JACOB'S   STORY.

It was a coast town in Wales, where the keep of a Norman castle and fragments of its shattered towers crown the cliffs above the sea, and from where, looking westward far away across fifty miles of bay, the shadowy range of Snowdon lies like a phantom land between sea and sky; here it was, that once upon a time, in a side street leading onwards to that "castle by the sea," I saw in the bleak March evening, with plumage shivering in the wind, the " object of my memoir."

He sat, a large white bird, with a pensive mien, upon a peg above a door, and seemed like the poet's raven, sitting still for evermore; only he was a cockatoo, and nothing more. In much surprise at his humility, patience, trustworthiness, and all the other virtues which must have kept him sitting there, and also in great fear that he might be catching cold, I stood and watched him for some time. He was not tied; it was perfectly plain that he was sitting still for conscience' sake, and although cold and unhappy, it was very evident that he could be, and was, trusted to

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