family calamity be made the topic of idle curiosity? But, in reality, she has resided in this castle-her state requiring constant and often strict restraint. I have been scarcely ever absent from the castle; but, alas! my tenderness has answered but in part. With a caprice incidental to persons in her dreadful situation, she has taken an extreme dislike to me, and fancies that I am her uncle, and imprison her to de tain the vast possessions of which she fancies herself the heiress." The fatal paper dropped from Ernest's hand. He remained pale, breathless, the dew starting, and the veins swelled of his forehead. "God of heaven, have mercy on me!-What have I done?" Again: he caught up the letter, and, with a desperate effort, read to the close. "My faithful Heinrich and his sister Clotilde are the only depositories of this secret. While I live, I shall devote myself to the care of my illstarred Minna, who is the very image of her mother. When I dieand the shadow of death even now rests upon my way-I commend her to her God and to you. You will be to her and to Pauline as a brother. I know I can rely upon you." "Married to a maniac-a hopeless maniac!-What will my mother say?"-exclaimed Ernest, as he paced the room. The image of his beautiful bride rose before him; he felt as if his tenderness and his devotion must avail; he would watch her every look-anticipate her very thoughts. He started-it was the steward who came into the room. "I see," said the old man, 66 that you have read my master's letter. Alas! I have dreadful news to tell. The Baroness Minna has evaded all our precautions. She has escaped, I know not whither. I only trust it is alone." "Heinrich," said Ernest, solemnly, "I speak to you as the trusted and valued friend of my beloved uncle. Miuna is with me. I married her last night-deceived, alas! by a narrative which I ought never to have credited. I at least ought to have known my uncle too well to believe that he could be guilty of fraud or oppression. The rest of my life will be too little to atone for that moment's doubt. Old man, hear me swear to devote myself to his children!" "God bless you!" sobbed the old man, as he clasped the hand which Ernest extended towards him. Months passed away in unceasing watchfulness on the part of Ernest. With trembling hope he began to rely on Minna's complete recovery. Wild she was at times, and her fondness for him had a strange character of fierceness; but his influence over her was unbounded, and her passion for music was a constant resource. By Heinrich's advice they left the castle, that no painful train of thought might be awakened; and they resided in a light, cheerful villa, amid the suburbs of Vienna. Her husband found all the plans of mutual study in which the young student lover had so delighted, were in vain. It was impossible to fix her attention long on anything. Companionship there was none between them, and the call on his attention was unceasing; but his affection became even deeper for its very fear, and it was hallowed by the feeling of how sacred it was as a duty. Gradually as he became more and more satisfied about Minna, he grew more anxious for Pauline. He saw her drooping day by day; her spirits became unequal, and her eyes were rarely without tears. Too late he discovered how she loved him. Her bodily weakness seemed to render her less capable of repressing her feelings. Her eye followed him, go where he would; she hung upon his least word, and she shrunk away from her sister. The proposed visit to his mother brought on such a passion of tears, that he had not the heart to insist upon it-especially when he looked upon her pale, sunken cheek, and watched her slow, dispirited step. Once or twice he saw Minna watching her with a wild, strange glance in her large, black eyes, as if there was an intentive feeling of jealousy. It was now the first week in June, and the weather was unusually hot; and there was thunder in the air, which added to the oppression. The moon, too, was at its full; and Minna, always restless at that time, was now unusually so. At last, towards evening, she sank on the windowseat in a deep slumber. Pauline was walking on the terrace below; and Ernest, who saw that she was scarcely equal to the fatigue, went down to give her his assistance. She took his arm, and they walked up and down together. At last she leant over the balustrade, and her eyes filled with tears as she watched the moonlight turning the flowers to silver. "I wish," said she, "I were a flower-happy in the sunshinehappy in the soft night air. No beating heart within, to make me wretched." And she dropped her head on his arm, and wept. Before Ernest had time to utter even a few soothing words, a bright blade glittered in the moonlight, and Pauline sunk with a faint scream on the pavement.-Minna had stabbed her sister to the heart! There she stood: her cheek flushed with the deepest crimson, and her eyes flashing the wild light of insanity-waving the weapon she had so fatally used. It was the little Indian dagger Ernest had lent her to sever the long tress of hair. She had concealed it till this moment. "Yes," cried she, "I have killed her at last. They thought I did not know her, but I did. She took away my father's heart from me, and would have taken away my husband's; but I have killed her at last." By this time the servants came rushing from all parts. At their approach, Minna seemed seized with some vague fear, and attempted to fly. Ernest had just time to pass his arms around her, though she struggled violently. They raised Pauline, but the last spark of life had fled-the pale and lovely features were set in death! Minna lived on for years-her insanity taking, every succeeding year, a darker colour. Ernest never left her side. Fierce or sullen, violent or desponding, he watched her through every mood. She wore herself away to a shadow, till it was a marvel how that frail form endured. For months before her death, she was almost ungovernable, and did not know him the least. She scarcely ever slept, but one night slumber overpowered her. The sun was shining brightly into the chamber, and its light fell upon the whitened hair and careworn features of her husband, who had been watching by her for hours. A sweet and meek expression was in her eyes when she awoke. "Ernest, dearest Ernest," said she, in a soft, low whisper. She raised her head from the pillow, and, like a child, put up her mouth to kiss him. She sank back: her last breath had passed in that kiss! He laid her in the same tomb with her father and sister; and the next day, the noble, the wealthy, and still handsome Count von Hermanstadt entered the order of St. Francis. DUNCAN AND HIS VICTORY. "I wish you were the son of an Admiral, and I your father, you dog." Wild Oats. When I look out I HAVE always had an instinctive dread of the sea. upon the boundless expanse of ocean, when I hear even the murmur of its billows in the calmest sunshine, I experience a degree of awe that is indescribable. I have never seen it under the aspect of anything approaching to a storm; but when I have been upon the coast during a gloomy day under a lowering atmosphere of clouds, and a hollow though not powerful blast of wind, my animal spirits desert me altogether; I sink under an intuitive conviction that I am placed in immediate contact, as it were, with an element over which I have no control, and could not for an instant contend. It may roll in and overwhelm me in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. My faculties grow confused, when I attempt to contemplate the mysterious power by whose breath the waves are made mountains-by whose fiat they are stayed. Courage I believe to be much a matter of animal endowment; and if upon any occasion I could be as brave as, according to Junius, the total absence of all thought and reflection can make a man, my nerves would fail before the wonders of the great deep. Familiarity might reconcile me, and habit might restore my self-possession, if I were to make a voyage; but in the sight of ocean from the shore, I am free to confess myself a downright coward" upon instinct." The longer I have lived, the more this awe has increased. I can only extenuate so egotistic a preface, by telling the reader that it has been introduced to show how even such a nature may be affected in a contrary direction. It was on Monday, the 9th of October, 1797, that an affair of business called me to Yarmouth, in the county of Norfolk, and about four o'clock of a most brilliant afternoon I first caught sight of the Roads. I have not forgotten, and I never shall forget the thrill with which I unexpectedly beheld a noble fleet of men-of-war under way, and sailing majestically out from their anchorage. It was that of Admiral Duncan, who, as I afterwards learned, had received information that De Winter had left the Texel, and was going forth to contend with him for the empire of the sea. My long-felt awe was gone. I gazed with a glow of exultation which youth only can know, and almost identified myself with the thoughts, action, and being of the Commander. To have been that man, I would have dared death in any or in all forms. To direct the thunders of that squadron seemed to me the most inspiring, the most glorious of all conditions. Ship after ship rode by me in silent grandeur, as if the subject elements were made but to bear them on. My memory, already saturated with descriptions I had read-although the vivid pictures of Cooper and Hall then were not-excited my imagination, and my fancy conjured up before my mind's eye the stern dignity of the Admiral, who may almost be said to dwell alone," walking dreadfully serene upon the deck of his ship, and changing or confirming with a word the entire dispositions of that dread line of battle; the master of the lives, actions, and destinies of the thousands of brave hearts whose courage it was his to direct. The presentation of power is, after all, the grandest and most irresistible mover of the human mind; nor can any condition of mortality render an image of power like the Admiral of a fleet, or the Commander of an army. And when the eye drinks in the whole splendour of such a spectacle, as it then lay before me, the fibres being, at the same time, braced and stimulated by a brisk air and a brilliant atmosphere, he must be sadly deficient in the romantic temperament who would not have been drawn out of himself. These are the sensations that make the land-bred boy a mariner-that make the mariner a Nelson or a Duncan. The fleet sailed on, and I gazed till darkness shut it out from my ken. The squadrons met and fought, and Duncan was victorious. He returned to Yarmouth Roads, and I hastened back to the coast to renew my novel sensations, or, as I anticipated, to exalt them. O! what a change! Covering almost identically the same tract of ocean, there lay at anchor the conquerors and the conquered: the first ship that met my sight was (as I afterwards learned) the Ardent, her masts reduced to stumps-her sides perceptibly, even from the shore, bored with shot like a cullender. The other vessels, at near or remote intervals, all partook of the same character of destruction-motionless, except for the dull monotonous heaving of the swell-silent-mournfully inactive; the rigging hanging in disorder, the masts sticks, the decks bare. expected triumph, without having defined, even to myself, what that triumph was to be. I found a scene of desolation that, like the "thick darkness" of the Egyptians, was felt, but could not be described. It was a dull, cold day; the wind moaned rather than blew. I became feelingly persuaded that even victory is but vanity. I When I entered the town, all was mourning. The inhabitants seemed to move about in heaviness-they went sorrowfully to their tasks; and as I passed down to the beach I met several partics bearing wounded men to the hospitals, whose haggard and pale, though weatherbeaten faces, which I saw as they lay, indicative of heroically-suppressed pain, awakened the keenest sympathy. Nor shall I cease to remember the bearing of one gallant fellow on being accosted by a stranger, who was induced to inveigh against war by way of heightening the interest. "Only a leg! d- -n my eyes," exclaimed Jack, endeavouring to lift himself upon his elbow," only a leg; hurrah! Duncan for ever!" But, I repeat, all in the town was mourning. A considerable number of seamen belonging to the port had sailed in the fleet, and in that day of slaughter not a few were killed and wounded. Nor could the spectacle of landing several hundreds of these poor fellows, with the sadlyaccompanying preparations for their burials or their attendance, be, without diffusing a melancholy over every face one met. The case of Captain Burgess of the Ardent was one of particular interest and commiseration, not only on account of his rank-being the highest of the slain-but because he was considered to have been a doomed man. seems that, with the superstition which used to be a trait as characteristic as bravery of a seaman, this officer had applied to a fellow who professed astrology, and who, independently of being a cheat by trade, It was a scoundrel by nature, education, and habit. This quacksalver, however, had drawn Captain Burgess's horoscope, and pronounced that he would fall in action. The prophecy was unhappily verified, for he was cut in pieces by a shot, about ten minutes after the engagement began. The astrologer, anxious to propagate the belief of his skill in divination, published the fact, and thus created more conversation than even the death of so gallant a man would otherwise have occasioned. Yarmouth was, of course, filled with anecdotes of the action, not the least splendid of which was the heroism of the seaman who mounted the rigging, and nailed the colours to the mast during the heat of the engagement. Soon afterwards there was circulated a mot of the gallant Admiral himself. After Admiral De Winter had been landed in England, Mr. Pitt or Lord Melville gave a dinner to the conqueror and the conquered, and at which most of the Cabinet Ministers were present. It is well known how hardly the victory was contested, for the Dutch had well-sustained the reputation of the valour which distinguished them in the days of Van Tromp and De Ruyter. It was indeed rendered more easy to the English-if what was most difficult can be deemed to be rendered easy--by the dastardly flight of the Dutch Admiral Story and four ships-of-the-line. In discussing the particulars of the action, Admiral De Winter insisted strongly upon this defection, and appealed to Admiral Duncan to say whether, if those vessels had fought with the same hardihood that the rest of his fleet had exhibited, the victory would not, in all probability, have been on his side? To which the veteran replied by filling his glass, and saying, "Admiral De Winter, I am exceedingly happy to drink your health in this good company." A neat evasion of the question, and a most complimentary manner of bringing to the Admiral's recollection that he was a prisoner in England, without any assertion of superiority. Twelve months after this happened the Battle of the Nile, and it was celebrated by Admiral Duncan, and the officers of the English and Russian fleets, which then lay in Yarmouth Roads, on the 11th of October, the anniversary of Lord Duncan's engagement. The town of Yarmouth was illuminated, and the party dined together at one of the hotels. Chance led me there, and the Mayor took me with him to the dinner; where it happened that, there being no other person in plain clothes in the room, I was placed at the left hand of the Admiral, He was, without exception, the finest man in his person I ever beheld, and the lines of the song written to describe the battle "The Venerable was the ship that bore his flag to fame, did not exaggerate the reverential respect his noble features and majestic stature awakened in the mind. Venerable he surely was; nor can there be found a phrase that more perfectly responds to the feelings which arose in the mind from his figure, deportment, and conversation, Imagine a man upwards of six feet two inches in height (I think he was six feet four), with limbs of proportionate frame and strength. His features were nobly beautiful, his forehead high and fair, and his hair as white as snow. His movements were all stately, but unaffected, and his manner easy, though dignified. I scarcely ever experienced so deep a sense of personal insignificance, as when presented to this magnificent |