love,
On human life attends;
And at the cold sepulchral stone
Th' uncertain vista ends.
How best to bear each various change,
Should weal or woe befall,
To love, live, die, this Sacred Book,
Lydia, it tells us all.

Oh, much-beloved, our coming day
To us is all unknown,
But sure we stand a broader mark
Than they who stand alone.
_One_ knows it all: not His an eye,
Like ours, obscured and dim;
And knowing us, He gives this book,
That we may know of Him.

His words, my love, are gracious words,
And gracious thoughts express:
He cares e'en for each little bird
That wings the blue abyss.
Of coming wants and woes He thought,
Ere want or woe began;
And took to Him a human heart.
That He might feel for man.

Then oh! my first, my only love,
The kindliest, dearest, best!
On Him may all our hopes repose,--
On Him our wishes rest.
His be the future's doubtful day,
Let Joy or grief befall:
In life or death, in weal or woe,
Our God, our guide, our all.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Professor Pillans.

[16] "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh."

CHAPTER XXIV.

"Life is a drama of a few brief acts;
The actors shift, the scene is often changed,
Pauses and revolutions intervene,
The mind is set to many a varied tune.
And jars and plays in harmony by turns."
ALEXANDER BETHUNE.

Though my wife continued, after our marriage, to teach a few pupils, the
united earnings of the household did not much exceed a hundred pounds
per annum--not quite so large a sum as I had used to think it a few
years before; and so I set myself to try whether I could not turn my
leisure hours to some account, by writing for the periodicals. My old
inability of pressing for work continued to be as embarrassing as ever,
and, save for a chance engagement of no very promising kind, which
presented itself to me unsolicited about this time, I might have failed
in procuring the employment which I sought. An ingenious self-taught
mechanic--the late Mr. John Mackay Wilson of Berwick-on-Tweed--after
making good his upward way from his original place at the compositor's
frame, to the editorship of a provincial paper, started, in the
beginning of 1835, a weekly perio