ften sent without even
knowing the cause of their banishment.

A faint idea of what the poor unfortunate exiles have to suffer may be
gleaned from the description which follows:--'Barren and rocky
mountains, covered with eternal snows, waste uncultivated plains, where,
in the hottest days of the year, little more than the surface of the
ground is thawed, alternate with large rivers, the icy waves of which,
rolling sullenly along, have never watered a meadow or seen a flower
expand. The Government supplies some of the exiles with food, very poor
and very scanty; those whom it abandons subsist on what they obtain by
hunting. The greater number of these hapless beings reside in the
villages which border the river from Tobolsk to the boundaries of
Tschimska; others are dispersed in huts through the plains. For these
unfortunates not a single happy day exists.'

To such a state of exile and misery would the noble Polish lord have
been reduced if Nicholas had not granted Catharine's petition. This tale
shows how the eye of a tender and watchful Father is ever over the young
and unprotected. How true are these beautiful words:

'No earthly father loves like Thee;
No mother, e'er so mild,
Bears and forbears as Thou hast done
With me, Thy sinful child.'

THE SHABBY SURTOUT.

My reader, need you ever say,
With Titus, 'I have lost a day,'
When right, and left, and all around,
God's poor and needy ones are found?

[Illustration]

THE SHABBY SURTOUT.

I had taken a place on the top of one of the coaches which ran between
Edinburgh and Glasgow, for the purpose of commencing a short tour in the
Highlands of Scotland. It was in the month of June, a season when
travellers of various descriptions flock towards the Modern Athens, and
thence betake themselves to the northern or western counties, as their
business or fancy leads. As we rattled along Princes Street, I had
leisure to survey my fellow-travellers. Immediately opposite to me sat
two dandies of the first water, dressed in white greatcoats and Belcher
handkerchiefs, and each with a cigar in his mouth, which he puffed away
with marvellous self-complacency. Beside me sat a modest and comely
young woman in a widow's dress, and with an infant about nine months old
in her arms. The appearance of this youthful mourner and her baby
indicated that they belonged to the working c