be dried up. For two days I was insensible to the advice of the hermit. In endeavoring to calm my distress, this holy man did not use vain and worldly arguments; he only said, "My son, the will of God be done;" and clasped me in his arms. Had I not felt, I never should have thought there could have been so much comfort in those few words of a resigned Christian. The tenderness, compassion, and unalterable affection, of the pious servant of the Most High, conquered my obstinate grief. Ashamed of the tears he had shed on my account, “O father," said I, "let not the passions of a miserable youth disturb thy aged breast; let me take the sad remains of my beloved; I will bury them in some remote corner of the desert, and if I am condemned to live, I shall endeavor to render myself worthy of those eternal nuptials promised by Atala.”

The hermit was delighted with my returning fortitude, and enthusiastically exclaimed, "May the blood of Jesus Christ, our divine master, which was shed in compassion to our miseries, have mercy upon this young man; increase his courage, and restore peace to his troubled mind, and only leave in it a useful and humble recollection of his misfortunes."

The holy priest refused to give up the corpse of the daughter of Lopez, but he offered to assemble the inhabitants of the village and to inter her with all Christian pomp, but I refused, saying, "The misfortunes and virtues of Atala are unknown to the rest of mankind; let a solitary grave be dug by our hands to share their obscurity." We agreed to set out the next day by sunrise to inter Atala, at the foot of the natural bridge, and in the entrance to the groves of death.

Towards night we carried the precious remains of this pious saint to the entrance of the cell on the north side. The hermit had enveloped her in a piece of linen cloth of his mother's spinning-the only thing that he had preserved from Europe, and which he intended for his own shroud. Atala lay stretched on a couch of sensitive plants; her feet, head, and shoulders were uncovered, and her hair was adorned with a flower of a magnolia; it was the sensitive flower which I had placed upon the maiden's head. Her lips, that were like

a withered rose, seemed endeavoring to smile: dark blue veins appeared upon her marble cheeks, her beauteous eyelids were closed, her feet were joined, and her alabaster hands pressed an ebony crucifix to her heart; the fatal scapulary was suspended on her bosom; she looked as if enchanted by the spirit of melancholy, and resting in the double sleep of innocence and death. Her appearance was quite celestial, and had any one seen her, and been ignorant that she had possessed animation, he would have supposed her the statue of virginity.

The pious anchoret ceased not to pray during the whole night. I sat in silence at the top of Atala's funeral couch: how often had I supported her sleeping head upon my knees, and how often had I bent over her beauteous form listening to her and inhaling her perfumed breath; but now no soft murmur issued from her motionless bosom, and it was in vain that I waited for my beloved to awake. The moon supplied her pale light to the funeral eve: she rose at midnight, as a fair virgin that weeps over the bier of a departed friend: it covered the whole scene with a deep melancholy, displaying the aged oaks and flowing rivers. From time to time the cenobite plunged a bunch of flowers into consecrated water, and bathed the couch of death with the heavenly dew, repeating in a solemn voice some verses from the ancient poet Job. "Man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

"Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery? and life unto the bitter in soul?"

Thus did the venerable missionary sing; his grave and tremulous voice was re-echoed in the silent woods, and the name of God and the grave was resounded by the neighboring torrents and mountains: the sad warbling of the Virginia dove, the roaring of the waves, and the bell that called travelers, mixed with these funeral chants, and methought I heard in the groves of death the departed spirits join the hermit's voice in mournful chorus. The eastern horizon was now fringed with gold: sparrow-hawks shrieked on the cliffs, and the squirrels hastened into the crevices of old elms: it was the time appointed for Atala's funeral. I carried the