The old gentleman smiled again. "All the fine spring bonnets of Easter-Sunday do not prove the youth of every face under them, and I wonder whether this splendid celebration of Easter means that you are a more religious people than in the plainer Easter days that I remember. Is the sincerity of religious feeling always in proportion to the magnificence of the ritual? If it be, you have become a deeply religious people, especially in your great city. We used to think at the legation in Rome that the people of that city were in danger of mistaking a punctual observance of religious ceremonies for religion. But you are so intelligent that you are, of course, in no such danger. I accept these beautiful flowers and this pretty procession of new bonnets as the proof of your religious progress." The Ambassador paused reflectively a moment, and then continued: "You send a great many missionaries to India and elsewhere. Is it because you have no work for them at home? In my country, my benighted and heathen Sennaar, we have a proverb that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of profession. In Rome, I say, we used to fear lest the people, with crossings and dippings and genuflections and repetitions of a long series of invocations and confessions and penance and many ceremonies, might come to confound these things with religion. But I suppose that this blossoming Easter, this solemn abstention from 'the German' in Lent, and this interest in draperies and postures, mean that you devote the same energy and time and care to studying how to help the helpless, how to console the suffering, how to teach poverty to hope and labor for its own relief. It means that the richly attired Christians who are walking in the most fashionable spring bonnets to church on Easter-Sunday have learned who is their neighbor, and what their duty is towards him, and are diligently doing it." The Ambassador removed his eyeglasses, and turned to smile blandly upon the group of club-men near him. "This reflection," he continued, "makes me very happy, and fills me with reverence for a Christian people. For if you built superb churches in one street, and tolerated heathen squalor of soul and body in the next street, you would crucify Christianity. No, no: these sweet flowers of Easter are not symbols of your words, but of your work; not of your professions, but of your practice." The old gentleman resumed his glasses, and looked silently at the thronged street. How comfortable to believe with our venerable friend, and to perceive that the great increase in the beauty of the Easter commemoration is the fitting symbol of the corresponding increase in our religious faith and practice! JENNY LIND.