Painted by H. Thompson, R.A.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVI. March, 1850. No. 3.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVI. PHILADELPHIA, March, 1850. No. 3.

MARCH.

Spenser finely characterizes this month —

Study March with brows full sternly bent

And armed strongly;

yet he pictures it, as it advances, scattering blessings around, calling on the buds to throw aside their wintry vestments, and come forth to gladden the earth with their smiles. Such is, in reality, the progress of the season. In the early days of the month

“Winter, still lingering on the verge of Spring,

Retires reluctant, and, from time to time,

Looks back.”

As it proceeds, however —

“The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps forth

Her universal green, and the clear sky

Delights still more and more the gazing eye,”

and all is joy and gladness. The lark is caroling in the clear blue vault of heaven; the notes of the blackbird resound through the yet leafless groves; the robin is again heard from his lofty perch on the branch of some tall tree. The waters are dancing in the pale sunshine, and every thing looks as if regeneration had commenced its work.

A quaint old writer says, “the moneth of March was called by the Saxons Leneth moneth, because the days did then first begin in length to exceed the nights. And this moneth being by our ancient fathers so called when they received Christianity, and, consequently, therewith the annual Christian custome of fasting, they called their chief season of fasting the fast of Lenet, because of the Lenet moneth, whereon most part of this fasting always fell, and hereof it cometh that we now call it Lent.” According to other etymologists, Lenet, or Lent, means Spring; hence, March was literally the Spring month. Spring, most delightful of seasons! how beautifully have thy charms been celebrated in undying song, by bards of old from the very dawn of literature. With what pleasure do we look back on thy worshipers of other days—such as Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick, Ben Jonson, Shakspeare, each speaking of thy beauties out of the fullness of his heart. But in our admiration of those whose memories will ever live in song, let us not forget those of our own day; gratitude, admiration and pride prompt our notice of Bryant, our favorite American poet, who thus beautifully apostrophizes this blustering month:

The stormy March is come at last,

With wind and cloud and changing skies:

I hear the rushing of the blast,

That through the snowy valley flies.

Ah! passing few are those who speak,

Wild stormy month, in praise of thee!

Yet though thy winds are loud and bleak,

Thou art a welcome month to me.

For thou to northern lands again

The glad and glorious sun dost bring;

And thou hast joined the gentle train,

And wearest the gentle name of Spring.

And in thy reign of blast and storm

Smiles many a long bright sunny day,

When the changed winds are soft and warm,

And heaven puts on the bloom of May.

Then sing aloud the gushing rills,

And the full springs from frost set free,

That brightly leaping down the hills

Are just set out to meet the sea.

The year’s departing beauty hides

Of wintry storms the sullen threat,

But in thy sternest frown abides

A look of kindly promise yet.

Thou bring’st the hope of those calm skies,

And that soft hue of many showers,

When the wide bloom on earth that lies

Seems of a brighter world than ours.

How graphically does the author of the “Fairie Queene” marshal this harbinger of Spring, in the noble march of the Seasons —

First lusty Spring, all dight in leaves of floures

That freshly budded, and new blossomes did beare,

In which a thousand birds had built their bowres,

That sweetly sung to call forth paramoures:

And in his hand a javelin he did beare,

And on his head (as fit for warlike stoures)

A guilt-engraven morion he did weare,

That as some did him love, so others did him feare

The great operations of Nature during this month seem to be, to dry up the superabundant moisture of February, thereby preventing the roots and seeds from rotting in the earth, and gradually to bring forward the process of evolution in the swelling buds, whilst, at the same time, by the wholesome severity of the chilling blasts, they are kept from a premature disclosure, which would expose their tender contents to injury from the yet unconfirmed season. Shakspeare in one of his beautiful similies says —

And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,

Checks all our buds from blowing.

This seeming tyranny, however, is to be regarded as the most useful discipline; and those years generally prove most fruitful in which the pleasing appearances of Spring are the latest.

The sun having now acquired some power, often reminds us of the genial influence of Spring, though the naked shrubs and trees still give the landscape the comfortless appearance of Winter —

“There is a vernal freshness in the air,

A breaking in the sky, full of sweet promise

That the tardy Spring, capricious as she is,

And chary of her favors, will, ere long,

Smile on us in her beauty, and call forth

From slumber long and deep each living thing.

I know it by this warm delicious breeze,

Balmy, yet fresh, the very soul of health—

Of health, of hope, of joy; by these bright beams,

And yonder azure heavens, I know it well.

Soon the pent blossom in the naked spray,

Trained to the sunny wall, shall own her power,

And ope its leaves, tinged like an ocean shell:

Soon shall each bank which fronts the southern sky,

And tangled wood, and quiet sheltered nook,

Be gemm’d with countless flowers—earth’s living stars.”

Mild, pleasant weather in March is seldom, however, of long duration. In Europe, where the seasons are much more forward than they are with us, they have an old proverb—“A peck of March dust is worth a king’s ransom.” For as soon as a few dry days have made the land fit for working, the farmer goes to the plough, and, if the fair weather continues, proceeds to sowing oats and barley, though this business is seldom finished till the next month.

“A strange commotion,” observes a celebrated English writer, “may be seen and heard at this season among the winged creatures, portending momentous matters. The lark is high up in the cold air before daylight, and his chosen mistress is listening to him among the dank grass, with the dew still upon her unshaken wing. The robin, too, has left off, for a brief season, his low, plaintive piping, which, it must be confessed, was poured forth for his own exclusive satisfaction, and, reckoning on his spruce looks and sparkling eyes, issues his quick, peremptory love-call in a somewhat ungallant and husband-like manner.

“The sparrows who have lately been skulking silently about from tree to tree, with ruffled plumes and drooping wings, now spruce themselves up, till they do not look half their former size, and if it were not pairing time, one might fancy there was more of war than of love in their noisy squabblings.” Among other indications of the advancing season, says Gray —

New born lambs in rustic dance

Frisking ply their nimble feet,

Forgetful of their wintry trance

The birds his presence greet;

But chief the sky-lark warbles high

His trembling, thrilling ecstasy,

And lessening from the dazzled sight,

Melts into air and liquid light.

Nothing, at this season, is a more pleasing spectacle than the sporting of the young lambs, most of which are yeaned this month, and are, if the weather is severe, protected in covered sheds, till the mildness of the season permits them to venture abroad. Dyer, in his poem of “The Fleece,” gives a very natural and beautiful description of this circumstance:

Spread around thy tend’rest diligence

In ploughing spring-time, when the new-dropt lamb,

Tottering with weakness by his mother’s side,

Feels the fresh world about him, and each thorn,

Hillock, or furrow, trips his feeble feet;

Oh! guard his meek, sweet innocence from all

The innum’rous ills that rush around his life!

Mark the quick kite, with beak and talons prone,

Circling the skies to snatch him from the plain!

Observe the larking crows! beware the brake,

There the sly wolf the careless minute waits!

Nor trust thy neighbor’s dog, nor earth nor sky;

Thy bosom to a thousand cares divide!

Eurus oft slings his hail; the tardy fields

Pay not their promised food; and oft the dam

O’er her weak twins with empty udder mourns,

Or fails to guard, when the bold bird of prey

Alights, and hops in many turns around,

And tires her, also turning; to her aid

Be nimble, and the weakest, in thine arms,

Gently convey to the warm cote; and oft,

Between the lark’s note and the nightingale’s

His hungry bleating still with tepid milk;

In this soft office may thy children join,

And charitable habits learn in sport;

Nor yield him to himself, ere the vernal airs

Sprinkle thy little croft with daisy flowers.

Another most agreeable token of the arrival of Spring is, that the bees,

“Pilgrims of Summer, who do bow the knee

At every shrine,”

begin to venture out of their hives about the middle of this month. As their food is the honey-like juice found in the tubes of flowers, their coming abroad is a certain indication of the approach of Spring. No creature seems possessed of a greater power of foreseeing the weather; so that their appearance in the morning may be reckoned a sure token of a fine day.

The insect world, now sunbeams higher climb,

Oft dream of Spring, and wake before their time.

Bees stroke their little legs across their wings,

And venture short flights where the snow-drop brings

Its silver bell, and winter aconite,

Its buttercup-like flowers, that shut at night,

With green leaf furling round its cup of gold,

Like tender maiden muffled from the cold;

They sip, and find their honey-dreams are vain,

Then feebly hasten to their hives again.

The butterflies, by eager hopes undone,

Glad as a child come out to greet the sun;

Beneath the shadow of a sudden shower,

Are lost—nor see to-morrow’s April flower.

The gardens are now beginning to be studded by the crocus —

“The flower of Hope, whose hue

Is bright with coming joy,”

the varieties of which adorn the borders with a rich mixture of yellow and purple. The little shrubs of mezereon are in their beauty. The fields begin to be clothed with the springing grass, and but few flowers appear to decorate their velvet mounds. The flowers of Spring have been favorite themes for the poets. Shakspeare represents Perdita as desirous to present to her guests

Daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,

Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phœbus in his strength, a malady

Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and

The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,

The flower-de-luce being one!

and Chaucer has sung so melodiously and so affectionately of the charms of

These flowres, white and rede,

Soch that men callen daisies in our town,

as to entwine it with the recollections of himself. Shelley, among the modern writers, in a single couplet, has left one of the most exquisite descriptions of this flower that ever was written:

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,

The constellated flower that never sets!

And another poet endears it by a single epithet. He is seeking for a flower to place in the coffined hand of a dead infant.

Flowers! oh, a flower! a winter rose,

That tiny hand to fill,

Go search the fields! the lichen wet,

Bends o’er the unfailing well:

Beneath the furrow lingers yet

The scarlet pimpernel.

Peeps not a snow-drop in the bower,

Where never froze the spring?

A daisy? oh! bring childhood’s flower —

The half-blown daisy bring!

Yes, lay the daisy’s little head

Beside the little cheek;

Oh, hush! the last of five is dead —

The childless cannot speak!

The inimitable Wordsworth, with the garrulity of a nurse, fondling a beloved infant, lavishes on it in a single poem, several endearing appellations, in one verse styling it

A nun demure, of lowly port.

And in another line:

A queen in crown of rubies drest.

And again:

A little Cyclops, with one eye,

Staring to threaten or defy.

The primrose, a beautiful little flower but little known in this country, also has been embalmed in song. Milton introduces it in terms of endearment, “the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,” as if its little heart was too gentle to withstand alone the rude shocks of the world.

The violet seems to have been a favorite flower with this author, when he says,

No sweeter fragrance e’er perfumed the gale.

Herrick thus fancifully accounts for its color:

Love, on a day, wise poets tell,

Some time in wrangling spent,

Whether the violet should excel,

Or she, in sweetest scent.

But Venus, having lost the day,

Poore girles, she fell on you,

And beate ye so, as some dare say,

Her blows did make ye blew.

Even the most unpoetical nature must have been occasionally conscious of some such emotion as is embodied in these lines:

There’s to me

A daintiness about these early flowers

That touches one like poetry.

Among the visitants of March, especially if the season be mild, that now delights the eye of the observer, is the rich scarlet flower of the Pyrus Japonica; and the sweet-smelling jonquil irradiates the flower-border, and if he ventures into the fields, and braves the blustering winds of the season, he will be charmed with the bright blossoms of the celandine and the butter-cup, whose bright golden faces recall many an hour of childhood and happiness of the time when

“Daisies and buttercups gladdened our sight,

Like treasures of silver and gold.”

As we approach the Equinox, the storms and winds tempestuous and frequent, yet from these extremes, reconciled and moderated by the hand of Providence, much good results. Thus says the poet of nature, whose philosophic reflections and moral remarks are only to be equalled by his own matchless descriptions:

Be patient, swains, these cruel seeming winds

Blow not in vain; for hence they keep repressed

Those deepening clouds on clouds, surcharged with rain,

That o’er the vast Atlantic hither borne,

In endless rain would quench the summer blaze,

And cheerless drown the crude unripened year.

THE LADY OF THE ROCK.

A LEGEND OF NEW ENGLAND.

———

BY MISS M. J. WINDLE.

———

CHAPTER I.

Splendor in heaven, and horror on the main,

Sunshine and storm at once—a troubled day.

Dramatic Poem.

All readers of English history must be able to recall to mind with especial distinctness that period in its annals when the unfortunate Charles I. drew upon himself the odium and mistrust of Parliament, and London witnessed the unprecedented scene of the trial of a king for treason before a court chosen from amongst his subjects. It will be recollected that opposing religious interests operated with those of a merely political nature in leading many of the enemies of Charles to push their aversion to his measures to this extreme. His unwise prohibition of the Puritan emigration to the American colonies was not the least of these creating causes; and might be cited by such as are fond of tracing retributive justice in human affairs, as one of those instances in which men are permitted by their frowardness to pass upon themselves the sentence of their own destruction, since, but for that prohibition, the most powerful opponent of Charles, and the mighty instrument of his ruin, would have embarked for New England, and this country have become the theatre of Cromwell’s actions and renown—supposing that the elements of that remarkable character must have won elsewhere something of the same name he has left behind him—a name to live alike in the condemnation and commendation of mankind.

To the period alluded the beginning of this tale reverts. The trial of the king had been in progress several days. Of more than an hundred and thirty judges appointed by the Commons, about seventy sat in constant attendance. Chief in rank and importance among these was General Lisle—a man whom we should not confound either with the mad enthusiasts of that day, or with those dissembling hypocrites who used their religion only as a stepping-stone to power, or the cloak to conceal a guilty and treasonable ambition, since his opposition to Charles was actuated solely by the purest principles of patriotism and religion. He was, at the time of the trial, in his sixtieth year; and his constant attendance and unwavering firmness of purpose—the evident results of preconceived principle—during the whole sitting of that strange tribunal, were not without great effect in nerving to continued resolution the otherwise faltering minds of many of the younger judges. For it cannot be doubted that compunctious feelings must have had moments of ascendency in the hearts of a number of those with whom rested the event of this questionable trial. This was evinced in some by their occasional absence; in others, who nevertheless felt scrupulously bound to be present, by a nervous tremor at the appearance of the prisoner, and subsequent abstraction of attention from the scene, as testifying a desire to assume as small a share as possible of the deep responsibility belonging to the occasion.

Of the latter class was William Heath, the son of a Puritan divine in Sussex. At the opening of the war, he had repaired to the army, and risen by his gallantry and merits to the rank of general. Though still young, he had been afterward conspicuous in Parliament, and was one of those who took up accusations against the eleven members. Yet although he was friendly to the king’s deposition, he had at first positively refused to sit when appointed one of a Court called to make inquisition for his blood. And he had at length only consented to assume the place assigned him there, as it was notoriously believed, through the influence of Lisle, to whose daughter he was betrothed, and his nuptials with whom were to be completed on the night on which this narrative opens.

His handsome countenance, as he sat in the Court through the whole day preceding—though it contrasted with the pallor which had marked it during those previous, in wearing upon it the anxious flush of the expectant bridegroom, yet bore the same harassed air which had been seen upon it since the commencement of the trial, and which even the blissful hopes he was about to realize could not suffice to dissipate. It was only when he turned his eyes upon Lisle, unflinching in his dignified composure, that he seemed momentarily able to yield himself up to the unalloyed anticipation of happiness. So true is it, that a conscience ill at ease with itself has the power to mar the bliss of heaven.

The Court had adjourned; the prisoner had been remanded to the care of Lisle, in whose house he had been kept in strict and harsh confinement ever since his landing in London, during those hours not occupied with his trial; and but one more day remained to decide the doom of the unhappy Charles Stuart.

It was eight o’clock in the evening. In an apartment, far remote from that chamber of Lisle’s spacious but sombre-looking dwelling, which held the person of the royal prisoner, were assembled the wedding guests. As much festivity and ornament had been called to grace the occasion as was consistent with Lisle’s Puritanic views, yet the whole seemed by far too little to celebrate the marriage of the lovely divinity for whom it was prepared. The apartment was in the Elizabethan style of architecture, but devoid of those ornaments of luxurious taste, which, in the reign of Charles I. graced the houses of the opulent and distinguished of the Church of England. A quaint stiffness reigned throughout the furniture and other arrangements. Rows of high-backed chairs, interrupted here and there with a book-case, table, or other heavy piece of mahogany, stood in prim regularity against the wall; tall candlesticks, containing taller candles, cast their blue light from the mantel-piece, and a large Bible, laid open upon the table, was calculated to infuse devotional or religious sentiments into those mirthful feelings belonging to the occasion. No branches of mistletoe or holly hung around the room remained as suggestions of the recent Christmas; no superb and glittering chandelier shed its soft flood of light upon the assembly; no damask drapery or luxurious sofas gave an air of elegance and comfort to the spacious dreariness of the apartment; no music was prepared for the enlivenment of the evening; nor were any profane amusements that night to invoke the judgments of Heaven upon the approaching ceremony.

The company consisted of more than two hundred guests, gentlemen and ladies, all staunch Puritans, and opposers of the king. The countenances of many of the male portion of these were recognisable as the same which had, for the last few days, appeared as the arraigners at the trial so speedily about to be terminated, and a certain peculiar expression, common to each, betokening a mind preoccupied by one deeply engrossing topic, might have enabled an uninformed observer readily to select them from the rest. Yet there were others present to whom the affair alluded to was not less momentous, and with whom rested fully as much of the responsibility of its now almost certainly dark result.

One of these latter, conspicuously seated near to Lisle, was the mighty mover of the political revolution of the day, and the chief instrument in procuring the king’s unhappy position—the aspiring, though still religious Cromwell. The descriptions of history have made the personal appearance of this remarkable man so familiar to posterity, that it is superfluous here to draw any picture of his coarse and strongly-made form, and severely harsh, but thoughtful features. The mention of his name will at once call up to the minds of such as have ever interested themselves in the account of those stirring times which have left their impress upon subsequent events, and one of whose later results may be traced in our own national freedom, no vague or shadowy embodiment, but a well-defined portrait, engraved on the tablet of memory.

On this evening, his furtive glance around him from beneath his shaggy eye-brows, as he conversed with Lisle in a labyrinthine manner peculiar to him at times, evinced a wish to penetrate into the secrets of such hearts as rated his character at its true value. A close observer might have noted, too, that ever and anon as that glance, after wandering to distant parts of the room, returned and fixed upon Lisle, it gradually fell, as if stricken to earth by the steady gaze of the truly disinterested religionist, and the rebukes of its owner’s accusing conscience.

“The Court, thou sayest,” ran his speech, “have this day considered and agreed upon a judgment. It is well. But I tell thee that not Parliament, nor the army, nor this Court, could avail to pull down Charles Stuart from his high place, saving that the God of Heaven is at war with him. What though there be witnesses to prove that he set up his standard at Nottingham, led his armed troops at Newbury, Edgehill and Naseby—issued proclamations and mandates for the prosecution of the war? They are but instruments in the hands of the same God who destroyed and dethroned Belshazzar of old, because he was weighed in the balance and found wanting. And is it not meet that we Christians should buckle on our armor in behalf of the Lord of Hosts? Yea, verily! else for mine own part, Charles Stuart should not fall from the throne of England. I am not a bloody man; nay, by reason of human frailty, my heart had now well-nigh failed me in this very cause, but that he who putteth his hand to the plough in these troublous times, and looketh back, need be careful that he be not hanged upon the gallows which Haman prepared for Mordecai.”

The whole of this last sentence was spoken in soliloquy, for Lisle had at that moment risen to receive some guests.

The persons entering were three in number—a gentleman of about forty years of age, attended by two lovely females, whose youthful years and striking resemblance to himself, would instantly have suggested, what was in reality the case, that they were his daughters.

From the looks of interest with which his arrival was regarded by all present, it was evident that he was a person of some distinction, though he had not, at that period, given to the world the monument of his genius on which he has since built his immortality. Yet John Milton was justly celebrated even then for his political writings, his strenuous assertion and defense of liberty, his austere Puritanic views, and his abstemious manner of life. His whole appearance was prepossessing in the extreme, but rather interesting than commanding; for his stature was low, though his body was strongly made and muscular. His hair, which was of light brown, streaked with hues of gold, and hanging in silken waves to his shoulders, was parted in the middle, after the fashion of the day, and surmounted a low yet expansive forehead, sufficiently indicative of the depth of genius which lay beneath. His complexion was fair, and delicately colored as a woman’s; and the contour of his features might have been objected to as effeminate, were it not for the expression of manly dignity which animated the whole countenance. His full, gray eye, in its somewhat sleepy expression, evinced that quiet melancholy peculiar to poetic genius, while a certain searching and wandering look with which he occasionally stared fixedly around him, suggested the idea that his sight was not perfect.

The two daughters of Milton, by whom he was attended, were highly interesting in appearance, with the dignity of countenance peculiar to their father, and having upon them the unmistakable stamp of an inheritance from him of nature’s noblest gift of intellect.

Returning Lisle’s salutation as he approached to meet them, these two young females retired to a seat amongst the ladies, and left Milton and his host standing near the entrance of the apartment.

“Thou losest thy daughter to-night, honored friend,” said the former. “I trust she may find a continuance of that happiness in wedlock that she has enjoyed in her father’s house.”

“True happiness belongs not to this earth,” said Lisle. “It is in mercy withheld from us by the Almighty, that we may be the more ready to meet death when the summons calls us hence.”

“Thou speakest well,” replied Milton; “the very impossibility of finding happiness here is a merciful provision of the all-wise Creator. But talking of a willingness to encounter death, they tell me that the court have decided upon the sentence of the tyrant and traitor king. Is the rumor correct?”

“So much so,” said Lisle, “that to-morrow we sign the warrant for his execution.”

“I shall marvel,” said the other, “though I speak it with shame, if fifty out of your hundred have the Christian courage to stain their fingers with the touch of the bloody quill prepared for them.”

“May all such then,” returned Lisle, while a flush as of indignation passed over his countenance for an instant, and then died rapidly away—“may all such as flinch from the performance of this noble act of duty to their country and to God, and omit to place their names, when called upon, to that righteous document of His preparing, not find at the last judgment that the angel of the Lord has likewise omitted to place their names upon his book. But here is my daughter and her future husband; and the man of God has risen to perform the marriage ceremony. Excuse me, I must meet them at the door.”

“I pray thee give me thy hand first, and conduct me to a seat. A strange mistiness which I have of late had to come frequently across my eyes, is upon them now, and every object before me seems indistinct and confused.”

Lisle hastily did as his friend desired, scarcely hearing or heeding, in his hurry, the import of his words, and then advancing to meet his daughter and Heath, he conducted them toward the venerable minister of their faith, in waiting to unite the young couple in the bonds of holy wedlock.

As they took their station before him, his pious “Let us pray,” was heard, and all present arose. After a long and fervent supplication, in the manner of the Puritan divines of that period, he delivered a sort of homily upon the duties and responsibilities of the marriage state, and then pronounced an extemporaneous and brief ceremony, ending with the words, “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” This was followed by another lengthy prayer, and William Heath and Alice Lisle were husband and wife.

The company now advanced to greet the bride and groom, who separately returned their salutations with a polished grace appropriate to their differing sex.

Unscreened by the customary bridal veil, as savoring too much of a form belonging to the established church, the lovely face of Alice was not covered, save that a few natural ringlets, purposely left unfastened, fell upon her cheeks, and partially screened from observation her exquisitely beautiful features. Her dress was of the simplest and purest white, and without ornament or addition to enhance her natural loveliness; and it is impossible to conceive of a being more charming than she appeared in the modest diffidence of her sex on the most important and conspicuous occasion of a woman’s life, and yet withal losing nothing of the dignity of manner belonging to one conscious of possessing that energy of mind, which, so far from being, as some erroneously suppose, a masculine or unwomanly trait, is, on the contrary, the distinguishing and crowning mark of a character essentially feminine. What but such strength of mind has ever yet triumphed over female vanity and love of display, and from the exacting divinity of man’s homage, converted a woman into the self-sacrificing and judicious minister to his happiness, fitted her to be true to one with untiring devotion through evil report and good report, rejoicing with him not for her sake, but for his, in his prosperity; sharing with him uncomplainingly his adversity, and cheering, with words of comfort, while her own heart may have been well nigh breaking, the path in which, but for her example to shame him, and her voice to comfort and encourage him, he would have sunk to rise no more.

Well was it for William Heath that Alice Lisle possessed these requisites for becoming such an unwavering and devoted companion in misfortune, as we have described; for the day, though not immediately near, was still in store, when her willingness to encounter adversity, and her fitness to meet it with fortitude sufficient to sustain herself, her father, and the husband to whom she had that night given her hand, and had long since pledged the full affections of her heart, were amply to be tested.

The appearance of Heath was such as was well calculated to excite interest, and his mind, character, and winning manners, such as speedily to change this on the appearance of any preference on his part, into sentiments of a more tender character. There was something in his whole mien—in the easy and upright carriage of his head—the intrepid character of his features—the bold and vigorous flashing of his dark eyes—that marked him no common man.

The salutations were soon ended, and the company now being somewhat relieved from the awkward embarrassment which they had experienced while waiting for the appearance of those whom the occasion was to honor—for, in those days, society was much the same in that respect as at present, the company scattered, and gathered together in knots and groups, and discussed with great eagerness the engrossing topic of the trial. Conversation, however, flowed, not as it was wont, in its pleasant current, diverging here and there, as fancy or caprice suggested, but an appearance of gloom pervaded the whole intercourse; and although each individual appeared evidently to make an effort to relieve this feeling, the effort itself showed a consciousness of the constraint.

It was not then the custom to deprive the groom and bride of each other’s society during the whole evening after the ceremony, but was rather the fashion to throw them together as much as possible—which must at least, in the case of all love-matches, have been more conformable with the inclinations, than that habit of scrupulously avoiding one another, now in vogue. Agreeably with this ordinary arrangement, Alice and Heath withdrew toward the close of the evening, without attracting observation, into an anteroom adjoining the main apartment.

It had not escaped the notice of any, that notwithstanding the blissful occasion, the brow of Alice wore a cloud, if not actually of sorrow, at least of melancholy sadness. We may believe that this had attracted the especial notice of him who had that evening taken her happiness into his proper keeping. But his sympathetic heart rightly surmised its cause.

“Thou art sad, my own Alice,” he said, “on this night, which I had fondly hoped would have made thee as supremely joyful as it does myself. You distress yourself on account of the king’s situation: is it not so?”

“Not only on account of the king’s unhappy situation, but likewise because of the hand my father and thyself have had in it. I fear that his blood, if he be sentenced, as the rumor is, to-morrow, will be avenged upon the heads of those whom I love best on earth.”

“But, Alice,” argued the husband, “he has merited, by his tyranny and treason, this trial, and in contemning the court, as he has done throughout in refusing to plead, he will likewise merit whatever sentence it may see fit, after examining the competent witnesses, to pass upon him. Besides, has not your father told you that this is the Lord’s cause, and that He calleth aloud from the throne of Heaven for the blood of Charles Stuart?”

“Those are indeed my father’s words,” replied Alice, “too severe in his religious views, and forgetting that the Almighty is a God of mercy no less than of justice. But, William Heath, they are not the words dictated by the generous and kind heart that animates thy bosom, else Alice Lisle, though she be her father’s daughter, had not this night become thy wife. Listen to the conscience which the penetrating eye of true affection seeth even now reproving thee, and have no further hand in this bloody work. Charles Stuart may be all that the Parliament and your court have named him; and if he be, God forbid that I should justify his baseness. But as we are all prone to err, it is sweet to forgive, even as we hope to be forgiven. Go not to the court to-morrow, William, nor stain this hand of thine by affixing thy signature to the death-warrant of the king. Promise me this, I ask it as my wedding boon.”

“Would that you had spared me, beloved one, the pain of hearing you ask aught that I cannot and dare not grant. My word of honor to your father is pledged to perform the very act which you implore me to leave undone. It was the condition which sealed my happiness in calling you wife this night. When I would have shrunk from the responsibility of taking an active part in the trial, and resigned my place to an older and more experienced statesman than myself, Henry Lisle, in disgust at what he conceived the indecision and irreligion of my character, would have robbed me of that dear hope which has even now been realized. I was forced to promise your father, Alice, that I would not only accept my place as one of the judges, but that I would be present throughout the trial, and shrink from no act which my position as a member of the court imposed on me—even to the signing of the warrant for Charles Stuart’s death. Is there naught else, involving less than my honor, that you would have me grant you? If there is, ask it, sweet one, and I will move heaven and earth to accomplish it.”

“These are idle words of gallantry, William, unworthy the confidence which should exist between us. A wife need have no boon to ask of her husband unless in a case which involves his own best interests. As such, I would have had thee remain away from the court to-morrow, and even have sought to use our united influence to detain my father also. But it seems he has set his heart upon the matter even more than I had deemed. I pray the Lord that his retributive justice for this parricidal act, fall not heavily on the heads of all of us. If this cause, as ye both believe, be His, can ye not be persuaded that He will avenge Himself on the king without human agency. Is there no hope for Charles Stuart? He is in this house: can no means be contrived for his escape?”

“That were impossible, dearest, guarded as he is on all hands. But if he would but abate his hauteur, and plead his cause in the eloquent manner he so well knows how to assume, there might yet, perhaps, exist a hope for him. In this lies his only chance of escape.”

At that moment supper was announced, and Alice and Heath repaired with the rest of the company to the refreshment-room.

——

CHAPTER II.

“Hark! the warning tone

Deepens—its word is death!”

Mrs. Hemans.

The large hall clock in Lisle’s house had told the hour of eleven, after the marriage described in the last chapter, and some fifteen or twenty minutes had elapsed since the departure of the guests, when the reader is invited into a small upper chamber, in a remote wing of the mansion. It was rather comfortless than otherwise in its whole aspect, and its grated windows, and long distance from any adjoining room—being surrounded entirely by galleries—suggested the idea of a place of confinement. It was one of those small rooms, common in large buildings at that period, and scarcely more suitable in its arrangements for an occupant than the waste halls and galleries which led to it. Some hasty preparations had been made for the prisoner’s accommodation. Arras had been tacked up, and a fire lighted in the rusty grate, which had been long unused, and a rude pallet placed in one corner.

Seated before a table in this chamber, was a person of something less than fifty years of age. He was dressed in plain black velvet, slashed with satin, and on his cloak, which was thrown back, glittered a star belonging to the order of the garter. His hair, thick and black, was slightly sprinkled with gray, and arranged in the custom of the day with scrupulous exactness. His mustaches were large and curled upward, and his pointed beard was of that formal style, so frequently seen in the portraits of that reign. His face was oval and handsome: the features being regular, notwithstanding that his full brown eyes seemed rather dull as he sat in thought; and a peculiar expression of exceeding melancholy rested upon his countenance. This look of melancholy was not relieved by the marks of any strong ruling passion or principle, nor much indication of individuality of character. Yet withal, it might not have escaped observation, that in the whole aspect there was not wanting a certain air of cold resolution, almost at variance with the mildness of the brow. This person was of the middle height, strongly made, and showing in his entire appearance a dignity denoting the highest birth.

Before him on the table lay the miniature of a lovely child, and a large Book of Common Prayer open beside it. He sat gazing upon the picture, until a tear ran slowly down his cheek. It was that of a blooming boy, the bright face shaded by clustered ringlets, and the whole countenance beaming with youthful hope and beauty.

“Sweet child,” he said audibly, “may you ascend the throne of the Stuarts under better auspices than I have done! Heaven in its mercy grant that you may never suffer the fate of your wretched father! Or if, at least, such hour of trial ever come upon you, may you not know what it is to be thus alone in your affliction, and separated from all you love on earth—shut out from the sweet sympathies of wife, children and home, while your rank and dignity as King of England is trampled upon, and you are imprisoned and tried by your own people!”

His softened mood seemed suddenly to give place to more angry feelings, as, rising up, and the dullness of his eyes brightening to a keen flash, he exclaimed:

“Let this court continue the mockery of its sitting; let it arraign me day by day, as a traitor, tyrant, and murderer. Am I not Charles Stuart, heir to a mighty line of sovereigns, and shall I stoop to acknowledge its authority, rather than resign myself to whatever fate its villainy may impose on me? Methinks already my doom could hardly be aggravated: yon matted floor—those wooden chairs—those grated windows—this narrow room—surely a prison were no worse. Yet perchance—but it cannot—no, it CANNOT be, that the base Cromwell will dare incite them to shed my blood.”

At this moment the door opened, and Alice Heath entered the apartment.

“Who is it intrudes upon me at this unseasonable hour?” angrily exclaimed the king, turning round and facing his fair visiter, who approached him, and dropped upon her knee.

“Spare your displeasure, sire!” she said, in the most soothing voice, “I am General Lisle’s daughter, but I come to you as a subject and a friend.”

“Rise, maiden,” said the king, “and talk not of being subject to an imprisoned and belied monarch. Charles Stuart is hardly now a sovereign in name.”

“Nevertheless, I would perform my duty by acknowledging him as such,” replied Alice, taking his hand, and then rising. “But it is not merely to admit his title, that I come to him at this hour of the night. I come to beg him to sacrifice his pride as the owner of that same dignity, and stoop to plead his cause for the saving of his life. Know, my liege, that to-morrow, unless you consent to relax your pertinacious refusal to plead your cause, the Court sign the warrant for your execution. I am ignorant whether or not you be all that my father and your enemies believe; but if you be, you are then the less fit to meet death.”

“Death! And has it come to this?” exclaimed Charles, setting his teeth, and rapidly pacing the room for some moments, without replying to his gentle visiter, or even heeding her presence.

At length she ventured to approach him.

“I have told you in what alone lies your hope of averting this awful sentence, my lord. I pray you to reflect upon it this night. A little sacrifice of pride—the mere utterance of a few humble words—”

“Sacrifice of pride! utterance of humble words! thou knowest not, girl, of what you speak. Charles Stuart cannot stoop so far, even though it be to save his life. Spirits of my royal ancestors,” added he, “spare me from a weakness which would make you blush to own me as your descendant.” And he covered his face with his hands.

“If it is permitted to a subject to own the feeling for her king, I compassionate your unhappy case most deeply,” said Alice, taking his passive hand, while her tears were falling fast.

A few moments silence prevailed, which Alice interrupted.

“Can I not induce you,” said she at length, “to value the precious boon of your life above the foolish pride of which we were speaking? Think, my lord, how sweet is existence, and all its precious ties of pleasure and affection—and she pointed to the miniature on the table—how awful is a violent death, and how lonely and dark and mysterious the tomb. Cannot the consideration of all these things move your purpose?”

“I thank you, sweet maiden, for your noble intention, and may God reward you for your words and wishes of goodness,” replied Charles, much touched by her tone of deep interest, “but my resolution is fixed.”

“Can you suggest nothing then, yourself, my liege, less displeasing to you? Have you no powerful friend whose influence I might this night move in your behalf?”

“Nay, it cannot be,” replied the king, after pondering a moment upon her words. “Charles Stuart is deserted on all hands, and it is the Lord’s will that he shall die. I begin to look upon it already with resignation. Yet the first intimation came upon me like the stroke of a thunderbolt. Private assassination I have long dreaded; but a public execution I had never dreamed of. Nevertheless, be it so. I shall meet death like a man and a king.”

“Then, farewell, since my visit is futile, and the Almighty be your support and comfort in your added affliction,” said Alice, as again kissing his hand, and bathing it with tears, she withdrew.

Left alone, the king remained for some time in deep thought. All anger and weakness appeared to have passed from his mood, and the remarkable expression of melancholy which we have before described, deepened on his face to a degree scarce ever seen except upon canvas. Not less heightened, however, was that coldly resolute air likewise previously alluded to—so that if evidently sad, it might likewise have been seen that Charles Stuart was also determined unto death.

What were his reflections in view of the announcement he had just received from the lips of Alice Heath, and which he saw no means of averting short of sacrificing the dignity with which his rank as sovereign of England invested him, we will not attempt to conjecture. None who have not been in his situation can form any thing like an adequate conception of his state of mind; and it were sacrilege to attempt to invade the sanctuary of the human soul in such hour of agony.

Whatever his cogitations were, they were of limited duration. For, after sitting thus for a considerable time, Charles pushed back his chair, and falling upon his knees before the table, he drew the Book of Prayer toward him, and clasping his hands upon it, read aloud:

“The day of thy servant’s calamity is at hand, and he is accounted as one of them that go down to the pit. Blessed Lord, remember thy mercies; give him, we beseech thee, patience in this his time of adversity, and support under the terrors that encompass him; set before his eyes the things which he hath done in the body, which have justly provoked thee to anger, and forasmuch as his continuance appeareth to be short among us, quicken him so much the more by thy grace and Holy Spirit; that he, being converted and reconciled unto thee, before thy judgments have cut him off from the earth, may at the hour of his death depart in peace, and be received into thine everlasting kingdom, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

Rising, he slowly disrobed, and throwing himself upon the bed, soon sunk into a placid slumber. Strange! that sleep of the prisoner in the prospect of death. The excitement of suspense—the palpitation of hope not altogether dead—these banish rest; but when the feverish perturbation caused by expectation departs, and the mind has nothing to feed upon but one dark and fearful certainty, it turns to seek forgetfulness in sleep.

——

CHAPTER III.

With my own power my majesty they wound;

In the king’s name, the king himself’s uncrowned,

So doth the dust destroy the diamond.

Charles Stuart’s Majesty in Misery.

Sardanapalus.——Answer, slave! how long

Have slaves decided on the doom of kings?

Herald.—Since they were free.

Byron’s Sardanapalus.

All London was astir. The excited populace filled every street and alley of the vast city. The report that sentence of death was that day to be passed upon Charles Stuart, rung on every tongue, and the popular feeling ran mainly in favor of his condemnation. All business was suspended; and from an early hour crowds were wending their way to Westminster Hall, where the trial was about to be brought to a close.

That specimen of perfect architecture—which modern art is not ashamed to take as a model, but vainly seeks to imitate—had been fitted up with great regard to the smallest details, for this most remarkable occasion. This had been done in order to invest the ceremonial of the trial with all the pomp and dignity becoming the delegates of a great nation, sitting in judgment upon their monarch, and trying him for a breach of the trust committed to his care—the weal and peace of the people. Benches covered with blue velvet were arranged at the upper end for the accommodation of the judges; and within the bar were strewn thick carpets and cushions. A splendid chair, to correspond with the benches, was placed for the use of the firm and subtle Bradshaw, who had the honor or disgrace, according as it may be deemed, of presiding over the court. He was seated before a table covered with crimson drapery—his fine countenance betokening that decision for which he was remarkable—attired in costly dress, and supported on either hand by his assessors.

The galleries were filled to suffocation with spectators; and the main body of the building was thronged with a vast concourse of people, while a regiment of armed soldiery was in attendance, with pieces loaded and ready for use in case any tumult should arise. The Puritan party, now no longer timid or wavering, took no pains to conceal their sense of coming victory, and even Cromwell, usually so guarded in every outward observance, took his seat without the bar, with a look of conscious triumph. A profound stillness prevailed as the judges entered. Fifty-nine only out of the one hundred and thirty-three had been able to summon sufficient resolution to be present. With sad and solemn, though severe and determined countenances, these severally seated themselves, apparently filled almost to a sense of oppression, with the responsibility devolved on them, but seeming not the less resolved to act according to their determination previously agreed upon. Among these were Lisle and Heath, the latter of whom was perhaps the only commissioner whose countenance wanted something of the resolute bearing we have described. They had scarcely taken their seats when the rumbling noise of an approaching vehicle was distinctly heard. The previous silence if possible deepened, and for some moments the multitude, as if moved by one mighty impulse, almost ceased to breathe. Not a hand was in motion—not an air stirred—and scarce a pulse beat, as the ponderous door slowly revolved upon its hinges, and the regal prisoner entered. He cast a look of blended pride and sorrow upon the judges, as he walked up to the bar, surrounded by a guard. But he made no token of acknowledgment or reverence, nor did he remove his velvet cap, as he took the seat prepared for him.

The names of the judges were called over. Bradshaw then arose, and in a silvery and ringing tone, which made his declamation peculiarly impressive, while a shade of deepening pallor was perceptible on his countenance, addressed the court.

He deviated from the usually calm and temperate manner he was accustomed to assume, and became warm and impassioned. As he went on, his rich voice swelled on the air with a clear, distinct intonation, that fell deeply and artfully into the ears of the listeners. He was evidently bent as much on appealing to those without the bar, as to the judges. With the consummate skill of a rhetorician he first drew the picture of the serf-like slavery of the people, dependent upon the will or caprice of the king. He next pointed out the liberty to which, by a just sentence passed against its tyrant, the nation would be restored. Although a studied simplicity of language pervaded in general his remarks, yet, at times, some striking or brilliant metaphor would, as it were, accidentally escape him, which was speedily followed by a loud roar of applause, evincing its full appreciation by his hearers. He then turned to the prisoner in the following words:

“Charles Stuart, King of England, it is now the fourth time that you have been arraigned before this tribunal. On each occasion you have persisted in contemning its authority, and denying its validity—breaking in upon its proceedings with frivolous and impertinent interruptions—frequently turning your back upon the judges—nay, sometimes even laughing outright at the awful charges which have been preferred against you. Since its last convention, witnesses have appeared to prove conclusively that you took up arms against the troops commissioned by the Parliament. Once again, therefore, you are called upon in the name of your country and your God, to plead guilty or not guilty of tyranny, treason and murder.”

No change whatever took place in the king’s countenance at hearing these words. When they had ceased, he slowly rose, his head still covered, and made answer:

“I acknowledge not the authority of this court. Were I to do so, it were to betray the sacred and inviolable trust confided to me in the care of the liberties of the British people. Your delegation, to be legal, should have come alike from the individual voice of the meanest and most ignorant boor of this realm, as from the high and cultivated hypocrites who have empowered you. Should I ratify such an authority—in the eyes of the law not better founded than that of pirates and murderers—I would indeed be the traitor ye would brand me. Nay, let me rather die a martyr to the constitution. But before ye proceed to pronounce the judgment ye threaten, I demand, by all those rights of inheritance which invest me as a monarch, with a majesty and power second only to the Omnipotent, to be heard before a convention of both houses of Parliament; and, whether or not ye refuse me, I adjure ye, the so-called judges of this court, as ye each hope to be arraigned at no unlawful or incompetent bar at the final judgment, to pause and reflect before ye take upon ye the high-handed responsibility of passing sentence upon your king.”

He resumed his seat, and after a few moments’ intense quiet, William Heath arose, and suggested that the court would do well to adjourn for a brief season for the purpose of taking into consideration the request of the prisoner.

The expediency of this suggestion was acceded to, and they withdrew and remained for some fifteen or twenty minutes in conference.

On their return, after a few moments’ consultation with some of the older judges, Lisle among the rest, Bradshaw, taking a parchment from the table, turned to the king with these words:

“Charles Stuart, you have in your request to be heard before Parliament, as well as in other language addressed by you some moments since to this honorable court, given a fresh denial of its jurisdiction, and an added proof of your contempt. It has already, by such contumacy on your part, been too long delayed, and must now proceed to pass judgment against you. You have been proven a traitor to England in waging war against her Parliament, and in refusing to plead in your own behalf, or endeavoring to invalidate such proof, justice has no alternative but to demand your death. The following warrant has therefore been agreed upon by your judges, who will presently affix their signatures thereunto. ‘We, the Commissioners appointed by the Commons to sit in trial on Charles Stuart, King of England, arraigned as a traitor, tyrant and murderer, having found these charges amply substantiated, do for the glory of God, and the liberties of the British people, hereby adjudge him to death.’ ”

He ceased: the members of the court had risen during the reading of the warrant, to testify their concurrence, and the fatal document was now circulated among them to receive their various signatures. It was observed to be written in the chirography of Cromwell.

Throughout the remarks of Bradshaw, Charles had remained with his eyes fixed upon the ground; but while the warrant was being read, he raised them and cast them upon Cromwell, who was standing without the bar. Brief as was this glance, it seemed to convey some momentous truth, for Cromwell became at first scarlet, and then pale as death. Instantly, however, he turned away, and began coolly to unfold the plaits of a white cambric handkerchief, and appeared only occupied with that object.

As soon as the warrant had been passed around to receive the signatures, and Bradshaw had resumed his seat, Charles arose, and with more of dignity than contempt in the act, he turned his back upon the judges—as though his pride would prevent their observing whatever effect their sentence had upon him.

The profound silence which had heretofore prevailed among the crowd, here gave way to loud hisses, and expressions of contempt and disgust; while the soldiers, instigated by the Roundheads, uttered exclamations of “Justice!” “Justice!”

Charles, on hearing the cries of these latter, turned mildly toward them, and casting on them a look of pity, said, in a tone of voice, which, though not loud, was yet sufficiently distinct to be heard by all within the bar:

“I pity them! for a little money they would do as much against their commanders.”

The proceedings closed; and under a strong escort, and amid the shouts of the populace, the noble prisoner was conducted out of the hall. As he proceeded, various outrages were put upon him. With a kingly majesty superior to insult, he received these indignities, as though he deemed them unworthy to excite any emotion within him, save what his sorrowful eye indicated, that of pity for the offenders. Some few, in the midst of the general odium, endeavored to evince their continued allegiance. But their faint prayer of “God save the king!” was drowned in the swelling cries of “Down with the traitor!” “Vengeance on the tyrant!” “Away with the murderer!” One soldier, who was intentionally or inadvertently heard humming the national air of his country, was stricken to the ground by his officer, just as the king crossed the threshold of the door.

“Poor fellow,” said Charles, “methinks his punishment was greater than his offence.”

——

CHAPTER IV.

Will nothing move him?

The Two Foscari.

The streets of a crowded metropolis, which, with their noise and clamor, their variety of lights, and the eternally changing bustle of their hundred groups, offer, by night especially, a spectacle which, though composed of the most vulgar materials, when they are separately considered, has, when they are combined, a striking and powerful effect upon the imagination.

At a late hour on the following night, when London presented such a scene as we have described, two persons were winding their way to the Palace of Whitehall. One was an individual of the male sex, in whom might have been seen, even through the gloom, a polished and dignified bearing, which, together with his dress—though of the Puritanic order—declared him a gentleman of more than ordinary rank. His companion was a delicate woman, evidently like himself of the most genteel class, but attired in the simplest and plainest walking costume of the times. She leaned on his arm with much appearance of womanly trust, although there was an air of self-confidence in her step, suggesting the idea of one capable of acting alone on occasion of emergency, and a striking yet perfectly feminine dignity presiding over her whole aspect.

“I have counseled your visiting him at this late hour,” said the gentleman, “because, as the only hope lies in striking terror into his conscience, the purpose may be best answered in the solitude and silence of a season like this. Conscience is a coward in the daylight, but darkness and night generally give her courage to assert her power.”

“True, William,” replied Alice Heath, (for she it was, and her companion, as the reader is aware by this time, was her husband,) “true—but alas! I fear for the success of my visit; the individual of whom we are speaking deceives himself no less than others, and therefore to him she is a coward at all times. Hast thou not read what my poor dead grandfather’s old acquaintance has written about a man’s ‘making such a sinner of his conscience as to believe his own lies’?”

“I have not forgotten the passage, my Alice, and ever correct in your judgment, you have penetrated rightly into the singular character we are alluding to. I wot it were hard for himself to say how far he has been actuated by pure, and how far by ambitious motives, in the hand he has had in the sentence of the king. Nevertheless, you would believe his conscience to be not altogether dead, had you seen him tremble and grow pale yesterday in the court, during the reading of the warrant, (which, by the way, he had worded and written with his own hands,) when Charles Stuart raised his eyes and looked upon him as if to imply that he knew him for the instigator, and no unselfish one either, of his doom. The emotion he then testified, it was, which led me to hope he may yet be operated upon to prevent the fatal judgment from taking effect. It is true, Charles is a traitor, and I cannot regret that in being arraigned and tried, an example has been made of him. But having from the first anticipated this result, except for your father, Alice, I would have had no part in the matter, being entirely opposed to the shedding of his blood. All ends which his death can accomplish have already been answered; and I devoutly pray that the effort your gentle heart is now about to make for the saving of his life, may be blessed in procuring that merciful result.”

At this moment they paused before the magnificent structure known as the Palace of Whitehall, and applied for admission. Vacated some time since by the king, it was now occupied by his rival in power, the aspiring Cromwell; and although the hour was so late, the vast pile was still illuminated. Having gained speedy access to the main building, the visiters were admitted by a servant in the gorgeous livery of the fallen monarch. Heath requested to be shown to an anteroom, while Alice solicited to be conducted without previous announcement to the presence of his master. After a moment’s hesitation on the part of the servant, which, however, was quickly overcome by her persuasive manner, he conducted her through various spacious halls, and up numerous flights of stairs, till pausing suddenly before the door of a chamber, he knocked gently. As they waited for an answer, the accents of prayer were distinctly audible. They were desired to enter; the servant threw open the door, simply announcing a lady. Alice entered, and found herself alone with Cromwell.

The apartment was an anteroom attached to the spacious bed-chamber formerly belonging to the king. It was luxuriously furnished with all the appliances of ease and elegance suitable to a royal with-drawing room. Tables and chairs of rose-wood, richly inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, were arranged in order around the room; magnificent vases of porcelain decorated the mantel-piece; statues from the chisel of Michael Angelo stood in the niches; and pictures in gorgeous frames hung upon the walls.

There, near a table, on which burned a single-shaded lamp, standing upright, in the attitude of prayer, from which he had just been interrupted, stood the occupant. For an instant—as she lingered near the door, and looked upon his figure, which bore so strongly the impress of power, and felt that on his word hung the fate of him for whom she had come to plead—she already feared for the success of her mission, and would fain almost have retracted her visit. But remembering the accents of prayer she had heard while waiting without, she considered that her purposed appeal was to the conscience of one whom she had just surprised, as it were, in the presence of his Maker, and took courage to advance.

“May I pray thee to approach, and be seated, madam, and unfold the object of this visit,” said Cromwell, in a thick, rapid utterance, the result of his surprise, as he waved his visiter to a chair. “At that distance, and by this light, I can hardly distinguish the features of the lady who so inopportunely and unceremoniously honors me with her presence.”

Immediately advancing, she threw back her hood, and offering him her hand, said, “It is Alice Heath, the daughter of your friend, General Lisle.”

Cromwell’s rugged countenance expressed the utmost surprise, as he awkwardly strove to assume a courtesy foreign to his manner, and exchange his first ungracious greeting for something of a more cordial welcome.

With exceeding tact, Alice hastened to relieve his embarrassment, by falling back into the chair he had offered, and at once declaring the purpose of her visit.

“General Cromwell,” she began, in a voice sweetly distinct, “you stand high in the eyes of man, not only as a patriot, but a strict and conscientious servant of the Most High. As such, you have been the main instrument in procuring the doom now hanging in awful expectation over the head of him who once tenanted, in the same splendor that now surrounds yourself, the building in which I find you. Methinks his vacation of these princely premises, and your succession thereunto, renders you scarcely capable of being a disinterested advocate for his death—since, by it, you become successor to all the pomp and power formerly his. Have you asked yourself the question whether no motives of self-aggrandisement have tainted this deed of patriotism, or sullied this act of religion?”

“Your language is unwarrantable and unbecoming, madam,” said Cromwell, deadly pale and trembling violently; “it is written—”

“Excuse me,” said Alice, interrupting him; “you think it uncourteous and even impertinent that I should intrude upon you with a question such as I but now addressed to you. But, General Cromwell, a human life is at stake, and that the life of no ordinary being, but the descendant of a race of kings. Nay, hear me out, sir, I beg of you. Charles Stuart is about to die an awful and a violent death; your voice has condemned him—your voice can yet save him. If it be your country’s weal that you desire, that object has been already sufficiently answered by the example of his trial; or, if it is to further the cause of the Lord of Hosts that you place yourself at the head of Britain in his place, be assured that he who would assert his power by surrounding himself with a pomp like this, is no delegate of One who commissioned Moses to lead his people through the wilderness, a sharer in the common lot, and a houseless wanderer like themselves. Bethink you, therefore, what must be the doom of him at the final judgment, who—for the sake of ambition and pride—in order that he might for the brief space of his life enjoy luxury and power—under the borrowed name, too, of that God who views the act with horror and detestation—stains his hands with parricidal blood. Yes, General Cromwell, for thy own soul’s, if not for mercy’s sake, I entreat thee, in whom alone lies the power, to cause Charles Stuart’s sentence to be remitted.”

As she waxed warm in her enthusiasm, Alice Heath had risen and drawn close to Cromwell, who was still standing, as on her entrance, and in her entreaty, she had even laid her hand on his arm. His tremor and pallor had increased every moment while she spoke, and though at first he would have interrupted her, he seemed very greatly at a loss, and little disposed to reply.

After a few moment’s hesitation, during which Alice looked in his face with the deepest anxiety, and awaited his answer, he said, “Go to, young woman, who presumest to interfere between a judge raised up for the redemption of England, and a traitor king, whom the Lord hath permitted to be condemned to the axe. As my soul liveth, and as He liveth who will one day make me a ruler in Israel, thou hast more than the vanity of thy sex, in hoping by thy foolish speech to move me to lift up my hand against the decree of the Almighty. Truly —”

“Nay, General Cromwell,” said Alice, interrupting him, as soon as she perceived he was about to enter into one of his lengthy and pointless harangues “nay, you evade the matter both with me and with the conscience whose workings I have for the last few moments beheld in the disorder of your frame. Have its pleadings—for to them I look and not to any eloquence of mine own—been of no avail? Will it please you to do aught for the king?”

“Young lady,” replied Cromwell, bursting into tears, which he was occasionally wont to do, “a man like me, who is called to perform great acts in Israel, had need to be immovable to feelings of human charities. Think you not it is painful to our mortal sympathies to be called upon to execute the righteous judgments of Heaven, while we are yet in the body. And think you that when we must remove some prime tyrant that the instruments of his removal can at all times view their part in his punishment with unshaken nerves? Must they not even at times doubt the inspiration under which they have felt and acted? Must they not occasionally question the origin of that strong impulse which appears the inward answer to prayer for direction under heavenly difficulties, and in their disturbed apprehensions, confuse even the responses of truth with the strong delusions of Satan. Would that the Lord would harden my heart even as he hardened that of —”

“Stop, sir,” said Alice, again interrupting him ere his softened mood should have passed away, “utter not such a sacrilegeous wish. Why are the kindly sympathies which you describe implanted in your bosom, unless it be to prevent your ambition from stifling your humanity? The rather encourage them, and save Charles Stuart. Let your mind dwell upon the many traits of nobleness in his character which might be mentioned with enthusiasm, ay, and with sorrow, too, that they should be thus sacrificed.”

“The Most High, young woman, will have no fainters in spirit in his service—none who turn back from Mount Gilead for fear of the Amalekites. To be brief—it waxes late; to discuss this topic longer is but to distress us both. Charles Stuart must die—the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

As he spoke, he bowed with a determined but respectful reverence, and when he lifted up his head, the expression of his features told Alice that the doom of the king was irrevocably fixed.

“I see there is no hope,” said she, with a deep sigh, as Cromwell spoke these words in a tone of decision which left her no further encouragement, and with a brevity so unusual to him. Nor was his hint to close the interview lost upon her. “No hope!” she repeated, drawing back. “I leave you, then, inexorable man of iron, and may you not plead thus in vain for mercy at the bar of God.”

So saying, she turned, and rejoining her husband who remained in waiting for her, they returned together to Lisle’s house.

[To be continued.

THE BRIGAND AND HIS WIFE.
Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine by F. Humphrys

THE BRIGAND AND HIS WIFE.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

The fine picture which our artist has given us for this number of our Magazine, is a spirited representation of a scene in the lives of those men of violence and murder who, setting at defiance both human and divine laws, wrest from the unarmed or overpowered traveler, amid the mountainous districts of Europe, the means of subsistence they are too idle to obtain through honest industry. To their secret retreat the band of robbers have been traced by armed soldiers, whose approach they are anxiously watching. The wife of the robber-chief is by his side.

By songs, stories, and pictures, much false sympathy has been created in the minds of the unreflecting for “bold brigands,” who are represented too often as possessed of chivalrous feelings and generous sentiments, while a charm is thrown about their wild and reckless lives which is altogether unreal. Love, too, a often brought in to give a warmer and more attractive color to the pictures thus drawn. The roving bandit is represented as loving passionately and tenderly some refined, pure-hearted, and high-souled woman, who, in turn, pours out for him her heart’s best affections.

Different from all this is the hard and harsh reality of the bandit’s life. He is no man of fine feelings and generous sympathies, but a selfish and cruel-minded villain; and between him and the woman, who, as his wife, shares his life of exposure and violence, there can be no gentle passages of affection, for these are only born of love laid upon the solid foundations of virtuous respect.

The real truth on this subject, Dumas has given in a Calabrian story. A body of soldiers had pursued a band of mountain robbers, in Calabria, and hemmed them in so effectually that, with all the passes guarded, escape seemed impossible. From this dilemma the chief determined to relieve his men, as they had refused to surrender, although promised pardon if they would give up their leader. The only possible way of escape was by crossing a deep chasm, so wide, that even the supple chamois could not make the fearful leap in safety. To reach this point, it was necessary to go along a narrow pass, near which sentinels had been placed. The movement was made at night. The chief of the robbers had a wife, and she had a babe at her bosom. For days they had been without food, except such roots as they dug from the ground, and the want of nourishment had dried the fountain of life in the mother’s breast, and the babe pined and fretted with hunger. As the little band moved silently along the narrow path, in which, if discovered by the soldiers, their destruction would be inevitable, the suffering babe began to cry. Instantly it was seized by the father, swung in the air, and its brains dashed out against a tree. For a moment the mother stood like a statue of horror, then gathering the mutilated remains of her murdered babe in her apron, she followed the retreating party.

Safely, through the skill of the chief, the chasm was passed, and they were beyond the reach of danger. All, then, after procuring some food, lay down to sleep, except a sentinel and the mother, who dug a grave with her own hands, in which to bury her child. This sad duty performed, she returned to the spot where her husband and his companions lay in deep slumber. It was not difficult for her to persuade the tired and sleepy sentinel to let her take his place, and soon she alone remained awake. Then stealthily approaching the spot where the father of her dead babe lay, she placed the muzzle of the piece she had taken from the sentinel within a few inches of his breast, and pulled the trigger. The ball passed through his heart!

Here we have something of the reality attending the life of a “bold brigand.” A lawless robber and murderer is incapable of such a sentiment as the true love of a woman. This feeling lives only in the breast of the virtuous. And whenever the poet or the novelist represents a pirate or robber as loving faithfully and tenderly some beautiful, true-hearted woman, the reader may set it all down as mere romance. Such things are contrary to the very nature of things. They never exist in real life. True love of woman is an unselfish love; but the inordinate self-love of these men leads them so utterly to disregard the rights of others, as to commit robbery and murder. How, then, are they capable of loving any thing out of themselves? It is impossible. A bitter fountain cannot send forth sweet water.

BALLADS OF THE CAMPAIGN IN MEXICO. NO. II.

———

BY HENRY KIRBY BENNER, U. S. A.

———

Resaca de la Palma.

Once again was daylight dawning, when the shrill, awakening fife

Called our soldiers from their slumbers to the toils of martial life:

We were weary: some among us through the long and dreary night

Had traversed, like silent ghosts, the scene of Palo Alto’s fight —

For our wounded lay around us, who had struggled at our side,

Stemming with their human bodies Battle’s hurricane-like tide.

All were anxious, for we knew that, though our foes had flown the field,

They were still in force before us, vowing never more to yield.

One by one our scouts came in—some with faces of dismay —

Others smiling at the promise of another glorious fray;

But the tidings that they brought only fired us, and we stood,

Like the old Norweyan Vikings, anxious for the feast of blood.

When our wounded were in motion, for our general, like a man

And a father, sent them back before the onward march began —

When we saw the laden wagons, with the sad, disheartened train,

Toward Point Isabel in silence slowly roll along the plain —

We advanced and took our places, drawing a determined breath,

While our wide-expanding nostrils drank the distant scent of death.

As we marched along the prairie, creeping, cat-like, from the day,

We could see the spotted jaguar, stealing from his human prey,

While in flocks the huge, majestic condor with his mighty wings

Flapped from his unusual feast, and swept above the plain in rings,

Shrieking, as he clove the air, some desperate necromantic charm

Over the pale, enchanted bodies that had lost the power of harm.

Here and there, as we proceeded, lying wounded in our way

We would meet some pallid victim, perishing in the face of day;

He was, yesterday, a foeman—now, a helpless, suffering man,

And a brother, praying sadly for some good Samaritan:

So we bound his wounds and fed him—each one from his little store

Taking what his pitying heart would fain have made a great deal more.

Hour by hour we marched in silence, throwing out in our advance

Daring souls with dauntless hearts, who laughed at lasso, ball and lance,

And, as, riding like the wind, one dashed along our serried files,

Twice a thousand lips breathed welcome, twice a thousand eyes looked smiles;

But at last the tidings reached us that our foes had made a stand

Between us and our gallant friends, near the yellow Rio Grande.

On we went with bounding hearts till the prairie lay behind.

While the tall, swan-like palmetto waved a welcome in the wind;

But when we reached the Swamp of Palms,[^[1]] the bristling chapparal,

With our foes in solid thousands, rose before us, like a wall;

And the dense woods frowned upon us, clothed with centuries of green,

Precipitously plunging down the dark and deep ravine.

The army paused. A moment, and we passed along the plain,

With rapid steps and loud huzzas, defiling by the train,

And spreading right and left, marched on, when, ere we fired a shot,

Cannon and grape and musket-ball swept through us thick and hot;

But we never faltered—never; no; we took their fire, and then,

Acknowledging their courtesy, we gave it back like men.

But our men, though doing wonders, began to disappear,

When Ridgely thundered with his guns up from the distant rear,

And we heard his balls go crashing through the thick palmetto trees,

And the shrieks of wounded Mexicans come ringing up the breeze;

And we hurried on like maniacs, scarcely stopping to take breath,

While every where around us rushed the messengers of death!

By this time our brave infantry had reached the chapparal: —

Here and there we heard our comrades answering one another’s call;

And the sharp crack of their muskets, and the death-cries of their foes,

With the constant boom of cannon—Battle’s diapason rose!

All was chaos; while, like lightning, sword and lance and bayonet

Flashed around, as desperate men in the deadly mêlée met.

Hand to hand, and foot to foot, through the ascending clouds of smoke,

On the enemy, through them, over them, gallantly our soldiers broke,

Dealing death at every stroke: then we heard the shout of May,

And beheld his brave dragoons for an instant line the way:

Ridgely’s voice—the roar of cannon—clashing sabres—dying cries —

Rose distinct, yet intermingled as a chorus, toward the skies,

As the vapor separated, dashing down the rough ravine,

May and Inge, with all their men, for an instant filled the scene —

Rushing like an autumn tempest through the chapparal, down the glen,

May, half-hidden by streaming hair, with gallant Inge led on the men,

Loud hurraing: but a crash! and Inge clutched wildly at his rein —

And twice a score of neighing steeds swept riderless along the plain.

All in vain: another instant! May was riding o’er the wall,

Waving on his fiery followers through the tangled chapparal;

Wheeling in a moment, backward, with the same resistless force

Came the hero, like a giant, on his gaunt and sinewy horse; —

As our infantry came up, battling boldly by his gun,

General La Vega yielded, and the battery was won.

But the brave Tampicoäns still refused to fly or yield,

And maintained the unequal fight until the last one kissed the field;

When their flag went down a cry of anguish rent the Mexic ranks,

And our foemen broke and fled despairing toward the river’s banks.

All was over: we pursued them, and the now-descending sun,

Saw Resaca de la Palma’s bloody battle lost and won!

AN ESSAY

ON AMERICAN LITERATURE AND ITS PROSPECTS.

———

BY MRS. M. A. FORD.

———

A national literature, purely our own, must rise superior to an imitation of that fostered by the institutions of the old world, and of course sustaining them. The principles of liberty and independence, which govern our country, are united in our national motto, with that which only can give them permanency, Virtue. Loose this bond of union, and the beautiful fabric of our institutions falls forever. To sustain virtue in her proud position, should then be the principal aim of republican literature. It is this alone which will preserve us from the disastrous fate of former republics, beginning, like our own, with a dawn of prosperity most auspicious, but whose fall, when at the very noon of fame and power, startled and disappointed a world.

Most of the writers and philosophers of ancient times, who defended virtue, wrote, regardless of the vengeance of those corrupt and luxurious governments under which they lived.

Thus was their testimony rendered more dear to succeeding generations, from the sacrifice of selfish interest with which it was given.

That genius which is called into action by the desire of fame only, must be interested; that stimulated by gain alone must be mercenary. Happily there is not enough of these encouragements in our new country to induce the many to leave the walks of busy life, or the more healthful though rugged paths of labor, from motives so liable to disappointment. Few can afford to devote a life to literature, and many of our brightest gems in poetry and prose are the offspring of minds, whose influence is more powerfully felt in the great action of our nation’s progress, or the refining process of their own good example on the morals of society. Others just peep out from the veil of their cherished domestic duties, to throw a simple flower into the world’s path. If lost, or unheeded, it causes no aching of the heart.

The great system of general education, now disseminating its light throughout our land, will place knowledge a welcome guest at every cottage hearth, and national intelligence will form the firm basis of our national literature. The labor of intense thought will not fall too heavily on the few. From the shade of every valley, from the height of every hill, genius will spring forth. The friction of cheerful and healthful labor, will light the spark, which virtuous emulation will fan to a flame.

From the freedom and happiness enjoyed, must necessarily arise a grateful sense of these blessings, a warm expression of that sense, and an anxiety to perpetuate those blessings. With genius and education, these feelings will find a vent in the flowing numbers of song, or the more perspicuous paragraphs of prose.

In both the old and new world, the present is a golden age of literature, rich in its array of brilliant talents and gifted minds. Some of these are glorious as the day-star, and like it, the harbingers of increasing light. Minds that from their own fullness impart knowledge and feelings, whose gushings are like those of the mountain stream, pure even when impetuous.

Others are like the meteor, brilliant, startling; their path a track of fire, but under that bright deception, like that wandering light are only a combination of unwholesome exhalations. Under their false glare, the clouds of vice are tinged with beauty, and the guilt of crime seems but the trace of romantic catastrophe.

That literature alone is valuable, which leaves an impression of increased knowledge, and improved moral sentiments, of chastened feeling and benign impulses, of virtuous resolutions and high aspirations. By these, man is prepared to fill the high station for which the Creator designed him. To partake of the joys of life without selfishness, to meet its sorrows with fortitude, to practice its virtues with firmness, to avoid its errors by resolution, and to dispense its charities with the feeling of brother toward brother. Under a free government, the arts and intrigue of the courtier would be useless and disgraceful appendages to the accomplishments that ornament life. Unsullied honor is based on truth and generous feeling, and the blessings enjoyed by freemen will teach them not to treat lightly the privileges of others. As the principles they profess are so different from those maintained by the policy of monarchical courts, the expression of them must also differ, and our country can proudly point to those, whose writings on these subjects may justly be considered standards for future efforts.

Constellations are already forming in our literary skies; some stars shining out in bold relief, like those glowing in the belt of Orion, or sparkling in the eye of Aldebaren. Some stretch across the northern sky, separate and grand as those in the Ursa major, while others timidly shrink from their own simplicity and beauty, like the meek twinkling of Pleiads. But all have their peculiar influence.

History, with its crowding events and exciting struggles, has already employed many gifted pens in our land. That of Bancroft, with his strong resources and vivid style; of Prescott, with his fine arrangement and freshness, combined with his clear narrative and research, and others, whose talents a limited essay is obliged to pass without remark.

Ethics and philosophy have brought to their aid a strong array of brilliant minds; the peculiar lights of each have their admirers. Comparison might be considered invidious, and it is enough that their names and talents belong to their country.

In various sciences, the American mind has shown itself capable of deep investigation, and our writers on these subjects, by their clear elucidations, have shed light on much that was shadowed in doubt.

In medical learning many works have appeared, and some of them of high importance and value. The number must increase, for the varied climate and diseases of our country require it, and the young physician, just entering on the practice of his profession in some newly settled prairie, or border land of the northern lakes, will find an American author his best guide in the treatment of diseases that differ so much in their nature from those of Europe, as to be but lightly glanced at by the best medical writers of the old world.

Works on law are also increasing; some of them emanating from those whose eloquence has “held captive their hearers.” If they cannot always impart that charm which seems the peculiar privilege of the few, their lessons must be the surest guide to the American lawyer; for, though including the best portions of the English code, there are so many peculiarities appertaining to the different States of the Union, each a sovereignty in itself, that national works must offer the clearest elucidations of all difficult cases.

Descriptive and narrative literature is rich in its contributions. The graceful ease and elegant diction of Irving, his vivid imagination and touching feeling, and the charm which he throws around his subject, have gained him an enviable fame both at home and abroad.

In the peculiar walks of Indian life, and the lonely daring of pioneer character, the pen of Cooper moves like a spell, and when it dips in the sea-wave—like the stroke of the oar, bright droppings glisten on its rising.

We can but name a few of the many whose talents have adorned this portion of literature. The interesting delineations of Simms, whose patriotic feeling glows under a southern sky; the reminiscent charm of Kennedy; the graphic strength of Paulding; the lively portraiture of Mrs. Kirkland, and the graceful but feeling pictures of Miss Sedgwick, recur to our memory.

These have all written on American subjects, and many more of equal merit might be added, if space allowed.

In poetry we have the bright imagery and refreshing beauty of Bryant, whose genius, like a clear stream, reflects the heavens above, and the loveliness of nature around.

Many others have the charm of originality, and a versification almost musical, but the votaries of the muse are so numerous, we must pass them without naming, yet our country may be proud of many a wild flower of poesy, the fragrance of which has been borne over the ocean, and appreciated in other lands.

The sweetness and beauty of Mrs. Sigourney’s muse, the elegance and delicacy of Halleck, the tenderness and strong feeling of Dana, the light grace of Willis, and many others of equal genius and talent are crowding on our memory.

But in this, as in every other branch, we must look to the future for the fulfillment of the high destiny of American literature.

Perhaps nothing has contributed more to the diffusion of intellectual knowledge, than periodical literature, which includes the reviews, magazines, and daily and weekly newspapers. Not a great many years have passed since the number of these were few, and though that few were of known excellence, how sparing was the patronage bestowed on them. How were the journals of other lands looked to for that supply of intellectual beauty, which the gifted minds of our own countrymen needed but a fair encouragement to pour forth. Yet who does not now look back with pride to the pioneer path of our first periodicals, those early gatherers of essays, showing the powers of mind now more strongly developed in our country?

These, in later years, have been followed by a gradual increase, and we can now proudly point to their numbers, many of them varied with the classic learning and lighter literature of contributors, whose talents would do honor to any country.

Possessing great advantages from its unassuming appearance and light form, periodical literature travels through the land. Like a gentle stream it winds its way, with banks covered with flowers, and pebbled bed, too pure to sully its waters. It comes to the door of the cottager to refresh him after labor. Its murmurs are heard near the village-green, and youth hastens to its welcome bath. If it bears not on its breast the heavy freight the larger river boasts, the light skiff on its waters offers a bijouterie that is truly interesting and valuable. Gems of poetry, incidents in history, pearls from the ocean, legends of the land, light from the sciences, and aid from the arts.

Some of the most beautiful effusions of American genius have graced the pages of periodical literature. Timid and retiring talent has been encouraged to take the first step in a path it is destined to illumine. How many gems from the ocean of thought have been brought to the surface, to sparkle on the view by the aid of this species of literature? What pearls from the shells which memory gathers, have thrown the faint but touching light of the past upon the present?

The gifted writers whose efforts have appeared on the pages of periodical literature, are too numerous, and many of them too equal in merit, though different in style, to be particularly named. This is especially the case with female writers, from some of whose pens the finely pointed moral or touching incident of narrative comes forth with varied beauty, but almost equal claims to attention.

This may be said with less force of male writers, where the scintillations of wit and graceful charm of humor in some, is in contrast with the grave discussions and intellectual strength of others, where the elegance of classic learning stands side by side with useful essays on national policy.

But the bright prospect of future American literature again opens before us in all its moral grandeur. When time shall have quieted the ruder anxieties of our being, when comfortable independence shall have passed from the few to the many, and the busy exertion of life can take longer rest from its labors, when the dignity of intellect shall outweigh that of wealth, how will the treasures of mind be poured on our land!

Future American literature must be very varied, from the great difference of climate and habits in our widely extended country. Stretching its immense length along the great Atlantic, the firm barrier of its waters, it almost connects the frozen pole with the burning Equator. The fervid imaginations of the sunny South will breathe their strains under the shadow of the lime-tree, and amidst the fragrance of the orange-grove, and the scenery and flowers that give emblems to their poetry, will be as strange to the dwellers on the rock-bound coast of the North-Eastern States, as the acacia of Arabia is to the Icelander, but its strange beauty will be dear to them, for it is American still.

From the calm, cold North, the calculations of Philosophy and the discoveries of scientific research will continue to issue. The progress already made, forms a bright page in our history, and the last great discovery which has realized the vision of our venerated Franklin, making the lightning of heaven the agent of earth, seems like a stray beam from the science of the skies. By it, knowledge, love, feeling, travel with the unseen speed of “angel’s visits.” The name of Morse will find a high association with that of the “Sage of the Revolution.”

For the light yet elegant portions of literature, our country presents a wide field. The history of Poetry in the old world, is mournfully, painfully interesting, from the blind dependence of the immortal Homer, down to the despairing end of the gifted Chatterton. From thence to the present time, how few have been successful, and of that few, how oft have their pages been marked, not, indeed, by the tear of weary anguish and hope deferred, but by a bitterness of sentiment filling the place from whence that tear was obliterated. Alas! how many strings in the harp of Genius have been broken by the force of its own disappointed feelings.

Pastoral poetry may well offer its incense at the shrine of our country’s scenery and productions, and breathe its strains in harmony with the happiness of American rural life. Here there need be no servile muse to sing of fruits the parched lip never tasted, nor of groves and streams whose verdure and coolness were felt not in the close atmosphere of garret penury. But from homes rendered happy by industry and content, the poets of our land may breathe their strains. The heart will speak from its own fullness, like the ascending vapor of the cottage chimney, that tells the comfort and warmth of the hearth beneath its roof.

Narrative prose and heroic verse have a deep fount from whence to draw.

It is true the legendary lore of our country has not yet the hoariness of age upon it, but what should recommend it more, it has the light of truth. If we have not moss-grown towers, whose mouldy recesses tell of ambition and cruelty, we have traces on the hills, and monuments in the vales of our varied landscape, that awaken the memory of deeds whose heroism might rival the days of chivalry; of battles where the disparity of force called forth the virtuous sacrifice of another Leonidas, of acts of patriotism and self-devotion worthy that purest of Romans, Regulus.

Love, during the struggle of the Revolution, was a sentiment, so guided by high impulses, as to offer to the pen of historical romance the most touching and thrilling incidents; vows rendered more sacred by the parting of the plighted, not to be renewed at the altar until the light of liberty shone on their country. The simple ribbon-knot and the glossy braid of hair, were to the patriot-lover talismans in the hour of danger; and courage to meet every trial came with the sweet thoughts of home and happiness with his American maid.

Mothers, with Spartan virtue, sacrificed their maternal tenderness on the altar of liberty, and urged the steps of their sons to the combat. Aged fathers, with eager though feeble hands, fastened the sword of their early days on the youthful limbs of those sons; and when their loved forms were brought back from the field of their country’s glory, cold in death, have pillowed their white locks on the young breasts, and died under the excitement of sorrow struggling with patriotic pride and glory.

Biography might appear like an overloaded vessel, her deck crowded with the bright and honored names of heroes, statesmen, patriots, scholars, and others, the famed and gifted of our land—but she gallantly bears the freight, for a greater than Cæsar is among them. Washington! how the full tide of feeling gushes at the name—a nation’s pride and glory, and the admiration of the world. Many brilliant pens have told his character and fame, and yet the theme seems new. How bright a pattern to American youth, is the docility of his childhood, and submission to parental rule, the beautiful truth of his boyhood, and pure morality of his youth. His tenderness, even in the noon of his fame, to the venerable mother, on whose breast at parting fell the strange but unchecked tears of manhood. His pure patriotism, his undaunted courage, his unchanging firmness and impartial justice, his meek devotion and faith in the God of nations, all present a beautiful example for imitation. Happy America! rearing in your own bosom the son whose talents and virtues were your protection in the hour of danger. And gloriously was he associated with the bright host of heroes and patriots, whose deathless names will live with his in the grateful memory of the country to which they gave freedom and independence. With such themes biography holds, and must continue to hold, an elevated rank in American literature; and when to these is added the bright list of those who, in later times have periled their all for their country’s glory, or whose talents and virtues have brightened her fame, the task of perpetuating their names and deeds to posterity will employ many gifted minds, and must look far into the future for its completion.

The ancient history of our country lies hid in the western mounds, or amidst the buried relics of past ages. Forests, in Central America, have grown over the ruins of temples and dwellings that, awakened from their sleep of ages by a Stephens and others, will in time become the Palmyra of the Western World. In the grandeur of their mysteries conjecture seems lost, yet there would appear a connection between them and the aboriginal race of our own land, whose lingering steps are receding toward the Pacific. In this remaining posterity of a lost genealogy, all that is left to tell the tale of the race from whence they sprung, is their firm independence, undying love of country, deep sense of injury and spirit of revenge, and strong faith of happier homes beyond the grave. Is not this a theme worthy the pen of the American poet, philosopher, antiquarian, or novelist?

With the many heroic virtues of Indian character, can we wonder that their principal fault should be that which filial piety made glorious in a Hannibal. In future they will be better understood, and while justice and humanity, nay, national pride, call on our government to civilize and enlighten them, the pens of their white brethren will show their true lineaments, and perhaps the hand of some American antiquary lift the veil that hides their lost ancestry.

While the music of their language yet lingers in the names of our rivers, we cannot forget their claims. In a lyric of much sweetness, a gifted poetess of our country pleads that they may not be changed. How quickly their sound arrests the attention of the traveler and stranger? How softly their syllables fall from the lips of beauty. There seems a magic spell about them. May it be their protection from any change. It is but just that the streams that first knew the Indians in their pride and glory should retain the melody of their language.

In many instances, the Indian character has been found capable of great refinement from education, and of the few who have been placed in our colleges, some have evinced superior talents. How pleasing is the thought that these children of the forest may hereafter contribute to the national literature of America. Will their strains be mournful, like the plaintive songs of the Israelites by the waters of the Euphrates? Perhaps not, for though many are far removed from the more eastern homes of their fathers, still it is their native land, now bounded only by the waves of the Pacific.

In anticipating the future literature of our country, its glorious effects on other nations should not be forgotten. The freedom and happiness that could fan into flame all that is great in mind, and all that is beautiful in virtue, must be appreciated; and from the combined effect of her own great example, and the persuasive influence of a literature then truly American, our country will become the standard of future republics.

THE CRY OF THE FORSAKEN.

———

BY GIFTIE.

———

Sing me to sleep, dear mother,

Upon thy faithful breast —

Ah! many a day hath passed, mother,

Since I laid me there to rest.

Now I am weary, weary,

And I fain would sleep once more,

And dream such dreams of heaven,

As I used to dream of yore.

Since then I’ve known Love’s power, mother —

Its heritage is tears —

And I have felt, sweet mother,

Its wild tumultuous fears.

Now hath the idol fallen,

On my soul’s ruined shrine —

All other hearts deceive me,

In grief I turn to thine.

Lull me to rest, kind mother,

And sing to me the while —

These tearful eyes shall cease to weep

These lips put on a smile.

And tell me of that blessed land

Where love is not in vain,

And they who wept despairingly

Shall never weep again.

Lull me to rest, dear mother,

Sing to me soft and low,

The same sweet mournful strain, mother,

You sang me long ago,

I am weary and heart-broken,

And I fain would be at rest,

Oh take me in thine arms, mother —

Let me slumber on thy breast.

A MIDNIGHT STORM IN MARCH.

———

BY CAROLINE MAY.

———

The storm beats loud against my window-pane,

And though upon the pillow of my bed

In pleasant warmth is laid my grateful head,

I cannot sleep for the excited train

Of thoughts the storm arouses in my brain.

O, wretched poor, who have no home—or if

A home—are weak and weary, sore and stiff,

For want of food and clothes and fire! O rain,

Fierce rain, and howling wind, and hissing hail,

Venting your rage beneath the flag of night —

A black flag, without stars—how do they quail,

Those aching, shivering poor, beneath your might!

O God, be pitiful! and to the poor’s sad tale

Make rich hearts open with the opening light.

BUONDLEMONTE.

A TALE OF ITALY.

———

BY JOSEPH A. NUNES.

———

CHAPTER I.

“So thou art here, in Florence, to be wived, Buondlemonte?” a gay gallant laughingly observed to the tallest and most elegant of a group of cavaliers, as they sauntered leisurely together along the principal street of Florence: “Thou art at last to be shut out from the pale of happy celibacy, and be offered up, a living sacrifice, on the altar of that most insatiate of all insatiate deities, Hymen? By Mars, but I pity thee, poor youth!”

“Reserve thy pity, thou thoughtless railer, for those who stand in need on’t,” the eldest of the party, a dark-complexioned, stern-featured man, replied in the same vein in which the first individual had spoken, though the frown on his brow, and the compression of his lips evinced that he was not pleased at the tone of the conversation. “Buondlemonte mates with the noblest house of Florence; and though he ranks with the first in Italy, he is not to be pitied when he enters the family of Amedi.”

“Nay, Amedi, thou shalt not make me grave,” the first speaker said, smiling at the serious looks of his saturnine companion; “I will commiserate the fate of any luckless bachelor, whose days of freedom draw so near their close; though, thou haughty senor, I will make this reservation in thy favor, that if there exists aught to mitigate the thraldom of matrimony, it may be found in the smiles of the beautiful Francesca, and in the alliance with thy thrice noble house.”

“Even that admission is a step toward Guiseppo’s reformation,” Buondlemonte observed, with a light laugh, as he placed his hand upon the shoulder of the last speaker; “it proves that he is not quite incorrigible.”

“But tell me, Buondlemonte—I must have it from thine own lips,” Guiseppo said; “dost thou wed so soon? Shall we see thee a married man on the third day from this?”

“ ’Tis most true, Guiseppo,” Buondlemonte replied, with a smile upon his lips, though, as he spoke, an almost imperceptible sigh escaped him; “in three days thou wilt see me wived. ’Tis an old contract, existing since my youth. Amedi’s father and my own were friends—companions in arms—and agreed to this union of our families. The time has arrived for the consummation of the contract, and I am here to fulfill it.”

“Alas, poor youth! in what a tone of resignation was that last sentence uttered. A pious maiden bending to the will of mother church could not have answered more meekly. I fear me thou art a reluctant neophyte in Hymen’s temple.”

“A truce with thy jesting, Guiseppo Leoni,” Jacopa Amedi angrily observed; “thou dost proceed beyond the limits of courtesy. If the noble Buondlemonte chooses to submit to thy rough raillery, I do not. The honor of my house is concerned, and that shall not be tampered with by light lips.”

“Enough, Amedi,” Buondlemonte said, as he interrupted a sharp retort from Leoni, “Guiseppo meant no harm, and I have grown too wise, in my travels, to be angered by a friendly jest.”

“Methinks, though,” another of the group, who had hitherto remained silent, observed, “that Buondlemonte might vindicate my fair cousin from the insinuation of accepting an unwilling husband. The court of the emperor is a poor school for chivalry, if it does not teach the lesson that a fair lady’s name should be preserved, like the polished surface of a mirror, unsullied even by a breath.”

What reply Buondlemonte might have made to the captious cousin of his betrothed bride is impossible to say, for at that moment a young page, in gay attire, came up to the party, and, cap in hand, inquired if one of them was not Buondlemonte.

“There stands the object of thy search, thou elfin emissary from the bower of beauty!” Guiseppo smilingly remarked, as he pointed to Buondlemonte; “deliver the challenge thou art charged with, and he will meet thy mistress, though she be Medusa or Circe.”

The child carefully undid the folds of his scarf, and taking from thence a small note, presented it with a graceful obeisance to Buondlemonte.

“Your answer, noble sir,” he said. “I am directed to bear it.”

Buondlemonte took the billet, and, after excusing himself to his companions, stepped aside and cut the silken thread that bound it.

The note must have contained something more than ordinary, for as the young man glanced his eyes over it, the red blood mounted to his cheeks and his forehead.

“Whom dost thou serve, my pretty youth?” Jacopa Amedi asked, as Buondlemonte perused and reperused the paper.

“To answer your question, signor,” the boy replied with a sly smile, as he bowed with deference to the noble, “would be to prove that I am unworthy to serve any one.”

“And to quicken thy speech,” Amedi’s cousin remarked, in a tone half jesting half earnest, “it would be well to apply a leathern strap to thy shoulders.”

“Fie, Baptista Amedi, fie!” Guiseppo said, as he observed the child’s eyes flash with indignation; “conceive no foul thoughts toward the boy; he merits thy praise for being faithful to his mistress, whoever she may be.”

By this time Buondlemonte had concluded his perusal of the note, and turning to the boy, he said, as he handed him a piece of money, “I will, in person, bear an answer to your missive.”

The page bowed, and donning his plumed cap, was soon lost to observation among the passengers in the street.

It was in vain that Guiseppo jested and Jacopa Amedi looked grave and inquisitive; Buondlemonte was uncommunicative, and would make no revelations in relation to the page’s mission.

“By my faith, thou art a lucky knight, Buondlemonte!” Guiseppo said. “Not yet a day in Florence, and thou hast an assignation, I warrant me, with some mysterious being.”

They had now arrived at the corner of a street that crossed the one in which they were. Jacopa Amedi paused and pointed to a splendid mansion.

“You know our palace,” he said; “shall we thither?”

“Not now, Amedi,” Buondlemonte replied; “I have a commission for a friend to execute before I can gratify my own wishes. In an hour I’ll wait upon you at the palace; in the meantime present my duty to your fair sister, and say that ere long I will offer it with my own lips.”

The young men separated; Amedi and his relatives turning their steps toward the palace of the former, while Buondlemonte and Guiseppo continued their walk alone.

——

CHAPTER II.

“Buondlemonte, thou art no happy bridegroom,” Guiseppo said, after they had proceeded for some time in silence.

Buondlemonte sighed, but made no reply.

“Thou dost not love Amedi’s sister,” Guiseppo observed, in a half interrogative tone.

“ ’Twas a compact between parents, and not a union of lovers that was intended,” Buondlemonte replied bitterly.

“Still thou dost not love her—this marriage promises thee no happiness.”

Buondlemonte paused a moment, and then said,

“I think, Guiseppo, thou art my friend, and I may trust thee.”

“Hast thou not proved me thy friend?” Guiseppo asked. “When first we left Italy together for the court of the French king, we pledged our faith each to the other. During our sojourn there thou still hast found me—thoughtless and gay, perhaps—but ever constant. ’Tis true, we parted, you to continue your travels to the capital of the empire, while I returned to Italy; and we have never met again until to-day, yet, believe me, I am still the same Guiseppo thou hast known among the brave knights and gay dames of France.”

Buondlemonte grasped the hand that was offered to him, and after a momentary pause, said,

“Thou art right, my friend; I am no happy bridegroom. This marriage is hateful to me—’tis none of my seeking.”

“Then why let it proceed?”

“Because the Amedi wish it, and the world thinks my honor demands it; heaven knows for no other cause. ’Tis true, Francesca is fair—so says report, for I have not seen her since her youth—but to me she can never seem so. She may be enchanting, yet me she cannot enchant. There is a dream of my youth about my heart, a spell that will not be dissipated. There is but one form that dwells in my memory, one voice that can breathe music in my ear.”

“And where dwells this siren?” Guiseppo asked with a slight smile at the enthusiasm of his friend.

“Here, even here, in Florence,” Buondlemonte replied.

“And her family is called?”

“Donati.”

“Pandora and all her mischiefs!” exclaimed Guiseppo; “thou couldst not have mentioned a name more hateful to the family of thy affianced bride. The extremes of the earth are not wider apart than the houses of Donati and Amedi—a deadly feud exists between them.”

“From my childhood, I have known but one absorbing influence,” Buondlemonte said, “and that is my love for Camilla Donati. ’Tis a secret I have kept within my own breast till now; for I was educated to consider myself the husband of another, and, looking upon the marriage with Amedi’s sister as a thing that must be, I felt reconciled—while the period of our union was indefinite—to what I could not avoid.”

“Why not feel so still?” Guiseppo asked.

“I cannot,” was the reply; “the nearer the hour for our nuptials approaches, the more repugnant do I feel. There’s no sympathy between the house of Amedi and Buondelmonte—they are Ghibellines and I am a Guelph. I love not Francesca; I like not her unsmiling brothers; yet I must wed, and in fulfilling a compact made without my consent, doom myself to certain misery.”

Buondlemonte might have added that the missive which the page had delivered to him was from the mother of Camilla Donati, and that it had given strength to feelings which were before but too powerful; but he did not; the information might have compromised others, and he kept it to himself. What was further said would scarcely interest the reader, and we pass to details more immediately connected with the development of our story.

——

CHAPTER III.

At the time of which we write—the latter end of the thirteenth century—there existed between the two principal families in Florence, (those of Amedi and Donati,) a spirit of bitter malignity and determined rivalry, which was carried quite to the extent of the quarrels described by Shakspeare, in “Romeo and Juliet,” between the houses of Capulet and Montague.

Ambition for supremacy was the origin of the dispute between these noble families, but political differences had widened the breach. The quarrels between the Emperor of Germany and the Pope, which followed the elevation of Gregory VII. to the papal throne—and which divided Germany, and even Italy into factions, calling themselves Guelphs and Ghibellines—had extended to Florence, mid the rival families of Donati and Amedi were not slow to take sides in the dispute; each hoping thereby to obtain an ascendency over the other. The Donati took part with the Pope, and called themselves Guelphs; the Amedi sided with the emperor, and were called Ghibellines; and for generations, the animosity between these two houses disturbed the peace of the beautiful city of Florence.

At the period of our narrative a female ranked as the head of the house of Donati. Left a widow, during the childhood of her only daughter, she had sustained with masculine energy the pretensions of her family, and at the same time she had reared with maternal fondness the offspring left to her sole charge.

The father of young Buondlemonte was a nobleman of the first influence in Italy. He resided in the upper vale of Arno, and though he supported the pretensions of the pontiff against those of the emperor, his feelings were so far from being rancorous, that he maintained an equal intimacy with the rival houses of Amedi and Donati; the circumstance of their having served together in the wars of the day alone induced him to prefer the alliance with the family of Amedi.

It is hardly necessary to observe, after the dialogue in the last chapter, that the predilections of the youthful noble took a different direction from the one indicated by the parental judgment. With free ingress to the bosoms of both families, Buondlemonte experienced no hesitation in preferring the sweet and gentle Camilla Donati to the equally beautiful, but haughty and imperious, Francesca Amedi. The considerate affection, too, of Camilla’s mother was much more attractive to him than the austere and severe manners which characterized the Amedi family.

Camilla Donati, young as she then was, was not insensible to the marked preference shown her by Buondlemonte. ’Tis true he uttered no words of love, yet she felt that she was beloved by him, and with all the ardor of her nature she returned his affection.

When he had arrived at the age of seventeen years, Buondlemonte’s father died. On his death-bed he expressed a wish that his son should travel for five years, and that the marriage with Francesca Amedi should be solemnized on his return to Italy. In accordance with this wish Buondlemonte left his home to acquire his education as a gallant knight at the polished court of the French king. His parting with his bride elect was a task of easy performance, but not so his farewell to Camilla Donati. It was with sad hearts and tearful eyes, and murmured hopes of a happier meeting that they separated. For five years he had been absent from his native country. All the scenes through which he had passed, all the fair ladies he had seen had not weakened the ardor of his first love. He returned to Florence, urged by the wishes of the Amedi family; but he came back with the feelings of a criminal stalking to the place of execution rather than as a bridegroom about to lead a beloved and blushing bride to the altar.

——

CHAPTER IV.

’Twas nearly twilight, and Francesca Amedi sat in a richly furnished apartment with her brother and her cousin. One of them had been making a communication to her to which she had listened in silence, but with wrapt attention. Her stately form, as he continued his story, became more majestic, her bosom heaved with concealed emotion, and, as she swept back with her beautiful hand the rich raven tresses, her dark eyes flashed like diamonds glittering in the light.

“So you think he loves me not,” she said, after a pause, as her cousin walked toward the window to examine the tapestry which hung from the walls.

“By St. Jago!” returned her brother, “an ice-hill on the summit of the Alps, could not have been colder than he was when speaking of thee. ‘ ’Twas an old compact,’ he said, ‘and he was here to fulfill it.’ By the souls of those who have gone before me! he could not have spoken more churlishly if he had been talking about a new doublet he had agreed to take upon a certain day.”

“I love him,” Francesca said, as she bit her lip till it became bloodless, “but he acts not wisely for his happiness or mine. He knows not what it is to put a slight upon Francesca Amedi.”

“Were it not,” Jacopa observed, “that his power, united with our own, will crush the whole race of the detested Donati, I would spurn his unwilling alliance, and he should die e’er he be thy husband. As it is,” he added, “we must dress our face in smiles, and thou must wed him.”

“I would do so,” Francesca said, as she fixed her eyes with a rigid look upon her brother, “were it only to make him feel what I have endured.”

“Before our very eyes,” Jacopa remarked, “he received without apology or explanation, a dainty billet from some shameless mistress.”

“Ay,” added Baptista, who had by this time concluded his careless scrutiny, and was listening to the conversation, “and if my memory serves me not a treacherous trick, that same page, who bore the silken-bound counsel, I have seen in attendance on our dearly loved friend, Donati’s widow.”

“If I had thought so,” exclaimed Jacopa, “I would have twisted the neck of the young go-between, even in the presence of Buondlemonte.”

“No, no,” Francesca said, as she waved her hand, “it cannot be. He would not—he dare not—offer me so great an insult as to receive a love-token from one of that house. He dare not, reckless as he is, place me in competition with the puling baby Donati calls her daughter.”

Baptista was about to repeat his opinion concerning the identity of the page, but he had scarcely commenced before Buondlemonte entered the apartment. Both Jacopa and Baptista exchanged an apparently cordial greeting with the new comer, and then retired, leaving him alone with Francesca.

“At last, Buondlemonte,” Francesca said, when they were left alone, “at last thou hast found time to see me.”

“The performance of a service for a friend,” Buondlemonte observed, as he touched with his lips the white hand which was extended toward him, “prevented the earlier presentation of my duty to thee.”

“It was not well,” she remarked, “after so long an absence, to give others a preference, and leave your promised wife neglected, if not forgotten. This was not an act of the cherished companion of former days; it was not the act of the noble youth who left Florence five years ago, betrothed to Francesca Amedi; thou no longer lovest me, Buondlemonte, or thou wouldst not have been thus slow to visit me.”

Buondlemonte thought that the charge might have been made with equal justice at any period of his existence, but he did not give utterance to the thought.

“If my tardiness gives offence,” he said, coldly, “I pray that thou wilt pardon it; I will be scrupulous not to repeat it.”

“Thou art as chilling in thy kindness as thou art in thy coldness,” she observed, with a short hysterical laugh, and then turned the conversation into another channel.

After an hour’s constrained intercourse, Buondlemonte rose to depart.

“I fear me,” she said, as she thought of the letter her brother had spoken of, “that some fairer lady than Francesca pines for thy society, and lures thee from my side.”

“Thou hast no cause to think so,” he replied, evasively, as he raised her hand respectfully to his lips.

She placed her hand firmly upon his arm and looked with her large, eloquent eyes steadily in his face.

“See that I have not,” she said, in a voice which had lost all its natural melody. “See that I have not. Thou mayst ensure my love, if ’tis worthy of an effort, but remember! I will brook no rival in thy affections—Francesca Amedi knows how to protect herself!”

“By all the torturing fates that ever turned awry love’s currents!” exclaimed Buondlemonte, as he reached the street, “but my destined spouse seems to be formed more in the mould of the tigress than the dove. A further promise,” he muttered ironically, “of our mutual happiness!”

——

CHAPTER V.

“Ye are beautiful, ye heavens!” murmured Camilla Donati, as she gazed from a casement of an apartment in her mother’s palace upon the gorgeous starlight of an April evening; “but what hope do you bring to me? He who was wont to make even darkness seem light, even he, is another’s, and ye shine in mockery of my anguish—your brightness makes my gloom the darker!”

It was, indeed, a beautiful evening; but he must have been an anchorite who would not have turned from the balmy air and richly studded sky, to gaze upon the graceful form and heavenly countenance of the fair being who apostrophized the stars.

Her age would have been that of a mere girl’s in any clime save those in which nature seems precocious; but her figure was that of a woman’s, in the zenith of her loveliness. Eighteen summers had scarcely passed over Camilla Donati, and, to contemplate her appearance, the thought would suggest itself that each succeeding year had outvied the efforts of the one that had preceded it, in a struggle to make her beauty faultless.

Her complexion was exquisitely fair. The natural color in her cheeks, as she sat in pensive thought, had disappeared, but still a roseate shade remained, and that, perhaps, shone in more perfect contrast with the transparent skin on which it rested. Pygmalion, when he worshiped the effort of his own art, could not have beheld more chastely beautiful features than she possessed. An ample forehead, shaded by clustering curls, terminated where the penciled brows overlooked lids, fringed with long silken lashes, which contained within their orbits a pair of lustrous, soul-speaking eyes. A nose of Grecian outline, and a mouth—formed from the model of Cupid’s bow—with lips of clear vermilion, seemed to speak an “alarum to love.” When we add to this description a chin of unsurpassed contour, and a neck of swan-like symmetry, we may form some idea of Camilla Donati’s features.

The dress she wore, though it shrouded, it did not conceal the proportions of her figure. The full, swelling bust and the slender waist could be discerned; nor were her robes so sweeping but that a fairy foot might have been discovered peeping from beneath them. A glittering veil had been thrown carelessly over her luxuriant auburn curls, but this she had put back with her delicate hand, and, as her cheek rested on that dimpled hand, she seemed too bright a thing to be profaned by the touch of sorrow; grief should have found a less transcendent temple in which to spread its sombre mantle.

“What is left me now,” she whispered to herself, as if pursuing a train of thought, “but to die, or, within the gloomy walls of a cloister, to endeavor to forget this world by offering myself up a sacrifice to heaven.”

“Not so, my child,” an unexpected voice observed, as a stately female stepped from the shade, and seated herself beside Camilla; “Heaven needs not such a sacrifice at thy hands, or at mine.”

“My mother!” exclaimed the lair girl, “I knew not thou wert present,” and bending her head to the parental bosom, she gave vent to her feelings in stifled sobs.

“Fie, Camilla!” the mother said, as she passed her hand affectionately over the glossy ringlets, “this is unworthy of thy race. Thou art a Donati, my child, and should have more iron in thy nature than to bend, like a willow-wand, before every storm; besides, all is not lost yet; Buondlemonte may still be thy husband.”

“Never!” replied Camilla; “I would not have it so now. Within three days he weds Francesca Amedi.”

“Not if I can prevent it!” exclaimed the elder lady. “He shall not sully his nobleness, or add to the o’ergrown pride of that arrogant house by mating with the haughty Francesca. This night—this hour—he hies hither to harken to my counsels; and if I have power to move him, he leaves not this palace till he is thy plighted husband.”

Camilla knelt at her mother’s feet, and clasping her hands, she turned her tearful eyes to that mother’s face.

“In mercy, spare me!” she said; “I would not wed an unwilling lord—I would not do a wrong even to a member of the house of Amedi.”

“Thou art a foolish child,” her mother replied; “thou shalt neither wed a reluctant lord, nor do a wrong to living soul. If wrong there be in aught I counsel, it rests with me, and I fear not to brave the consequences.”

Camilla was about to speak, but her mother interrupted her.

“I tell thee, timid flutterer,” she said, “Buondlemonte loves thee. I know him, even as if he were my own child—he loves thee, and thee alone. An ancient compact, wrung from the weakness of his father, is all that binds him to Francesca Amedi. Between them there is no shadow of affection. Her swollen pride is not akin to tenderness, and he could not love a being whose nature, like hers, is fierce, revengeful and fiend-like.”

Again Camilla was about to interpose, but her mother stopped her.

“Hear me out,” she said. “Buondlemonte’s interest and inclination, as well as ours, require that he should abandon all thoughts of that unholy union, and take thee to wife. In all, save hypocritical appearances, the Amedi are his enemies—enemies in religion, enemies in disposition. He is frank, open, generous and noble; and they are cold, selfish, subtle and malignant. His faith is pure, and, like us, he sustains the cause of our holy church; while they are Ghibellines—little better than schismatics—and in their hearts detest all who think not with them. If ’twere not a virtue to humble the pride of this presumptuous family, it would at least be a charity to preserve the peace of the noble youth, by disconcerting so ill-assorted a match.”

Once more Camilla attempted to be heard, but again she was interrupted.

“I will hear no reply,” her mother said: “I cannot be moved by arguments from the course I intend to pursue. Thou knowest me tender and indulgent, but at the same time resolute and determined. Thy happiness and his demand the policy I adopt; let me not hear thee therefore murmur against it. I go now,” she observed, rising from her seat, “to meet him I would make thy husband: bide thou here till my return.”

As she concluded she left the apartment.

Camilla, at the thought of meeting Buondlemonte, and the circumstances, instinctively drew her veil over her burning cheeks.

“It is not I, Francesca,” she murmured, “who plots against thy peace; it is not I, Buondlemonte, who seeks to make thee swerve from thy knightly faith!”

For the space of half an hour Camilla Donati remained in a state of timorous apprehension and painful thought; at the expiration of that period, however, the door of the apartment she occupied again opened, and her mother re-entered. This time she was not alone—Buondlemonte was with her. His handsome countenance was flushed with excitement; the color mantled in his cheeks, and an unusual lustre danced in his bright eyes.

No sooner did his gaze rest on the maiden’s form than he rushed forward, and, bending his knee before her, took her unresisting hand and pressed it again and again to his lips.

“Dearest Camilla!” he exclaimed, in a whispered voice, “even thus have I dreamed of thee in my wanderings! even thus have I knelt before thee, and, unrebuked by a reproachful look, pressed thy gentle hand.”

The elder lady approached her daughter, and raising the veil which concealed her beautiful features she addressed Buondlemonte.

“This,” she said, as Buondlemonte’s ravished sight wandered from the flushing cheeks to the closed lids and trembling lips, “this is the bride I had reserved for thee. From childhood she has loved thee, and loves thee still.”

Buondlemonte’s enraptured exclamations prevented Camilla’s piteous appeal to her mother from being heard.

“From childhood she has been the star I have worshiped,” he replied, and rising to a seat beside her, his arm encircled her delicate waist. “None other,” he exclaimed with enthusiasm, as his eyes devoured the unfolding beauties which momentarily developed themselves, “none other shall claim the bride who has been reserved for me. If she will accept the homage of a heart that is all her own, my wedded wife she shall be before two suns have gilded the eastern sky.”

The burning blushes were on Camilla’s cheeks, and the tears gushed from her eyes, but her breath came quick and her heart throbbed strangely.

“Speak, dearest Camilla!” Buondlemonte whispered; “let me know from thy own lips that my passion is not unrequited—say that thou lovest me!”

“Oh, Buondlemonte!” Camilla articulated, in a low voice, “think of Francesca—think of her family.”

“To wed her would be a union on which nor heaven nor earth could smile,” he replied. “Dearest Camilla, Francesca loves me not, and I do not love her; her family are my aversion—there is no kindred, no sympathy between us. This night, if thou dost love me still, this night I will revoke the ill-advised bond that linked my destiny with Francesca Amedi’s, and to-morrow’s night shall see us happily wedded.”

Small blame was it to Camilla that she yielded to the entreaties, nay, the commands of her mother, and the moving solicitations of her lover. Her heart, too, was an advocate against herself. For some time she resisted the persuasive music which was poured into her ear, but at length she breathed in whispered accents the words that united her fate to Buondlemonte’s.

The rest of the evening, to the lovers, passed like the brief existence of a moment; yet its lapse had afforded an eternity of happiness. It had given birth to a world of pleasant recollections.

Ere he slept that night, Buondlemonte dispatched his friend Guiseppo Leoni to Jacopa Amedi, to inform him of the step he had taken. Disclaiming all intention to offend, he pleaded his early passion in palliation of his apparent fickleness, and alleged that the uncongeniality between Francesca and himself could be prolific of naught but discord and unhappiness.

——

CHAPTER VI.

The dawn of the morrow found the Amedi family awake and stirring; and every member of it breathing deep and terrible vengeance against the faithless Buondlemonte. Late as it was when Guiseppo Leoni delivered the unpleasant communication of which he was the bearer, messengers had been dispatched to all the relatives of the house, to summon them to a council, which was fixed to meet at an early hour in the morning.

When Francesca Amedi learned what had happened her towering form grew more erect, her dark eyes flashed forth unutterable thoughts, and, as she grasped tightly the jeweled dagger that hung from her girdle, she muttered between her set teeth —

“He would not learn how deeply I could have loved, but he shall feel—he and his puny minion—how bitterly I can hate, and how fearfully I can avenge!”

“He is not married yet,” her brother menacingly observed.

“The saints be praised for that,” she replied; “There shall be more guests at the wedding than are bidden.”

She retired to her own apartment, and after a long interview with her principal attendant she gave directions that no one should be admitted to see her, and that no summons, from any source, should be communicated to her.

——

CHAPTER VII.

The council had assembled at the Amedi palace. In a spacious apartment a crowd of men sat together. There were dark frowns upon their countenances, and, at intervals, angry exclamations escaped from their lips, as the cause of their convocation was dwelt upon with malignant emphasis and vehement declamation by Jacopa Amedi.

“What,” he asked, after having recapitulated the facts, “should be the fate of him, who, casting aside the honor of knighthood and manhood, violates his plighted word, showers disgraceful contumely upon our house, and offers deadliest insult to Amedi’s daughter?”

“Death!” replied a solitary voice, as the door of the apartment opened, and a stranger stood at the threshold.

The eyes of all were turned with wonder in the direction from which the voice proceeded. No one present appeared to know the stranger.

The intruder gazed around unrebuked by the inquiring looks that were bent upon him, and as his eye met the speaker’s, he repeated the ominous word which had startled the assembled group.

He was a youth of fine appearance; slight in form, but of a lofty bearing, with a handsome countenance, and full, large, searching, dark eyes. His dress was of sable velvet. Upon his head he wore a cap, surmounted with two black plumes, and at his side there hung a sombre-cased rapier, the hilt of which glittered with diamonds.

“Death!” he repeated, as he glanced deliberately from one individual to another, “death should be the doom of him who, traitorous to love and false to honor, pays back the affection of a betrothed wife with withering scorn, and upon the dignity of a noble house tramples with profane and sacrilegious tread!”

Jacopa Amedi advanced from the position he had occupied, and confronted the new comer.

“Whoe’er thou art, sir stranger,” he said, “thou hast mistaken the place for thy reception. This is a meeting only of the relatives of our house—thou canst not claim kindred with the Amedi.”

“I am,” the youth replied, “of noble birth—a Ghibelline—a friend to thy family and cause, and an enemy—a deadly enemy—to Buondlemonte and the Donati. Thy wrongs are the wrongs of all who hate the Guelphs, and affect every noble in the land. Me they have united to thee by an indissoluble bond, and I proclaim again that death—death unannounced—should be the fate launched at the treacherous Buondlemonte!”

There was a wild energy in the stranger’s voice, and as he spoke, his dark eyes gleamed with demoniacal fire.

“For thy noble sympathy thou art entitled to our thanks, and hast them,” Jacopa Amedi observed, in reply; “but still we must entreat thy absence; a stranger may not be admitted to our counsels.”

“Not though he tenders thy honor as dearly as though he were himself an Amedi?” the young man asked hurriedly.

Jacopa bowed a negative.

“My name may change thy thought,” the youth remarked, as he approached Jacopa, and, as the latter inclined his ear, whispered a single sentence to him.

Jacopa Amedi started back in amazement, and gazed for a moment as if he had been paralyzed.

“Thou! thou!” he exclaimed, as a grim smile settled upon his features.

The stranger placed his gloved finger upon his lip to advise caution; and Jacopa, warned by the signal, restrained the expressions to which he had been about to give utterance.

“This,” he said, as he took the other’s hand and led him forward, while a gloomy frown supplanted the smile upon his own countenance, “this is as it should be; there is nobility enough in the act to make thee a worthy partaker in our deliberations.”

Saying this, he made a place for him among the rest, and vouched to the company for his right to be present.

The consultation was continued, but Jacopa Amedi ceased to take the lead in it. The stranger, as if by magic, exerted a controlless influence over every one. He spoke, and all listened with breathless attention to his lava-like words. He proposed and his suggestions were adopted without a dissenting voice. He named himself the leader of an enterprise in contemplation, and he was selected by acclamation.

“Who,” he asked, after an hour had been spent in consultation, “is informed of the period when this faithless lord leads his dainty bride to the altar?”

“I have taken care to learn that,” Baptista Amedi replied. “An hour after vespers the priest pronounces the marriage sacrament in the chapel of the palace.”

“Then at vespers,” the stranger said, as he rose from his place, “meet me here again, prepared as we have agreed; till then let us teach ourselves discretion.”

——

CHAPTER VIII.

The hour of vespers had passed, and Camilla Donati sat alone with Buondlemonte. She was attired for the altar, and in her bridal robes outrivaled e’en her own loveliness. Yet she was sad with all her beauty, and amidst all the aids to happiness that surrounded her. A cloud shaded her fair brow, and the rosy lips sought in vain to wreath themselves in smiles.

“Thou art grave, dear Camilla!” Buondlemonte said, speaking in a subdued tone; “dost thou repent thy promise to be mine?”

She turned her beautiful eyes, liquid with tenderness and trusting affection, to his, and placed her snowy hand lightly upon his shoulder,

“Dost thou think it?” she asked.

“Forgive me!” he replied; “I only meant to banish thy sad thoughts, and make thee gay.”

“I should be happy,” she said, as his arm stole round her waist, “but yet I cannot feel so. Thy form is ever in my thought, and bliss smiles at thy side, yet when I seek to clasp it in my embrace, a dark phantom interposes, and with a hollow laugh, mocks my baffled purpose. In the air there is a murmuring dirge, and thy voice swells with sepulchral sound. I cannot feel happy,” she said; “an icy coldness settles round my heart.”

“Let love,” he replied, “banish it from thence. Thou shall not yield thy soul up to sickly fancies. ’Tis part of mine, dear Camilla, and must take its hue from the cheerful coloring of its other half. Thy fears for my safety have faded the rose-tint from thy cheeks, but within an hour—when the holy father has performed the sacred rite, and thou art mine own—thou wilt smile at the fantastic thoughts that now make thee look so grave.”

“Would that the rite were over, and safely so!” Camilla fervently whispered, as she turned aside her blushing face.

The wish seemed uttered only to be answered, for at that moment her mother entered the apartment to summon the couple to the chapel.

“The priest is at the altar,” she said, “and the guests await the presence of the bridegroom and his bride.”

Buondlemonte rose, and supporting Camilla on his arm, passed into an adjoining room, where Guiseppo Leoni and the maidens who were to officiate as bridemaids, were assembled.

The wedding-party passed from the palace to the chapel. The lamps were all lighted, and beneath the arched roof a gay crowd was collected. Jewels glittered, rich silks rustled, lofty plumes waved, and happy smiles circulated on every side.

When Camilla and Buondlemonte appeared, the crowd fell back, and opened a passage for them to the altar, where for a moment they stood—the admiration of every beholder—till the ceremony should commence.

The holy man commenced the marriage-service, and propounded to the parties concerned, the questions which the church directs shall be put on such occasions. Those addressed to Camilla were answered in a low, musical voice, while Buondlemonte made his responses boldly and with pride.

The ceremony was over—they were man and wife. A happy smile already diffused itself over the countenance of the bride, and the priest raised his hand to pronounce the benediction; but he spoke not. His attention was arrested by voices elevated in anger, and sounds of rude strife at the entrance of the chapel.

All turned to inquire the cause of this interruption, and as they did so, the huge doors were forced back upon their hinges, and a band of armed men, with weapons bared, rushed up the tesselated aisle toward the altar. At their head was the youthful stranger who had appeared that morning at the Amedi palace. In his hand gleamed a naked poignard; his plumed cap had fallen from his head, and upon his shoulders there fell a luxuriant mass of long, dark hair. His eyes were bloodshot, and his voice sounded hoarse and unnatural as he called upon those who came after, to follow him. Casting with desperate strength all impediments aside, he paused not in his course until he stood fronting Buondlemonte.

The latter had drawn his sword, but Camilla Donati threw herself impulsively before him to shelter his person with her own; the stranger took advantage of the act of devotion, and burying his poignard up to the hilt in Buondlemonte’s body, he exclaimed,

“Die, traitor! even in thy act of treachery!”

The unfortunate young nobleman fell to the ground weltering in his own blood; and Camilla, with a shriek of heart-piercing agony, sunk fainting and prostrate upon his body.

The stranger gazed for an instant at the harrowing sight before him, then bent his knee beside Buondlemonte, and said, in a voice which already was touched with remorse,

“Buondlemonte, thou hast grievously wronged Francesca Amedi, and she has been her own avenger!”

The dying noble turned an inquiring glance upon the speaker, and with difficulty recognized the person of Francesca in the habiliments of the stranger.

“Thou art indeed avenged,” he murmured, in a weak voice, as he endeavored to embrace his fainting bride.

“Thou hadst canceled my hopes of happiness,” she said, as she rose to her feet, “and I have put the seal to the act by destroying thine!”

With a solemn step she stalked from the chapel, protected by those who had supported her; while Buondlemonte, after breathing a prayer to Heaven for Camilla’s peace, resigned his soul into the hands of its author.

It would be too melancholy a task to detail the particulars that followed this unhappy bridal. A few words will be sufficient to explain all that is necessary.

Camilla Donati, after many months, recovered from the fearful shock she had received in seeing her lover slain; but this world had ceased to delight her. She entered a convent, and in the course of time became its abbess. Francesca Amedi had accomplished her vengeance, but with its accomplishment she had ensured her own misery. With the vulture, remorse, ever preying upon her heart, she knew but one wish, and that was for death, while she lacked the power to terminate her own existence and solve the problem of eternity. After a vain effort to secure forgetfulness by mingling in society, she, too, retired from the world, and within the walls of the same convent over which Camilla Donati presided, she became a nun.

The death of Buondlemonte added virulence to the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines; and many generations passed away before the families of Amedi and Donati became reconciled.

A SUNBEAM.

———

BY ALBERT M. NOYES.

———

A sunbeam flashed from its azure throne,

O’er the bright and the beautiful earth to roam;

And it left a plume from its glist’ning wings

Where’er it traced its wanderings.

It tipped the bough of an old oak tree

With its joyous ray, and in their glee

A myriad host that were slumb’ring there

Came glancing forth in the morning air.

Then off like a flash it sped away,

And next it touched with a diamond ray

A lofty spire, as it rose upon high,

Till it looked like a star in an azure sky.

Again it flew, and this joyous beam

Flashed o’er the breast of a rippling stream;

And a bridge of trembling light it gave

To the sparkling crests of the dimpled wave.

I mused awhile—and lo! I heard

The joyous song of a bright-winged bird;

It had caught the flash of that morning ray

As it sped to its bower of love away.

And bathed in a flood of golden light

It looked like a rainbow spirit bright,

By an angel hand sent down to unfurl

The banner of peace to a sinful world.

And a thousand voices rose on high,

As its gliding form flew swiftly by;

Each bright and beautiful thing of earth

Awoke to hail its heavenly birth.

Sweet beam, said I, oh! how I’d love,

Like thee, the bright green earth to rove;

To shine o’er the hearts of pale despair

And kindle a glow of rapture there.

Just then, a darkling cloud flew by,

And shadowed the face of the azure sky;

I looked for this beautiful child of the dawn

But its glory had faded, its brightness had gone!

And I thought how much like Life did seem

The fate of this bright yet transient beam;

In glory it rose with the morn’s first breath,

At eve it was shadowed in darkness and death.

LONG AGO.

Long ago a blue-eyed cherub

In my arms

Softly lay and sweetly smiled—

Spotless, holy, undefiled—

And my troubled heart beguiled

With its charms.

Long ago, on angel’s pinion,

To my breast

Came a gentle, timid dove—

Stole the treasure of my love—

Upward soared, no more to rove

From its nest.

Long ago my seraph maiden

Took her flight

From a dreary, darkling world—

She her radiant wings unfurled,

And the heavenly gates of pearl

Shut my sight.

Long ago the angel reaper

Cruel sore

Gave my heart its keenest blow,

Made my tears of anguish flow,

Bid me onward weeping go—

Evermore.

Long ago the fair world faded

In mine eyes,

And I burn to clasp that child.

With a love more fondly wild

Than when first she sweetly smiled

From the skies.

Long ago one lock I severed

From her brow,

And that sunny little tress

In its shining loveliness—

To my heart I fondly press

Ever now.

In my dreams I meet the maiden—

Passing fair

Far beyond the frost and snow

Doth my lovely flow’ret blow—

And my tears no longer flow

For her there.

E. H.

THE TWO WORLDS.

———

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

———

Like the contented peasant of the vale,

Dreams it the world and never looks beyond.

Lowell.

There was an humble village lad

Who thought the round, revolving world,

Mountains and plains and streams and skies,

Lay in the compass of his eyes.

The symphonies of the leafy woods,

The melodies of the murmuring brooks,

Mingling—like light, or songs of spheres —

Contented his untutored ears.

Confined between gigantic hills,

The little hamlet, where he dwell,

Never imagined land more blest

Than that where it had made its nest.

And so our simple village boy,

With thoughtless urchins like himself,

Chatting with brooks and birds and flowers,

Ran swiftly through his childish hours.

But manhood, like a shadow, rose

And stood before his growing eyes —

With aspirations, such as start

To being in the ambitious heart.

Somehow—he knew not whence it came —

The fancy of a nobler world

Than that in which his soul now pined,

Trembled, like moonlight, on his mind.

Habit, however, made his home

So very dear; he sadly threw

The thought aside, and, turning back,

Pursued his old accustomed track.

Nevertheless, the glowing dream

Followed his steps with pleading eyes,

Filling his heart, wherever he went,

With unaccustomed discontent.

But one day hunting in the hills

He saw a chamois mount a peak,

Which seemed—its summit was so high —

To melt and mingle with the sky.

Urged by the instinct of the chase,

He slowly crept from crag to crag

Until he reached the dizzy height

Where last the chamois met his sight.

Before him, in the morning sun,

Stretching away from sky to sky,

Brighter than even his soul had dreamed.

His other world before him gleamed.

Behind him lay the little vale

Where he had spent his youthful hours;

There was the cottage where he dwelt —

The shrine at which he always knelt.

And over-shadowing the brook,

He saw the weeping-willow stand,

Where, but the night before, he met

His loving, lovely young Florette.

But fairer than his maiden love,

And lovelier than his native glen,

Inviting him with novel charms,

His fairy world held out its arms.

The Old yields always to the New,

And so the youth with just such steps

As one would run to meet a bride,

Ran lightly down the mountain side.

Day after day, year after year,

He wandered in his golden world:

A shadow-hunter he became: —

The Shadow which he sought was Fame.

But Age, who walks on velvet feet,

Followed his footsteps like a wolf,

And when the fame he sought was won,

He only saw the setting sun.

Cold as his native granite rocks,

And hard, had grown the wanderer’s heart:

For many weary, desolate years

His eyes had lost the power of tears.

The name his genius had acquired,

The wealth which Fortune had bestowed,

Instead of pleasure gave him pain:

Sadness was in his heart and brain.

The great are friendless: he was great:

His very fortune hedged him round

And shut him from the love of all;

He could not leap the lofty wall.

But somehow, like an angel’s tear,

The memory of his early home

Fell on his heart: he saw the glen

He loved so in his youth again.

A wan and worn and wrinkled man

He stood upon his native hills:

There was each old familiar spot;

There stood his silent shepherd cot.

Downward with trembling, painful steps

The wanderer took his lonely way:

Like one who wakens from a dream

He stood beside the mournful stream.

Above him, in a green old age,

He saw a weeping-willow trail

Its murmuring leaves; and at its foot

A single rose had taken root.

It grew upon a grassy mound,

At head of which a rustic cross

Pointed to heaven;—there last he met —

There last he clasped the fair Florette.

The old man’s eyes were full of tears,

As, like a penitent child, he knelt

And sobbed and prayed in pale despair:

Next day a maiden found him there.

The hillock where reposed his form

Was circled by his feeble arms:

Pale, pitying Death his seal had set

On love, and laid him with Florette.

A RECEPTION MORNING:

OR PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES, ETC.

———

BY F. E. F., AUTHOR OF “A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE,” ETC.

———

Je m’oublie,

Tu t’oublies,

Il ou elle s’oublis, etc.

Verb S’oublier.

“Why were you not at Elliot’s last night, Mrs. Fortesque?” asked Mrs. Lyman.

“We do not visit,” replied Mrs. Fortesque, with a slight shade of mortification.

“Not visit!” repeated her friend in an accent of surprise, and fixing her eyes as she spoke with a prolonged look of astonishment that caused Mrs. Fortesque to color. “Is it possible! It was an elegant party—very select—the handsomest I have been at this winter. Indeed, the party of the season.”

“It could scarcely surpass Rawley’s,” said Mrs. Fortesque with smothered indignation. “I am sure there was nothing spared there, and their house is larger than Elliot’s.”

“Yes. But it was such a jam at Rawley’s,” replied Mrs. Lyman, in the tone of one oppressed even by the recollection of the crowd—“and such a mêlée—all sorts of people! This paying off debts in this way is, in my opinion, very vulgar. Now at Elliot’s it was so different. Just every body you would wish to meet and no more. Room to see and be seen—and the ladies so beautifully dressed—no crowd—every thing elegant and recherché.”

“The dressing at Rawley’s was as elegant as possible,” remarked Mrs. Fortesque, evidently piqued that the party she had just been describing to Miss Appleton with no small degree of complacency as so fashionable, should now be spoken of as a mêlée.

“Did you think so?” said Mrs. Lyman, with affected surprise. “It was very inferior to that of last night. Indeed in such a crowd there’s no inducement to wear any thing handsome; but last night the ladies really came out. I never saw such dressing—and the supper was exquisite.”

“It seems to me that all suppers are alike,” said one of the Miss Appletons, with true girlish ignorance.

“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed both ladies in a breath.

“The difference between such a supper as we had at Elliot’s and such a one as at Rawley’s,” continued Mrs. Lyman, “is immense. The exquisite china, the plate, and then the natural flowers! Such a supper as you can only have at a select party.”

Mrs. Fortesque looked very angry. The Rawleys were rather her grand people, and as she had not been at Elliot’s she did not like this being set down in the crowd of “any bodies” invited.

“I am fairly tired out,” pursued Mrs. Lyman languidly, “with this succession of parties. I do wish people would be quiet for a little while and let one rest. The girls too are quite jaded and fagged with this dancing night after night.”

“Oh, it’s too much,” said Emma Appleton. “I never go more than two or three times a week. I wonder you do,” turning to Miss Lyman.

“How can you help it, my dear?” said Mrs. Lyman, in the tone of one bewailing a great hardship. “You give such offence if you decline.”

“I decline whenever it suits me,” replied Miss Appleton, “and people bear the disappointment very philosophically,” she added, smiling.

“You may well say that, Emma,” said Mrs. Fortesque, with an emphasis meant at Mrs. Lyman. “Society is so large now that I at least never find offence is taken when I decline.”

“But you cannot refuse a first invitation,” pursued Mrs. Lyman. “Now the Elliots for instance. They have just called upon us, we could not decline. Are you going to Hammersley’s to-morrow, Emma?”

“No,” said Emma, “we are not invited. Are you?”

“Yes; it’s a small party. We shall go there first and afterwards to Lascelles’.”

“I saw you all at the opera on Monday,” remarked Emma.

“Yes, we were there the first two acts—we went from there to Shaw’s. By the way, did you call upon the bride yesterday?”

“No,” replied Emma. “I have never visited the Halseys.”

“But as Hamilton’s friends,” pursued Mrs. Lyman, “I called on his account.”