148 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



and quadrilles, to finish the evening. Some- 

 times my uncle made up our number, and my 

 aunt was so good as to play for us, 



The servants were allowed to have a tea-party 

 for their friends on this occasion, and I heard, 

 this morning, that my aunt had distributed meat 

 or clothing to all her poor pensioners. The 

 school-girls, too, had a holyday; and books 

 work-bags pin-cushions or housewifes -were 

 distributed according to their merits. Caroline 

 did all this part of the business. 



Sunday. My uncle has been giving 

 me some instruction in reading the Psalms to 

 day. He thinks they are not always rightly 

 understood, partly from the mistaken views of 

 modern expositors^ who have ascribed the im- 

 mediate subject of every psalm, either to the 

 history of the Jewish nation, or to the events of 

 David's life. 



" Many of the psalms," he said, " do com- 

 memorate the miraculous interpositions of God 

 in behalf of his chosen people, and many of them 

 were probably composed upon the dangers, af- 

 flictions, and deliverances of King David. But 

 even of those which relate to the Israelites as a 

 nation, there are few which do not represent, in 

 a figurative manner, the future history of the 

 Christian church ; and of those which allude to 

 the life of David, there are none in which it is not 



