oldest died when he was just beginning with his studies; and then Miss Marion, she soon followed, poor dear; so that your papa and your aunt were all that remained. Your papa, the second in the family, went off early to a distant part of the country to be with an uncle who was a merchant somewhere; so that Miss Isabel, as everybody called her, seemed almost like the only child, and a precious treasure she was. She was like her father's right hand in the parish; for Mrs. Harper-that's your grandmother-fell ill, and for years was confined to the house, and almost to her own room; so that Miss Isabel was all in all, as she had a right to be. Indeed you can hardly believe what she was amongst her father's people. Young and old were delighted when they saw her coming, or heard her voice; and many were the poor women, and aged men and sickly children, that would have kissed the ground over which she trod if they had dared. But all praise of her goodness she put away from her-would not hear it. It made her feel ashamed and abased, as she said, to hear such flattery bestowed upon one who only tried to do her duty, and sadly failed in that. So the people learned in time to keep their feelings to themselves, for there was no more certain method of sending Miss Isabel away than to let her hear her own praises.

of

"I sometimes wondered-for you must know I was not quite proof against such things myself-I wondered whether she did not like a bit of praise heard on the sly, or caught up, as it were, unawares; and I feel almost sure she did in a certain way, but not perhaps for what she considered as acts of duty done to God, if I may say so-I mean not for her religious duties as such. That she liked to hear of her praises as a woman, I still believe, and I always shall, for to be wholly indifferent to that, would be, in my opinion, not to be a woman at all.

"However that may be, as my mistress grew up, and her schooling was finished, and she took her place as a lady, I think I may say of her that she was adorned with all the graces of the loveliest and the best. I don't mean that she was exactly handsome; and there might be them that danced better, and sung better, too. I don't know about such

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matters, being myself no judge; but this I do know-that a smile from Miss Isabel used to turn the heads of the young gentlemen, and many a one there was who would have been glad if she would have smiled on him and nobody else.

"Miss Isabel, there is no doubt, might have married well. It is true she never told me about her offers. I have heard her say that no woman need have an offer unless she likes-that is, she can stop it before it comes to a real offer. So I will not pretend to say who offered to her or who did not; only that as years went on people wondered why she did not marry. I said she could never leave her father alone; for our poor mistress was taken to her rest at length, and the master and Miss Isabel were all-humanly, all the poor had to look to in their distress-all the sick had to. ask help of in their weakness--all the troubled in any way had to come to for pity.

"Soon after your grandmother's death, master's health began to fail. He seemed all at once to become like an old man. His sight, too, gave way, and there were days when he was totally unfit to go through the two services on the Sunday. So he consented at last to have a curate. The people would gladly have kept him amongst them without his preaching at all, rather than lose him altogether, so with the help of this curate, he managed mostly once in the day to fill the pulpit, as he had done for so many years; and although his sight was very dim, I suppose he had the Bible off by heart, and all the services too, for he used to get through, we all thought, as well as when he could see. "The curate, Mr. Maxwell, came, I think, that year when Mr. Harper, your papa, went off to the Indies, or somewhere. You know he was sent out by the house where he had been from a youth, and he remained away many years-five or six, perhaps. I know I often wished him back again, for he was wanted enough at home; but so it happens sometimes, that when folks are most wanted they are farthest off.

"But as I was saying, the curate came-a born gentleman, people said, and one who was likely enough to have the living after master's death. I suppose he was a gentleman. He was tall, and good-looking, as far

S we are rather pencilling a sketch than recording a history, we shall here diverge from strict chronological order to delineate Luther's portrait as a man, a husband, and a father. We love to contemplate a great character in little things -they are the casual notes of introduction that render it accessible-they present the man in his undress, off his guard, in his real and inner self; and in these trivial indices their greatness often betrays itself with a simple natural grandeur that eclipses their more public and memorable developments, just as the sun looks brightest in the little rays that shine through the shutter-blinds into a dark room. One of the earliest keynotes of the moral greatness of a Chalmers was sounded in the fond-hearted heroism that led him in his young manhood to walk all the way from Edinburgh to Liverpool and back again, to give a younger brother, who was going to sea some lessons in navigation, which both were too poor to pay for in any other way! Such brotherhood as that is large enough to make room for a wide fraternity of its fellow-man.

Luther married a nun, Catherine de Bora, a beautiful and accomplished lady of noble birth, who, moved alike by the great Reformer's eloquent philippics against sacerdotal celibacy, and by admiration of a holy boldness, like another John the Baptist's, abandoned her ancient creed, her convent, and her vows, to become the wife of a monk who offered to share with her the odium and the heroism of such a precedent. From this twofold matrimonial sacrilege, the small

THE HOMES OF SCRIPTURE."

homœopathic witlings of the day predicted the birth of antichrist; but in due course, six fine prattling Lutherans negatived their ribald prophecy. Luther's own defence of the case was, like the man, clear, direct, and straightforward. "He had inculcated on others," he said, "the advantages of the conjugal state, and was bound to enforce his precepts by his example." And all that need be added to the argument, is the converse proposition-it were well if they who uphold the celibate as a sacerdotal theory, were in the habit of illustrating its virtues "not only with their lips, but also in their lives." Unless it be conceded to the unnatural contract of monkery and nunnery, that it is binding upon the parties for life, whatever conscientious change of views might thereafter lead them to loathe and abhor that contract, along with the other abominations of the same system, then it appears to me Luther had a better right to marry, which is God's ordinance, than to patronise the celibate, which is man's device. "But the vow was a bar against matrimony," says the man with. the beam in his eye. True, but it was notoriously the "bar-sinister," and it was better, with the might of a Samson, to bear away the gates of the harlot's city, "bar and all," than to be taken captive in the harlot's arms!

Luther's habitual reverence for woman was at once a natural instinct, and a point of doctrine. Hence, he was not merely a fond, but in the most touching sense of the graceful word, a courteous husband. His view of the relation of man and wife partook of the originality that distinguished his other conceptions. He observed, that when the first woman was brought to the first man to receive her name, he called her, not wife, but mother-"Eve, the mother of all living!" A word more eloquent than ever fell from the lips of Demosthenes.

A happier home than Luther's was not to be found even in the domestic fatherland of Germany. He gaily said to his wife, one day, "If I were going to make love again, I would carve an obedient woman out of marble, in despair of finding one in any other way." Over one of his infants, fondly pressed to its mother's bosom, Luther moralized, "that babe and everything that belongs to us, is hated by the Pope, by Duke George, by their adherents, and by all the devils. Yet, dear little fellow, he troubles himself not a whit for all these powerful enemies; he gaily sucks the breast, looks round him with a loud laugh, and lets them storm as they like."

The following letter, written to his eldest boy, during the Diet of Augsburg, will be read by parental eyes with more interest than the five confessions submitted to the Emperor on that famous occasion:

"Grace and peace be with thee, my dear little boy! I rejoice to find that you are attentive to your lessons and your prayers. Persevere, my child, and when I come home I will bring you some pretty fairing." (He then proceeds to put in an allegory his favourite view of the enjoyments of Heaven, as being more in unison with the constitution of the human creature, and less refined away to such a point of evanescent spirituality, as, in some people's celestial theories, neutralize or rob them of their attraction.)

"I know," said he, " of a beautiful garden, full of children in golden dresses, who run about under the trees eating apples, pears, cherries, nuts, and plums. They jump and sing, and are full of glee, and they have pretty little horses with golden bridles and silver saddles. As I went by this garden I asked the owner of it, who those children were ? and he told me that they were the good children who loved to say their prayers, and to learn their lessons, and who fear God. Then I said to him: Dear sir, I have a boy, little John Luther; may not he, too, come to this garden to eat these beautiful apples and pears, to ride these pretty little horses, and to play with the other children? And the man said, If he is

There were other seasons of domestic gloom and sorrowing for the inroads of death upon his attached home circle, when theology and polemics gave way to the more powerful voice of nature, and the iron-stone man that could stand alone and firm as a rock in the storm, could melt into gushing tears,like Horebunder the touch of the Hand Divine. Witness his passionate apostrophe over the bier of his sweet child, Magdalene, whom the Lord took to Himself, like Jephtha's daughter, in her virgin youth and beauty.

"Such is the power of natural affection," said he, "that I cannot endure this without tears and groans, or rather an utter deadness of heart. At the bottom of my soul are engraven her looks, her words, her gestures, as I gazed at her in her lifetime and on her deathbed. My dutiful, my gentle daughter! Even the death of Christ (and what are all deaths compared to His ?) cannot tear me from the thought, as it should-she was playful, lovely, and full of love!"

Take one more trait of Luther as a master there is but one step from the nursery to the servant's ball "-mark the great man's social gratitude to his old servant John, who was leaving his family:

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