6. Familiar sounds and cries came by degrees into the street below; the servants in the house were roused and busy; faces looked in at the door, and voices asked his attendants softly how he was. Paul always answered for himself, "I am better, a great deal better, thank you. Tell papa so!"

7. By little and little, he got tired of the bustle of the day, the noise of carriages and carts, and people passing and repassing; and would fall asleep, or be troubled with a restless and uneasy sense again-the child could hardly tell whether this were in his sleeping or his waking moments-of that rushing river. "Why will it never stop, Floy?" he would sometimes ask her. "It is bearing me away, I think!"

8. But Floy could always soothe and reassure him; and it was his daily delight to make her lay her head down on his pillow, and take some rest.

"You are always watching me, Floy. Let me watch you, now." They would prop him up with cushions in a corner of his bed, and there he would recline the while she lay beside him; bending forward oftentimes to kiss her, and whispering to those who were near that she was tired, and how she had sat up so many nights beside him.

9. Thus, the flush of the day, in its heat and light, would gradually decline; and again the golden water would be dancing on the wall.

He was visited by as many as three grave doctors-they used to assemble down stairs, and come up together—and the room was so quiet, and Paul was so observant of them (though he never asked of anybody what they said) that he even knew the difference in the sound of their watches.

10 But his interest was centred in Sir Parker Peps, who always took his seat on the side of the bed. For Paul had heard them say long ago, that that gentleman had been with his mamma when she clasped Florence to her arms, and died. And he could not forget it now. He liked him for it. He was not afraid.

Paul closed his eyes with those words, and fell asleep.

When he awoke, the sun was high, and the broad day was clear and warm. He lay a little, looking at the windows, which were open, and the curtains rustling in the air, and waving to and fro; then he said; "Floy, is it to-morrow? Is she come?"

11. Some one seemed to go in quest of her. Perhaps it was Susan. Paul thought he heard her telling him, when he had closed his eyes again, that she would soon be back; but he did not open them to see her. She kept her word-perhaps she had never been away-but the next thing that happened was a noise of footsteps on the stairs, and then Paul woke-woke mind and body—and sat upright in his bed. He saw them now about him.

12. There was no gray mist before them, as there had been sometimes in the night. He knew them every one, and called them by their names.

"And who is this? Is this my old nurse?" said the child, regarding with a radiant smile a figure coming in.

Yes, yes. No other stranger would have shed those tears at the sight of him, and called him her dear boy, her pretty boy, her own poor blighted child. No other woman would have stooped down by his bed, and taken up his wasted hand, and put it to her lips and breast, as one who had some right to fondle it. No other woman would have so forgotten everybody there but him and Floy, and been so full of tenderness and pity.

13. "Floy! this is a kind good face!" said Paul. “I am glad to see it again. Don't go away, old nurse. Stay here!" His senses were all quickened, and he heard a name he

knew.

"Who was that?-who said Walter?" he asked, looking round. "Some one said Walter. Is he here? I should like to see him very much."

14. Nobody replied directly, but his father soon said to Susan, 66 'Call him back, then; let him come up!" After a short pause of expectation, during which he looked with smil

ing interest and wonder on his nurse, and saw that she had not forgotten Floy, Walter was brought into the room. His open face and manner, and his cheerful eyes, had always made him a favorite with Paul; and when Paul saw him, he stretched out his hand, and said, "Good-bye!"

15. Good bye, my child!" cried Mrs. Pipchin, hurrying to his bed's head. "Not good-bye?"

For an instant, Paul looked at her with the wistful face with which he had so often gazed upon her in his corner by the fire. "Ah, yes," he said, placidly, "good-bye! Walter dear, good-bye !" turning his head to where he stood, and putting out his hand again. "Where is papa?"

16. He felt his father's breath upon his cheek, before the words had parted from his lips.

"Remember Walter, dear papa," he whispered, looking in his face- remember Walter. I was fond of Walter!" The feeble hand waved in the air, as if it cried "good-bye!" to Walter once again.

17. "Now lay me down again," he said; "and Floy, come close to me, and let me see you!"

Sister and brother wound their arms around each other, and the golden light came streaming in, and fell upon them, locked together.

How fast the river runs between its green banks and the rushes, Floy! But it's very near the sea. I hear the waves. They always said so!"

18. Presently he told her that the motion of the boat upon the stream was lulling him to rest. How green the banks were now, how bright the flowers growing on them, and how tall the rushes! Now the boat was out at sea, but gliding smoothly And now there was a shore before him. Who stood on the bank?

on.

19. He put his hands together, as he had been used to do at his prayers. He did not remove his arms to do it, but they saw him fold them so behind her neck.

“Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by the face! But

tell them that the print upon the stairs at school is not divine enough. The light about the head is shining on me as I go!"

20. The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion— Death!

Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of immortality! And look upon us, angels of young children, with regards not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean!

LESSON IX.

LANGUAGE.

BY R. W. EMERSON.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the distinguished American poet, essayist, and philosopher, was born in Boston, 1803. He graduated at Harvard College in 1821, and, after teaching school for some years, entered the ministry. In 1833 he commenced his career as a lecturer, gathering his discourses from time to time, and publishing them iu separate volumes. Mr. Emerson is a brilliant and original thinker, and takes rank among the best writers of the time. His leading works consist of Essays, Miscellanies, Representative Men, English Traits, Poems, Conduct of Life, and Society and Solitude. He resides at the historic town of Concord, Mass.

ORDS natural facts.

The use of natural

W bistory are signs of matu in supernatural history, the

use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eyebrow.

2. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from

sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed ; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children and savages use only nouns, or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.

3. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import-so conspicuous a fact in the history of language—is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expressions for knowledge and ignorance. Visible distance behind and before us, is, respectively, our image of memory and hope.

* * *

4. Because of this radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts, savages, who have only what is necessary, converse in figures. As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. The same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages.

5. It has moreover been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest cloquence and power. And as this is the first language, so it is the last. This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman which all men relish.