PICTURES IN PRINT. THE STORY OF A SUNBEAM. AN ALLEGORY. A CHEERFUL pilgrim Sunbeam, straggling through the shrubbery of St. James's Park, so justly termed one of the lungs of London, accosted me, in a lonely morning walk, at that season of the year when night is, comparatively speaking, only a twilight. The morning was hazy, and there was so little of genial warmth in the promises indicated in a summer-day's dawn, that I could not resist repeating to myself the poet's comparison, as applicable, in a measure, to my celestial friend of the “wandering wing," who seemed so like what it may have been "A sunbeam that had gone astray;" but, in reality, the golden ray was welcomed, there having, for some days previous, been so much of cruel truancy on the part of the King of Day. "Let us together," said the Sunbeam, "make a pilgrimage towards the domains of Night, till the Moon B begins to close her silver gates against the Sun, and her daughters, the Stars, twinkle in the heavens, like the punctuates of light sparkling through angels' tears." "Agreed," said I; "but if it may not be that it seem like intrusion, or laying a Trap to catch a sunbeam,' do the angels weep-those spirits of purity, whose home is heaven, and whose loves are beautified and directed by the essence of all Truth?" Un "Yes, even the angels weep,” replied the Sunbeam; "but their tears are those of sanctified sorrow. like those of frail humanity, they are not shed over their own follies, but for the degeneracies of earth. Hence the poet was right when he described the class who 'Play such fantastic tricks before high heaven, and, if you will but follow my somewhat erratic footsteps, I will show to you society in many forms, and the transactions of mankind in various aspects-grasping the hand of avarice, and begging the very means of existence-pleasure, affluence, poverty, wretchedness, and rags, intermingling in the greatest of all mysteries, human life. In my wanderings, it is true, I peep more frequently into the saloon and drawingroom of the great and wealthy, or tarry longer with the haughty pleasure-seeker in his divan or conservatory, than in the hovels of the poor and needy; but |