre, of Balbec, of Thebes, of Nineveh, of Babylon, of Rome; has borne the news of the setting up of empires and the pulling down of empires; yet itself hath known no change-still has it ebbed and still has it flowed. And proudly will it ebb and flow perchance "when some traveler from the metropolis of New Zealand shall take his stand on one of the arches of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."

But yet, as an emblem of divine eternity, it comes infinitely short. It does ebb and flow; God is "the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever." And there shall come an hour when its deep caves, its coral mountains, its pearl

The Physical Geography of the Sea. By M. F. Maury, LL. D., Lieut. U. S. Navy. Harper & Brothers.

covered plains, shall shake beneath the divine declaration, “There shall be no more sea.”

But grand as may have been our thoughts, we think the ocean has not usually been considered as a striking proof of the Divine beneficence and wisdom. The pious heart said, and felt that it surely was, if the fact could be proven. But the great deep remained almost a terra incognita. It surface was crossed, its distance measured from point to point, shoals, rocks, islands, and lee-coasts were mapped, and there it ended. The hidden ways of its wide sweep were unsought. Like the Godhead whom men held it to symbol, it was considered a subject of profound reflection, but not for overleaping curiosity. Sailor followed in the track of sailor, mariner followed the wake of mariner, and there ended the

matter.

It has been reserved for one of our own countrymen to discover the paths of the sea; to map the tracks of the winds; to shorten sailing time to California thirty days, to Australia twenty, and to Rio Janeiro ten. He has communed with the spirit of the sea earnestly and lovingly; and while it shouted to others in thunder peals of omnipotence, and majesty, and eternity, it came and whispered to him in gentle and soothing tones of divine beneficence, wisdom, love.

The American Franklin drew the lightning from heaven; the American Morse sent it as an errand-boy along the oscillating wire; and now again American genius stands confessed in high superiority, as Maury tells us "whence the wind cometh and whither it goeth," and then declares that long, long ago the Bible announced the same teachings.

He has shown us that the most exquisite proofs of perfect design and infinite skill are manifested in ocean laws.

Take the Gulf Stream. Here we have a river in the sea, "which in the severest drouths never fails, in the mightiest floods never overflows; with banks and bottom of cold water, while the current is of warm." It flows ceaselessly from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Seas. It has a current more rapid than the Mississippi or Amazon. Some of our American writers supposed this stream was caused by the Mississippi river, which had accumulated so much western American force of character, that, entering the ocean through the Gulf, it pushed boldly on, holding tenaciously together on the ground that "the union must be preserved, and refusing to submit to any interference from Neptune till it paid its homage to Terminus in the Arctic Sea, and, in a quiet, respectable, and eminently American

manner, froze up! But, alas for us, and alas for our river! it has been demonstrated that the volume of water it pours into the Gulf of Mexico does not amount to more than the one-thousandth part which flows out through the Gulf Stream. But we know if our river can't make the Stream, none other need try.

The thorough discussion given to the reputed causes of this wonder by Lieutenant Maury are highly interesting and instructive, but can not be inserted. His general conclusion is, that it is not produced by local causes, "but is controlled by the great law of matter in motion."

But there are some traces of Divine wisdom and goodness imprinted upon the rapid current of this stream, we do wisely to pause and read. To the mariner it has been a means of discerning his longitude, and has been his perpetual landmark. Up to the close of the last century, guessing was as much used as calculation in ascertaining the position of the vessel. Chronometers were then an experiment. "The Nautical Ephemeris was defective, and its tables involved errors in the longitude of thirty miles." "The instruments of navigation erred by degrees quite as much as they do now do by minutes, for the rude cross-staff' and 'back-staff' had not given place to the nicer sextant and circle of reflection of the present day. Instances are numerous of vessels navigating the Atlantic being six, eight, or ten degrees of longitude out of their reckoning in as many days."

Here again is the triumph of American discrimination, Dr. Franklin was the first to suggest that the Gulf Stream clearly defined the longitude of vessels, and notified them of their approach to the shores of this continent. Its waters are separated from the common sea-water by a sharp dividing line. In making our northern coast in winter the sailor encountered furious snow-storms and "gusty gales," which baffled his skill and drove back his vessel, while the intense cold covered it with a mass of ice. The only refuge was to hold her away for the Gulf Stream. When reached, the weary ship passed at once, as from the frigid zone, to the balmy air of the tropics. "The ice disappears; the sailor bathes his limbs in tepid water; feeling himself refreshed and invigorated with the genial warmth about him, he realizes the fable of Antæus and his mother Earth." These storm-conflicts were protracted and severe. Vessels bound to Norfolk or Baltimore have encountered them as far down as the capes of Virginia, and have been repeatedly driven back into the Gulf Stream, and have kept out forty, fifty, and even sixty

days in vain attempts to make the anchorage. Hence, ship captains naturally enough sought to secure more southerly markets, and took their commerce to the ports of the Carolinas. "Before the temperature of the stream was known, vessels beat back as above described had no refuge short of the West Indies."

Dr. Franklin's discovery of its temperature, and its importance in determining longitude-by the thermometer!—and ascertaining the locality of the ship, was made in 1775, but, in consequence of the war with the mother-country, was not made public till 1790. When made known it demonstrated that in approaching this country the warm water of the Stream and the cold water on the sides forming its banks, if tried by the thermometer, would ascertain approximately his position. An old navigator, writing to the Doctor, said that if the Gulf Stream had been of green and the banks of yellow, they could not more certainly mark the sailor's path than they did by the use of the thermometer.

The immediate result of this discovery was to render the northern marts as accessible in winter as in summer. This had no small influence in determining the superiority of the northern over the southern seaports, and in transferring the American commercial center from Charleston to New York. In 1769 the commerce of the two Carolinas equaled that of all New England, was more than double that of New York, and exceeded that of Pennsylvania. But the glory departed. Commerce,

"Shifting, turned the other way."

The Palmettoes had to bow before the port of "Manhattan" and the cities of "Notions" and "Brotherly Love." After the use of the Stream was known, and its course mapped by Dr. Franklin and Captain Folger, and the knowledge of its set and drift ascertained, sailing time from England to America was reduced from eight to four weeks.

But we pass to another matter. It was long known that the sea, as well as the land, had its climates; that there were differences for which latitude did not account. It had its indigenous plants and animals-its edible fish of the cold climes, and its many-hued but insipid, finny and shelled inhabitants of tropic waves. But it had escaped the notice of man for many years that the ocean was the grand dispenser of warmth and regulator of climate throughout the globethe warmer of the Arctic, the cooler of the torrid zone.

It was reckoned as a triumph of art and a

potent aid to health and economy when the systems of warming large buildings by hot water was made practicable. The caldron and furnace are often placed at a distance from the apart- | ments to be heated. Pipes conduct the boiling water from the caldron to the rooms; in a chamber for that purpose the pipes are flared out so as to present a large cooling surface, after which they are united in one, through which the water, now thoroughly cooled, returns to the caldron. Thus cool water is constantly flowing in, while hot water is flowing out of the caldron.

This we said was a triumph, and so men shouted it, and "model houses" thus warmed were painted, and engraved, and praised. Yet on a scale infinitely grander had the Creator of all long since even before "he rested from his labors"-made such a heating apparatus for Great Britain, North Atlantic, and western Europe. | The furnace which generated the heat was the torrid zone, where the sun glares out so fiercely; the immense caldrons in which the waters were heated were the Carribean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico; while the Gulf Stream was the conducting pipe. This carries the heated waters | till they meet the British Isles, which divides them-one part entering the polar basin of Spitzbergen, the other the Bay of Biscay. "From the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to the shores of Europe is the chamber where the pipe is flared out to present a large cooling surface. Here the circulation of the atmosphere is arranged by nature, [Providence,] and is such that the warmth thus conveyed into this warm air chamber of mid-ocean is taken up by the genial west winds, and dispensed in the most benign manner throughout Great Britain and western Europe."

"The maximum temperature of the Stream is eighty-six degrees, which is about nine degrees above ordinary ocean temperature in the same latitude." You may increase the latitude north ten degrees, and the waters of the "conducting pipe" shall lose but two degrees of their heat. You may send this body of warm water, containing more than one thousand Mississippis, three thousand miles toward the cold "north countries," toward the hummocks, and floes, and bergs, and still it shall retain the heat of sumHere it will spread out for thousands of miles, and do much to mitigate the horrors of European winter.

mer.

Would you know how much this body of water ameliorates intense cold? Maury estimates the depth and velocity found on the surface of the Stream at two hundred fathoms. Take the

well-known difference between the capacity of air and water for specific heat as the argument, and you will find "the quantity of heat discharged over the Atlantic by these waters, in a winter's day, would be sufficient to raise the whole column of atmosphere that rests upon France and the British Isles from the freezing point to summer heat." See then the "manifold wisdom" and diversified goodness of God. The heat of the burning zone is carried across the deep, and diffused over what would else be perpetually frozen plains. "Every west wind that blows crosses this stream on its way to Europe, and carries with it a portion of this heat. It is its influence upon climate which makes Erin the 'Emerald Isle' of the sea, and clothes the shores of Albion in evergreen robes; while in the same latitude the coasts of Labrador on this side are fast bound in fetters of ice."

I can not close this section without one extract from Lieutenant Maury longer than I have yet given:

"Nor do the beneficial influences of this stream upon climate end here. The West India Archipelago is encompassed on one side by its chain of islands, and on the other by the Cordilleras of the Andes contracting with the Isthmus of Darien, and stretching themselves out over the plains of Central America and Mexico. Beginning on the summit of this range, we leave the regions of perpetual snow, and descend first into the tierra templada, and then into the tierra calienta, or burning land. Descending still lower, we reach both the level and the surface of the Mexican seas, where, were it not for this beautiful and benign system of aqueous circulation, the peculiar features of the surroundings assure us we should have the hottest, if not the most pestilential climate in the world. As the waters in these two caldrons become heated, they are borne off by the Gulf Stream, and are replaced by cooler currents through the Carribean Sea; the surface water as it enters here being three or four degrees, and that in depth forty degrees cooler than where it escapes from the Gulf. Taking only this difference in surface temperature as an index of the heat accumulated there, a simple calculation will show that the quantity of specific heat daily carried off by the Gulf Stream from those regions and discharged over the Atlantic, is sufficient to raise mountains of iron from zero to the melting point, and to keep in flow from them a molten stream greater in volume than the waters daily discharged from the Mississippi river. Who therefore can calcu late the benign influence of the wonderful current