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EFFECTS OF TRAVELLING.

and selfishness yields to the exercise of the disinterested affections. We sustain fatigue with the spirit of a martyr, we adventure ourselves upon the mouldering tower, we thread the mazes of the labyrinth, we explore the mine, we ascend the cloud-crested mountain, not so much for personal enjoyment, as that we may be enabled to enliven our own fireside, to gratify the friend, or to hold spell-bound the wondering and delighted child.

Travelling ought to advance the growth of piety. Especially do those, who, in visiting foreign regions, leave behind the objects of their warmest attachment, find the separation a deep and perpetual discipline. Amid the outward semblance of joy, it acts secretly as a balance-check to all exultation or vanity. There may be gayety through the day, but at night-fall comes the homesickness. Who can say amid his most earnest and fortunate pursuits, whether the hue of the tomb may not be spread over some face dearer than life itself. Thus is he driven to an intensity of prayer, that he never before knew. His risks, his perils, his uncertainty of their fate, from whom so many leagues of fathomless ocean divide him, force him to a stronger faith, a deeper humility, a more self-abandoning dependence on the Rock of Ages. Thus amid the gains of the reflecting traveller, may be numbered that which is above all price, a more adhesive and tranquil trust in the "God of our salvation, who is the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of those who are afar off upon the sea."