Old Age.

"No snow falls lighter than the snow of age; but none is heavier, for it never melts."

THE figure is by no means novel, but the closing part of the sentence is new as well as emphatic. The Scriptures represent age by the almond-tree, which bears blossoms of the purest white. "The almond-tree shall flourish," the head shall be hoary. Dickens says of one of his characters, whose hair was turning gray, that it looked as if Time had lightly splashed his snows upon it in passing.

"It never melts"-no never. Age is inexorable. Its wheels must move onward; they know no retrograde movement. The old man may sit and sing, “l would I were a boy again," but he grows older as he sings. He may read of the elixir of youth, but he cannot find it; he may sigh for the secrets of that alchemy which is able to make him young again, but sighing brings it not. He may gaze backward with an eye of longing upon the rosy scenes of early years, as one who gazes on his home from the deck of a departing ship, which every moment carries him farther and farther away. Poor old man! he has little more to do than die.

"It never melts." The snow of winter comes and sheds its white blessings upon the valley and the moun tains, but soon the sweet spring comes and smiles it all away. Not so with that upon the brow of the tottering veteran. There is no spring whose warmth can pene