The reader, perhaps, may ask, “are we to have nothing but good people in this book?” Let him wait a little. We shall find their foil presently, and pray do not let any one fall into the mistake of supposing that there is any thing inherently monotonous in goodness. Far from it. It has as infinite variety as evil. Its scope is as extensive, from the most sublime deed of devotion or self-sacrifice, to the smallest act of kindness. Nay, it is more vast than evil; for I cannot but think that goodness embraces all things, while evil only touches a part. It is because the mind of man is too small to comprehend the magnitude of goodness that he fancies it limited, as a child gazing at the sky, thinks that there is a blue wall to space. It is because his mind is too dim and feeble, too much accustomed to struggle with impurer things, that he cannot reach its heights or penetrate its depths, and conceive the infinite variety it affords. The salmon can leap up the cataract, or dart against the current of the turbid stream, but he cannot soar into the sky like the eagle, and at one glance take in a world below. The most sublime thing in the whole universe is goodness, and it is the sweetest too. Happy, right happy do I believe myself to have been thus, in youth, associated with two such good and kindly beings. At that period of life, the plastic nature of the child receives, in a great degree, its future shape and form. The impressions are deep, and, once hardened, ineffaceable: the character receives its bent, the mind its tone and coloring, and although I may have done many things in life which I regret, and which they could not have approved, yet their goodness has been always in my memory as a light-house to show me the way across the dark and struggling waters of life, and to welcome me home to port, however far I may have wandered astray. I cannot conceive any greater blessing can be bestowed on youth than the companionship of the really good. I speak not of the stiff and rigid. I speak not of the harsh and the severe. I speak not even of the self-denying, the sober, and the circumspect. The example of anchorite or puritan, never effected much upon the heart of youth. But I speak of the really good, and they are not good if they are not gentle; for the reverse of gentleness is wrong. I speak of the good who learn from the fountain of all goodness to be happy, and to make happy; and who know that it is part of the commandment, to enjoy. THE FIRST ADVENTURE.