again; (Luke xxii. 40; Matt. v. 44; vi. 9; ix. 38; Luke xviii. 1; Matt. vii. 7, 11; xviii. 19; xxi. 22; John xiv. 13, 14, &c. &c.) but, as when He said "Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder;" (Matt. xxvi. 36.) as when He stood in a certain place where his disciples saw him praying; (Luke xi. 1.) as when He prayed with and for His disciples; (John xvii. 1, 9, 15, 17, &c.) and as when He gave thanks, in the hearing of, and partly on purpose to be heard by, the people who stood by ;—(John xi. 41, 42.) He taught them also by His example.* (See also Matt. xi. 25; xxvi. 27; Mark viii. 6; xix. 23; Luke xxii. 19; John vi. 11, 23, for instances of thanksgiving in the presence of His disciples.) Accordingly, if you consult the early history of the first disciples in the book of Acts, you find proof upon proof of the great stress they laid, in their practice, upon the importance both of private and social prayer. I have gone through that book, and marked twenty references to prayer as a most valued habit of theirs, and often productive of most striking good results. I have also marked forty-one references to prayer as a duty, and as a means to most important ends of charity and use, occurring in the epistles of the New Testament. The apostle Paul is repeatedly exhorting his readers to continue instant in prayer; (Rom. xii. 12.) to be always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints, and for him; (Eph. vi. 18.) to give themselves to prayer, &c. (1 Cor. vii. 5.) in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to let their requests be made known unto God; (Phil. iv. 6.) to pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting; (1 Tim. ii. 8.) and (if Paul wrote the epistle to the Hebrews) to come boldly to the throne of the heavenly grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. iv. 16.) It is not Paul only who gives such counsel; it is Peter also, and James the less, and John. It is Peter who says "The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers." (1 Peter iii. 12.) It is James who says "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." (James v. 16.) It is John who says "This is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us." (1 John v. 14.)†

* The fact that He who "trod the wine-press alone" often prayed in solitude, apart from His disciples, does not abate from the force of these instances of prayer actually taught by example.

In these passages from the Epistles, and in those that follow from the Acts of the Apostles, the meaning of "prayer" and "asking" is, of course, the simple natural-sense meaning, those books having no internal sense.

And well might the apostles thus lay emphasis on the value of prayer, seeing what remarkable proofs they had of its marvellous efficacy. It was after Peter and John and their companions had prayed aloud with one accord-held a prayer meeting, in fact that the place was shaken where they were assembled, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. (Acts iv. 31.) When Peter brought Dorcas back from the dead, it was after he had kneeled down and prayed. (Acts ix. 40.) When Cornelius was favoured with the vision of the angel, it was because he was a man devout, fearing God, and praying to God alway. (Acts x. 2.) The vision in which heaven was opened to Peter occurred when he had gone upon the house-top to pray. (Acts x. 9.) His deliverance from prison by the angel, was after prayer had been made by the church unto God for him. (Acts xii. 5.) And when the angel left him, Peter went to the house of Mary where many were gathered together praying,-holding a prayer-meeting, in fact. (Acts xii. 12.) The earthquake that delivered Paul and Silas from prison at Phillipi, did so whilst Paul and Silas prayed aloud and sang praises unto God so that the other prisoners could hear them, (Acts xvi. 25.)—a prayer-meeting again. I could go on adding to such references if there were time. Read the Acts of the Apostles and you will be struck with the proofs that free, spontaneous prayerprayer in the natural-sense meaning of the word-was a cherished habit of the Lord's first disciples whilst under the express teaching of the Holy Spirit. And this was in many cases not only free prayer, but social prayer-free prayer uttered in behalf of and in the hearing of each other.

(To be continued.)

THE TREES OF OLD ENGLAND.
(Concluded.)

No. XI.-THE ASH-TREE.

THE fame of the Ash-tree reaches back to the remotest antiquity, the wood having been used from time immemorial for spear-shafts and in the construction of other weapons of war, whence its well-known epithet-the "martial." Strange that such a purpose should be served by a tree the young branches of which are so brittle that they snap like sealing-wax. The delicate and feminine beauty of the ashtree has also contributed to render it an object of frequent mention in literature, as when Virgil commends it as the most graceful of trees, in the often-quoted line

"In fraxinus pulcherrima sylvis."

To English landscape the ash gives something of the character which in warm countries is supplied by the Acacia. This comes of its feathered leaves. The sunbeams filter perfectly through the foliage, and thus we receive at all times that agreeable sense of lightness and transparency which results from the sky being seen through a network of twig and verdure. In its stature too, the ash commends itself, wellgrown individuals rising to the height of from eighty to a hundred feet. It has been said, that while we instinctively most love that which is little, admiration fastens chiefly upon the great: I think it will prove that we find our highest pleasure, after all, in contemplating that which strikes us more particularly as lofty, of course with the idea of symmetry combined. We give this meed of approval, as the spontaneous act of the soul, to the lily, to the aspiring palm, to the woman who rises higher than her companions. Not that in so doing we depreciate and disesteem the less, but that the tall takes the firmest and deepest hold. It is a great point to be always invited, by the stature of what surrounds us, to look upwards; or at all events, not to have our eyes habitually below the line of straight seeing. Our physical nature and organization are the better for such upwardlooking; and a certain quiet satisfaction of spirit, felt, though indefinable, flows therefrom as a beautiful corollary. I have often thought that it may have pleased God to furnish and decorate the earth with tall trees in no slight measure for this identical and especial purpose. Timber, or something equivalent to it, might have been caused to exist after the manner of granite and marble:-fruits are produced, as it is, mainly by plants of inconsiderable height, so designed, no doubt, in order that their juicy largess shall be reached readily and pleasantly; all other gifts of vegetation it is quite easy to conceive as producible by herbaceous plants, and how copiously, let the gums, the resins, the dyes, the medicines which the latter yield so profusely, declare on their behalf. All this luxury and munificence is quite conceivable; yet no such provision would compensate the want of the green stateliness of the Trees. Shade, dignity, the poetry of the past, the delight of the present, the hope and inspiration of the future; all these things come of their glorious tallness; contemplating which, we are constrained to peer into the heavens. The two most admirable things in living nature, are mankind and the perennial trees; and the most perfect expression of the beautiful lies in that section of each respectively which we term the feminine, the latter always gaining from graceful stature. It is interesting to observe, at the same moment, that the ash, while

so stately in its upright growth, is one of those trees in which the branches most readily assume the pendant position, thus becoming what are inconsiderately called "weeping," the true idea being rather that of long tresses, gracefully let down awhile, and calculated to remind us, not of mourning and the disconsolate, but rather of such incidents as when the Lady Godiva

"Let fall the rippled ringlets to her knee."

Quite enough of calamity and sadness is inevitable to this temporal world to render it unnecessary for man to encourage thoughts and to impose names that shall make it seem more plentiful. The true idea of wisdom and of religion alike, is cheerfulness; and our pride and pleasure should be not only to cultivate unbroken gratitude to God for the multitudinous small mercies which we daily enjoy, and to cherish thankful sensations and ideas; but at the same time to endeavour to reflect these thoughts and feelings upon the face of nature, seeking and striving to behold gladness in all things, and to gather, in turn, from the pictures set forth in nature, new incitements to the pursuit of what is "lovely and of good report," new impulses to be energetic in right doing, new reason to forsake selfishness as being a thing utterly unprofitable. It is just these results upon our hearts which constitute the true utility and the magnificence of the purpose of the world around us. If we ask what is the use of an immense proportion of the world's contents, meaning by "use," serviceableness for food, or for drink, or for clothing, there will come no answer. It was but a small part of the Divine munificence to provide for the satisfaction of bodily wants. It has pleased God to make innumerably more things fitted to do good to our souls than He has prepared of a kind suited to the body, only we think so little of it and so seldom. See how earnestly we thank Him at meal-times, and rightly so, for our meat, and peas and beans, for our milk, and sugar, and bread: do we not sometimes err in forgetting to thank Him for the Trees? I see, too, in these beautiful pendulous ones, the weeping-ash for example—so charming an ornament for a lawn, especially when not far from a silver birch-a sweet emblem of filial love. For though fed and allured in every possible way by the atmosphere and the sunshine overhead, see how the branches seem to love the spot from which that glorious canopy of verdure took its rise! Tall and illustrious as the tree is now, once it was a little seedling that might be crushed beneath the foot. So true is it that nature contains counterparts of everything that is delightful in the history of human life and the human affections—one

form or another gives us a picture of everything that goes to make up home and love, faithfulness, and reverence, and solace.

Botanically, the ash-tree is distinguished from every other arborescent plant of our country (save and except the somewhat similar mountain-ash) by the peculiar form of the leaves. These, instead of consisting of a single blade, like those of the oak, the elm, or the beech, are composed of several pairs of leaflets, with an odd one at the extremity. Technically, this form is called "pinnate" or feather-like. Whether the leaflets be articulated to the main stalk from the first, so as to constitute a truly compound leaf, is not quite clear. When they fall in autumn, the pieces certainly come asunder, just like those of the horse-chesnut and the Virginian-creeper; it is not unusual, on the other hand, to find young leaves in September, in which all the members are perfectly conjoined. The analogy of the jessamine, to which the ash-tree is nearly allied, would seem to indicate that they are not truly compound. The foliage is late in coming out,-with the exception of the mulberry, perhaps there is no tree in England which is habitually so much behind-hand; and late as the leaves appear, they are among the soonest to fade in the autumn. At the last-named period the ash assumes none of those brilliant hues which go to make up the grandeur of the woodland sunset. The leaves simply turn to a dull brownish-green, curling up as if scorched, and generally fall from the tree almost together, so that the branches become denuded in the course of one or two days. There is a useful bit of practical knowledge connected with this tardy appearance and early decay. The expansion of the leaves is a sign that the season is sufficiently advanced for greenhouse-plants to be trusted out of doors, the chance of frost being now reduced to a minimum; and by-and-bye, when the leaves begin to fall, it is a sign that the time is come for the restoration of them to their wonted shelter. So pleasing are the " 'signs of the times" afforded by plants; very many of which are almost as trustworthy as those drawn from astronomy.

Linnæus proposed to construct a calendar for the guide of the gardener and of the agriculturist, which would enable them, by observing at what periods certain trees come into leaf, or certain plants into blossom or fruit, to judge of the best times for sowing and planting, and also for gathering in the crops. It stands to reason that if after a few years' careful observation, a particular vegetable is found to succeed best when the seed is sown at the time some particular flower is in perfection, the recurrence of that period, the renewal of the perfection