: derest care. A rude wind might blast this fragile flower; and therefore 1 give her to you, as the oldest, the most tried and trusted of my friends, with my whole heart; but upon this condition, that you never yield to her often repeated wish to learn to dance; for that too violent and exciting exercise, which proved fatal to her mother, which devoted her sisters, even while yet unborn, to death, and which is my terror and aversion; her tender frame and easily agitated disposition, I am sure, are unable to bear. Will you promise me this?' "The picture-her picture, had, during his relation, lain before me on the table: its heavenly smile, and, still more, the tranquil and clear narrative of my friend, had banished from my bosom the last remains of uncomfortable feeling, and awakened with a still livelier emotion sympathy with this being so lovely, so worthy to be loved. What could be more fascinating than thus to become the protecting angel of such a creature! The very conviction that I had already involuntarily been so, gave a higher impulse to my love and my confidence. I promised him every thing. "Let me be brief-brief as the solitary year of my happiness! Business still detained my friend at home, and regard for appearances would not allow me to reconduct to the capital my Amanda, to whom I had not declared my sentiments, and to whom, indeed, it would have been indecent to have done so, while her dearest relations were hardly consigned to the tomb. One plan, however, suggested itself, which appeared the more advisable from the advantages which the pure air and tranquil amusements of a country life seemed to promise to her, who was the object of our solicitude. "The Count, with whom her mother had danced that fatal Dance of Death, now an old man, had long been in possession of the situation formerly held by his father, and was at this time an inhabitant of an estate upon the island. Always attached to the family of the pastor, he offered Amanda a residence in his family, and, on the pretext that her health might suffer from a longer residence in this house of death, we had her immediately removed from its gloomy images to the more cheerful mansion of the Count. Being myself acquainted with her intended protector, I accompanied her thither, and while I strove by every endeavour, to gain her affection, some expressions which escaped her, made me aware that I was already possessed of it. The close of the year of mourning was fixed for our marriage. I had already cast my eye upon an estate in the neighbourhood, which I had resolved to purchase, instead of that which had fallen to me. Partly with the view of restoring the activity of my friend, partly to escape the pain of being separated from my love, and partly because such matters are generally most advantageously managed by the intervention of a third party, I begged him immediately to set about the negotiation for the purchase. He undertook the commission readily, but his own affairs soon afterwards summoned him to the capital, and he set out. "The bargain was found to be attended with difficulty. The matter was studiously protracted, in hopes of obtaining a higher price, and at last, as the close of the year approached, I resolved not to wait for the purchase, but to celebrate our nuptials at once. Amanda had all along enjoyed the best health. My friend engaged for us a simple but comfortable residence in the city, but the Count would not hear of the marriage being performed any where except in his own house. The day was at last fixed; we only waited for Emanuel, who, for some time past, had from time to time put off his arrival. At last be wrote that he would certainly appear on the day of the marriage. "The day arrived and yet he came not. The Count's chamberlain entered, and delivered to me a letter, which had been put into his hands the day before, under a cover, in which he was requested to deliver it to me shortly before the ceremony took place. "It was from Emanuel, and ran as follows:'Do not be anxious should 1 not appear at the marriage, and on no account put off the ceremony. The cause of my detention is for the good of all of us. You yourself will thank me for it.' "This new enigma disconcerted me; but a bridegroom must endeavour to conceal his uneasiness, and a singular chance made me at last regard the unexpected absence of Emanuel, which, in fact, I attributed to caprice, as not altogether to be regretted. The Count had, notwithstanding my entreaties, made preparations for a ball, at which, after the ceremony had been quietly performed in the chapel, our union was to be publicly announced to the company. I knew how much the mind of my friend, so prone to repose faith in omens of every kind, would be agitated by the very idea of dancing. "I succeeded in calming Amanda's mind as to the prolonged absence of her brother; but I felt that I began to regard with a feeling of oppression the idea of his arrival, which might momentarily take place. "The guests assembled. The young people were eagerly listening to the music, which began to echo from the great hall. I was intent only on my own happiness; when, to my dismay, the old Count, stepping up, introduced his son to my Amanda, with a request that she would open the ball, while the young Countess, his daughter, offered her hand to me. I scarcely noticed her, in the confusion with which I ran up to the Count, to inform him that Amanda never danced, and had never learnt to do so. Father and son were equally astonished; the possibility of such an event had never occurred to them. But,' exclaimed the son,' can such a pattern of grace and dignity require to learn what nature herself must have taught her?' Amanda, who perhaps attributed my confusion to a feeling of shame at her ignorance, looked at mé entreatingly, and whispered to me, ว 'I have never tried; but my eye has taught me something.' "What could I say? and, in truth, I confess I could not see why, merely for fear of my absent friend, I should make myself ridiculous; nay, I could not but feel a sensation of pride in the triumph which 1 anticipated for my bride. The Countess and 1 were the second couple; some of the more honoured guests made up the third and fourth, and the dance began. "After a few turns, however, the music, at the suggestion of the young Count, changed to a lively waltz; and the dancers began to revolve in giddier circles. I felt as if lightning-struck; my feet seemed glued to the ground; the young Countess vainly endeavoured to draw me along with her; my eyes alone retained life and motion, and followed the footsteps of Amanda, who, light as a sylph, but blooming beyond aught that I had ever seen, was flitting round in the arms of the Count. "At once the door opened, and I saw Emanuel enter in full dress, but he was arrested on the threshold; his eyes were rooted on Amanda. Suddenly he smote his hands together above his head, and sank at the same moment to the ground with a cry that rang through the hall. "This accident seemed to disenchant me. My feet were loosened. I and others flew towards him like lightning, raised him, and carried him through the hall, into an adjoining room, which served as a passage to the hall. All this was the work of a moment. Amanda, however, had observed the confusion, had heard the name of her brother; that loud and piercing cry had echoed through her heart. As if transported out. of herself, she tore herself out of the supporting arms of the Count, flew across the court into the chamber beyond, and sunk, weeping, imploring, in the most lively agitation, at the feet of her brother. "The strange appearance of Emanuel, his cry, his fainting, had created a confusion which, for a moment, I confess withdrew my attention from her. It was when her brother began to recover his senses, that I first observed her deadly paleness. Methought I saw again the dying Lucia in my gaily dressed bride, whose white robes and myrtle wreath reminded me of the ghastly bridegroom of her sisters, who thus seemed to step in between me and my happiness. She hung, cold, inanimate, tottering, upon my arm. "She was immediately carried to bed. She never rose from it again. Her sickness took even a more sudden and terrible character than usual, which, indeed, under the circumstances, might have been expected. Never,1 may say, had my poor Amanda been in so great a state of excitement as during this, her first and last dance. The sudden shock she received, the coldness of the open room, and the still more open court, swept by a rude autumnal wind, at a moment when the general confusion prevented any measures of precaution from being taken, had wrought terrible ravages in her tonder frame, and would have been enough, even without a hereditary predisposition to the malady, to have produced the same fatal consequences. The disease seized on her with that fatal and rapid grasp from which it derives its name; in a fortnight she was numbered with the dead. "Her decline seemed for a moment to restore the physical strength of her unhappy brother. He burst out into the loudest reproaches against me, and every one who sought to withdraw him. from the bedside of the invalid. It was wonderful how his weak frame bore up against it, but he scarcely ever left her side. She died in his arms; he covered the dead body with kisses; force alone could detach him from it. "But almost instantly after, a strange dull inaction seemed to come over his mind. He reproached me no longer, as I had expected, but asked to know how all had happened, and in turn told me, with a bitter and heart-piercing smile, that he had been prevented from coming by a serious indisposition. I had caught, as the physicians thought, a cough arising from cold, but with the natural nervousness of my disposition, I thought 1 discerned in it the seeds of the long-dreaded malady, and as the physician assured me that a few days would remove it, I resolved to stay away from the marriage, in order to give his prescriptions (which were chiefly rest and quietness) every fair chance; and if the truth were as I suspected, not to disturb your happiness by any uneasiness on my account. But the day before the marriage I was seized with an inexpressible feeling of anxiety. I recollected that your marriage would be celebrated in the same mansion, perhaps in the same chamber, where my mother, with her yet unborn offspring had been devoted to death. I could not rest; some unknown power seemed to impel me forward, as if to prevent some great, some inexplicable evil. I was instantly on my way; at the last station on the road, while waiting for my horses, 1 dressed, that I might lose no time. I came-not to prevent-but every thing was now too clearly explained. I had come to fulfil my destiny.' ' My friend remained completely resigned to his fate. The death of his sister had convinced him of the certainty of his own. With her life, his own relish for life had utterly departed. Already it seemed to lie behind him like a shadow; he felt an impatient, irrepressible longing to be with those who had gone before. "The physicians at first maintained that his malady-for he already felt its influence on his frame was but imaginary. And as he submit ́ted quietly to every thing, it cost me but little trouble to induce him to travel with me. I will not trouble you with my own feelings or sufferings: 1 urged him to go to the south of France, the climate of which was so generally reckoned beneficial. He smiled, but as if the dying flame of love of life had for a moment rekindled in his bosom, he expressed a wish rather to go to Italy. There,' he said, 'he might have an opportunity of sceing and studying the works of the great camels, and of those belonging to his immediate masters of art.' We reached Italy, but here his "I cared little, as you may imagine, during these shifting scenes, about financial concerns, and when I revisited this country, it was to find that I had returned to it only not absolutely a beggar, and destined, 1 fear, to make all my friends melancholy around me. "Thus has a numerous family been effaced from the earth, though not from my heart, leaving behind them nothing but this portrait, which seems daily to hold forth the lesson, how vain is beauty, how fleeting is life!" L- ceased, and the silence continued, while the portrait circulated once more among the now deeply affected and sympathizing assembly. The evening which had begun with loud revelry, had gradually glided into the deep stillness of night. The friends rose, and even the younger of them, who had proposed the health of their mistresses with such proud confidence and frolic vanity, separated in silence, after pressing the hand of the narrator, as if in token that he had become to all of them an object of esteem, of sympathy, and affection. FOOTMARKS. VOLTAIRE, in Zadig, has attributed to his hero a sagacity in tracing footsteps, which, no doubt, has often been considered an idle invention. Such a power, however, appears to be possessed by the Arabs to a degree which deprives even Zadig of the marvellous. "The Arab," says Burckhardt, "Who has applied himself diligently to the study of footsteps, can generally ascertain, from inspecting the impression, to what_individual of his own, or of some neighbouring tribe, the footstep belongs, and therefore is able to judge whether it was a stranger who passed or a friend. He likewise knows, from the slightness or depth of the impression, whether the man who made it carried a load or not. From a certain regularity of intervals between the steps, a Bedouin can judge whether that man, whose feet left the impression was fatigued or not, as the pace becomes more irregular and the intervals unequal; hence he can calculate the chance of overtaking the man. Besides all this, every Arab knows the printed footsteps of his own driver's footsteps, draws so many conclusions, GENIUS is invoked in vain; it obeys no summons, heeds no invitation, lies not in the path of the persevering, follows not the traces of the industrious: disdaining the hand of culture, it throws forth its blossoms in all the sportive luxuriance of nature. Upon genius, every other mental plant may be engrafted; but it must itself be of spontaneous growth-an ever welcome, but always an unbidden guest. THE fever's hue hath left thy cheek, beloved! The rich air fill'd with wandering scents and sounds? FRANCESCO. No, gentlest love! not now: My soul is wakeful-lingering to look forth, Not on the sun, but thee! Doth the light sleep So gently on the lake? and are the stems Of our own chesnuts by that alchymy So richly changed ?-and is the orange scent Floating around ?-But I have said farewell, Farewell to earth, Teresa! not to thee, Nor yet to our deep love, nor yet awhile Unto the spirit of mine art, which flows Back on my soul in mastery !-one last work! And I will shrine my wealth of glowing thoughts, Clinging affection and undying hope, All that is in me for eternity, All, all, in that memorial. TERESA. Oh! what dream Is this, mine own Francesco? Waste thou not FRANCESCO. Yes! the unseen land Of glorious visions hath sent forth a voice To call me hence. Oh! be thou not deceived! Bind to thy heart no earthly hope, Teresa ! I must, must leave thee! Yet be strong, my love, As thou hast still been gentle ! TERESA. Oh, Francesco ! What will this dim world be to me, Francesco, FRANCESCO. Ev'n therefore we can part, With an immortal trust, that such high love Is not of things to perish. * Suggested by the closing scene in the life of the painter Blake; as beautifully related by Allan Cunningham. Let me leave One record still, to prove it strong as death, Thou hast made those rich hues and sunny smiles, But how much rests unbreathed! My faithful one! The dear work grows Beneath my hand-the last! Each faintest line With treasured memories fraught. Oh! weep thou not Too long, too bitterly, when I depart! Surely a bright home waits us both-for I, In all my dreams, have turn'd me not from God; FIRST LOVE. LOVE!--I will tell thee what it is to love! And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this! Yes, this is Love-the steadfast and the true The immortal glory which hath never set- Oh! who but can recal the eve they met To breathe, in some green walk, their first young vow, While summer flows with moonlight dews were wet, And winds sighed soft around the mountain's browAnd all was rapture then-which is but memory now! Honour may wreathe the victor's brow with bays, But when-ah! when were earth's possessions sweet- The lowliest peasant, in his calm retreat, Finds more of happiness, and less of care, Than hearts unwarmed by Love 'mid palace halls must bear! |