have anticipated you; and almost dare venture to repeat some verses I made one evening in these very woods.

Nay, replied St. Aubert, dismiss the almost, and venture quite: let us hear what vagaries fancy has been playing in your mind. If she has given you one of her spells, you need not envy those of the fairies.

If it is strong enough to enchant your judgement, Sir, said Emily, while I disclose her images, I need not envy them. The lines go in a sort of tripping measure, which I thought might suit the subject well enough; but I fear they are too irregular.

THE GLOW-WORM.

How pleasant is the green-wood's deep-matted shade
On a mid-summer's eve, when the fresh rain is o'er;
When the yellow beams slope, and sparkle through the glade,
And swiftly in the thin air the light swallows soar!

But sweeter, sweeter still, when the sun sinks to rest,
And twilight comes on, with the fairies so gay
Tripping through the forest-walk, where flowers, unprest,
Bow not their tall heads beneath their frolic play.

To music's softest sounds they dance away the hour,

Till moon-light steals down among the trembling leaves,
And chequers all the ground, and guides them to the bower,
The long-haunted bower, where the nightingale grieves.

Then no more they dance, till her sad song is done,
But, silent as the night, to her mourning attend;
And often as her dying notes their pity have won,
They vow all her sacred haunts from mortals to defend.

When down among the mountains sinks the evening star,
And the changing moon forsakes this shadowy sphere,
How cheerless would they be, though they fairies are,
If I, with my pale light, came not near!

Yet cheerless though they'd be, they're ungrateful to my love!
For often, when the traveller's benighted on his way,
And I glimmer in his path, and would guide him through the grove,
They bind me in their magic spells to lead him far astray;

And in the mire to leave him, till the stars are all burnt out;
While in strange-looking shapes they frisk about the ground,
And afar in the woods they raise a dismal shout,

Till I shrink into my cell again for terror of the sound!

But, see where all the tiny elves come dancing in a ring,
With the merry merry pipe, and the tabor, and the horn,
And the timbrel so clear, and the lute with dulcet string;
Then round about the oak they go till peeping of the morn.

Down yonder glade two lovers steal, to shun the fairy queen,
Who frowns upon their plighted vows, and jealous is of me,
That yester-eve I lighted them, along the dewy green,

To seek the purple flower whose juice from all her spells can free.

And now to punish me, she keeps afar her joeund band,
With the merry merry pipe, and the tabor, and the lute :
If I creep near yonder oak she will wave her fairy wand,
And to me the dance will cease, and the music all be mute.
O! had I but that purple flower whose leaves her charms can foil,
And knew like fays to draw the juice, and throw it on the wind,
I'd be her slave no longer, nor the traveller beguile,
And help all faithful lovers, nor fear the fairy kind!

But soon the vapour of the woods will wander afar,
And the fickle moon will fade, and the stars disappear;
Then cheerless will they be, though they fairies are,
If I, with my pale light, come not near!

Whatever St. Aubert might think of the stanzas, he would not deny his daughter the pleasure of believing that he approved them; and having given his commendation he sunk into a reverie, and they St. Aubert continued silent till he reached the chateau, where his wife had retired to her chamber. The languor and dejection that had lately oppressed her, and which the exertion called forth by the arrival of her guests had suspended, now returned with increased effect. On the following day symptoms of fever appeared; and St. Aubert, having sent for medical advice, learned that her disorder was a fever of the same nature as that from which he had lately recovered. She had, indeed, taken the infection during her attendance upon him; and her constitution being too weak to throw out the disease immediately, it had lurked in her veins, and occasioned the heavy languor of which she had complained. St. Aubert, whose anxiety for his wife overcame every other consideration, detained the physician in his house. He remembered the feelings and the reflections that had called a momentary gloom upon his mind, on the day when he had last visited the fishing-house in company witlı Madame St. Aubert, and he now admitted a presentiment that this illness would be a fatal one. But he effectually concealed this from her and from his daughter, whom he endeavoured to reanimate with hopes that her constant assiduities would not be unavailing. The physician, when asked by St. Aubert for his opinion of the disorder, replied that the event of it depended upon circumstances which he could not ascertain. Madame St. Aubert seemed to have formed a more decided one; but her eyes only gave hints of this. She frequently fixed them upon her anxious friends with an expression of pity and of tenderness, as if she anticipated the sorrow that awaited them, and that seemed to say, it was for their sakes only, for their sufferings, that she regretted life. On the seventh day the disorder was at its crisis. The physician assumed a graver

manner, which she observed, and took occasion, when her family had once quitted the chamber, to tell him that she perceived her death was approaching. Do not attempt to deceive me, said she; I feel that I cannot long survive: I am prepared for the event-I have long, I hope, been preparing for it. Since I have not long to live, do not suffer a mistaken compassion to induce you to flatter my family with false hopes. If you do, their affliction will only be the heavier when it arrives: I will endeavour to teach them resignation by my example.

The physician was affected: he promised to obey her, and told St. Aubert somewhat abruptly that there was nothing to expect. The latter was not philosopher enough to restrain his feelings when he received this information; but a consideration of the increased affliction which the observance of his grief would occasion his wife, enabled him, after some time, to command himself in her presence. Emily was at first overwhelmed with the intelligence; then, deluded by the strength of her wishes, a hope sprung up in her mind that her mother would yet recover, and to this she pertinaciously adhered almost to the last hour.

The progress of this disorder was marked, on the side of Madame St. Aubert, by patient suffering and subjected wishes. The composure with which she awaited her death could be derived only from the retrospect of a life governed, as far as human frailty permits, by a consciousness of being always in the presence of the Deity, and by the hope of a higher world. But her piety could not entirely subdue the grief of parting from those whom she so dearly loved. During these her last hours she conversed much with St. Aubert and Emily on the prospect of futurity, and other religious topics. The resignation she expressed, with the firm hope of meeting in a future world the friends she left in this, and the effort which sometimes appeared to conceal her sorrow at this temporary separation, frequently affected St. Aubert so much as to oblige him to leave the room. Having indulged his tears a while, he would dry them, and return to the chamber with a countenance composed by an endeavour which did but increase his grief.

Never had Emily felt the importance of the lessons which had taught her to restrain her sensibility, so much as in these moments, and never had she practised them with a triumph so complete. But when the last was over, she sunk at once under the pressure of her sorrow, and then perceived that it was hope, as well as fortitude, which had hitherto supported her. St. Aubert was for a time too devoid of comfort himself to bestow any on his daugh