more to be disputed than that of the Medes and Persians. Old Humphrey saw at a glance, that he was an I by itself I, and found, on inquiry, that he was the wealthy landlord of all the houses around.

It was not more than half an hour after, that I met a thin stripling of a young fellow, whom I knew to be a draper's apprentice. He had a

ring on his finger, a chain across his breast, and a sparkling pin stuck in his bosom. The way in which he walked, with his hat a little on one side, amused me; for the springing up of his heel, and the lifting up of his elbow, told me that whatever he might be in the opinion of others, he was an I by itself I in his own.

There is a neighbour of mine who is the leader of a concert, and I am told that when he presides, he has an air of as much importance as though the welfare of the four quarters of the world depended, solely, on the sounds that he produces from his fiddle-strings. Next door to him lives one skilled in the mathematics, who utterly despises the musician, and laments that a man having a head on his shoulders, should be content with fiddling his way through the world. Nothing like mathematical knowledge in his estimation. I overheard him the other day say to a friend of his, "Some people take our neighbour Old Humphrey to be a wise man; but, poor

creature, he knows no more of mathematics than I do of astrology." The musician undervalues the mathematician in his turn, and says, "If there be a proof of a man's being a simpleton, it is when he has no ear for music; but when he bothers his brains in useless calculations, there is no hope for him." Each of these is an I by itself I.

When

Vanity assumes strange shapes, and wears strange disguises, but is pretty sure to manifest itself at last. It is bad enough to see any man in any place influenced by it; but there is one place where the shadow of it should never appear. An I by itself I in the pulpit is terrible. a minister forgets God, and remembers himself; when he indulges in exhibitions of his own talents, playing his brilliant parts before their eyes, whose souls are hungering for the bread of life, it is sad indeed! Oh, the blessing of a simpleminded, faithful, and affectionate minister of the Gospel! one who considers himself a round O, rather than an I by itself I; one who is mainly anxious to watch over and gain the souls of men, and willing to be nothing, that his heavenly Master may be all in all.

In looking abroad, I sometimes fancy that there are many more I by itself I's than there are other letters among mankind; for vanity, more or less, at particular seasons, seems to lift

Some

up every head, and to puff up every heart. are vain always, some generally, and others only occasionally; but to find one person perfectly free from vanity and selfishness would be a hard day's work.

If you wish to see an I by itself I in common life, you may soon have your desire. A girl is an I by itself I when her first waxen doll is given her; a boy, when first put into buttoned clothes; an apprentice, the day he is out of his time; a servant-girl, in her new bonnet and blue ribands; and a churchwarden, the first time he enters his great pew.

I might give you a score more illustrations; but, to tell you an honest truth, I hardly know a more confirmed I by itself I than Old Humphrey. Oh, what pride and vanity, at times, gather round an old man's heart! He is shrewd enough in observing others' failings, but it costs him much to keep under his own; he values himself on the very wisdom he has gained from others, and feels proud even of his humility, when acknowledging his own infirmities. Surely it becomes him, if it becomes any man on earth, to exercise charity and forbearance!

To gaze with pity on the throng,

To failings somewhat blind;

To praise the right, forgive the wrong,

And feel for all mankind.

ON EPITAPHS.

WHEN I was only a child, I was fond of a churchyard. The broad flat stone on which I sat; the monument with the coat of arms on it, surrounded with iron palisades, inside of which the nettles grew abundantly; the mouldering old tablet against the wall, from which time had peeled away the inscription in slips, just as a boy would peel an orange; and the old tumbledown head-stone, with a death's-head and crossbones at the top, and part of a verse yet readable at the bottom;-all these had excited my interest; and even the green hillock, in the shady corner, that had no tombstone, and nothing but weeds around it, was visited by me with a strange kind of pleasure; and some of the quaint old sayings, and striking texts of Scripture that I used to read there, have never been effaced from my memory to this day.

As I grew older, this interest in a churchyard

rather increased than diminished. I have stood gazing on the tablet erected against the east end of the church, to the memory of my grandfather, till my tears have nearly blinded me. He feared God, and charged his children and his children's children, before his death, to meet him at the throne of Christ in a better world. That charge has sunk deep into my heart and soul.

And now that I am an old man, my inclination to visit a churchyard is stronger than ever. Oh, there is a keeping, a sort of harmony between the long grass, the mouldering stone, the decayed monument, and an old man! They tell strange tales of the nothingness of the world; tales that we know to be true when we think of them, and that we feel to be true when we sit reflecting in a churchyard.

In our morning and evening prayers, in reading the word of God, in our daily meditations, we are aware that “life is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away," James iv. 14 but in a churchyard, with the memorials of mortality around us, the knowledge comes more home to our hearts; we are made sensible, not only that we must all die, but also that "the time is short;" that " as the Lord liveth, and as our souls live, there is but a step between us and death."