from his heart the javelin sent by his monarch's hand, and presses it against that monarch's naked breast. The cold point touches him; a sickening horror overspreads his soul. He would fly but may not; he writhes but cannot turn. The inexorable shade

urges on the deadly weapon.

One cry of horror! one groan! the jaw relaxes, the eye is glassy, and Alexander is dead. Wretched man! Godless he lived and Godless died: as the fool dieth, so died he!

Blessed be God that all men die not thus. He supporteth them that put their trust in Him.

The lonely Missionary, enfeebled by suffering and disease, set his face homeward from the heart of Persia, hoping to renew his youth. His journey was a fearful one, and God in his mercy cut it short. By day the fierce glaring of the sun forbade all travel, and he spent its hours, lying in his tent with his aching, tortured head, wrapped in wet blankets, thanking God for teaching him this simple remedy.

During the cooler hours of the night, sick and faint, he is hurried forward by his merciless guide. Thus he journeys till he nears the Turkish town of Tocat. His weary pilgrimage is well nigh ended. On October 2d, 1812, he makes the following entry in his diary. "Retreating to the stable room, I sought in vain for solitude. My fever increased to a violent degree, and the heat in my eyes and forehead was so great that the fire almost made me frantic. I entreated that it might be put out, or I carried out of doors. Neither was attended to. My servant, who believed me delirious, was deaf to all I said. At last I pushed my head in among the luggage, lodged it on the damp ground, and slept." On the 6th, for the last time, he records his "sweet comfort and peace in God," and his joyful anticipations of release. It came speedily. On the 16th (if we may speak of things unseen) he lies in a Caravanserai, in Tocat. His form is wasted, his face pallid. Around him stand a group of Turks, curious to see the dying Frank. No mother holds his head; no sister wipes the death damp from his brow, none of the loved ones of his heart are there.

Delirium has just left him. With a feeble effort he raises his head, and gazes upon that group of unknown faces. Where is

he? He is about to call a well known name- -the words are half uttered-but he checks himself, casts a second bewildered look upon his strange attendants, remembers, and sinks upon his bed. He covers his face with his wasted hands, but the treacherous tears trickle along the poor partition. He feels that he is alone, dying amid strangers, far away from those whom he had hoped once more to embrace.

But this weakness is short. His God in whom he trusted will not leave him to mourn. "Thou art here," he murmurs, and all is calm. His eyes close and his soul communes with God. "Oh Jesus," he whispers, "I have trusted in thee and have not been deceived. Thou art more than all to me. I rest my soul on thee. We shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on us nor any heat, for the Lamb shall feed us, and shall lead us unto fountains of living waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes.'

Awhile he is silent. His breast heaves languidly. The Turks press nearer but he heeds them not. He is passing away. With a sudden effort he raises himself. His eyes gleam once more. He cries, "Victorious through Christ," then falls upon his couch and dies.

Oh, could we trace his rapturous flight to meet the blood-bought throng, and catch a strain of their ecstatic joys, we might learn how glorious is the victory through faith in Christ, how transcendantly glorious when compared with the doom of one who put his faith in self, and sank unsupported to a dread eternity of wo.

Tis then we learn the weakness of the man of human might, when we hear them sing, "thy God is thine, oh man of faith."

A GOSSIPPING LETTER.

Timotheus, Timotheus, what have you been doing during the indisposition of your old gossipping friend? Into what an embarrassing “pickle" have you soused me! It was bad enough to be bored with pestering inquiries about "Rebecca," whose history I promised full three moons ago: to be asked if I really meant to play a practical joke

on your readers by my offer to sketch her lineaments, and whether or not any Rebecca ever existed, (except Isaac's wife or the heroine of Scott's Ivanhoe,) worth the trouble of describing. But it was infinitely worse to be taunted about masquerading in petticoats as "Diana Vernon," and scribbling about female education; to be asked if "Di" was "Rebecca," and vice versa: to be teazed about the identity of the young ladies of Wso impertinently described by some wag of an old bachelor in your last number, and about the latitude and longitude of that famous village. Now, be it known once for all, that I am not Di Vernon, and never dressed in feminine attire: that, as for female education, I always had a strong partiality for boarding schools, as being places where young ladies learn a great deal not promised in the principal's prospectuses, especially about young gentlemen. As for the ladies of W- -9 all that I can do is to make affidavit to the color of C's eyes and of E- -'s lips. But it is not in the power of the brightest forms of earth or air to lure my thoughts back, when they escape through the blue veil of the upper sky to seek communion with a fair young soul, long since departed thither. I mean

REBECCA.

The first time I saw Rebecca, I never shall forget. It was when I was sitting in the window of my apartment near the cemetery already described, on a morning late in May-one of those mornings, when sunshine and dew have made the earth seem ready for the advent of angels. I was watching the varied verdure of the grass below, and the starting foliage of the trees above, over which peered pointed spires and rose sober grey towers, beautifully dim in the misty-bright air of opening summer. A stream of fragrance occasionally floated by me, and the steaming mould below was not more full, than was my frame, of the new life of spring.

On the opposite side of the retired street, a little lad, whose whole person was shaded under an immense straw hat, and who had evidently been turned out to grass for the first time during the season, was uttering peremptory commands to an imaginary steed, which he seemed to see dashing along under the vigorous applications of his toy-whip. Who denies or doubts total depravity? A child's first plaything is a rattle-box, with which he produces the discomfort of sound, the only vexation which he is strong enough to occasion. His second toy is a

whip, with which he is enabled to indulge luxurious fancies of agony inflicted upon invisible horses and other brutes of the imagination. The third is a toy-gun or toy-sword, the real ante-type of those man-killing propensities, which, in later years, transform your quiet, orderly cob

bler into an epauletted hero, delightfully stained with spots of blood, and gloriously addicted to homicide.

To resume. Under an orchard of apple-trees, which were at this time immense masses of pink and white blossoms, the juvenile coachman was plying his whip, when, suddenly as a new thought, a fairy figure of a girl, seemingly about eleven years old, bounded with a playful shout behind the boy, caught him, turned him around, and kissed him heartily-then, with a stream of black hair floating behind her, ran off towards the corner of the orchard. Her quick eye, as she ran, glanced up at my window, and I had barely time to cast my eyes on my book before I felt hers for a moment upon me. She stopped by the tree in the corner, in the bottom of which there was a cavity, which might bring to mind the memorable hollow in the trunk of the famous Charter Oak: although it would be a comparison of small things with great. She thrust in her hand and drew out-ah! total depravity again—a little shabby note. She had scarcely done it, before I felt her eyes again, though turned towards me with a sidelong glance. Then suddenly facing me, she threw back her curls with her small hands, fixed her eyes upon the note, and read it with an enthusiasm admirably counterfeited. I could almost hear the murmur of her laughing lips. She clasped the paper to her bosom with a gesture of ecstasy, and thenas this dumb show was intended for my benefit-stared intelligently upwards towards me with her large black eyes again. 1 dodged the glance, as before: but she evidently knew that I must see her; for, casting a look of admirably simulated fear towards the house, from which she had just escaped, she tore the missive to pieces with gestures of apprehension, threw the bits gracefully over the fence into the high road and ran away.

It was Rebecca: the fairest girl I ever saw. Her features were moulded, not merely into exquisite outlines, but so as to be capable of the most variable and enchanting expressions. Her complexion was pale and pure, without the faintest tinge of rose upon it, or the slightest shade of sallow. Her eyes, so large, lustrous, black, burned softly,— nay, it was hard to tell, whether they burned or melted. I know they always grew softer and more tender under the slow sweep of those long raven black lashes which overhung them. Her figure, so light but well-developed, was always most pleasing in motion, as true grace must always be. But her hair, waving in such long delicious curls, and lips, through which the red blood seemed on the point of bursting, were the most remarkable charms of her person. The latter were the lips of a woman, not of a child-concentrating all the delicate passions of glowing maidenhood in their expression. In short she was (to borrow an expression of our grandmother's) "an angel upon earth"-gender

alone excepted. Mahomet's celestial system, only, authorizes female angels.

As soon as my room-mate arrived, I related to him the adventure. He at once left the room, without uttering any thing beyond an inquiry or two, and deliberately gathered up all the fragments of Rebecca's billet-doux. On his return, he seated himself, tipped his chair backward, lighted a cigar, and coolly proceeded to inform me, that the young girl was an acquaintance of his, yes, he might say a pet, a most interesting being, such as he never met before and might never meet again. This confession looked serious, and I was amazed at his obstinacy in keeping the secret so long.

"I have," continued W- "been in the habit of lending Rebecca books from our libraries

I was glad to learn that I had been even indirectly useful to the fair young girl.

11

-And she read them through with amazing rapidity; and yet, when I catechised her, she showed herself perfectly familiar with their contents. Her intelligence and memory would put a whole model school to shame."

I farther learned from my friend, that her father was the captain of a vessel, engaged in the South American trade, and that he was very seldom at home. But he, (the father,) was fondly devoted to his daughter, and she could recount his adventures by the hour, as she had learned them sitting on her parent's knee. He was looking eagerly forward to the conclusion of one more voyage, when he designed to renounce his sea-life forever, and enjoy the society of wife and children, especially of that elder daughter, just budding into brilliant maidenhood. Rebecca's mother, according to W- was a woman of rare good sense and disposition, imprisoned among her domestic cares, and the confidante of her daughter, even in the most minute of Rebecca's girlish feelings and actions.

"In fact, R, the creature whom you describe as a precocious little coquette, is as beautiful as you have said, and as good as beautiful. A purer, more simple nature than hers was never known; and yet the ripeness of her mind, and the wisdom of her conversation almost make you dread her sagacity. You can scarcely believe that she is a child, while you are sure that no one but a child could be so undisguised and artless. In reality, R- , she is the most premature little damsel I ever saw or heard of in real life."

1 started at the words. A premature child! It is one of those terms, that almost make us weep. Those beautiful flowers of human nature, which seem to condense the bloom and loveliness and strength of a long life into a few short years, are the fairest worldly objects we are ever