other; and the golden light came streaming in, and fell upon them locked together.

"How fast the river runs between its green banks and the rushes, Floy! But it's very near the sea. I hear the waves. They always said so.'

"Presently he told her that the motion of the boat upon the stream was lulling him to rest.

How green

the banks were now! how bright the flowers growing on them! and how tall the rushes! Now the boat was out at sea, but gliding smoothly on; and now there was a shore before him. Who stood on the bank?

"He put his hands together as he had been used to do at his prayers. He did not remove his arms to do it; but they saw him fold them so behind her neck.

“Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by the face. But tell them that the print upon the stairs of school is not divine enough. The light about the head is shining as I go.'

"The golden ripple of the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion,the fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll; the old, old fashion, death!

"Oh! thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, immortality. And look upon us, angels of young children, with regard not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean."

The chapter containing the foregoing is headed in the novel, "What are the wild waves saying?"

A beautiful song has been written by some one with that title, which is twined with the memory of Dickens and little Paul. It will fitly close this chapter.

What is that voice repeating
Ever by night and day?
Is it a friendly greeting,

Or a warning that calls away?

"Brother, the inland mountain,

Hath it not voice and sound?
Speaks not the dripping fountain
As it bedews the ground?
E'en by the household ingle,

Curtained and closed and warm,

Do not our voices mingle

With those of the distant storm?

"Yes; but there's something greater That speaks to the heart alone: "Tis the voice of the great Creator

That dwells in that mighty tone."

CHAPTER X.

HIS MASTERPIECE.

The Reality of Fiction.-David Copperfield. - Opinion of Fraser's Magazine The Shipwreck.-Uriah Heap.-Little Em'ly. - A Lone, Lorn Creetur.

"The gnashing billows heaved and fell;

Wild shrieked the midnight gale;

Far, far beneath the morning swell

Were pennant, spar, and sail."

O. W. HOLMES.

"There is sorrow on the sea."-JER. xlix. 23.

SENSIBLE writer in "The Christian Examiner" for September, 1863, discusses the utility and moral effect of the drama and the novel; and, according to his method of argument, Charles Dickens was a benefactor to the readers of "David Copperfield," and to those who have witnessed the touching drama of "Little Em'ly," founded upon the same.

The story-telling and the story-reading propensity are utterly indestructible; and the following passages from that excellent article on "The Reality of Fiction" show where lies the danger in the literature of the imagination:

"This ever-increasing enlargement of the domain of that imaginative literature which already exists, or is to be given to the world, refutes all the fears and lamentations about its decay and disappearance; as if it were to be submerged and lost under the flooding sweep of a despotic and universal utilitarianism; as if He who made the soul would allow its finest and most delicate powers to lie dormant, and rust out; as if, under the Providence which arrays the lilies, piles up the splendors of ever-changing cloud-scenery, flashes across the north and up to the zenith the mystic brilliancy of the aurora, bends the rainbow-hues of hope, and garlands our daily bread with flowers, as if, under this Providence, so prodigal in dispensations of beauty, and ever revelling in infinite forms of grace, man will be suffered to degenerate into a worshipper of machinery, and an idolater of the golden calf.

"When the parables are stricken from the Bible, when the story of Joseph ceases to be told, and David's lyrics are no longer chanted, then the curtain will fall upon the last drama, and the poet sing his last note to the deaf, and the novelist write his last romance for the blind. The realm of imagination to be annihilated ! —-—why, it came into existence when order came out of chaos, and was in the joyous song the morning stars sang together. All races and all climes have colonized it. It is the realm of the spirit, wherein the spirit often lives its purest life, gets its sweetest expression, and