Ernest Carrington sat in the retirement of his little study, and gave himself up to thought. His scholastic labours were over for the day, and with a head too tired for mental occupation, and a heart too full of the great problem of existence to find pleasure in frivolous amusements, he sat resting his aching brow upon his hand, pondering the mighty enigma of human life in general, and his own individual experience of it in particular. He thought of the aspirations of his boyhood, of the bright hopes of his later youth, and mentally compared them with the dark reality of his manhood; he called to mind the dreams of greatness which he had pictured to himself--not the-false and hollow greatness of mere rank and riches, but the true greatness of living to become a benefactor to his species; the greatness which he sought when he took upon him the duties, and privileges, and responsibilities of his sacred calling; greatness the praise whereof is uttered by the lips of widows and orphans, and written on broken and contrite hearts, to be transferred thence, by an angel’s hand, to the Book of Life. And then, for he was young and loving-hearted, he thought of softer, brighter visions; of a fair ideal being, with an angel’s brow and a woman’s form, who should pass by his side through life, and, loving him more than all things else save the GOD who gave them, to each other, should meet him again, and be his reward in Heaven, where perfect bliss could be ensured by the certainty that they should part no more. And in what had these bright visions ended?--a life of solitary drudgery. Even independence, the one thing that sweetens labour--the power of carrying out his own ideas of right and wrong--even that, by his subordinate position, was denied to him. And why was all this? What wrong had he committed, to deserve so severe a punishment? Why was he condemned to this mental prison-discipline, this alternation between psychological oakum-picking and solitary confinement? Nay, was not his present position, the result of his own unselfishness and liberality? If he had not given up his patrimony for the benefit of his sisters, nor relinquished his claim upon the entailed property, he would have possessed a fair income, on which he could have lived comfortably until he should have met with some ecclesiastical preferment, the duties of which would have afforded him the opportunities he sought of devoting himself to the good of others. If not permitted to exercise the talents committed to him to the glory of God, why was he born into this world at all? Poor Ernest! he had yet to learn that hardest of all lessons, to an eager, energetic spirit: he had yet to acquire belief in the great truth, that “------They also serve Who stand and wait.”