would love to dwell. Their daughters trim the shrubbery in the yard, and cultivate the rose, and partake themselves of the purity and the refinement of the rural scenes in the midst of which they are reared. In the village of Ruel, so unattractive to one accustomed to the rich beauty of New England towns, we found the church, an old, cracked, mouldering and crumbling stone edifice, built five hundred years ago. It was picturesque in its aspect, venerable from its historical associations, and as poorly adapted as can well be imagined for any purposes to which we in America appropriate our churches. The floor was of crumbling stone, worn by the footfalls of five centuries. There were enormous pillars supporting the roof, alcoves running in here and there, a pulpit stuck like the mud nest of a swallow upon a rock. The village priest was there catechising the children. A large number of straight-backed, rush-bottomed chairs were scattered about in confusion, instead of pews. These old Gothic churches, built in a semi-barbarian age, and adapted to a style of worship in which the pomp of paganism and a corrupted Christianity were blended, are to my mind gloomy memorials of days of darkness. Visions of hooded monks, of deluded penitents, of ignorant, joyless generations toiling painfully through them to the grave, impress and oppress the spirit. In one corner of the church, occupying a space some twenty feet square, we saw the beautiful monument reared by Eugene and Hortense to their mother. It was indeed a privilege to stand by the grave of Josephine; there to meditate upon life's vicissitudes, there to breathe the prayer for preparation for that world of spirits to which Josephine has gone. How faithful her earthly love; how affecting her dying prayer! clasping the miniature of the Emperor fervently to her bosom, she exclaimed, "O God! watch over Napoleon while he remains in the desert of this world. Alas! though he hath committed great faults, hath he not expiated them by great sufferings? Just God, thou hast looked into his heart, and hast seen by how ardent a desire for useful and durable improvements he was animated! Deign to approve my last petition. And may this image of my husband bear me witness that my latest wish and my latest prayer were for him and for my children." As the Emperor Alexander gazed upon her lifeless remains, he exclaimed, "She is no more; that woman whom France named the Beneficent; that angel of goodness is no more. Those who have known Josephine can never forget her. She dies regretted by her offspring, her friends, and her contemporaries."