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The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in ; and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word-and blotted it out for ever!

out his purse into ral to go early in and fell asleep.

› every eye in ; the hand of

My uncle Toby went to his bure his pocket, and having ordered th the morning for a physician, he we The sun looked bright, the morn the village but Le Fevre's and his a................... Death pressed heavy upon his eyelids, and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle-when my uncle Toby, who had got up an hour before his wonted time, entered the Lieutenant's room, and, without preface or apology, sat himself down upon the chair by the bed-side, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother-officer would have done it, and asked him how he did,- how he had rested in the night,—what was his complaint,—where was his pain, --and what he could do to serve him?—and, without giving him time to answer any one of the inquiries, went on and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the Corporal the night before for him.—

"You shall go home directly, Le Fevre," said my uncle Toby, "to my house, and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter,—and we'll have an apothecary,—and the Corporal shall be your nurse, and I'll be your servant, Le Fevre !"

There was a frankness in my uncle Toby,-not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it,—which let you at once into his soul, and showed you the goodness of his nature. To this, there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which continually beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that, before my uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, the son had insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards him—. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart— rallied back!-the film forsook his eyes for a moment-he

looked up wistfully in my uncle Toby's face-then cast a look upon his boy.-And that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!

Nature instantly ebbed again-the film returned to its place the pulse fluttered-stopped-went on-throbbedstopped again-moved-stopped. Shall I go on?—No!

II. THE BROTHERS DORRIT.
(CHARLES DICKENS.)

Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth in 1812. On the termination of the French war, his father, who held a situation in the Navy Pay Department, removed to London and employed himself as a newspaper reporter. This occupation Mr. Dickens followed for some years, till his genius found a more fitting sphere in writing works of fiction.

THEY got him up to his room without help, and laid him down on his bed. And from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of nothing beyond the Marshalsea.* When he heard footsteps in the street, he took them for the old weary tread in the yards. When the hour came for locking up, he supposed all strangers to be excluded for the night. When the time for opening came again, he was so anxious to see Bob that they were fain to patch up a narrative how that Bob-many a year dead then, gentle turnkey-had taken cold, but hoped to be out to-morrow, or the next day, or the next at furthest.

He fell away into a weakness so extreme that he could not raise his hand. But he still protected his brother, according to his long usage; and would say with some complacency, fifty times a day, when he saw him standing by his bed, "My good Frederick, sit down. You are very feeble indeed."

But the child who had done so much for him and had been so poorly repaid, was never out of his mind. Not

* Mr. Dorrit had for many years been confined in the Marshalsea, or debtors' prison, but had ultimately acquired great wealth. A short time before his death, his mind gave way; and in his ravings he returned to the scenes with which he had been so long familiar.

that he spared her, or was fearful of her being spent by watching and fatigue; he was not more troubled on that score than he had usually been. No; he loved her in his old way. They were in the jail again, and she tended him, and he had constant need of her, and could not turn without her; and he even told her, sometimes, that he was content to have undergone a great deal for her sake. As to her, she bent over his bed with her quiet face against his, and would have laid down her own life to restore him.

......

Thus for ten days Little Dorrit bent over his pillow, laying her cheek against his. Sometimes she was so worn out that for a few minutes they would slumber together. Then she would awake; to recollect with fast-flowing silent tears what it was that touched her face; and to see, stealing over the cherished face upon the pillow, a deeper shadow than the shadow of the Marshalsea wall.

Quietly, quietly, all the lines of the plan of the great Castle melted, one after another. Quietly, quietly, the ruled and cross-ruled countenance on which they were traced, became fair and blank. Quietly, quietly, the reflected marks of the prison bars and of the zig-zag iron on the wall-top, faded away. Quietly, quietly, the face subsided into a far younger likeness of her own than she had ever seen under the grey hair, and sank to rest.

At first her uncle was stark distracted. "O my brother! O William, William! You to go before me! you to go alone! you to go, and I to remain! You, so far superior, so distinguished, so noble; I, a poor useless creature, fit for nothing, and whom no one would have missed!"

It did her, for the time, the good of having him to think of, and to succour. "Uncle, dear uncle, spare yourself,—

spare me !"

The old man was not deaf to the last words. When he did begin to restrain himself, it was that he might spare her. He had no care for himself; but, with all the remaining power of the honest heart, stunned so long and now awaking to be broken, he honoured and blessed her.

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'O God," he cried, before they left the room, with his wrinkled hands clasped over her, "Thou seest this daughter

of my dear dead brother! All that I have looked upon, with my half-blind and sinful eyes, Thou hast discerned clearly, brightly. Not a hair of her head shall be harmed before Thee. Thou wilt uphold her here, to her last hour. And I know thou wilt reward her hereafter !"

They remained in a dim room near, until it was almost midnight, quiet and sad together. At times his grief would seek relief in a burst like that in which it had found its earliest expression; but, besides that his little strength would soon have been unequal to such strains, he never failed to recall her words, and to reproach himself and calm himself. The only utterance with which he indulged his sorrow, was the frequent exclamation that his brother was gone, alone; that they had been together in the outset of their lives; that they had fallen into misfortune together; that they had kept together through their many years of poverty; that they had remained together to that day; and that his brother was gone alone, alone!

They parted, heavy and sorrowful. She would not consent to leave him anywhere but in his own room, and she saw him lie down in his clothes upon his bed, and covered him with her own hands. Then she sank upon her own bed, and fell into a deep sleep,-the sleep of exhaustion and rest, though not of complete release from a pervading consciousness of affliction. Sleep, good Little Dorrit. Sleep through the night!

It was a moonlight night; but the moon rose late, being long past the full. When it was high in the peaceful firmament, it shone through half-closed lattice blinds into the solemn room where the stumblings and wanderings of a life had so lately ended. Two quiet figures were within the room; two figures, equally still and impassive, equally removed by an untraversable distance from the teeming earth and all that it contains, though soon to lie in it.

One figure reposed upon the bed. The other, kneeling on the floor, drooped over it; the arms easily and peacefully resting on the coverlet; the face bowed down, so that the lips touched the hand over which with its last breath it had bent. The two brothers were before their Father; far beyond the twilight judgments of this world; high above its mists and obscurities.

III. THE VISION OF MIRZA.

(ADDISON.)

Joseph Addison was the son of a clergyman in Wiltshire. Born 1672; died 1719. He wrote a tragedy, "Cato," "The Campaign,"-"Letter from Italy," and other poems. But his fame rests on his essays in the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, and his other prose works.

WHEN I was at Grand Cairo I picked up several Oriental manuscripts, which I have still by me. Among others, I met with one entitled "The Visions of Mirza," which I have read over with great pleasure. I intend to give it to the public when I have no other entertainment for them; and shall begin with the first vision, which I have translated word for word as follows:

"On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on the vanity of human life; and passing from one thought to another, 'Surely,' said I, 'man is but a shadow, and life a dream.' Whilst I was thus musing, I cast mine eyes towards the summit of a rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him, he applied it to his lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious and altogether different from anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in paradise, to wear out the impressions of their last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures.

"I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of a Genius, and that several had been entertained with music who had passed by it; but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. When he had raised