TH

FAMILY WORSHIP.

HEN kneeling down, to HEAVEN'S ETERNAL KING,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"
That thus they all shall meet in future days:
There ever bask in uncreated rays

No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,
In such society, yet still more dear;
While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.
Compared with this, how poor religion's pride,
In all the pomp of method, and of art,
When men display to congregations wide.

Devotion's every grace, except the heart!
The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole :
But, haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul;
And in His book of life the inmates poor enrol.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad :
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

'An honest man 's the noblest work of GOD;"
And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,

The cottage leaves the palace far behind.
What is a lordling's pomp?-a cumbrous load,
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined!

-BURNS.

F

FRIENDS.

RIEND after friend departs!

Who hath not lost a friend? There is no union here of hearts, That finds not here an end! Were this frail world our final rest, Living or dying, none were blest.

Beyond the flight of time,-

Beyond the reign of death,
There surely is some blessed clime
Where life is not a breath;
Nor life's affections transient fire,
Whose sparks fly upwards and expire.

There is a world above,

Where parting is unknown;

A long eternity of love

Formed for the good alone :
And faith beholds the dying here
Translated to that glorious sphere !

Thus star by star declines,

Till all are past away;

As morning high and higher shines

To pure and perfect day;

Nor sink those stars in empty night,

But hide themselves in heaven's own light.

-MONTGOMERY.

IN

HARLEY AND THE FORTUNE-TELLER. *

Na few hours Harley reached the inn where he proposed breakfasting; but the fulness of his heart would not suffer him to eat a morsel. He walked out on the road, and, gaining a little height, stood gazing on that quarter he had left. He looked for his wonted prospect, his fields, his woods, and his hills: they were lost in the distant clouds! He pencilled them on the clouds, and bade them farewell with a sigh!

He sat down on a large stone to take out a little pebble from his shoe, when he saw, at some distance, a beggar approaching him. He had on a loose sort of coat, mended with different-coloured rags, amongst which the blue and the russet were the predominant. He had a short, knotty stick in his hand, and on the top of it was stuck a ram's horn; his knees (though he was no pilgrim) had worn the stuff off his breeches; he wore no shoes, and his stockings had entirely lost that part of them which should have covered his feet and ankles in his face, however, was the plump appearance of good humour; he walked a good round pace, and a crook-legged dog trotted at his heels.

"Our delicacies," said Harley to himself, "are fantastic; they are not in nature! That beggar walks over the sharpest of these stones barefooted, whilst I have lost the most delightful dream in the world from the smallest of them happening to get into my shoe."

The beggar had by this time come up, and, pulling off a piece of hat, asked charity of Harley; the dog began to beg too :-it was impossible to resist both; and, in truth, the want of shoes and stockings had made both unnecessary, for Harley had destined sixpence for him before. The beggar, on receiving it, poured forth blessings without number; and, with a sort of smile on his countenance, said to Harley, "that if he wanted to have his fortune told "— Harley turned his eye briskly on the beggar: it was an unpromising look for the subject of a prediction, and silenced the prophet immediately. "I would much rather learn," said Harley, "what it is in

*From "The Man of Feeling." The first edition was published anonymously in 1771. A complete edition of Mackenzie's works, in 8vo, was issued at Edinburgh in 1838.