her child. I stood awed, motionless; fearful almost to profane by my breathing, the silence around. Mechanically I thought over those wild words, "Thy people should be my people, and thy God my God." "Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name," murmured the little child. The sweet low words went to my heart; I shut my dressing-room door, and buried my face in my hands; and then I started up, and tore the letter of the temptress into a thousand atoms. Would that I had died that night! Would that I had perished when I first felt the sense of overwhelming shame and regret; when I remembered and sighed for the day when I, too, knelt at my mother's knee, to pray against temptation; when I made weak and miserable, but sincere resolutions, against the wrong, and for the right. But my punishment would then have been spared me.

There are but two other days of my early life worth recording: to one, I look back with horror and remorse; to the other, with chastened sorrow, and a spirit bowed and humbled. The first of these memorable days saw me vowed to Lady Eleanor Staunton. She wrote me a hurried frenzied note, intreating me to see her for half an hour. I obeyed the summons, and found her in a state bordering on distraction: she said that her maid had betrayed her, that her desk had been broken open, my letters and picture taken from it; that her husband had mounted his horse, and rode off, full gallop, but where she knew not. Of this only she was certain, that such was his violence, that, should he find her in the house when he returned, he would murder her. She assured me, that he had frequently struck her on slight provocations. She knelt at my feet, and clung to meshe wept, nay, shrieked, in the vehemence of her passion, and declared, that if I forsook her, she would put an end to her existence. I raised her from the ground, soothed her, bade her rely on me, and, leaving her at an hotel, with directions to the landlord to have a carriage and four in waiting by the time I should return, I hurried home.

How well every incident of that evening is impressed on my memory! I still see the cold pure waves dashing on the shore; I still hear the booming of the surf, as it broke the reflected beams of the moon into phosphoric sparkles; I still behold the line of pale light which bounded the mighty ocean in the distance. The fisherman's song; the shrill laugh of children; the hoarse call of boatmen ; and the confused murmur of a summer twilight, are still in my ear, as they sounded then; and yet, what remains of the fearful realities of that evening, but a dream of regret!

I shut myself in my study, and wrote a long incoherent letter to my wife. I read it over; I figured her reading it, and it appeared a mockery of her patient love. I tore it to pieces with my teeth, and stamped the fragments under my feet; I sat down again, and wrote a few hasty words, containing an assurance that I had not left her for long, and nerved myself to enter her room. I listened at the door for a moment before I turned the lock; but all was silent-she slept; I stole softly to her bed-side, and gazed on that pure pale face, with its shadowy brow. Involuntarily I contrasted its expression with the haggard beauty of the weary and passion-distorted countenance

which, a short time since, presented itself to my view; it was the contrast of sin and innocence. I looked round the apartment, and my eyes fell on the young artist's Madonna, which hung over the chimney-piece: the night-lamp which stood under it, dimly lighted up the features of the infant Jesus, the female figure remaining in deep shade. Suddenly, the tableau of that evening at Rome flashed across me. I saw my boy on Eleanor's knee; I saw Lucy's look of sorrowful reproach, when I insisted on taking him with me. I was roused from my reverie by the sound of the church clock; it was an hour beyond the time I had appointed with Lady Eleanor! I started up, and, in a few moments, the damp coolness of the night air fell on my brow.

I remained with Eleanor long after the delirious passion which had filled my heart had ceased to find a place there. Her faults, to which I had been blind while they affected not me, now became glaringly visible: her restless vanity and love of conquest; the fearful violence of her temper; the wild jealousy, not of my affection, but my esteem, for the forsaken Lucy, sickened and disgusted me. I grew weary; her very beauty lost its charm, for I could not gaze on her without reflecting how stormy a burst might in a moment destroy (to me) the features I looked on, and light into ungovernable fury the latent fire of her passionate eyes. All my confidence, too, in her love was destroyed. Accustomed to the feminine dignity of my wife's manner to her male acquaintance, I was shocked and ashamed when Eleanor lavished on every coxcomb round her marks of preference and regard. I grew sick of her demi-mots; what had once appeared wit, seemed forwardness; what had been playfulness, appeared coquetry; and the expression of her "laughter-lighted eyes," seemed to me that which might be supposed to animate the countenance of a female demon-a mixture of talent and wantonness. Then, too, the torture, the hell, of being unable to introduce her to any but male acquaintances; the shrinking and whispering of dames, who had, at least, preserved their reputation, whatever other loss they might have sustained, when Eleanor (which happened rarely) was visible in the streets or public walks of Paris. And all this she seemed to feel and observe less than I did; or if observed, her feeling of it was only shown by a flash from those wild eyes, and a haughtier and firmer step. There was no woman's shrinking about her; Byron's Gulnare was gentle in comparison. The feeling of tenderness called forth by the evident suffering of one whom we ourselves have reduced to a painful and galling situation, was never aroused by Eleanor: for humility and tenderness, which I had looked for, I found pride and defiance. She was born to sin, and to brave the consequences of sin.

Mr. Staunton obtained a divorce and heavy damages, and I still remained with Eleanor, though sick at heart; weary of her, of life, of every thing, and regretting my abandoned Lucy, and the tranquil blessings of my home. I was at Paris, and the severe winter of 18was setting in, when one morning I was startled by finding on the breakfast-table a letter, the superscription of which was in Lucy's hand-writing. My hand shook violently as I broke the seal: it contained but a few words, which were as follow:

"My dear Husband,

"Our (my was scratched out) little boy has got a return of his old complaint on the lungs the doctors here have pronounced him in great and immediate danger. Under such circumstances, I am sure I know you well enough to depend on your allowing nothing to detain you at Paris. Pray, pray come to us, for I am very wretched. Oh! Frederick, if it should please God to take him from us! Ever your own,

Worthing.

LUCY."

I waited till Lady Eleanor entered the breakfast-room, and, after a few preliminary words, I read the letter to her. Anger and contempt shadowed her face, and her answer grated on my feelings: "You are impatient to return, Frederick, and you cannot do better than catch at the first woman's excuse offered to you. I have no doubt you will find your child perfectly well by the time its mother welcomes you." She paused for a few moments, and then spoke with much emotion: the substance of her speech kept me silent, while it filled me with surprise and indignation. She withdrew all claim on my protection, and declared her intention of marrying a Mr. Sullivan, who had occasionally visited at my house, and sung with her; and whose extreme boyishness, both of age and appearance, had never allowed me, for one instant, to look upon him as a subject for Eleanor's coquetry. She disgusted me by her cold calculation of the advantages to be derived from this step; she reminded me, that, although she was divorced, I could not do her the justice of marrying her; she assured me the young man was passionately attached to her, and that her conduct was excused in his eyes by the barbarity of her husband. She might have spoken for hours. I rose, and could not forbear exclaiming, "Well, Eleanor, I could not have believed you would have been so false." Never did I behold fury in woman like that she displayed at these words. "Do you reproach me with falsehood?-you," exclaimed she, "you, who led me on, step by step, till I became a living lie to all around me ;-you, who, under the very eyes of the woman you professed to honour as a wife, gave stolen tokens of affection to your mistress?-You! Oh! man, man, do you not blush to talk of falsehood, knowing what you are? Fool!" continued she, yet more passionately, "shall I, who played false in my husband's home, when my own happiness, my own interest, were bound up in my faith, be true to one who cannot aid me,-who has ceased to love me; and, like a wayward child, has broken through all restraint to obtain a toy, the possession of which already wearies him. Go! go back to your gentle Lucy, and offer her the dregs of a heart satiated with unholy passion. Go! and, as you have rendered vain all sacrifice to sin, made for your sake; so may all your tardy sacri fice to virtue be also vain; and may every effort you make for the right be followed by bitterness and disappointment; may the being you abandoned forsake you in turn; and the home to which you return, be desolate!" I could not answer; her words fell like a knell on my ear; and, amid all the bewilderment of my feelings, rose the one thought, " And this is she for whom I have given so much, whose love I deemed a compensation for all other blessings!"

I parted from Eleanor, and was soon on my way to England. At 2 Η May.-VOL. XXXI. NO. CXXV.

Calais I was detained three days by stress of weather, in spite of bribe and exhortation to the captains of packets; but at length fortune favoured me; I touched English ground again; I heard English voices; and the evening of my arrival found me at the door of our cottage, at Worthing, in which Lucy had ever since continued to reside. The knocker was muffled: with a beating heart I rang the bell; I paused. No one answered my summons; I repeated the ring several times, and at length I heard a slow heavy step advance through the hall. I said to myself then, "My child is dead." The door was slowly opened by my old butler, who ejaculated in a sorrowful tone, "Good Lord! is it you, sir? it's all over !"- "When did it happen?" said I, as a cold chill fell on my heart. "This morning, sir, at eight o'clock; all's been done that could be done." I sprang past the old man, and rushed up stairs: even in those few moments I made resolutions for the future; I pictured to myself Lucy reviving under my care and consolations; I vowed eternal constancy and devotedness to her; I figured her weeping on my bosom, and looking up, in the midst of tears, to bless my return. I paused on the landing-place. Was it some wild dream, or did I indeed hear the voice of my little one? I pushed open the door of his apartment, which adjoined Lucy's-why did my heart sicken, when I beheld my living child kneeling at his nurse's side, and slowly repeating that well-remembered prayer, "Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." The woman screamed when she saw me, in vulgar terror and uncertainty; but my boy ran forward, and clung to me.. I took him by the hand, and led him into Lucy's room. There, pale as the drapery beneath; slumbering, as when I last beheld her, lay my sainted wife; but her slumber was that from which there is no waking to terror, to bitterness, or to despair. I looked again: she was, according to the common phrase, laid out. At that moment, I felt as if it would have consoled me to have beheld her as she died. I felt as if the clasping of her hands, or the turn of that graceful head, could have told me whether she died thinking of me, with my name on her lips, with the hope of my return in her heart-but in vain! There she lay, cold, stiff, and motionless for ever! Strangers had closed those pure and lovely eyes, and shaded that unconscious cheek with their long melancholy lashes; strangers had spoken the last words of consolation and tenderness, as that sinless soul winged its flight to another world. They told me she had died of a brain fever, brought on by excessive anxiety: they gave me the letters which had been received since she had been too ill to read them; and there, with the seal unbroken, was the one I had written from Paris, informing her of my speedy return. She had died without knowing of my repentance, of my love; Eleanor's curse was fulfilled; the home to which I returned was desolate !

C. E. N.

At Melton, next, I join'd the hunt,
Of bogs and bushes bore the brunt,
Nor once my courser held in ;
But when I saw a yawning steep,
I thought of "Look before you leap,"
And curb'd my eager gelding.

While doubtful thus I rein'd my roan,
Willing to save a fractured bone,
Yet fearful of exposure;
A sportsman thus my spirit stirr'd-
"Delays are dangerous,"-I spurr'd
My steed, and leap'd th' enclosure.

I ogled Jane, who heard me say,
That "Rome was not built in a day,"
When lo! Sir Fleet O'Grady
Put this, my saw, to sea again,
And proved, by running off with Jane,
"Faint heart ne'er won fair Lady."

Aware "New Brooms sweep clean," I took An untaught tyro for a cook,

(The tale I tell a fact is)

She spoilt my soup: But, when I chid,

She thus once more my work undid, "Perfection comes from Practice."

Thus, out of every adage hit,
And, finding that ancestral wit

As changeful as the clime is :
From Proverbs, turning on my heel,
I now cull Wisdom from my seal,
Whose motto's "Ne quid nimis."