to aspire; so each, with mutual estrangement, trod the same well-beaten path to the tomb.

་

The children of the proprietor were rarely seen beyond the precincts, unless when, in a carriage, they accompanied their mother on visits to the distant gentry, or set off for their winter residence in the city. Happy smiling innocents, all unconscious of distinction between man and man! By and by, thought I, you will become staid, reserved; and, it may be, look on God's creatures, breathing the same air, born in the same land, and bound for one common home beyond the grave, as beings of a different race.

THE YOUNG MASTER.

AMONG the young people was one verging on manhood, in whom was well displayed the ingenuousness so desirable in youth. He rode, followed by a servant, oftener, however,

alone, over the surrounding country. I sometimes met him with dog and gun in search of game. On these occasions he would step into the houses of the peasantry, ask for a draught of milk or water, chat with the inmates, play

with the children, and depart as he came, with a laugh or a smile.

One day, it so fell out, I entered a cabin by the hill-side just as the young master left it, and took part in the following discourse.

"And so, Michael, darling, you saw him; he went out just as you came in."

"I saw him," was the reply.

"The Virgin be over us," continued the "and such a nice young boy!"

woman,

"What pity-heretic cub, spawn of Luther, already damned, or shortly to be," growled the man. And here he crossed himself while the woman sighed.

"But you do not really think, do not mean to

say, that one after God's image, so young, so innocent, shall incur this fearful doom?"

"Come, now, Michael dear," and the man smiled incredulously, "I suppose you do not know what is before him?"

"As Christian man, or rather boy then, I believe heart and soul, that it is the will and intent, as it is within the power, of Almighty God to save each wandering child of Adam whether he be of Rome or Geneva, or whether he be neither."

The man gazed sullen, unconvinced; but the woman again sighed, and invoked blessings on my head.

Shortly after I met the young master with rod and gun. "I am not much of a sportsman," he said; "and I dare say you know the haunts of the trout fully better than I do."

I could show him, I replied, "still pools where they leaped after flies, shady banks which

afforded them shelter from the noon-day heat. It reminds me," I observed, as the fishes went and came, "of what one reads in books about the temptations of the world; though here, amid the solitudes, one meets nothing of the kind." The young master seemed pleased with my remark, and passed away.

I sat upon the bank, looking as it were into myself when the youth had gone. I felt as one might feel who, for the first time, had discovered his nakedness. Frieze, old and worn, as well as a world too small, composed my attire; cloth of Saxony, nicely adjusted, his. Shoes of Cordovan covered his feet; brogues protected mine. The fur of the beaver shaded his hair; a leathern cap did this office for me. He wore the finest Holland; I was satisfied with sacking. My hands, face, ankles were brown and weatherbeaten; but when he happened to unglove, or the wind deranged his attire, it revealed a surface

fair and soft as that of a girl.

Then his accent

and address; but why pursue the comparison -he was a gentleman, and I-I was the rustic I had been born.

Ah me, if I had been rightly told, the proprietor held the very inheritance of my ancestors; yet I envied him not. I acknowledged, indeed, the significance of a fair exterior: was not the green earth, with its garniture of flowers, preferable to the arid soil - the naked rock? After all, the outside was not the man ; and nothing, I felt, could forego the needful culture of the soul.

MURDER.

I WAS returning from the house of my preceptor, and had struck into a path through the fields. Scarcely had I forced myself through a growth of young timber, ere I was aware of the short quick bark of a dog, mingled with smo

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