veneration about
this sweet image of perfect purity and faith. Never does love strike so
deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature;
there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its
interlacing fibres.

In this case it was not merely Agnes that he sighed for, but she stood
to him as the fair symbol of that life-peace, that rest of soul which he
had lost, it seemed to him, forever.

"Behold this pure, believing child," he said to himself,--"a true member
of that blessed Church to which thou art a rebel! How peacefully this
lamb walketh the old ways trodden by saints and martyrs, while thou
art an infidel and unbeliever!" And then a stern voice within him
answered,--"What then? Is the Holy Ghost indeed alone dispensed through
the medium of Alexander and his scarlet crew of cardinals? Hath the
power to bind and loose in Christ's Church been indeed given to whoever
can buy it with the wages of robbery and oppression? Why does every
prayer and pious word of the faithful reproach me? Why is God silent? Or
is there any God? Oh, Agnes, Agnes! dear lily! fair lamb! lead a sinner
into the green pastures where thou restest!"

So wrestled the strong nature, tempest-tossed in its strength,--so slept
the trustful, blessed in its trust,--then in Italy, as now in all lands.

MAIL-CLAD STEAMERS.

Exposed as we are to treason at home and jealousy abroad, it becomes the
policy as well as the duty of our country to prepare with promptitude
for every contingency by availing itself of all improvements in the
art of war. Superior weapons double the courage and efficiency of our
troops, carry dismay to the foe, and diminish the cost and delays
of warfare. The match-lock and the field-piece in their rudest form
triumphed over the shield, the spear, and the javelin, while the
long-bow, once so formidable, is now rarely drawn, except by those who
cater for sensation-journals. The king's-arm and artillery of the last
war cannot stand before the Minie rifle and Whitworth cannon any more
than the sickle can keep pace with the McCormick reaper, or the slow
coach with the railway-car or the telegraph. Mail-clad steamers,
impervious to shells and red-hot balls, and almost, if not quite,
invulnerable by solid shot and balls from rifled cannon at the distance
of a hundred yards, have been launched upon the deep, and already form
an important part of the navies of France and England. They have been