We have given this simple story--simple in all its bearings--as an instance of how much real heroism is daily enacted, how much true morality daily cherished, under the most unfavourable conditions. A widow and her young son cast on the world without sufficient means of living--a brave boy battling against poverty and sickness combined, and doing his small endeavour with manful constancy--a dying youth, whose whole soul is penetrated with love, as with a divine song: all these are elements of true human interest, and these are circumstances to be found in every street of a crowded city. And to such as these is the divine mission of brotherly charity required; for though poverty may not be relieved by reason of our inability, suffering may always be lightened by our sympathy. It takes but a word of love, a glance of pity, a gentle kiss of affection--it takes but an hour of our day, a prayer at night, and we may walk through the sick world and the sorrowful as angels dropping balm and comfort on the wounded. The cup of such human love as this poured freely out will prove in truth 'twice blessed,' returning back to our own hearts the peace we have shed on others. Alas! alas! how thick the harvest and how few the reapers! VISIT TO A SPOT CONNECTED WITH THE BIOGRAPHY OF BURNS. Having occasion to spend a few days of the beautiful July of the present year in the lower part of Nithsdale, I felt tempted to bestow a forenoon upon an effort to discover and examine a particular spot in the district connected with the history of the poet Burns, but respecting which a doubt has till lately existed. The subject was the more excitingly placed before me, by my seeing every morning, from my bedroom windows, the smiling farmstead of Ellisland, which the poet built, and where he spent more than four years of his life. Daily beholding his simple home, and the fields he had tilled, I felt a revived interest in his sad history and everything associated with it. All the readers of Burns are of course acquainted with his extravagant Bacchanalian lyric, beginning-- O Willie brewed a peck o' maut, And Rab and Allan cam to prie; Three blither hearts that lee-lang night Ye wadna find in Christendie.