My friend met the train on its arrival; and by his influence, two passages were obtained in a steamship which sailed this afternoon—that is all, Miss Emma." The young lady addressed, looked at the narrator, but did not speak: tears were in his eyes, and a something in her throat which would have made any attempt at conversation result in a breakdown. “By George!” said Frank, who had got his glass but no tear in his eye, “you are too quiet with that sort of man: you should have waked me, I'd have given them a bit of cold lead in no time—I should have liked to meet them." "You," broke in Emma, whose indignation quickly absorbed her tears. "You, who ran from a friend in the road a foot less in height than yourself, because he asked, in feigned voice, for your money and watch.” "Ah! women, I may say children, don't understand true pluck," said the youth. "Nor cowardice in men. Oh Arthur, you are good," she added, turning to him. "Do you think, Arthur," said Mrs. Wylley, "they will reform?” Before he could reply, the girl entered with a letter. "It is from Liverpool," he said, looking at the post mark. He broke the seal, examined its contents, and then read as follows— "DEAR MASTer, 66 By the time you receive this, Bill and me will be on the road to a new land. We both mean well, and I am going to work once more as an honest man, and earn a good character, which, when I get, I shall come back and beg from you my old place back again. God bless you, sir, God bless you. Bill sends his best respects. "Your humble Servant, "GEORGE CARTER." "It seems to me to be a dreadful dream," said Emma. Ah, not a bad notion," said Frank. "You hav'nt been selling us." "If you will dive under the couch, you will come upon the evidences -in the shape of a jemmy, a brace and bit, and some skeleton keys-of the visit of the strange visitors who came unbidden at such an unusual hour to Myrtle Villa." THE HEART. (From the German of H. Neumann.) The Heart has chambers twain; Therein dwell Both Joy and Pain. When Joy wakes in her cell, Speak lowly, That Pain do not awake! J. A. L. J. A. SOMETHING ABOUT POSEYS. "A contract of eternal bond of love, Strengthened by interchangement of your Rings," -TWELFTH NIGHT. The title of this paper has been suggested to me by a fellow member of the C. L. A. It has the charm of brevity, the quaintness of a century in which the great grandsires of this Association lived, gave love gifts, pledged their troth with betrothal rings, and married and wed their wives with a hoop of gold, pretty much as we do now. But they made their gift rings tell each a story of its own; of undying affection, of defence in time of trial, of comfort in the hour of sorrow, of simple trust in God, of submission to His will, faith in His promises, and hope in His salvation, These short and pithy sentences were called poeseys or poseys, and we adopt the shorter and rounder word as being the best known of the two, and more germane to our subject. The earliest variety of these rings have the posey in raised letters on the outside. There was a ring of this kind in the late Lord Londesborough's collection, which was found in the Thames; it was of fifteenth century work, and had the posey X SANS X VITENIE," (sans vilenie-the T being a blunder for L) i.e. without baseness. We have in this the prototype of the "Mizpah " rings, that are now so fashionable. It was not, however, until the reign of Elizabeth, and the succeeding Stuart Kings, that the motto ring became a favourite, although we have seen examples that date from the reign of Henry VIII. In the epoch of English History that embraced these reigns, the pious mottoes were not only engraved in finger rings, but were cut in stone over the lintels of the dwelling houses, and carved in marble on some of the fine old mantelpieces, which are still preserved in our Tudor Mansions. The wellknown "God's Providence" House at Chester is a type of one, and there still remains cut in a block of limestone which is built into the wall of a house at Cork, a lasting record of the builder's faith and trust, in the following inscription in Old English raised characters :— 66 In these nineteenth century days, when we have taken example from those who have gone before us in the fashion of our personal ornaments, would it not be well to go a step further, and copy our ancestors in their faith and love, by placing the same enduring records in the houses which we build? These will remain when we, like the builders of old, have passed away; and the wayfarer of a future generation will have his hope strengthened, and his love rekindled, as he pauses to read the words which we have left behind us as a rich and lasting legacy. A little book, entitled "Love's Garland," published 1624, contains a number of poseys, and has the quaint title of— 66 'Poseys on Rings, handkerchiefs, and gloves, And such pretty tokens that Lovers send their Loves." From this it is evident that Poseys were then so much in fashion that not only were they employed on rings, but on gloves and handkerchiefs, in which they were worked and embroidered. It is told of John, Bishop of Lincoln, that in 1753, upon his fourth wife's ring, he placed the rather too hopeful poesy "If I survive—I'll make them five." Rather would we agree with one who has recently adopted an older motto as his own, and placed it upon his wife's ring "Like this shall be-my love to thee." Or with another who has borrowed from a XVI century ring "In thee my choice-I do rejoyce." Poseys may be classed under two heads: those which were used in marriage, or for betrothal, and others that were parental gifts, or were made for individuals as commemorative of remarkable events or circumstances in their lives. Amongst the first may be placed the following:-Those marked with an asterisk are in the writer's collection, and in every case the posey is either engraved or punched in the inner surface of the ring. "The pledge I prove-of mutual love." "Gift and giver-your servants ever." "I love the rod-and thee and God." "My love is fixed, I cannot change—I like my choice too well to range.” "In thee dear wife-I find new life." "Silence ends strife-with man and wife." Happy in thee- hath God made me." "True love-will ne'er remove." "In love abide-till death divide." "No gift can show-the love I owe." "Where hearts agree-there God will be." "Heart and hand-at your command." * "The gift is small-but love is all." This also occurs upon the enamelled cover of a patch box in the writer's collection. "As sure to thee-as death to me." "Where this I give-I wish to live." * "Love for love." "Absence tries love." "Marriage is the happiest state of life you see, If hands are only joined where hearts agree." "Live as I-or else I dye." "Within thy brest-my harte doth rest." "Hurt not the hart-whose joy thou art." "The love is true that I. O. V.--as true to me then C. V. B." Qui dedit se dedit AM." "Since God hath wrought this choice in thee, So frame thyselfe fo comfort me.' "United hearts-death onlie parts." * "Don Damy." "Love and live happy." "Let likynge last." "I live in love." "Annulus hic nobis, quod sic uterque stabit."-Ben Jonson. "All I refeus-and thee i chus." "Let this-be a kiss." The Poseys which rank under the second class, are not so many, and among them may be placed the following: "By courage bold-I won this gold." * "Condem him not, but hye him in, * Forkindnes that be for hah bin." "Let virtue guide thee. Pray to love-love to pray. 1647." "Let reason rule." "Let no calamitie-separate amitie." "God's Providence-is our inheritance." This is the motto of the Earls of Cork; I have met with it twice on gold hoop rings. "God us ayde." The same with the cipher IN is on one of the bells of Rylstone Church. It is the motto of the Norton family. "Love and live happy. 1689." "Not valew but vertu." * "Let vertue be thy guide." * "No jewell to truthe+" * "Keep vertue still-within thy will." "Love and pray-night and day." "Let not absence banish love." "Let vertue rest-within thy brest." So much for the old time-worn posies. While I write, a firm in Birmingham have caught the spirit of the past, and in reproducing the motto rings, are not only abiding by the Old English couplets, but are travelling into Celtic ground, and giving to the lover and the loved some of the Celtic words which though perhaps hard to be pronounced, yet carry with them a depth of meaning, and a beauty of idiom and thought, which could not otherwise be compressed into the circle of a ring. Take for instance the following : "Acushla ma chree" (pulse of my heart). "Savourneen Deelish." If in this short notice of a subject upon which so much more could be written, an interest should be awakened in those love pledges of the past, which are now becoming more and more scarce; and if, through this paper, even one old ring, doomed by some silversmith to the melting pot, should be rescued from destruction, it will not have been written in vain. THE AGE OF THE EARTH. F. S. A. An THE world is getting older every day; getting older far more rapidly than the days are measured by its never-wearying rotation. enigmatical statement which, being interpreted, means that the better we become acquainted with the earth, the more candidly and unfalter ingly we yield ourselves to the evidence of the stony records of Nature's workings in the past, the more completely we relieve ourselves of all preconceived notions and prejudices, so much the more does the conviction of its extreme antiquity grow upon the mind; until, as in the contemplation of the interstellar distances, even the trained intellect sinks back exhausted in the attempt to grasp the immensity of the subject. Time was when an age of six thousand years was looked upon as a very respectable antiquity for the earth, and it was with the greatest reluctance, and apparently with inconsolable regret, the majority of people allowed that the earth might not be so young as they had always taken it to be. It was a fierce struggle while it lasted, this debate on the age of the earth, and many absurd, and some impious, aye, they might fairly be called blasphemous subterfuges, were made by the party of prejudice and ignorance. Of course the first step was to brand as infidels the noble men who fearlessly used their reason in the attempt to read those wonderful hieroglyphs carved by Nature's hand on every hill, and cliff, and valley, for all to read who, not entirely engrossed in the mere mechanical animal life of the many, cared to become wiser, and prove themselves worthy of their high endowments. Then all the remains of animal life embedded in the rocks (those chiefly known at the time were the shells of mollusca) were declared to have been brought into their present positions by the Noachian Deluge, “when the waters stood above the mountains, and all the high hills were covered." Some even went further, and, in their doting stupidity, that |