To Saint Bride's Church, Douglas, Lanarkshire, N. B.

There were some deeds would raise our hearts in pride , And stir our souls to love thine ancient lays . Fond eyes have glanced full free to eyes as bright

, Lovely , and radiant as the morning star ; While love met all-entrancing love and felt That visor-plate its passion could not mar .

Sleep on ! ye noble dead . Sleep on ! Though now your bodies crumble to the dust , Each was a hero while his blood ran warm , And reverenced , lives in mem ' ry of the just .

These hundred years that have rolled away , A revolution in thy form have made , The sinful hands of all-despoiling man , In very ruins have thy beauties laid . But as the storm comes whistling o ' er The darkened hillswhere loomy looks

, g the west , And howls so fiercely round thy shattered walls , And buffets nigh the strength from out thy breast .

The ivy thick that still clings close too thee , And clasps thee fondly in a warm embrace , Supports thy tottering frame when age assails , And threats to end thee in thy sacred race .

So brethren of our ancient lodge , St . Bride , May we the ivy simulate through life , Support each other in the long-toil days , Till troubles cease , and euds each passing strife .

The Women Of Our Time.

THE WOMEN OF OUR TIME .

BY CELEBS . STRONG-MINDED WOMEN . IT is , as some one once said , with the "utmost of diffidence and a feeling of transcendental awe , " that I venture to touch upon this topic . I have always myself looked on strong-minded women with

"fear and trembling . " I do not deny writing philosophically and exactly , that there is no reason , a priori , why there should not be strong-minded women as well as weak-minded women , in this lower earth and amid us suffering mortals all . And ifas I believethere is a

compensa-, , tory process always going on here , a balancing , so to say , of the contrasted scales of wit and dulness , of strength and weakness , of pleasure and sorrow , and so on , there is no possible objection to the fact , per se , that strong-minded women may and do

exist amongst us . Indeed strong-minded women have existed from the very first . Miriam and Jael were both strong-minded women ; so was Judith ; so was Mariamne . The Queen of Sheba was a strong-minded woman ; so was Semiramis . Cleopatra was

a strong-minded woman ; so was Aspasia , And in the early and middle ages , down to comparatively modern times , strong-minded women have adorned the fleeting centuries , as married women " ruling the roast , " as we say , keeping their husbands and all around them in proper subjection , as single women , astonishing their age and succeeding epochs by their firmness aud massiveness of

intellect , their masculine courage , or their unconquerable wills , sometimes too , I am compelled to add , by their pranks and their eccentricities . That strong-minded women should be , need not , therefore , astonish any of us , as until Time ' s weird is over , until the sands of this great world are run out ,

there always will be , we may feel assured , strong-minded women in all nations of the world , who will exercise great influence on their contemporaries , and who will shine as stars in that peculiar firmament at which men often look up to with admiring gaze ,

but which women , and I am not sure but that they are right after all , pass coldly and callously by . But the strong-minded woman of onr own time is alike a study and a singularity , a fact and a fiction , a certainty and a

consideration , and amid the good and evil , the pleasant and the pretentious , the agreeable and the wearisome , amid the realities which charm , and the horrors which alarm us , in these noisy , and sensational , and often unnaturally excited days , the strongminded woman stands out before us in clear contour , and in distinct persouality , a creature not of the imagination on the