and raises us, of all speculations, the highest above earthly evils. Youth reads history only from curiosity, as it cons a story; to maturity it becomes a divinely consoling and edifying companion, preparing it gently by its wise discourses for a higher and more embracing sphere of action, and acquainting it through intelligible images with the unknown world. The church is the dwelling-house of history, the church-yard its symbolic flower-garden. History should only be written by old and pious men, whose own is drawing to its close, and who have nothing more to hope for, but transplantation to the garden. Their descriptions will be neither obscure nor dull; on the contrary a ray from the spire will exhibit everything in the most exact and beautiful light, and the Holy Spirit will hover above these rarely stirred waters." "How true and obvious are your remarks," said the old man. "We ought certainly to spend more labor in faithfully recording the occurrences of our own times, and should leave our record as a devout bequest for posterity. There are a thousand remoter matters to which care and labor are devoted, while we trouble ourselves little with the nearer and weightier, the occurrences of our lives, and those of our relatives and generation, whose fleeting destiny we have comprehended in the idea of a Providence. We heedlessly suffer all traces of these to escape from our memories. Like consecrated relics, all facts of the past will be sought for by a wiser future, not indifferent to the biography of the most insignificant man, since in his life the lives of all his greater contemporaries will be more or less reflected."