“Oh! how sweet to feel and know E’en in this hour of dread, that dear to Thee Is the confiding spirit!” E. TAYLOR. “Henceforth I learn that to obey is best, And love with fear the only God; to walk As in His presence; ever to observe His providence, and on Him sole depend, Merciful over all His works, with good Still overcoming evil, and by small Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise By simply meek!” MILTON. It is the darkest hour of night, that hour which precedes the dawn. A thousand stars are spangling the deep azure of the sky, looking down, like angels’ eyes, on a world of sin and sorrow. Augustine’s gaze is fixed upon one beauteous planet, which, in its calm light, outshines the tremulous glory of the constellations. Mabel has wearily fallen asleep where she sits, resting her head on her arm, the piercing cold of the upper air making her slumber the deeper. The earl, still stretched at the bottom of the car, is also finding a short oblivion of woe, and in dreams is wandering again upon the warm, bright, joyous earth, with Annabella at his side. Augustine, on his dizzy height, in the stillness of the hour, feels himself alone with his God. The conversation held at the vicarage with his brother now recurs to his mind with a deep and solemn effect. Augustine draws a mental parallel between his own present awful position and that in which his soul has for so long unfearingly remained. Has he not been, as it were, floating between earth and heaven, carried up by his pride, full inflated as that swollen ball which is at this moment bearing him onward perhaps to destruction! Has he any reason to rejoice that he has risen high above the mass of his fellow-creatures, if his very exaltation prove the means of his deeper fall!