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HOPE ON" OR, THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.

JACK'S FIRST FRIEND.

POOR JACK! he does not look as if he would ever be able to build a house of any kind, as you see him in the Picture, a poor ragged boy, thankfully eating the remains of the street sweeper's dinner. His mother was dead, and his father had deserted him; he had nothing to do, and nothing to eat; and poor Jack had been sorely tempted to steal, but he remembered his good mother's teaching, and her motto, "Hope on." So Jack prayed, as his mother had taught him, that God would help him, and resolved that he would not steal, but hope on and trust in God. That day, as he was leaning wearily against the railings, the street sweeper pitied him and gave him part of his dinner. This kind man became Jack's best friend, and helped him to get work.

In our next Number you shall hear how Jack won his second good friend, and how his house came to be built.

A MATCH FOR THE PRIEST.

A POPISH priest was once talking to a clever boy belonging to his parish, who had been attending a Protestant school in the neighbourhood. The priest tried to persuade him to give up his Testament and pray to the Virgin to take care of him, and keep him from danger and harm.

"Plase your riverence," said the boy, "I rade in the Gospel, that when the Virgin was on earth, in going home from Jerusalem she lost her son. She couldn't tell where he had gone, and was three days before she found him. Now, if she couldn't take better care than that of her own child, who was so near to her, I'm thinking it's little care she'll take of me, who am so far away from her!"

DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT.

WITHIN twelve hours after the death mentioned in our black-bordered page last month, a heavy sorrow fell upon the nation. Prince Albert, the beloved husband of our beloved Queen, died of fever at Windsor, on Saturday night, 14th December 1861.

A few weeks ago the Royal Family passed southward, through Edinburgh, on their way from Balmoral. Sunburnt from his Highland home, and in the full bloom and vigour of manhood, the Prince never looked more like life, less like death. Now that noble form is low in the grave. Our Queen is a widow, and her children fatherless.

He was buried on Monday, 23d December, in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. There was comparatively little of the outward pomp with which princes are wont to be buried; but never was the dead carried from a palace to a grave amid deeper sorrow or truer tears. "Poor little Prince Arthur's grief" (he is eleven years of age) "was enough to move the sternest. He of course inade no attempt to check or hide his feelings. His eyes were red and swollen, and the tears were running down his cheeks as he entered the chapel. As they stood at the head of their father's coffin, the Prince of Wales turned and spoke, apparently, a few soothing words; for after this Prince Arthur, for a minute or so, seemed to bear up better. It was not till the procession began to move forward that all the little fellow's fortitude gave way, and, hiding his face in his handkerchief, he sobbed as if his very heart was breaking." The last verses of the 15th of First Corinthians were read, beginning, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." The following hymn, which had

been a favourite of the Prince, was then sung, before the coffin was lowered into the vault. How sweet and beautiful, when we think of the good cause to hope that, before "God took him," God had drawn Prince Albert's heart to himself, and "set him among the princes," princes of a nobler line, "the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people!"

"I shall not in the grave remain,

Since thou death's bonds hast sever'd;
By hope with Him to rise again,
From fear of death deliver'd.
I'll come to thee, where'er thou art.
Live with thee, from thee never part
Therefore to die is rapture.

"And so to Jesus Christ I'll go,

My longing arms extending;
So fall asleep in slumber deep,

Slumber that knows no ending,
Till Jesus Christ, God's only Son,
Opens the gates of bliss, leads on
To heaven, to life eterr.al."

How sweet, again we say, when such words could be truly spoken by one who now lay there! Many little circumstances are coming out which give us the strong consolation that Prince Albert, ere he died, had become "a new creature in Christ Jesus." We have learned, on good authority, that this was manifest in the Palace, in his later life as well as in his dying hours. He showed in many ways that he had learned of Him who is "meek and lowly in heart ;" and in no way more than by his kind, unselfish consideration for even the humblest servants around him.

When dying, he said that his hope was the hope of the publican-" God be merciful to me a sinner ;" and in his last hours, with calm trust, he repeated over and over a

hymn that has cheered many a poor child of God when passing through the dark valley :

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee!"

How affecting to think that, when the joys, and sorrows, and vanities of this world were fading from his eyes, his dying heart could sing,—

"When I draw life's fleeting breath,

When my eyelids close in death,
When I soar to worlds unknown,
See thee on the judgment-throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee!"

More than ever let us remember our beloved Queen. When the husband of her youth was taken from her, she made known her wish, that, as far as possible, her people should put on "decent mourning." Most truly has that gentle wish been complied with; and "never within the memory of living men has one died for whom the nation has so sincerely mourned."

On that sad Monday, at the hour of the funeral, a meeting, far larger than the place could hold, assembled at the New Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, to pray for the Queen. The Lord Provost presided ; and, amid the silent tears of many in that black-clad multitude, he and others commended the Royal Widow and her fatherless children to the grace and consolations of Jesus.

During that week, at least, surely every Christian in the kingdom prayed for the Queen. May the answer come in a saving and sanctifying blessing upon her desolate heart.

Prince Albert, about two weeks before his death, signed a lease of a piece of ground at Crathie, near Balmoral, for the erection of a church and manse in connection with the Free Church of Scotland.

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AN Indian prince was as wild and reckless as young men in his position often are in the East. Among other faults of which he was guilty, he was not good to his elephants. We have seen him trying to make one of them walk backwards up a short flight of steps, a feat which, with all the desire the animal had to oblige, it was too clumsy to accomplish.

At length, an elephant he had not behaved well to, resolved to watch an opportunity of killing him. The prince, like many other people in India, often travelled

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