is joy and innocent happiness. They reach the shore, passing beneath the long, black tresses of the attendant maidens, and embark with sober state to voyage around the lake. This rite performed, the sun ever shines more brightly on the harvest, and the dews descend gently on the young promise of the meadows. Ganri propitious smiles upon the undertakings of her favorite race. Ganga, then, would spring up in delight, and with sparkling eyes wish to remove from their quiet retreat and visit these brilliant festivals. Gently the old man reproaches her, and warns her of ambitious wishes. His kindly words fall as quiet and soothing on the soul of Ganga as the shades of evening on the silent leaves of the forest. But hark! from the distant jungle resounds the howl of the panther, and the muttering of the king of the beasts! The child shrinks fearful and awe-struck into the arms of her protector, as the timid leaves bow before the blast of the tempest. Faltering rose her voice as the quivering notes of the songster, when the thunder rolls in the ether, when fleeing its dread approach, she seeks her sheltered nest, her callow and expectant young, seizing the opportunity when great emotions bare the inner soul, and adapt it to softer impressions. Nikaiyah would speak of the love, the providence always waking; tell her of her perilous voyage on the Ganges, describe her preservation, and ask if she feared the wild beasts, who obeyed their master’s orders. Then the old doctrine of the transmigration would glimmer on her young mind, when explained with persuasive eloquence, like the faint first twinklings of Hesperus, and with as mild and benignant an influence. She would hang upon his words with large, attentive eyes, as he told her that even the ferial nature of the wildest monster was filled by a penance-doing spirit that once had felt as she did—alas! the expiation! Therefore the pious Brahmin forbore to destroy a living thing, fearful of injuring a brother—for then would the unfortunate begin his weary pilgrimage anew. Beware, mortal, of defeating the purposes of Bramah! That to avoid or shorten this term of suffering the good man lived secluded from the world, devoting himself to the study of his own breast, and seeking to know his Creator, or subjected himself to privation, to torture, and to death, to gain the reward of martyrdom unspotted by earthly taint, unwearied by earthly transmigration. Thus did the priests for themselves and others atoning, as did of old in Christian infancy Simon Stylites. For this had Nikaiyah shut himself up in the forest, in voluntary retirement, for a term of years which was even now expiring. Then to the mind of Ganga would come the thought of a previous life, when she might have roamed under some different form through the forest, returned by an accident to her human probation. Vague thoughts like these would steal upon her spirit, like the waves of a distant ocean, an indefinite sea of former existence, surging, rising