"Not those baby looks that go
All unmeaning to and fro,
But an earnest gazing deep,
Such as soul gives soul at length,
When through work and wail of years
It hath won a solemn strength."
In that strange communion was the mother imparting to her nursling her own speechless weight of agony, at parting with other beloved objects in their distant home? Or did the tender soul take upon itself a burden, which pressed from it a sudden ripeness of sympathy? Or was the intensity of prayer drawing the spirit of the child into that of the mother, until they were as one before God?
Strong lessons were learned at an hour like this. Ages of thought were compressed into a moment. The reach of an unbodied spirit, or some glimpse of the power, by which the deeds and motives of a whole life may be brought into view, at the scrutiny of the last judgment, seemed to reveal itself. Methought the affections, that so imperatively bind to earth, loosened their links in that very extremity of peril; and a strange courage sprang up, and the lonely soul, driven to one, sole trust, took hold of the pierced hand of the Redeemer, and found it strong to save.
That night the prayer and sacred music, which regularly hallowed our hour of retirement, should
