Those who have never felt a similar deprivation are necessarily disqualified from forming any adequate idea of the bitterness of parental grief, when the objects of their fondest solicitude are suddenly snatched from the grasp of their affections. It is difficult to say in what period of youthful history this stroke is severest, or when it is most tolerable; because every point of age has its peculiar attractions, and parental love will always imagine that to be the most afflicting in which the event occurs. Happy those who can adopt the language of one of the sweetest epitaphs that ever adorned a monument!-- "Liv'd--to wake each tender passion, And delightful hopes inspire; Died--to try our resignation, And direct our wishes higher:-- "Rest, sweet babe, in gentle slumbers, Till the resurrection morn; Then arise to join the numbers, That its triumphs shall adorn. "Though, thy presence so endearing, We thy absence now deplore; At the Saviour's bright appearing, We shall meet to part no more. "Thus to thee, O Lord, submitting, We the tender pledge resign; And, thy mercies ne'er forgetting, Own that all we have is thine." [45] It is not unusual for the providence of God to deprive us of those objects we had too exclusively and too fondly called _our own_, and the long enjoyment of which we had confidently anticipated. This is no capricious proceeding: it is marked by wisdom and goodness, since our real happiness depends on the regulation of those passions which, but for such dispensations, would rove with unhallowed eccentricity from the chief good. It is necessary that we should be trained in the school of adversity; and that by a course of corrective discipline, nicely adapted to each particular case, our characters should be gradually matured for a nobler existence. The manner in which the calamity to which we have referred overtook the Shunammite, is thus detailed by the faithful pen of inspiration. "And when the child was grown, it fell on a day that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, my head! And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. And when he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died." From this brief statement it is evident that this child was smitten by the sun, in consequence of exposing himself in the harvest field to the intensity of the season. In northern climates it is difficult to realize the danger; but in the torrid zone great precaution is necessary to avoid such calamities. Observing the effects of the sun's rays, Apollo is represented, in heathen mythology, as holding a bow, and shooting his arrows upon the earth. "Pay sacred reverence to Apollo's song, Lest watchful the far-shooting god emit His fatal arrows." PRIOR'S Callimachus.