furnace heated seven times; but that Savior whom she loved sat close by the crucible to watch the gold, and to remove it from the fire the moment he could see his own image in the purified metal, that demonstrated it was entirely separated from the dross.

Mr. Lauderdale's jealous, envious wife, and her sister, and their friends, all continued to circulate calumny after calumny against a woman that every one of those gossips in that parish secretly envied for her genius, her moral influence, and commanding goodness.

"If envy, like anger, did not burn itself in its own fire, and consume and destroy those persons it possesses before it can destroy those it wishes worst to, it would set the whole world on fire and leave the most excellent persons the most miserable."

Musidora's friends among the poor, to whom she had unweariedly ministered for ten or fifteen years, threatened to mob this petty Pope; and the gentlemen of the whole community declared "that were she their sister they would compel Mr. Lauderdale, from the pulpit, to confess his wickedness and beg Musidora's pardon before the whole congregation."

But what became of her brother Halcombe all this time? Mr. Lauderdale would have actually shivered before his righteous wrath. Why he was sitting down at home, canvassing whether it is ever right to resist evil; whether the august Musidora could by any pos

A NOBLE WIFE.-Many of our public men have been blessed with wives and mothers who were the ornaments of their sex, and their quiet and ennobling influence contributed largely to the subsequent greatness of their children and husbands. Mr. Parton tells the following story of General Jackson's wife: —

sibility be injured by an abolition adventurer; and no doubt he canvassed, too, the popularity or unpopularity

"When General Jackson was a candidate for the Presidency in 1828, not only did his political foes oppose him for his public acts, which, if unconstitutional or violent, were a legitimate subject of reprobation, but they defamed the character of his wife. On one occasion, a newspaper published in Nashville was laid upon the General's table. He glanced over it, and his eyes fell upon an article in which the character of Mrs. Jackson was violently assailed. So soon as he had read it, he sent for

his trusty old servant Dunwoodie.

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'Saddle my horse,' said he to him in a whisper, and put my holsters on him.' Mrs. Jackson watched him, and though she heard not a word, she thought she saw mischief in his eyes. The General went out after a few moments, when she took up the paper and understood everything. She ran out to the south gate of the yard of the Hermitage by which the General would have to pass. She had not been there more than a few seconds before the General rode up with the countenance of a madman. She placed herself before his horse, and cried out,

"O General, don't go to Nashville! Let that poor editor live! Let that poor editor live!'

"Let me alone!' he replied; 'how came you to know what I am going for?'

“She answered, 'I saw it all in his paper after you went out; put up your horse and go back.'

"He replied, furiously, But I will go-get out of my way!" "Instead of doing this she grasped his bridle with both hands. "He cried to her, 'I say, let go my horse; I'll have his heart's blood; the villain that reviles my wife shall not live.'

"She grasped the reins but the tighter, and began to expos tulate with him, saying that she was the one who ought to be angry, but that she forgave her persecutors from the bottom of her heart, and prayed for them; that he should forgive, if he hoped to be forgiven. At last, by her reasoning, her entreaties, and her tears, she so worked upon her husband that he seemed mollified to a certain extent. She wound up by

that might accrue to himself if he took the needful steps to cause the bishop to unfrock this disturber of the peace of all Christian people over whom he sacrilegiously dared to minister. Colton says "It was observed of the Jesuits, that they constantly inculcated a thorough contempt of worldly things in their doctrines, but eagerly grasped at them in their lives. They were 'wise in their generation,' for they cried down worldly things because they wanted to obtain them, and cried up spiritual things because they wanted to dispose of them."

Halcombe was also so unreasonable as to expect that his high-mettled, undisciplined sister, Musidora, would have treated with silent contempt a whisperer who had had the power to deprive her of friends she loved as her own soul. Such a silence would have dethroned her reason entirely; for who can bear or should bear the grossest injustice and tyranny in any church where religion itself requires us to demand a sufficient reason for excommunication.

Halcombe felt, too, that Mr. Lauderdale was too small to arouse his wrath. But did a fly ever know that it was his insignificance that enabled him to buzz around and annoy the ears of a lion? that he was too diminutive a little creature for that lordly beast to

saying, 'No, General, you shall not take the life of even my reviler; you dare not do it, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!”'

The iron-nerved hero gave way before the earnest pleading of his beloved wife, and replied,

"I yield to you; but had it not been for you, and the words of the Almighty, the wretch should not have lived an hour.””

expend his strength to annihilate him? even so Mr. Lauderdale, in his monstrous conceits, thought Halcombe was afraid of him.

Musidora's step-mother now revealed the jealousy that had hitherto only shown itself in petty tempests at home; she allowed Mr. Lauderdale, although she did not belong to his church, to visit her and speak against, and write to her sneeringly, about Musidora; and then her daughter, Gulielma, who was just grown up, contracted desperate intimacies with all Musidora's enemies, repeating, in her daftness, to them, every word exchanged between Halcombe and herself at home. Thus Mr. Lauderdale's fox-like cunning induced him to report to all the clergy in the State, that Musidora's family were all against her and in favor of himself.

Our characters in this world are really never injured by calumny if we are truly innocent; but poor human nature is too mercurial to believe this blessed fact when we feel ourselves in the blazing fire of wicked, envious women, or men's poisonous nimble tongues; so Musidora thought she had best write to every minister in the diocese, to defend herself from the innumerable scandals of Mr. Lauderdale for be it borne in mind that her religious heart was so afraid of injuring the holy calling of the priesthood, that in all her anguish she had never said aught, except to her brethren and sisters in the Church of God; and she actually knew so little of the world that she thought St. Paul's injunction was an article of the 19th century religion, namely," And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it."

Musidora also believed that sarcasm was a gift that might be carefully used; for certain it is, that ridicule is often more pungent in showing vain people their absurdities, than the most philosophic reasoning or angular rebuke. She, therefore, with a pen dipped in irony, showed the clergy the absurdity of a married minister's thinking the girls in love with him. Mr. Lauderdale had one of these witty episodes sent to him. by an enemy of Musidora's, and he jumped into a curricle, and actually ran his poor horse from Dan to Beersheba, proclaiming his purpose to issue immediately a bull of excommunication from the Church to her. Now she happened to care as much about passionate, malignant bulls of excommunication, as Napoleon Bonaparte did, for she felt innocent of any crime save that of self-defence. Her enemy soon perceived this, and therefore sent a letter to the vestry resigning the church, and assigning Miss Wyndham as the cause. This he did to overwhelm her, for he knew his congregation worshipped talent, and he was, indeed, a sparkling genius. The moment Musidora heard of this renewed cunning, she went personally to the vestry, and said, "Now, gentlemen, you know that the most prominent people in the State are my friends; therefore, if Mr. Lauderdale does not instantly recall this letter of resignation, I will write to let everybody know the truth which, from the very outset, has caused all this enterprising persecution for three years without cessation namely, that I did not think the parson's wife a handsome woman." This presented the whole tempest in a teapot in such an irresistibly ludicrous light, that the resignation was immediately withdrawn