With most of us it is only when we are nigh unto death that we learn what it is to live. We talk of acquainting ourselves with the lives of eminent persons, when we read a record of the events through which they have passed; we call our own lives desolate, because events of a painful nature have befallen us; but these are not our life. Life—the principle which makes us sentient, intelligent, active beings; the principle by which we hold converse with the living spirit of beauty and goodness, by which—if we pervert not its heavenly aims—assimilating with that spirit incarnated in the adorable Saviour, we rise from the finite to the infinite, and, resting on the bosom of love, find blessedness when that which made our happiness has vanished from our grasp; this life no events can make desolate. Sorrow may darken our sky, but the loving, trusting child of God rises above its gloomy cloud, and there shines his life supremely bright. Who shall penetrate into the spirit’s mysterious intercourse with Him, who inhabiting eternity, yet dwelleth with the humble and contrite heart? Reverently and humbly to illustrate this precious truth, to show that in His presence earth’s discords are harmonized, and peace and strength arise where all was disorder and weakness may be permitted—but there let us pause, lest we be as the fools who “rush in where angels dare not tread.” * * * * * BY G. A BERTIE. STANZAS. I am not what I was—the time’s gone by When, bright and cloudless as the summer’s sky, My day of life began; When all was music to my raptured ear, And, bounding onward, without grief or fear, Eager my course I ran. I am not what I was—the sense of youth, And hope, and joyous feeling, and the truth Of earth, hath passed away; The heart that once throbbed high with health and life Beats faint and wearied with the ceaseless strife Which there has held its sway. * * * * * BY G. P. R. JAMES. Long experience of any thing existing, has shown mankind all its benefits and all its evils; but beside this, there is an indirect advantage in retaining that which is, namely, that it has adjusted itself to the things by which it is surrounded; and there is an indirect disadvantage in change, namely, that one can never calculate what derangements of all relations may take place, by any great alteration of even one small part in the complicated machine of any state or society. * * * * *