The providence of God towards this great family, therefore, seems to be very marked and significant. They have been preserved for centuries in great numbers and vigorous manhood, notwithstanding their perpetual intestine strifes and the cruel desolations that have been occasioned by the slave trade, along both their eastern and western borders. They are in possession of a country that is not only healthful and productive, but whose navigable streams seem to have been traced out by the finger of Divine Providence for the twofold purpose of facilitating intercommunication among the people themselves, and of furthering the rapid diffusion of the Gospel wherever it has once gained a footing. Then their language, with all its wonderful characteristics, seems to have been kept by the Divine hand as an easy channel through which the light and blessings of the Gospel might, in God’s own good time, reach their dark and benighted minds. J. LEIGHTON WILSON, in _The Catholic Presbyterian_. * * * * * A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY. BY MRS. H. G. GUINESS. A wealthy farmer who cultivated some thousands of acres, had, by his benevolence, endeared himself greatly to his large staff of laborers. He had occasion to leave the country in which his property was situated, for some years; but, before doing so, he gave his people clearly to understand that he wished the whole of the cultivated land to be kept in hand, and all the unclaimed marsh lands to be enclosed and drained, and brought into cultivation—that even the hills were to be terraced, and the poor mountain pastures manured—so that no single corner of the estate should remain neglected and barren. Ample resources were left for the execution of these works, and there were sufficient hands to have accomplished the whole within the first few years of the proprietor’s absence. He was detained in the country to which he had been called very many years. Those whom he left children were men and women when he came back, and so the number of his tenantry and laborers was vastly multiplied. Was the task he had given them to do accomplished? Alas! no. Bog and moor and mountain waste were only wilder and more desolate than ever. Fine rich virgin soil, by thousands of acres, was bearing only briars and thistles. Meadow after meadow was utterly barren for want of culture; nay, by far the larger part of the farm seemed never to have been visited by his servants.