possible, of having it "ere decay's effacing fingers" did their work, I was asked to do it. Our former intimacy led them to expect a more faithful likeness from me than even from a more experienced artist. I shall never forget the struggle of that night. My first thought was, that I should write a refusal; but, after consideration, and the remembrance of the great kindness to me in the past shewn by all the family, I resolved to undertake it. The next morning's mail carried me safely to the castle gate. It was a dreary morning. The frost of the past night had given way, and a thick rain was drizzling from the leaden clouds overhead. Every bush and tree was wet, and it did not require much effort to fancy that the leaves of the great laurels, which hang over the footpath to the castle, were weeping for the loss of her who loved them so much. Then those withered leaves which were scattered all around seemed to say, "We all do fade."

I was expected. Steele, the old butler, met me at the door, pressed my hands, while the tears gushed down his cheeks, and led me softly into the room where Mary lay. Tapers seemed to have been burning there all night. One of them cast its flickering light on the face of the dead, who, to be ready for my work, had in the early morning been propped up with pillows, and had been clad in her birthday-dress, as it was in that which Sir William wished her portrait. My work was to paint as from life. The window-blind was drawn up-the curtains were folded back -a servant had followed with a cup of tea, which was set down for me, and I was left alone with the dead. I can never, never forget that moment. It was the same face, and yet different, as I

had loved to look upon years before. That ripeness of thought and affection seemed still to linger there, as if the imprint which the soul had made upon the countenance was, successfully, for a few hours doing battle with decay and death. The fair hair hung in luxuriant curls over the neck, and a carnation had been put into the hand, now fastened across the heart. The bright blue eye was covered by the stiffened eyelids and their long fair eyelashes, while the lips were slightly opened, as if the soul longed to speak through them for the last time, and tell to others something more of Jesus, whom we all knew she loved. I opened the eyelids and began my work. I spent a whole day in that cold room, striving after the power to put on canvas the face which was now so freshly on my memory, but it was all in vain. The shades of evening gathered around me, and I had not yet caught even one feature of Mary. The time had come when I must again return by the mail, and I wrote a short note to Sir William, intimating that I regretted I could not do the work he so much wished me to do. It was a weary, restless time to me for some weeks after I returned. In the daytime and at night, I was often startled by the sudden reproduction of that image, propped up with pillows in the antique bed-room of the castle. Sometimes, when walking along the street, the image on the eye would turn memory to it and make me stop, as if under the power of a strong impulse; and night after night, when I lay down to sleep, it stood out before me. I reasoned about it; I knew the very simple explanation of it; yet for more than a month it haunted me thus. Other commissions came, and under the study of these

the impressions of my first one wore away. On several occasions I felt drawn towards the attempt at a portrait of Mary; and about two years after my first trial, when again on a visit to Old Aunty, I resolved to make a last effort. The result was most successful. The old Baronet wept like a child when the portrait was shewn him, while in tones of such deep tenderness as we would use in the presence of beloved ones asleep, and whose slumbers we desire not to disturb, he said, "Mary, my pet Mary!" And now my "first commission" hangs opposite my last; for the portrait of Sir William, which you saw the other day, now hangs vis à vis to that of his Mary in the castle dining-room.

LICHENS.

Το many the word with which this paper is headed may suggest no idea of importance. Flowers they love and have ever loved, for they are associated with the sunny joys of childhood, and mingle with the hallowed memories of the dead, and of the beautiful scenes where they repose; ferns they consider beautiful as they cluster in the forest shade, gracefully bend down to see their own forms in the mossy spring, or wave from some wild inaccessible crag their delicate fronds in the breeze of summer; and mosses have often drawn their admiring gaze as they spread their softening hues-Time's own genuine and expressive colouring-over the decaying tree and the mouldering ruin, or

wove round the gnarled roots of the forest patriarchs, or over the shaded primrose-banks, those yielding, velvet-like cushions on which, in the sultry noonday, the golden sun beams and the dreamy flickering shadows produce the most exquisite effects. The beauties and uses of these plants are at once apparent, and require no microscopic aid to detect them, but the lowly lichens they have passed by a thousand times with indifference, regarding them, if indeed they ever thought of them at all, merely as inorganic discolorations and ugly weather-stains on the trees and rocks where they grew. And yet they, too, are interesting, as interesting as many plants which occupy a far higher position in the ranks of vegetation, either as regards their history or their uses. Lifeless and uninviting as their external aspect may appear, we find, when we examine them under the microscope, that they are not without their own wonders-that the spirit of beauty is as aptly represented in them as in the flowers of a thousand hues that flaunt in the summer sun. Simple as is their construction, being composed entirely of an aggregation of cells, and completely destitute of stems and leaves, and all those parts which enter into our ideas of perfect plants, yet, by a wonderful compensation, they are so extensively diversified in their external form and appearance as to present to the student of nature as wide and varied a field for his inquiry and research as is to be found in any other department of the vegetable kingdom. With many of these forms and appearances we are all familiar. them clothing with their gray and feathery-looking rosettes our old walls, spreading over our ruined castles in strangelooking patches of brown and yellow, painting our bare

We see