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It is Thanksgiving Day, Lizzy, and my thoughts have been wandering backward far over the current of years. Reflection is indeed an angel, when she points out the errors of the past and gives us courage to avoid them in the future. Maggie is reading me the book of Job, and this evening my spirit more than ever looks up in thankfulness to God for the Bible, Heaven's purest gift to mortals. It is the star of eternity, whose mild rays come twinkling to this nether sphere; erring man's guide to wisdom, virtue, and heaven. The Bible is the book of books. In comparison Byron loses his fire, Milton his soarings, Gray his beauties, and Homer his grandeur and figures. No eye like rapt Isaiah's ever pierced the veil of the future; no tongue ever reasoned like sainted Job's; no poet ever sung like Israel's shepherd king, and God never made a man more wise than Solomon. The words of the Bible are pictures of immortality; dews from the tree of Knowledge; pearls from the river of Life, and gems of celestial thought. As the moaning shell whispers of the sea, so the Bible breathes of love in heaven, the home of angels, and joys too pure to die. Would I had read it more when my poor eyes could see. Would more of its pure precepts were bound about my heart, and I had wisdom to make them the mottoes of my life. The world may entertain its idea of a magnificent Deity, whose government is general, but let me believe in the Lord God of Elijah, whose providence is entire, ordering the minutest event in human life, and with a father's care arranging it for the greatest possible good. Yes, Lizzy, when storms gather; and my way is dark and drear, with no star to guide, nor voice to cheer, my sinking spirit finds refuge in the world-wide sympathies of a Saviour who did not chide Mary for her tears, and came himself to weep at the grave of his friend.

My dear Lizzy, I fear I have written you too long and too sad a letter; but, dearest, do not think me melancholy; like all the rest of the world I have more smiles than tears, more good than ill. Let me thank you many times for your kind invitations to be with you on New Year's Day at your new home, and for your gentle hint that Santa Claus will be there too. Maggie says his majesty will be in the country at that time, and I must stop here; however, I shall be with you, Lizzy; till then good-bye, with my unabated love.

P. S. Water is to nature what melancholy is to the soul; beautiful in its mildness, but terrific and fearful in its wrath. When I began my letter, Ontario was sleeping in her beauty; but since then she has foamed and roared like a thing of very madness, and her long circling waves have overturned the seaman's home, and borne it far down where the dolphins sleep, and the bones of wrecked mariners lie thick on the ground.

To-day I took a long adieu of William's grave; Maggie led me there and left me alone awhile, to commune with the dead; and as the waves washed the bright pebbles to the shore and bore them back again, so the tide of memory swept over my heart its cherished hopes; and I watched them fall back into the sea of life, to return no more.

June 14. 1849.

MY DEAR MRS. FISHER, -- Your letter was a darling little visitor. My heart has had many a sweet chat with its friendly words. How glad it made me I cannot tell you. It is pleasant to be remembered. I regret that Mr. F--- could not find time to call, but such remissness of duty is always pardonable in a business man. Well, dear Jenny, "they tell me Spring is waking," and all nature is teeming with very gladness; the leaves and buds and twigs with new life are swelling, the little brooks have unclasped their icy bands, and the lake waters have broken their magic fetters, and the waves again dance to the tunes the breezes play, and the little seeds in the warm earth, like loving hearts, are beating and struggling upward to the world of light and showers; so may our hearts pant for the waters whose streams flow fast by the throne of God, and the smile of Him whose look makes the light of heaven.

You are going to your pleasant home; may it be ever the resting place of peace and plenty, and may no ills come there, and no storms gather to mar your happiness. The days I passed with you are with me yet, like a dream of love which may not be told. True, joy did not crowd the hours with gladness, but all that souls can share we straightway embarked in a little commerce of heart, and felt ourselves growing richer by a perfect interchange of views and feelings. Locke, in all, his reasonings, lived not half so fast. The world I live in is an ideal world, and its inhabitants are beings of fancy, and of course sinless and good; their lips speak no lies, and their hands work no evil; their smiles are like the beams of the morning, and their whispers like the night breeze among the flowers, soft and healing as the breath of prayer. Still, Jenny; this morning my imprisoned spirit would go into raptures for one glance at this world of light; oh yes, I would bow in grateful adoration for the fragment beam that plays idly on an infant's tear, or sports with a drop of dew. Oh holy light! thou art old as the look of God, and eternal as his breath. The angels were rocked in thy lap, and their infant smiles were brightened by thee. Creation is in thy memory; by thy torch the throne of Jehovah was set, and thy hand burnished the myriad stars that glitter in his crown. Worlds, new, from His omnipotent hand, were sprinkled with beams from thy baptismal font. At thy golden urn pale Luna comes to fill her silver horn, and Saturn bathes his sky-girt rings; Jupiter lights his waning moons, and Venus dips her queenly robes anew. Thy fountains are shoreless as the ocean of heavenly love, thy centre is every where, and thy boundary no power has marked. Thy beams gild the illimitable fields of space, and gladden the farthest verge of the universe. The glories of the seventh heaven are open to thy gaze, and thy glare is felt in the woes of lowest Erebus. The sealed books of heaven by thee are read, and thine eye, like the Infinite, can pierce the dark veil of the future, and glance backward through the mystic cycles of the past. Thy touch gives the lily its whiteness, the rose its tint, and thy kindling ray makes the diamond's light; thy beams are mighty as the power that binds the spheres; thou canst change the sleety winds to soothing zephyrs, and thou canst melt the icy mountains of the poles to gentle rains and dewy vapors. The granite rocks of the hills are upturned by thee, volcanoes burst, islands sink and rise, rivers roll, and oceans swell at thy look of command. And oh, thou monarch of the skies, bend now thy bow of millioned arrows and pierce, if thou canst, this darkness that thrice twelve moons has bound me. Burst now thine emerald gates, O morn, and let thy dawning come. My eyes roll in vain to find thee, and my soul is weary of this interminable gloom. My heart is but the tomb of blighted hopes, and all the misery of feelings unemployed has settled on me. I am misfortune's child, and sorrow long since marked me for her own. The past comes back, robed in a pall, which makes all things dark. The future seems a rayless night, and the world does not always deal gently, even with one so sorrowed.