Pictures

A room with pictures in n and a room without pictures, differ about as luuoh as a rooni with windows and a room without windows. Nothing is more nielan choly, particularly to a person who has t.o pass much time in bis room, thau bleak walls with uothing on them, for pictures are loop boles of escape to the soul, leadicg to otber scènes aud other spheres. It is sucb an inexpressible relief to a person engaged in writing or even reading, on looking up, not to have bis line of visión cbopped off by an odious white wall, but to ñnd bis soul escaping, as it were, tbrough the frame of an exquisite picture, to other beautiful and perhaps heaveiily scènes, wbeu the fancy for a moment niay revel, refreshed and delighted. Thus pictures are consolers of loneliness ; they are a relief to a jaded mind ; they are windows to the imprisoned thought; they are books, they are histories and sermona, wbioh we can read without turning over the leaves. - Downing. EP" What u lovely world this would be ifall its inhabitantfi could say, with Sbakespeare'fl shepherd - "Sir, I ama true laborer; I earn tbat I wear; I owe no man bate-; envy no man's happiness; glad ol other meo'e good; content witb my farro."