each other's hand, and a few natural tears gushed forth as an adieu to the land they had loved.

Soon after sunset, I persuaded my little friends to let me lead them to the cabin, and then returned again to look out upon the ocean. In about half an hour, as I was standing musingly apart, I felt my hand gently pressed, and on turning around, saw that the girl had stolen alone to my side. In a few moments, the evening star began to twinkle from the edging of a violet cloud. At first, it gleamed faintly and at intervals, but anon it came brightly out, and shone like a holy thing upon the brow of the evening.

The girl at my side gazed upon it, and hailed it with a tone which told that a thought of rapture was at her heart. She inquired with simplicity and eagerness, whether, in the fair land to which we were going, that same bright star would be visible; and seemed to regard it as another friend, that was to be with her in her long and lonely journey.

The first week of our voyage was unattended by any important incident. The sea. was, at times, wild and stormy, but again it would sink to repose, and spread itself out in beauty to the verge of the horizon. On the eighth day the boy arose pale and dejected, and complained of indisposition. On the following morning he was confined by a fever to his bed, and much doubt was expressed as to his fate by the physician of - the vessel..

I can never forget the look of agony, the look of utter wo, that appeared upon the face of the little girl, when the conviction of her brother's danger came slowly home upon her thoughts. She wept not; she

complained not; but hour after hour she sat by the bed of the young sufferer an image of grief and beautiful affection. The boy became daily more feeble and emaciated. He could not return the long and burning caresses of his sister; and at last a faint heaving of his breast, and the eloquence of his half closed eye, and a flush, at intervals, upon his wasted cheek, like the first violet. tint of a morning cloud, were all that told he had not yet passed "the dark day of nothingness."

The twelfth evening of our absence from land was the most beautiful I had ever known, and I persuaded the girl to go for a short time upon deck, that her own fevered brow might be fanned by the twilight breeze. The sun had gone down in glory, and the traces of his blood red setting, were still visible upon the western waters. Slowly, but brilliantly, the many stars were gathering themselves together above, and another sky swelled out in softened beauty beneath, and the foam upon the crests of the waves were lighted up like wreaths of snow. There was music in every wave, and its wild sweet tones came floating down from the fluttering pennon above us, like the sound of a gentle wind amid a cypress grove.

But neither music nor beauty had a spell for the heart of my little friend. I talked to her of the glories of the sky and sea-I pointed to her the star on which she had always loved to look-but her only answer was a sigh-and I returned with her to the bed-side of her brother. I perceived instantly that he was dying. There was no visible struggle-but the film was creeping over his eye, and the hectic flush of

his cheek was fast deepening into purple. I know not whether, at first, his sister perceived the change in his appearance; she took her seat at his side, pressed his pale lips to her own, and then, as usual, let her melancholy eye rest fixedly upon his countenance.

Suddenly his looks brightened for a moment, and he spoke his sister's name. She replied with a passionate caress, and looked up to my face as if to implore encouragement. I knew that her hopes were but a mockery. A moment more, and a convulsive quiver passed over the lips of the dying boy—a slight shudder ran through his frame and all was still. The girl knew, as if intuitively, that her brother was dead. She sat in tearless silence- -but I saw that the waters of bitterness were gathering fearfully at their fountain. At last she raised her hands with a sudden effort, and pressing them upon her forehead, wept with the uncontrollable agony of despair.

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On the next day the corpse of the dead boy was committed to the waves. The little girl knew that it must be so, but she strove to drive the thought away, as if it had been an unreal and terrible vision. When the appointed hour was at hand, she came and begged me, with a tone that seemed less like a human voice than the low cadence of a disembodied and melancholy spirit, to go and look upon her brother and see if he was indeed dead..

I could not resist her entreaties, but went with her to gaze upon the sleeping dust, to which all the tendrils of her life seemed bound. She paused by the bed-side, and I almost deemed that her very existence would pass off in that long, fixed gaze. She moved

not-she spoke not-till the form she loved was taken away to be let down into the ocean. Then indeed she arose, and followed her lifeless brother, with a calmness that might have been from heaven. The body sunk slowly and solemnly beneath the waves; a few long, bright ringlets streamed out upon the waters, a single white and beautiful glimpse came up through the glancing billows, and all that had once been joy and beauty, vanished forever.

During the short residue of our voyage, the bereaved sister seemed fading away, and beautiful as a cloud in a summer zenith. Her heart had lost its communion with nature, and she would look down into the sea, and murmur incoherently of its cold and solitary depths, and call her brother's name, and then weep herself into calmness.

Soon afterward I left her with her friends. I know not whether she is still a blossom of the earth, or whether she has long since gone to be nurtured in a holier realm.But I love the memory of that beautiful and stricken one. Her loveliness, her innocence, and her deep and holy feelings, still come back to me in their glory and quietude, like a rainbow, or a summer cloud, that has showered and passed off for

LESSON XXIV.

ADVANTAGES OF TEMPERANCE.

TEMPERANCE promotes clearness and vigor of intellect. If the functions of the brain be not in a healthy and vigorous state, equally unhealthy and inefficient must be those of the mind. History will bear us out in asserting, that the highest and most successful intellectual efforts have ever been associated with the practice of those general principles of temperance in diet for which we plead. It is the mighty minds that have grappled most successfully with the demonstrations of mathematical, intellectual, and moral science, that stand highest on the scale of mental acumen and power; and it is such minds that have found strict témperance in diet essential to their success. Let us advert to the history of a few of the master spirits of the human race.

Foremost on the list stands Sir Isaac Newton. The treatise of his, that cost him the mightiest intellectual effort of all his works, was composed while the body was sustained by bread and water alone. And in spite of the wear and tear of such protracted and prodigious mental labor-as his, that same -temperance sustained him to his eighty-fifth year.

The celebrated John Locke, with a feeble constitution, outlived the term of threescore years and ten by his temperance. "To this temperate mode of life, too, he was probably indebted for the increase of those intellectual powers, which gave birth to his incompa