all your countrymen are like you the task to which the Vatican has called us will be arduous; but it worthy of a son of France, and our conquest will be the more glorious, and defeat will be without disgrace. Now let us try to escape from the tempest, which is but growing worse. Do you navigate; I confide in your good faith, for the valiant are never treacherous. Let the admiral be called." Thus spoke Charles, and he who sees the heart knows with what dissimulation. One thing is certain, he had no intention of entrusting the navigation of the galley to the vanquished, and had already said to Gorello," You are the master here;" but like one experienced in the ways of the world, he knew that where a wellarmed distrust (which is the best kind) cannot be made use of, there remains no alternative but the ostentation of confidence, and in fact this his half victory did not permit him to relinquish all apprehension of the strength and bravery of the enemy. "Here is the admiral," cried the crew; and through the darkness some persons were heard approaching Charles. "I lay my sword at your feet," said a man, submissively; "and I pray you, illustrious prince, to receive the homage of my fidelity." At this moment a flash of lightning illuminated the scene. Charles, with his hand upon the shoulder of Gorello, surrounded by his barons, made a sign to the admiral to resume his sword; the latter respectfully lifted up his head to express his due gratitude, or rather to feign it. "Vengeance of Heaven!" shouted Gorello, in a terrible voice, and with impetuous fury thrust back the Count of Anjou. A profound darkness succeeded the flash; they heard a fall, a rolling on the deck, a groan. Another flash-atrocious spectacle! Gorello with a horrible eagerness, his knees planted on the stomach of the Sicilian admiral, grasped his throat with his left hand, and with a knife his right was cutting open his breast in the region of the heart. Again it darkened; a murmur spread through the galley; every man moved towards the spot, and stood there trembling. Again it lightened; Gorello had opened the admiral's breast, and torn out his heart, which he held up, panting fearfully. The panic-stricken spectators uttered a piercing sercam, and darkness again concealed the evil deed. Perhaps Heaven, weary of enduring, launched the thunderbolt of wrath to destroy this blood-stained vessel. The bolt struck the mast, splintered part, and set the rest on fire; then the lightning shot with a thousand tongues of flame along the deck, which seemed overspread with fire; then it parted into minute sparks, which finding obstacles to their course in some parts of the galley, rent it with wonderful rapidity, leaving open a breach for the boisterous waves. No living man could support the stunning crash and the oppressive stench. Let it be imagined what it is when flames burn the hair and flesh, and deprive the eyes of sight. French and Sicilians, one with another, dropped down insensible. The stump of the mast splintered by the thunderbolt struck Gorello in its fall, broke the spine of his back, and throwing him headlong, lay heavily upon him. The miserable man, trying to relieve himself from the intensity of his agony, stretched out his arms in search of some object which he might grasp, and thus drag himself from under the wreck; but he lacerated his fingers in vain, with his continued and agonized scraping; the bloody traces of that impotent despair were impressed upon the planks; it was as if a serpent had been there, which, with its back broken, writhed the forepart of its body, while the rest lay dead in the dust. The last pangs came upon him; then death, and his soul passed quietly away over the heart of the infamous Drogone. The galley, left to itself, was now admitting the water in a thousand fissures. The sailors, with all their exertions, had not been able to save it. A gurgling was heard, as of something filling; the vessel reeled for a moment, and then sunk-the waves that opened to receive it into the abyss closed over it murmuring -it sank like lead in the deep waters-all disappeared with it, the coward and the brave, the innocent and the guilty-the glory of the ocean prevailed amid the exultation of victory. Thus the traces of the misdeed were removed from mortal eyes, but breathed in the sob of agony, and written in the blood of the innocent, they remain ineffaceable in the volume of divine justice. SIMILES. BY MRS. CHARLES TINSLEY. As, dash'd against some rocky steep, So hope within the human breast, To win the far-off pointed rest, For ever sought, yet never found. As on the ocean's broad expanse Scattereth with lavish hand its flowers, THE CONTRAST. BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS. DOUBTLESS with thee, 'mid pleasure's heedless throng, I mourn'd for light, that I once more might see The fading face-where, like an angel, sate Meek Patience, meekest, Heaven's dread doom to wait; O'er which, at intervals, a vivid smile Played lambently, my anguish to beguile. Thy letter found me worn with vigils, fasts Thy thoughtless letter. How long memory lasts, We consolation from the friendly pen Had hoped! How blank the amount of gaiety Thou left'st me-oh! how happy!-I'm unjust; The blow was sudden, like the simoom blast My child is gone; and though the world is full THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ADVENTURER.' CHAPTER III. MR. ELTON's residence, where I was this night to rest an honoured guest, was an old manor house of the Gothic kind of architecture, but the completeness of its character was considerably impaired by the modern style of decoration adopted in its exterior. The room I entered displayed a heterogeneous collection of paintings, sculpture, and articles of virtu, disposed without any regard to situation or propriety. Sculpture from Greece, pictures from Holland, Spain, and Germany were intermingled with ancient spears, silken pennons, steel bucklers, and huge antlers. There was no arrangement or attempt at arrangement. It seemed as if the owner of the place had too much reverence for the warlike trophies and barbarous ornaments of his ancestors to suffer them to be dismissed from their time-honoured places in hall and chamber to make room for a new picture by Vandyke, or classical antique by Phidias. To me the very want of order made the scene more attractive. Here I thought I saw realized all that I had ever read or dreamt of. Paintings which eloquently told of the noblest deeds in ancient or modern history, sculptured figures which represented the noble and beautiful forms of the heroes, sages, and great men and women of ancient days. Landscapes which revealed a part of the architectural glories and natural scenery of Rome in all her modern splendour, Greece in her hour of pride, Venice in her present renown. My host remarked with satisfaction the evident admiration with which I regarded his collection. 66 "You are, I see," he said, a lover of the fine arts." "A devoted one," I replied, "though I have had but few opportunities to gratify my inclination, and never within my remembrance have seen paintings that have so deeply interested me before." "I am glad you approve my taste," he returned, "for the collection is too ill-arranged, and in much too admired disorder to gain the suffrages of the fastidious, so your approbation is doubly welcome. To me, indeed, the greater number of these paintings bring pleasurable associations, independent of their own intrinsic worth as works of art. That Salvator Rosa, for instance, with its noble mountains, haughty pine trees, gushing torrent, and 1 Continued from page 213. hollow cave, recalls to my memory the pleasant days I spent with its creator in the Alruzzi; suddenly the mountain scene seems to fade away, and in its stead appears the gay and joyous carnival, which the wit and humour of the great painter has immortalized. Again, that delicately-chiselled Leander takes me back to Greece, with her beautiful mythological tales, and its thousand noble actions of her gallant sons; while that meek, heavenly face, serene and soft as any angel's, recalls the recollection of one I shall never see again on earth." The picture which elicited this last burst of sentiment was the portrait of a young and beautiful female, whose calm, seraphic expression seemed to rival in its intensity a weeping Magdalene. On turning round to express my admiration of this lovely countenance, I found my host on the brink of what he had earlier in the day chided me for-viz., weeping. However, perceiving he was watched, he quickly recovered himself, and bade me mark an old, half-broken spear. "After all," he said, "what extraordinary creatures men arc. I do not think I would consent to exchange yon clumsy, halfrotten bit of wood and steel for the most beautiful piece of sculpture or most poetical picture sculptor or painter ever conceived. All the treasures of art I have in my various wanderings bought, beheld, or coveted, have not made me less fond, less proud of the aged spear with which my ancestor drove back the black Douglas and his marauding crew to their fastnesses in their own barren land. Of all rarities in this world of vanities the last that forsakes us, and in my opinion the most excusable, is that of ancestry." Dinner interrupted the notes and illustrations with which my host elucidated my examination of his paintings. I had, since I had witnessed Mr. Elton's unmistakeable emotion occasioned by my expression of admiration for the lady of the sorrowful countenance, become a little curious respecting the man who had visited all that was "famous in story," and had so providentially delivered me out of the hands of Master Matthew Hopkins and his myrmidons. I fancy I but ill concealed my curiosity, as my host after dinner took occasion to say, that seeing I appeared somewhat to marvel why an individual at six and twenty should shut himself up in an old house with no other companions but books and pictures, he would tell his own plain unvarnished tale before he called on me for mine. "This large massive old building was my birthplace. Here in early and happier days I have played, gambolled, and quarrelled, laughed and cried after the usual fashion of children. From hence at a suitable age I went to Eton, and from thence was destined by my father to go to Cambridge, but unfortunately I at the same time had undutifully determined to call a foreign university my alma mater. This was for a considerable time a cause of |