tions on the other side of the valley; but
hearing nothing of the lost children, now
joined them. He said he had heard the cry
from the hill-side farther down, that answered
to their shouts; and he was sure that it was
his boy David's voice. But he had shouted
again, and there had been no answer but a
wild scream as of terror, that made his blood
run cold.

' O God! ' exclaimed the distracted mother,
' what can it be? David! David! Jane!
Nancy! '

There was no answer. The young men bade
Betty Dunster to contain herself, and they
would find the children before they went
home again. All held on down the valley,
and in the direction whence the voice came.
Many times did the young men and the now
strongly agitated father shout and listen. At
length they seemed to hear voices of weeping
and moaning. They listened—they were sure
they heard a lamenting—it could only be the
children. But why then did they not answer?
On struggled the men, and Mrs. Dunster
followed wildly after. Now, again, they stood
and shouted, and a kind of terrified scream
followed the shout.

' God in heaven! ' exclaimed the mother;
' what is it? There is something dreadful.
My children! my children! where are you? '

' Be silent, pray do, Mrs. Dunster,' said one
of the young men, ' or we cannot catch the
sounds so as to follow them.' They again
listened, and the wailings of the children
were plainly heard. The whole party pushed
forward over stock and stone up the hill.
They called again, and there was a cry of
' Here! here! fayther! mother! where are
you?'

In a few moments more the whole party
had reached the children, who stood drenched
with rain, and trembling violently, under a
cliff that gave no shelter, but was exposed
especially to the wind and rain.

' O Christ! My children! ' cried the mother
wildly, struggling forwards and clasping one
in her arms. ' Nancy! Jane! But where
is David? David! David! Oh, where is
David? Where is your brother?'

The whole party was startled at not seeing
the boy, and joined in a simultaneous 'Where
is he? Where is your brother?'

The two children only wept and trembled
more violently, and burst into loud crying.

'Silence!' shouted the father. 'Where is
David, I tell ye? Is he lost? David, lad,
where ar ta?'

All listened, but there was no answer but
the renewed crying of the two girls.

' Where is the lad, then?' thundered forth
the father with a terrible oath.

The two terrified children cried, ' Oh, down
there! down there!'

'Down where? Oh God!' exclaimed one of
the young men; " why it's a precipice!
Down there? '

At this dreadful intelligence the mother
gave a wild shriek, and fell senseless on the
ground. The young men caught her, and
dragged her back from the edge of the
precipice. The father in the same moment,
furious at what he heard, seized the younger
child that happened to be near him, and
shaking it violently, swore he would fling it
down after the lad.

He was angry with the poor children, as if
they had caused the destruction of his boy.
The young men seized him, and bade him
think what he was about; but the man
believing his boy had fallen down the precipice,
was like a madman. He kicked at his
wife as she lay on the ground, as if she were
guilty of this calamity by leaving the children
at home. He was furious against the poor
girls, as if they had led their brother into
danger. In his violent rage he was a perfect
maniac, and the young men pushing him
away, cried shame on him. In a while, the
desperate man torn by a hurricane of passion,
sate himself down on a crag, and burst into a
tempest of tears, and struck his head violently
with his clenched fists, and cursed himself
and everybody. It was a dreadful scene.

Meantime, some of the young men had
gone down below the precipice on which the
children had stood, and, feeling amongst the
loose stones, had found the body of poor little
David. He was truly dead!

When he had heard the shout of his father,
or of the young men, he had given one loud
shout in answer, and saying ' Come on! never
fear now! ' sprang forward, and was over the
precipice in the dark, and flew down and was
dashed to pieces. His sisters heard a rush, a
faint shriek, and suddenly stopping, escaped
the destruction that poor David had found.

NEW LIFE AND OLD LEARNING.

THERE is not, in the whole of Bacon's
writings, a remark more profoundly
characteristic of the man and his philosophy,
than is embodied in his epigram that
Antiquity is the Youth of the World. If men
could only have had the courage to act upon
this truth as soon as it was pointed out,—if
they could but have seen, that, in their mode
of reckoning antiquity, they made always the
mistake of beginning the calculations from
the wrong end, and that, in everything
relating to the progress of knowledge, and the
advancement of the species, the Present, not
the Past, should be deemed of superior authority,
—how many miseries society would have
spared itself, and how much earlier it would
have profited by the greatest of its teachers,
Experience!

' For antiquity,' says Lord Bacon, ' the
opinion which men cherish concerning it is
altogether negligent, and scarcely congruous
even to the name. For the old age and
grandevity of the world are to be truly
counted as antiquity; which are properly to
be ascribed to our times, not to the younger