the circumstances under which we made our appearance at their hospitable door, and in a kind of serio-comic version of "Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man," demanded lodging for the night per carità.

The Capuchin, a short-necked, apoplectic-looking gentleman, listened in sleepy silence to the doctor's oration, and then, without uttering a word, slowly extricated his shoulders from the narrow wicket, leisurely closed the shutters, and disappeared.

"Cool, that," said the doctor.

"Silent contempt," said Dawson. "You may depend he's sound asleep again by this time, dreaming of white wine and fat pullets. Come, wake him up again; we have no choice between effecting a lodgment here, and bivouacking al fresco for the night, without even the spare stall of a stable for a refuge. O for a marquee of Edgington's !"

Dawson's wishes were cut short by the slow opening of the foldingdoors, the same sleepy friar officiating as porter. He neither bade us welcome, nor forbade us, but stared at the forestieri with the leaden look of a plethoric alderman dozing away his supper.

"Can you lodge us for the night, buon padre ?" said the doctor. "'Gnor-si."

"Can we stable our mules here?"

"Can you say anything but 'gnor-si and 'gnor-no?" said the doctor, seriously.

up

"Gnor-si," said the Capuchin, a slight flickering of thought lighting his eye, as if he had some faint idea that the question was a droll

one.

"Then would you be good enough to go to the superior, and say an English traveller requests the pleasure of a word with him."

"Gnor-si," replied the sleepy janitor, and he slowly wended his way up a flight of stone steps rising from the courtyard to an upper gallery, half stopping every now and then to look at the doctor, as if to recal to his mind the nearly-forgotten errand of which he was the bearer.

A tall, pale-faced man, with a beard which had once been black, but was now sprinkled with gray, soon made his appearance. He was, we understood, the lettore or reader. He received us with a staid graciousness, and in reply to the doctor's apologies for disturbing the solitude of the brotherhood, made us welcome to their poor convent. He then recommended us to the care of Giuseppe the porter, and Antonio the cook, and sweeping along the colonnade that surrounded the courtyard, disappeared under an archway in the corner.

A number of the friars had in the mean time gathered round, young and old, displaying the great ornament of the human chin in uncropped luxuriance, and with an amusing variety of hue and style. They had maintained a respectful distance during our conversation with the lettore, but now busily occupied themselves in transferring

our luggage from the panniers to the cells in which we were to pass the night. They eulogised the lettore as a man of wondrous scholarship, who even knew French, and must have read, they thought, nearly all the books in the world. He was now in his study, where he almost always remained. I was inclined to think, as well from their account of the matter as from his demeanour to ourselves, that the lettore was a man little likely to forget the old proverb, or be betrayed into that familiarity that breeds contempt.

Each cell of those set apart for our use was a small square room, arched with stone, and having a narrow window sunk in the thick wall. It contained a bedstead, (on which was a mattress covered with a brown rug,) a small deal table, and a chair. Over the door of

each was a coarse fresco, representing some variety of future torments, with a Latin motto, such as "Religiosus negligens, lætitia dæmonis;" or "Prodesse aliis, et nocere sibi, stultitia est, non caritas.” We had an apartment of somewhat larger size as a sitting-room.

Now came our inquiries about supper, and Antonio made his appearance, a dark-eyed youngster, with a merry glance, and a dark moustache that would have been invaluable in a marching regiment. "Well, Antonio, what can we have for supper?"

"Cosa vi piace, signor."

Why, we are easily pleased, Antonio-what have you in the convent ?"

"Niente, signor."

"What! nothing at all, Antonio? How then do you live?"

"Ah!" replied Antonio, half laughing; "we live on charity, noi altri-we are poor, signor. Molto poveri."

"What's to be done, then ?" said the doctor.

"We can buy," said Antonio.

"Ah! now I understand. Come, there's a dollar, and forage for us as well as you can."

The result of Antonio's labours made their appearance in about half an hour, and proved to be a huge dish of macaroni, enough, according to our limited ideas, to satisfy at least a dozen-a roast capon, some oranges, and a couple of bottles of tolerable Marsala.

During supper we held a levee somewhat in the style of the king's dinner at Versailles under the old regime, all the brotherhood being anxious to get a peep at the forestieri, and ask a question or two about the strange lands from which we came.

The lettore, however, did not again make his appearance, and with him vanished apparently the learning of the establishment, the whole batch seeming to be in a state of as blissful ignorance as ever illustrated the folly of wisdom.

Nothing could exceed their amazement at the discovery that England did not produce oranges fit to eat. That we did not make macaroni was to them a strong evidence of our savage condition, and all their original ideas of an inhabitable country being thus upset at once, they proceeded, like a posse of grown children, to go over an interminable list of names, asking with regard to each the same dull question" Have you that in England?" Bells, butterflies, sheep, beetles, were a few of the items; and a jolly old gentleman, with a

white beard, not to be behind-hand in the pursuit of knowledge, blurted out, after a long silence, during which he had been listening attentively to the questions of the juniors-" Have you any rivers there?"

"Tacete, Pietro," harshly grumbled a pert youngster; and poor old Pietro, for whose intellect they did not seem to entertain any very high respect, lost on the instant the self-satisfied look of importance which he had assumed, and sank back again into his chronic silence and insignificance.

In the course of the conversation, however, it happened to be mentioned that Dawson was not an Englishman, which of course produced an inquiry on the part of one of the younger brethren as to his peculiar nationality.

"Son' Irlandese, Io," said Dawson.

"Ah!" said the inquirer, brightening up, and taking evidently an interest in the answer, for which in the crassa ignorantia of the community I could not account.

"Lei è Cattolico dunque." "No-son' Protestante."

"Ah!" replied the other in surprise, "there are then Protestants in Ireland ?”

"Vi credo-I believe ye," said Dawson.

The friar, though rather puzzled with the construction of Dawson's Italian, considered it to imply an affirmative, and there was a short pause.

"What is the difference then, signor," he said at last, "between the two religions?”

Dawson was rather puzzled. He had been in the habit of drinking the glorious memory, as he himself expressed it, like a Briton, and could tell the political differences to a shade, but with the theological he was, truth to say, not quite so intimate. He was proceeding, however, as well as a man can who endeavours to discuss points of doctrine, of which he has rather a confused notion, in a language with which he is not very familiar, and the doctor had just suggested the propriety of laying due stress on the orange and green, when one of the elders put an end to the explanation at once by saying

"Via! there is no occasion to speak of these things."

The young inquirer was silent and abashed, the conversation was stopped at once, and the whole party shortly after bade us good-night. I threw myself on the bed, in which, to my unutterable delight, I found there were no previous tenants, and was awakened by the hum of the midnight mass in the chapel from a horrid dream, in which I was riveted to the floor in the centre of a huge circular theatre, the benches rising tier above tier, until they were lost in the distance, like one of Martin's perspectives, and covered with myriads of Scotch bagpipers playing con furore.

DECEPTION.1

A TALE.

BY MRS. ABDY.

RESOLVED to know my fate at once, I arose with tottering steps, and proceeded to the library. Mrs. Neville sat on one side of the table, with her handkerchief hypocritally placed at her eyes. Mr. Neville was opposite to her writing rapidly in a memorandum-book, and my poor husband, pale, trembling, and looking like one under the influence of a horrid dream, sat near him. Mr. Neville glanced at me in a cold, contemptuous manner, and had not even the common good feeling to offer me a seat, but my knees trembled under me, and I sank into the nearest that presented itself.

"Isabel, my beloved, precious Isabel," said Lord Ellerton in a hollow tone," speak! tell me that you are innocent of this terrible charge, and I will believe you against the assembled and accumulated voices of thousands."

A pause ensued-a dreadful temptation crossed my mind that I would brave my accuser by a declaration of innocence, in which I doubted not I should meet the ready support of Lady Barlow; but I lifted up a fervent aspiration to God for strength to rise above the snare, and in a low but audible voice rejoined, "I cannot deny the charge-I am guilty!"

My husband uttered a deep groan, and hid his face in his hands. Mr. Neville could scarcely restrain an exclamation of triumph; and my sister-in-law, removing her handkerchief from her eyes, began to declare, with the malignant exultation of a low mind, "that she had never thought well of me—that she had always suspected something very mysterious about the birth of the child, and was not in the least surprised at having her conjectures confirmed."

This I felt convinced was false; for if a suspicion of the kind had ever crossed her mind, she would immediately have instituted the most minute inquiries into the particulars of Lord Montford's birth; but I made her no answer, and Lord Ellerton impatiently waved his hand to her to be silent. Mr. Neville now proceeded to lay before me all the proofs of my guilt, evidently fearful that I might hereafter recant my confession, imputing it to temporary delirium. It appeared that Ruth Hammond was confined of her first child in the neighbourhood of Sidmouth, under circumstances of great want and distress. Mr. Wickham obtained the infant from her, during a temporary absence of her husband, by the bribe of a handsome sum of money; she would not accede to his wishes, however, till he had given her the name of the lady to whom it was to be delivered, since she suspected he might meditate some imposition on her; he on his part was equally wary, and only gave her the name on condition of her signing a paper, and also taking a solemn vow that she would never reveal the

1 Concluded from p. 215.

name to her husband, nor to any one else, and that she would never voluntarily seek an interview with her child, or its reputed parents. When Hammond returned she gave him the money, and told him the circumstances of the case, concealing, however, her knowledge of the name of the family. The money proved a bane instead of a blessing to him, since it led him into habits of low company and dissipation, which he never afterwards subdued; and the want of maternal tenderness shown by his wife in the transaction furnished him with a constant subject of recrimination and sarcasm whenever she ventured to remonstrate with him on the culpable course he was pursuing. She had several other children; none of them respected or obeyed her; they followed the footsteps of their father in the paths of evil, and death or the laws of the country snatched them from her one by one. She still preserved a reverence for her vow of secrecy, and a kind of wild stormy affection for her husband; and nothing but the sudden and irrepressible bursting forth of the latter, under such awful circumstances, could have caused the violation of the former. She adduced as witnesses to the truth of her tale, Lady Barlow, the nurse who had attended me, and who was since married to a respectable tradesman at Exeter, and a cousin of Mr. Wickham's, who was in partnership with him at the time of the transaction, and through whose mediation the affair had been in a great measure adjusted. A silence ensued more terrible than words; it was broken by the sudden entrance of Lord Montford.

"Father," he exclaimed, sinking on his knees before Lord Ellerton, "they have surely been mocking and deceiving me by the dreadful and disgraceful tale they have imparted to me: tell me that it is false. I could bear the loss of rank and wealth, but not the trial of being told that I am henceforth to cease to consider myself as your

son.

My dear boy," said the earl, raising him and clasping him in his arms, "be composed; ; you shall ever be the first, as you are now, alas! the only object of my care and affection: you shall be my son in all but the name.'

"And am I not then your son in truth?" he passionately asked. "Am I the offspring of the low and vile? Must I hereafter be a

stranger to you ?"

"Talk not in this manner, my beloved Montford," said the earl; "ever while I live shall you share my house, my fortune, and my heart."

"Never," he replied with vehemence, "never will I be the object of the scornful mockery of the world as the idle and abject dependent of the generous and forgiving man on whom I have been basely imposed as a son; my thanks and blessings shall ever rest on you, your name shall never be forgotten in my prayers, but our earthly intercourse must cease. For you, Lady Ellerton," he continued, turning to me, "to offer any thanks to you would be an insult to my feelings and your own: for the purposes of heartless ambition you tore me from the arms of my rightful mother, but you never attempted to supply her place by any instance of kindness or tenderness to me; coldness, neglect, and misapprehension, even from my earliest years,

Nov. 1838.-VOL. XXIII.--NO. XCI.

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