when I bought the pony I did not know that I should so often be honored with your company, or I might, as you suggest, have purchased an animal which would carry us both without difficulty."

"I'm glad papa didn't hear that speech of yours, he would be sure to say, 'Alice! how can you be so troublesome. Haven't you comforts of your own without encroaching upon other people's? There he comes, I declare!" And with a sudden jerk she turned the pony round another way. Mr. Harvey seized the reins-" Where, what, what's the matterwho's coming ?"

“Papa; I don't want him to see me."

"But it's of no use coming down here!" said poor Mr. Harvey. “Yes, because I want some hemp-seed at Perkins's, if you don't mind, and some bran for the rabbits, and then I'll drive back again, when papa is safely within our gates."

"But that won't visit my sick people."

“Then why did you come, Mr. Harvey ?"

"Because you asked me. Now suppose we turn round again;" and he gently took the reins from her hand, and proceeded towards the main road. As Alice feared, her father turned round at the sound of wheels, and confronted them.

"Well, Mr. Harrington! your daughter has been helping me in my duties,” said Mr. Harvey, stopping the chaise to shake hands.

"So I suppose. Why, Alice, have you nothing to do at home? I wish you were more like Edward in some things; but I hope, if you are taking a drive, Mr. Harvey will try to drive a little common sense into your giddy head, and give you a lecture out of the pulpit."

"Mamma said I might,

Alice looked a little out of temper. papa; at least I shall be home in time for dinner."

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"What am I to lecture you about?" asked Mr. Harvey, as they turned down a quiet lane. "Your papa seems harrassed to-day. Do you amuse him of an evening, or leave it to Henry?"

“Henry never amuses anybody," said Alice, disconsolately; "his whole life is mummyfied with his books. If I drag him out for a walk (and you would think that in the long vacation a brother might go out with me) he goes mooning along, taking

G

no more notice of me than if I were a sparrow, and as to conversing with any one, I should think he would call that sheer waste of time. Even at breakfast time he is cogitating and knitting his brows; I hate to see such abstraction."

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'Perhaps if you do converse," said Mr. Harvey, "it is not on subjects which interest him."

"Oh, but nothing interests him. I talk all the worse nonsense, because he says I'm so frivolous, and I don't like to be told I'm childish and illogical in my theories."

“And yet Henry is fond of you. You must remember that every year you will be more fitted to be his companion. You are only just fifteen, are you?"

"I shall be sixteen in a month."

"Well! and Henry is twenty-two; his pursuits are necessarily different to yours."

"You are more than thirty-two," said Alice, "but yet you talk to me, and so do mamma, and so do numbers of other people. But Henry is so different to what he used to be, and is so perfectly happy in his own way. I believe if he were shut up in a desert island, if he could but take with him his Paley and his Euclid, and his other mathematical divines, he would be perfectly satisfied without the sound of a human voice."

"You make a great mistake. If Henry thought less of the opinions of others, he would be less wedded to his books; and if he were in a desert, as you romantically suggest, I think he would feel peculiarly miserable. Now hold my pony while I get out and see poor old Crisp; I'm afraid he is very ill."

"Oh! and do ask him to let me have some of that groundsel: here is two-pence to pay, and tell him to choose the best bunches. Tell him, please, the last was”—

"Now, do consider, Alice! how can the poor bed-ridden man go into his garden to get groundsel for your canary ?" and with a countenance alike expressive of disappointment and sorrow, Mr. Harvey returned the two-pence, and walked into the cottage.

"How odious it is," exclaimed Alice, pettishly, "to have to be always considering and considering! How it does worry one. I wish there were no poor men—or no canaries would be better, perhaps-and then one might have a little peaceheigh ho!"

Presently she tied the reins to the little garden gate, and commenced picking blackberries from the hedges. They were not half ripe, and consequently rather unpalateable, and decidedly unwholesome; but they furnished something to do, and that was better than sitting still in the chaise. She did not observe in the mean time, that the pony was helping himself copiously to the marigolds and other flowers at the edge of the old man's garden. Having poked his head unrestrainedly through the gate, he was just dragging the chaise after him over the neat little borders, when Mr. Harvey came out of the cottage in time to prevent the utter destruction which would otherwise have ensued.

"You'll bring me into ill repute, Miss Alice," he said, "if you don't make a better coachman. Look what has been going on while you have been staining your lip with nut or berry."

Alice had brought some fine bilberries in her hand, and presented these with a grave smile, as a peace offering.

"And now," said Mr. Harvey, "drive round again to Perkins' I must send his boy to put old Crisp's garden to rights again, and your two-pence will pay him.”

But when they got to Perkins's, the boy was out, and so was Smith's boy, so half-an-hour was spent in driving round to the different cottages which possessed a boy, and when one was at last found, it was past Alice's dinner hour. As the chaise stopped in front of their garden gates, Alice entreated Mr. Harvey to come in and dine with them. "Papa will say nothing to me then, and its not pleasant to be called to account." "No, it is not," was the answer. "But I've dined, thank you."

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"Oh! but a long time ago; and you can surely pretend to eat now; and you must have an appetite."

"No, I should be losing my time. I have a great deal to do, and our going to find those boys lost me a good half-hour. Good bye."

"Well, good bye, then;" and she went with a crest-fallen air, and resolved to make the best she could of her delay.

And now we will turn to Henry. It was near the end of his long vacation at the time we introduced him to the reader. Upon his countenance might be seen an expression sometimes of

excitement, at others of calm meditation, but generally of pleasure. He seldom talked, and when he did so, it was unwillingly. To win for himself a name was his ambition; and with intense study and perseverance that was apparently within his grasp. To be admired and envied by his rival colleagues, to be known to literary men as having attained high university honors, ap peared to him the golden dream which, once a reality, would leave him nothing to wish for. No wonder then that he did not care to occupy himself otherwise than to pursue this endthat he absented himself constantly from the family circle, and altogether gave up friendly intercourse in the neighbourhood. Even Sunday appeared to him to come too often, when he must rest. The early dawn found him seated in his little study, busily engaged in his delightful path to honor; and while his parents willingly for his sake gave up the present pleasure of his once cheerful society, he felt that his was truly Life in Earnest. Sometimes, it is true, he remembered with a momentary regret, earlier days, when he could enter into every pursuit with pleasure; and would feel an impulse of shame at the petulance with which he now resented any interruption; but then back would come the thought-"I was then only existing, I lived for to-day, and had no thought beyond; now I have an object, and a noble one, in view."

(To be continued in our next.)

PRECEPTIVE BIOGRAPHY.

BLAISE PASCAL.

THERE is much to be learned from the life of every mangood, bad, or indifferent. Our better nature has so many forms and modes of development, that it cannot be properly understood or studied, unless we take a comprehensive view of its workings under every variety of circumstance, and as affected by every style of character. The same principle will produce widely different results in different minds; and we cannot thoroughly examine that principle, unless we look at it in all the various shapes it assumes by passing through them. Many and great mistakes have arisen from the tendency so widely prevalent to analyze a simple idea and break it up into

many by encumbering it with conditions, which do not in reality belong to it. We hear frequently, for example, of a theoretical or a practical faith-an historical faith, a scriptural faith, a saving faith-as if faith were not really the same in essence, whatever may be its influence, its bearings, its results, or the particular form in which it is called forth. The Bible, our best teacher, not only as is generally supposed on questions of moral truth, but on all the great mental problems that affect our nobler nature, never does this. It employs every variety of illustration in explaining one and the same principle, never condemning the good phases of a bad motive, or the good motives of an untoward incident. An unjust steward may act "wisely," even before Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; and a calamitous result be nevertheless illustrative of a sound and wholesome idea. By how large a variety of facts the Apostle sets before us the multiform workings of this one principle of Faith. Defining it as "the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen," he does not find it necessary to make any nice distinction between the faith of Samson, a mere machine of vast physical power, and Abraham, whose spiritually-discerning eye saw the yet distant day of Christ-between Moses, who spake face to face with God, and Rahab, who had just the low instinctive faith that led her to seek temporal deliverance for herself and hers.

This, if any apology be needed, is ours for presenting from time to time the biographies of men, whose whole lives cannot be held up for imitation. "The proper study of mankind is man”—man universal; humanity in all its length and breadth, height and depth. The Christian, as the highest style and type of our race, ought to combine the excellencies of all; and he will never attain pre-eminence of mental or moral stature, if he seek his model only in the church: he must needs go into the world. Yet how many refuse to enter even the "many mansions" of their Father's kingdom here; but wall themselves around with needless and soul-narrowing fears.

In these times of sympathy with Romanism, it may be thought dangerous to direct the Protestant to any good thing we may meet with in the characters, the purposes, or the