Sweet is the cyprus, but his rind is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;

Sweet is the broom flower, but yet sour enough;

And sweet is moly, but his root is ill:

So, every sweet with sour is temper'd still;
That maketh it be coveted the more:

For easy things, that may be got at will,
Most sorts of men do set but little store.
Why, then, should I account of little pain
That endless pleasure shall unto me gain?

83. THE CHOICE.

MILES.

GH. MILES, native of Baltimore, professor now at Mt. St. Mary' / Colle, his Alma Mater, one of our most gifted writers in poetry and prose. His two published tales of "The Governess," and "Loretto; or, The Choice," and still more his tragedy of "Mahomet," prove him possessed of a high order of talent.

1. "WHAT No Von think of the world, Agnes? rather a nice place after all-eh? Oh, I have had my time in it!" "And so have I," said Agnes.

"You ought to see more of it, my girl."

"No, thank you; I have seen quite enough."

"Why, you jade you, what have you seen in a month? It takes one years to see the world as it is, in all its majestically accumulating glory and versatile interest. Poh !" continued the Colonel, "what have you seen ?"

2. "I have seen," returned Agnes, with provoking calmness, "that its standard of morality is not God's standard; that wealth and impudence are its virtues; poverty and modesty Its vices; that money is its god, its grand governing principle, to which all else is subservient; that happiness is measured by the purse, and that a comfortable if not luxurious settlement in life is the grand goal, in the chase of which eternity is lost sight of."

"Poh!" ejaculated the Colonel. ·

3. "I have seen Catholics almost universally ashamed of the first principles of their faith, and artfully smoothing them over to attract their dissenting brethren. I have seen them dressing so indecently, even when priests are invited, that their pastors are put to the blush."

"That's the priest's fault," mumbled the Colonel.

4. "I have seen," continued Agnes, smiling at the inter ruption, "that your happy, merry men and women, are only so because they have a false conscience, which has ceased to accuse them; I have seen all who have virtue enough to feel, living in perpetual fear of the temptations by which they are surrounded. I have seen that society is but a hollow farce, in which there is neither love nor friendship. I have seen the idol of a thousand worshippers left without a single friend when touched by poverty."

5. The Colonel groaned and looked away from Lel.

I

"And I have seen," said Agnes, taking her uncle's hand, and modulating her voice to a whisper, "I have seen that, in spite of all this, the world is dazzlingly beautiful, winning, enchanting. And oh, my dear, good uncle, it is not God that makes it so! I have felt its insidious fascination. tell you, uncle, that I have been wandering along the brink of a precipice; that I could no more live in the world than can the moth live in the candle; that my only salvation is in that Convent!"

6. The old man knocked the ashes carefully from his cigar, slowly brushed a tear from his eye, and put his arm around Lel's neck.

"Thank God, you are not a Catholic!" he exclaimed. "There are no Protestant convents to take you from me."

With tears streaming down her cheeks, Lel leaned her head on his shoulder. A horrible suspicion ran through the Colonel's mind. He raised her head in the clear moonlight, and mutely questioned her, with such a fearful, timid gaze, that her heart bled for him, as she said

"Yes, uncle, I am a Catholic!"

7. The cigar fell from his hand-his cane rolled on the porch-his broad chest swelled as if his heart was bursting

had they both been dead at his feet, he could scarcely have shown more grief, than at this overthrow of all his plans, this defeat of his best diplomacy.

"CHECK-MATED!" he sobbed in uncontrolled agony; repulsed them sternly from his side, and then, spreading his arms, snatched them both to his bosom. "Check-mated

Check-mated !"

8. One word: the sermon just preached by Agnes against he world, has nothing new in it; Solomon put it all in a nutshell long ago; it will be found better expressed in every prayer-book. To the Colonel, it was perfectly puerile, the same old song which saints and misanthropists have been singing together from time immemorial. Only by constant meditation do we comprehend that life is but a préparation for death; and unless this great truth is realized, where is the folly in living as if time were the main thing and eternity a trifle?

9. The visible present, though brief, and bounded by the grave, is apt to be more important than the invisible future. Without strong faith, men must live as they do; and all who reprove them for neglecting their souls, in over devotion to their bodies, will seem only fools, or very good people, who have not weighed well the difficulty of what they propose. Every day we witness the same spectacle-a world, for whom God died upon the cross, devoting all their time, all their thoughts, to obtain material comfort and avoid sorrow: a prayer at night, an ejaculation in the morning-the rest of the day sacred to the body.

10. We see this every day; we do not wonder at it; it is all right, all in the order of Providonce the only mystery is, that some weak, pious souls are absurd enough to quit the world, and devote the greater part of their lives to religious exercises; this is the singular part of it. It would be an unnatural state of things, indeed, if all mankind were to make business secondary to religion, and spend as much time in praising God, as they do in making money.

11. Why, the best instructed, the most edifying Catholic parents, cannot help preferring an auspicious alliance with

man for their daughters, to an eternal union with God in the solitary cloister; and how can we expect the worldly-minded Colonel, who has not seen a confessional for forty years, to consider the choice made by Agnes, as any thing else than a burning shame, a living death?

12. How many of us have realized, by prayer and medita tion, that heaven is all and earth nothing? How many of us are truly sick of the vanity of life, much as we pretend to be, and do not sagely conclude that our neighbors and ourselves are all doing our duty, taking our share of enjoyment with sufficient gratitude, and bearing our just proportion of affliction with exemplary resignation?

13. There was a time when monasteries and chapels were as numerous as castles; when the Christian world seemed ambitious to live a Christian life; when self-denial and selfcastigation were honored; when the consecration of a cathe dral was of more moment than the opening of a railroad; when there was something nobler than science, and dearer than profit; when the security of government was in the humility of the people; when the security of the people was in the firmness and purity of the Church; when there was not, as now, a groundwork of ignorance, pride, and envy, which is either a withering master or a dangerous slave. Yes! there was a time when all this was, and when Agnes might not have been laughed at; but it was in the dark ages, reader, in those terribie nights before the sunlight of newspapers had illumined the earth.

84. THE CHOICE-continued.

1. MUST it be told that, within a month after her return from the city, Agnes entered the convent as a candidate; that three months later, her long hair was cut to suit the brown cap of the novice? Until her hair was cut, the Colonel had cherished a hope that she would repent her girlish haste; but when he saw the ruin caused by those envious shears, he could not help saying "It is all over-all over !"

2. And ye who have clung to Agnes, in the hope that she would be induced to marry Melville, or incline to Mr. Almy, or that some romantic young gentleman would appear upon the carpet, invested with every virtue and every grace, between whom and our young novice, a sweet sympathy might be established, which should ultimately lead to better things than the cloister, and supply a chapter or two of delicious sentiment,— leave us, we beseech you,-for her CHOICE is made, though the Vows are not yet taken.

3. Yes! she is lost to the world! that sweet, beautiful girl, who laughed so merrily with her load of premiums in her arms; the milk-white lamb among those green hills; the friend who had gone to change Lel, and who did change her, though she nearly perished in the effort; the kind protectress who had comforted little Clarence and the Wanderer; the keen-sighted woman who had penetrated the secret of Mr. Almy's face; who had conquered Melville, and reigned supreme in the ballroom, eclipsing all the practised belles of the season!

4. She was lost to the world! that sweet, beautiful girl, who was so well fitted to delight and adorn it; lost before the first bloom of youth had passed from her cheeks, before experience had dried the first bright waters of hope and trust that are born in our hearts; lost before there was any need to seek a refuge from the ills of life in that last resource, a convent! She is lost to the world, and what matters it what she has gained-what heaven has won !-so thought the Colonel.

5. Yet, what was his love for Agnes, compared to her mother's-the mother who remembered her baptism, her first cries, her first words, her first caresses; who had counted her first smiles, and treasured them in her heart; who remembere every incident of her youth, her first lisping prayers, her firs songs, her first visit to mass, her first confession, her first communion, her confirmation: what was his bereavement to hers?

6. Agnes was her only child, her only companion in prayer, her jewel, her treasure, her all on earth; a thousand uncles could not have loved her as she did; their lives had been one, and now they are called upon to live apart. Oh, not apart!