more sensitive to the influences of each other, than the most delicate plants and flowers are to the influences of soil or climate. The very presence of an evil spirit among us deeply af fects us. Such a person may neither say or do any thing evil, and he will insensibly lower the tone of our spirits, just as a snow-bank or iceberg affects all the atmosphere about it. We e are sometimes introduced to persons, perfect strangers, who immediately make us feel that good passing out of us restores a kind of equilibrium which their presence had disturbed. We cannot account for it, but we know it to be so. It is a fact of our consciousness.

On the other hand, there are persons who always seem to create or carry about with them, a heavenly or spiritual atmosphere. As soon as we come in the circle of their influence, though they say not a word to us, and we know nothing of their history, we feel stronger and better; we feel a self-devotion, a spiritual aspiration, that is not familiar to us. Their very presence is benediction. 1 know a person that thus affected me the first

time I ever saw him, and I have been in his society. Yet it is not an intellectual influence. He is not distinguished for learning, nor for any brilliancy or originality of thought. It is simply the influence of character. It is a latent, inheritant, spiritual influence which is felt by all around him, though many may not be conscious of it. It commands the respect and love of those who differ most from him in opinion. It prevents men from expressing any impure or vicious feelings in his presence, from saying in his company what they would not hesitate to say in the company of others. It represses the angry passions of the crowd whenever he appears, and inspires confidence and every good emotion. Inestimable are even the unconscious blessings which such a man diffuses through the community in which he lives; he blesses those around him more by what he is, than by what he does.

Coming-on of Spring.

BY LOUIS GAYLORD CLARK.

"COLD winter-ice is fled and gone,
And Summer brags on every tree:
The red breast peeps among the throng

Of wood-brown birds that wanton be."

Yes and now how pleasant to the husbandman is "all the land about, and all the flowers that blow:" the springing grass, the budding-trees, the smell of the freshploughed earth, the transparent briskness of the spring-tide air! Season of hope and promise to the independent, happy cultivator of the soil! As a quaint old English poet says:

"The earthe to entertaine him

Puts on its best arraye;
The loftie trees and lowly shrubbs
Likewise are fresh and gaye:

The birds to bid him welcome
Doe warble pleasant notes:
The beaste, the fielde, the forest

Cast off theire winter coates."

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