once they quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an ash jutting out of the cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the Christian mother falling across the eyrie, in the midst of bones and blood, clasping 5 her child,-dead-dead-dead,-no doubt,-but unmangled and untorn, and swaddled up, just as it was, when she laid it down asleep, among the fresh hay, in a nook of the harvest field.

Oh! what a pang of perfect blessedness transfixed her 10 heart from that faint feeble cry :- "It lives-it lives-it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud laughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious innocent once more murmuring, at the fount of life and love! "O Thou great, and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou 15 brought me, one of the most sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save my soul, lest it perish, even for thy own name's sake! O Thou, who diedst to save sinners, have mercy upon me!"

Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old 20 trees,-far-far down,-and dwindled into specks, a thousand creatures of her own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound of the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native strath ?—and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which stands the cradle 25 of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here must she die,-and when her breast is exhausted, her baby too! And those horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings, will return; and her child will be devoured at last, even within the dead bosom that can protect 30 it no longer.

LESSON LXXXV.-SAME SUBJECT CONCLUDED.-ID.

Where all this while was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half

way up the cliffs. But his eye had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart sick;—and he who had so often reefed the top-gallant sail, when at midnight the coming of the 5 gale was heard afar, covered his face with his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights.

"And who will take care of my poor bed-ridden mother," thought Hannah, whose soul, through the exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain, in its grasp, that 10 hope which it had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God!" She looked around, expecting to see an angel ;

but nothing moved, except a rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye, -by some secret sympathy of her soul with the inanimate object, watched its fall; and it seemed to stop, not far 5 off, on a small platform.

Her child was bound within her bosom,-she remembered not how or when,-but it was safe;-and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm root-bound soil, 10 with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down by brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarfbirch. There, a loosened stone leapt over a ledge; and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall. There, the 15 shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff.

Steep as the wall of a house, was now the side of the 20 precipice. But it was matted with ivy centuries old,-long ago dead, and without a single green leaf,-but with thousands of arm-thick stems, petrified into the rock, and covering it, as with a trellis. She bound her baby to her neck, and with hands and feet clung to that fearful ladder. 25 Turning round her head and looking down, lo! the whole population of the parish,-so great was the multitude, on their knees and, hush! the voice of psalms! a hymn breathing the spirit of one united prayer! Sad and solemn was the strain, but nothing dirge-like,-breathing not of 30 death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that tune, perhaps the very words, but them she heard not,-in her own hut, she and her mother,—or in the kirk, along with all the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy ; and, in sudden inspiration, believ35 ing that her life was to be saved, she became almost as fearless, as if she had been changed into a winged creature.

Again her feet touched stones and earth,-the psalm was hushed,—but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and lo! a she-goat, with two little kids at her 40 feet. "Wild heights," thought she, "do these creatures climb;—but the dam will lead down her kid by the easiest paths, for oh! even in the brute creatures, what is the holy power of a mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping baby, and for the first time she 45 wept.

Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before by human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it; and the golden eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their eyrie, they had 5 brushed it with their wings. But all the rest of this part of the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yet accessible;-and more than one person in the parish had reached the bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it, and ere the cautious 10 mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, though among dangers, that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and then the head of another; and she knew that God had delivered her and her 15 child, in safety, into the care of their fellow-creatures.

Not a word was spoken,-eyes said enough,—she hushed her friends with her hands,-and, with uplifted eyes, pointed to the guides sent to her by Heaven. Small green plats, where those creatures nibble the wild-flowers, 20 became now more frequent,-trodden lines, almost as easy as sheep-paths, showed that the dam had not led her young into danger; and now the brush-wood dwindled away into straggling shrubs; and the party stood on a little eminence above the stream, and forming part of the strath.

25

There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing, and many tears, among the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs :-sublime was the shout that echoed afar the moment she reached the eyrie ;-then had succeeded a silence deep as death;-in a little while arose 30 the hymning prayer, succeeded by mute supplication ;the wildness of thankful and congratulatory joy had next its sway;—and now that her salvation was sure, the great crowd rustled like the wind-swept wood. And, for whose sake, was all this alternation of ? agony A poor, humble 35 creature, unknown to many even by name,-one who had but few friends, nor wished for more,-contented to work all day, here, there, any where,-that she might be able to support her aged mother and her little child,—and who on Sabbath took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart 40 for paupers, in the kirk.

LESSON LXXXVI.-SCENE AT THE DEDICATION OF A HEATHEN TEMPLE.-WILLIAM WARE.

As we drew near to the lofty fabric, I thought that no scene of such various beauty and magnificence, had ever met my eye. The temple itself is a work of unrivalled art. In size, it surpasses any other building of the same 5 kind in Rome, and for the excellence of workmanship, and purity of design, although it may fall below the standard of Hadrian's age, yet for a certain air of grandeur, and luxuriance of invention, in its details, and lavish profusion of embellishment in gold and silver, no temple nor other 10 edifice of any preceding age, ever perhaps resembled it.

Its order is Corinthian, of the Roman form, and the entire building is surrounded by its slender columns, each composed of a single piece of marble. Upon the front is wrought Apollo surrounded by the Hours. The western 15 extremity is approached by a flight of steps, of the same breadth as the temple itself. At the eastern, there extends beyond the walls, to a distance equal to the length of the building, a marble platform, upon which stands the altar of sacrifice, and which is ascended by various flights of 20 steps, some little more than a gently rising plain, up which the beasts are led that are destined to the altar.

When this vast extent of wall and column, of the most dazzling brightness, came into view, everywhere covered, together with the surrounding temples, palaces, and thea25 tres, with a dense mass of human beings, of all climes and regions, dressed out in their richest attire,-music, from innumerable instruments, filling the heavens with harmony, -shouts of the proud and excited populace, every few moments, and from different points, as Aurelian advanced, 30 shaking the air with its thrilling din,-the neighing of horses, the frequent blasts of the trumpet,-the whole made more solemnly imposing by the vast masses of cloud, which swept over the sky, now suddenly unveiling, and again eclipsing, the sun, the great god of this idolatry, 35 and from which few could withdraw their gaze; when, at once, this all broke upon my eye and ear, I was like a child who before had never seen aught but his own village, and his own rural temple, in the effect wrought upon me, and the passiveness with which I abandoned myself to the 40 sway of the senses. Not one there was more ravished by the outward circumstance and show. I thought of Rome's

thousand years, of her power, her greatness, and universal empire, and, for a moment, my step was not less proud than that of Aurelian.

But after that moment,-when the senses had had their 5 fill, when the eye had seen the glory, and the ear had fed upon the harmony and the praise, then I thought and felt very differently; sorrow and compassion, for these gay multitudes, were at my heart; prophetic forebodings of disaster, danger, and ruin to those, to whose sacred cause I 10 had linked myself, made my tongue to falter in its speech, and my limbs to tremble. I thought that the superstition, which was upheld by the wealth and the power, whose manifestations were before me, had its roots in the very centre of the earth,--far too deep down, for a few, like myself, ever 15 to reach them. I was like one whose last hope of life and escape, is suddenly struck away.

LESSON LXXXVII.-SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.-ID.

I was roused from these meditations, by our arrival at the eastern front of the temple. Between the two central columns, on a throne of gold and ivory, sat the emperor of the world, surrounded by the senate, the colleges of au5 gurs and haruspices, and by the priests of the various temples of the capital, all in their peculiar costume. Then Fronto, the priest of the temple, when the crier had proclaimed that the hour of worship and sacrifice had come, and had commanded silence to be observed,-standing at 10 the altar. glittering in his white and golden robes, like a messenger of light,-bared his head, and lifting his face up toward the sun, offered, in clear and sounding tones, the prayer of dedication.

As he came toward the close of his prayer, he, as is so 15 usual, with loud and almost frantic cries, and importunate repetition, called upon the god to hear him, and then, with appropriate names and praises, invoked the Father of gods and men, to be present and hear. Just as he had thus solemnly invoked Jupiter by name, and was about to call 20 on the other gods in the same manner, the clouds, which had been deepening and darkening, suddenly obscured the sun; a distant peal of thunder rolled along the heavens, and, at the same moment, from the dark recesses of the temple, a voice of preternatural power came forth, proclaim