and on the Sabbath mornings, I was wont to steal, as if unobserved, into the first country church, or rather place of worship, which I found open. I was there unknown; and in a congregation of English peasantry, the one-half of whom were in their smock-frocks, there were none to observe the shabbiness of my garments. And in the plainness of everything around me, there was something that accorded with my frame of mind, and in the midst of which I felt happier, and more at ease, than I could in the splendid cathedral or the gaudy chapel of a great city. It was in the month of May, and the sweet blossom, like odoriferous snow, lay on the hawthorn. The lark sang over me its Sabbath hymn. The sun had just risen, and, like the canopy of a celestial couch on which an angel might have reposed, the clouds, like curtains of red and gold, seemed drawn asunder. I sat beneath a venerable elm-tree, over which more than a hundred winters had passed; but their frosts had not nipped the majesty of its beauty. Above me a goldfinch chirmed and fed its young, and they seemed ready to break away upon the wing. It chirped to them, it fluttered from branch to branch, to allure them from the nest. One bolder than the rest ventured to follow, but ignorant of the strength of its wings, it fell upon the ground. The parent bird descended, and with strange motions mourned over it, anxiously striving again to teach it to ascend and regain its nest. My first impulse was to take up the little flutterer, to climb the tree, and replace it in the home which its first parent had built; but I lay and watched its motions for a few minutes. Again and again by a bold effort it endeavoured to reach the lofty branch where its parent had poised its nest, but as often it fell upon the ground, and its little breast panted on the earth. At length it perched upon the lowest twig, and from it got to others higher and higher, turning round proudly as it ascended, as if conversing with its parent, happy in what it was achieving, until the nest was regained. "There," I exclaimed--"there is an example of perseverance; and a lesson is taught me by that little bird. It attempted too much at once, and its efforts were unsuccessful; it endeavoured to rise step by step, and it has gained the object it desired. That bird shall be my monitor, and I will endeavour to rise step by step, even as it has done." I returned to London, and as I went, the attempts of the little bird were the text on which my thoughts dwelt. By sedulous attention to my duties, I began to rise in the esteem of my employer, the law stationer, and he increased my salary from seven shillings to a guinea a-week. I said unto myself, that, like the young bird, I had gained a higher branch.