denote eminent rank and dignity; whether men's rings with us signify this, or simply the vanity of their wearers, we will not undertake to say. William Penn found the American Indians paying homage to their chief, who was distinguished by something like a horn. The eastern horn is usually about twelve inches long, and often covered with a veil, nearly as large as a sheet, which covers almost the whole body. It is drawn over the face, or removed at pleasure. As the horn has to be held in one position generally, the stiffneck of Scripture seems to have some relation thereto. We read of a Druse servant who wore a horn, and being tall, she was obliged to stoop to enter a doorway. The horn is worn, it is said, both night and day, and only taken off when the hair has to be dressed, which is not often. We may add, the higher the rank of a person, the longer the horn she wears, some being above three feet. The horn, when very valuable, is frequently almost the only dowry even rich parents give their daughters.

The engraving gives a representation of the appearance of the horned ladies in a marriage procession. The procession of the Princess Alexandra through London was a different affair, but the Druses would probably be as proud of their ceremony as the Londoners, and if so they would be vain enough. All nations or peoples have their weaknesses.

REAL NOBILITY.

BY REV. JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

Ir is moral worth which makes the man, and that worth is more frequently attained in the school of deprivation and suffering, than under any other teaching. A. Humboldt may be crossing the ocean. He contemplates the limitless sea with the eye of a philosopher, its depth, its expanse, its saline ingredients. Night comes. He looks upon the stars. Every constellation is familiar to him. He knows their names, their relative positions, and can trace the path of the sun with unerring precision through the abysses of space. He descends to his state-room, and with diagram and an algebraic formula, records the observations of the day-a record which perhaps instructs the whole philosophic world. In all this he neither sees nor feels the presence of a God. He is a fatherless child,

"Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay."

He places his head upon his pillow, prayerless as the ox in the stall, and falls asleep.

But far up, among the shrouds, clinging to the cordage, there is a sailor boy, of humble parentage, of slight education, dressed in the coarse garb of toil. The philosopher hardly regards him as a brother of the human family. The boy has just finished the work for which he climbed the spars. Grasping the ropes, he looks up to the gorgeous canopy above him, glittering with the mansions of God. There he sees his Father's home. There he sees the abode of angels. The instructions he received from his sainted mother's lips rush upon his soul. Overcome, he repeats, with trembling voice, and flooded eye, the hymn he learned in the Sabbath school,

"Ye stars are but the shining dust

Of our divine abode,

The pavements of those heavenly courts
Where I shall see my God."

Who is the greater, the philosopher, with his diagrams, or the boy with his God?

A black cloud appears in the sky. The gleam of lightning illumines the ocean. Crashes of thunder cause the ship to tremble in every timber, and she rolls and plunges beneath the rising tempest. The philosopher, the mere philosopher, hastens from his berth to witness the phenomenon. With electrometer in hand, he experiments upon the electric fluid, which he draws from the cloud. He notices the flash, and waits the report, understanding perfectly the rapidity with which sound can traverse the air. With accurate calculation he computes the speed with which the waves are driven by the gale. In all he sees but the forces of nature-electric fluid, aerial vibrations, atmospheric energies. Blind, blind nature alone, converses with his blinded soul. Again the benighted philosopher records his observations, and again, godless, falls asleep.

The Christian sailor boy stands on the deck, through the storm, in his midnight watch. He knows nothing of the scientific speculations which alone engross the soul of the philosopher. But as he paces the deck, God is by his side, his Father, Companion, and Friend. God, who loves him as his own adopted child. In the crashing thunder, in the gleaming lightning, in the heaving, foaming, tumultuous ocean, he hears and feels the presence and the power of God. He has not the faculty of Milton or of Byron to improvise, in glowing verse, the emotions he feels, but he experiences the emotions. His soul is enriched and ennobled by them. Again the Sabbath-school hymn in

spires his mind, fraught with the science of heaven. In unison with the spirit of the tempest, he exclaims,—

"On cherubim and seraphim

Full royally He rode,

And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad."

Now which of these two is the greater? Which is endowed with the loftier spirit? Upon which soul descends, radiant from above, in fullest measure, the love of celestial choirs, upon the warmhearted, full-souled, God-loving sailor boy, all unlettered as he is? Or upon the cold, heartless, prayerless, godless philosopher, whose whole moral nature has been starved and shrivelled, as he has fed only on the husks of science?

It does not require acquaintance with Greek and Roman classics for one to feel God's presence in those forms of beauty and of grandeur which nature is ever assuming. One may not be able to comprehend all the revelations found in Cosmos, or the demonstrations of La Place-and yet he may read and comprehend with intensest appreciation, the inscriptions God has registered on billowy ocean, earth and spangled sky. He may interpret, with vastly more than philosophic acumen, all the voices of nature, when God speaks in the thunder, or breathes his anthems in the storm-swept forest or dashing surge.

Earthly science alone may be able to decipher the hieroglyphics which Assyrian or Egyptian has carved on the mausoleums of the Pharaohs. But there is a nobler science, heaven-born, God-taught, which enables a Christian, even the unlettered child, to decipher those more sublime characters which the finger of God has everywhere carved on craggy mountain and verdant valley, on prairie and forest, everywhere, everywhere on ocean, earth, and sky. It is the loving heart which God welcomes to companionship with Him.

DILIGENCE REWARDED.

In the middle of the last century there lived in the little town of Montdidier, France, an apothecary, by name Master Lombard, and by report a miser.

Everybody said Master Lombard was rich, and though what everybody says is not always true, it was true in this instance. Lombard was rich, but he lived like a beggar. He spent very little, and he gave away nothing. He lent money on good security, but he never lent any of it to the

Lord by giving it to the poor,-never accepted the security of that Bible assurance that those who do so shall be amply repaid. No; Master Lombard cared only for money; lent only that he might make more money. For this he denied himself decent clothes, or wholesome food, or comfortable lodging. It was meat and drink, he said, to him to look at his golden louis, to hear their true ring of metal, to count them up as if they were so many friends or children, and to relish the thought of what he could do with his money if he chose. He never read-or reading, only seorned-the solemn words, "Your riches are corrupted.

Your gold and silver are cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days."

One snowy night, when Lombard had closed his shop, and was sitting in his back parlour over the smallest scrap of fire, and was eating a dry crust, there was a knocking at the outer door. 5.

Old Lombard kept no servant, and neither had friend nor child beneath his roof; no one came to see him except on business; for, as you may imagine, he was not a man given to hospitality. When the knock was heard at the door, therefore, he knew very well it must be either an idle trick of some foolish boy to annoy him, or a customer; and being economical of his own trouble as well as of everything else, he waited for the stranger to knock again.

of If it is only a mischievous boy," he said, "he'll not venture to knock twice; if it is a customer he is sure to do so."uited) 8oldsas doidw adquets.

B

The knock was repeated, and old. Lombard rose, and passing through his shop, un barred and unbolted the outer door, and looked out straight before him into the snowy street. He saw nothing, and was about to shut the door again, with an angry word, when a child's voice arrested his attention.

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"Please you, good Master Lombard, it is me. "Me!" said old Lombard, suddenly darting upon a small boy, who stood shivering on the showy door-step; "and who is me, that he dare disturb a quiet trader? Who says I never give to to those who want? Tell them they speak false; you wanted a thrashing, and I gave you that, Come here!" He seized the boy by his ear, but the lad struggled and released himself, saying,

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"I did not come to play a trick on you, Master Lombard, but to ask you to make up some medicine for my mother." to'yun tuo!'"ovou od aand olursa bóɔg no yonbur

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"Medicine for my mother!" Lombard repeated in a mocking voice. And is my mother ill? High living is, too much for her; let her try meagre soup, or no soup at all!"

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'Please you, Master Lombard, my mother is dying, partly for want of food,-you know she is very poor,partly for want of medicine; but this paper tells us what is sure to do for her all that medicine can do. It is in Latin, but you know all about it."

"Come in," said Lombard, and the boy followed him. He closed the door, went behind the counter, put on his spectacles, and stooping down over a bit of lighted candle, read the paper which the boy had given him.

The boy watched the old man's face anxiously as he read, and when he ceased, asked was it a good remedy for such and such complaints, detailing his mother's ailments.

"Yes," said old Lombard, "the remedy is excellent, but it is dear; it would cost a golden piece."

"A golden piece!" cried the poor child in alarm. "O, what shall I do! I have but seven sous."

"I don't know what you are to do, except take yourself out of my shop as quickly as may be."

"O, Master Lombard, you know that ever since my father's death, sickness and distress have been in our house, and now my mother is dying!"

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That is no affair of mine,' old Lombard answered; "people who have no money are best out of the world."

"I implore you," cried the boy, "send me not away without the medicine. For God's sake, do this charity, and God will reward you!"

I tell you," said old Lombard, "I will do no such thing. Money will buy medicine in this shop. Nothing for nothing; those are my terms."

"Give me the medicine," said the distracted boy, as the thought of his poor suffering mother pressed itself on him, and almost broke his heart."O, good Master Lombard I will be your servant-your slave. I will eat little, I will work much. I will do anything, suffer anything, if you will help me now!"

Old Lombard seemed to hesitate; he was rather surprised at the boy's vehemence; he knew him to be sharp and honest, and it occurred to him that it might not be a bad speculation to close with the boy's bargain. Therefore he felt a little inclined to listen, and see if it would not, after all, be more to his purpose to take the boy's services in payment for the medicine than hard cash. The boy was not slow to perceive a slight change in his