books, Christmas carols, and harmless songs, and desired the fiddler's woman never to call there again.

This little incident afterwards confirmed Mrs. Jones in a plan she had before some thoughts of putting in practice. This was, after her school had been established a few months, to invite all the well-disposed grown-up youth of the parish to meet her at the school an hour or two on a Sunday evening, after the necessary business of the dairy, and of serving the cattle was over. Both Mrs. Jones and her agent had the talent of making this time pass so agreeably, by their manner of explaining Scripture, and of impressing the heart by serious and affectionate discourse, that in a short time the evening school was nearly filled with a second company, after the younger ones were dismissed. In time, not only the servants, but the sons and daughters of the most substantial people in the parish attended. At length many of the parents, pleased with the improvement so visible in the young

people, got a habit of dropping in, that they might learn how to instruct their own families. And it was observed that as the school filled, not only the fives-court and public house were thinned, but even Sunday gossipping and teavisiting declined. Even farmer Hoskins, who was at first very angry with his maids for leaving off those merry songs (as he called them) was so pleased by the manner in which the psalms were sung at the school, that he promised Mrs. Jones to make her a present of half a sheep towards her first May-day feast. Of this feast some account shall be given hereafter; and the reader may expect some further account of the Sunday school in the history of Hester Wilmot.*

*For a continuation of the Sunday School, see the story of Hester Wilmot, in two parts, in this edition. It was thought proper to separate them in this collec tion: as the two preceding numbers rather tend to enforce the duties of the higher and middle class, and the two subsequent ones those of the poor.

THE PILGRIMS.

AN ALLEGORY.

wish to know a little what sort of a city London or York is? Don't you wonder what is doing there, and are you not anxious to know whether you are properly qualified for the business, or the company you expect to be engaged in? Do

METHOUGHT I was once upon a time travelling your journey, especially if you have never been through a certain land which was very full of to that place before, or are likely to remain there, people; but, what was rather odd, not one of all don't you begin to think a little about the pleathis multitude was at home; they were all boundsures and the employments of the place, and to to a far distant country. Though it was permitted by the lord of the land that these pilgrims might associate together for their present mutual comfort and convenience; and each was not only allowed, but commanded, to do the others all the services he could upon their jour-you never look at the map, or consult Brooke's ney, yet it was decreed, that every individual traveller must enter the far country singly. There was a great gulf at the end of the journey, which every one must pass alone, and at his own risk, and the friendship of the whole united world could be of no use in shooting that gulf. The exact time when each was to pass was not known to any; this the lord always kept a close secret out of kindness, yet still they were as sure that the time must come, and that at no very great distance, as if they had been informed of the very moment. Now, as they know they were always liable to be called away at an hour's notice, one would have thought they would have been chiefly employed in packing up, and preparing, and getting every thing in order. But this was so far from being the case, that it was almost the only thing which they did not think about.

Gazetteer? And don't you try to pick up from your fellow-passengers in the stage coach any little information you can get? And though you may be obliged, out of civility, to converse with them on common subjects, yet do not your secret thoughts still run upon London or York, its business, or its pleasures? And above all, if you are likely to set out early, are you not afraid of over-sleeping, and does not that fear keep you upon the watch, so that you are commonly up and ready before the porter comes to summon you? Reader! if this be your case, how surprised will you be to hear that the travellers to the far country have not half your prudence, though embarked on a journey of infinitely more importance, bound to a land where nothing can be sent after them, in which, when they are once settled, all errors are irretrievable.

I observed that these pilgrims, instead of being Now, I only appeal to you, my readers, if any upon the watch, lest they should be ordered off of you are setting out upon a little common unprepared; instead of laying up any provision, journey, if it is only to London or York, is not or even making memorandums of what they all your leisure time employed in settling your would be likely to want at the end of their jourbusiness at home, and packing up every little ney, spent most of their time in crowds, either necessary for your expedition? And does not in the way of traffic or diversion. At first, when the fear of neglecting any thing you ought to I saw them so much engaged in conversing with remember, or may have occasion for, haunt your each other, I thought it a good sign, and listened mind, and sometimes even intrude upon you un-attentively to their talk, not doubting but the seasonably? And when you are actually on chief turn of it would be about the climate, or

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turned them out of these habitations before he had on his part provided for them a better, so that there was not such a landlord in the world; and though their present dwelling was but frail, being only slightly run up to serve the occasion, yet they might hold their future possession by a most certain tenure, the word of the lord himself. This word was entered in a covenant, or titledeed, consisting of many sheets, and because a great many good things were given away in this deed, a book was made of which every soul might get a copy,

poor

treasures, or society, they should probably meet with in the far country. I supposed they might be also discussing about the best and safest road to it, and that each was availing himself of the knowledge of his neighbour, on a subject of equal importance to all. I listened to every party, but in scarcely any did I hear one word about the land to which they were bound, though it was their home, the place where their whole interest, expectation, and inheritance lay; to which also great part of their friends were gone before, and whither they were sure all the rest would follow.-Instead of this, their whole talk This indeed had not always been the case } was about the business, or the pleasures, or the because, till a few ages back, there had been a fashions of the strange but bewitching country sort of monopoly in the case, and 'the wise and which they were merely passing through, and prudent;' that is, the cunning and fraudful, had in which they had not one foot of land which hid these things from the babes and sucklings;' they were sure of calling their own for the next that is, from the low and ignorant, and many quarter of an hour. What little estate they had frauds had been practised, and the was personal, and not real, and that was a mort- cheated of their right; so that not being allowed had been gaged, life-hold tenement of clay, not properly to read and judge for themselves, they had been their own, but only lent to them on a short un- sadly imposed upon; but all these tricks had certain lease, of which three-score years and been put an end to more than two hundred years ten was considered as the longest period, and when I passed through the country, and the very few indeed lived in it to the end of the meanest man who could read might then have a term; for this was always at the will of the lord, copy; so that he might see himself what he had part of whose prerogative it was, that he could to trust to; and even those who could not read, take away the lease at pleasure, knock down might hear it read once or twice every week, at the stoutest tenement at a single blow, and turn least, without pay, by learned and holy men, out the poor shivering, helpless inhabitant naked, whose business it was. But it surprised me to to that fur country for which he had made no see how few comparatively made use of these provision. Sometimes, in order to quicken the vast advantages. Of those who had a copy, pilgrim in his preparation, the lord would break many laid it carelessly by, expressed a general down the tenement by slow degrees; sometimes belief in the truth of the title deed, a general he would let it tumble by its own natural decay; satisfaction that they should come in for a share for it was only built to last a certain term, it of the inheritance, a general good opinion of the would often grow so uncomfortable by increasing lord whose word it was, and a general disposis dilapidations even before the ordinary lease was tion to take his promise upon trust; always, out, that the lodging was hardly worth keeping, however, intending, at a convenient season, to though the tenant could seldom be persuaded to inquire farther into the matter; but this convethink so, but fondly clung to it to the last.-nient season seldom came; and this neglect of First the thatch on the top of the tenement changed colour, then it fell off and left the roof bare; then the grinders ceased because they At the end of this country lay the vast gulf were few; then the windows became so dark- mentioned before; it was shadowed over by a ened that the owner could scarcely see through broad and thick cloud, which prevented the pilthem; then one prop fell away, then another, grims from seeing in a distinct manner what then the uprights became bent, and the whole was doing behind it, yet such beams of brightfabric trembled and tottered, with every other ness now and then darted through the cloud, as symptom of a falling house. But what was re-enabled those who used a telescope, provided for markable, the more uncomfortable the house became, and the less prospect there was of staying in it, the more preposterously fond did the tenant grow of his precarious habitation.

On some occasions the lord ordered his messengers, of which he has a great variety, to batter, injure, deface, and almost demolish the frail building, even while it seemed new and strong; this was what the landlord called giving warning; but many a tenant would not take warning, and so fond of staying where he was, even under all these inconveniences, that at last he was cast out by ejectment, not being prevailed on to leave his dwelling in a proper manner, though one would have thought the fear of being turned out would have whetted his diligence in preparing for a better and more enduring inheritance. For though the people were only tenants at will in these crazy tenements, yet, through the goodness of the same lord, they were assured that he never VOL. I. M

theirs was construed by their lord into a forfeiture of the inheritance.

that purpose, to see the substance of things hoped for; but it was not every one who could make use of this telescope; no eye indeed was naturally disposed to it; but an earnest desire of getting a glimpse of the invisible realities, gave such a strength and steadiness to the eye which used the telescope, as enabled it to discern many things which could not be seen by the natural sight.-Above the cloud was this inscription : The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Of these last things many glorious descriptions had been given; but as those splendors were at a distance, and as the pilgrims in general did not care to use the telescope, these distant glories made little impression.

The glorious inheritance which lay beyond the cloud, was called, The things above, while a multitude of trifling objects, which appeared conteinptibly small when looked at through the

telescope, were called the things below. Now, as we know it is nearness which gives size and bulk to any object, it was not wonderful that these ill-judging pilgrims were more struck with these baubles and trifles, which, by laying close at hand, were visible and tempting to the naked eye, and which made up the sum of the things below, than with the remote glories of the things above; but this was chiefly owing to their not making use of the telescope, through which, if you examined thoroughly the things below, they seemed to shrink almost down to nothing, which was indeed their real size; while the things above appeared the more beautiful and vast, the more the telescope was used. But the surprising part of the story was this; not that the pilgrims were captivated at first sight with the things below, for that was natural enough; but that when they had tried them all over and over, and found themselves deceived and disappointed in almost every one of them, it did not at all lessen their fondness, and they grasped at them again with the same eagerness as before. There were some gay fruits which looked alluring, but on being opened, instead of a kernel, they were found to contain rottenness; and those which seemed the fullest, often proved on trial to be quite hollow and empty. Those which were most tempting to the eye, were often found to be wormwood to the taste, or poison to the stomach, and many flowers that seemed most bright and gay had a worm gnawing at the root; and it was observable that on the finest and brightest of them was seen, when looked at through the telescope, the word vanity inscribed in large characters.

Among the chief attractions of the things below were certain little lumps of yellow clay, on which almost every eye and every heart was fixed. When I saw the variety of uses to which this clay could be converted, and the respect which was shown to those who could scrape together the greatest number of pieces, I did not much wonder at the general desire to pick up some of them; but when I beheld the anxiety, the wakefulness, the competitions, the contrivances, the tricks, the frauds, the scuffling, the pushing, the turmoiling, the kicking, the shoving, the cheating, the circumvention, the envy, the malignity, which was excited by a desire to possess this article; when I saw the general scramble among those who had little to get much, and of those who had much to get more, then I could not help applying to these people a proverb in use among us, that gold may be bought too dear.

Though I saw that there were various sorts of baubles which engaged the hearts of different travellers, such as an ell of red or blue ribbon, for which some were content to forfeit their future inheritance, committing the sin of Esau, without his temptation of hunger; yet the yellow clay I found was the grand object for which most hands were scrambling, and most souls were risked. One thing was extraordinary, that the nearer these people were to being turned out of their tenement, the fonder they grew of these pieces of clay; so that I naturally concluded they meant to take the clay with them to the far country, to assist them in their establishment in it; but I soon learnt this clay was not current

there, the lord having farther declared to these pilgrims that as they had brought nothing into this world, they could carry nothing away.

I inquired of the different people who were raising the various heaps of clay, some of a larger, some of a smaller size, why they discovered such unremitting anxiety, and for whom? Some, whose piles were immense, told me they were heaping up for their children; this I thought very right, till, on casting my eyes around, I observed many of the children of these very people had large heaps of their own. Others told me it was for their grand-children; but on inquiry I found these were not yet born, and in many cases there was little chance that they ever would. The truth, on a close examination, proved to be, that the true genuine heapers really heaped for themselves; that it was in fact neither for friend nor child, but to gratify an inorNor was I much dinate appetite of their own. surprised after this to see these yellow hoards at length canker, and the rust of them become a witness against the hoarders, and eat their flesh as it were fire.

Many, however, who had set out with a high heap of their father's raising, before they had got one third of their journey, had scarcely a As I was wondering what single piece left. had caused these enormous piles to vanish in so short a time, I spied scattered up and down the country all sorts of odd inventions, for some or other of which the vain possessors of the great heaps of clay had truckled and bartered them away in fewer hours than their ancestors had spent years in getting them together. O what a strange unaccountable medley it was! and what was ridiculous enough, I observed that the greatest quantity of the clay was always exchanged for things that were of no use that I could discover, owing I suppose to my ignorance of the manners of the country.

In one place I saw large heaps exhausted, in order to set two idle pampered horses a running ; but the worst part of the joke was, the horses did not run to fetch or carry any thing, of course were of no kind of use, but merely to let the gazers see which could run fastest. Now, this gift of swiftness, exercised to no useful purpose, was only one out of many instances, I observed, of talents employed to no end. In another place I saw whole piles of the clay spent to maintain long ranges of buildings full of dogs, on provisions which would have nicely fattened some thousands of pilgrims, who sadly wanted fattening, and whose ragged tenements were out at elbows, for want of a little help to repair them. Some of the piles were regularly pulled down once in seven years, in order to corrupt certain needy pilgrims to belie their consciences, by doing that for a bribe which they were bound to do from principle. Others were spent in playing with white stiff bits of paper, painted over with red and black spots, in which I thought there must be some conjuring, because the very touch of these painted pasteboards made the heaps fly from one to another, and back again to the same, in a way that natural causes could not account for. There was another proof that there must be some magic in this business which was that if a pasteboard with red spots

fell into a hand which wanted a black one, the person changed colour, his eyes flashed fire, and he discovered other symptoms of madness, which showed there was some witchcraft in the case. These clean little pasteboards as harmless as they looked, had the wonderful power of pulling down the highest piles in less time than all the other causes put together. I observed that many small piles were given in exchange for an enchanted liquor which when the purchaser had drunk to a little excess, he lost power of managing the rest of his heap without losing | the love of it; and thus the excess of indulgence, by making him a beggar, deprived himn of that very gratification on which his heart was set.

Now I find it was the opinion of sober pilgrims, that either hoarding the clay, or trucking it for any such purposes as the above, was thought exactly the same offence in the eyes of the lord; and it was expected that when they should come under his more immediate jurisdiction in the far country, the penalty annexed to hoarding and squandering would be nearly the same.- -While I examined the countenances of the owners of the heaps, I observed that those who I well knew never intended to make any use at all of their heap, were far more terrified at the thought of losing it, or of being torn from it, than those were who were employing it in the most useful manner. Those who best knew what to do with it, set their hearts least upon it, and were always most willing to leave it. But such riddles were common in this odd country. It was indeed a very land of paradoxes.

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Now I wondered why these pilgrims, who were naturally made erect with an eye formed to look up to the things above, yet had their eyes almost constantly bent in the other direction, riveted to the earth, and fastened on things below, just like those animals who walk on all four. I was told they had not always been subject to this weakness of sight, and proneness to earth that they had originally been upright and beautiful, having been created after the image of the lord, who was himself the perfection of beauty; that he had, at first, placed them in a far superior situation, which he had given them in perpetuity; but that their first ancestors fell from it through pride and carelessness; that upon this the freehold was taken away, they lost their original strength, brightness, and beauty, and were driven out into this strange country, where, however, they had every opportunity given them of recovering their original health, and the lord's favour and likeness; for they were become so disfigured, and were grown so unlike him, that you would hardly believe they were his own children, though, in some, the resemblance was become again visible.

The lord, however, was so merciful, that, instead of giving them up to the dreadful consequences of their own folly, as he might have done without any impeachment of his justice, he gave them immediate comfort, and promised them that, in due time, his own son should come down and restore them to the future inheritance which he should purchase for them. And now it was, that in order to keep up their spirits, after they had lost their estate through the folly

of their ancestors, that he began to give them a part of their former title deed. He continued to send them portions of it from time to time by different faithful servants, whom, however, these ungrateful people generally used ill, and some of whom they murdered. But for all this, the lord was so very forgiving, that he at length sent these mutineers a proclamation of full and free pardon by his son. This son, though they used him in a more cruel manner than they had done any of his servants, yet after having finished the work his father gave him to do, went back into the far country to prepare a place for all them who believe in him; and there he still lives; begging and pleading for those unkind people, whom he still loves and forgives, and will restore to the purchased inheritance on the easy terms of their being heartily sorry for what they have done, thoroughly desirous of pardon, and convinced that he is able and willing to save to the utmost all them that come unto him.

I saw, indeed, that many old offenders appeared to be sorry for what they had done; that is, they did not like to be punished for it. They were willing enough to be delivered from the penalty of their guilt, but they did not heartily wish to be delivered from the power of it. Many declared, in the most public manner, once every week, that they were sorry they had done amiss that they had erred and strayed like lost sheep, but it was not enough to declare their sorrow, ever so often, if they gave no other sign of their penitence. For there was so little truth in them, that the lord required other proofs of their sin. cerity beside their own word, for they often lied with their lips and dissembled with their tongue But those who professed to be penitents must give some outward proof of it. They were nei ther allowed to raise heaps of clay, by circum venting their neighbours, or to keep great piles lying by them useless; nor must they barter them for any of those idle vanities which re duced the heaps on a sudden: for I found that among the grand articles of future reckoning, the use they had made of the heaps would be a principal one.

I was sorry to observe many of the fairer part of these pilgrims spend too much of their heaps in adorning and beautifying their tenements of clay, in painting, white-washing, and enamelling them. All those tricks, however, did not preserve them from decay; and when they grew old, they even looked worse for all this cost and varnish. Some, however, acted a more sensible part, and spent no more upon their mouldering tenements than just to keep them whole and clean, and in good repair, which is what every tenant ought to do; and I observed that those who were most moderate in the care of their own tenements, were most attentive to repair and warm the ragged tenements of others. But none did this with much zeal or acceptance, but those who had acquired a habit of overlooking the things below, and who also, by the constant use of the telescope had got their natural weak and dim sight so strengthened, as to be able to discern pretty distinctly the nature of the things above. The habit of fixing their eyes on these glories made all the shining trifles, which compose the mass of things below, at last appear in

THE VALLEY OF TEARS

A VISION.

OR, BEAR YE ONE ANOTHER'S BURTHENS.

ONCE upon a time methought I set out upon af long journey, and the place through which I travelled appeared to be a dark valley, which was called the Valley of Tears. It had obtained this name, not only on account of the many sorrowful adventures which poor passengers commonly meet with in their journey through it; but also because most of these travellers entered it weeping and crying, and left it in very great pain and anguish. This vast valley was full of people of all colours, ages, sizes and descriptions. But whether white, or black, or tawny, all were travelling the same road; or rather they were taking different little paths which all led to the same common end.

Now it was remarkable, that notwithstanding the different complexions, ages, and tempers of this vast variety of people, yet all resembled each other in this one respect, that each had a burthen on his back which he was destined to carry through the toil and heat of the day, until he should arrive, by a longer or shorter course, at his journey's end. These burthens would in general have made the pilgrimage quite intolerable, had not the lord of the valley, out of his great compassion for these poor pilgrims, pro