"You are satisfied now that I acted rightly?" said Annie, with a beaming countenance, as she looked up to her cousins, after she had finished reading part of Katherine's letter to them.

Louisa and Harriet were satisfied, and they expressed their cordial sympathy with the pleasant feelings Annie experienced.

"Well, I suppose there are some true friends in the world," said Louisa, affectionately; "although I have often felt half inclined to doubt it. But I must take a lesson out of your book Annie, and try to cherish a spirit of hope and faith towards those around me."

Will our young readers also take a lesson out of Annie's book? I do not mean that you shall rashly place

implicit confidence in every one who may cross your path; but that when you have thoughtfully chosen your friends, you shall treat them with that generous confidence which is the invariable accompaniment of true affection.

"Let this be your comfortable and hopeful watch-word, never to distrust any one until you have tried him, and found him fail. Nay, after he has failed, trust him again, so, peradventure, may your good thoughts of him win him to act up to them."

CHRISTIAN CONSISTENCY.

"AND this is religion!" exclaimed Charles Stevenson, as he threw himself on a chair in his own room, and shut the door with a violence which accorded with the excited state of his feelings. Much angry altercation about some trifling affair, not really worth a moment's consideration, had arisen between his cousins and himself, and had been silenced in an equally angry manner by his uncle. Charles felt that he was treated unjustly, and walked proudly and silently away; and it was not until

he was alone that he gave free expression to his indignant feelings.

"And this is religion!" he repeated aloud; "then I am sure the less one has of it the better. I never met with so selfish and disagreeable a family, and yet they can assume the most sanctified demeanour, and talk so well and so fast on religious subjects! It is such hypocrisy to pretend to be so much better than other people, when, in reality, they are far more unamiable and ill-tempered; I hate such high profession, for it is always associated with the most miserable practice. There is a very fair outside, but all is hollow underneath."

Charles suddenly paused, for just then he thought of his mother. She

died while he was very young, but her gentle mien and lovely conduct had always been fondly cherished in his memory, and they seemed at that moment to recur to his recollection more vividly than ever. He remembered the anxiety with which she guided his earliest years; the sweet way in which she taught him the simple hymns of childhood; and the beautiful exemplification in her own life, of those truths which she carefully sought to impress upon his tender mind. And it appeared but as yesterday, since he had knelt beside her dying couch, and listened to the ardent prayer which she breathed to heaven as she folded him in her arms.

Her glistening eye, and

beaming smile, appeared to pass before