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THE SOLITARY MOURNER.

in the unwelcome daylight just admitted, beside the bed on which he had seen depart, successively, the two who had made life dear-he stood alone in the room-alone in the hard mocking world. On the table-under the glass-just where it had been placed to please the innocent eyes which would never again reward with a smile his labours of love—lay the white rose he had gathered on the morning before his little one died. For lack of water the flower had withered even before her cheek was cold, and now the lapse of a week had turned it brown and shrivelled. But though there was no life within the rose, there was life about it-near it. The captive Lady-bird still survived; and as if shrinking from contact with the vegetable death, was traversing uneasily the sides of the tumbler.

The mourner's eye followed the motions of the insect. It was something living to look at when all else to him seemed dead. It was the last object, except himself, on which his little Rachel had smiled,-perhaps the last save himself, on which her thoughts had wandered.

Remember the Bastille prisoner and his spider; Silvio Pellico with his.-Their hearts could cling even to a loathsome object, because they were alone-shut out from communion with human life and human love; yet they, in the world beyond their prison walls, had other lives bound up with theirs other hearts with which theirs, at least in fancy, could hold fond intercourse, and hope to meet again on earth.

DEATH OF THE LADY-BIRD.

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The bereaved father was more alone than they. Care, and poverty, and scorn, anxiety and grief, had made him weak in body and in mind, perhaps childish--perhaps doating in his desolation. He kept the dead rose, and he also kept the living Lady-bird-watched it-tended it-even till he loved and missed it, when it too died.

And this was the reason why our old gentleman, who at Providence Cottage had no garden, kept in a glass-case white roses and red Lady-birds.

Look at this beautiful world, and read the truth

In her fair page; see every season brings

New change to her of everlasting youth

Still the green soil, with joyous living things

Swarms-the wide air is full of joyous wings.-Bryant.

OLD MAY DAY.-Now is May arrived in earnest-the real flowering May of the Old Style and the old Poets; when kings and queens were wont to "come out," and meet, as they went a Maying, all the more glorious things "come out" too, and "coming out" still, bright and beautiful as ever, now

that of all these royal personages even the old bones are crumbled into dust.

"Coming out!" what a multitude of pleasant notions are associated with this expression-the very motto for the season, now inscribed in living characters on the unfolding scroll of nature. Who can want an exhortation to 66 come out" and

read it?

Not the flaxen-headed village children, who "coming out" of school, hie shouting to the wood and meadow, where they spell it (each after his fashion) with a merry laugh.

Not the captives set free, be it from durance, from disease, or labour. These from the dark-barred prison--from the close sick chamber,--from the foetid factory "coming out" themselves, all read the bright inscription in the glorious sunshine-in the free fresh air,-in the opening flowers :-read it with eyes that glisten, and hearts that, if not crushed entirely, expand with gratitude and joy.

And can there be of others--of all that are free to do it-one who heeds not the kind persuasion of nature to "come out?" Yes, more than can be numbered of such as sunk deep in selfishness and sensual pleasure, and, loving the things of darkness, care not to look upon the things of light, now coming out" daily, under the influence of the summer

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sun.

And other "comings out" are in progress, which, as compared with these, are cold, conventional and artificial-yet not without a something, in their way, of seasonable light and gaiety and promise. Of such are the "coming out" of new

books--of new actors--of fair new flowers, not of the garden or the wild, but of the world,

"With eyes

That mock the hazel-nut and shame the violet."

Last, not least, in eyes like these, are the fashions, "coming out" for summer "with the butterflies" a phrase which brings us back to the sweet natural, and gives occasion to look more closely than our wont into some of those expansive processes by which the youthful flutterers of summer are "finished" for their "coming out" in the gay assemblies of

the insect world.

Now day by day do the garlands which adorn their verdant ball-rooms grow thicker with opening flowers, and together with these, and emerging in numbers nicely proportioned, do

"Throngs of insects in the shade

Try their thin wings, and dance in the warm beams
That waked them into life."

We are thus reminded, at every step, that flower, leaf, and insect, were intended for each other; a fact already noticed, together with various other analogies between their respective "comings out."

It is no easy matter, watch it as we may, to see a flower in the act of blowing-bursting from forth the confining calyx; nor is it much less difficult (out of doors) to catch an insect in the act of emergement from the trammels of its chrysalis estate. It needs, however, but small pains and patience,