never grew cold, for the sweet memories that dwell like incense in our hearts and around our family altars, and for the strong, abiding hope that beyond the sunset and the night our love will be rekindled into a purer, holier flame, and broken ties reunited, and pain and sorrow will be known and felt no more. SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS. There is a skeleton in every closet. There is a deep shadow lurking near to every hearthstone, and often when the fire glows brightest and the family circle is all radiant with love and hope and happiness, it spreads its raven wings over the scene and all is suddenly changed, as if by a breath from the under-world, or at the echo of a distant wail from some fallen spirit. Life is shaded with sorrow, hope sinks into despair, and bright cheer changes place with gloom and despondency. It may be that a ghost, not visible to the eyes, but well discerned in every feeling of the heart and definitely shaped in the consciousness of the soul, sits in the chair long since vacant; it may be that the night winds bring whispers from afar that start the chords of the soul into sympathetic vibrations sounding in mournful cadences the requiem of dead love, of blighted hopes, of happiness that was never to be, of days and years that never yet nestled in the bosom of time; it may be that the bright chain that bound heart to heart has been rudely broken and its links widely scattered, some to shine in new chains of love, others to be isolated by neglect and to rust and canker in the dews of sorrow; but whatever it be, the shadows are always brooding near and the ghosts are always ready to start up from the abyss and march in solemn procession in the wake of the shadows. Oh! how light and darkness, sunshine and shadows, chase each other in the weird drama of life! What wondrous scenes of beauty are brought to view in the kaleidoscope, which by another turn, quickly vanish and darkness comes on filled with misshapen creatures of the night, strangely magnified and distorted, stalking by in grim silence or mingling and changing, as if reveling in the very exuberance of gloom! How one day-one moment -the soul is all aglow with the light and warmth of love and its every fiber thrilled with hope and happiness, and the next the spirits droop, hope gives way to despair, and the light of happiness goes out in gloom, as the shadows of night chase away the glistening sunbeams! The world without and the world within keep step to a common march. The crowds that jostle on the streets, that surge like billows of the sea, that scatter like the leaves of autumn; the nations that are clothed with power, the armies that shake the earth with their tread-what are they all but an aggregation of units, each one of which has within. it an epitome of the whole? What are the hallelujahs of multitudes, or the dying wails of nations, but the reinforced echoes of each individual heart? What are widespread scenes of glory and desolation but stereopticon views projected on a visible canvas, of scenes which chase each other in every human life? The funeral cortege presses with solemn tread close upon the steps of the bridal party; the children of sorrow cower under the windows of brilliant halls sparkling with silks and jewels and resounding with songs of mirth and revelry; Dives throws the dust from his glittering wheels on the prostrate form of Lazarus, and everywhere joy and sorrow dwell side by side, or follow each other with unvaried speed around the dial plate of destiny. So, every heart has its bridal songs, to be followed by the funeral dirge: so it has its halls resplendent with wealth and gay with mirth, and close by are the dens of wrechedness and despair; so it has its days of swelling joys and its nights of sinking sorrows. How nature on all her broad face shows her kindly sympathy! She builds an arch of soft blue skies, beautiful to behold and emblematical of peace and love, and then she marshals her battle clouds and they rush to the conflict to the sound of rolling thunder, wrapping the heavens in darkness relieved only by the lurid lightning's glare, and covering the earth with a pall of gloom and terror. She spreads out her vast ocean and hushes it to sleep with whispered lullabies, when it smiles in beauty bewitching and entices adventurous man afar on its tranquil bosom; then suddenly she hurls down her charging tempests and there is a wild waste of battling billows in which the great warships, the mightiest embodiments of a nation's power, are as helpless as a babe in an enraged nurse's arms; and on opposite sides of the earth she draws from pole to pole dividing lines between day and night, each line bordered on both sides by rainbow-tinted bands woven by the mystic hand of refraction, the one the harbinger of day, the other the rosy fringe of night; and swifter than birds of passage-swifter than the winged winds have these lines and bands swept from orient to occident, and day and night have followed each other in giddy whirls since time began, and so they will follow till time shall be no more. But high above the shifting scenes of earth, ocean and sky-far back in the abysmal depths-are the unchanging stars-the fixed, steadfast, eternal stars-serene and undisturbed in their far off splendor, and giving sweet promises in their twinkling eyes of rest and peace and love. So the heart has its star of hope ever beaming in the distant blue, ever wooing the struggling soul upwards, and in viting it to a sphere beyond the realm of change and shadows, where the true and the brave shall dwell together and where peace and love shall live and reign forever. PAR NOBILE FRATRUM. About a month ago, James R. Westmoreland, Esq., died at Woodruff in the 85th year of his age. He was the oldest of the fourth generation of Westmorelands in Spartanburg county, being descended in a direct line from Thomas Westmoreland, who came from England about the year 1750, and settled on Enoree river near Van Patton's Shoals. He marked off 600 acres of land with his hatchet and afterwards obtained a grant of the same from King George, which is still preserved among his descendants and the land it covers has been held by them through five generations. Through all these generations the Westmorelands have been remarkable for moral uprightness, honesty, truthfulness, patriotism, and solid integrity. James Westmoreland inherited all the best traits. of his race, and during his long life he carried them to a higher degree of development and exercised them on a wider scale than his ancestors with their limited opportunities had been able to do. When he was twenty-two years old he married. Miss Rebecca Peden, who at the time was only six |