'The Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave.'

ring off his finger ere his last sigh was drawn, and then his servants plundered the house. Richard of Bordeaux, deprived of his power, and immured in Pontefract Castle, either committed suicide there or was murdered by Sir Piers Exton and others.

A fit quenched the vital spark of Bolingbroke (known as Henry IV.), in the forty-seventh year of his age, as he was at his devotions in Westminster Abbey; and his gallant son, Henry of Monmouth, succumbed to a mysterious and rapid disorder in the summer of 1422, calm himself, amid the tears of the bystanders. So he slept, having lived out barely half his days. His infant son, not nine months old, was at times imbecile. After many startling changes of fortune he closed his unquiet reign in the Tower, probably being murdered; while his successor, the handsome Yorkist Edward, flushed with success, and given to pleasure, died in his forty-first year-it is said, penitent and devout. Edward V. was smothered by order of his uncle Richard, and then buried at the dismal stair-foot; while that same cruel uncle, having enjoyed for a brief while the fruits of his own wickedness, fell at Bosworth, almost hewed to pieces. The Earl of Richmond, who picked up the crown of England from a hawthorn-bush, ended, by his marriage, the long and foolish bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses. Crafty and covetous, he ground his people to swell his money-bags, and then tried to salve his conscience by leaving his son directions to disgorge. It was a thing he had not the heart to do himself. Nothing tragic or interesting marks his death. His son, the famous eighth Henry, died suspicious and irritable. In the very agonies of death he stained his hands with the blood of the amiable Henry Howard. He grasped Cranmer's hand when that Bishop bade him hope for mercy, and so he died, a man terrible to the last.

Mary Tudor, prematurely old, and as wretched a woman as then lived, fell sick of an ague and died, to the joy of her people, after languishing two months. When I am dead and opened,' said she, 'you shall find the loss of Calais written on my heart.' Her sister, after a long and glorious reign, in which she contrived to win the love and goodwill of her subjects, met the king of terrors in deep melancholy, lonely and haggard. As a writer says She lost her memory, the violence of her temper became unbearable, her very courage seemed to forsake her; she sat day and night propped up with pillows on a stool, her finger almost always in her mouth, her eyes open and fixed on the ground. And early one March morning the life of Elizabeth, a life so great, so strange and lonely in its greatness, passed quietly away.'

On a March morning, too, died James the First, not without suspicion of foul play, which, however, seems to have been unfounded. He sank to his rest, desirous of saying something important to 'baby Charles,' but not able to say it. Of poor baby Charles and his death nothing need here be said, as its tragic circumstances are so well known. The second Charles's death-bed was strange. A disguised Roman priest named Huddlestone, who had saved the King's life after the fight at Worcester, was introduced into the room of the dying man by the Duke of York (afterwards James the Second), as one who 'had once saved Charles's life, and was now come to save his soul.' The King confessed, and received absolution from the priest, while Protestant Bishops, Ken among them, waited in the ante-room. James

was exiled through his attachment to the Church of Rome, and found a grave in France. In spite of this, however, there was a peace about James's death which was wanting in so many of our kings' last moments. James was a bigot, but a sincere one, and he thought he was justified in risking all for the religion he approved. The happy day is come at last,' said he, as he received the Sacrament. And then he forgave all his enemies by name, specially the Princess Anne his daughter.

His successor, the able William, made also a devout end. He died,' says Burnet, in a wonderfully tranquil manner, often looking up to Heaven. He was singularly prone to hide all religious impressions, but he gave the Archbishop his hand as a sign that he firmly believed the truth of the Christian faith.'

Anne was seized with apoplexy, brought on by the political agitations of that most unquiet time. This Queen leant to her own kindred, the Stuarts, but was obliged, by her ministers, to assign the crown to the Hanoverian family. Her brother, the Old Pretender, made, shortly before she died, a visit to her, and no doubt she told him she secretly favoured the Jacobite cause. Her infirm health made the succession of the crown a matter of the greatest importance; but when she died suddenly, the partizans of the Stuarts were not prepared, and Bishop Atterbury was the only man of importance who had the boldness to proclaim the Pretender.

The first George died also of apoplexy, estranged from his son; and seven months after the death of his once lovely and much-injured wife, Sophia Dorothea, whom he had kept in confinement in the solitary castle of Ahlen for well-nigh thirty-two years. There she languished, while a number of worthless women disgraced the English Court. The second George died as suddenly as his father. In this case it was the ventricle of the heart which burst, and a quick and painless death put a stop to a long and useful career. Blind and imbecile was George the Third when death overtook him at Windsor, an old man of eighty-two. And so great monarchs die; and so the fashion of this world passeth away. As we look down this long vista of death-beds, and see the end of the conqueror, the usurper, the rich, the powerful, the envied, we feel how truly an ancient king spoke of human life, when he said of it, even in its brightest form- Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!' G. S. O.

'IN THE HOLLOW

THE great and restless ocean rolls

Resistless on the sand,

Yet every wave is measured in

The hollow of His hand.

Each separate drop that teems with life,
Each billow far from land,
Or angry-crested breaker, knows

The hollow of His hand.

Help us, O Lord, for faith grows dim;
We do not understand;

Our seas of woe sure must o'erflow
The hollow of Thy hand.

OF HIS HAND.'

Teach us that all are measured there,
A sounding deep and grand;
There are no depths of grief without
The hollow of Thy hand.

Each throb of woe, each weary pain

Of head, or heart, or hand,
The long-drawn hours of sickness-all
Are measured in Thy hand.
These waves can never rise too high,
For Thou wilt help us stand.
Dear Lord, we cast our burdens in
The hollow of Thy hand.

From an American Newspaper.

ZRA of Babylon, 'a ready scribe in the law of Moses,' may be considered as the father of modern Judaism. At a time when the Jews had almost forgotten the customs of their ancient faith from their long captivity, and did not even understand the law of Moses in their own language from their having adopted the speech of Chaldæa,* it was Ezra who restored the ordinances of the Jewish religion and the worship in the Temple. This, the second temple, though founded in the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, was not finished till the reign of Darius Hystaspes: so that it was about sixty years afterwards that Ezra went to Jerusalem.

In the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, king of Persia, B.C. 458, Ezra received a royal commission to restore the temple worship at Jerusalem, and to regulate the affairs of the Jewish nation. This commission invested him with the power of life and death in the execution of his reforms.

The Temple had now been built a considerable time; yet the Jews were very lax in their observances, and had broken the Mosaic law by intermarriage with the surrounding nations. How Ezra succeeded in the work of reformation may be gathered from his own vivid narrative, which is preserved in the sacred Scriptures. Even to this day a great portion of the Hebrew liturgy, as it stands in their modern prayer-books, is attributed to him.

There is a remarkable tradition, which ascribes to him the invention of the Hebrew square letters in use at the present time. This is possible, though they are probably only a form of the Chaldean letters; we possess no inscriptions in the character of earlier date than the Christian era. Origen, who lived from A.D. 186 to 253, himself edited two editions of the Old Testament, and has a great deal to say about the Hebrew alphabet. He mentions that in the best Bibles the square letter was used throughout the work, except in the name of the Lord, which was written in the old Samaritan letters; from this it would appear that Ezra, or whoever made the first copies in the new character, had, from a feeling of reverence, left the Holy Name in the very letters in which it was first inscribed in the sacred roll. It is probable that in the time of Ezra there were very few Jewish manuscripts remaining: the people during their long captivity having given up the use of their own language, these writings would not be intelligible to them, so copies were made in letters more like those with which they were familiar than the ancient ones. The fact that so great a work should be attributed to Ezra shows the high esteem in which this earnest and patriotic man was held by his people, who have called him their second Moses. A. R.

Parts of the Book of Ezra, from chap. iv. 8 to chap. vi. 18 and chap. vii. 12-26 are in Chaldee.

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

A PASTORAL OF ENGLISH LIFE.

CHAPTER I.-WATCHING THE BEES.

INAH, lass, the bees seem mighty busy this morning. They look like swarming, so thee'd best keep an eye upon them.' It was the genial voice of Farmer Yeatman which thus roused his daughter from her work, one bright spring morning, half a century ago. He was standing outside the broad stone-mullioned window, through which a flood of sunshine poured into the great old-fashioned kitchen of the Holt Farm.

It was a quiet, rural scene, such as might still be found in some out-of-the-way place, which the hurry and bustle of modern life has not yet reached. Across the low ceiling there were huge oak beams, almost black with age; the walls were of panelled wood, whitewashed for the sake of the light; but all the furniture, which was also of oak, was polished until you could see yourself reflected in it. This, however, was rendered unnecessary by a little round mirror which hung opposite the window, and presented a picture in miniature of the garden outside. Then there was the corner-cupboard with a glass front, in which was carefully stored the best china, only to be brought out on rare and festive occasions; the blue plates and dishes for daily use being ranged on the kitchen shelves, above the spotless array of polished copper pans. Opposite the cupboard stood the tall eightday clock, a wonderful work of art, which was supposed to tell the signs of the zodiac and the changes of the moon, but at that moment it was simply occupied in striking eleven o'clock.

By the side of the wide, open fireplace, close into the chimney-corner, sat old Mrs. Yeatman, the farmer's mother. In the snowy cap drawn closely round the face, and the dark blue dress with a muslin kerchief neatly folded over it, she looked the picture of gentle, placid old age, as she bent over her knitting. So absorbed was she, that her ball of yarn had fallen unnoticed on the floor, and was now a plaything for the kitten, who had taken to it as a relaxation from the effort of virtue required to keep her thoughts away from the brood of little yellow chicks nestling in a basket on the hearth. But having now described the surrounding scene, we must turn to the central point, pretty Dinah Yeatman, as she stands there with the sunshine lighting up her smooth golden hair, and her dainty figure set off by a flowery chintz gown of some long-forgotten pattern. She had hastened to the window at her father's call, and opened the diamond-paned casement to speak to him.

'Keep an eye on the bees, Dinah !' he said.

6

"Yes, father,' she replied. And if so be they do swarm, shall I fetch thee to hive them?' she continued, with a mischievous smile.

'Nay, nay, child,' replied the farmer, drawing back and shaking his head. Thee knows well that they creatures never can abide me. If they do but see me go anigh their pots, out they buzz as fierce as may be. I never did hold much with bee-keeping; they seem to