"Very likely,' answered the old gentleman, earnestly: 'nothing more likely; 'leave alone the law,' he added with a marked emphasis on the last word; 'leave alone the law, and try the gospel, brother; try the pure, unmixed gospel; show them the Father's love; go at once to the point; speak of the Father's love, as manifested in the work of salvation : catch them when they are most quiet, and give it them shortly and pithily, and again and again, here a little, and there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept. And though I do not promise you any immediate reformation, yet I will engage that your endeavors will not be lost, according to the promise which we have of the blessing on the word, though you and I may never know it in this life.' Then wishing me 'good day,' he turned into a cross road, leaving me to give my undivided attention to my troublesome charge, the first exercise of which was to pluck little Madeline all torn and screaming from the midst of a thorny brake.

“It pleased God to give me grace to follow the admonitions of the pious elder; and I was certainly surprised to find how many opportunities occurred of introducing such views of gospel truth as my friend enjoined, being led especially to state the love of the divine Father in the most decided way, and to show that it was, of the same enduring kind, though infinitely higher in degree, as that of an earthly father. For does not your own father,' I often said, 'love you all, my children, though I see not that you ever even try to do his pleasure? The good earthly father loves his son, and loves him most when he corrects him; but he does not love his sins.' I need not say how I enforced these truths, but it was often amid such interruptions as ill-taught children may be supposed to occasion.

“The term of my labors had an end in time. The father thanked me heartily, but not so the mother; she had discovered that I saw and felt her children's misconduct; and this is an offence which some sort of parents do not easily pardon. In con... sequence of this displeasure on her part, all intimacy between the family and myself soon entirely ceased, though Mr. Melton never failed to greet me with a smile, and a hearty shake of the hand, when circumstances brought us together.

"Years went on; the children grew up, and some of them acquired so much knowledge of the world as enabled them, at

least, not to disgrace themselves in society; the lady-mother became more imperious when she had her daughters to bring out; but the father grew constitutionally indolent, and became at length only a mere cipher in his family. Still he was loved by his servants, neighbours, and tenants; and was always spoken of, as 'the kind Mr. Melton.'

"For some years, things seemed to go on with the family in a common-place way; then came rumours that the youngest daughter, Madeline, was so wholly unmanageable, that she must be sent to school, to some fine seminary near London; then, that she was gone, and next, that she had been guilty there of such violence and opposition to authority, that her father was forced to go up to town to settle matters; his wife having worked him up, and urged him on to this extraordinary exertion. I saw him once, and he had shaken my hand with his wonted cordiality, after his return from town; and therefore I was the less prepared for the next news from the court, which was no other than that of his sudden death. He was much, and sincerely mourned by his dependants, to whom he had been always kind; but within a month of his death, things seemed to have settled down at the court much in the old train; and those who visited there, might almost have supposed that the husband and father had been dead for years, had it not been for the hatchment over the principal door, and the weeds of the family. Another few weeks passed on, and then we heard that Mrs. Melton was gone up to town to fetch Madeline, who we then learnt had been in a languishing state ever since the shock of her father's death.

"I happened to be speaking to the woman who kept the turnpike gate, when the coach came up on its return from town; and most shocked I was at the change which had taken place in the young lady's appearance since I had last seen her. She was pale as death, and lay back in the farther corner of the coach, as if wholly overcome with sickness and grief.

"I remembered the wild little romp of former years, and thought that the days of man are indeed as grass, and as a flower of the field.' Another little space of time elapsed, and I called often at the door of the court, to ask after Miss Madeline, but was never invited in. The usual medical attendant of the family, it was now known, came every day; and then a physician

was called in, and it soon became clear that the young lady was in a deep decline.

"Oh! how my heart yearned towards that dying girl, whom I could not think of under any form but the little round child, whose ringing laugh had so often pierced my ears; and oftenoften was I led to pray that the truth might be revealed to her, ere she departed hence, and how earnestly did I wish that I could be admitted to see her. In the mean time, as it afterwards appeared, the poor child was equally anxious to see me; but her mother fancying that my conversation would only render her more uneasy than she already was, refused to send for me, until the physician, who was a pious man, insisted that she ought to be indulged in the only wish she ever expressed with earnestness.

"I flew to her at the first call, and was left with her at her anxious entreaty. She was seated in an easy chair in her dressing room, the deceitful glow in her sunken cheeks too fully manifesting the internal fire which was rapidly destroying her; her eyes were unnaturally bright, and her lips parched, though still red. I could not trace in her one lineament of the childish Madeline. She extended her burning hand to receive me, and causing me to sit opposite. 'Oh! Sir, dear Sir !' she said, 'how I have longed to see you, to speak to you of that smile— that last smile! I have thought of it through the long, long hours of each torturing day; I have dreamt of it by night; it comes between me and every present object; it will follow at all times; it will go with me to the grave. Oh! that smile,'—and she began to weep.

My first idea was that her head was affected, that she actually did not know what she said, and I used general expressions of comfort derived from the rich treasury of scripture. She became gradually more calm-she had been excited by seeing me, and in the course of this and other visits, (for I attended her unremittingly till her death) I obtained a full and affecting explanation of her mysterious words. She described herself as having through life been a self-willed, violent, proud creature. "I rendered myself,' she said, 'so unbearable at home, that I was sent to school, and looking on school as a punishment, I rebelled there; my governess complained to my parents, and my mother persuaded my dear father to come up to town to settle

matters between me and my preceptress; she urged him to be severe with me, and she told him on no account whatever to bring me home, for she would not receive me. She judged rightly, and I do not blame her. My father came-my poor father he saw my governess first; her report was bad, such as I deserved, and I was sent for to the presence of both of them. My father refused to kiss me, but his lip trembled when he reproved me; it was rarely that he could be worked up to anger, but he was angry then. When he had said as much, he again delivered me to the authority of the governess: he went out with her, leaving me standing in the window, which commanded a view over the shrubbery, to where my father's carriage waited beyond the gates.

"I had no feeling when thus left, but that of anger-anger in the extreme. I thought myself most cruelly used, and my parents most unkind. At length I heard the door of the hall below opened, and steps and voices in the portico; I heard my father taking leave of my governess, and then I saw him descending into the garden. He walked on a few paces, and then turned his head, as if to look back at the house where he was leaving his child. He looked up, and looked around, as along the line of upper windows, and at last his eye rested on my figure as I stood at the open sash. Not a trace of anger rested then upon his features; not a trace-his anger was gone, and he gave me a smile; it was a beaming father's smile: it said, 'I love you, Madeline, notwithstanding all your faults; notwithstanding, I am forced to chastise you; I love you still, my little one;' for such he always called me. I love you at this moment more than ever. Oh! that you were worthy to take home to my heart!'

"That smile said all, and more than this,' continued the weeping girl, for she wept most bitterly whilst telling her tale; ' and it was the last smile-my father's last smile! He walked on to his carriage, like one who feared his resolution would give way, and from that moment I never saw him more.'

"I could not refrain from weeping with the afflicted daughter; nor could I then command myself sufficiently as to make the use of this pathetic incident which I at once saw it to be capable of in a spiritual way. I thought it best, therefore, to withdraw

for meditation and prayer; nor was it till the day after she had told me this story, that I saw her again. I then found her more calm, and fully able to listen to me, and to answer my questions. "What,' I asked, 'were the feelings which prompted your dear father's last smile, think you, Madeline?'

"Oh love! love!' she answered, a father's love, such as you once told us of when you took care of us; and it is something like that love of God which he shewed for his poor creatures when he sent his Son to die for us.'

"I told you?' I repeated; 'and do you remember what I told you then?'

"I had long forgotten it,' she answered; but it has all come back since I have been afflicted, and these memories have made me long to see you again, for I am not only cut to the heart by the memory of my earthly father's smile; but I am full of fear lest I have for ever lost by my wickedness the love of my heavenly Father! Oh! what would I not now give,' she added, ' if I could but recall only one of those careless hours of childhood, when it was in my power to have run to my father, and told him how I loved him, and how I would try to obey him!'

"But,' I answered, 'there is no such thing as recalling the past; there is no repentance which can undo that which has been done; and therefore, by repentance and future obedience, the sinner never can deserve eternal happiness: there is no hope for him but in the Lord the Saviour, in whom and through whom only, our heavenly Father smiles again, and looks down on the offender as your earthly father looked up to you, with that love which takes no account of transgression.''

"But we hasten to the final scene. The last moments of this young lady were such as filled her hitherto unbelieving relations with astonishment, It matters not to the dying saint whether the power of expressing his feelings, whilst yet lingering on the threshold of the other world is given or withheld; but who shall presume to calculate the amazing influence which the words of the departing believer have sometimes been permitted to exercise over his fellow-mortals? Often during the last few hours of her life, she broke out into these expressions, "My Father smiles; He smiles again; it is not the Father's last smile; it is not the first!" And every time she spake such words as these, there