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Looking Back.

ness, summoned home in an instant, by the touching of some electric chord of the past, which caused the spirit to "look back," and thus attuned the jarring strings and brought sweet order out of the wild confusion of the brain!

One of the most beautiful and melting illustrations of the beneficent wonders wrought by "looking back," is given by Moore, in his exquisite allegory of "Paradise and the Peri," when he portrays a man, whose soul is heavy with manifold crimes, watching the gambols of an innocent child. At the sound of the vesper bell the boy starts up from his couch of flowers and sinks upon his knees, his hands fervently clasped and his pure brow and eyes lifted heavenward. A long-silent string vibrates in the heart of the wretched man; he recalls the days when he knelt with a prayer on his lips,—lips that were as sinless as those of that little child; his whole life of guilt rises in terrible review before him, the first tears of penitence quench the evil fire of his eyes and wash his guilt-stained cheeks—he kneels! he prays!

Who can doubt that the soul has eternal memory? Every man carries about him invisible tablets which are his "book of life." The work of every day is indelibly graven upon a new page. The records may seem to be obliterated in this world, but every line must be read in that sphere where there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nothing hid that shall not be known. But even on