One summer day a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house, and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they would let him have lodging with them for a few months—a single room for bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family. Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of imagination. Home, friends, colleges, cities—all sunk away into oblivion, and HARRY HOWARD felt as if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in all languages; and there was much wondering talk over all the country side about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at the Fold. Every day-and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts among the hills, every hour-was Lucy before the young poet's eyes; and every hour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. . . . ...... What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of very impossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be in place of all the world. I will myself shed light over her being, till in a new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away, perennial and selfrenewed. In a few years the bright docile creature will have the soul of a very angel-and then, before God and at his holy altar, mine shall she become for ever— -here and hereafter in this paradise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise of heaven." Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in the change, imperceptible from day to day, but glorious at last, wrought on Lucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcely could her parents believe it was their same child, except that she was dutiful as before, as affectionate, and, as fond of all the familiar objects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had now grown to woman's stature— tall, though she scarcely seemed so except when among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling, and far more than fulfilling, the fair promise of her childhood. Never once had the young stranger-stranger no more-spoken to daughter, father, or mother, of his love. ...... At last it was known through the country that Mr. Howard-the stranger, the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much, but whom everybody loved, and whose father must at the least have been a lord,— was going, in a year or less, to marry the daughter of Allan Fleming-Lucy of the Fold... ...... In spring, Mr. Howard went away for a few months-it was said to the great city-and on his return at midsummer, Lucy was to be his bride. They parted with a few peaceful tears, and though absent were still together. And now a letter came, saying that before another Sabbath he would be at the Fold. . . . . . . Lucy saw the Sabbath of his return and its golden sun, but it was in her mind's eye only; for ere it was to descend behind the hills, she was not to be among the number of living things. ...... Up Forest-Ullswater the youth had come by the light of the setting sun; and as he crossed the mountains to Grassmere by the majestic path of the Hawse, still as every new star arose in heaven, with it arose as lustrous a new emotion from the bosom of his betrothed. The midnight hour had been fixed for his return to the Fold; and as he reached the cliffs above White-moss, according to agreement a light was burning in the low window-the very planet of love. . . . . Prayers crowded fast into his soul, and tears of joy fell from his eyes as he stood at the threshold, almost afraid in the trembling of life-deep affection to meet her first embrace. ..... In the silence, sobs and sighs, and one or two long deep groans! Then in another moment, he saw- - through the open door of the room where Lucy used to sleep—several figures moving to and fro in the light, and one figure upon its knees who else could it be but her father! Unnoticed he became one of the pale-faced company-and there he beheld her on her bed, mute and motionless, her face covered with a deplorable beauty-eyes closed, and her hands clasped upon her breast! "Dead, dead, dead!" muttered in his ringing ears a voice from the tombs, and he fell down in the midst of them with great violence upon the floor..... Three days and three nights did he sit beside her who so soon was to have been his bride-and come or go who would into the room, he saw them not-his sight was fixed on the winding-sheet, eyeing it without a single tear from feet to forehead, and sometimes looking up to heaven. As men forgotten in dungeons have lived miserably long without food, so did he, and so he would have done, on and on to the most far-off funeral day. From that one chair, close to the bedside, he never rose. Night after night, when all the vale was hushed, he never slept. Through one of the midnights there had been a great thunder-storm, the lightning smiting a cliff close to the cottage; but it seemed that he heard it not; and during the floods of next day, to him the roaring vale was silent. On the morning of the funeral, the old people-for now they seemed to be old-wept to see him sitting still beside their dead child; for each of the few remaining hours had now its own sad office, and a man had come to nail down the coffin. Three black specks suddenly alighted on the face of the corpse-and then off—and onand away-and returning-was heard the buzzing of large flies, attracted by beauty in its corruption. 'Ha-ha!" starting up, he cried in horror—“What birds of prey are these whom Satan has sent to devour the corpse ?" He became stricken with a sort of palsy, and, being led out to the open air, was laid down, seemingly as dead as her within, on the green daisied turf, where, beneath the shadow of the sycamore, they had so often sat, building up beautiful visions of a long blissful life. 66 The company assembled—but not before his eyes-the bier was lifted up and moved away down the silvan slope, and away round the head of the lake, and over the wooden bridge, accompanied here and there as it passed the wayside houses on the road to Grassmere, by the sound of psalms: but he saw he heard not;-when the last sound of the spade rebounded from the smooth arch of the grave, he was not by, but all the while he was lying where they left him, with one or two pitying dalesmen at his head and feet. When he awoke again and rose up, the cottage of the Fold was as if she had never been born-for she had vanished for ever and aye, and her sixteen years' smiling life was all extinguished in the dust. Weeks and months passed on, and still there was a vacant wildness in his eyes, and a mortal ghastliness all over his face, inexpressive of a reasonable soul. It scarcely seemed that he knew where he was, or in what part of the earth; yet, when left by himself, he never sought to move beyond the boundaries of the Fold. During the first faint glimmerings of returning reason, he would utter her name, over and over many times, with a mournful voice, but still he knew not that she was dead-then he began to caution them all to tread softly, for that sleep had fallen upon her, and her fever in its blessed balm might abate-then with groans, too affecting to be borne by those who heard them, he would ask why, since she was dead, God had the cruelty to keep him, her husband, in life; and finally and last of all, he imagined himself in Grassmere Church-yard, and clasping a little mound on the green, which it was evident he thought was her grave, he wept over it for hours and hours, and kissed it, and placed a stone at its head, and sometimes all at once broke out into fits of laughter, till the hideous fainting fits returned, and after long convulsions left him lying as if stone dead. As for his bodily frame, when Lucy's father lifted it up in his arms, little heavier was it than a bundle of withered fern. Nobody supposed that one so miserably attenuated and ghost-like could for many days be alive; yet not till the earth had thrice revolved round the sun did that body die, and then it was buried far away from the Fold, the banks of Rydal-water, and the sweet mountains of Westmoreland; for after passing like a shadow through many foreign lands, he ceased his pilgrimage in Palestine, even beneath the shadow of Mount Zion, and was laid, with a lock of hair-which, from the place it held, strangers knew to have belonged to one dearly belovedclose to his heart, on which it had lain so long and with which it was to moulder away in darkness, by Christian hands and in a Christian sepulchre. SECTION IL-FICTION. [Under this head are classed all those pieces which are taken from works of fiction, even though they have a historical basis, or are largely descriptive.] I.-STORY OF LE FEVRE. (STERNE.) He was a The Rev. Laurence Sterne was born at Clonmel, Ireland, in 1713. clergyman of the Episcopal Church in England for many years, and died in London in 1768 It was some time in the summer of that year in which Dendermond was taken by the Allies, when my uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper, with Trim sitting behind him at a small side-board.-I say sitting; for, in consideration of the Corporal's lame knee, which sometimes gave him exquisite pain,-when my uncle Toby dined or supped alone, he would never suffer the Corporal to stand: and the poor fellow's veneration for his master was such, that, with a proper artillery, my uncle Toby could have taken Dendermond itself with less trouble than he was able to gain this point over him; for many a time, when my uncle Toby supposed the Corporal's leg was at rest, he would look back, and detect him standing behind him with the most dutiful respect. This bred more little squabbles betwixt them than all other causes for five and twenty years together. He was one evening sitting thus at his supper, when the landlord of a little inn in the village came into the parlour with an empty phial in his hand, to beg a glass or two of sack. ""Tis for a poor gentleman-I think of the army," said the landlord, "who has been taken ill at my house, four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a desire to taste anything-till just now that he has a fancy for a glass of sack and a thin toast-'I think,' says he, taking his hand from his forehead, 'it would comfort me.' |