piness and utility. I treat all the people around me as members of one large family, and from the interest I take in their welfare, although some may be wayward, yet eventually, all are drawn into my plan, and in many instances, the most obstinate opponents contribute now towards its support and

* The author cannot help giving here the letter of a friend on the subject of national schools, which, though written merely in the frankness of epistolary chit-chat, contains remarks well worthy the attention of those who are anxious to do good.

"I have been this morning to the annual meeting of our national school, where I have been witness to a little circumstance, which has not raised my opinion of Messrs. the Human Species. The people who conduct the school are a respectable couple about thirty, active, zealous, and very sensible of the importance of the cause in which they are engaged. They brought their respective children forward for examination in all the honest pride of conscious success, and after a great many fine speeches from the gentlemen about the benevolence of the institution, and many compliments to each other on their great charity and kindness, the woman was permitted to bring in her train of little ones, and begin the work of examination. She was leading them successively through the various branches of their education, with a countenance ex. pressive of the mingled feelings of pride and pleasure, tempered by those of anxiety and fear, (which must ever accompany such a task,) and proving beyond all

William was interrupted by a message from Charles, saying, "that a grand

doubt, the indefatigable zeal with which she had prosecuted her labours in the service of these poor children; when in the very midst of their explanation of their religious duties and scriptural knowledge, (on which she had bestowed her greatest pains) one of these men stepped up to her, and without any delicacy or feeling, showed her a piece of paper on which was written, 'do you not think we have had enough of this?' I saw the 'iron enter into her soul,' her voice fell, the glow of honest pride, hope, and anticipated triumph, was instantly exchanged for the pallid hue and trembling lip of disappointment and bitter mortification. She had been working early and late, for some time before the meeting, to prepare her children's minds for the trial; they had even forgotten their meals in their anxiety for a creditable examination. All this was rendered nugatory in the very moment of expected success, by a stupid man, who knowing nothing of the toil and difficulty which attend the task this poor woman had to perform, and finding himself no longer amused by the exhibition, when the speeches were over, thus snatched from her the highest gratification she could receive, the general approbation of her various employers, and the encouragement of her pupils.

They all presently withdrew in silence and dejection and I, seeing the working of their minds, (the mistress's especially), went down after them, and found half the poor girls in tears, and she in the midst of them; the moment she perceived the errand I had come upon, she burst into a suffocating, convulsive fit of crying herself, and I had a great deal to do to restore her to composure.

officer, (he thought he was a General,) having heard by chance, that sergeant Hallam was alive, was coming to the house to see him.

Her fears, she afterwards said, 'were, lest such repulsive discouragement should damp the ardour of her children, as she was sure it would do her own;' this I endeavoured to convince her, her better sense and wellregulated feelings would prevent, and that she would look higher for her recompence, when she had duly and temperately weighed the real nature and importance of the office, and perceived the good she was doing would remain, and operate beneficially, when all her mortifications were passed away.

"To you, my dear friend, this incident will not be wholly uninteresting, though my description of it may be tedious ; you will, with me, see the danger there may be in thus coldly damping the best energies of our natures, and checking the flow of real and active benevolence in its course. This good woman and her respectable helpmate, had done infinitely more than all the members of the meeting put together, for it is a far easier thing to take a bank note from the pocket, than it is to draw out the talents of the long neglected human mind. to humanise a being brought up for ten, twelve, or fourteen years, in ignorance and brutality, and make him duly sensible of the value of instruction, discipline, and good habits."

As this long note contains the sentiments of a lady, whose superior talents, benevloence, and experience, entitle her observations to serious attention, we trust

The General entered immediately, after his announcement; he was a good looking man turned of fifty, his lady hung upon his arm, she appeared in delicate health, and oppressed by some circumstance which affected her by painful recollection. The old sergeant, (brought in by William,) obeyed their summons with somewhat of the promptitude of his better days; but he did not recollect, as it appeared, either the name or the person of the General, who was evidently struck by the changes time had made in his venerable form, and moved by recollections connected with him.

"So, my good sergeant, you know nothing of General Mountmorris? but I think you cannot have forgotten Lieutenant Powis? though many years have rolled over us: many suns have withered us since we met."

"Remember! ah, Sir! I remember your beautiful young wife,

you well, and

that you ran away with, and your sweet little boy, and -"

"Hush," said the General, holding up his finger, while struggling to command himself, he turned gaily to his lady, saying, "Here you see her still, not quite so young or so beautiful as you have known her, but as dear as ever; and still as fond of being near her husband, as when you furnished her with the means of following him in the wilds of America."

The lady, unable to speak from the emotion awakened by remembering a scene of severe suffering, and a child no longer in existence, put out her hand to the sergeant, who respectfully kissed it, and, perhaps, moistened it with the tears which mixed sensations of pleasure and sympathy had gathered in his eyes, for he well remembered the hour (though many similar scenes had been witnessed by him) when this lady, a young and lovely woman, a tender wife, and doating