calm joy that sat in her eye, and the brighter smile of her lip: Yes!" it seemed to say-"Yes, we shall die together!"—and it was so! As the stem withered, the branch declined. As the deathlike paleness of the matron's brow increased, it was sympathetically reflected in that of the girl. When the one had sunk on the pillow of eternal rest, the other had closed her eyes for ever. They waned as it were by consent; and, like stars which are linked by some mysterious bond together, vanished into the skies at the same moment! SONNET. BY MISS MITFORD. WITHIN my little garden is a flower, A tuft of flowers, most like a sheaf of corn, Of blooming beauty-Spring hath nought more fair! Gay, peaceful creatures! Round that odorous bower Home-loving pretty ones! would that I might So meet the rising dawn, so hail the parting day. THE BELL AT SEA. BY MRS. HEMANS. The dangerous islet called the Bell Rock, on the coast of Fife, used formerly to be marked only by a Bell, which was so placed as to be swung by the motion of the waves, when the tide rose above the rock. erected there. A light-house has since been WHEN the tide's billowy swell Then tolled the Rock's lone Bell, Sternly by night. Far over cliff and surge Swept the deep sound, Making each wild wind's dirge Still more profound. Yet that funereal tone The sailor bless'd, Steering through darkness on, E'en so may we, that float On life's wide sea, Welcome each warning note, "" LOVEST THOU ME?" BY JAMES MONTGOMERY. "LOVEST thou me?" I hear my Saviour say: Oh! that my heart had power to answer "Yea; THE INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE. BY THE REV. J. THORNTON. "Exemplo plus quam ratione vivimus." "We live more by example than reason." EVERY one who has attentively marked the formation of character, will at once acknowledge, that man has been justly called an imitative creature. Direct instruction carries less, and example much more weight, than is usually imagined. This is best evinced by observing that plastic period of life, when both the mind and the manners are most yielding and susceptible. "We are all," says Mr. Locke, "especially in youth, a kind of chameleons, that take a tincture from the objects around us." The words of Seneca have gained the currency of an approved general maxim :-"Longum iter est per præcepta, breve et efficax per exempla."-Your way by precepts is tedi ous, by examples short and sure. Were our design to point out the influence which bad company has in vitiating and ensnaring youth, the difficulty would not be so much in finding facts, as in selecting and classifying them. We should be bewildered in the mass of materials, and demonstration itself might wear an air of triteness. How many, besides Julius Cæsar and Charles XII. of Sweden, have been roused by the story of the Macedonian Madman, to aspire after heroic fame! They can, unmoved, contemplate the earth deluged with torrents of blood and misery, so they may but win and wear the wreaths of conquest. Nor does it rarely happen, that one fierce, daring spirit inflames a multitude, though in prosecuting their wild career, they are chiefly distinguished by petty exploits of mischief and extravagance. Promptitude and energy, when joined with eccentricity, often act with the power of enchantment on the impassioned minds of the young. Schiller's play, called the Robbers, was forbidden the stage in one town, because it was discovered that certain juvenile frequenters of the theatre, had been instigated by it to bind themselves in a secret confederacy to go out into the woods, and live the life of freebooters. Thus we see, that not merely real characters, but fictitious also, which vividly represent them, possess and exert, in no small degree, this powerful species of fascination. But there are many who have none of the elements of ambition and enterprise in their nature, and of course can never be spurred to daring deeds. True; yet, have they |