The genial air of May comes to us all laden with the sweet breath of opening blossoms, and has a balm for the spirits as well as for the health. It stirs within us a sentiment deeper than we know how to define, revives our chilled or buried ideals, and makes every heart young again. It cannot but give something of its own tone to our thought, and we find that in all nations this month has been a continued festival in the calendar, and associated with the loveliest imagery of earth and heaven. The heathen nations, who gave the month its present name, called it so after the fairest of their goddesses, and Christians following a similar sentiment, and desirous also of enlisting every natural feeling in the service of a purer faith, transferred the honors of Maia to Mary, and in every land white flowers deck the shrines of the Madonna, and the "Hail Mary" is the burden of the matin and vesper hymn. Some of the hymns and aspirations connected with the season convey thoughts with which an earnest Protestant may sympathize, and grateful for the maternal love that has made our lives so blessed, we cannot ridicule, although we cannot imitate the Italian devotee, who salutes the Holy Mother as the representative of God's tender mercy to man through her sex, in words of such fervor:-- "Joy of my heart! O let me pay To thee thine own sweet month of May. Mother! be love of thee a ray From Heaven to show the heavenward way. Sweet Day-Star! let thy beauty be A light to draw my soul to thee." May we not once more speak the name of Mary, the Blessed Mother, not to adore her as a divinity, but to win from her an illustration of our common humanity in one of its great sorrows and consolations? Cheerfully as under the returning smile of heaven, solemnly as in presence of much grief, our meditation now turns upon orphanage of the affections, as one of the facts of our homes, and upon the secondary relations which may be its solace. * * * * *