stone with a sand-glass, skull and cross-bones, chiselled not rudely, and a few words inscribed. The younger brother regarded the operation with a troubled eye, and said, loudly enough to be heard by several of the bystanders, “William, this was not kind in you; you should have told me of this. I loved my father as well as you could love him. You were the elder, and, it may be, the favorite son; but I had a right in nature to have joined you in ordering this head-stone, had I not ?"

During these words the stone was sinking into the earth, and many persons who were on their way from the grave returned. For a while the elder brother said nothing, for he had a consciousness in his heart that he ought to have consulted his father's son in designing this last becoming mark of affection and respect to his memory; so the stone was planted in silence, and now stood erect, decently and simply, among the other unostentatious memorials of the humble dead.

The inscription merely gave the name and age of the deceased, and told that the stone had been erected “by his affectionate sons. The sight of these words seemed to soften the displeasure of the angry man, and he said, somewhat more mildly, “Yes, we were his affectionate sons; and since my name is on the stone, I am satisfied, brother. We have not drawn together kindly of late years, and perhaps never may; but I acknowledge and respect your worth; and here, before our own friends and before the friends of our father, with my foot above his head, I express my willingness to be on other and better terms with you; and if we cannot command love in our hearts, let us, at least, brother, bar out all unkindness.”

The minister who had attended the funeral, and had something intrusted to him to say publicly before he left the churchyard, now came forward, and asked the elder brother why he spake not regarding this matter. He saw that there was something of a cold and sullen pride rising up in his heart, for not easily may any man hope to dismiss from the chamber of his heart even the vilest guest, if once cherished there. With a solemn, and almost severe air, he looked upon the relenting man, and then, changing his countenance into serenity, said gently

“Behold, how good a thing it is,

And how becoming well,
Together such as brethron are,

In unity to dwell !" The time, the place, and this beautiful expression of a natural sentiment, quite overcame a heart in which many kind, if not warm, affections dwelt; and the man thus appealed to bowed down his head and wept. “Give me your hand, brother;" and it was given, while a murmur of satisfaction arose from all present, and all hearts felt kindlier and more humanely towards each other.

As the brothers stood fervently, but composedly grasping each other's hand, in the little hollow that lay between the grave of their mother, long since dead, and of their father, whose shroud was haply not yet still from the fall of dust to dust, the minister stond beside them with a pleasant countenance, and said—“I must fulfil the promise I made to your father on his death-bed. I must read to you a few words which his hand wrote at an hour when his tongue denied its office. I must not say that you did your duty to your old father: for did he not often beseech you, apart from one another, to be reconciled, for your own sakes as Christians, for his sake, and for the sake of the mother who bare you, and, Stephen, who died that you might be born? When the palsy struck him for the last time, you were both absent; nor was it your fault that you were not beside the old man when he died.

“As long as sense continued with him here, did he think of you two, and of you two alone. Tears were in his eyes; I saw them there, and on his cheek too, when no breath came from his lips. But of this no more. He died with this paper in his hand; and he made me know that I was to read it to you over his grare. I now obey him.

My sons,

if

you will let my bones lie quiet in the grave, near the dust of your mother, depart not from my burial till, in the name of God and Christ, you promise to love one another as you used to do. Dear boys, receive my blessing.'

Some turned their heads away to hide the tears that needed not to be hidden—and when the brothers had released each other from a long and sobbing embrace, many went up to them, and, in a single word or two, expressed their joy at this perfect reconcilement. The brothers themselves walked away from the churchyard, arm in arm, with the minister to the manse. On the following Sabbath, they were seen sitting with their families in the same pew, and it was observed that they read together off the same Bible when the minister gave out the text, and that they sang together, taking hold of the same psalm-book. The same psalm was sung, (given out at their own request,) of which one verse had been repeated at their father's grave; a larger sum than usual was on that Sabbath found in the plate for the poor, for Love and Charity are sisters. And ever after, both during the peace and the troubles of this life, the hearts of the brothers were as one, and in nothing were they divided.

A MORNING PICTURE.

She hath risen up from her morning prayer,
And chain'd the waves of her golden hair,
Hath kiss'd her sleeping sister's cheek,
And breathed the blessing she might not speak,

Lest the whisper should break the dream that smiled
Round the snow-white brow of the sinless child.
Her radiant lamb and her purpling dove
Have ta’en their food from the hand they love;
The low deep coo and the plaintive bleat
In the morning calm, how clear and sweet!
Ere the sun has warm’d the dawning hours
She hath water'd the glow of her garden flowers,
And welcomed the hum of the earliest bee
In the moist bloom working drowsily;
Then up the flow of the rocky rill
She trips away to the pastoral hill;
And, as she lifts her glistening eyes,
In the joy of her heart, to the dewy skies,
She feels that her sainted parents bless
The life of their orphan shepherdess.

'Tis a lonely glen! but the happy child
Hath friends whom she meets in the morning wild !
As on she trips, her native stream,
Like her, hath awoke from a joyful dream,
And glides away by her twinkling feet,
With a face as bright and a voice as sweet.
In the osier bank the ouzel sitting
Hath heard her steps, and away is flitting
From stone to stone as she glides along,
Then sinks in the stream with a broken song.
The lapwing, fearless of his nest,
Stands looking round with his delicate crest;
For a love-like joy is in his cry,
As he wheels and darts and glances by.

Is the heron asleep on the silvery sand
Of his little lake? Lo! his wings expand
As a dreamy thought, and withouten dread
Cloud-like he floats o'er the maiden's head.
She looks to the birch-wood glade, and lo!
There is browsing there the mountain roe,
Who lifts up her gentle eyes, nor moves,
As on glides the form whom all nature loves.
Having spent in heaven an hour of mirth,
The lark drops down to the dewy earth,
And a silence smooths his yearning breast
In the gentle fold of his lowly nest;
The linnet takes up the hymn, unseen
In the yellow broom or the bracken green ;
And now, as the morning hours are glowing,
From the hill-side cots the cocks are crowing,
And the shepherd's dog is barking shrill
From the mist fast rising from the hill,
And the shepherd's self, with locks of gray,
Hath bless'd the maiden on her way!
And now she sees her own dear flock
On a verdant mound beneath the rock,

All close together in beauty and love,
Like the small fair clouds in heaven above,
And her innocent soul, at the peaceful sight,
Is swimming o'er with a still delight.'

Lays from Fairy Land.

THE MIDNIGHT OCEAN.
It is the midnight hour :—the beauteous sea,

Calm as the cloudless heaven, the heaven discloses,
While many a sparkling star, in quiet glee,

Far down within the watery sky reposes.
As if the Ocean's heart were stirr'd
With inward life, a sound is heard,

Like that of dreamer murmuring in his sleep;
'Tis partly the billow, and partly the air,
That lies like a garment floating fair

Above the happy deep.
The sea, I wean, cannot be fann'd
By evening freshness from the land,

For the land it is far away ;
But God hath will'd that the sky-born breeze
In the centre of the loneliest seas

Should ever sport and play.
The mighty Moon she sits above,
Encircled with a zone of love,
A zone of dim and tender light
That makes her wakeful eye more bright:
She seems to shine with a sunny ray,
And the night looks like a mellow'd day!
The gracious Mistress of the Main
Hath now an undisturbed reign,
And from her silent throne looks down,
As upon children of her own,
On the waves that lend their gentle breast
In gladness for her couch of rest!

TO THE MEMORY OF THE REV. JAMES GRAHAME, THE POET

OF SCOTLAND.

With tearless eyes and undisturbed heart,
O Bard! of sinless life and holiest song,
I muse upon thy death-bed and thy grave;
Though round that grave the trodden grass still lies
Besmear'd with clay; for many feet were there,
Fast-rooted to the spot, when slowly sank
Thy coffin, Grahame! into the quiet cell.
Yet, well I loved thee, even as one might love
An elder brother, imaged in the soul

With solemn features, half-creating awe,
But smiling still with gentleness and peace.
Tears have I shed when thy most mournful voice
Did tremblingly breathe forth that touching air,
By Scottish shepherd haply framed of old,
Amid the silence of his pastoral hills,
Weeping the flowers on Flodden-field that died.
Wept, too, have I, when thou didst simply read
From thine own lays, so simply beautiful,
Some short pathetic tale of human grief,
Or orison or hymn of deeper love,
That might have won the skeptic's sullen heart
To gradual adoration, and belief
Of Him who died for us upon the cross.

*

How beautiful is genius when combined With holiness! Oh, how divinely sweet The tones of earthly harp, whose chords are touch'd By the soft hand of Piety, and hung Upon Religion's shrine, there vibrating With solemn music in the ear of God. And must the bard from sacred themes refrain ? Sweet were the hymns in patriarchal days, That, kneeling in the silence of his tent, Or on some moonlight hill, the shepherd pour'd Unto his heavenly Father. Strains survive Erst chanted to the lyre of Israel, More touching far than ever poet breathed Amid the Grecian isles, or later times Have heard in Albion, land of every lay.

*

Such glory, Grahame! thine: Thou didst despise To win the ear of this degenerate age By gorgeous epithets, all idly heap'd On theme of earthly state, or, idler still, By tinkling measures and unchasten'd lays, Warbled to pleasure and her siren-train, Profaning the best name of poesy. With loftier aspirations, and an aim More worthy man's immortal nature, Thou That holiest spirit that still loves to dwell In the upright heart and pure, at noon of night Didst fervently invoke, and, led by her Above the Aonian mount, send from the stars Of heaven such soul-subduing melody As Bethlehem-shepherds heard when Christ was born.

THE EVENING CLOUD-A SONNET.

A cloud lay cradled near the setting sun,

A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow; Long had I watch'd the glory moving on,