hand, murmured feebly, "Du pain, maman." The wretched girl shrieked with agony, and springing from what she had hoped would have been her resting-place from woe, she pressed her hands to her burning brow, and remained for some moments a prey to torture which convulsed her whole frame. Slowly she uncovered her face, and, spite of its beauty, it was fearful to look upon. The big drops stood on her pale forehead, her lips were colourless, while her eyes seemed dilated beyond their natural size. She took her child in her arms, and kissing it with a vehemence that seemed to partake almost of insanity, "Je l'aurai," she said, in a voice of desperation. She rose-but her steps were unsteady, she was obliged to cling to the wall for support-but she reached the cupboard where she had hid the money that she might not look upon it; she opened the bag, and taking out some silver, quitted the house.

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Again was Louise beside her child, but this time the infant did not ask in vain for bread-food of the best quality, and in abundance, was there. O how eagerly she watched it as it ate heartily, showing that as yet it had suffered no serious injury from its fast. The poor old woman, who from suffering and age was become quite imbecile, was not forgotten, and while the two extremes of life were satisfying their wants, unconscious of the terrible price at which they did so, Louise sat down and penned the following note:

"I know not what you are, but your dreadful words have come to pass. I have seen my child pining and dying. She asked me for bread I had none to give her-I bought some with your money. I prayed for death, but it would not come-so I sold myself to give her food."

The night was cold and dismal-the rain beat against the window -the wind swept by in mournful gusts a miserable bit of candle served to show the utter destitution of the cottage. There was no fire; but by the cheerless hearth sat Louise miserably clad, her eyes fixed on her sleeping child; it seemed, indeed, as if all she had retained of life was derived from gazing on her infant. A carriage stopped, and a low knock was heard at the door. Louise trembled violently, but rose and gave admission to the man who took such cruel advantage of her misery. Even he, impassable as he usually appeared, almost started as he looked on her; she was so pale, so shadowy, and her hand, as he took it in his, had the clammy coldness of death.

"Why have you brought yourself to this, Louise?" he said. "But come away-this is no place to remain in longer. I love you, and will make you forget all this wretchedness."

She made no resistance-she was passive as an infant in his hands; only she gave him a note directed to his mother's housekeeper, who had shown her great kindness when she had been in the habit of going to the house, and requested it might be delivered immediately. "It was only," she said, "to beg her to come and remain with her child till her return; or, if she never came back, to be a mother to it, and a friend to Jeanneton."

As she spoke, her voice was firm and clear, but so low, so mournful, it sounded like a distant knell, borne to the ear on the evening breeze of summer.

"You shall never return to this wretched place," said the marquis; but the old woman shall be taken care of, and your child shall be brought to you."

She made no reply-she turned not once to look on the bed where lay the helpless little being for whom she sacrificed herself, but clasping her hands for a moment, as if in earnest prayer, suffered him to place her in the carriage. It stopped at his own door. As be alighted she saw him give her letter to the servant, with orders to deliver it immediately; and as she heard his injunction she drew a deep breath, as if a weight were removed from her heart. He led her into a well-warmed room, where a table was laid with everything that could tempt the appetite. On one side there was a pair of folding-doors, leading into a bed-chamber, and they were half open. As the wretched girl saw it, she trembled so violently that she was obliged to lean on a chair for support. He pressed her to eat-she sickened at the sight of the delicacies spread before her, but in the same calm chilly voice in which she had before spoken, asked for a glass of water, and, taking it with a steady hand, turned her back on him. The marquis no longer suppressed an expression of wonder and admiration; he watched her narrowly, and in an instant springing to her side, and seizing a paper which she had let fall, dashed the yet untasted goblet from her lips."

"Forbear!" he cried; "make me not a murderer. Oh, Louise, look on me. I, who have never bent the knee to aught on earth or in heaven, kneel to you for forgiveness. No, not for countless empires would I sully purity like yours. Till now, I thought holiness and virtue were but a fable. Base that I was, to require such proofs of the excellency of woman! But forgive me, Louise. 'Tis now my turn to sue for mercy, and, angel as you are, I feel that, sorely as I have tried you, I shall not plead in vain. Do not hate me for my cruelty, but try to look on me as a brother, and one whose greatest happiness will consist in promoting yours."

The girl looked on him as he knelt at her feet, and she gazed wildly, and passed her hands across her eyes as though she thought it was all a dream; but the tone of truth cannot be mistaken, and as she became convinced of the sincerity of his words, the revulsion of feeling was too great for her exhausted frame-she burst into a wild laugh, and fell senseless on the floor.

For many days she lay hovering between life and death, and when, at length, her youth and good constitution triumphed over disease, and her consciousness returned, it was long before she could be convinced that all she saw was not a deceitful dream, which would melt away, and leave her desolate as before. She lay in a comfortable bed, in a cheerful, neatly-furnished apartment. Her child, the picture of health, was playing on the floor, while Jeanneton, well clothed, sat in an arm-chair beside a blazing fire. A smiling young girl stood by the bed, and gave her a draught, which seemed to endow her with new life. It was not, however, till two days afterwards that the phy

sician allowed her to receive a letter which her young attendant had been most anxious to give her. It was from the Marquis de la Riviere, and contained the following words :

"Noble Louise, I will not talk of reparation—I can never make you amends for the suffering I have caused; but let me show you, at least, that I am anxious to make what atonement is in my power. The cottage you are in, with the land attached to it, is settled on your husband, together with a pension of a thousand francs a year. I have found a substitute for him, and he will be with you in a few days; have interest enough to prevent his ever being called upon to serve again. Forgive me, I implore you, and let me speedily hear of your recovery. Remember, till I do, I know not whether I am a murderer or not. Pray to God that you may recover, that so I may be spared being the destroyer of her who has been a guardian angel to my soul.'

What a restorative is happiness! It freshens the heart like summer showers. And, O the bright and lovely things which spring forth beneath its influence, where all before was scorched and arid. It was not more than a year after the foregoing circumstances that the narrator of them first beheld Louise. It was on a beautiful evening in the latter end of August. The cottage stood in the midst of corn-fields, full of wheat-sheaves. Beneath a porch grown over with jasmine and honeysuckle sat old Jeanneton, watching with almost childish glee the little girl who was making a garland of wild flowers. Paul was arranging a parterre in which his beautiful wife took great delight, and she stood beside him a living exemplification that virtue has its reward. When she was not giving him directions about her garden, she continued working at something she held in her hand. I had been in conversation with them some time, when I could not help remarking how beautiful the embroidery was on which she was employed, and asked her what it was for? She answered, “It is a dress for the young Marquise de la Riviere's first child."

THE BROTHERS.

BY MRS. ABDY.

OH! brother, we have met again! what tedious years have past,
Since we strayed upon yon breezy hills in careless boyhood last:
We parted, each elate with hope; wide seas between us rolled;
I sought in sultry eastern climes to gather heaps of gold,
And you consumed the midnight oil in themes abstruse and deep,
Striving to climb the topmost height of learning's thorny steep.
We roam once more, dear brother, in our native glades and bowers,
And surely hopes were never crowned so brilliantly as ours.

I come enriched with countless wealth from India's spicy shore,
And in brilliant pomps and luxuries diffuse my lavish store,
While you the homage and the praise of learned men command,
And claim a noble rank amid the wise ones of the land:
Yet, brother, are we happy when we sit beside the hearth?

Do we breathe the tones of joyfulness, or smile the smiles of mirth?
No, no; your brow bespeaks a heart too ready to repine,
And well I know the feeling is reflected back in mine.

Dear brother, to our loved pursuits our constant thoughts we gave,
And never seemed the tenderness of faithful friends to crave;
You gathered classic treasures, and I sought for Mammon's spoil,
Uncheered by woman's gentle eye, by woman's kindly smile.
We gained our wish-but barren is the scene that round us lies;
We boast not friendship's cordial joys, or love's endearing ties ;
We never thought of others in the summer that has gone,
And we stand, in life's dull wintry eve, unloved, unblest, alone.

Oh! if a parent's bliss were ours, how happy might we be,
Surrounded by the dear ones we had fondled on our knee!
With fatherly delight I might deck some blushing girl

In the brightly flashing diamond, or the softly gleaming pearl;
While you through learning's labyrinth might lead your ardent son ]
To grasp still higher honours than his gifted sire had won;
Our wives might smile beside us in their tenderness and truth,
And welcome in their offspring a second brighter youth.

Oh! brother, we have toiled in vain-we have not met success
In life's great aim-we have not reached the goal of happiness;
Yet our cold and selfish vanities still bind us to the sod,
Nor dare we put the world aside, and give ourselves to God;
The gentle charities of earth-the ties of wedded love—

These smooth the path of man below, and guide his way above;

But we never sought them, brother, and our vaunted wealth and fame End in a splendid lonely hearth-a proud and empty name.

SHAKSPEARE FANCIES.1

No. IV.

PORTIA AND JOANNA BAILLIE.

CHILDREN are particularly apprehensive of meanness in their parents : it disgusts them, and they can never forgive or forget it. To reflect on this baseness is the revenge adopted by the young ones to atone for all the petty annoyances to which its owner has subjected them; and a bitter, deep, and powerful revenge it is. Parents, for their own interests, if not for their children's, should treat them well. Foster no loved vice, nor look to obtain their co-operation; for they will assuredly hurry into an opposite extreme, and undo all your longcherished plans. Fancy not you have a sympathising hearer when you make a confidant of him whom you have ill-used; he but laughs at you behind your back, and his merriment is all you get for your paíns. You are mean thus to trouble him with your paltry concerns: you, who have neither pitied his sorrows nor relieved his distresses, how can you, like a silly fool, expect him to do aught but revel in your ill luck? It is absurd to advise youth against their chosen joys -to command what is against the grain, and to which you have no means of insuring obedience. If we study human nature, we will hope for no paragons; but ever attend common failings, for which rational allowance is to be made; bearing no ill will to the erring, though, with propriety, we undisguisedly condemn their course. are to remember that once we had like failings; or, in all probability, worse; and that now we have those which are the usual accompaniments of our age. Risk not an inducement to deceit: order little, and question less. Nothing elicits lying propensities like vain prohibitions and impertinent queries. It is ridiculous to anticipate that perfection in a servant which nowhere on earth can be discovered; and how unjust to be out of sorts with an unfortunate domestic, because he resembles all the world beside! Let us, above all things, shun manoeuvring, which the most stupid child will ultimately detect, and our own weapons will be wielded to our discomfiture.

We

Children are never moved by their parents' complaints of servants; they always take the part of the latter, with whom their own servitude has more communion. How joyous are spirited damsels when narrowhearted fathers take their departure, whose absence is indeed a relief, whose presence a nearly unendurable burden! If you wish to rid yourself of your daughter, bind her fast, and render yourself disreputable in her eyes. Jessica, notwithstanding her improprieties, appears now in a more interesting light than heretofore, when she was merely the designer of duplicity, and the confider in her footboy. Even then she was the prisoned nun, the merciful mistress; not, like Master

1 Continued from p. 157,