had left, and begged her to open it on the spot. It was a legal deed, making over to Mary H----, in free gift, the ground on which she stood--a broad strip from the tip of the hill to the waters of the lake. The widow's tears rained fast upon it. "Both God and man are very good to me," she said; "I am lonely but not forsaken. But, Catherine, it is you to whom I must speak. I have tried to speak before, but never felt I could till now. Oh, Catherine! stay with me; let us never be parted. God gave you to me when He took all else beside; He has not done it for naught. I can bear to return to my lonely home if you will share it--I can bear to see this valley, this grave again, if you are with me. I am not afraid of tying your cheerfulness to my sorrow; I feel that I am under a calamity, but I feel also that I am under no curse--you will help to make it a blessing. Oh! complete your sacred work, give me years to requite to you your last few days to me. You have none who need you more--none who love you more. Oh! follow me; here, on my child's grave, I humbly entreat you, follow me." Catherine trembled; she stood silent a minute, and then, with a low, firm voice, replied, "Here, on your child's grave, I promise you. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God." She kept her promise and never repented it. LIFE OF BLAKE, THE GREAT ADMIRAL. Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, in August, 1599. His father, Humphrey Blake, was a merchant trading with Spain--a man whose temper seems to have been too sanguine and adventurous for the ordinary action of trade, finally involving him in difficulties which clouded his latter days, and left his family in straitened circumstances: his name, however, was held in general respect; and we find that he lived in one of the best houses in Bridgewater, and twice filled the chair of its chief magistrate. The perils to which mercantile enterprise was then liable--the chance escapes and valorous deeds which the successful adventurer had to tell his friends and children on the dark winter nights--doubtless formed a part of the food on which the imagination of young Blake, "silent and thoughtful from his childhood," was fed in the "old house at home." At the Bridgewater grammar-school, Robert received his early education, making tolerable acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and acquiring a strong bias toward a literary life. This _penchant_ was confirmed by his subsequent career at Oxford, where he matriculated at sixteen, and where he strove hard, but fruitlessly, for scholarships and fellowships at different colleges. His failure to obtain a Merton fellowship has been attributed to a crotchet of the warden's, Sir Henry Savile, in favor of tall men: "The young Somersetshire student, thick-set, fair-complexioned, and only five feet six, fell below his standard of manly beauty;" and thus the Cavalier warden, in denying this aspirant the means of cultivating literature on a little university oatmeal,