in both, to another; as a record of spiritual struggle, and, in some measure, of spiritual victory, to another; and as pointing, ever and anon, to the cheering rays of the

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Coming Glory" of the Church of Christ, to another. Whether the writer has been able to interpose, by means of the interest of his own personal story, or by the idiosyncrasy of his own style, a thread of unity through these various materials,—is a different question, and one about which, sooth to say, he is considerably careless. In writing it, and especially the latter portion of it, he had higher objects in view than to manifest either the skill of the artist or the power of the poet.

B. E.

March 5, 1856.

THE

HISTORY OF A MAN.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND EARLY YOUTH.

How simple the announcement, such a person was born at such a day and such an hour; and yet how significant and solemn the statement ! What comparison between the birth of a sun-a vast mass of mere light, heat, and perishable matter-and the birth of a being who can weigh, measure, love, laugh at, adore, or despise that orb,- kiss his hand and worship, or cry, "Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams!” and who is to survive the proud luminary, and to return one day the smile shed by the Day-star on his death-bed and grave, and shall see him snatched from his sphere while holding on his own immortal journey! What a key-note is struck when the tidings are told, "Behold, there is a manchild brought forth,"-a key-note which is to ring and reverberate through eternal ages! This thought is very seldom in men's minds, when they hear of or witness a birth. They see only the poor paltry threescore and ten years of mortal life that are to follow, and not the awful roll of cycles of innumerable centuries! Perhaps men never feel less, or are less certain of the immortality of the soul, than when they watch the puny creature as it enters the stage, "wawling"

B

and shrinking from the chill air of an inhospitable world. "That child live for ever?-that poor shrunken worm become a winged angel?" Besides, the fact of birth is so common, that to many it loses all its charm, and all its poetic interest. While parents, in general, think too much of their offspring, and act and speak as if they were the creators of the spirits as well as the begetters of the bodies of their children; and, to use the quaint language of a friend long since dead, dress up their young sinners, and bring them to be baptized, as if they were newly-arrived angels, many people go to the other extreme, and are apt to pooh the baby, and to wonder what parents see about their brats, and why they should be expected to kiss and fondle them. To me a child has always had a deeper significance; and I have always regarded it with a warmer interest,—not, indeed, looking on it as an angel, but as a candidate for a life higher than the angelic, or for one lower than the demoniac,-a drop of dew, destined either to be exhaled by the sun of heaven, or to be mixed with that miry stream which flows through this world down to the chambers of death; and have felt this thought invest a cradle with greater grandeur and an interest far more thrilling and profound than, I repeat it, had I seen a sun struggling up through chaos and fire-mist toward its finished and orbed magnificence.

With what emotions my birth was regarded, I know not; but at all events I was born on the 30th of January, 181–. A little girl of four, whom I know right well, was lately overheard by her father soliloquizing thus to herself about a younger brother, whose pet name was Dirrley: "There'll, may be, be more Dirrleys yet; but I'm born, at any rate-yes, I'm born!" She felt this to be a great fact, and that no succeeding arrivals could interfere with the truth that she had come upon the stage,—had got and was to keep the start. It was the queerest assertion of individuality and independence I ever heard of. So I, on a Saturday morning, in the depth of winter, received the unalterable honours of birth. My