SCENES AND SENTENCES FROM THE

PROPHETS.

EXHIBITION ROOM.

Mrs. Piercy, her Son, and the Exhibitor.

Mr. Piercy. I am quite disappointed: I expected we were to have viewed a collection of paintings; but here is nothing like it-not a picture to be seen!

Exhibitor.-If you will have the goodness to look into this instrument, Sir, your disappointment will probably be removed.

Mr. P.-O, here are your paintings!

or rather here is one; but what is the

subject?

Er. That, Sir, you will oblige me by naming; it is taken from the sacred writings.

Mrs P.-Now, my son, verify your father's opinion, and prove that you are well versed in the scriptures.

Mr. P.-I hope, Madam, that I am not quite ignorant of them; but my ability to name the scene must depend, in a great measure, on the painting. However, I will endeavour. It represents an elegant apartment, in which a person, apparently of distinction, is sitting on a couch, attended by a venerable man in a priest's habit, who, pointing with his finger,

directs his attention to a dial in the court of the pavilion. The subject of this, my dear mother, is King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah.

Ex.—I hope, Sir, the drawing meets your approval.

Mr. P.-Perfectly so, Sir. By your lens the picture is greatly enlarged; the action of the figures increases the interest of the painting, and brings to my recollection the saying of my father, that this history affords great encouragement to seek the Lord, and a beautiful display of his condescending attention to his suffering people.

Mrs. P.-But do you also remember, what it was in the experience of

Hezekiah, that excited his astonish

ment?

Mr. P.-O, yes, Madam; you allude to Hezekiah's distress at the announcement of the approach of death. My father used to say, the king had not attended as he should have done to his spiritual observatory; and he feared, that the fine things with which Hezekiah was surrounded, had engaged more of his attention than the eternal realities which are discovered only by the telescope of faith. This he considered the cause of Hezekiah being so averse to exchanging his earthly palace for a mansion not made with hands, eternal in the hea

vens.