ness this earth would be without them. Mary Howitt expresses our own thoughts, as true poets ever do, when she says:

"God might have made the earth bring forth Enough for great and small,

The oak tree and the cedar tree,

Without a flower at all;

He might have made enough-enough

For every want of ours,
For luxury, medicine and toil,

And yet have made no flowers."

From time immemorial flowers have been associated with love and tenderness, indeed, tenderness is a part of love, for whatever we love most we are most tender of. Whatever appeals to the heart fosters and strengthens the affections. It is perhaps because the Spring is the season when flowers are freshest, and birds sing sweetest, and skies are bluest, that love is strongest. And one's own heart is so full of the tender passion that one wonders what the birds say to each other, and what the flowers think, and the poet sings of their secrets in strains like these:

"I wonder what the Clover thinks,
Intimate friend of Bob-o-links,
Lover of Daisies slim and white,
Waltzer with Buttercups at night,

Oh, who knows what the Clover thinks?
No one unless the Bob-o-links!"

Who would sing such a song except one in love, yes, in love with nature? And who that has felt the divine sentiment in its purity and intensity does not

know that to be in love glorifies all beauty? In Eastern lands, where love is said to be most intense, there flowers abound and fruits are most luxuriant. Flowers in the fields and meadows feast the eye of the traveler and inspire the pen of the poet, but flowers in and about the home are indications of beauty in life and character. Their influence is always good and brightening. The lowliest cottage is handsomely adorned when flowers are blooming round it, and graceful vines trail o'er its doorways or its portico. Even those who pass by respect its inmates more, and to the indwellers these simple adornments are often of more value in adding to their happiness and enjoyment than the elegancies and splendor of the rich.

Nature herself is rich in embellishment, if we will but dispose her varied gifts becomingly. At all seasons of the year the poet may find himself in harmony with nature, but the Spring has many advantages, many charms to beguile the poet into musical, mazy rhythm. Therefore we should be lenient with even the humblest aspirant who sips at the perennial fount of poesy, remembering that all are weak compared to the great Author of that nature to which we are indebted for our subjects. Undoubtedly Spring is the poet's season, for it is then God's goodness strikes us most forcibly, and the poet must drink freely from the pure fount of knowledge, and all intelligence comes from Him, and He is love. Amethyst.

In the Heavens, are parents single?

No; the thought makes reason stare.
Truth is reason, truth eternal,

'Tells me I've a mother there!

That this conception seems to find sympathy in experience,every heart bears witness by response. The love of a mother is the most precious thing of earth; nothing so unfaltering, so unselfish, so angelic as a mother's love; no wayward action, no unappreciative disposition, no studied indifference, no long separation, no wearying sickness, ever seems to blunt or extinguish a mother's love; all else in life may fail-friendship, position morality, wealth-loneliness and neglect may settle as the sables of night on Nature's landscape, but the mother's heart turns ever in affection to her children, and her hopes fail not, as to their ultimate redemption from even the most fearful fall.

Now, if amid the changes and perplexities of this life, we see so much devotion, what must have been the childhood and motherhood of the world behind? First thought in regard to this would suggest that, as the ills of mortality are there unexperienced and unknown, the barriers which exist and bar the way to maturity here are there unknown also; no such thing as early or infantile dissolution comes into spiritual experience; while agency may be there eternal, there is such an eternity of accumulated experience that no chance, or accident, or disease, prevents the full development of spiritual manhood or womanhood, so far as stature is concerned; food, clothing, climate, schools, associations, homes, are all surely so based and formed as to insure maturity to all of spirit born. In the designs of the Almighty Father of the vast host of spirits who have peopled this planet, it was provided, that those who in the righteous exercise of their agency honored their first estate, should at some period receive a taberna

ganizations as individuals have to possess certain qualifications as to length of existence before they come here, we are not informed; but that there is method and order in their coming may easily be concluded from analogy; while each individual probably understands the necessity for new probation, it cannot be a change undertaken at random; there must be provision made by procreation on the earth, before the spirit can leave its home; and as there can be no aimless wandering in search of bodies, so that they cannot go anywhere at will, would also seem to be self-evident.

Spirits tabernacle in heathendom as in Christendom, among the meanest and poorest, as among the most noble and wealthy of the earth; they tabernacle with the red races, the black, yellow and white races, and in every conceivable condition of mental, moral and spiritual growth and development among those several races; they become subject to these diverse conditions, not so much, probably, as a matter of personal choice as because of parentage, or in some way as the penalty or reward of agency or worthiness, or of lineage in some phase of their pre-existence. There appears to be a degree of humiliation in the path of progressive beings, nevertheless, to compress, within the tiny form of babyhood, that spiritual form which has lived and enjoyed the plenitude of spiritual growth and power for periods uncomprehended in earth experience, and must, except under vivid sense of blessing and power, to be secured only in this direction, be an apparent degradation; so it was said of Jesus, that, "in his humiliation his judgment was taken away," and no doubt this fact enables the spirit to pass ordeals, in which, could its functions and powers be actively exercised, might produce utter loathing and disgust.

At what time the spirit enters the puny tabernacle, we may not closely say; some have thought this occurred at conception, others at what is known as "quickening," but with more propriety may we not suppose that the entrance of the spirit is at or about the moment of

birth, when that life ceases which sprang from connexion with the mother? A little imagination might further suggest that the first universal cry of infant being is the last realizing sense of entrance upon the period of its humiliation. Philosophers and scientists, and nurses and parents have taken pride in marking and explaining the wonderful expansion and growth of infancy, through childhood and youth, to manhood, and much of this has been attributed to food, care, surroundings and to many other causes; but that these will not induce continuous expansion and growth is apparent to all observation; after men and women attain their full stature, no generous diet or extra condition will enlarge, save in rotundity, the form; probably in the fact of condensed spiritual form, and its inherent elasticity, aided by food, we have the key to the average stature of humankind. Under this thought some might ask: What then is the condition of the spiritual form of those who die in infancy? From remarks made by the Prophet Joseph, it is understood that those who thus die will be raised as infants; and some have inferred that were it other wise, the mother who laid her love and her life beneath the sod when the babe "went on," would be unable to enjoy recognition of the loved, unless received as she laid it down. This implies (what may be an error) that the recognition of family, and friends, and loved, depends upon the short and limited association of this life only, yet as the premises would be destroyed by other conditions, they therefore cannot exist as a general solution of the question; for instance, a mother dies, as is often the case, during the childhood of all her children; they continue to live and mature, then have families of their own, finally yielding up the tabernacle at a ripe old age. Now if recognition, if continuous love can only exist or find satisfaction in receiving the loved as last beheld, surely a vast volume of love by relentless fate is doomed to utter annihilation. Is it not more reasonable to suppose that recognition in the spirit world will come quite as forcibly and as naturally from associations,

friendships, loves and family groupings prior to the life that now is, as from the comparatively meagre and limited opportunities of the present?

It is not an uncommon thing to hear inquiries as to the subsistence of the spirit when identified with the body; if the spirit needed food and sustenance prior to this connection, the conclusion appears inevitable that it will need it under such connection. Some have thought that inasmuch as spirit is the life of all creations-animal, vegetable and mineralthat therefore in the processes of appropriation for the physical system, the spirit of these elements sustained the spiritual man organization, while the more crude elements of food went to the sustenance of the physical; others have said that "the night of the body was the day of the spirit," and that when the body in sleep is recuperating, the spirit is enjoying its own life, food, associations, and gathering strength for the union with the body. gested that restless sleep and the lassitude consequent thereon are because of incomplete conditions in one or both; whatever there may be of truth in these conjectures, we need not now inquire. We know that the body is, we know that the spirit is, we understand that it is "the spirit which quickeneth”— which giveth life;" and we are pretty well assured, by observation and experi ence, that when the spirit makes its final exit from the tabernacle, no food, no application of science, no medical skill or human experience, possesses the secret of restoration, or can renew the vital spark, when once "the weary wheels of life stand still."

succeeding daily It has been sugnights, unsound

The peculiarities of that severance of body and spirit which we call death is almost as inexplicable as the beginning. As to how the spirit "shuffles off this mortal coil," there may be many thoughts, but knowledge is very limited in the matter; some have thought it to be a very painful process; others, that being a natural order, it was without agony and without sorrow. Much might be said on both sides, and yet the truth remain unreached. It has been claimed

Menu lived at a very remote period, or if he only lived in fable, the Hindoo books setting forth the foregoing rude codification, have been in existence for ages, which proves that the author was not so far behind at that period in legal attainment. It appears that the ancients were more intent on devising than classifying. Classification is an attainment that belongs to the highest order of cultivated intellect. Prior to the introduction of Blackstone's Commentaries and Wood's Institutes, the body of English law lay strewn over an ambiguous mass of authorities, from which the jurist had to extract as well as he could.

Property with the Hindoos, as among all peoples, is the great subject of law, whether acquired by occupancy, descent, donation, or by contract and labor. Property, no doubt, in the first stage of its existence, was measured by possession; and the system was early acquired of selling for a certain consideration, or transferring by buying and selling. When any species of property changes hands through purchase, among the Hindoos, the transaction must be done in public to be valid. "He," says the law of Menu, "who has received chattel by purchase in open market, before a number of men, justly acquires the absolute property, by having paid the price for it." This must have been an ancient custom, for we learn from the book of Genesis, chapter xxxiii, that when Abraham bought a field to bury Sarah, the bargain was made in the presence of the people. The ancient Saxons prohibited the sale of every commodity above the value of twenty pence, except in open market. It sometimes occurred, under the head of “Sale without ownership," that the vender was not the owner of the goods sold; in such cases, to make the purchase valid, the vendee had to produce the vender. "If," says the law of Menu, "the vender be not produced and the vendee prove the public sale, the latter must be dismissed by the king without punishment, and the former owner, who lost the chattel, may take it back on paying the vendee half its value." It is also common among the Hindoos, as

among children, who ofttimes rue their bargains and have them annulled: a provision being incorporated in their law, that the buying and selling of property not perishable may be revoked within ten days, at the whims of either party.

The fixed price of commodities is not governed by the law of competition, “But let the king," says the ordinance of Menu, "establish rules for the sale and purchase of all marketable things, once in every five nights, or at the close of every half month, let him make a regulation for market prices."

In relation to that part of the law classed under the title of bailments, or a delivery of goods in trust, it has frequently occurred in the history of India, that the rich were necessitated to conceal, or place in trust,, much of their valuables, to keep them out of the hands of the spoiler. When the owner would call upon the temporary custodian for the deposited wealth, the bailee, in many instances, would disclaim all knowledge of any such deposit, and daring the bailor or plaintiff to prove what he alleges, and by this system of trickery defraud the plaintiff out of his deposited wealth. This principle of cunning deception must have existed from a very early period, for Menu has a provision covering such nefarious acts, which says: "On failure of witnesses to prove a deposit, let the judge actually deposit gold or precious things with the defendant by the artful contrivance of spies. Should he restore the deposit, he is to be held innocent; if he deny it, he is to be apprehended and compelled to pay the value of both."

In the line of personal services, and the disputes between master and servant occupy a very abridged place in their laws. Hindoo servants are divided into three distinct classes. First, a student who is preparing himself for the priestly order, who, while studying the Vedas, must do all the menial services of his preceptor, and for his hire receives instruction. Second, artificers, who receive a stipulated amount for their services, and where no agreement is made in relation to hire, receive one-tenth of what has accrued from their labor. The third