few years had passed by, it became toil and weariness to him to trace the same rounds. Those who as playful boys, intent on sport, had been thrust into the stream that marked in one place the boundary of the parish, or dragged in another through a coppice, or driven up a tree as if in anger, to make them remember the boundaries, were now grave and thoughtful men, with young striplings beside them. A few years more, and not one of the grown-up people are left. The gospel-tree may remain, but of those who stood as boys or aged men, as young maidens or grave matrons, beneath its shade, some will be laid down in the narrow house, and others will not even present a trace of what they were. Another minister will fill the office of his predecessor, and even the younger children will be grown up to manhood. He who then passes through the village may see old and wrinkled persons looking from their cottage windows, or seated on the green to bless the procession. Those aged persons are strangely altered from what, they were. Who may recognise in them, the young men and maidens, who now with joyous hearts and unwearied steps, are pressing round the boundaries! Thus might have thought and felt the men and women who first stood beside the gospel-tree when the experience of a few short years gave them some little insight into the changes of human life. When not a trace of that company remained, others stood in the same place, and many thought the same among succeeding generations; content to suffer, and to see the breaking asunder of every earthly tie, of all that renders life desirable, while yet the sacred volume declares to those who read and understand, that the present state of human wretchedness is not designed to last for ever. [Illustration] [Illustration: CLIPSTONE PALACE] Ruins of Clipstone Palace. Where have ye gone, ye statesmen great, That have left your home so desolate? Where have ye vanished, king and peer, And left what ye liv'd for, lying here? Sin can follow where gold may not, Pictures and books the damp may rot; And creepers may hang frail lines of flowers Down the crevices of ancient towers: But what hath passed from the soul of mortal, Be it thought or word of pride, Hath gone with him through the dim, low portal, And waiteth by his side.--F. W. FABER.