being more rare among princes, as well as more useful, seem chiefly to challenge our applause.  Nature also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him all bodily accomplishments, vigour of limbs, dignity of shape and air, and a pleasant, engaging, and open countenance.  Fortune alone, by throwing him into that barbarous age, deprived him of historians worthy to transmit his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively colours, and with more particular strokes, that we may at least perceive some of those small specks and blemishes, from which, as a man, it is impossible he could be entirely exempted.

HUME.

* * * * *

THE FIRST GRIEF.

[Illustration:  Letter O.]

    Oh! call my brother back to me,
      I cannot play alone;
    The summer comes with flower and bee—­
      Where is my brother gone?

    The butterfly is glancing bright
      Across the sunbeam’s track;
    I care not now to chase its flight—­
      Oh! call my brother back.

    The flowers run wild—­the flowers we sow’d
      Around our garden-tree;
    Our vine is drooping with its load—­
      Oh! call him back to me.

    “He would not hear my voice, fair child—­
      He may not come to thee;
    The face that once like spring-time smiled,
      On earth no more thou’lt see

[Illustration]

    “A rose’s brief bright life of joy,
      Such unto him was given;
    Go, thou must play alone, my boy—­
      Thy brother is in heaven!”

    And has he left the birds and flowers,
      And must I call in vain,
    And through the long, long summer hours,
      Will he not come again?

    And by the brook, and in the glade,
      Are all our wand’rings o’er? 
    Oh! while my brother with me play’d,
      Would I had loved him more!—­

    MRS. HEMANS.

* * * * *

ON CRUELTY TO INFERIOR ANIMALS

[Illustration:  Letter M.]

Man is that link of the chain of universal existence by which spiritual and corporeal beings are united:  as the numbers and variety of the latter his inferiors are almost infinite, so probably are those of the former his superiors; and as we see that the lives and happiness of those below us are dependant on our wills, we may reasonably conclude that our lives and happiness are equally dependant on the wills of those above us; accountable, like ourselves, for the use of this power to the supreme Creator and governor of all things.  Should this analogy be well founded, how criminal will our account appear when laid before that just and impartial judge!  How will man, that sanguinary tyrant, be able to excuse himself from the charge of those innumerable cruelties inflicted on his unoffending subjects committed to his care, formed for his benefit, and placed under his authority by their common Father? whose mercy is over all his works, and who expects that his authority should be exercised, not only with tenderness and mercy, but in conformity to the laws of justice and gratitude.