ready access to your hearts. We have declared, as well as we could in so short a space, what we deemed the whole counsel of God respecting sickness. And now we commend you to Him, even our Father, who hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through Jesus Christ. May He comfort you, and stablish you in every good word and work.

4*

COMPENSATIONS OF THE SICK ROOM.

Ir would be worth our while to trace, amidst the desolations which disease creates, the footsteps of that mercy which descends to repair them. We do not admit to our minds freely enough the lights which might gild, if they could not dissipate, the clouds which brood over them. God forbid that we should represent as less than they are the the sorrows of the sick. They can hardly be spoken of unreservedly to the healthy and happy, without the semblance of exaggeration. But they who will enter the dark retreats which cover them, may know for themselves what those sorrows are. Others cannot know by being told. Yet sternly, terribly, as the evils in the prison-house of the victim to disease may frown upon us, there are good angels among them, whom having seen we remember forever with inexpressible tenderness and joy.

One element among those most obvious in this sad condition, is the deep, entire, often dreary seclusion it implies. In health we range far and wide, unrestrained. Our track is on the morning dews "o'er every pleasant hill and dale; " we linger at nightfall by the murmuring brook, or the shore which echoes the moan of the sea. Nature opens

for us all her springs of delight. Society awaits our coming, with other pleasures and gifts of instruction to bestow. And there are yet other resources for mind and for body, wholesome and not without their charms, in the scenes where business traffics. This free contact with a thousand varieties of outward objects and interests is replete with spiritual uses. We lose and forget ourselves in the open world. Collision brings out thoughts and feelings which had else slept within us, and the soul may be thus enriched, and is always quickened and animated. The intellectual activity receives here direction as well as impulse, and when tending to excess is conducted off through many safe channels. But with health this

liberty passes away. The invalid must dwell apart where the world will not follow him. He has few severer pangs than the one which accompanies the conviction, that he is henceforth cut off from free intercourse with nature and society, and has no longer a part in the common business and amusements of life. Long will images of objects once cherished, but abandoned now, continue to haunt his waking and his sleeping hours. In his feverish dreams he resumes suspended tasks, stands at the wonted desk and writes, makes sales, calculates accounts; or he revisits favorite places, sits beneath the tree on the rock which he rested by when a child, joins the merry ring on the green sward, kneels on the hassock with his parents to pray. But he wakes to find it only a dream. He is alone in a retirement from which he can seldom, perhaps never, be withdrawn. Not his, the solitude which the scholar knows well to enliven. Happy were it so. With his aching frame and unstrung nerves few studies could be made compatible, supposing he had the disposition

and the means to pursue them. Not his, the solitude of the artist; those are brighter and happier hours than his, which are spent with pallet, pen, or chisel in hand, however spent alone. Intelligence with him has put off its dignities, and genius has done with her creations. The hands which hang down and the feeble knees are no more unsuitable to their wonted uses, than the higher faculties to their former employments, in their present drooping and spiritless condition. He sits, alike in pain or quietness, idle, or with varied expedients, all poor enough, to keep from seeming idle. What exertions of mind or body he puts forth are so different from those he once made, that he can find nothing in them to raise selfesteem, though they help to beguile the sorrows he must still endure. Other and yet darker incidents overshadow the picture, but we will not name them. Enough, if we have indicated what is implied in sequestration from the common paths and interests of men.

And have we any offset to all this?