not, of your mother doing such a thing as that which you are now going to read about. You know what it is to enjoy a mother's love; but here, in these dark places of the earth, we find a wretched mother so destitute of all natural affection as to barter her own child for a toy!

"The Bowchee people," says Lander, "appear to have no affection for their offspring; the gentle appeals of nature are unknown to them; parental tenderness dwells not in their bosoms, and they sell their children as slaves to the greatest strangers in the world, with no greater remorse of conscience than if they had been common articles of merchandise.

"A travelling slave-dealer, passing through the place, purchased several of their children of both sexes, from the inhabitants, and amongst others, a middle-aged woman had an only daughter, whom she parted with for a necklace of beads! The unhappy girl, who might have been about thirteen or fourteen years of age, on being dragged away from the threshold of her parent's hut, clung distractedly, like a shipwrecked mariner to a floating mast, round the knees of her unfeeling mother, and looking up wistfully in her countenance, burst into a flood of tears, exclaiming with vehemence and passion, 'O mother, do not sell me! What will become

of me? What will become of you in your old age, if you suffer me to desert you? Who will fetch your corn and milk? Who will pity you when you die? Have I been unkind to you! O mother, do not sell your only daughter! I will take you in my arms when you are feeble, and carry you under the shade of trees. As a hen watches over her chickens, so will I watch over you, my dear mother. I will repay the kindness you showed me in my infant years. When you are weary, I will fan you to sleep; and whilst you are sleeping, I will drive away flies from you. I will attend on you when you are in pain; and when you die, I will shed rivers of sorrows over your grave. O my mother, dear mother, do not push me away from you! do not sell your only daughter to be the slave of a stranger!' Useless tears! vain remonstrance ! The unnatural, relentless parent, shaking the beads in the face of her only child, thrust her from her embraces, and the slave dealer drove the agonized girl from the place of her nativity, which she was to behold no more."

Happy English child! blest with a loving mother and a kind father, think of these poor wretched creatures, and do all you can to send them the Word of Truth, that they may be taught to love God and then they will love one another.

On the death of WILLIAM STEVENS, aged 13 years, who was run over at Tottenham, by the Mail Coach, and died on the spot.

AND shall we check our tears and heartfelt sighs,
For oh! the youthful, blooming Stevens dies!
Dies, not by dread disease, or slow decay,
But, strong in health is sudden torn away.

Was there no hand to snatch, or arm to save
The hopeful youth from his untimely grave?
No ear to hear his cries ?-he utters none,
And dies, without a struggle, or a groan.

But ah! loud lamentations rend the air,

See, frantic, sea, a tender mother there!
There to behold her first-born's lifeless clay,
And strangers bear the breathless corpse away.

Oh! woe of woes, too heavy to be borne!
With agony her bleeding heart is torn;

LINES ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM STEVENS.

What language can her torturing grief explain,
Or tell the madness of her throbbing brain.

Obedient to his humble parents, he,
By filial duty and sobriety,

Promis'd to be their succour, help, and stay,
And soothe them in affliction's adverse day.

Taught at the Sabbath School, he learnt to raise
His grateful voice in High Jehovah's praise ;
For grace and truth with fervency to pray,
And piously revere God's holy day.

But he is gone! let finite man be still,
And bow submissive to his Maker's will:
Whate'er He does, acknowledge just and right
Nor tax his goodness, but our erring sight.

To parents, teachers, and employer, he
Endeared himself; and though of low degree,
Lov'd and respected lived, lamented died,—
A fate to many a son of wealth denied.

Witness the tears of sympathy that fell
At his interment, where no funeral knell,
Or solemn splendour drew spectators there,
To gaze unmoved, with heedless vacant stare.

Oh! may his parents trust Almighty love,
Their darling boy has reached those realms above,
Of bliss unspeakable, where pain and woe
Its blest inhabitants no more shall know.

And you his teachers hear an humble voice,
Which bids your sorrow cease, and you rejoice,
Your youthful charge is wafted safe above,
Secure for ever in a Saviour's love.

Ye children strive to meet him in the sky,
Ye also may be early called to die;

Youth, health, and vigour, furnish no defence,
To ward off death, when God may call us hence.
Tottenham.

THE EVERGREEN.

A. M

-N.

WHEN I walked in the light of November's last sun,
And the prospects of nature no longer were gay;
When the spring and the summer their courses had run,
And had pass'd with their bloom and their buoyance
away;

The breezes were cold, and o'ercast was the sky,
And the ground felt the chill and the stiffness of age;
I descended our hill, down a lane that is by,

And on, through the groves, to the lone hermitage.

My pathway was strewn with the leaves of the trees,
Not verdant as late, but all faded and brown;
Their number increasing, as every breeze
Sent more of them tittering, pattering down.

All nature look'd desolate, dreary, and bare,
As far as the eye could revolve on the scene;
Save where, in the landscape, appear'd, here and there,
The pleasing relief of a fair evergreen.