tokens true
Of grace for ever fresh and new!
Prayers for Emigrants.

There are some days in the early year, devoid indeed of spring
brilliance, but full of soft, heavy, steaming fragrance, pervading the
grey air with sweet odours, and fostering the growth of tender bud and
fragile stem with an unseen influence, more mild and kindly than even
the smiling sunbeam or the gushing shower. 'A growing day,' as the
country-people term such genial, gentle weather, might not be without
analogy to the brief betrothal of Louis and Mary.

Subdued and anxious, there had been little of the ordinary light of
joy, hope, or gaiety, and their pleasures had been less their own than
in preparing the happiness of their two friends. It was a time such as
to be more sweet in memory than it was in the present; and the shade
which had hung over it, the self-restraint and the forbearance which it
had elicited, had unconsciously conduced to the development of the
characters of both, preparing them to endure the parting far more
effectually than unmixed enjoyment could have done. The check upon
Louis's love of trifling, the restraint on his spirits, the being
thrown back on his own judgment when he wanted to lean upon Mary, had
given him a habit of controlling his boyish ways.

It was a call to train himself in manliness and self-reliance. It
changed him from the unstable reed he once had been, and helped him to
take one steady and consistent view of the trial required of him and of
Mary, and then to act upon it resolutely and submissively. With Mary
gone, he cared little what became of him until her letters could
arrive; and his father, with more attention to his supposed benefit
than to his wishes, carried him at once, without returning home, to a
round of visits among all his acquaintance most likely to furnish a
distracting amount of Christmas gaieties. In the midst of these, there
occurred a vacancy in the representation of a borough chiefly under the
influence of Sir Miles Oakstead; and, as it was considered expedient
that he should be brought into Parliament, his father repaired with him
at once to Oakstead, and involved him in all the business of the
election. On his success, he went with his father to London for the
session, and this was all that his friends at Northwold knew of him.
He wrote hurried notes to James or to Mr. Holdsworth on necessary
affairs connected with his farm and improvements, menti