only offered you such remarks as would naturally arise out of a fire-side chat amongst female cousins. It constitutes no small portion of the enjoyment which this great world's wonder affords, that so vast a number of friends and relatives will be able, in future years, to share their remembrances of it together. Each time that I renew my acquaintance with it, I feel this more forcibly; for I either meet some party of friends unexpectedly, or others are present with me, through the power of association, with whom it will be mutually delightful to chat about these on future days. If my observations, conveyed in these letters, have appeared to you either trifling or unworthy of the subject, pray remember, I have ever borne in mind that all the great characteristics and leading features of the Exhibition itself will have been placed before you in a thousand ways simultaneously with my letters. For the present, my task is concluded. I will place in the hands of a friend, who is professionally, as well as otherwise qualified, such artistic remarks and conclusions as would naturally arise out of a careful observation of the works of art to be found in this vast collection.

If you still hesitate about coming to see for yourself, let me beg of you to put aside every consideration but that of sheer impracticability. Weakness and delicacy of health need scarcely prevent; for persons of the most retired or indulgent habits may here make themselves perfectly comfortable. The invalid has nothing to do but take her camp stool, and sit and gaze, drinking in wonder and beauty at every glance. But I will only repeat" Come, and see for yourself." Words were never more vain than when employed in attempting to convey any adequate idea of this wonderful scene. Come then, and come all. With this advice, I remain, yours, &c.

THE BOOK OF LIFE.

UPON this transient life I fain would look
With philosophic eyes, as on a book,

Wherein from day to day I'd read a page;
Nor would I, over anxious, seek to know

The end, nor murmuring deem too swift or slow
Th' events that brought me to it stage by stage;
Enough for me, and more I durst not ask,

In thus fulfilling my diurnal task,

Some humble duty, some new truth to learn,
To bear with equal mind what might befal

My lot, or joy or sorrow, and in all

The righteous ways of Providence discern―
So the brief volume closed, I might not dread

To meditate the past, ere death's dark shore I tread.

SELF-DECEPTION:

OR,

THE HISTORY OF A HUMAN HEART.

CHAPTER LVIII.

THAT feeling of separation from the good and the happy, which Ella sometimes experienced while sharing the society of her friends at the rectory, was always deepened by conversing with Mr. Cawthorne alone; and the quiet walk home, late in the evening, with a few observations more pointed than usual, which dropped, as it were accidentally by the way, left upon her mind a kind of half determination to set herself free at once and for ever from those entanglements of which she mentally complained. Buoyed up as she had been with a consciousness of the very best intentions, she did not even now admit the idea, that with regard to the past, she had been wrong; but she was less hopeful for the future, and had recently begun to doubt the strength of her own influence over those who were the most dependent upon her kindness, and hospitality. Ella's first desire had unquestionably been to do good; but it was followed sc closely by another desire-the desire of being herself the instrument of that good, of being looked up to as such, admired, valued, and esteemed pre-eminently, that all these motives had blended themselves together into a complicated and deceptive tissue, in which it was now impossible to distinguish the evil from the good.

It is not the external world alone which looks so different by star-light from what it does by the broad light of noon that we scarcely know the most familiar scenes to be the same. Our own hearts, our lives, our circumstances, look different when reviewed under the silent influence of night. Ella felt, almost more than she had ever done before, the holy calm of that

solemn hour, and with it the deep reality of her own spiritual existence.

"They tell us," said Ella, conversing with herself, "that life is short, and that its good and evil will soon pass away. At this hour, I feel that it is so. Looking out upon the spangled heavens, I feel that I am myself, with all my cares and perplexities, but as a speck in the vast universe: a grain of sand on the shore of the great ocean of life. I feel that the power and the glory of God fill all things, and that He himself is the living centre to which all things tend. How is it, then, that we—such atoms-such minute and scarcely distinguishable atoms of a ruined world, should seek to establish a centre and a sphere of our own? Alas! it would be better for me to be altogether blended and lost sight of amongst the general massresolved, as it were, into a mere portion of the great whole of God's universe, and nothing more."

Ella had thrown open her window. The night was still, and calm, but yet not altogether undisturbed by sounds the very opposite of that holy peace which seemed to reign over every portion of the world, except those human elements, which a gross and vulgar excitement had so recently stirred. Seated at her open window, her meditations were every now and then disturbed by sounds of distant mirth, as some party of revellers came home, singing on their way, or by the tread of feet upon the dewy grass, which grew so thickly in the adjoining meadows that a rushing sound announced the passing of every traveller that way.

ances.

It was scarcely possible to think collectedly, or with any definite purpose, while occasionally startled by such disturbOnce Ella thought she heard the galloping of a horse in the distance, but it ceased on a sudden; and she was only sensible of a burning flush in her cheeks, and a quick flutter at her heart, which she was glad that there was no eye to perceive. The sensation, however, did not easily subside. It had too many troublesome associations for that. The train of her serious reflections once disturbed, she became more alive to

external things, and for a few moments she felt sure that a horse was cropping the grass in the lane which led immediately past her garden.

Well," said she, "and if it is, how many gipsies, and idle people must be about just now. They always turn their horses loose in the lanes."

But still Ella felt very differently from what she had done before the sound of a galloping horse had reached her ear. She was nervous, and unsettled, easily startled, and incapable of collected thought. She had no wish for repose, no desire to do anything but gaze into the "dumb dark night," and penetrate its secrets. There was certainly no sound but what might easily be accounted for, and those which reached her were of the most commonplace and vulgar description, in all respects the very reverse of mysterious, or awful; but for all that, she felt more and more oppressed with a strange indefinite sense of mischief being abroad, of danger, and calamity, to which she was unable to assign either shape, or substance. The late hour of the night was of itself sufficient to account for this; but Ella felt no consciousness that it was late: no want of sleep weighed down her eye-lids; she was only too much awake, too sensitive, and alive to every impression. Gazing out into the darkness, her very sight became bewildered, and sometimes she fancied there were dim forms half distinguishable about or beneath the old yew trees in her garden, or they floated round the fountain, or issued in misty and fantastic forms from out the deeper gloom of the shadowy brook which murmured on, with its low whispering voice, amongst the trees and shrubs at the bottom of the garden.

While listening and looking in this manner at the dead of night, how terrifically loud is any near sound, such as the neighing of a horse, for instance. Ella started from her seat. If a cannon had been fired beneath her window, she could not have been seized by a greater terror. And yet it was but a horse neighing for its companions in the lane-a gipsy's horse, no doubt. No, that it could not be-for after a loud snort, it

struck off into a gallop, so swift, and light, that Ella seemed to recognise at once the tread of the animal of whose speed she had heard many an exulting boast.

"It is his horse, without a rider!" said Ella to herself, "and he perhaps is lying dead, or dying, on the road. What can I do?"

Ella had no one to call, or to consult. Her servants were not altogether trustworthy, the friends whom she harboured beneath her roof were not real friends. It was one of those moments in which women so often act without calculating consequences—one of those moments out of which spring some of their best and most generous actions; but alas! out of which spring also some of their wildest, and their worst. Happily for Ella, she could, and she did, reflect. There was a poor man, her gardener, who lived in a cottage near her gate. She would go to him, and ask him to do for her, what she dared not do for herself.

In another moment, Ella was out in the still night air. It might look strange to do what she was now doing, but she fancied there was no alternative. It never once occurred to her, that Mrs. Lorrimer would have been a fitter person than herself to discharge this duty; for a duty she believed it to be. Indeed, it is more than probable, that had such an idea presented itself to her mind, it would have been rejected with indignation; for what had that heartless woman to do with her affairs?

Never once did Ella flinch or falter in her resolution, until after knocking, for some time, at the poor man's door, he stretched his head from the window, and asked, in an angry tone, who was there, and what was wanted? at the same time bidding the unknown disturber of his rest begone, and not trouble him.

The poor man evidently believed he had been aroused by some reveller from the fair, and Ella very naturally shrunk under the suspicion: but she must not give up her point; so she called again; and this time he seemed to recognise her