THE GRANDMOTHER.

How striking is the contrast between youth and age. Here is a venerable woman, with a little grandchild reading the Bible to her. Her quiet dignity of manner seems well suited to the solemn truths which we may suppose her to be hearing. Continued sickness and old age, which is itself a long disease, have left their marks on her countenance. Yet it is placid and meek, like that of one who has grown old in the exercises of piety. There are tokens of pain as well as languor in her whole posture, as well as in the expression of her face. The ivory-headed staff, which leans against the table, tells us that the old lady is lame. The little box, placed within her reach, is supplied with favourite lozenges for her racking cough. Good Mrs. Morley-she has not crossed the threshold of her cottage for more than three years.

The house in which she lives is much older than herself-indeed, it is the very one in which she was born, and into which she received her young husband, Kit Morley, the boatswain, sixty years

ago. On the gable-end, towards the garden, you may see the year when it was built marked in the glazed bricks, 1699. It has but one story, and contains two rooms besides the kitchen. You may look into the kitchen through the half-door.

The chair in which Mrs. Morley sits is not like those which we commonly see in poor people's houses. It is an arm-chair of black-walnut wood, with a high, carved back, and it was brought over from England, by her husband, fifty years ago. She has sat in it almost constantly for a long time past.

Mrs. Morley's only companion is her little grandchild, Agnes. This little girl's father was the only son of the old lady. The little creature has been an orphan ever since she was two years old, and her grandmother is the only parent she can remember.

You may observe in her countenance a little of that pensive sobriety caused by living entirely with an infirm and aged person. Agnes has never had any little playmates. All her days have been spent in her grandmother's cottage, and in the little garden and meadow. The old lady has been so decrepit most of the time, that little Agnes has had to do many things which you would consider above her age; for she loves this dear old grandmother, and delights to be serviceable to her. The

geranium, which stands in the sunny window-seat, is her particular charge. It was her mother's. Agnes can already do a good deal towards getting breakfast, and can sweep and dust the room as well as any body.

It is

Day after day does this pale, fair-haired little girl sit on her bench, and read the Bible to her grandmother; while the old lady is in a pleasing revery, from which she now and then breaks into an explanation. The volume in which she reads is the same which her grandmother used when she was young. It is stoutly bound in black leather, and has brass plates at the corners. almost the only book that Agnes knows any thing about; and she does not need any other. Its histories are engraved on her memory, and yet she reads them again and again; for there are many parts of the Bible that children love to read over and over. The great men of old times are like neighbours and near acquaintances to little Agnes. She loves to talk with her grandmother about the days before the flood, when men used to live to be near a thousand years old. She still shudders when she comes to the sacrifice of Isaac, lest, after all, the knife should go into his breast. The tear starts in her eye when she thinks of the distresses of Joseph, and when the cup is found in Benjamin's