and bracelets, and ornaments for the legs, and head-bands, and tablets, and ear-rings, and rings, and nose-jewels, and changeable suits of apparel, for which the prophet reproved the pride of the daughters of Zion. Pythonissa's errors had, latterly at least, not much declined into personal vanity. And Sephora, from a child, had always been plain in her attire, and preferred simplicity to splendour. This might be, because she saw her father liked it best, or it might be her own natural taste, but whatever first induced the habit, it certainly since had been strengthened and confirmed by seeing, that vanity or pride in any shape is forbidden by the voice of God, and by feeling that it is the natural and irreconcilable enemy of spiritual peace.

As soon as she had made things ready for their departure, she set out their supper, which they all partook of with true cheerfulness of heart, and felt that a meal of herbs where love is, is far better than all the dainties of the earth without it. Vashni was not at all offended at their simple mode of living. His own was almost

equally remote from every species of luxury, only as his family was generally larger, his table was consequently on a more extended scale, and as there were often those among his inmates whose health was so impaired as to be unable to taste the coarser food of life, for them he provided what was suitable to their infirmities. Vashni was glad to find his young friend so active and ready at those domestic duties which, in more polished countries, are sometimes thought to have a natural tendency to debase the mind, and disqualify it for higher enjoyments. But he had always thought that luxury and dissipation were much more apt to weaken the intellect and degrade the man, than the most servile offices of life, and that the hewers of wood and drawers of water were far from being the meanest part of the creation.

He had in his time been a great rover over the earth, and had seen life in much more pompous as well as under much ruder forms, than those which were usual among his own people, and he thought that the pastoral life, which was so generally followed in his

own beloved land, had greatly the advantage of every other; that it had a tendency to raise the mind above the level of vulgar life, and to fill it with grand images of nature. The roll of seasons-the alternate and progressive change to perfection and decay, of the vegetable world-the sustaining hand of providence, filling all things living with plenteousness. Daily and hourly witnessing these works of God, he thought ennobled unconsciously the mind of man. But, however this might be, he was sure that there was a more general purity of life among them than in any other country he had visited, and that they were farther removed from the excesses of barbarism and luxury. He did not then place this difference to the true account their knowledge of the only God. He had left his native land with a veneration for the religion of his ancestors, but it was only since his return to it, that he had known its pervading power, or felt how it subdues all things to itself, and how all things become religion to the mind of the religious. He knew that the mass, even of his own people,

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felt none of this, but he was aware also that they found something of its influence even where they disowned its power, and that the multitude, like the clod of earth in the fable which had lain next the rose, had imbibed some of the fragrance of the flower of heavenly mindedness, though it still remained but earth itself.

Pythonissa, Sephora, and Vashni, were ready with the dawn of morning to set forward towards Mount Carmel. Sephora could scarcely persuade herself that but one day had passed since she went there alone, friendless, disconsolate, and almost without a hope on this side the grave. How soon

had the dark clouds of sorrow been chased away, and joy, like the clear shining after rain, succeeded to their place. She was now with a friend who had shown himself ready to comfort her grief and rejoice in her happiness, with a mother whose very soul seemed changed to love. Whichever way she looked the prospect was bright before her, the horizon of happiness was unclouded, and hope and expectation darted their magic

beams over the immediate foreground of life. She was going to new scenes and new society with spirits raised to enjoy them. The world with her, was still in a great measure an unplucked fruit, and where is the youthful mind which has seen it hanging with all its tempting bloom around it, whose hope of happiness has not exceeded its experience, whose pleasures have not exhibited more vivid colours in anticipation than in fruition, and whose indistinct vision of some undefined joy, have borne to be looked closely at without melting into empty air. Yes, even those who know most surely that abiding happiness is only in heaven, still continue to look for it on earth, they think they perceive something like it, and grasping at the shadow, often let the substance fall.