It is time, however, to inform the reader of the true cause. Jeronimo was scarcely led to execution when the confessor of the prison demanded access to the president, and immediately laid before him the confession of a prisoner who had died under a fever the preceding night. The wretched malefactor hereupon acknowledged that he was one of a party of coiners, who had carried on the trade of making false money to a very great extent; that Jeronimo's clerk was at the head of the gang: that all the false money was delivered to this clerk, who immediately exchanged it for good money from his master's coffers, to all of which he had private keys, and in which coffers, on the apprehension of Jeronimo, he had deposited the instruments of coining, lest they should thing very heavy at her heart to communicate | to her. Jeronimo's wife accordingly came very early on the following morning. The unhappy woman, after having summoned up the small remnant of her strength, and requested Jeronimo's wife to hear what she had to say, but not to interrupt her till she had concluded, thus addressed her:-"Your husband is innocent, mine was guilty. Fly to the magistrates, inform them of this, and save my husband's soul from adding to his other crimes the guilt of innocent blood. Thy husband." She was about to proceed, but death arrested her words. Jeronimo's wife, thinking that her husband was now effectually saved, flew to the president of the magistracy, and demanded immediate admission, and related the confession she had just received. The president shook his head.be found in his own possession. The confession "Where is the woman that made the confession?" "She is dead."-"Then where is the party accused instead of Jeronimo?" "He is dead likewise."—"Have you any witnesses of the conversation of the dying woman?" "None; she requested every one to leave the chamber, that she might communicate to me alone.""Then the confession, good woman, can avail you nothing; the law must have its course." Jeronimo's wife could make no reply; she was carried senseless out of the court, and the president, from a due sense of humanity, ordered her to be taken to the house of one of his officers, and kept there till after the execu-bunal the same evening. The result was, that tion of her husband. terminated with enumerating such of the gang as were yet living, and pointing out their places of asylum and concealment. The execution of Jeronimo, as has been related, was in its actual operation. The first step of the president, therefore, was to hurry one of the officers to stop its progress, and in the same moment to send off two or three detachments of the city guard to seize the accused parties before they should learn from public report the death of their comrade. The guards executed their purpose successfully; the malefactors were all taken and brought to the tri one of them became evidence against his com- The finishing of this catastrophe was now at hand. Already the great bell of the city was tolling. The hour at length arrived, and Jeronimo was led forth. He was desired to add anything which he had to say, without loss of time. He satisfied himself with the declaration of his innocence, and with recommending his soul to his Maker, then knelt down to receive the destined blow; but scarcely was he on his knees before the whole crowd was thrown into motion, by some of the marshals of justice rushing forward and exclaiming to stop the execution. The marshal at length made his way to the scaffold, and delivered a paper with which he was charged, to the presiding officer. The officer, upon reading it, immediately stayed the farther progress of the execution, and Jero-citizens. nimo was led back to his prison. "What is all this?" exclaimed the crowd. "Have the friends of Jeronimo at length raised a sum of money which our just judges have required of them; and is his punishment thus bought off? Happy inhabitants of Padua, where to be rich is to be able to commit any crime with impunity." Thus ended the misfortunes of a man who had provoked the chastisement of Heaven by his vanity and self-glory.-The course of Providence is uniform in all ages of the world; when blessings are contemned, they are withdrawn-when the man unduly elevates himself, the moment of his humiliation is at hand. O'CONNOR'S CHILD; OR, THE "FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING." [Thomas Campbell, born at Glasgow, 27th July, 1777; died at Boulogne, 15th June, 1844. He was little more than twenty one when the Pleasures of Hope was first published. The success which attended the appearance of this poem determined Campbell to abandon the laborious profession of a tutor for the no less laborious one of letters. He proceeded to London, and in spite of indifferent health worked hard as journalist, critic, and historian; whilst at intervals he gave to the world new poems, which confirmed the reputation he had already won. In 1805 government awarded him a pension of £200 a year. He was editor of the New Monthly Magazine for ten years (1810-20), and in 1830 he started the Metropolitan Magazine, which afterwards fell into the hands of Captain Marryat. Except his essays on English and Scottish poetry, and notes of the poets' lives, Campbell's prose works are not now extensively read, although on their first issue the Annals of Great Britain, from the Accession of George III. to the Peace of Amiens, the Life of Mrs. Siddons, the Life and Times of Petrarch, Letters from the South (Algiers), and Frederick the Great, were received with considerable favour. His poems, however, retain much of their popularity; and it will be interesting to general readers to know Lord Jeffrey's estimate of the poet:There are but two noble sorts of poetry-the pathetic and the sublime; and we think he (Campbell) has given us very extraordinary proofs of his talents for both."] Oh! once the harp of Innisfail1 Was strung full high to notes of gladness; Sad was the note, and wild its fall, When, for O'Connor's child to mourn, Sweet lady! she no more inspires 1 Ireland. Yet why, though fall'n her brother's kerne2 While yet in Leinster unexplored And fix'd on empty space, why burn Bright as the bow that spans the storm, The morat in a golden cup. "A hero's bride! this desert bower, It ill befits thy gentle breeding: And wherefore dost thou love this flower 2 Kerne, the ancient Irish foot soldiery. 3 Rude hut or cabin. And every rock and every stone Bare witness that he was my own. "O'Connor's child! I was the bud Of Erin's royal tree of glory; But woe to them that wrapp'd in blood Still as I clasp my burning brain The bloody feud -the fatal night, "Ah, brothers! what did it avail "At bleating of the wild watch-fold "And fast and far, before the star Of day-spring, rush'd we through the glade, Sweet was to us the hermitage Of this unplough'd, untrodden shore, For man's neglect we loved it more. And every hand that dealt the blow- Yes, when his moanings died away, "Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred, "But Heaven, at last, my soul's eclipse A prophetess's fire. 4 Ancient fortification. 5 The Irish lamentation for the dead. Thrice in the east a war-drum beat, "And go! (I cried), the combat seek, And fired me with the wrathful mood; Dire was the look that o'er their backs "Stranger! I fled the home of grief, THE LOST CHILD.2 Lucy was only six years old, but bold as a fairy; she had gone by herself a thousand times "They would have cross'd themselves, all about the braes, and often upon errands to mute; They would have pray'd to burst the spell; Where, downward when the sun shall fall, And not a vassal shall unlace "A bolt that overhung our dome Suspended till my curse was given, Soon as it pass'd these lips of foam, Peal'd in the blood-red heaven. 1 Athunree, the battle fought in 1314, which decided the fate of Ireland. houses two or three miles distant. What had her parents to fear? The footpaths were all firm, and led through no places of danger, nor are infants of themselves incautious, when alone in their pastimes. Lucy went singing into the coppice-woods, and singing she reappeared on the open hill-side. With her small white hand on the rail, she glided along the wooden-bridge, or lightly as the owzel tripped from stone to stone across the shallow streamlet. The creature would be away for hours, and no fears be felt on her account by any one at home -whether she had gone with her basket under her arm to borrow some articles of household use from a neighbour, or merely for her own solitary delight wandered off to the braes to play among the flowers, coming back laden with wreaths and garlands. With a bonnet of her own sewing to shade her pretty face from the sun, and across her shoulders a plaid in which she could sit dry during an hour of the heaviest rain beneath the smallest beild, Lucy passed many long hours in the daylight, and thus knew, without thinking of it, all the 2 From The Foresters, by Professor Wilson (Christopher North). Blackwood and Sons, topography of that pastoral solitude, and even something of the changeful appearances in the air and sky. The happy child had been invited to pass a whole day, from morning to night, at Ladyside (a farm-house about two miles off), with her playmates, the Maynes; and she left home about an hour after sunrise. She was dressed, for a holiday, and father and mother, and Aunt Isobel, all three kissed her sparkling face before she set off by herself, and stood listening to her singing, till her small voice was lost in the murmur of the rivulet. During her absence the house was silent but happy; and the evening being now far advanced, Lucy was expected home every minute, and Michael, Agnes, and Isobel went to meet her on the way. They walked on and on, wondering a little, but in no degree alarmed, till they reached Ladyside; and heard the cheerful din of the imps within, still rioting at the close of the holiday. Jacob, Mayne came to the door-but on their kindly asking why Lucy had not been sent home before daylight was over, he looked painfully surprised, and said that she had not been at Ladyside. Agnes suddenly sat down, without speaking one word, on the stone seat beside the door, and Michael, supporting her, said, 'Jacob, our child left us this morning at six o'clock, and it is now near ten at night. God is merciful, but perhaps Lucy is dead.' Jacob Mayne was an ordinary, commonplace, and rather ignorant man, but his heart leaped within him at these words, and by this time his own children were standing about the door. 'Yes, Mr. Forrester-God is merciful and your daughter, let us trust, is not dead. Let us trust that she yet liveth-and without delay let us go to seek the child.' Michael trembled from head to foot, and his voice was gone; he lifted up his eyes to heaven, but it seemed not as if he saw either the moon or the stars. "Run over to Raeshorn, some of you," said Jacob, "and tell what has happened. Do you Isaac, my good boy, cross over to a' the towns on the Inverlethen-side, and-oh! Mr. ForresterMr. Forrester, dinna let this trial overcome you sae sairly"-for Michael was leaning against the wall of the house, and the strong man was helpless as a child. Keep up your heart, my dearest son," said Isobel, with a voice all unlike her usual, "keep up your heart, for the blessed bairn is beyond doubt somewhere in the keeping of the great God, yea, without a hair of her head being hurt. A hundred things may have happened her, and death not among the number.-Oh! no-no— surely not death-that would indeed be too dreadful a judgment." And Aunt Isobel, oppressed by the power of that word, now needed the very comfort that she had in vain tried to bestow. Within two hours a hundred people were traversing the hills in all directions, even to a distance which it seemed most unlikely that poor Lucy could have reached. The shepherds and their dogs all night through searched every nook-every stony and rocky place-every little shaw-every piece of taller heatherevery crevice that could conceal anything alive or dead, but no Lucy was there. Her mother, who for a while seemed inspired with supernatural strength, had joined in the search, and with a quaking heart looked into every brake, or stopped and listened to every shout and hollo reverberating among the hills, if she could seize on some tone of recognition or discovery. But the moon sank, and then all the stars, whose increased brightness had for a short time supplied her place, all faded away, and then came the gray dawn of morning, and then the clear brightness of the day, and still Michael and Agnes were childless. "She has sunk into some mossy or miry place,” said Michael to a man near him, into whose face he never looked. "A cruel, cruel death for one like her! The earth on which my child walked has closed over her, and we shall never see her more!" At last a man who had left the search and gone in a direction towards the high-road, came running with something in his arms towards the place where Michael and others were standing beside Agnes, who lay apparently exhausted almost to dying on the sward. He approached hesitatingly; and Michael saw that he carried Lucy's bonnet, clothes, and plaid. It was impossible not to see some spots of blood upon the frill that the child had worn round her neck. "Murdered-murdered-" was the one word whispered or ejaculated all around; but Agnes heard it not, for, worn out by that long night of hope and despair, she had fallen asleep, and was perhaps seeking her lost Lucy in her dreams. Isobel took the clothes, and narrowly inspecting them with eye and hand, said with a fervent voice, that was heard even in Michael's despair, "No-Lucy is yet among the living. There are no marks of violence on the garments of the innocent-no murderer's hand has been here. These blood-spots have been put there to deceive. Besides, would not the murderer have carried off these things? For what else would he have murdered her? But oh! foolish |