"I can't get those poor fellows out of my head," said Tom Day to his wife, as late in the afternoon he stood with her in the garden of their quiet home. The wind had lulled, the rain had just ceased, the heavy clouds were passing away, the sun was breaking forth with a mild evening glow, and a bright rainbow spanning the heavens, interrupted only in one spot by a mass of black rolling smoke. “I can't get those poor fellows out of my head, I wish I could.”

"Do you?" replied Ellen. "Well, I hope that I shall remember them to the longest day I live. Oh Tom, Tom! how ashamed of myself I feel! what a thankless, ungrateful wretch I have been! I have been making miseries of my very mercies, while they have found bless ings in their terrible misfortune. Oh, dear Tom, forgive me. Help me, pray for me; when you see me giving way to my besetting sin, remind me of youder smoking wreck, and I think by God's grace, the recollection will not come into my mind in vain!"

And it did not? And in a year's time Sunny Nook was once more the happiest home, and Tom Day the happiest man in Winterbourne.

JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD AND LONDON.

THE CLOUD UPON THE MOUNTAIN.

AN ALLEGORY.

I WAS a stranger in a strange land. Indeed I am still a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers were. In that confession I declare plainly that I seek a country. I am a wayfaring man, a wanderer, a pilgrim far from my home; and on that plea, since I have no abiding city here, I ground my appeal to the charity of those among whom I dwell, that when my time of need comes, they would grant me, for such a season as I may need it, the only possession I shall ever ask at their hands, the possession of a burying-place.

It is toward evening, and the day is far spent. Few and evil have been the hours of my pilgrimage. Thankfully do I see around me unerring tokens that I am approaching my journey's end. I have yet a dark and dreary valley to cross, but my path hath long wound along the base of lofty mountains. I have walked through the vale of misery, and used it for a

well, yea, and have found its waters, though bitter, healthful. And now, though the deep and perilous abyss which yet remains to be passed, is, I am well aware, the awfulest and most terrible in all the universe of God, still I would fear no evil. I know in whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have entrusted unto Him against that day. To Him I have committed the keeping of my soul in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator. And my faith tells me that in that day He will commit His rod and staff to me to comfort me. I am confident that He which hath begun a good work in me, who in His mercy made me His child, and who in His pity hath led me these many years in the wilderness, to humble me, and to prove me, and to know what is in mine heart, whether I would keep His commandments or no-I am confident that He which hath begun a good work in me, will perform it unto the end, if only I be not wanting to myself.

I have been a stranger in strange lands, and it is ever the way with strangers to be struck with, and to mark circumstances and customs, which are not noticed, or are passed over by natives as matters too common to be thought about or commented upon. It may be that the

scenes and events which I am about to record, are an every-day sight in the land wherein I have been sojourning. I suppose this is the case, for I observed that none but myself stood to contemplate them; and this, methinks, could hardly have been the case, had the deep meaning of all that passed before me presented itself as strongly to the minds of others, as it did to my own. Use, no doubt, had deadened their perceptions, so that had I spoken to them of what was passing before their eyes, they would probably have said that I had put a visionary interpretation upon it, or that, like other travellers, I had been led astray by hasty impressions, and drawn my conclusions from insufficient grounds.

Perhaps it may have been so. But whether a sight which I saw of late in my wanderings was altogether such as it might have appeared to an indifferent spectator, or whether it had not in it more than met the careless eye; whether there did not lie beneath the surface, deep spiritual meanings, types of truth, lessons of heavenly wisdom, and awful warnings, let the reader judge.

I sat alone upon the summit of a vast fragment of rock, which, in some convulsion of nature, had been hurled from the mountain above, and had found a resting-place half-way between

the summit of the steep, and the waves which washed its base. It was a huge isolated crag, standing boldly out amidst a wilderness of confused masses of stone; for the scene around was one of ruin. Passing fair it was, for the growth of underwood, the spread of creepers, the colour and luxuriance of wild flowers, had done much in the lapse of ages to mask, at least to the casual passer-by, the desolation which must have ensued, when the work of creation was marred, and the grassy slopes and verdant thickets had been upturned from their base, by the sudden catastrophe which converted a garden into a wild and desolate wilderness of barren rocks and treacherous quagmires. The marshy spots seemed now, in the lapse of ages, and when viewed from a distance, to be clothed with healthy verdure, and the deep and dangerous chasms and fissures were, for the most part, concealed by tussocks of the hart's-tongue fern, or wreathed over with festoons of the bryony or clematis.

The ascent to the crag which I had chosen for my temporary resting-place, was rendered easy on one side by a flight of natural steps formed by the shelving layers or beds of stone, which had been thus irregularly wrenched from their