should have
imagined that nothing could have healed: wounds which we should have
expected to see bleed afresh at the sight of the inflictor, as it was
said of old that those of the murdered did at the approach of the
murderer. Sometimes we almost feel as if nothing was real in that
singular existence called _the world_. Like the performers, who laugh
and talk behind the scenes after the close of some dreadful tragedy;
we see around us men who have ruined the fortunes and destroyed the
happiness of others, women who have betrayed and been betrayed, whose
existence has been perhaps devoted to misery and to infamy by the
first step they have taken in the path of guilt, and whose hearts, if
they did not break grew hard; we see the victims and the destroyers,
those who have loved and those who have hated, those who have injured
and those who have been injured, mix together in the common
thoroughfares of life, meet even in social intimacy, with offered
hands and ready smiles; not because "Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy;" not because "To those who forgive, shall
much be forgiven;" but because what is genuine and true, what is deep
and what is strong, takes no root in that worn-out soil on which we
tread, thrives not in that withering air which we breathe in that
fictitious region which we live in, and which we so emphatically and
so presumptuously call _the world_.

BY MRS. LUELLA J. CASE.

CHARITY.

Speak kindly, oh! speak soothingly,
To him whose hopes are crossed,
Whose blessed trust in human love,
Was early, sadly lost;
For wearily--how wearily!
Drags life, if love depart;
Oh! let the balm of gentle words
Fall on the smitten heart.

Go gladly, with true sympathy,
Where want's pale victims pine,
And bid life's sweetest smiles again
Along their pathway shine.
Oh, heavily doth poverty
Man's nobler instincts bind;
Yet sever not that chain, to cast
A sadder on the mind.

BY G. P. R. JAMES.

He was a fool, and not a philosopher, who said that uncertainty was
the just condition of man's mind. In trust, in confidence, in firm
conviction, and in faith, is only to be found repose and peace.
Assurance is what man's heart and understanding both require, and the
very fact of the mind not being capable of obtaining certainty upon
many points, is a proof of weakness, not of strength.

EDITOR'S TABLE.