contributes who smokes a farthing cigar,
or tastes a drop of wine.

But people in Italy have not yet learned
to look at matters from this point of view.
Contrariwise, there would seem to be plenty
of room for some of our London boards of
guardians to advance a few steps in emulation
of Signor Peri, without any danger
of trenching on the above principle.

             LOVE'S SUNRISE.

    THE lark leaves the earth
         With the dew on his breast,
    And my love's at the birth,
        And my life's at the best.
What bliss shall I bid the beam bring thee
          To-day, love?
What care shall I bid the breeze fling thee
          Away, love?
What song shall I bid the bird sing thee,
          O say, love?
    For the beam and the breeze
    And the birds all of these
(Because thou hast loved me) my bidding obey, love.
    Now the lark's in the light,
      And the dew on the bough;
    And my heart's at the height
      Of the day that dawns now.

            GIDEON BROWN.

A TRUE STORY OF THE COVENANT.

  IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

IN the year of Our Lord one thousand
six hundred and eighty-seven I, Gideon
Brown, of the city of Glasgow, being sound
of mind and body, and in the forty-first
year of my age, an exile from my home and
country, write this true history of my life.
Perhaps no eye but my own will ever read
it. But if this should be so, I am resigned
to cast my bread upon the waters, not
again to find it after any days. The act
of writing relieves my mind of a burthen;
and I need sympathy, even if it be no other
than the sympathy of my own pen as it
traces my thoughts upon the paper. I
begin my task at Newark, in the plantation
of New Jersey, at the distance of many
thousands of miles from my native land, to
which my thoughts continually turn with
the hope that before I die my eyes shall
once again behold it, and that my arms
shall once more be permitted to clasp to
my bosom my faithful wife, and the three
bonnie bairns that she has borne to me. If
any one ever reads these pages who is cast
down by sorrow, let him take courage from
the records of mine, and learn, as I have
done, the nobility of endurance and the
dignity of resignation. God has given me
a dauntless spirit, which has upheld me
amid troubles and perils manifold. I have
been cast down, but I have never despaired
either of this world or the next. I have
seen Death, face to face, and talked with
him as a man talketh with his friend. Nay,
there have been times when I have been
tempted to think that I had no other friend
than he; yet even in those gloomy hours I
have never lost hold of the abounding
consolation that I was in the hands of my
Almighty Father, without whose consent
not a hair of my head could be injured,
and that, until His time came, neither
Death nor Hell should prevail against me.
Strong in this conviction, I have endured
scoffs and scorns without repining, and
passed unharmed through the Valley of
Dark Shadows.

My father, Hugh Brown, was a tobacco
merchant in Glasgow, and carried on a
profitable trade with the plantations of
Virginia. He was a pious Christian, and as
unflinching an enemy of Popery and Prelacy
as ever strove to uphold the Covenant.
My mother, Margaret Brodie, was a native
of Nairn, reported to have been in her
youth the comeliest woman in Scotland.
When I last saw her, in her seventieth
year, she seemed to me, with her snow-
white hair, her pleasant smile, her kindly
eyes, and her winsome voice, to be bonnier
in her old age than other women in their
youth. She and my father were one in
thought as well as in heart. They had
a family of seven children, of whom I was
the eldest. I was born in 1646, and at the
proper age, after a sound training in the
rudiments of knowledge, and in the faith
of the Gospel, received at my mother's
knee, was sent to the University of St.
Andrews. Here I remained until my
twentieth year, when my father required
my help in the counting-house, promising,
if my tastes inclined that way, to make me
a partner in his business. I early began
to study the affairs of my country, and in
1660, being only fourteen years of age, I
remember to have heard my father predict
great evil to Scotland from the restoration
of "the wicked and ungodly race of Stuart."
I also remember the wrath of all our household,
which even affected my gentle mother,
when, a year later, the news reached Glasgow
that the Westminster parliament had
ordered "The Solemn League and Covenant"
to be publicly burned by the common
hangman in Palace-yard. On the
night following there supped at our house
two worthy ministers of the Gospel, whom
I saw for the first time, one of whom was