Delia is at middle life when she writes her book, but then it is no young girl's story with an imperious Rochester-like hero, that we used to shiver over and adore. It is a serious, inspiriting woman's book, and carries weight in spite of the flood of new literature. Charles Reed has followed a manly, pure, and high-minded Christian course, and left an impress on the hurrying world. Josie has grown broader and more intelligent, and made a delightful household mother. There have been children enough to satisfy Grandmamma Reed. These old friends meet now and then, and talk as people will when they begin to go down the decline on the other side of the hill that they climbed with such a light step and high heart. How simple life was then compared with the ramifications of to-day! The old songs, the old poets, the old novelists are gone. "Jane Eyre" no longer holds us spell-bound, though the three sisters in the bleak old Haworth Rectory will never be forgotten; nor that strange "Rosemary," and Huntingdon's "Lady Alice," thought to be so unsettling to the faith. We read "Robert Elsmere," and "John Ward, Preacher," and go our way tranquilly. Education has become almost a synonym for genius. The gold of the Pacific Coast, the oil wells, the rich spoils of the earth, have been touched with the wand of industry and science. Railroads run to and fro; vessels dot the ocean; we cross it now in less than a week. Cables bring us hour-old news from everywhere. We go abroad for seasons and touch elbows with royalty, and are not abashed. We gather the beauty and wisdom of the old world. We build palaces, and spend on an evening's entertainment what would have been a fortune fifty years ago. We have private palace-cars, and luxurious yachts for pleasure, and others for speed, so swift that the "America's Cup" has remained in our keeping all these years. Will we presently utter the old cry of the wise man who "gat him everything," "that all is vanity"? When the children are asleep the little grandmother goes down to her son's study. He is not ambitious for show or wealth, but he has a rather luxurious side. The rugs are soft; the chairs are easy, the library is filled with choice books. Sometimes she sits and reads, and brave old Thackeray is one of her favourites. It is as her lover said,--it takes years and experience to see all the tender, hidden mysteries of his best speech.