The likeness of Cowper's mother led him to mourn for past delights, but this picture led the son to look in humble joy to that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. EDITH. * * * * * Original. LIGHT READING. During a recent tour in search of health and pleasure, I was surprised and pained at seeing the amount of light reading indulged in while traveling, by old and young of both sexes and all classes. I observed, while rapidly urged over our railways, many thus engaged--many purchasing eagerly the trash offered at every station, and could but regret they had not provided with the same care food for the mind, by placing in the satchel that contained sustenance for the body, some valuable book, some truthful work. Lake George, with its clear waters and lovely islands, its majestic, untrod mountains and historical associations, had not attractions sufficient to win the lovers of fiction from the false pages of life, to the open, beautiful book of Nature. It was a bright July morning when I stood upon the deck of the "John Jay." "The beautiful sun arose--and there was not A stain upon the sky, the virgin blue Was delicate as light, and birds went up And sang invisibly, the heavenly air Wooed them so temptingly." Now the mountain-tops were radiant with the golden light, now valley, lake, and green islet, rejoiced in the morning sun. Yet, at such an hour, amid such scenes, ladies and gentlemen were engrossed with the mawkish sentimentalities of fictitious narrations, their eyes closed to all the beauty of the time and place, their ears deaf to the delicious harmony of awakening nature. Lake Champlain, with its romantic ruins ever dear to the heart of an American, its verdant shores and rural villages, nestling in the valleys or crowning the hills, could scarce obtain a passing glance from those enraptured with the improbable if not impossible pictures of life.