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to rejoin its parent stream, and carry, as it were, the thanks of Clairvaux for the generous assistance lent, and so pouring back into the main channel the supply that had been diverted for our use, gives stimulus and momentum to the debilitated river.

Having witnessed the meeting of the parted waters, let us return to the channels and ducts we have left behind, which, being fed from the river, are conducted in various directions around to fertilize the fields. This furnishes a sure and ample provision against the droughts of summer; our meadows having no need of the borrowed distillations of the clouds, while fed by the kindness of the bountiful river These streamlets or trenches, having performed their ministry, are absorbed in the stream that emitted them, and thus the entire Alba, reunited, flows downward to its destination.

The

But as we have now conducted it at considera ble length on its way, and it returneth (as Solomon says) to its own place, let us return to whence we set out, and skip with a rapid description over the broad level of the meadows. varied beauties of this spot comprise much that is adapted to relieve the wearied mind and solace anxious grief; the smiling landscape, the verdant lawn, the fragrant mead, enkindling devotion in those who seek the Lord, and leading us to the contemplation of those heavenly joys for which we sigh. As we behold the beauty and scent the fragrance of the flowers, the meadows rehearse to us stories of ancient days. We think of the fragrance of Jacob's garments, which was likened to that of a fruitful field, and of the glory of Solomon, who, with all his wealth and wisdom, was not to be compared to the lilies. Thus, while we perform the labors of the field, our souls are refreshed by the suggestion of hidden mysteries.

This meadow is watered by the Alba flowing through the midst of it, and sendeth its roots unto the moisture; therefore it shall not fear when heat cometh. Its extent, moreover, is such that when the sun has dried the shorn and grassy fleece into hay, it suffices to weary the whole convent for twice ten days. Nor is the labor of haying left simply to the monks, but employs an immense number of hands beside, both novices, and such as are lent and hired. The river divides this meadow into two farms; standing as arbiter between them, and allotting to the dwellers on either side their respective shares of labor. The farm-houses you might suppose to be monasteries rather than the habitation of converts; were it not that implements of rustic labor, yokes,

ants, or perchance the absence of books. For as to the buildings themselves, such is their situation, their beauty and extent, that they might be taken for a populous convent of monks.

In that part of the meadow which approaches nearest the wall, the dry land has been converted into a liquid lake, and where the sweating mower formerly swung his scythe, there the watermanbrother (frater aquarius), seated on his lively wooden horse, spurs him with his light oar over the glassy plain, and directs his course whither he will. Beneath is extended the entangling net, and the barbed and baited hook to catch unwary nibblers; a caution to us to shun ensnaring pleasures which must be bought with pain; a sad certainty of which none can be ignorant save such as have either never sinned, or never repented. May God keep us far from those haunts of pleasure, by whose portal Death stands in waiting! which, according to the sage Boethius, tempt us as spilt honey tempts the flying bee-to entangle him fatally in its glutinous embrace. The banks of the pond are secured from washing away by the intertwining roots of shrubs and vines. The river flowing by at a short distance serves as a feeder; constantly furnishing fresh supplies through a narrow inlet. A corresponding outlet at the opposite end carries off the excess to rejoin the stream, and thus the water is always kept at the same level.

This highly ambitious and flowery description of the charms of Clairvaux (which perhaps may have been intended, like the above-mentioned hook, to catch unwary novices) closes with a profuse eulogy of a certain fountain, which the good monk thanks for the refreshment and solace it had often afforded him. Not only had it many a time quenched his thirst, but it had condescended even to wash his hands and feet, and he apologizes for mentioning it last, when, in gratitude for all its favors, he should have given it the post of honor. It was a modest fountain, for it flowed a long ways under ground (as most other fountains do, I suppose), winding hither and thither, as if reluctant to expose itself to the broad stare of daylight, and finally only consents to appear under the cover of an arbor. It had the distinguishing characteristic of a good fountain, that it burst forth opposite the rising sun, so as to partake of the first rosy influences of the morning; and finally, it was a very pious fountain, apparently having no other object in life than to minister comfort to the Brethren; for soon after quitting the monastery, it loses itself in the valley below and disappears.

We have here a very pleasant picture certainly

of the externals of monastic life in the thirteenth century; of the local habitation and belongings of a Cistercian community. These good Brethren had an eye to the picturesque as well as to the substantial. They must have not only rich hills and gushing streams, and smiling meadows, but well-filled bins and larders, and wellstocked fish-ponds. The Brethren could not be expected to serve God for naught. Occasional voluntary abstinence was no doubt good, but it was good also to have on hand plenty of the warm and ripe daughter of the grape and of the barley-field, to treat resolution, and make glad the heart saddened by penance. When monks got to be so very comfortable, planted down in the sunniest spots of France, with groves of fruittrees enclosing their convent, and the vine hanging her rich clusters by their windows, and a most accommodating river to do all their heavy and dirty work, it is no wonder they grew luxurious and lazy. A modicum of labor sufficed for the abundant supply of their wants, and a cellar bountifully stored with the fat and the sweet was not favorable to devotion. All abbots, more

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over, were not like Bernard; rigid, holy, mortified men, trampling the flesh under their feet. Monks grown luxurious and lazy would not love such abbots, nor choose them. Discipline would be relaxed, either willingly, or perforce. The superior would grow indulgent, or if not, the monks would grow mutinous. Work and pray, they would not, according to the rigidity of the old Cistercian rule; and so matters rapidly went from bad to worse. Of a convent in such a decayed state of discipline and otherwise damaged, the reader may find a description in the old monkish chronicle that forms the basis of Mr. Carlyle's speculations in "Past and Present."

"Yet more; round many a convent's blazing fire,
Unhallowed threads of revelry are spun ;
There Venus sits disguised like a nun,
While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar,
Pours out his choicest beverage high and higher.
The domination of the sprightly juice
Spreads high conceits to madding Fancy dear,
Till the arched roof, with resolute abuse
Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain,
Whose votive burden is, 'Our kingdom's here.'"'
WORDSWORTH.

son,

"To everything there is a season;" and, in its seafitness and beauty. How beautiful and lovely to a refined mind is the opening spring! What a pure and exquisite gratification is felt, when the chilling blasts of winter have given place to the balmy breezes from the south, when "the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle [dove] is heard in our land!"

To one who for months has been shut up in the crowded city, where everything exhibits the hand of man, and God is seen only in the nocturnal heavens, " afar off" and not at hand-how refreshing is it to breathe the pure air, and, with enraptured vision, to drink in the verdant and floral beauties of fields and forests, and winding streamlets, with their shady banks! More especially if the coming spring has found us on the couch of languishing, and disease has for weeks with relentless hand shut us out from all communion with the beautiful earth, while in the meantime all Nature has put on its verdant robes and gay attire-how inexpresibly pleasing, then, to rise from the bed of sickness, and go forth to revel in the glories of the full-blown spring! Never shall I forget my own experience after such a visitation of disease at the commencement of the season of flowers and fruits. As I gazed on the charming landscape, it seemed more like the work of enchantment than the course of Nature. I thought of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp; a fairy palace had risen before me-the work, as it were, of a single

THE LEAF-How much do we owe to the Leaf! What is it, that, through the long months of spring, and summer, and early autumn, clothes the earth and the forests with that delicate verdure that is so grateful to the eye and heart? It is the leaf, in forms and shades almost infinitely diversified, that gives the earth its raiment, and clothes the landscape with such attractions. Beneath the burning midsummer sky, how grateful the grove's umbrageous retreat, or the shade of a wide-spread tree! It is the leaf to which we owe this refreshment.

The use of the leaf ends not here. The varied products of the vegetable world would be unknown were it not for the leaf. What the lungs are to animal life, the leaf is to vegetable. It is this, by which the dependent plant imbibes, in seasons of drought, the needful moisture, and by which, at all times, it inhales the light and air without which it could not subsist or live; without a plentiful supply of which, it could not grow, nor its flower unfold, nor its fruit be formed and matured.

How useful is the leaf! What a valuable servant to man! God has made it very beautiful, and admirably adapted it to the comfort and sustenance of man. When you take up the most fragile leaf, therefore, and look upon its cuticle, its pores, its cellular structure, its nerves, and

veins, and arteries, all admirably arranged, and, in its very construction, perceive that the leaf has a God, fail not to lift your heart to the Great Giver of all good, and praise him for the humble leaf.

"To everything there is a season," and everything is beautiful in its season. The leaf has its season, and, in its season, is a beautiful object. But seasons have their limit, and their beautiful things an end. As the cool of the year comes on, go forth into the wayside, the park, or the forest, and the leaf is under your foot. Its beauty is gone, its life extinguished. It is a faded, withered, crumbling wreck. It returns to dust. Lift up your eye, and on every tree you behold the marks of decay. The verdure is passing from the leaf, the chilling breath of autumn has dried up its moisture, it fades, it withers, it falls. A few days more, and the forest will be dismantled; and, as you seek it again, the bare branches above, and the rustling leaf below, will affectingly remind you that "the fashion of this world passeth away." In the saddened aspect of the departing season, a voice will be heard addressing itself to the heart, and reminding you that "we all do fade as a leaf;" that "all flesh is as grass, and the glory of man is as the flower of grass."

True, and as affecting as it is true: "We all do fade as a leaf." A lovely infant was reposing in the arms of a fond mother. It was her only one. She pressed it to her bosom, and imprinted kiss after kiss on its sweet face. She laid it down and went to the house of God. On her return, she pressed its throbbing head, now burning with fever, to her breast for the last time. On the morrow, the shroud, the coffin, and the frail flower with which-fitting emblems!—it was decked for the grave, told the sad tale. "We all do fade as a leaf."

Just as she was blooming into womanhood, one of the children of the covenant was enfeebled by disease. A slight cough-" only a slight cough" -had gradually undermined the citadel of life, and laid her helpless on the bed of languishing. The bloom departed, and her pale, attenuated face told too plainly that the destroyer was near. Not long before, her faithful and pious mother had breathed her last breath on that same bed. The daughter prepared to follow her to a world where the fields are ever green, and the leaf does not fade. She sought for her departing spirit the grace of salvation, and was enabled to trust in a Redeemer's blood before she closed her eyes upon the world. Among those who came to mourn at her burial was a lovely sister, the youthful and beloved wife of a young husband, and the mother of a sweet babe. She returned to her habitation, and shortly after could leave it

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no more. Gradually she faded away, and, with calm and holy resignation, breathed out her redeemed spirit into the hands of that Saviour in whom she had put all her trust. At leaf-fall she went down to the grave, and followed her sainted mother and sister to the land of perennial verdure. Yes, yes-" we all do fade as a leaf."

One of the little ones of a young physician, watched and cared-for with all the solicitude of parental love, and favored with the best of medical skill, lay extended, a few months since, on the bed of death. Within three days from the hour of its departure, the youthful mother, in all her loveliness, withered and died. A month or two more, and her infant, a sweet babe just budding into life, and an only son, followed his mother and sister into the spirit-world. Scarcely had the tomb closed upon its remains, ere the bereaved husband and father, full of grace and honor, a ruling-elder in the house of God, beloved and wept by a large circle of friends and kindred, was welcomed to a place among the elders round about the throne above. Father, mother, son and daughter, all that was mortal of them, called to sleep the long, last sleep of death within two short months! Truly, truly-" We all do fade as a leaf."

And so it is, week after week, day after day. Now I am kneeling by the side of a couch on which is extended the form of some idolized child, or adored parent, or endeared brother or sister, husband or wife; and then, I am commending the bereaved survivors, in the solemn funeral service, to the compassion of a gracious God and Saviour. Hundreds of my fellow-travelers have I thus attended, within these few years, in the last stage of their mortal pilgrimage. Many a beloved parishioner, many an interesting youth, whose very countenance I can now recall, and with whose religious history I have been familiar, have I accompanied down to the banks of the river. It seems but yesterday that we were taking sweet counsel together, and bowing at the altar of God in the endeared sanctuary. But they faded away as a leaf, and I see them no more.

"Who has not lost a friend?" Who can look back over the fatal scenes of the summer of 1849, and say of his friends and kindred that with him began the season—“ "They are all here?" Alas, alas, the destroyer has left his mark. Few have wholly escaped.

"Our eyes have seen the rosy light
Of youth's soft cheek decay;
And fate descend, in sudden night,
On manhood's middle day."

The dear delight of your eyes and heart, so cher

ished once and so prized, the object of deepest interest on the earth, has faded, it may be, like the autumnal leaf, has withered away and departed, leaving you to endure the cold blasts of winter and its cheerless desolation alone. Alas-"We all do fade as a leaf "

The

And is it so? Do we all fade as a leaf? Then let us learn to set a proper estimate on life. "I never dreamed," said a youthful, broken-hearted widow, "that my husband would be taken from me in youth, or in middle life. I expected to see him live to be an old man, and go gradually down to the grave. I never thought that I should live to close his eyes." So says many a fond wife whose endeared husband still lives. mother, too, expects that her dear child will live to be a solace to her declining years, and to pillow her head as she sinks into her last sleep. The child fades like a leaf and the mother lives. "What is your life? it is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." What it was in that faded leaf, such it is in you and me. Just so brittle is the thread that holds us up from the grave; just so fleeting our days; just so feeble our hold on life. Like the flower we bloom, and as quickly fade; cut down like the grass, we wither away.

"So fades the lovely blooming flower,
Frail smiling solace of an hour:
So soon our transient comforts fly,
And pleasure only blooms to die."

Why, then, should we set our hearts on these fleeting vapors? Why embark the heart's full treasure in such earthen vessels? Why invest our whole stock in trade in such a venture? If the bark is wrecked, what becomes of your treasure? Your all is gone. You have nothing left -nothing to live for-nothing to interest you on earth. Life becomes a burden--not easily borne, nor easily laid aside. And, oh! how much greater the folly of those who set their hearts on glittering gold! The momentary pleasures of appetite are not to be named. We share them with the brutes.

Let me reason with you for a moment, while the leaf is falling at our feet. How long will it be, think you, before your leaf shall wither! Already, perhaps, the bloom has left your face. You are not what you were. That recent sickness was but a premonition-the early leaf-fall, that tells of the coming frosts of winter. You have the sentence of death within yourself. Disease has found its way into your frame, and sapped the foundations of your health and strength. So it is with me, and so with you. Every seated pain; every new form of pain; your watchings

by night; your pulmonary irritations by day, all remind you that the time is short. The pale face, too, of that dear friend, whose lifeless form lay shrouded and coffined for the grave, told too plainly the affecting truth-" We all do fade as a leaf."

You may not apprehend a speedy termination of that life which all Scripture and experience declare to be "but a vapor." You are hale and hearty. You feel no infirmity of body. Why should you be afraid? Ah! your very want of apprehension may be one of the premonitory symptoms. You may go forth to-day into the garden of flowers, and the splendor of the dahlia may greet and gratify you in its numberless varieties, presenting a vivid and pleasing contrast to the deep green of its rich and healthful foliage. To-morrow, it may be, that green leaf has gathered, blackness, those splendid blossoms are blighted, and all that splendor blasted. A sudden and severe frost has intervened, and one short night puts an end to the season of bloom. So have I often seen it, not only in my own garden of flowbut in the garden of the Lord, among the plants of grace.

ers,

The leaf accomplishes the purpose for which it was created, and then it fades and withers away. But many, who never, perhaps, bestowed a passing thought on the humble leaf-that silent and truthful monitor-have yet the whole work of life to do. Be admonished, ye loiterers! and receive the lesson of the season. Could nothing but death arouse you? Was it needful that the valued friend, the endeared idol, should be torn from you, before you waked out of sleep? Let the admonition be effectual. Sleep no more. W Work "while it is day. The night cometh in which no man can work."

Yes," we all do fade as a leaf." Ere the forest is wholly bared by the approaching frosts, many a leaf will fade and fall. Ere the winter has fully set in, how many fading cheeks will rest on "the lap of earth!" Soon it will be said of this one and that-" She is gone!" Gone! but whither? Happy will you be, if your sorrows do but lead you to seek consolations in the religion, in the love of Jesus, the friend of sinners-the neverfailing friend. Then, with the dear friends that have gone before you, transplanted in a better soil, you shall bloom for ever in the paradise of God, where your leaf shall not wither-where it shall never fade.

"It matters little at what hour o' the day

The righteous falls asleep; death cannot come
To him untimely who is fit to die;
The less of this cold world, the more of heaven;
The briefer life, the earlier immortality."