Passion, at this silent hour and awful scene, shrinks away unperceived, and every light idea flies off. The mind takes the reins, and the body seems for a while to partake of that spiritual nature it will have hereafter. Listen then, while reason is uninterrupted, to the silent councils of nature;---every shadow whispers, such are you! A breeze may blow you away---to-morrow you may be no more; tread then,---as now---with caution through the slippery paths of life; beware of the briars and thorns that lie athwart your way; mistake not shadow for substance. Brush away, as the dew on the ground, at every step, the little affairs that momentary rise to check your progress towards heaven. This river too has its lesson to give, she is like the cool hour of reflection, when conscience gives back the actions of our life in legible characters. Oh may they be as smooth! See, says she, how fair is my face! how transparent I am! You see my depth; even the ground whence I spring is open to your view. Let your conscience be ever as smooth, as clear, as open; let your breast need no disguise, so will no troubled waters impede your heavenly voyage. Now again behold the stars, they have a language; and with a powerful tongue, they call on me to adore the Great King of Heaven and Earth, whose name they write in golden characters legible to all mankind. They proclaim him, _Creator of all Worlds, and the Friend of Man_. Let me, then, often read their book and listen to their tale.---Let me, like them, proclaim my maker’s praise, by shining in the orb in which his hand has placed me; nor ever leap the bound, nor strive to rise above, nor dare to sink beneath the sphere wherein I am. So when the sun, and stars, and earth shall be no more; my Creator shall raise me to another world, “to shine like the stars for evermore.” [[Source: Earliest source found, with same “gloom” for “gleam” error: The lady’s magazine: entertaining companion, for the fair sex, appropriated solely to their use and amusement (London, vol. X, September 1779, pg 482), signed “An Old Correspondent”. Notes: “The bold luminary of day has now withdrawn his radiance, yet the sinking crimson of yonder western sky...”. This line was used in The Seasons of Life; With an Introduction on the Creation and Primeval State of Man, by Mary Ashdowne 1839 Quotation: “the hand that made it is divine”. Joseph Addison, “the hand that made us...”]] * * * * * _HAPPINESS._ The road to happiness is seldom strewed with flowers, nor perhaps ought it to be so; as we should, in that case, be inclined to take our passage for our port, and while we enjoyed the manna, we might neglect the promised land. * * * * * * * * * Interesting History Of THE PRINCESS DE PONTHIEU. _Translated from the French._ (Continued from page 67.)