latest news from gossiping workmen. He felt a singular sense of buoyancy and elasticity, which made him trudge many miles before he was aware that he ought to be hungry. At length he established himself in a comfortable coffee-house and got refreshment, and, liking the looks of the people, he determined upon remaining there all night. In his quiet corner he heard all the noise without being thought an eavesdropper, or an uncivil person. Fairly tired with so many platitudes, witticisms, and nimble displays of logic and word-fencing, as were plentiful about him, he took out his Bible, and tried to read. The first words that caught his eyes were in Nehemiah. Be not ye afraid of them; remember the Lord, great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives and your houses. to They blended strangely with all he had seen and heard during the day, and seemed express to him his own half-formed thoughts. Then there came upon him, boldly and vividly, like a flash of arrowy flame, his father's words, "Do not forget your duty." He was much moved, and wrestled in solitary thought, alone, as in a very solitude of desert, amidst the babble and clatter around him. A heavy overwhelming burden seemed upon him, and the room grew hazy and whirled around him. "O God," he cried out wildly, "guide me aright, and let me know my way and go in it bravely." The company were startled. "Some Puritan Roundhead in a frenzy," they muttered. Aye, it was a frenzy, and a fine frenzy, too. God was in that room, working upon that young mind as he does not often work in these days. There was a mystery in it all, I confess. Clearer and calmer, at length, a certain luminous influence seemed generated within him, and in that fine spiritual transparency of sight, he saw himself and his duty, in a way that words can never reveal. He would have liked to have written to Maggie, but he dared not; but the following letter home was very carefully penned, and then posted. It speaks for itself. "My dearly beloved Parents, "I desire to inform you, that I am no longer with our uncle, who could not well continue me in his service in these uncertain days, but I am in the Lord's hands and cannot suffer distress. I had intended to have come home at once, but I have had wonderful openings of the Holy Spirit, who hath put into my heart a new way whereby I may acquit myself of the duty God hath imposed upon our country at this hour. I would fain see you all in peace, but I abide in patience until God giveth me discharge of that service he hath put me to. "Send me a little money where I now am, and God will bless you. Be not alarmed at my conduct. God will bless me, as he will keep you. "In all sobriety and prayerfulness, "Ever your dutiful son, 59 CHAPTER IV. THE BATTLE OF NASEBY. NEXT to the satisfaction of doing work well ourselves, is that of seeing others do it better. 'Nathaniel Newbury had done what seemed a part of his great life-duty as well as he was able, and now calmly reposed in the noble satisfaction of witnessing others leave him and his far behind in their victorious progress in the divine royalty of right. In the full swing of action every man is a hero, and seems to touch the heavens with his exalted head, but it is only the good man who is genuinely modest and magnanimously humble in the after-thoughts that follow hard upon the heels of his performances. The spuriously brave says, "Have I not done wisely and well?" but the inscription written by the truly great over every achievement is, "O that I had done more, and done better!" Our life is barred with these alternations of mood. The real and ideal, the actual and the possible, the pride of activity and the graceful loveliness of repose, are the shine and shade, the azure and cloud, the hill and valley, the earth and heaven, the orb and system, that compose our human existence and foreshadow our divine exaltation. The sentimental humility of many men may be explained from their slavish passivity, and the intolerant pride of others from their perpetually doing a number of small things that bring with them no recovering balance of the mind. The wise man is he who is brave enough to do great things, and when he has done his best sees how infinitely much better the work might have been done. So thought Nathaniel on his sick bed at the Grange. "But for this hack," said he, "I might have been a vain-glorious trumpeter of self, a prating boaster, and a proudhearted warrior; whereas now I am simply a wounded man and a smitten soldier. Strange, how one good blow will alter our views of |