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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE RED ROVER,” “THE PIONEERS,” “LE FEU-FOLLET,” ETC.

Certain moral philosophers, with a due disdain of the flimsy foundations of human pride, have shown that every man is equally descended from a million of ancestors, within a given number of generations; thereby demonstrating that no prince exists who does not participate in the blood of some beggar, or any beggar who does not share in the blood of princes. Although favored by a strictly vegetable descent myself, the laws of nature have not permitted me to escape from the influence of this common rule. The earliest accounts I possess of my progenitors represent them as a goodly growth of the Linum Usitatissimum, divided into a thousand cotemporaneous plants, singularly well conditioned, and remarkable for an equality that renders the production valuable. In this particular, then, I may be said to enjoy a precedency over the Bourbons themselves, who now govern no less than four different states of Europe, and who have sat on thrones these thousand years.

While our family has followed the general human law in the matter just mentioned, it forms a marked exception to the rule that so absolutely controls all of white blood, on this continent, in what relates to immigration and territorial origin. When the American enters on the history of his ancestors, he is driven, after ten or twelve generations at most, to seek refuge in some country in Europe; whereas exactly the reverse is the case with us, our most remote extraction being American, while our more recent construction and education have taken place in Europe. When I speak of the “earliest accounts I possess of my progenitors,” authentic information is meant only; for, like other races, we have certain dark legends that might possibly carry us back again to the old world in quest of our estates and privileges. But, in writing this history, it has been my determination from the first, to record nothing but settled truths, and to reject everything in the shape of vague report or unauthenticated anecdote. Under these limitations, I have ever considered my family as American by origin, European by emigration, and restored to its paternal soil by the mutations and calculations of industry and trade.

The glorious family of cotemporaneous plants from which I derive my being, grew in a lovely vale of Connecticut, and quite near to the banks of the celebrated river of the same name. This renders us strictly Yankee in our origin, an extraction of which I find all who enjoy it fond of boasting. It is the only subject of self-felicitation with which I am acquainted that men can indulge in, without awakening the envy of their fellow-creatures; from which I infer it is at least innocent, if not commendable.

We have traditions among us of the enjoyments of our predecessors, as they rioted in the fertility of their cis-atlantic field; a happy company of thriving and luxuriant plants. Still, I shall pass them over, merely remarking that a bountiful nature has made such provision for the happiness of all created things as enables each to rejoice in its creation, and to praise, after its fashion and kind, the divine Being to which it owes its existence.

In due time, the field in which my forefathers grew was gathered, the seed winnowed from the chaff and collected in casks, when the whole company was shipped for Ireland. Now occurred one of those chances which decide the fortunes of plants, as well as those of men, giving me a claim to Norman, instead of Milesian descent. The embarkation, or shipment of my progenitors, whichever may be the proper expression, occurred in the height of the last general war, and, for a novelty, it occurred in an English ship. A French privateer captured the vessel on her passage home, the flax-seed was condemned and sold, my ancestors being transferred in a body to the ownership of a certain agriculturist in the neighborhood of Evreux, who dealt largely in such articles. There have been evil disposed vegetables that have seen fit to reproach us with this sale as a stigma on our family history, but I have ever considered it myself as a circumstance of which one has no more reason to be ashamed than a d’Uzès has to blush for the robberies of a baron of the middle ages. Each is an incident in the progress of civilization; the man and the vegetable alike taking the direction pointed out by Providence for the fulfilment of his or its destiny.

Plants have sensations as well as animals. The latter, however, have no consciousness anterior to their physical births, and very little, indeed, for some time afterwards; whereas a different law prevails as respects us; our mental conformation being such as to enable us to refer our moral existence to a period that embraces the experience, reasoning and sentiments of several generations. As respects logical inductions, for instance, the linum usitatissimum draws as largely on the intellectual acquisitions of the various epochs that belonged to the three or four parent stems which preceded it, as on its own. In a word, that accumulated knowledge which man inherits by means of books, imparted and transmitted information, schools, colleges, and universities, we obtain through more subtle agencies that are incorporated with our organic construction, and which form a species of hereditary mesmerism; a vegetable clairvoyance that enables us to see with the eyes, hear with the ears, and digest with the understandings of our predecessors.

Some of the happiest moments of my moral existence were thus obtained, while our family was growing in the fields of Normandy. It happened that a distinguished astronomer selected a beautiful seat, that was placed on the very margin of our position, as a favorite spot for his observations and discourses; from a recollection of the latter of which, in particular, I still derive indescribable satisfaction. It seems us only yesterday—it is in fact fourteen long, long years—that I heard him thus holding forth to his pupils, explaining the marvels of the illimitable void, and rendering clear to my understanding the vast distance that exists between the Being that created all things and the works of his hands. To those who live in the narrow circle of human interests and human feelings, there ever exists, unheeded, almost unnoticed, before their very eyes, the most humbling proofs of their own comparative insignificance in the scale of creation, which, in the midst of their admitted mastery over the earth and all it contains, it would be well for them to consider, if they would obtain just views of what they are and what they were intended to be.

I think I can still hear this learned and devout man—for his soul was filled with devotion of the dread Being that could hold a universe in subjection to his will—dwelling with delight on all the discoveries among the heavenly bodies, that the recent improvements in science and mechanics have enabled the astronomers to make. Fortunately, he gave his discourses somewhat of the progressive character of lectures, leading his listeners on, as it might be step by step, in a way to render all easy to the commonest understanding. Thus it was, I first got accurate notions of the almost inconceivable magnitude of space, to which, indeed, it is probable there are no more positive limits than there are a beginning and an end to eternity! Can these wonders be, I thought—and how pitiful in those who affect to reduce all things to the level of their own powers of comprehension, and their own experience in practice! Let them exercise their sublime and boasted reason, I said to myself, in endeavoring to comprehend infinity in any thing, and we will note the result! If it be in space, we shall find them setting bounds to their illimitable void, until ashamed of the feebleness of their first effort, it is renewed, again and again, only to furnish new proofs of the insufficiency of any of earth, even to bring within the compass of their imaginations truths that all their experiments, inductions, evidence and revelations compel them to admit.

“The moon has no atmosphere,” said our astronomer one day, “and if inhabited at all, it must be by beings constructed altogether differently from ourselves. Nothing that has life, either animal or vegetable as we know them, can exist without air, and it follows that nothing having life, according to our views of it, can exist in the moon:—or, if any thing having life do exist there, it must be under such modifications of all our known facts, as to amount to something like other principles of being. One side of that planet feels the genial warmth of the sun for a fortnight, while the other is for the same period without it,” he continued. “That which feels the sun must be a day, of a heat so intense as to render it insupportable to us, while the opposite side, on which the rays of the sun do not fall, must be masses of ice, if water exist there to be congealed. But the moon has no seas, so far as we can ascertain; its surface representing one of strictly volcanic origin, the mountains being numerous to a wonderful degree. Our instruments enable us to perceive craters, with the inner cones so common to all our own volcanoes, giving reason to believe in the activity of innumerable burning hills at some remote period. It is scarcely necessary to say, that nothing we know could live in the moon under these rapid and extreme transitions of heat and cold, to say nothing of the want of atmospheric air.” I listened to this with wonder, and learned to be satisfied with my station. Of what moment was it to me, in filling the destiny of the linum usitatissimum, whether I grew in a soil a little more or a little less fertile; whether my fibres attained the extremest fineness known to the manufacturer, or fell a little short of this excellence. I was but a speck among a myriad of other things produced by the hand of the Creator, and all to conduce to his own wise ends and unequaled glory. It was my duty to live my time, to be content, and to proclaim the praise of God within the sphere assigned to me. Could men or plants but once elevate their thoughts to the vast scale of creation, it would teach them their own insignificance so plainly, would so unerringly make manifest the futility of complaints, and the immense disparity between time and eternity, as to render the useful lesson of contentment as inevitable as it is important.

I remember that our astronomer, one day, spoke of the nature and magnitude of the sun. The manner that he chose to render clear to the imagination of his hearers some just notions of its size, though so familiar to astronomers, produced a deep and unexpected impression on me. “Our instruments,” he said, “are now so perfect and powerful, as to enable us to ascertain many facts of the deepest interest, with near approaches to positive accuracy. The moon being the heavenly body much the nearest to us, of course we see farther into its secrets than into those of any other planet. We have calculated its distance from us at 237,000 miles. Of course by doubling this distance, and adding to it the diameter of the earth, we get the diameter of the circle, or orbit, in which the moon moves around the earth. In other words the diameter of this orbit is about 480,000 miles. Now could the sun be brought in contact with this orbit, and had the latter solidity to mark its circumference, it would be found that this circumference would include but a little more than half the surface of one side of the sun, the diameter of which orb is calculated to be 882,000 miles! The sun is one million three hundred and eighty-four thousand four hundred and seventy-two times larger than the earth. Of the substance of the sun it is not so easy to speak. Still it is thought, though it is not certain, that we occasionally see the actual surface of this orb, an advantage we do not possess as respects any other of the heavenly bodies, with the exception of the moon and Mars. The light and warmth of the sun probably exist in its atmosphere, and the spots which are so often seen on this bright orb, are supposed to be glimpses of the solid mass of the sun itself, that are occasionally obtained through openings in this atmosphere. At all events, this is the more consistent way of accounting for the appearance of these spots. You will get a better idea of the magnitude of the sidereal system, however, by remembering that, in comparison with it, the distances of our entire solar system are as mere specks. Thus, while our own change of positions is known to embrace an orbit of about 200,000,000 of miles, it is nevertheless so trifling as to produce no apparent change of position in thousands of the fixed stars that are believed to be the suns of other systems. Some conjecture even that all these suns, with their several systems, our own included, revolve around a common centre that is invisible to us, but which is the actual throne of God; the comets that we note and measure being heavenly messengers, as it might be, constantly passing from one of these families of worlds to another.”

I remember that one of the astronomer’s pupils asked certain explanations here, touching the planets that it was thought, or rather known, that we could actually see, and those of which the true surfaces were believed to be concealed from us. “I have told you,” answered the man of science, “that they are the Moon, Mars and the Sun. Both Venus and Mercury are nearer to us than Mars, but their relative proximities to the sun have some such effect on their surfaces, as placing an object near a strong light is known to have on its appearance. We are dazzled, to speak popularly, and cannot distinguish minutely. With Mars it is different. If this planet has any atmosphere at all, it is one of no great density, and its orbit being without our own, we can easily trace on its surface the outlines of seas and continents. It is even supposed that the tinge of the latter is that of reddish sand-stone, like much of that known in our own world, but more decided in tint, while two brilliant white spots, at its poles, are thought to be light reflected from the snows of those regions, rendered more conspicuous, or disappearing, as they first emerge from a twelvemonths’ winter, or melt in a summer of equal duration.”

I could have listened forever to this astronomer, whose lectures so profoundly taught lessons of humility to the created, and which were so replete with silent eulogies on the power of the Creator! What was it to me whether I were a modest plant, of half a cubit in stature, or the proudest oak of the forest—man or vegetable? My duty was clearly to glorify the dread Being who had produced all these marvels, and to fulfill my time in worship, praise and contentment. It mattered not whether my impressions were derived through organs called ears, and were communicated by others called those of speech, or whether each function was performed by means of sensations and agencies too subtle to be detected by ordinary means. It was enough for me that I heard and understood, and felt the goodness and glory of God. I may say that my first great lessons in true philosophy were obtained in these lectures, where I learned to distinguish between the finite and infinite, ceasing to envy any, while I inclined to worship one. The benevolence of Providence is extended to all its creatures, each receiving it in a mode adapted to its own powers of improvement. My destiny being toward a communion with man—or rather with woman—I have ever looked upon these silent communications with the astronomer as so much preparatory schooling, in order that my mind might be prepared for its own avenir, and not be blinded by an undue appreciation of the importance of its future associates. I know there are those who will sneer at the supposition of a pocket-handkerchief’s possessing any mind, or esprit, at all; but let such have patience and read on, when I hope it will be in my power to demonstrate their error.

It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the scenes which occurred between the time I first sprang from the earth and that in which I was “pulled.” The latter was a melancholy day for me, however, arriving prematurely as regarded my vegetable state, since it was early determined that I was to be spun into threads of unusual fineness. I will only say, here, that my youth was a period of innocent pleasures, during which my chief delight was to exhibit my simple but beautiful flowers, in honor of the hand that gave them birth.

At the proper season, the whole field was laid low, when a scene of hurry and confusion succeeded, to which I find it exceedingly painful to turn in memory. The “rotting” was the most humiliating part of the process which followed, though, in our case, this was done in clear running water, and the “crackling” the most uncomfortable. Happily, we were spared the anguish which ordinarily accompanies breaking on the wheel, though we could not be said to have entirely escaped from all its parade. Innocence was our shield, and while we endured some of the disgrace that attaches to mere forms, we had that consolation of which no cruelty or device can deprive the unoffending. Our sorrows were not heightened by the consciousness of undeserving.

There is a period, which occurred between the time of being “hatcheled” and that of being “woven,” that it exceeds my powers to delineate. All around me seemed to be in a state of inextricable confusion, out of which order finally appeared in the shape of a piece of cambric, of a quality that brought the workmen far and near to visit it. We were a single family of only twelve, in this rare fabric, among which I remember that I occupied the seventh place in the order of arrangement, and of course in the order of seniority also. When properly folded, end bestowed in a comfortable covering, our time passed pleasantly enough, being removed from all disagreeable sights and smells, and lodged in a place of great security, and indeed of honor, men seldom failing to bestow this attention on their valuables.

It is out of my power to say precisely how long we remained in this passive state in the hands of the manufacturer. It was some weeks, however, if not months; during which our chief communications were on the chances of our future fortunes. Some of our number were ambitious, and would hear to nothing but the probability, nay, the certainty, of our being purchased, as soon as our arrival in Paris should be made known, by the king, in person, and presented to the dauphine, then the first lady in France. The virtues of the Duchesse d’Angoulême were properly appreciated by some of us, while I discovered that others entertained for her any feelings but those of veneration and respect. This diversity of opinion, on a subject of which one would think none of us very well qualified to be judges, was owing to a circumstance of such every-day occurrence as almost to supersede the necessity of telling it, though the narrative would be rendered more complete by an explanation.

It happened, while we lay in the bleaching grounds, that one half of the piece extended into a part of the field that came under the management of a legitimist, while the other invaded the dominions of a liberal. Neither of these persons had any concern with us, we being under the special superintendence of the head workman, but it was impossible, altogether impossible, to escape the consequences of our locales. While the legitimist read nothing but the Moniteur, the liberal read nothing but Le Temps, a journal then recently established, in the supposed interests of human freedom. Each of these individuals got a paper at a certain hour, which he read with as much manner as he could command, and with singular perseverance as related to the difficulties to be overcome, to a clientele of bleachers, who reasoned as he reasoned, swore by his oaths, and finally arrived at all his conclusions. The liberals had the best of it as to numbers, and possibly as to wit, the Moniteur possessing the dullness of official dignity under all the dynasties and ministries that have governed France since its establishment. My business, however, is with the effect produced on the pocket-handkerchiefs, and not with that produced on the laborers. The two extremes were regular côtés gauches and côtés droits. In other words, all at the right end of the piece became devoted Bourbonists, devoutly believing that princes, who were daily mentioned with so much reverence and respect, could be nothing else but perfect; while the opposite extreme were disposed to think that nothing good could come of Nazareth. In this way, four of our number became decided politicians, not only entertaining a sovereign contempt for the sides they respectively opposed, but beginning to feel sensations approaching to hatred for each other.

The reader will readily understand that these feelings lessened toward the centre of the piece, acquiring most intensity at the extremes. I may be said, myself, to have belonged to the centre gauche, that being my accidental position in the fabric, where it was a natural consequence to obtain sentiments of this shade. It will be seen, in the end, how permanent were these early impressions, and how far it is worth while for mere pocket-handkerchiefs to throw away their time, and permit their feelings to become excited concerning interests that they are certainly not destined to control, and about which, under the most favorable circumstances, they seldom obtain other than very questionable information.

It followed from this state of feeling, that the notion we were about to fall into the hands of the unfortunate daughter of Louis XVI. excited considerable commotion and disgust among us. Though very moderate in my political antipathies and predilections, I confess to some excitement in my own case, declaring that if royalty was to be my lot, I would prefer not to ascend any higher on the scale than to become the property of that excellent princess, Amélie, who then presided in the Palais Royal, the daughter and sister of a king, but with as little prospects as desires of becoming a queen in her own person. This wish of mine was treated as groveling, and even worse than republican, by the côté droit of our piece, while the côté gauche sneered at it as manifesting a sneaking regard for station without the spirit to avow it. Roth were mistaken, however; no unworthy sentiments entering into my decision. Accident had made me acquainted with the virtues of this estimable woman, and I felt assured that she would treat even a pocket-handkerchief kindly. This early opinion has been confirmed by her deportment under very trying and unexpected events. I wish, as I believe she wishes herself, she had never been a queen.

All our family did not aspire as high as royalty. Some looked forward to the glories of a banker’s daughter’s trousseau,—we all understood that our price would be too high for any of the old nobility—while some even fancied that the happiness of traveling in company was reserved for us before we should be called regularly to enter on the duties of life. As we were so closely connected, and on the whole were affectionate as became brothers and sisters, it was the common wish that we might not be separated, but go together into the same wardrobe, let it be foreign or domestic, that of prince or plebeian. There were a few among us who spoke of the Duchesse de Berri as our future mistress; but the notion prevailed that we should so soon pass into the hands of a femme de chambre, as to render the selection little desirable. In the end we wisely and philosophically determined to await the result with patience, well knowing that we were altogether in the hands of caprice and fashion.

At length the happy moment arrived when we were to quit the warehouse of the manufacturer. Let what would happen, this was a source of joy, inasmuch as we all knew that we could only vegetate while we continued where we then were, and that too without experiencing the delights of our former position, with good roots in the earth, a genial sun shedding its warmth upon our bosoms, and balmy airs fanning our cheeks. We loved change, too, like other people, and had probably seen enough of vegetation, whether figurative or real, to satisfy us. Our departure from Picardie took place in June, 1830, and we reached Paris on the first day of the succeeding month. We went through the formalities of the custom-houses, or barrières, the same day, and the next morning we were all transferred to a celebrated shop that dealt in articles of our genus. Most of the goods were sent on drays to the magazin, but our reputation having preceded us, we were honored with a fiacre, making the journey between the Douane and the shop on the knee of a confidential commissionaire.

Great was the satisfaction of our little party as we first drove along through the streets of this capital of Europe—the centre of fashion and the abode of elegance. Our natures had adapted themselves to circumstances, and we no longer pined for the luxuries of the linum usitatissimum, but were ready to enter into all the pleasures of our now existence; which we well understood was to be one of pure parade, for no handkerchief of our quality was ever employed on any of the more menial offices of the profession. We might occasionally brush a lady’s cheek, or conceal a blush or a smile, but the usitatissimum had been left behind us in the fields. The fiacre stopped at the door of a celebrated perfumer, and the commissionaire, deeming us of too much value to be left on a carriage seat, took us in her hand while she negotiated a small affair with its mistress. This was our introduction to the pleasant association of sweet odors, with which it was to be our fortune to enjoy in future the most delicate and judicious communion. We knew very well that things of this sort were considered vulgar, unless of the purest quality and used with the tact of good society; but still it was permitted to sprinkle a very little lavender, or exquisite eau de cologne, on a pocket-handkerchief. The odor of these two scents, therefore, appeared quite natural to us, and as Madame Savon never allowed any perfume, or articles (as these things are technically termed) of inferior quality to pollute her shop, we had no scruples about inhaling the delightful fragrance that breathed in the place. Désirée, the commissionaire, could not depart without permitting her friend, Madame Savon, to feast her eyes on the treasure in her own hands. The handkerchiefs were unfolded, amidst a hundred dieux! ciels! and dames! Our fineness and beauty were extolled in a manner that was perfectly gratifying to the self-esteem of the whole family. Madame Savon imagined that even her perfumes would be more fragrant in such company, and she insisted on letting one drop—a single drop—of her eau de cologne fall on the beautiful texture. I was the happy handkerchief that was thus favored, and long did I riot in that delightful odor, which was just strong enough to fill the air with sensations, rather than impressions, of all that is sweet and womanly in the female wardrobe.

Notwithstanding this accidental introduction to one of the nicest distinctions of good society, and the general exhilaration that prevailed in our party, I was far from being perfectly happy. To own the truth, I had left my heart in Picardie. I do not say I was in love; I am far from certain that there is any precedent for a pocket-handkerchief’s being in love at all, and I am quite sure that the sensations I experienced were different from those I have since had frequent occasion to hear described. The circumstances which called them forth were as follows:

The manufactory in which our family was fabricated was formerly known as the Château de la Rocheaimard, and had been the property of the Vicomte de la Rocheaimard previously to the revolution that overturned the throne of Louis XVI. The vicomte and his wife joined the royalists at Coblentz, and the former, with his only son, Adrien de la Rocheaimard or the Chevalier de la Rocheaimard, as he was usually termed, had joined the allies in their attempted invasion on the soil of France. The vicomte, a marechal du camp, had fallen in battle, but the son escaped, and passed his youth in exile; marrying, a few years later, a cousin whose fortunes were at as low an ebb as his own. One child, Adrienne, was the sole issue of this marriage, having been born in the year 1810. Both the parents died before the restoration, leaving the little girl to the care of her pious grandmother, la vicomtesse, who survived, in a feeble old age, to descant on the former grandeur of her house, and to sigh, in common with so many others, for le bon vieux temps. At the restoration, there was some difficulty in establishing the right of the de la Rocheaimards to their share of the indemnity; a difficulty I never heard explained, but which was probably owing to the circumstance that there was no one in particular to interest themselves in the matter, but an old woman of sixty-five and a little girl of four. Such appellants, unsupported by money, interest, or power, seldom make out a very strong case for reparation of any sort, in this righteous world of ours, and had it not been for the goodness of the dauphine it is probable that the vicomtesse and her grand-daughter would have been reduced to downright beggary. But the daughter of the late king got intelligence of the necessities of the two descendants of crusaders, and a pension of two thousand francs a year was granted, en attendant.

Four hundred dollars a year does not appear a large sum, even to the nouveaux riches of America, but it sufficed to give Adrienne and her grandmother a comfortable, and even a respectable subsistence in the provinces. It was impossible for them to inhabit the château, now converted into a workshop and filled with machinery, but lodgings were procured in its immediate vicinity. Here Madame de la Rocheaimard whiled away the close of a varied and troubled life; if not in absolute peace, still not in absolute misery, while her grand-daughter grew into young womanhood, a miracle of goodness and pious devotion to her sole surviving parent. The strength of the family tie in France, and its comparative weakness in America, have been the subjects of frequent comment among travelers. I do not know that all which has been said is rigidly just, but I am inclined to think that much of it is, and, as I am now writing to Americans, and of French people, I see no particular reason why the fact should be concealed. Respect for years, deference to the authors of their being, and submission to parental authority are inculcated equally by the morals and the laws of France. The conseilles de famille is a beautiful and wise provision of the national code, and aids greatly in maintaining that system of patriarchal rule which lies at the foundation of the whole social structure. Alas! in the ease of the excellent Adrienne, this conseille de famille was easily assembled, and possessed perfect unanimity. The wars, the guillotine and exile had reduced it to two, one of which was despotic in her government, so far as theory was concerned at least; possibly, at times, a little so in practice. Still Adrienne, on the whole, grew up tolerably happy. She was taught most that is suitable for a gentlewoman, without being crammed with superfluous accomplishments, and, aided by the good curé, a man who remembered her grandfather, had both polished and stored her mind. Her manners were of the excellent tone that distinguished the good society of Paris before the revolution, being natural, quiet, simple and considerate. She seldom laughed, I fear; but her smiles were sweetness and benevolence itself.

The bleaching grounds of our manufactory were in the old park of the château. Thither Mad. de la Rocheaimard was fond of coming in the fine mornings of June, for many of the roses and lovely Persian lilacs that once abounded there still remained. I first saw Adrienne in one of these visits, the quality of our little family circle attracting her attention. One of the bleachers, indeed, was an old servant of the vicomte’s, and it was a source of pleasure to him to point out any thing to the ladies that he thought might prove interesting. This was the man who so diligently read the Moniteur, giving a religious credence to all it contained. He fancied no hand so worthy to hold fabrics of such exquisite fineness as that of Mademoiselle Adrienne, and it was through his assiduity that I had the honor of being first placed within the gentle pressure of her beautiful little fingers. This occurred about a month before our departure for Paris.

Adrienne de la Rocheaimard was then just twenty. Her beauty was of a character that is not common in France; but which, when it does exist, is nowhere surpassed. She was slight and delicate in person, of fair hair and complexion, and with the meekest and most dove-like blue eyes I ever saw in a female face. Her smile, too, was of so winning and gentle a nature, as to announce a disposition pregnant with all the affections. Still it was well understood that Adrienne was not likely to marry, her birth raising her above all intentions of connecting her ancient name with mere gold, while her poverty placed an almost insuperable barrier between her and most of the impoverished young men of rank whom she occasionally saw. Even the power of the dauphine was not sufficient to provide Adrienne de la Rocheaimard with a suitable husband. But of this the charming girl never thought; she lived more for her grandmother than for herself, and so long as that venerated relative, almost the only one that remained to her on earth, did not suffer or repine, she herself could be comparatively happy.

“Dans le bon vieux temps,” said the vicomtesse, examining me through her spectacles, and addressing Georges, who stood, hat in hand, to hearken to her wisdom; “dans le bon vieux temps, mon ami, the ladies of the château did not want for these things. There were six dozen in my corbeille, that were almost as fine as this; as for the trousseau, I believe it had twice the number, but very little inferior.”

“I remember that madame,” Georges always gave his old mistress this title of honor, “kept many of the beautiful garments of her trousseau untouched, down to the melancholy period of the revolution.”

“It has been a mine of wealth to me, Georges, in behalf of that dear child. You may remember that this trousseau was kept in the old armoire, on the right hand side of the little door of my dressing-room—”

“Madame la Vicomtesse will have the goodness to pardon me—it was on the left hand side of the room—Monsieur’s medals were kept in the opposite armoire.”

“Our good Georges is right, Adrienne!—he has a memory! Your grandfather insisted on keeping his medals in my dressing-room, as he says. Well, Monsieur Georges, left or right, there I left the remains of my trousseau when I fled from France, and there I found it untouched on my return. The manufactory had saved the château, and the manufacturers had spared my wardrobe. Its sale, and its materials, have done much toward rendering that dear child respectable and well clad, since our return.”

I thought the slight color which usually adorned the fair oval cheeks of Adrienne deepened a little at this remark, and I certainly felt a little tremor in the hand which held me; but it could not have been shame, as the sweet girl often alluded to her poverty in a way so simple and natural, as to prove that she had no false feelings on that subject. And why should she? Poverty ordinarily causes no such sensations to those who are conscious of possessing advantages of an order superior to wealth, and surely a well-educated, well-born, virtuous girl need not have blushed because estates were torn from her parents by a political convulsion that had overturned an ancient and powerful throne.

From this time, the charming Adrienne frequently visited the bleaching grounds, always accompanied by her grandmother. The presence of Georges was an excuse, but to watch the improvement in our appearance was the reason. Never before had Adrienne seen a fabric as beautiful as our own, and, as I afterwards discovered, she was laying by a few francs with the intention of purchasing the piece, and of working and ornamenting the handkerchiefs, in order to present them to her benefactress, the dauphine. Mad. de la Rocheaimard was pleased with this project; it was becoming in a de la Rocheaimard; and they soon began to speak of it openly in their visits. Fifteen or twenty napoleons might do it, and the remains of the recovered trousseau would still produce that sum. It is probable this intention would have been carried out, but for a severe illness that attacked the dear girl, during which her life was even despaired of. I had the happiness of hearing of her gradual recovery, however, before we commenced our journey, though no more was said of the purchase. Perhaps it was as well as it was; for, by this time, such a feeling existed in our extreme côté gauche, that it may be questioned if the handkerchiefs of that end of the piece would have behaved themselves in the wardrobe of the dauphine with the discretion and prudence that are expected from every thing around the person of a princess of her exalted rank and excellent character. It is true, none of us understood the questions at issue; but that only made the matter worse; the violence of all dissensions being very generally in proportion to the ignorance and consequent confidence of the disputants.

I could not but remember Adrienne, as the commissionaire laid us down before the eyes of the wife of the head of the firm, in the rue de— —. We were carefully examined, and pronounced “parfaits;” still it was not in the sweet tunes, and with the sweeter smiles of the polished and gentle girl we had left in Picardie. There was a sentiment in her admiration that touched all our hearts, even to the most exaggerated republican among us, for she seemed to go deeper in her examination of merits than the mere texture and price. She saw her offering in our beauty, the benevolence of the dauphine in our softness, her own gratitude in our exquisite fineness, and princely munificence in our delicacy. In a word, she could enter into the sentiment of a pocket-handkerchief. Alas! how different was the estimation in which we were held by Désirée and her employers. With them, it was purely a question of francs, and we had not been in the magazin five minutes, when there was a lively dispute whether we were to be put at a certain number of napoleons, or one napoleon more. A good deal was said about Mad. la Duchesse, and I found it was expected that a certain lady of that rank, one who had enjoyed the extraordinary luck of retaining her fortune, being of an old and historical family, and who was at the head of fashion in the faubourg, would become the purchaser. At all events, it was determined no one should see us until this lady returned to town, she being at the moment at Rosny, with madame, whence she was expected to accompany that princess to Dieppe, to come back to her hotel, in the rue de Bourbon, about the last of October. Here, then, were we doomed to three months of total seclusion in the heart of the gayest capital of Europe. It was useless to repine, and we determined among ourselves to exercise patience in the best manner we could.

Accordingly, we were safely deposited in a particular drawer, along with a few other favorite articles, that, like our family, were reserved for the eyes of certain distinguished but absent customers. These specialités in trade are of frequent occurrence in Paris, and form a pleasant bond of union between the buyer and seller, which gives a particular zest to this sort of commerce, and not unfrequently a particular value to goods. To see that which no one else has seen, and to own that which no one else can own, are equally agreeable, and delightfully exclusive. All minds that do not possess the natural sources of exclusion, are fond of creating them by means of a subordinate and more artificial character.

On the whole, I think we enjoyed our new situation, rather than otherwise. The drawer was never opened, it is true, but that next it was in constant use, and certain crevices beneath the counter enabled us to see a little, and to hear more, of what passed in the magazin. We were in a part of the shop most frequented by ladies, and we overheard a few tête-à-têtes that were not without amusement. These generally related to cancans. Paris is a town in which cancans do not usually flourish, their proper theatre being provincial and trading places, beyond a question; still there are cancans at Paris; for all sorts of persons frequent that centre of civilization. The only difference is, that in the social pictures offered by what are called cities, the cancans are in the strongest light, and in the most conspicuous of the grouping; whereas in Paris they are kept in shadow, and in the background. Still there are cancans at Paris; and cancans we overheard, and precisely in the manner I have related. Did pretty ladies remember that pocket-handkerchiefs have ears, they might possibly have more reserve in the indulgence of this extraordinary propensity.

We had been near a month in the drawer, when I recognized a female voice near us, that I had often heard of late, speaking in a confident and decided tone, and making allusions that showed she belonged to the court. I presume her position there was not of the most exalted kind, yet it was sufficiently so to qualify her, in her own estimation, to talk politics. “Les ordonnances” were in her mouth constantly, and it was easy to perceive that she attached the greatest importance to these ordinances, whatever they were, and fancied a political millennium was near. The shop was frequented less than usual that day; the next it was worse still, in the way of business, and the clerks began to talk loud, also, about les ordonnances. The following morning neither windows nor doors were opened, and we passed a gloomy time of uncertainty and conjecture. There were ominous sounds in the streets. Some of us thought we heard the roar of distant artillery. At length the master and mistress appeared by themselves in the shop; money and papers were secured, and the female was just retiring to an inner room, when she suddenly came back to the counter, opened our drawer, seized us with no very reverent hands, and, the next thing we knew, the whole twelve of us were thrust into a trunk up stairs, and buried in Egyptian darkness. From that moment all traces of what was occurring in the streets of Paris were lost to us. After all, it is not so very disagreeable to be only a pocket-handkerchief in a revolution.

Our imprisonment lasted until the following December. As our feelings had become excited on the questions of the day, as well as those of other irrational beings around us, we might have passed a most uncomfortable time in the trunk, but for one circumstance. So great had been the hurry of our mistress in thus shutting us up, that we had been crammed in in a way to leave it impossible to say which was the côté droit, and which the côté gauche. Thus completely deranged as parties, we took to discussing philosophical matters in general; an occupation well adapted to a situation that required so great an exercise of discretion.

One day, when we least expected so great a change, our mistress came in person, searched several chests, trunks and drawers, and finally discovered us where she had laid us, with her own hands, near four months before. It seems that, in her hurry and fright, she had actually forgotten in what nook we had been concealed. We were smoothed with care, our political order reëstablished, and then we were taken below and restored to the dignity of the select circle in the drawer already mentioned. This was like removing to a fashionable square, or living in a beau quartier of a capital. It was even better than removing from East Broadway into bona fide real, unequaled, league-long, eighty feet wide, Broadway!

We now had an opportunity of learning some of the great events that had recently occurred in France, and which still troubled Europe. The Bourbons were again dethroned, as it was termed, and another Bourbon seated in their place. It would seem il y a Bourbon et Bourbon. The result has since shown that “what is bred in the bone will break out in the flesh.” Commerce was at a stand still; our master passed half his time under arms, as a national guard, in order to keep the revolutionists from revolutionizing the revolution. The great families had laid aside their liveries; some of them their coaches; most of them their arms. Pocket-handkerchiefs of our calibre would be thought decidedly aristocratic; and aristocracy in Paris, just at that moment, was almost in as bad odor as it is in America, where it ranks as an eighth deadly sin, though no one seems to know precisely what it means. In the latter country, an honest development of democracy is certain to be stigmatized as tainted with this crime. No governor would dare to pardon it.

The groans over the state of trade were loud and deep among those who lived by its innocent arts. Still, the holidays were near, and hope revived. If revolutionized Paris would not buy as the jour de l’an approached, Paris must have a new dynasty. The police foresaw this, and it ceased to agitate, in order to bring the republicans into discredit; men must eat, and trade was permitted to revive a little, Alas! how little do they who vote, know why they vote, or they who dye their hands in the blood of their kind, why the deed has been done!

The duchesse had not returned to Paris; neither had she emigrated. Like most of the high nobility, who rightly enough believed that primogeniture and birth were of the last importance to them, she preferred to show her distaste for the present order of things, by which the youngest prince of a numerous family had been put upon the throne of the oldest, by remaining at her château. All expectations of selling us to her were abandoned, and we were thrown fairly into the market, on the great principle of liberty and equality. This was as became a republican reign.

Our prospects were varied daily. The dauphine, madame, and all the de la Rochefoucaulds, de la Trémouilles, de Grammonts, de Rohans, de Crillons, &c. &c., were out of the question. The royal family were in England, the Orleans branch excepted, and the high nobility were very generally on their “high ropes,” or, à bouder. As for the bankers, their reign had not yet fairly commenced. Previously to July, 1830, this estimable class of citizens had not dared to indulge their native tastes for extravagance and parade, the grave dignity and high breeding of a very ancient but impoverished nobility holding them in some restraint; and, then, their fortunes were still uncertain; the funds were not firm, and even the honorable and worthy Jacques Lafitte, a man to ennoble any calling, was shaking in credit. Had we been brought into the market a twelvemonth later, there is no question that we should have been caught up within a week, by the wife or daughter of some of the operatives at the Bourse.

As it was, however, we enjoyed ample leisure for observation and reflection. Again and again were we shown to those who, it was thought, could not fail to yield to our beauty; but no one would purchase. All appeared to eschew aristocracy, even in their pocket-handkerchiefs. The day the fleurs de lys were cut out of the medallions of the treasury, and the king laid down his arms, I thought our mistress would have had the hysterics on our account. Little did she understand human nature, for the nouveaux riches, who are as certain to succeed an old and displaced class of superiors, as hungry flies to follow flies with full bellies, would have been much more apt to run into extravagance and folly, than persons always accustomed to money, and who did not depend on its exhibition for their importance. A day of deliverance, notwithstanding, was at hand, which to me seemed like the bridal of a girl dying to rush into the dissipations of society.

The holidays were over, without there being any material revival of trade, when my deliverance unexpectedly occurred. It was in February, and I do believe our mistress had abandoned the expectation of disposing of us that season, when I heard a gentle voice speaking near the counter, one day, in tones which struck me as familiar. It was a female, of course, and her inquiries were about a piece of cambric handkerchiefs, which she said had been sent to this shop from a manufactory in Picardie. There was nothing of the customary alertness in the manner of our mistress, and, to my surprise, she even showed the customer one or two pieces of much inferior quality, before we were produced. The moment I got into the light, however, I recognized the beautifully turned form and sweet face of Adrienne de la Rocheaimard. The poor girl was paler and thinner than when I had last seen her, doubtless, I thought, the effects of her late illness; but I could not conceal from myself the unpleasant fact that she was much less expensively clad. I say less expensively clad, though the expression is scarcely just, for I had never seen her in attire that could properly be called expensive at all; and, yet, the term mean would be equally inapplicable to her present appearance. It might be better to say that, relieved by a faultless, even a fastidious neatness and grace, there was an air of severe, perhaps of pinched economy in her present attire. This it was that had prevented our mistress from showing her fabrics as fine as we, on the first demand. Still I thought there was a slight flush on the cheek of the poor girl, and a faint smile on her features, as she instantly recognized us for old acquaintances. For one, I own I was delighted at finding her soft fingers again brushing over my own exquisite surface, feeling as if one had been expressly designed for the other. Then Adrienne hesitated; she appeared desirous of speaking, and yet abashed. Her color went and came, until a deep rosy blush settled on each cheek, and her tongue found utterance.

“Would it suit you, madame,” she asked, as if dreading a repulse, “to part with one of these?”

“Your pardon, mademoiselle; handkerchiefs of this quality are seldom sold singly.”

“I feared us much—and yet I have occasion for only one. It is to be worked—if it—”

The words came slowly, and they were spoken with difficulty. At that last uttered, the sound of the sweet girl’s voice died entirely away. I fear it was the dullness of trade, rather than any considerations of benevolence, that induced our mistress to depart from her rule.

“The price of each handkerchief is five and twenty francs, mademoiselle—” she had offered the day before to sell us to the wife of one of the richest agents de change in Paris, at a napoleon a piece—“the price is five and twenty francs, if you take the dozen, but as you appear to wish only one, rather than not oblige you, it may be had for eight and twenty.”

There was a strange mixture of sorrow and delight in the countenance of Adrienne; but she did not hesitate, and, attracted by the odor of the eau de cologne, she instantly pointed me out as the handkerchief she selected. Our mistress passed her scissors between me and my neighbor of the côté gauche, and then she seemed instantly to regret her own precipitation. Before making the final separation from the piece, she delivered herself of her doubts.

“It is worth another franc, mademoiselle,” she said, “to cut a handkerchief from the centre of the piece.”

The pain of Adrienne was now too manifest for concealment. That she ardently desired the handkerchief was beyond dispute, and yet there existed some evident obstacle to her wishes.

“I fear I have not so much money with me, madame,” she said, pale as death, for all sense of shame was lost in intense apprehension. Still her trembling hands did their duty, and her purse was produced. A gold napoleon promised well, but it had no fellow. Seven more francs appeared in single pieces. Then two ten-sous were produced; after which nothing remained but copper. The purse was emptied, and the reticule rummaged, the whole amounting to just twenty-eight francs seven sous.

“I have no more, madame,” said Adrienne, in a faint voice.

The woman, who had been trained in the school of suspicion, looked intently at the other, for an instant, and then she swept the money into her drawer, content with having extorted from this poor girl more than she would have dared to ask of the wife of the agent de change. Adrienne took me up and glided from the shop, as if she feared her dear bought prize would yet be torn from her. I confess my own delight was so great that I did not fully appreciate, at the time, all the hardship of the case. It was enough to be liberated, to get into the fresh air, to be about to fulfill my proper destiny. I was tired of that sort of vegetation in which I neither grew, nor was watered by tears; nor could I see those stars on which I so much doated, and from which I had learned a wisdom so profound. The politics, too, were rendering our family unpleasant; the coté droit was becoming supercilious—it had always been illogical; while the côté gauche was just beginning to discover that it had made a revolution for other people. Then it was happiness itself to be with Adrienne, and when I felt the dear girl pressing me to her heart, by an act of volition of which pocket-handkerchiefs are little suspected, I threw up a fold of my gossamer-like texture, as if the air wafted me, and brushed the first tear of happiness from her eye that she had shed in months.

The reader may be certain that my imagination was all alive to conjecture the circumstances which had brought Adrienne de la Rocheaimard to Paris, and why she had been so assiduous in searching me out, in particular. Could it be that the grateful girl still intended to make her offering to the Duchesse d’Angoulême? Ah! no—that princess was in exile; while her sister was forming weak plots in behalf of her son, which a double treachery was about to defeat. I have already hinted that pocket-handkerchiefs do not receive and communicate ideas, by means of the organs in use among human beings. They possess a clairvoyance that is always available under favorable circumstances. In their case the mesmeritic trance may be said to be ever in existence, while in the performance of their proper functions. It is only while crowded into bales, or thrust into drawers for the vulgar purposes of trade, that this instinct is dormant, a beneficent nature scorning to exercise her benevolence for any but legitimate objects. I now mean legitimacy as connected with cause and effect, and nothing political or dynastic.

By virtue of this power, I had not long been held in the soft hand of Adrienne, or pressed against her beating heart, without becoming the master of all her thoughts, as well as of her various causes of hope and fear. This knowledge did not burst upon me at once, it is true, as is pretended to be the case with certain somnambules, for with me there is no empiricism—every thing proceeds from cause to effect, and a little time, with some progressive steps, was necessary to make me fully acquainted with the whole. The simplest things became the first apparent, and others followed by a species of magnetic induction, which I cannot now stop to explain. When this tale is told, I propose to lecture on the subject, to which all the editors in the country will receive the usual free tickets, when the world cannot fail of knowing quite as much, at least, as these meritorious public servants.

The first fact that I learned, was the very important one that the vicomtesse had lost all her usual means of support by the late revolution, and the consequent exile of the dauphine. This blow, so terrible to the grandmother and her dependent child, had occurred, too, most inopportunely, as to time. A half year’s pension was nearly due at the moment the great change occurred, and the day of payment arrived and passed, leaving these two females literally without twenty francs. Had it not been for the remains of the trousseau, both must have begged, or perished of want. The crisis called for decision, and fortunately the old lady, who had already witnessed so many vicissitudes, had still sufficient energy to direct their proceedings. Paris was the best place in which to dispose of her effects, and thither she and Adrienne came, without a moment’s delay. The shops were first tried, but the shops, in the autumn of 1830, offered indifferent resources for the seller. Valuable effects were there daily sold for a twentieth part of their original cost, and the vicomtesse saw her little stores diminish daily; for the Mont de Piété was obliged to regulate its own proceedings by the received current values of the day. Old age, vexation, and this last most cruel blow, did not fail of effecting that which might have been foreseen. The vicomtesse sunk under this accumulation of misfortunes, and became bed-ridden, helpless, and querulous. Every thing now devolved on the timid, gentle, unpracticed Adrienne. All females of her condition, in countries advanced in civilization like France, look to the resource of imparting a portion of what they themselves have acquired, to others of their own sex, in moments of urgent necessity. The possibility of Adrienne’s being compelled to become a governess, or a companion, had long keen kept in view, but the situation of Mad. de la Rocheaimard forbade any attempt of the sort, for the moment, had the state of the country rendered it at all probable that a situation could have been procured. On this fearful exigency, Adrienne had aroused all her energies, and gone deliberately into the consideration of her circumstances.

Poverty had compelled Mad. de la Rocheaimard to seek the cheapest respectable lodgings she could find on reaching town. In anticipation of a long residence, and, for the consideration of a considerable abatement in price, she had fortunately paid six months’ rent in advance; thus removing from Adrienne the apprehension of having no place in which to cover her head, for some time to come. These lodgings were in an entresol of the Place Royale, a perfectly reputable and private part of the town, and in some respects were highly eligible. Many of the menial offices, too, were to be performed by the wife of the porter, according to the bargain, leaving to poor Adrienne, however, all the care of her grandmother, whose room she seldom quitted, the duties of nurse and cook, and the still more important task of finding the means of subsistence.

For quite a month the poor desolate girl contrived to provide for her grandmother’s necessities, by disposing of the different articles of the trousseau. This store was now nearly exhausted, and she had found a milliner who gave her a miserable pittance for toiling with her needle eight or ten hours each day. Adrienne had not lost a moment, but had begun this system of ill-requited industry long before her money was exhausted. She foresaw that her grandmother must die, and the great object of her present existence was to provide for the few remaining wants of this only relative during the brief time she had yet to live, and to give her decent and Christian burial. Of her own future lot, the poor girl thought as little as possible, though fearful glimpses would obtrude themselves on her uneasy imagination. At first she had employed a physician; but her means could not pay for his visits, nor did the situation of her grandmother render them very necessary. He promised to call occasionally without fee, and, for a short time, he kept his word, but his benevolence soon wearied of performing offices that really were not required. By the end of the month, Adrienne saw him no more.

As long as her daily toil seemed to supply her own little wants, Adrienne was content to watch on, weep on, pray on, in waiting for the moment she so much dreaded; that which was to sever the last tie she appeared to possess on earth. It is true she had a few very distant relatives, but they had emigrated to America, at the commencement of the revolution of 1789, and all traces of them had long been lost. In point of fact, the men were dead, and the females were grandmothers with English names, and were almost ignorant of any such persons as the de la Rocheaimards. From these Adrienne had nothing to expect. To her, they were as beings in another planet. But the trousseau was nearly exhausted, and the stock of ready money was reduced to a single napoleon, and a little change. It was absolutely necessary to decide on some new scheme for a temporary subsistence, and that without delay.

Among the valuables of the trousseau was a piece of exquisite lace, that had never been even worn. The vicomtesse had a pride in looking at it, for it showed the traces of her former wealth and magnificence, and she would never consent to part with it. Adrienne had carried it once to her employer, the milliner, with the intention of disposing of it, but the price offered was so greatly below what she knew to be the true value, that she would not sell it. Her own wardrobe, however, was going fast, nothing disposable remained of her grandmother’s, and this piece of lace must be turned to account in some way. While reflecting on these dire necessities, Adrienne remembered our family. She knew to what shop we had been sent in Paris, and she now determined to purchase one of us, to bestow on the handkerchief selected some of her own beautiful needle work, to trim it with this lace, and, by the sale, to raise a sum sufficient for all her grandmother’s earthly wants.

Generous souls are usually ardent. Their hopes keep pace with their wishes, and, as Adrienne had heard that twenty napoleons were sometimes paid by the wealthy for a single pocket-handkerchief, when thus decorated, she saw a little treasure in reserve, before her mind’s eye.

“I can do the work in two months,” she said to herself, “by taking the time I have used for exercise, and by severe economy; by eating less myself, and working harder, we can make out to live that time on what we have.”

This was the secret of my purchase, and the true reason why this lovely girl had literally expended her last sou in making it. The cost had materially exceeded her expectations, and she could not return home without disposing of some article she had in her reticule, to supply the vacuum left in her purse. There would be nothing ready for the milliner, under two or three days, and there was little in the lodgings to meet the necessities of her grandmother. Adrienne had taken her way along the quays, delighted with her acquisition, and was far from the Mont de Piété before this indispensable duty occurred to her mind. She then began to look about her for a shop in which she might dispose of something for the moment. Luckily she was the mistress of a gold thimble, that had been presented to her by her grandmother, as her very last birth-day present. It was painful for her to part with it, but, as it was to supply the wants of that very parent, the sacrifice cost her less than might otherwise have been the case. Its price had been a napoleon, and a napoleon, just then, was a mint of money in her eyes. Beside, she had a silver thimble at home, and a brass one would do for her work.

Adrienne’s necessities had made her acquainted with several jewellers’ shops. To one of these she now proceeded, and, first observing through the window that no person was in but one of her own sex, the silversmith’s wife, she entered with the greater confidence and alacrity.

“Madame,” she said, in timid tones, for want had not yet made Adrienne bold or coarse, “I have a thimble to dispose of—could you be induced to buy it?”

The woman look the thimble and examined it, weighed it, and submitted its metal to the test of the touchstone. It was a pretty thimble, though small, or it would not have fitted Adrienne’s finger. This fact struck the woman of the shop, and she cast a suspicious glance at Adrienne’s hand, the whiteness and size of which, however, satisfied her that the thimble had not been stolen.

“What do you expect to receive for this thimble, mademoiselle?” asked the woman, coldly.

“It cost a napoleon, madame, and was made expressly for myself.”

“You do not expect to sell it at what it cost?” was the dry answer.

“Perhaps not, madame—I suppose you will look for a profit in selling it again. I wish you to name the price.”

This was said because the delicate ever shrink from affixing a value to the time and services of others. Adrienne was afraid she might unintentionally deprive the woman of a portion of her just gains. The latter understood by the timidity and undecided manner of the applicant, that she had a very unpracticed being to deal with, and she was emboldened to act accordingly. First taking another look at the pretty little hand and fingers, to make certain the thimble might not be reclaimed, when satisfied that it really belonged to her who wished to dispose of it, she ventured to answer.

“In such times as we had before these vile republicans drove all the strangers from Paris, and when our commerce was good,” she said, “I might have offered seven francs and a half for that thimble; but, as things are now, the last sou I can think of giving is five francs.”

“The gold is very good, madame,” Adrienne observed, in a voice half-choked; “they told my grandmother the metal alone was worth thirteen.”

“Perhaps, mademoiselle, they might give that much at the mint, for there they coin money; but, in this shop, no one will give more than five francs for that thimble.”

Had Adrienne been longer in communion with a cold and heartless world, she would not have submitted to this piece of selfish extortion; but, inexperienced, and half frightened by the woman’s manner, she begged the pittance offered as a boon, dropped her thimble, and made a busty retreat. When the poor girl reached the street, she began to reflect on what she had done. Five francs would scarcely support her grandmother a week, with even the wood and wine she had on hand, and she had no more gold thimbles to sacrifice. A heavy sigh broke from her bosom, and tears stood in her eyes. But she was wanted at home, and had not the leisure to reflect fully on her own mistake.

Occupation is a blessed relief to the miserable. Of all the ingenious modes of torture that have ever been invented, that of solitary confinement is probably the most cruel—the mind feeding on itself with the rapacity of a cormorant, when the conscience quickens its activity and prompts its longings. Happily for Adrienne, she had too many positive cares, to be enabled to waste many minutes either in retrospection, or in endeavors to conjecture the future. Far—far more happily for herself, her conscience was clear, for never had a purer mind, or a gentler spirit dwelt in female breast. Still she could blame her own oversight, and it was days before her self-upbraidings, for thus trifling with what she conceived to be the resources of her beloved grandmother, were driven from her thoughts by the pressure of other and greater ills.

Were I to last a thousand years, and rise to the dignity of being the handkerchief that the Grand Turk is said to toss toward his favorite, I could not forget the interest with which I accompanied Adrienne to the door of her little apartment, in the entresol. She was in the habit of hiring little Nathalie, the porter’s daughter, to remain with her grandmother during her own necessary but brief absences, and this girl was found at the entrance, eager to be relieved.

“Has my grandmother asked for me, Nathalie?” demanded Adrienne, anxiously, the moment they met.

“Non, mademoiselle; madame has done nothing but sleep, and I was getting so tired!”

The sou was given, and the porter’s daughter disappeared, leaving Adrienne alone in the ante-chamber. The furniture of this little apartment was very respectable, for Madame de la Rocheaimard, besides paying a pretty fair rent, had hired it just after the revolution, when the prices had fallen quite half, and the place had, by no means, the appearance of that poverty which actually reigned within. Adrienne went through the ante-chamber, which served also as a salle à manger, and passed a small saloon, into the bed-chamber of her parent. Here her mind was relieved by finding all right. She gave her grandmother some nourishment, inquired tenderly as to her wishes, executed several little necessary offices, and then sat down to work for her own daily bread; every moment being precious to one so situated. I expected to be examined—perhaps caressed, fondled, or praised, but no such attention awaited me. Adrienne had arranged every thing in her own mind, and I was to be produced only at those extra hours in the morning, when she had been accustomed to take exercise in the open air. For the moment I was laid aside, though in a place that enabled me to be a witness of all that occurred. The day passed in patient toil, on the part of the poor girl, the only relief she enjoyed being those moments when she was called on to attend to the wants of her grandmother. A light potage, with a few grapes and bread, composed her dinner; even of these I observed that she laid aside nearly half for the succeeding day; doubts of her having the means of supporting her parent until the handkerchief was completed, beginning to beset her mind. It was these painful and obtrusive doubts that most distressed the dear girl, now, for the expectation of reaping a reward comparatively brilliant, from the ingenious device to repair her means on which she had fallen, was strong within her. Poor child! her misgivings were the overflowings of a tender heart, while her hopes partook of the sanguine character of youth and inexperience!

My turn came the following morning. It was now spring, and this is a season of natural delights at Paris. We were already in April, end the flowers had begun to shed their fragrance on the air, and to brighten the aspect of the public gardens. Mad. de la Rocheaimard usually slept the soundest at this hour, and, hitherto, Adrienne had not hesitated to leave her, while she went herself to the nearest public promenade, to breathe the pure air and to gain strength for the day. In future, she was to deny herself this sweet gratification. It was such a sacrifice, as the innocent and virtuous, and I may add the tasteful, who are cooped up amid the unnatural restraints of a town, will best know how to appreciate. Still it was made without a murmur, though not without a sigh.

When Adrienne laid me on the frame where I was to be ornamented by her own pretty hands, she regarded me with a look of delight, nay, even of affection, that I shall never forget. As yet she felt none of the malign consequences of the self-denial she was about to exert. If not blooming, her cheeks still retained some of their native color, and her eye, thoughtful and even sad, was not yet anxious and sunken. She was pleased with her purchase, and she contemplated prodigies in the way of results. Adrienne was unusually skillful with the needle, and her taste had been so highly cultivated, as to make her a perfect mistress of all the proprieties of patterns. At the time it was thought of making an offering of all our family to the dauphine, the idea of working the handkerchiefs was entertained, and some designs of exquisite beauty and neatness had been prepared. They were not simple, vulgar, unmeaning ornaments, such as the uncultivated seize upon with avidity on account of their florid appearance, but well devised drawings, that were replete with taste and thought, and afforded some apology for the otherwise senseless luxury contemplated, by aiding in refining the imagination, and cultivating the intellect. She had chosen one of the simplest and most beautiful of these designs, intending to transfer it to my face, by means of the needle.

The first stitch was made just as the clocks were striking the hour of five, on the morning of the fourteenth of April, 1831. The last was drawn that day two months, precisely as the same clocks struck twelve. For four hours Adrienne sat bending over her toil, deeply engrossed in the occupation, and fluttering herself with the fruits of her success. I learned much of the excellent child’s true character in these brief hours. Her mind wandered over her hopes and fears, recurring to her other labors, and the prices she received for occupations so wearying and slavish. By the milliner, she was paid merely as a common sewing-girl, though her neatness, skill and taste might well have entitled her to double wages. A franc a day was the usual price for girls of an inferior caste, and out of this they were expected to find their own lodgings and food. But the poor revolution had still a great deal of private misery to answer for, in the way of reduced wages. Those who live on the frivolities of mankind, or, what is the same thing, their luxuries, have two sets of victims to plunder—the consumer, and the real producer, or the operative. This is true where men are employed, but much truer in the case of females. The last are usually so helpless, that they often cling to oppression and wrong, rather than submit to be cast entirely upon the world. The marchande de mode who employed Adrienne was as rusée as a politician who had followed all the tergiversations of Gallic policy, since the year ’89. She was fully aware of what a prize she possessed in the unpracticed girl, and she felt the importance of keeping her in ignorance of her own value. By paying the franc, it might give her assistant premature notions of her own importance; but, by bringing her down to fifteen sous, humility would be inculcated, and the chance of keeping her doubled. This, which would have defeated a bargain with any common couturière, succeeded perfectly with Adrienne. She received her fifteen sous with humble thankfulness, in constant apprehension of losing even that miserable pittance. Nor would her employer consent to let her work by the piece, at which the dear child might have earned at least thirty sous, for she discovered that she had to deal with a person of conscience, and that in no mode could as much be possibly extracted from the assistant, as by confiding to her own honor. At nine each day she was to breakfast. At a quarter past nine, precisely, to commence work for her employer; at one, she had a remission of half an hour; and at six, she became her own mistress.

“I put confidence in you, mademoiselle,” said the marchande de mode, “and leave you to yourself entirely. You will bring home the work as it is finished, and your money will be always ready. Should your grandmother occupy more of your time than common, on any occasion, you can make it up of yourself, by working a little earlier, or a little later; or, once in a while, you can throw in a day, to make up for last time. You would not do as well at piece-work, and I wish to deal generously by you. When certain things are wanted in a hurry, you will not mind working an hour or two beyond time, and I will always find lights with the greatest pleasure. Permit me to advise you to take the intermissions as much as possible for your attentions to your grandmother, who must be attended to properly. Si—the care of our parents is one of our most solemn duties! Adieu, mademoiselle; au revoir!”

This was one of the speeches of the marchande de mode to Adrienne, and the dear girl repeated it in her mind, as she sat at work on me, without the slightest distrust of the heartless selfishness it so ill concealed. On fifteen sous she found she could live without encroaching on the little stock set apart for the support of her grandmother, and she was content. Alas! the poor girl had not entered into any calculation of the expense of lodgings, of fuel, of clothes, of health impaired, and as for any resources for illness or accidents, she was totally without them. Still Adrienne thought herself the obliged party, in times as critical as those which then hung over France, in being permitted to toil for a sum that would barely supply a grisette, accustomed all her life to privations, with the coarsest necessaries.

I have little to say of the succeeding fortnight. Mad. de la Rocheaimard gradually grew feebler, but she might still live months. No one could tell, and Adrienne hoped she would never die. Happily, her real wants were few, though her appetite was capricious, and her temper querulous. Love for her grandchild, however, shone in all she said and did, and so long as she was loved by this, the only being on earth she had ever been taught to love herself, Adrienne would not think an instant of the ills caused by the infirmities of age. She husbanded her money, with the utmost frugality, and contrived to save even a few sous daily, out of her own wages, to add to her grandmother’s stock. This she could not have done, but for the circumstance of there living so much in the house of their early stores, to help eke out the supplies of the moment. But, at the end of a fortnight, Adrienne found herself reduced to her last franc, including all her own savings. Something must be done, and that without delay, or Madame de la Rocheaimard would be without the means of support.

By this time Adrienne had little to dispose of, except the lace. This exquisite piece of human ingenuity had originally cost five louis d’or, and Adrienne had once shown it to her employer, who had generously offered to give two napoleons for it. But the lace must be kept for my gala dress, and it was hoped that it would bring at least its original cost when properly bestowed as an ornament on a fabric of my quality. There was the silver thimble, and that had cost five francs. Adrienne sent for the porter’s daughter, and she went forth to dispose of this, almost the only article of luxury that remained to her.

“Un dé, ma bonne demoiselle!” exclaimed the woman to whom the thimble was offered for sale; “this is so common an article as scarcely to command any price. I will give thirty sous, notwithstanding.”

Adrienne had made her calculations, as she fancied, with some attention to the ways of the world. Bitter experience was teaching her severe lessons, and she felt the necessity of paying more attention than had been her wont to the practices of men. She had hoped to receive three francs for her thimble, which was quite new, and which, being pretty, was cheap at five, as sold in the shops. She ventured, therefore, to express as much to the woman in question.

“Three francs, Mademoiselle!” exclaimed the other—“Jamais, since the three days! All our commerce was then destroyed, and no one would think of giving such a price. If I get three for it myself I shall be too happy. Cependant, as the thimble is pretty, and the metal looks good, we will say five and thirty sous, and have no more words about it.”

Adrienne sighed, and then she received the money and returned home. Two hours later the woman of the shop met with an idle customer who had more money than discretion, and she sold this very thimble for six francs, under the plea that it was a new fashion that had sprung out of the Revolution of July. That illustrious event, however, produced other results that were quite as hard to be reduced to the known connection between cause and effect as this.

Adrienne found that by using the wine which still remained, as well as some sugar and arrowroot, her grandmother could be made comfortable for just ten sous a day. She had been able to save of her own wages three, and here, then, were the means of maintaining Madame de la Rocheaimard, including the franc on hand, for just a week longer. To do this, however, some little extra economy would be necessary. Adrienne had conscientiously taken the time used to sell the thimble from her morning’s work on me. As she sat down, on her return, she went over these calculations in her mind, and when they were ended, she cast a look at her work, as if to calculate its duration by what she had so far finished. Her eye assured her that not more than one fourth of her labor was, as yet, completed. Could she get over the next six weeks, however, she would be comparatively rich, and, as her lease would be out in two months, she determined to get cheaper lodgings in the country, remove her grandmother, purchase another handkerchief—if possible one of my family—and while she lived on the fruits of her present labors, to earn the means for a still more remote day. It is true, she had no more lace with which to decorate another handkerchief, but the sale of this would supply the money to purchase anew, and in this way the simple minded girl saw no reason why she might not continue on as long as health and strength would allow—at least as long as her grandmother lived.

Hope is as blessed a provision for the poor and unhappy us occupation. While oppressed with present ills they struggle to obtain a fancied existence under happier auspices, furnishing a healthful and important lesson to man, that never ceases to remind him of a future that is to repair every wrong, apply a balm to every wound, if he will only make a timely provision for its wants.

Again did Adrienne resume her customary round of duties. Four hours each morning were devoted to me. Then followed the frugal breakfast, when her commoner toil for the milliner succeeded. The rest of the day was occupied with this latter work, for which she received the customary fifteen sous. When she retired at night, which the ailings and complaints of her grandmother seldom permitted before eleven, it was with a sense of weariness that began to destroy sleep; still the dear girl thought herself happy, for I more than equaled her expectations, and she had latterly worked on me with so much zeal as to have literally thrown the fruits of two weeks’ work into one.

But the few francs Adrienne possessed diminished with alarming rapidity. She began to calculate her ways and means once more, and this was no longer done as readily as before. Her own wardrobe would not bear any drain upon it. Early in the indisposition of her grandmother, all of that had been sold which she could spare; for, with the disinterestedness of her nature, when sacrifices became necessary her first thoughts were of her own little stock of clothes. Of jewelry she never had been the mistress of much, though the vicomtesse had managed to save a few relics of her own ancient magnificence. Nevertheless, they were articles of but little value, the days of her exile having made many demands on all such resources.

It happened, one evening when Adrienne was receiving her wages from the milliner, that the poor girl overheard a discourse that proved she was not paid at the rate at which others were remunerated. Her eyes told her that her own work was the neatest in the shop, and she also saw that she did more than any other girl employed by the same person. As she knew her own expertness with the needle, this did not surprise her; but she felt some wonder that more and better work should produce the least reward. Little did she understand the artifices of the selfish and calculating, one of the most familiar of their frauds being to conceal from the skillful their own success, lest it should command a price in proportion to its claims. The milliner heard Adrienne’s ladylike and gentle remonstrance with alarm, and she felt that she was in danger of losing a prize. But two expedients suggested themselves; to offer a higher price, or to undervalue the services she was so fearful of losing. Her practiced policy, as well as her selfishness, counseled her to try the latter expedient first.

“You amaze me, mademoiselle!” she answered, when Adrienne, trembling at her own resolution, ceased speaking. “I was thinking myself whether I could afford to pay you fifteen sous, when so many young women who have been regularly brought up to the business are willing to work for less. I am afraid we must part, unless you can consent to receive twelve sous in future.”

Adrienne stood aghast. The very mirror of truth herself, she could not imagine that any one—least of all any woman—could be so false and cruel as to practice the artifice to which the milliner had resorted; and, here, just as she hoped she saw a way opened by which she might support both her grandmother and herself until the handkerchief was completed, a change threatened her, by which she was to be left altogether without food. Still her conscience was so tender that she even doubted the propriety of accepting her old wages were she really incompetent to earn them.

“I had hoped, madame,” she said, the color coming and going on cheeks that were now usually pale—“I had hoped, madame, that you found my work profitable. Surely, surely I bring home as much at night as any other demoiselle you employ.”

“In that there is not much difference, I allow, mademoiselle; but you can imagine that work done by one accustomed to the art is more likely to please customers than work done by one who has been educated as a lady. Cependant, I will not throw you off, as I know that your poor dear grandmother—”

“Si—si,” eagerly interrupted Adrienne, trembling from head to foot with apprehension.

“I know it all, mademoiselle, and the dear old lady shall not suffer; you shall both be made happy again on fifteen. To ease your mind, mademoiselle, I am willing to make a written contract for a year; at that rate, too, to put your heart at ease.”

“Non—non—non,” murmured Adrienne, happy and grateful for the moment, but unwilling to defeat her own plans for the future. “Thank you, thank you, madame; to-morrow you shall see what I can do.”

And Adrienne toiled the succeeding day, not only until her fingers and body ached, but, until her very heart ached. Poor child! Little did she think that she was establishing precedents against herself, by which further and destructive exertions might be required. But the apprehension of losing the pittance she actually received, and thereby blasting all hopes from me, was constantly before her mind, quickening her hand and sustaining her body.

During all this time Madame de la Rocheaimard continued slowly to sink. Old age, disappointments and poverty were working out their usual results, and death was near to close the scene. So gradual were the changes, however, that Adrienne did not note them, and accustomed as she had been to the existence, the presence, the love of this one being, and of this being only, to her the final separation scarce seemed within the bounds of possibility. Surely every thing around the human family inculcates the doctrine of the mysterious future, and the necessity of living principally that they be prepared to die. All they produce perishes, all they imagine perishes, as does all they love. The union of two beings may be so engrossing, in their eyes, have lasted so long, and embraced so many ties, as to seem indissoluble; it is all seeming; the hour will infallibly come when the past becomes as nothing, except as it has opened the way to the future.

Adrienne at length, by dint of excessive toil, by working deep into the nights, by stinting herself of food, and by means of having disposed of the last article with which she could possibly part, had managed to support her grandmother and herself, until she saw me so far done as to be within another day’s work of completion. At such a moment as this all feeling of vanity is out of the question. I was certainly very beautiful. A neater, a more tasteful, a finer, or a more exquisitely laced handkerchief, did not exist within the walls of Paris. In all that she figured to herself, as related to my appearance, the end justified her brightest expectations; but, as that end drew near, she felt how insufficient were human results to meet the desires of human hopes. Now that her painful and exhausting toil was nearly over, she did not experience the happiness she had anticipated. The fault was not in me; but in herself. Hope had exhausted her spirit, and as if merely to teach the vanity of the wishes of men, a near approach to the object that had seemed so desirable in the distance, had stripped off the mask and left the real countenance exposed. There was nothing unusual in this; it was merely following out a known law of nature.

The morning of the 14th June arrived. Paris is then at its loveliest season. The gardens in particular are worthy of the capital of Europe, and they are open to all who can manage to make a decent appearance. Adrienne’s hotel had a little garden in the rear, and she sat at her window endeavoring to breathe the balmy odors that arose from it. Enter it she could not. It was the property, or devoted to the uses, of the occupant of the rez de chaussée. Still she might look at it as often as she dared to raise her eyes from her needle. The poor girl was not what she had been two months before. The handkerchief wanted but a few hours of being finished, it is true, but the pale cheeks, the hollow eyes and the anxious look, proved at what a sacrifice of health and physical force I had become what I was. As I had grown in beauty, the hand that ornamented me had wasted, and when I looked up to catch the smile of approbation, it was found to be care worn and melancholy. Still the birds did not sing the less sweetly, for Paris is full of birds, the roses were as fragrant, and the verdure was as deep as ever. Nature does not stop to lament over any single victim of human society. When misery is the deepest, there is something awful in this perpetual and smiling round of natural movements. It teaches profoundly the insignificance of the atoms of creation.

Adrienne had risen earlier than common, even, this morning, determined to get through with her task by noon, for she was actually sewing on the lace, and her impatience would not permit her to resume the work of the milliner that day, at least. For the last month she had literally lived on dry bread herself; at first with a few grapes to give her appetite a little gratification, but toward the last, on nothing but bread and water. She had not suffered so much from a want of food, however, as from a want of air and exercise; from unremitting, wasting toil at a sedentary occupation, from hope deferred and from sleepless nights. Then she wanted the cheering association of sympathy. She was strictly alone; with the exception of her short interviews with the milliner, she conversed with no one. Her grandmother slept most of the time, and when she did speak, it was with the querulousness of disease, and not in the tones of affection. This was hardest of all to bear; but Adrienne did bear up under all, flattering herself that when she could remove Mad. de la Rocheaimard into the country, her grandmother would revive and become as fond of her as ever. She toiled on, therefore, though she could not altogether suppress her tears. Under her painful and pressing circumstances, the poor girl felt her deepest affliction to be that she had not time to pray. Her work, now that she had nothing to expect from the milliner, could not be laid aside for a moment, though her soul did pour out its longings as she sat plying her needle.

Fortunately, Madame de la Rocheaimard was easy and tranquil the whole of the last morning. Although nearly exhausted by her toil and the want of food, for Adrienne had eaten her last morsel, half a roll, at breakfast, she continued to toil; but the work was nearly done, and the dear girl’s needle fairly flew. Of a sudden she dropped me in her lap and burst into a flood of tears. Her sobs were hysterical, and I felt afraid she would faint. A glass of water, however, restored her, and then this outpouring of an exhausted nature was suppressed. I was completed! At that instant, if not the richest, I was probably the neatest and most tasteful handkerchief in Paris. At this critical moment, Désirée, the commissionaire, entered the room.

From the moment that Adrienne had purchased me, this artful woman had never lost sight of the intended victim. By means of an occasional bribe to little Nathalie, she ascertained the precise progress of the work, and learning that I should probably be ready for sale that very morning, under the pretence of hiring the apartment, she was shown into my important presence. A brief apology explained all, and Adrienne civilly showed her little rooms.

“When does your lease end, mademoiselle?” demanded Désirée, carelessly.

“Next week, madame. I intend to remove to the country with my grandmother the beginning of the week.”

“You will do very right; no one that has the means should stay in Paris after June. Dieu! What a beautiful handkerchief! Surely—surely—this is not your work, mademoiselle!”

Adrienne simply answered in the affirmative, and then the commissionaire’s admiration was redoubled. Glancing her eye round the room, as if to ascertain the probabilities, the woman inquired if the handkerchief was ordered. Adrienne blushed, but shaking off the transient feeling of shame, she stated that it was for sale.

“I know a lady who would buy this—a marchande de mode, a friend of mine, who gives the highest prices that are ever paid for such articles—for to tell you the truth certain Russian princesses employ her in all these little matters. Have you thought of your price, mademoiselle?”

Adrienne’s bloom had actually returned, with this unexpected gleam of hope, for the affair of disposing of me had always appeared awful in her imagination. She owned the truth frankly, and said that she had not made herself acquainted with the prices of such things, except as she had understood what affluent ladies paid for them.

“Ah! that is a different matter,” said Désirée, coldly. “These ladies pay for more than a thing is worth. Now you paid ten francs for the handkerchief itself.”

“Twenty-eight,” answered Adrienne, trembling.

“Twenty-eight! mademoiselle, they deceived you shamefully. Ten would have been dear in the present absence of strangers from Paris. No, call that ten. This lace would probably bring a napoleon—yes, I think it might bring a napoleon.”

Adrienne’s heart sunk within her. She had supposed it to be worth at least five times as much.

“That makes thirty francs,” continued Désirée, coldly; “and now for the work. You must have been a fortnight doing all this pretty work.”

“Two months, madame,” said Adrienne, faintly.

“Two months! Ah! you are not accustomed to this sort of work and are not adroit, perhaps.”

“I worked only in the mornings and late at night; but still think I worked full hours.”

“Yes, you worked when sleepy. Call it a month, then. Thirty days at ten sous a day make fifteen francs. Ten for the handkerchief, twenty for the lace, and fifteen for the work, make forty-five francs—parole d’honneur, it does come to a pretty price for a handkerchief. Si, we must ask forty-five francs for it, and then we can always abate the five francs, and take two napoleons.”

Adrienne felt sick at heart. Want of nourishment had lessened her energies, and here came a blow to all her golden visions that was near overcoming her. She knew that handkerchiefs similar to this frequently sold for twenty napoleons in the shops, but she did not know how much the cupidity of trade exacted from the silly and vain in the way of sheer contributions to avarice. It is probable the unfortunate young lady would have lost her consciousness, under the weight of this blow, had it not been for the sound of her grandmother’s feeble voice calling her to the bedside. This was a summons that Adrienne never disregarded, and, for the moment, she forgot her causes of grief.

“My poor Adrienne,” whimpered Madame de la Rocheaimard in a tone of tenderness that her grand-daughter had not heard for some weeks, “my poor Adrienne, the hour is near when we must part—”

“Grand-mamma!—dearest grand-mamma!”

“Nay, love, God wills it. I am old, and I feel death upon me. It is happy that he comes so gently, and when I am so well prepared to meet him. The grave has views that no other scene offers, Adrienne! Noble blood and ancient renown are as nothing compared to God’s mercy and forgiveness. Pardon me if I have ever taught thy simple heart to dwell on vanities; but it was a fault of the age. This world is all vanity, and I can now see it when it is too late. Do not let my fault be thy fault, child of my love. Kiss me, Adrienne, pray for my soul when all is over.”

“Yes, dearest, dearest grand-mamma, thou know’st I will.”

“Thou must part with the rest of the trousseau to make thyself comfortable when I am gone.”

“I will do as thou wishest, dearest grand-mamma.”

“Perhaps it will raise enough to purchase thee four or five hundred francs of rentes, on which thou may’st live with frugality.”

“Perhaps it will, grand-mamma.”

“Thou wilt not sell the thimble—that thou wilt keep to remember me.”

Adrienne bowed her head and groaned. Then her grandmother desired her to send for a priest, and her thoughts took another direction. It was fortunate they did, for the spirit of the girl could not have endured more.

That night Madame de la Rocheaimard died, the wife of the porter, the bon curé, and Adrienne alone being present. Her last words were a benediction on the fair and gentle being who laid so faithfully and tenderly nursed her in old age. When all was over, and the body was laid out, Adrienne asked to be left alone with it. Living or dead, her grandmother could never be an object of dread to her, and there were few disposed to watch. In the course of the night, Adrienne even caught a little sleep, a tribute that nature imperiously demanded of her weakness.

The following day was one of anguish and embarrassment. The physician, who always inspects the dead in France, came to make his report. The arrangements were to be ordered for the funeral. Fortunately, as Adrienne then thought, Désirée appeared in the course of the morning, as one who came in consequence of having been present at so much of the scene of the preceding day. In her character of a commissionaire she offered her services, and Adrienne, unaccustomed to act for herself in such offices, was fain to accept them. She received an order, or rather an answer to a suggestion of her own, and hurried off to give the necessary directions. Adrienne was now left alone again with the body of her deceased grandmother. As soon as the excitement ceased, she began to feel languid, and she became sensible of her own bodily wants. Food of no sort had passed her lips in more than thirty hours, and her last meal had been a scanty breakfast of dry bread. As the faintness of hunger came over her, Adrienne felt for her purse with the intention of sending Nathalie to a neighboring baker’s, when the truth dashed upon her, in its dreadful reality. She had not a liard. Her last sou had furnished the breakfast of the preceding day. A sickness like that of death came over her, when, casting her eyes around her in despair, they fell on the little table that usually held the nourishment prepared for her grandmother. A little arrowroot, and a light potage, that contained bread, still remained. Although it was all that seemed to separate the girl from death, she hesitated about using it. There was an appearance of sacrilege, in her eyes, in the act of appropriating these things to herself. A moment’s reflection, however, brought her to a truer state of mind, and then she felt it to be a duty to that dear parent herself, to renew her own strength, in order to discharge her duty to the dead. She ate, therefore, though it was with a species of holy reverence. Her strength was renewed, and she was enabled to relieve her soul by prayer.

“Mademoiselle will have the goodness to give me ten francs,” said Désirée, on her return; “I have ordered every thing that is proper, but money is wanting to pay for some little articles that will soon come.”

“I have no money, Désirée—not even a sou.”

“No money, mademoiselle? In the name of heaven, how are we to bury your grandmother?”

“The handkerchief—”

Désirée shook her head, and saw that she must countermand most of the orders. Still she was human, and she was a female. She could not altogether desert one so helpless, in a moment of such extreme distress. She reflected on the matter for a minute or two, and opened her mind.

“This handkerchief might sell for forty-five francs, mademoiselle,” she said, “and I will pay that much for it myself, and will charge nothing for my services to-day. Your dear grandmother must have Christian burial, that is certain, and poor enough will that be which is had for two napoleons. What say you, mademoiselle—will you accept the forty five francs, or would you prefer seeing the marchande de mode?”

“I can see no one now, Désirée. Give me the money, and do honor to the remains of my dear, dear grandmother.”

Adrienne said this with her hands resting on her lap in quiescent despair. Her eyes were hollow and vacant, her cheeks bloodless, her mind almost as helpless as that of an infant. Désirée laid down two napoleons, keeping the five francs to pay for some necessaries, and then she took me in her hands, as if to ascertain whether she had done too much. Satisfied on this head, I was carefully replaced in the basket, when the commissionaire went out again, on her errands, honorably disposed to be useful. Still she did not deem it necessary to conceal her employer’s poverty, which was soon divulged to the porteress, and by her to the bourgeois.

Adrienne had now the means of purchasing food, but ignorant how much might be demanded on behalf of the approaching ceremony, she religiously adhered to the use of dry bread. When Désirée returned in the evening, she told the poor girl that the convoi was arranged for the following morning, that she had ordered all in the most economical way, but that thirty-five francs were the lowest sou for which the funeral could be had. Adrienne counted out the money, and then found herself the mistress of just four francs ten sous. When Désirée took her leave for the night, she placed me in her basket, and carried me to her own lodgings, in virtue of her purchase.

I was laid upon a table where I could look through an open window, up at the void of heaven. It was glittering with those bright stars which the astronomers tell us are suns of other systems, and the scene gradually drew me to reflections on that eternity which is before us. My feelings got to be gradually soothed, as I remembered the moment of time that all are required to endure injustice and wrongs on earth. Some such reflections are necessary to induce us to submit to the mysterious reign of Providence, whose decrees so often seem unequal, and whose designs are so inscrutable. By remembering what a speck is time, as compared with eternity, and that “God chasteneth those he loveth,” the ills of life may be borne, even with joy.

The manner in which Désirée disposed of me, shall be related in another number.

[To be continued.

BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

A FAIRY TALE.

BY T. C. GRATTAN.

INTRODUCTION.

The world, and particularly that part of it which patronizes periodical literature, is very tolerant of nonsense in general, and especially of that which is not mischievous, and which comes in the shape of a snake or fish story. The following effusion may therefore hope for indulgence. Its history is scarcely worth telling—perhaps it will tell it itself. But, to guard against obscurity, it may be well to state that the manuscript was first discovered in a basket, which contained, moreover, a very fine Turbot, that found its way—it never was rightly explained how—from the sea side to a capital city, and was there left at the house of a lady, who at first declined receiving what she thought could not be meant for her. But there was no use in resisting what evidently came to her under the influence of a spell. Besides which, every one, except an envious few, would have been ready, and rejoiced, to confirm the correctness of the address—to come at which you must turn to the next page, and read to the end of the story.

Some time back—it was about sixteen or seventeen hundred years ago—an Irish Philosopher was taking a walk by the sea side in a foreign country. He was an odd man, though not a single one. He had many queer notions of his own, and cared very little for those of other people. He firmly believed the world to be round; yet he was always hoping for a snug corner in it. It was he who first said (though Sir Boyle Roche got the credit of originality for translating the sayings into English) that “no one could be in two places at once unless he was a bird;” that “the best way to avoid danger was to meet it plump;” and several other “wise saws,” equally perspicuous, and almost as easy to be understood. He lived at the top of an inaccessible mountain, which nobody could reach without going up the back way. Whenever he was bent on doing a good turn, he did it in an upright manner, quite the contrary of some people, who go straight to their bad objects by the crookedest path they can find. He always looked upon money—though it was not often he had any to look upon—as a very respectable sort of a thing; yet he had small respect for many who had the most of it. He thought that great people were very often mighty little; and that the best way to make them stick close to you, is to hold them at arm’s length. He was by nature a bit of an aristocrat. But he saw nobility so idolized by ignobility, that he took a dislike to what he actually loved for its own sake, only because its worshipers knew not how to do it honor without debasing themselves. In fact, he loved rank and title—but he loved the dignity of human nature better; and whenever he met a man who could stand mentally upright in presence of a lord (and that was not often) or a lord who could meet a man without seeming to think he must stoop (and that was seldomer) he loved one quite as much as the other, and would willingly wear both of them in his heart’s core. In his youth he was rather fond of fighting; but he gave that up as he grew older, for he met few worth quarreling with. He rarely took the trouble of contradicting any one, because he found that most folks, if left alone, were pretty sure, some time or other, to give themselves the lie. He had a great deal of fun in him; and was very quick in finding out the joke in most serious matters; and he frequently took refuge in his own nonsense from the stupid good sense of other people. He saw dishonesty, hypocrisy and impudence paid so much attention to, and get on so well in life, that whenever he was asked out to dinner, or the like, he thought he must (unknown to himself) have been guilty of some dirty action. He was, in one word, what my first sentence has already repeated, an Irish Philosopher, which means a lover of all good things; because wisdom (sophos) being a good thing, it is sound (Irish) logic that a lover (philo) of every thing good must be a lover of wisdom. And on that principle, this philosopher (that is to say, disliking every thing that was bad, bad taste among the rest) eschewed tobacco, while others were chewing it—gave up pipes and cigars, out of hatred of puffery—never snuffed, except “the gale” or the candle—and took no physic, if it wasn’t the Psuches Iatreion—but that is Greek to many people, and whatever you please to more—and so now for my story.

Well, as I was saying, he was taking a walk all alone by himself, and the sun was going down, and the tide was coming up, and thinking very deeply of nothing at all, when a curly white wave, for all the world like the Lord Chancellor’s wig, came rolling in, after the fashion of the Master of the Rolls, and wet him all over his clothes, which were rather long and very expensive—a perfect Chancery suit, to carry out my metaphor. This put him in a great passion, for there was nothing he hated so mortally as water unless half of it was whiskey. But before he could rap out an oath, shake himself dry, or in any other manner give himself comfort, he remarked a fish sprawling close to him in the spray, and tumbling about in a very outlandish fashion. It was flat on both sides, like the wit of some of the Philosopher’s male friends; and spotted on one, like the reputation of his female ones. It had a head at one end, and a tail at the other; and a fin at each side, with which it was flapping itself (the day being warm) and which made the Philosopher conclude that it was some blood relation of Fan-me-cool,^[1] the great Irish giant.

“That must be a flounder,” said the Philosopher, as the Fish continued to tumble about.

“You’re out,” said the Fish, making a spring clear over upon the sand.

“And so are you,” said the Philosopher.

“Never mind whether I’m in or out,” replied the Fish; “what’s out to-day may be in to-morrow—and there’s no great difference between them.”

“What good English you have, for a fish!” exclaimed he.

“May be I have, and Irish too,” replied it. And then it added, “I’ll tell you a bit of a secret.”

“Musha! that’s kind of you, agra,” said the Philosopher, opening his ears and eyes and mouth, all at once, with the curiosity natural to his tribe.

“I’m a fairy,” said the Fish.

“Why thin, are you, avick? That’s the first time I ever hard tell of a fish bein’ a fairy—so I suppose that the say is fairy land?”

“May be it is.”

“Be gorra! thin, it must be the bottom of it,” said the Philosopher, and he chuckled (like some others) at his own wit.

“None of your gosther!” cried the Fish, as if it was uneasy at any one cracking a joke but itself (like some people, but I wont say who) and with that it jumped up, like a pancake out of a frying pan on Shrove Tuesday; giving a couple of curls in the air, and then coming clean down with the white side uppermost.

“Well, that bates!” cried the amazed Philosopher, who did not know how easy it is to change sides, “jump about, and wheel about,” and look mighty pure and innocent after all.

“I’m afeard you hurt yourself; you look very pale in the face,” said the compassionate Philosopher.

“Not in the least—what do you think of this? This is what I call defining my position,” said the Fish, standing on its tail and wagging its head, and then standing on its head and wagging its tail, just like a great big Irish agitator.

“By my sowl! I dunna what to think of it,” muttered the Philosopher, “if it isn’t that when one’s about defining their position they don’t know whether they’re on their head or their tail.”

“Then if you don’t know what to think, don’t be standing there, like an open mouthed omadthaun, as you are,” said the Fish, jumping up, and giving the Philosopher a slap in the face with its tail.

“Thank you for your civility,” said he, wiping the salt water out of his eyes, like Ophelia, Belvidera, or Sterne’s Maria; “faith, an’ there’s a great dale of fun in that tail of yours.”

“To be sure there is—don’t you know it’s a fairy tail?”

Upon which the Philosopher was silent, and looked very glum; as every philosopher does who hates a bad pun—because he can’t make a good one.

“Well, then, why don’t you do what you’re bid?” said the Fish, rather sharp.

“What’s that?” asked the Philosopher, very much afraid he was going to get another slap in the face.

“Just this,” said the Fish; “there’s a most beautiful princess that lives somewhere or another, but I don’t know exactly where.”

“Nor I neither,” said the Philosopher.

“Never mind that,” said the Fish; “but just take me up, and pack me in a basket, and send me to her.”

“How the divil can I do that, when you wont tell me where she lives?”

“Leave that to me,” said the Fish; “I’ll find her out.”

“Why, then, how will you do that, alanna?” asked he, on the stretch for information.

“By putting myself to sleep, and taking a slight dose of clairvoyance,” said the Fish, shutting its eyes and yawning, “I’ll tell you another secret—I’m a somnambulist.”

“A what?—a somnyambulist?”

“A somnambulist,” answered the Fish; “did you never see one before?”

“To be sure I did, thousands,” replied the Philosopher—for philosophers would say any thing, rather than acknowledge their ignorance; “I caught them often asleep in the big bog, near Banagher.”

And upon that the Fish winked at him, and said—“nabocklish.”

“By my sowl, you’re an odd Fish!” said the Philosopher.

“Then there’s a pair of us, and that makes us even, otherwise dual,” said the Fish; “and there’s an ‘orphic saying’ for you, what do you think of it?”

“I think it’s like the rest of them, as clear as mud,” grunted the Philosopher, looking grave again.

“Well, well, make haste; I want to set out on my travels,” said the Fish. Upon which the Philosopher took it up, and stroked it down the back, and tickled its fins a little, and smoothed the curl out of its tail, and said—

“I see you’re getting rather drowsy; and as I now pronounce you in the magnetic state, may be you’d tell me something about the princess you’re going to.”

“I’ll do that same,” said the Fairy, stretching itself out, and yawning again. “It is that most beautiful princess that’s doomed to eat me,” continued the Fairy, as we must now call our heroine, as the novel writers say.

“To ate you, darlin’!” exclaimed the Philosopher, dropping his jaw very low, and the tears coming into his eyes.

“Yes, indeed,” said the Fairy, “she alone—that is to say, with her husband and her small children, and the other ladies and gentlemen she asks to dine with her.”

“I’m very sorry the princess is married,” said the Philosopher, drawing down his mouth all at one side.

“Why so?” asked the Fairy.

“Bekase I was thinking of axing her for myself?”

“Get along home, you thieving deceiver, to your own wife and children,” said the Fairy, giving him another flap with her tail.

“Well, thim fairies is the divil for finding one out,” said the Philosopher, wiping his face once more.

“Yaw-aw-aw-aw!!!” said the Fairy.

“Arah, now that you’re fast asleep entirely, my honey, will you be jist after telling me about what time you’ll reach the princess’s palace?”

“It wont be long—about a thousand years, or nearer two.”

“That’s a long time for a Fish to keep fresh.”

“Yes, but it’s nothing at all for a Fairy—so good night to you.”

“Banaslaath! Pleasant dhrames to you!” said the Philosopher, covering the Fish with the flap of his great coat. And upon that he walked home with himself. And when he got there he was greatly tempted to boil the Fish, and eat it for his supper; but just as this notion crossed his mind, he felt it pinching him in the little finger, and half frightened out of his life at being in such close magnetic communication, he packed it up in some straw and a basket, and writing on the back of a gilt-edged visiting card—

“FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL,”

(being certain sure that no one could mistake the direction) he sent it off by the stage, which—there being no steam-carriages in those days—he thought the rale-way for despatching a Fish on its travels; and he had no doubt but that when, in the course of time, it would come to its destination, it would be just as fresh as if it were caught only yesterday.

What may happen to the Fish whenever it shall reach the palace of the beautiful princess, may be left to the imagination of the intelligent reader. And we, at the same time, leave “our heroine” to the tender mercies of the gentleman who officiates at the head of the princess’s table, and who “sarves her (our heroine) out,” with lobster sauce, to the company.

BY “MARIA DEL OCCIDENTE.”

ON THE LATE S. T. COLERIDGE.

BY WASHINGTON ALLSTON.

OR THE GAME OF LIFE.

BY MRS. FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.

The brilliantly lighted saloon in which Mrs. Clifford’s company were assembled was suddenly darkened. At the same moment the curtain rose, and displayed to expectant eyes the first “tableau vivant.” It was strikingly beautiful. A dark, fierce looking slave-dealer stood behind a Persian girl, from whose graceful form and face he had just withdrawn the veil, thereby revealing to the gaze of a voluptuous looking Turk, seated on a pile of cushions, so rare a galaxy of charms, that not only his eyes, but those of all the spectators, were riveted upon her. The shrinking timidity of her attitude, as she stood with her drooping hands locked languidly and meekly before her, was exquisitely graceful—her downcast eyes were “darkly, deeply blue,” “and auburn waves of gemmed and braided hair” fell glistening over her rounded form, in its becoming vest of scarlet cashmere, and reached nearly to the feet, which peeped out beneath the full white satin pantaloons, in slippers gorgeous with jewels and embroidery.

For a moment the lovely vision glittered, and was gone—and seen no more until the closing tableau, which represented Retzch’s thrilling picture, called “The Game of Life.” A youth with Satan playing at chess—his stake, a soul! The guardian spirit of the latter is seen at his side, with half averted face, gazing in mingled sorrow and compassion on the game, which he has almost lost. And in that white-robed angel, the beautiful form and features of the Persian girl again appeared, so touchingly lovely, so pure and spiritual, that the gazers held their breath in rapture.

“Tell me—tell me her name!” exclaimed a young artist, as the curtain fell.

“It is Lilian Clifford, the daughter of our hostess,” was the answer.

“But where is Fanny?” said another.

“Oh! she is nursing her little brother, I suppose. He is an invalid, you know, and she is devoted to him. But we shall see her by and by, for her mother insists upon her appearing at the ball, though she could not persuade her to take part in the tableaux. But hark! I hear the band—let us join the dancers.”

A fancy ball followed the tableaux, and as the artist stood near the door, watching for the entrance of the angel, a young and blooming girl, in the ancient dress of a French marquise, glided by him, and with a low and playful courtesy to Mrs. Clifford, took her station by her side, whence she was immediately led to the dance by the Lucifer of the tableau. Could it be Lilian? The transformation was so complete, that he could hardly believe his eyes. The beautiful hair powdered—drawn back from the brow, and raised to an enormous height—tiny black patches here and there setting off her exquisite complexion—the dark stiff brocade looped up over white satin—the monstrous fan—the dainty French lisped out at intervals of the quadrille—the stately, graceful minuet motions—all, all was perfect!

“What a study!” murmured the fascinated artist, who, by the way, looked very picturesque himself, as he stood leaning against a pillar, in a Spanish costume, worthy of Murillo.

“My guardian angel!” whispered the youth who had been Lucifer’s antagonist in the tableau, and who now appeared in the garb of a sailor, “will you not dance the next quadrille with me? I need your protection more than ever, amid the temptations of such a scene as this.”

“Je toujours veille sur toi!” replied the lady, with an eloquent smile, and a bow of assent. Lucifer scowled malignantly, and muttered in the sailor’s ear—

“Julian Delancy, you will lose the game!”

The young man’s eyes flashed fire as he answered,

“You are a skillful player, Burton, but I, for one, defy your arts!”

A slight sneer was the reply, but Delaney passed on without deigning farther notice of his rival. At the same time, a modest looking, dark-eyed girl, in the simple dress of a quaker, approached, and whispered—

“Lilly, dear, I wish you could come to the nursery for a moment, after this dance; Willie wants to see your dress.”

“Nonsense, Fanny, I can’t leave till the ball is over. Willie must wait—”

“But he will be asleep then, Lilly!”

“Well, well, I can’t help it if he is!” and with a bewitching smile, and the grace of a Hebe, she turned her partner in the dance.

Funny sighed, and the artist sighed too, and soon after begged an introduction, not to the coquettish marquise, but to the timid quaker girl.

“Who is that noble-looking being with my sister?” suddenly exclaimed Lilian Clifford to a friend, struck for the first time, by his manly form, and dark, but beautifully chiseled face, lighted up by a pair of brilliant Byron eyes, and a mouth full of expression.

“That? Why, Frank Russell, the artist, to be sure. Don’t you know—he has just returned from Italy. What do you think of him?”

“Think of him? He looks like a man—and that is more than you can say of any one else in the room. Look at that attitude! and then his voice!—hark! did you ever listen to such tones—so rich—so deep? I should like to hear him read poetry—and his manner, too—there is a calm and gentle dignity about it, which makes one involuntarily look up to him as to a superior being. I must go and speak to Fanny.” And tripping up to her sister, she tapped her cheek with her fan, exclaiming, “A penny for your thought, Fanny. How abstracted you look!”

“A thousand guineas for the thought, Miss Clifford,” said Russell, in a low tone, and with an earnest gallantry, which well became his chivalrous beauty and bearing.

“Tell him you will give your thought for his,” whispered Lilian, playfully, “for he too was in a reverie.”

“Nay, I would give an age’s thought of mine, for one moment’s of yours, and rejoice in the exchange,” murmured Russell, with a smile, still bending his dark eyes upon Fanny’s drooping lids.

“Come, Fanny, you shall tell it now,” continued her sister.

“I cannot—don’t ask me, Lilian,” faltered Fanny, while a deep blush stole into her pure, pale cheek.

“Well, at least have the sense to introduce me to your new beau—can’t you?” whispered Lilian, pettishly.

The introduction took place, and the graceful coquette tried all her sportive and beguiling wiles, without any apparent effect upon the heart of the handsome stranger.

While thus engaged, Delancy claimed her hand for the dance.

“Oh! Julian—you will excuse me, I know, and dance with Fanny this time, for dear little Willie has sent for me. I will be back soon. Mr. Russell, may I trouble you for your arm through this crowd?”

“That’s right, dear Lily, I am so glad,” cried Funny, her sweet face beaming with joy, at her sister’s supposed kindness to the little invalid.

“You are Willie’s guardian angel, too, then, Lilian,” said Delancy, with a look of admiring affection.

The artist sighed again—but gave his arm to the lady, and accompanied her to the foot of the stairs. On their way she contrived to tell a dozen different people where she was going.

“Wait for me here a few moments, Mr. Russell—I shall hate to enter the room alone,” and she glided up the stairs, and vanished from his gaze, like a dream of light.

The artist leant against the balusters, and lost himself in thought—how long he knew not; but he was awakened by a low melodious laugh at his side, and starting, he found the soft hand of Lilian Clifford on his arm, and her lovely eyes raised smilingly to his.

“Is it your pleasure, noble don, that we re-enter the saloon? I have had my arm in yours for some three minutes, patiently awaiting your movements.”

Russell colored, as he asked her forgiveness, and unable to resist the witchery of her every word and look, abandoned himself to her influence during the rest of the evening.

CHAPTER II.

Luxurious as a lady’s boudoir, was the studio in which Frank Russell was seated, three weeks after the ball at Mrs. Clifford’s. Lounges, ottomans, damask drapery, mirrors, paintings, statues and books, were all arranged with a graceful and careless elegance, which told of the artist throughout—while he himself, in his rich crimson tunic, his dark hair waving beneath an embroidered velvet cap, completed the beauty of the picture.

Before him, on his easel, was the half-length of a girl in a Spanish costume. She was looking over her shoulder, with an arch smile—the tip of a superb fan, which she held, was pressed to her dimpled chin, and a black lace mantilla, thrown back on her head, fell over her snowy shoulder to her waist; while clusters of soft dark hair mingled their golden glow with its shade, and softened the brilliant beauty of a face radiant with youth, love, and happiness.

“My own, my precious Lilian,” murmured the artist, as he gazed at his own exquisite creation, “I am sure she loves me—just so she looked last night, when I begged her to grant me an interview this evening. She guessed my purpose, and her whole soul was in her eyes, as she looked her reply. But I must touch that arm once more—it is hardly round enough yet.”

He passed behind a marble pedestal, on which was a statue of Love, to a table, where lay his palette and brushes. Ere he reappeared, a party of ladies and gentlemen entered the room.

“Lilian Clifford, it is you to perfection!” exclaimed one of the former.

“Is it a likeness of the laughing elf?”

“A likeness! No! by heaven—’tis she herself!” exclaimed a gentleman of the party, and then the cold, sneering voice of Burton, the tableau Lucifer, was heard—

“But where is your artist lover, Miss Clifford? We thought to find him at his devotions, before your portrait. Report declares the sittings to be not ‘like angel visits,’ but most unreasonably prolonged.”

Frank waited to hear her indignant reply to this impertinence. How was he confounded by what followed.

“Nay, Burton, report can hardly accuse me of so preposterous a purpose, as that of encouraging a nameless artist.”

“It accuses you of encouraging a nameless poet, as well.”

“You refer to Julian Delancy. Be assured, air, that they themselves know me better.”

The statue fell with a crash at her feet, and the artist confronted her with folded arms, and flashing eyes.

“Thank God, madam, I do know you, ere it is too late!” and bowing haughtily, he left the room.

Lilian turned pale, but forced a laugh, and began to criticise the pictures.

Fanny Clifford sat alone that evening by the fire-side, when Mr. Russell was announced.

“I have come to thank you for your kindness during my sojourn here, my dear Miss Clifford, and to bid you ‘good bye.’ ”

Fanny started, but by a brave effort restrained her emotion, and said, in a low tone—

“Are you to be long absent?”

“Only a year or two!”

Only a year or two! Fortunately for Fanny, at that moment the door opened, and Lilian, attired for a ball, and radiant in beauty, entered. She colored, when she saw her lover—her eyes filled with tears, and springing forward, she caught his hands.

“Frank! dear Frank! forgive me!”

“Lilian Clifford, you little know the heart your lightness has lost you. Farewell!”

“As you please, sir!”

With a light laugh, she drew up her graceful figure, and walking with the step of a queen, a fairy queen, to the glass, adjusted a gem in her hair, as calmly us if nothing had happened to ruffle or to grieve her.

He turned again to her sister. He took her hand—it trembled violently in his—he gazed on her blushing and downcast face, and wondered that he had never seen its beauty before. Pure, soft and spiritual, with an exquisite delicacy and transparency of complexion, and an expression ever varying with her varying emotions, Fanny’s face was not one to strike the beholder at first sight, but it grew upon his heart, and once seen in all its beauty, lighted up by the full warmth of her lofty and generous soul, it left an impression which was never afterwards effaced. Fanny lived in the truest sense of the word. Her heart was in all she did, and said, and looked, and a great heart it was—but alas! how little appreciated by those around her.

Well! Frank departed, and Lilian, as he closed the door, threw herself into her sister’s arms, and poured out her sorrow and repentance. And Fanny soothed her with her loving voice, and half forgot her own deeper grief, in pity for her sister’s.

CHAPTER III.

Three years passed, and again was the artist, no longer a nameless one, seated in his studio, in Bond street, New York; and again stood Fanny and Lilian Clifford by his side. They were in mourning for the little brother, mentioned in the commencement of my story, and Fanny was paler and sadder than of yore; but Lilian was gay, and brilliant, and beautiful as ever.

“Mr. Russell,” she said, with her sweet, persuasive smile, “I will have a look at this picture turned to the wall.”

Russell colored, as he sprang forward to prevent her. It was too late—she had turned it and revealed a striking likeness of her sister, in the quaker dress which she had worn at the fancy ball!

For one instant, Fanny’s eyes met the thrilling gaze of Frank’s. The next, the lashes fell, but they were wet with tears, as she turned away, touched to the soul by this proof of his remembrance. And Lilian, after gazing at both, with a proud curl of her beautiful lip, exclaimed—

“Oh! I see it all now—excuse me, good people—I would be the last to interrupt so interesting a tête-à-tête. Good morning.”

And ere Fanny could move to detain her, she was gone. They were alone, and Russell turned to the trembling and bewildered girl at his side with a look of mingled reverence and affection.

“Fanny, you see there a proof that I have treasured your image in my heart—would to Heaven I might wear the original there. Speak, dearest, will you—can you be mine?”

Fanny’s eye and cheek grew luminous, with the rapture of that moment. But the light, the glow died away, as suddenly as it came. She thought of Lilian, and though she blamed her coquetry and folly, she pitied her disappointment. With one glorious effort she repressed her tears—the sighs, that struggled for liberty, and replied in a low, but clear voice,

“Mr. Russell, I can never be your wife!”

Struck by her calm, decided tone, he stood for a moment gazing at her in despair; but that gaze called to her cheek a blush so speaking, that hope revived, and with all the glowing eloquence of which he was master, he besought her to retract her resolution. Overcome by his passionate entreaties, Fanny could only falter, half unconsciously, in reply—

“But Lilian—”

“Lilian has wronged me—but that light dream is over. Do not, oh! do not disappoint me in one far dearer and holier love.”

Poor Fanny! it was a moment of strange trial, but her heart was strong. She raised her clear, sad eyes to his, and again replied—

“Russell, I can never be your wife!”

He dropped her hand. With a slow but unfaltering step she passed from the room—reached home—locked herself into her chamber, and for once giving way to the full tide of her emotions, wept for hours unceasingly. Her tears relieved her, and after a fervent prayer to Heaven for strength, she was able to resume her occupations, with a subduced and self-approving heart.

“Mr. Russell, you have grown very stupid of late, do read me something,” said Lilian, one evening, as they sat with a few friends in the library.

“And what?” said Frank.

“Oh! there is a new, fresh, uncut volume of poems by Tennyson on the table. Isn’t that delightful?”

“But I shall want a paper knife.”

“That you shall have, and keep it, too, as a reward for your trouble,—and oh! congratulate me! I have just had an idea!—while you are cutting the leaves, I will scribble it down. Lend me your pencil, Frank!” And ere he had divided half a dozen leaves, she had traced in fairy characters the following lines:

Rolling the paper in as small a compass as possible, she screwed it into the top of the pencil-case and returned it to him with a grace so bewitching, that his old dream begun to disturb him again. He hurriedly turned over the leaves of the book and smiled half in bitterness, as a few lines caught his glance and told upon his heart.

Fixing his eyes earnestly upon Lilian’s face, he said in a deep meaning tone, “I have found a poem which I think you will appreciate. Shall I read it?”

The poem was that strangely moving one, called “Clara Vere de Vere,” and his low, rich, manly, but melancholy voice thrilled to her very soul as he proceeded.

The second verse commences as follows:

These lines, and those which follow, called the fire into Lilian’s eyes and cheeks; but she tossed back her graceful head with a proud and careless smile.

But when he came to the words—

Poor Lilian struggled for a moment as if suffocating, and then fell at his feel insensible.

Fanny sprung forward to raise her, exclaiming. “Oh, Frank! why did you read that verse? You surely could not have heard—”

“What—what—Fanny?” he cried, as he hung over the lovely, lifeless form of her whom he now felt to be dearer to him than ever.

Too soon, he heard the truth! Too soon? Too late for his revived affection. Julian Delaney, who, as the reader already knows, was passionately devoted to Lilian, had been, during Frank’s last visit in Italy, alternately petted and scorned as the attentions of his rich rival Burton had varied from cold to warm; until at length the growing empressement of the latter’s manner had decided her to dismiss, at once and forever, the unfortunate and interesting victim of her coquetry. That very day his lifeless body was borne home to a widowed mother,

The same paper which announced this tragic event, also announced the elopement of the Lucifer of my tale, with the wife of his most intimate friend. Lilian recovered from her fainting fit to find her artist lover bending over her with a gaze in which his whole soul spoke to hers; but the instant he met her eye he turned away, determined never again to betray his feelings to her scorn. Still he visited the house from time to time, and was often allured to the very verge of a declaration by her bewildering beauty and the childlike, pleading, playful sweetness of her manner.

One day he took up a book, in a blank page of which she had been scribbling some lines. When she saw him turn to them, she sprung up with a bright blush, and sportively placed her little hand over the words. Unable to resist the temptation, he pressed his lips to it involuntarily.

She immediately withdrew it, but leaned over his shoulder as he read—

Touched by the sad sentiment, he looked up in her face. Her eyes, filled with tears, were bent upon him, and her hand trembled us he took it. “Are the verses yours, Lilian?”

“Oh, Frank! I should not have let you read them!”

He was thrown off his guard.

“They are yours, then? And I—may not I ‘mind the helm?’ Dear Lilian! say that I may.”

She hid her eyes upon his shoulder. Her soft hair touched his face. He laid his check to hers—their destiny was sealed. The next moment she raised that beautiful face, bathed in blushes and smiles, and clasping her hands with a sweet, low, ringing laugh, exclaimed in the words of one of our finest poets—

He caught her to his heart.

Ah, Frank! you little know what a frail, light thing you have undertaken to guide. Be happy while you may.

CHAPTER IV.

A twelvemonth after the wedding—a charming cottage in Brookline—Lilian, Frank and Fanny in the former’s boudoir. A beautiful infant lying on the rich cushions of the couch. There is a light cloud on the noble brow of the artist;—he has been looking over a milliner’s bill! His young wife looks listless and weary.

“Will you lend me your pencil, Frank?” said Fanny. He handed it to her; there was no lead in it. She unscrewed the top—and out fell the little roll of paper, placed there long ago by Lilian.

“May I read it, Frank?”

“Certainly, dear.”

She read it—started—changed color; but without farther sign of emotion, quietly returned it to the pencil-case. Lilian looked imploringly at her, and Fanny rose to leave the room. Frank saw it all. “Stay, Fanny; did you compose those lines?” Fanny was silent—she trembled like a leaf. Russell continued, “I saw in your scrap-book, the other day, signed by your name, a copy of some verses which Lilian gave me on the day of our engagement. Here they are. Are they yours or hers?”

Fanny shrunk back; but he insisted, and she took the paper—read the first line—

and burst into tears. He stood before her pale, but resolute.

“Speak, Fanny, I implore you, are they yours?”

She hesitated; but she could not lie. She looked at Lilian and flew to her side.

“Oh, Frank! she is fainting; come to her quick!”

“Let her come to herself; she has deceived me. Let her forgive herself, if she can!”

The sternness of his tone aroused her.

She rose, and tottering toward him, threw herself in tears at his feet. “Oh, Frank! do not look at me so! They are Fanny’s lines; but it was to win your love that I deceived you! Will you see your Lilian suffer and not forgive her?” Who could resist those eyes—those sweet, imploring tones—that almost angel loveliness. Frank could not. She was forgiven, and the game of life went on.

CHAPTER V.

“Lilian, is not that the ring Burton was showing you the other day? I am astonished you should have kept it so long. It was imprudent, dear, very.”

“I shall see him to-morrow, and will return it then, dear Frank. There, now, smile again—do, there’s a darling.”

The next evening the ring had disappeared, and Frank smiled approvingly as he took her hand in his. “I could not bear to touch this dear little hand yesterday, Lilian, but I love it now.”

“Oh! because Burton’s ring is gone. He was glad to have it back, for he thought it lost.”

Six weeks afterward, Frank found the ring in a box, where she had requested him to look for a missing bracelet. Inside the ring was an inscription—“My heart goes with it, Lilian.” It was a gift, then! not a loan as she had declared! His heart grew chill with the thought. He looked at her and murmured, “So lovely, yet so light and false!” She was half dressed for a ball, and oh! how exquisitely beautiful she looked! She was braiding her rich brown hair, and those slight, snowy, jeweled fingers glanced down the luxuriant tresses with the speed and light of a snowflake gleaming in the sun. She turned toward him; the truth flashed upon her. She remembered the ring, and pale with fear, she staggered to his side. He looked up, without a word, placed the ring in her hand and left the room. The ring was returned to the giver; but not to Lilian returned the love and confidence of her husband.

She had never been strong, and from that day she faded. Frank watched over her with Fanny tenderly and truly; but she felt his trust was gone. In a few months he followed her to her untimely grave. For years he wandered mourning and alone. At length, he renewed to Fanny the offer of his hand and heart. Firm, but sad was her reply.

“Dear Frank, I can never be your wife; but I will be a mother to your precious child.” “Take her, then, and touch her to love me, as none have ever loved me yet.” And Fanny hushed the beating heart that still worshiped the very shadow of that noble form, and devoted her life, with all a mother’s tenderness, to the child of her lost and lamented Lilian.

BY N. P. WILLIS.

“L’Esprit est un faux monnayeur, qui change continuellement les gros sous en louis d’or, et qui souvent fait de ses louis d’or des gros sous.”

There were five hundred guardian angels (and of course as many evil spirits,) in and about the merry premises of Congress Hall. Each gay guest had his pair; but though each pair had their special ministry, (and there was here and there a guest who would not have objected to transform his, for the time being, into a pair of trotting ponies,) the attention of the cherubic troop, it may fairly be presumed, was directed mainly to the momentous flirtations of Miss C. Sophy Onthank, the dread disposer of the destinies of eighty thousand innocent little dollars.

Miss Chittaline Sophy—(though this is blabbing, for that mysterious “C.” was generally condemned to travel in domino)—Miss Chittaline Sophy, besides her good and evil spirit already referred to, was under the additional watch and ward of a pair of bombazine aunts, Miss Charity Onthank and Miss Sophy the same, of whom she was the united namesake—“Chittaline” being the embellished diminutive of “Charity.” These Hesperian dragons of old maids were cut after the common pattern of such utensils, and of course would not dignify a description; though this disparaging remark (we must stop long enough to say) is not at all to the prejudice of that occasional love-of-an-old-maid that one does sometimes see—that four-leaved clover of virginity—that star apart in the spilled milk of the Via Lactea:—

But the two elderly Misses Onthank were not of this category.

By the absence of that Junonic assurance, common to those ladies who are born and bred heiresses, Miss C. Sophy’s autograph had not long been an object of interest at the bank. She had all the air of having been “brought up at the trough,” as the French phrase it,

and her belle-ship was still a surprise to her. Like the red-haired and freckled who find, when they get to Italy, that their flaming peculiarities are considered as captivating signs of a skin too delicate for exposure, she received with a slight incredulity the homage to her unseen charms—homage not the less welcome for exacting from the giver an exercise of faith and imagination. The same faith and imagination, she was free to suppose, might find a Venus within her girdle, as the sculptor sees one in the goodly block of marble, lacking only the removal of its clumsy covering, by chisel and sand paper. With no visible waist, she was as tall as a pump, and riotously rosy like a flowering rhododendron. Hair brown and plenty of it. Teeth white and all at home. And her voice, with but one semitone higher, would have been an approved contralto.

Having thus compressed into a couple of paragraphs what would have served a novelist for his first ten chapters, permit us, without the bother of intermediate mortar or moralizing, (though this is rather a mixed figure,) to lay on the next brick in the shape of a hint at the character of Miss Onthank’s two prominent admirers.

Mr. Greville Seville was a New York beau. He had all the refinement that could possibly be imported. He had seen those who had seen all that is visible in the fashionable men of London and Paris, and he was well versed in the conduits through which their several peculiarities found their way across the Atlantic. Faultlessly booted, pantalooned, waistcoated and shirted, he could afford to trust his coat and scarf to Providence, and his hat to Warnock or Leary. He wore a slightly restrained whisker, and a faint smut of an imperial, and his gloves fitted him inexorably. His figure was a matter of course. He was brought up in New York, and was one of the four hundred thousand results (more or less) of its drastic water—washy and short. And he had as good a heart as is compatible with the above personal advantages.

It would very much have surprised the “company” at Congress Hall, to have seen Mr. Chesterfield Potts put down as No. 2 in the emulous contest for the two hands of Miss Onthank. The count (he was commonly called “Count Potts,” a compliment to good manners not unusual in America,) was, by his own label, a man of “thirty and upward”—by the parish register possibly sixty-two. He was an upright, well preserved, stylish looking man, with an expensive wig, fine teeth, (commonly supposed not to be indigenous,) and a lavish outlay of cotton butting, covering the retreat of such of his muscular forces as were inclined to retire from the field. What his native qualities might be was a branch of knowledge long since lost to the world. His politeness had superseded the necessity of any particular inquiry into the matter—indeed we are inclined to believe his politeness had superseded his character altogether. He was as incapable of the impolite virtues, (of which there are several,) as of the impolite vices. Like cricketing, punning, political speech making and other mechanical arts, complimenting may be brought to a high degree of dexterity, and Count Potts, after a practice of many years, could, over most kinds of female platitude, spread a flattering unction humbuggative to the most suspicious incredulity. As he told no stories, made no puns, volunteered but little conversation, and had the air of a modest man wishing to avoid notice, the blockheads and the very young girls stoutly denied his fascination. But in the memory of the riper belles as they went to sleep night after night, lay snugly lodged and carefully treasured, some timely compliment, some soothing word, and though credited to “old Potts,” the smile with which it was gratefully reacknowledged the next morning at breakfast, would have been warm enough for young Ascanius. “Nice old Potts!” was the faint murmur of many a bright lip turning downward to the pillow in the “last position.”

And now, dear reader, you have an idea of the forces in the field, and you probably know how “the war is carried on” at Saratoga. Two aunts and a guardian angel versus an evil spirit and two lovers—Miss Onthank’s hand, the (well covered) bone of contention. Whether the citadel would speedily yield, and which of these two rival knights would bear away the palm of victory, were questions upon which the majority of lookers-on were doomed to make erroneous predictions. The reader of course is in the sagacious minority.

Mr. Potts’ income was a nett answer to his morning prayer. It provided his “daily bread,” but no provender for a horse. He probably coveted Miss Onthank as much for her accompanying oats as for her personal avoirdupois, since the only complaint with which he ever troubled his acquaintances, was one touching his inability to keep an equipage. Man is instinctively a centaur, he used to say, and when you cut him off from his horse and reduce him to his simple trunk, (and a trunk was all the count’s worldly furniture,) he is but a mutilated remainder, robbed of his natural locomotive.

It was not authenticated in Wall street that Mr. Greville Seville was reasonably entitled to horse flesh and caparison; but he had a trotting wagon and two delicious cropped sorrels; and those who drove in his company were obliged to “down with the dust,” (a bon mot of Count Potts’.) Science explains many of the enigmas of common life, however, and the secret of Mr. Seville’s equipment and other means of going on swimmingly, lay in his unusually large organ of hope. He was simply anticipating the arrival of 1840, a year in which he had reason to believe there would be paid in to the credit of the present Miss Onthank a sufficient sum to cover his lowest expenditure. The intermediate transfer to himself of her rights to the same, was a mere filling up of an outline, his mind being entirely made up as to the conditional incumbrance of the lady’s person. He was now paying her some attentions in advance, and he felt justified in charging his expenses on the estate. She herself would wish it, doubtless, if she could look into the future with his eyes.

By all the common data of matrimonial skirmishing, a lover with horses easily outstrips a lover with none. Miss C. Sophy beside was particularly fond of driving, and Seville was an accomplished whip. There was no lack of the “golden opportunity” of tête-à-tête, for, with a deaf aunt and somebody else on the back seat, he had Miss Onthank to himself on the driving box, and could talk to his horses in the embarrassing pauses. It looked a clear case to most observers; and as to Seville, he had studied out a livery for his future footman end tiger, and would not have taken an insurance at a quarter per cent.

But Potts—ah, Potts had traced back the wires of women’s weaknesses! The heiress had no conversation, (why should she have it and money too?) and the part of her daily drive which she remembered with most pleasure, was the flourish of starting and returning—managed by Potts with a pomp and circumstance that would have done honor to the goings and comings of Queen Victoria. Once away from the portico, it was a monotonous drag through the dust for two or three hours, and as most ladies know it takes a great deal of chit-chat to butter so large a slice of time; for there was no making love, parbleu! Miss Chittaline Onthank was of a stratum of human nature susceptible of no sentiment less substantial than a kiss, and when the news, and the weather, and the virtues of the sorrel ponies were exhausted, the talk came to a stand still. The heiress began to remember with alarm that her education had been neglected, and it was a relief to get back to old Potts and the portico.

Fresh from his nap and warm bath, the perfumed count stepped out from the group he had purposely collected, gave her his hand with a deferential inquiry, spread the loungers to the right and left like an “usher of the black rod,” and with some well-studied impromptu compliment, waited on her to her chamber door. He received her again after her toilet, and for the remainder of the day devoted his utmost powers to her aggrandizement. If talking alone with her, it was to provide her to some passage of school girl autobiography, and listen like a charmed stone to the harp of Orpheus. If others were near, it was to catch her stupidities half uttered and twist them into sense before they came to the ground. His own clevernesses were prefaced with “as you remarked yesterday, Miss Onthank,” or “as you were about to say when I interrupted you.” If he touched her foot, it was “so small he didn’t see it.” If she uttered an irredeemable and immitigable absurdity, he covered its retreat with some sudden exclamation. He called her pensive when she was sleepy and vacant. He called her romantic when he couldn’t understand her. In short, her vanity was embodied—turned into a magician and slave—and in the shape of Count Chesterfield Potts, ministered to her indefatigably.

But the summer solstice began to wane. A week more was all that was allotted to Saratoga by that great American commander, General Consent.

Count Potts came to breakfast in a shawl cravat!

“Off, Potts?”

“Are you flitting, my dear count?”

“What—going away, dear Mr. Potts!”

“Gracious me! don’t go, Mr. Potts!”

The last exclamation was sent across the table in a tone of alarm by Miss C. Sophy, and responded to only by a bow of obsequious melancholy.

Breakfast was over, and Potts arose. His baggage was at the door. He sought do interview with Miss Onthank. He did not even honor the two bambuzinities with a farewell. He stepped up to the group of belles, airing their demi-toillettes on the portico, said “Ladies! au revoir!” took the heiress’s hand and put it gallantly toward his lips, and walked off with his umbrella, requesting the driver to pick him up at the spring.

“He has been refused!” said one.

“He has given Seville a clear field in despair!” said another. And this was the general opinion.

The day crept on. But there was an emptiness without Potts. Seville had the field to himself, and as there was no fear of a new squatter, he thought he might dispense with tillage. They had a very dull drive and a very dull dinner, and in the evening, as there was no ball, Seville went off to play billiards. Miss Onthank was surrounded, as usual, by the belles and beaux, but she was down flat—un-magnetized, un-galvanized. The magician was gone. Her stupid things “stayed put.” She was like a glass bead lost from a kaleidoscope.

That weary week was spent in lamentations over Potts. Everybody praised him. Every body complimented Miss Onthank on her exclusive power of monopoly over such porcelain ware. The two aunts were his main glorifiers—for, as Potts knew, they were of that leathery toughness that only shines on you with rough usage.

We have said little, as yet, of Miss Onthank’s capabilities in the love line. We doubt, indeed, whether she rightly understood the difference between loving and being born again. As to giving away her heart, she believed she could do what her mother did before her, but she would rather it would be one of her back teeth, if that would do as well. She liked Mr. Potts because he never made any difficulty about such things.

Seville considered himself accepted, though he had made no direct proposition. He had asked whether she preferred to live in country or town—she said “town.” He had asked if she would leave the choice and management of horses and equipages to him—she said “be sure!” He had asked if she had any objection to his giving bachelor dinners occasionally—she said “la! no!” As he understood it, the whole thing was most comfortably arranged, and he lent money to several of his friends on the strength of it—giving his note, that is to say.

On a certain morning, some ten days after the departure of the count from Saratoga, Miss Onthank and her two aunts sat up in state in their parlor at the City Hotel. They always went to the City Hotel because Willard remembered their names, and asked after their uncle the major. Mr. Seville’s ponies and wagon were at the door, and Mr. Seville’s father, mother, seven sisters, and two small brothers, were in the progress of a betrothal visit—calling on the future Mrs. Greville Seville.

All of a sudden the door was thrown open, and enter Count Potts!

Up jumped the enchanted Chittaline Sophy.

“How do you do, Mr. Potts!”

“Good morning, Mr. Potts!” said the aunts, in a breath.

“D’ye-do, Potts!” said Seville, giving him his fore-finger, with the air of a man rising from winning at cards.

Potts made his compliments all round. He was about sailing for Carolina, he said, and had come to ask permission of Miss Onthank to leave her sweet society for a few years of exile. But as this was the last of his days of pleasure, at least till he saw Miss Onthank again, he wished to be graced with the honor of her arm for a promenade in Broadway. The ladies and Mr. Seville doubtless would excuse her if she put on her bonnet without further ceremony.

Now Potts’ politenesses had such an air of irresistible authority that people fell into their truck like cars after a locomotive. While Miss Onthank was bonneting and shawling, the count entertained the entire party most gaily, though the Sevilles thought it rather unceremonious in the allianced miss to leave them in the midst of a first visit, and Mr. Greville Seville had arranged to send his mother home on foot, and drive Miss Onthank out to Harlem.

“I’ll keep my horses here till you come back!” he shouted after them, as she tripped gaily down stairs on the count’s arm.

And so he did. Though it was two hours before she appeared again, the impatient youth kept the old aunt’s company, and would have staid till night, sorrels and all—for in that drive he meant to “name the day,” and put his creditors at case.

“I wouldn’t even go up stairs, my dear!” said the count, handing her to the wagon, and sending up the groom for his master, “it’s but an hour to dinner, and you’ll like the air after your fatigue. Ah, Seville, I’ve brought her back! Take good care of her for my sake, my good fellow!”

“What the devil has his sake to do with it, I wonder?” said Seville, letting his horses off like two rockets in harness.

And away they went toward Harlem. And in about an hour, very much to the surprise of the old aunts, who were looking out of the parlor window, the young lady dismounted from an omnibus! Count Potts had come to dine with them, and he tripped down to meet her with uncommon agility.

“Why do you know, aunties,” she exclaimed, as she came up stairs, out of breath, “do you know that Mr. Seville—when I told him I was married already to Mr. Potts—stopped his wagon, and p-p-put me into an omnibus!”

“Married to Mr. Potts!” screamed Aunt Charity.

“Married to Mr. Potts!” screamed Aunt Sophy.

“Why—yes, aunties; he said he must go South, if I didn’t!” drawled out the bride, with only a very little blush indeed. “Tell aunties all about it, Mr. Potts!”

And Mr. Potts, with the same smile of infallible propriety, which seemed a warrant for every thing he said or did, gave a very sketchy account of his morning’s work, which, like all he undertook, had been exceedingly well done—properly witnessed, certified, etc., etc., etc. All of which shows the very sound policy of first making yourself indispensable to people you wish to manage.

Or—put it receipt-wise:—

To marry a flat.—First, raise her up till she is giddy. Second, go away, and let her down. Third, come back, and offer to support her, if she will give you her hand.

“Simple comme bonjour,” as Balsac says.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

WRITTEN FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF A BENEVOLENT SOCIETY.

BY WILLIAM PITT PALMER.

BY MRS. SEBA SMITH.

No character is more genial to a child than a good story-teller—one that with a serene fullness pours out incident and narrative, peril and “hair-breadth ’scape,” tale of enormous serpent or deadly beast, of wild or chivalric adventure, till the old clock behind the door is heard to tick with a solemn loudness, and the elders begin to yawn and stir the ashes in token of weariness. Most heartily do I pity either man or woman who has no such delicious reminiscence. It was my good fortune when a child to pass much of my time at an old country farm-house, where the many retainers, the primitive and exact ordering of the household had in it much of the baronial style of which we read amongst our Saxon ancestors. The principal apartment for ordinary occasions was a long hall, or dining-room, in the centre of which was spread a table capable of holding the whole family—from the head down to the youngest servant. Our New England gentry are exact observers of precedence, and in the old families where any degree of state is observed, a single glance at the ordering of the table betrays the relative position of each member. At the head sit the master and mistress, then occasional visiters, next the children ranged according to the age of each, and then came the upper domestics, as they might be termed, old, respectable retainers, who sometimes join a few words in the conversation at the head of the table; but always in a subdued and respectful voice—followed next by the younger servants, “to the manor born” as it were, but as yet too young to share in its dignities.

After the morning and evening meal, which is announced by the blowing of a horn, each member places his chair to the wall, and the patriarch of the family reads a portion of scripture from the “big ha’ bible, once his father’s pride,” and then,

At night, when the household arrangements were completed, this long room with its dim recesses, its antique furniture and quaint ornaments, was the place to give impressiveness to a story. Here might one shudder at the supernatural, stare at the marvelous, and thrill at the bold and magnanimous, Here was the place, too, to bemoan the cruelty of “Queen Eleanor” to “Fair Rosamond,” to weep for the lover by “Yarrow flowing,” and to rejoice in the retribution of the proud and “cruel Barbara Allen.” These and many other ballads, such as the “Milk White Doe,” “Fair Margaret and Sweet William,” “Lord James and Fair Eleanor,” were preserved in rude manuscript and learned orally, and most have been in this way preserved by tradition and brought over to this country by the first settlers; the writer having never seen them in print till he found them in Perry’s reliques and long after she had been familiar with them as chanted in the old farm-house.

The city is no place for story-telling—nothing is in harmony. A story to go well must be either in a rich antique room, or old-fashioned farm-house, where things have an air of quaintness and permanency; in our rough cottage with smoky rafters; or, better still, in some rude cabin upon the wild frontier. In such places we abandon ourselves to any fantastic illusion, and are not ashamed to yield faith, nor to be swayed by the emotions of the tale. A sea story need be told by some weather-beaten tar by the sea shore, or by a dim wood fire with a fierce tempest raging without; unless you have the good fortune to hear it by the forecastle itself. A good story-teller should be exceedingly careful never to mis-time, nor mis-place his narrative. If his miserable fortune afford him nothing better than a carpeted room, with sofas and chandeliers, be sure to make the light dim; let it come from behind some piece of statuary or heavy-stuffed chair, a rose bush, or large geranium, that outline and faint shadows be cast—then if he have a quiet voice, and not too much of the detail, a very good illusion may be produced.

Children, in whom the love of the marvelous is always predominant, and who never weary at the twice-told tale, will adopt all sorts of expedients to hear one. They may be found in the garret turning over musty relics and old records, in the desire for suggestion; and they drag forth triumphantly a rusty sword, a cocked hat, a worm-eaten log book, or time hallowed garment, any one of which may afford material for a story. The boy sits on the steps of the grocer, lulls upon the pump at the corner, or leans over the tafferel of the ship, and he is listening to some history of stirring adventure. Do not call him away, he is building up the materials for a man—a man firm, enterprising and self-sustained—the only wealth, the only true dignity.

A story-teller should never hurry, least of all be interrupted—as for himself he should think for the time being only of his story; give himself up and become a part of what he relates. Nothing mars a story like pre-occupation. I believe all I am writing was suggested to me when about eight years old, from the fact of having unfortunately asked Mrs. Smith, a respectable country woman, rejoicing in that rarest of names, to tell me the story of a Catamount. Her husband was also happy in the name of John, but as these two favorite names happened to conjoin in union as well as many of his neighbors, it was not always easy to determine the individual specified. In a transition state of society, a man frequently receives a soubriquet, indicating some quality of mind, person or achievement, by which he is distinguished from those about him. It is an ancient practice sanctioned by history, and one mode by which names were created. The aborigines in this way named their chiefs and warriors. Mr. John Smith, of the country town of which I am speaking, was hence called Catamount Smith.

Great was my curiosity to learn why. I questioned every one. Why is Mr. Smith called Catamount John?

“Why? Because he killed the Catamount.”

There was the fact; but I wanted the story—all the details—the enormous size of the animal, his growl, his tremendous leap, the fierce contest, the peril, and finally to be in at the death. Once seduced by the good-natured face of Catamount John, I ventured to crave the story, blushing up to the eyes while I did so.

“Mr. Smith, will you tell me how you killed the Catamount?”

He turned his bland face full upon mine, placed his rough, broad palm upon my head and answered,

“My dear, I shot him.”

“But how, Mr. Smith, how?”

“I took my gun and pointed, so—‘suiting the action to the word,’ and shot him through the—— .” I ran out of the room to hide my vexation.

At this moment, Mrs. Catamount Smith passed by me, bearing an enormous pan of butter, fresh from the churn. Now Mrs. Smith would never have deluded any thing but a child into a belief that she could tell a story. She was entirely deficient in that quality of repose, so essential to the thing. She was a little, plump, bustling dame, forever on the alert to see that all was neat and tidy. Her sleeves were always up at the elbow, her apron white as snow, and the frill of her cap blowing back with her quick tread. Short people never stoop, and Mrs. Smith being very short and very round, tipped somewhat backward when she walked.

That night, when all the family were in bed, except a faithful domestic named Polly, I seated myself beside the good old lady, to hear the story of the Catamount. The reader must bear with me while I relate the thing just as it transpired.

Mrs. Smith gave one keen look about the apartment, to convince herself that all was right, and then stuck her needle into a sheath affixed to her belt, and commenced knitting and talking at the same moment.

“John and I begun house-keeping in the log house down by the pond, about a mile from the place where the meeting-house now—(la, Polly, there’s Jacob’s buskins on the back of your chair, and they must be bound round to-night; do go right to work on them)—where did I leave off?—where the meeting-house now stands. ’Twas another thing to be fixed out then, to what it is now-a-days. I was considered very well off—my father gave me a cow and a pig—and I had spun and wove sheets and kiverlids, besides aiming enough to buy a chist of draws, and a couple of chairs. Then my mother launched out a nice bed, a wheel, and some kettles. We hadn’t much company in them times, our nighest neighbour was over the mountain, five mile off—(now did you ever—I liked to forgot them are trousis of Ephraim’s—he’s tied his handhercher round his knee all day, to kiver up the hole—Polly, get my wax and thimble, and the patches, and I’ll go right to work.) Well, what was I sayin’? Oh, we hadn’t much company, and my old men made a settle, with a high back, and bought chairs two at a time, as our family grew larger.”

“But, my dear ma’am, you promised to tell me about the Catamount.”

“Yes, yes. I’m comin along to it. Well, John had got together a yoke of oxen, some sheep, and other cattle, and we began to be pretty considerable fore-handed. He was a nice, smart man, and nobody should say he had a lazy wife. (Polly, just sweep the hearth up.)

“We had no machines then to card our wool, and I had to card it all myself—for I never hired help till after our Jacob was—”

“Dear Mrs. Smith, the Catamount!”

“Yes, child, I’m eeny most to it. Let me see—till after Jacob was born—then I hired Lydia Keene, as smart a girl she was, as ever wore shoe leather. By this time we had eighteen or twenty sheep, and John used to drive them into the pen and count them every night, to be sure that the wolves or panthers hadn’t got any of ’em; for the beasts were pretty thick about the mountain, and many a time I’ve stood to the door, and heard them howl and cry, to say nothing of the foxes and screech-owls that kept up a rumpus all night long. (Dear me, this snappy wood now has burnt a hole in my apron—it looks jist like a pipe hole—I do so hate to see it. I’ll mend it now, and then ’twill be done with. I never put off any thing till to-morrow, that can be done to-day—that’s the way to—) Now don’t fidget, child, you see I’m almost to it; that’s the way to get fore-handed, as I was saving. Well, one morning John went out, and found the sheep all huddled together into a corner, trembling pitifully. He counted them, and one was missing. This was a loss, for I needed the wool for winter kiverlids. (There, Polly, you’ve forgot the apples you’re a goin to pare for the pan-dowdy, now the buskins is done, you better get them under way.)

“Well, the next night John took Rover—now Rover was the largest dog I ever see, near about us large us a heifer, and the knowingest critter I ever laid eyes on. Well, John took him out to the pen, and told him to watch the sheep. John’ll never forget how that critter looked up in his face, and licked his hand when he left him, just as if he knew what would come of it, and wanted to say good bye; nor how he crouched down before the bars, and laid his nose upon his paws, and looked after him solemn-like. Poor Rover! The next morning John was up airly, for he felt kind a worried. He went out to the sheep-pen, and sure enough the first thing he see, was—(Polly, you’ve just cut a worm-hole into your apples)—the first thing he see, was poor Rover dead by the bars, his head torn right open, and another sheep gone. John’s dander was fairly up—he took down the gun, there it hangs on the hooks, took his powder-horn and bullets, and started off. I tried to coax him to set a trap, or to watch by the sheep-pen. But John always had a will of his own, and was the courageousest man in the town, and he declared he’d have nothing to do with any such cowardly tricks. He’d kill the critter in broad day-light, if ’twas only to revenge poor Rover. So he started off. He tracked the critter about a mile round by the mountain, which in them days was covered with trees to the very top. (Polly, jist take them are trousis, and lay them down by Ephraim’s chamber door; he’ll want them in the morning.)

“Well, John now missed Rover dreadfully, to scent out the beast—he moved along carefully, searching into the trees—expectin’ he might be down upon him every minit. All at once he heard the bark ripped up from a tree almost over his head, and then a low, quick growl, and there was the Catamount jist ready for his spring—(my conscience, Polly, there’s that new soup all running out o’ the barrel into the cellar, I saw it had sprung a leak about supper time, and then I forgot all about it again.)

“The word ‘spring’ had been the unlucky association, and away she darted to the cellar, followed by the faithful Polly.”

“Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Smith, do finish the story!”

“La! child—John shot him!” she screamed from the foot of the stairs.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “HENRI QUATRE; OR THE DAYS OF THE LEAGUE.”

’Twas mid-day in Verona—the season, summer—the air, warm, close, voluptuous, between the double lines of stately palaces which adorned the magnificent old city, but quickening into life and playful activity, as it stole over the gardens and terraces which fringed the broad and rapid Adige.

The streets were hushed in the mid-day quietude of southern climes—the few pedestrians loitered with noiseless step—the richly chiseled marble palaces (their projecting balconies shaded with overhanging drapery unruffled by breeze or zephyr) seemed to slumber on the deep cast shadows—the long bearded, tattered mendicant reposed with closed eyes against the church pillar, or encumbered the cool steps where the sun’s rays crept not, or found no access.

In such an hour what makes the noble count—the brave Lorenzo Della Scala—quit his palazzo, seek to breathe the hot air of the streets? Truce Verona through, who should be held happier than Della Scala? Of illustrious birth, claiming descent from rulers of the city in the olden times, with wide spread reputation, acquired by the conduct of armies in Germanic warfare, he returned to his native place, still young, though of years beyond the opening flush of manhood, to live in the respect of the citizens, to taste the enjoyment of long neglected wealth amidst the splendor of a Veronese palazzo, or the deep seclusion of forest girt villas and pavilions. Scarcely domiciled in his patrimonial mansion, he fell in love with Bianca Guidoni, sole daughter of the count of that name. Lorenzo first beheld her at a festa di campagna, at her father’s suburban villa, was smitten with her youth and beauty, whilst the nascent passion was enhanced and piqued by the indifference and coldness with which she—the centre of a host of worshipers—treated their lavish attentions. Such pride and reserve, he thought, would well become the house of Della Scala, and so—impetuous in love as in war—he sought the maiden, poured forth his passion, and construing her embarrassed replies favorably, betook himself to her father, by whom he was gladly accepted as future son-in-law. The Count Guidoni, anxious not to compromise the offer of so rich a suitor, or suffer accident or contingency to intervene, hurried on the marriage, as regardless of the presumed or known state of his daughter’s affections, as a despotic father, or Italian noble—whose word in his own household was law even to death—could by harsh, precipitate conduct evince. So Bianca was wedded, and amidst the costly magnificence which distinguished the ceremonies of the Veronese nobility, installed mistress of the palazza Della Scala.

Why, therefore, in the third week of marriage, should the noble Lorenzo be found walking lonely through Verona’s streets at an hour consecrated by the Italians to repose, or the quietude of domestic intercourse? Certainly it bespoke a restless spirit. The count was indeed sorely troubled, his pride hurt by the indifference of his young wife. Though the wooing was short, and certainly on his part rather unceremonious, he had married the countess for beauty, in utter absence of sordid motive or consideration, and believing in his pride—it must be confessed—rather than in his judgment, that he had made a favorable impression on her affections, his expectations of wedded happiness were as feasible as ardent. But alas! for short lived hope—the affection was not reciprocated. Bianca was dutiful, obedient, attentive to his wishes—no wife could be more so—yet her conduct was ever cold, constrained, devoid of affection. He missed the happiness he sought, which he perhaps thought his due after years of warlike fatigue, and often wandered forth a secret prey to discontent and gloomy forebodings.

In this mood, chance and desire of solitude led him to the margin of the Adige, to seek amidst the shade of the river’s embowered banks the tranquillity which he found not at home. To avoid recognition by a group of cavaliers, lounging after the fashion of the hour in a pavilion, near to and overlooking the circling stream, though far above its banks, he bent his steps to a small path which intersected, amidst flowering shrubs and underwood, a narrow space between the base of the edifice and the edge of the water. As he was passing beneath—his footsteps unheard on the soft velvet turf—the echo of his own name from the pavilion caused the count to pause.

“For rarest beauty,” continued the speaker, “I give the palm to Ubuldini—her face is Juno’s own—The Signora—I mean, as you may suppose, the old man’s wife—Signora Cavalcanti—she I allow is peerless in form and figure—but Della Scala I would crown Queen of Grace and witching Elegance!”

“Bravo, Guiseppe!” cried another, “thy eloquence is warm and luscious like the hour—but Della Scala is too cold and reserved for my fancy—I worship the Cavalcanti—my very soul is in bondage to Signora Cavalcanti. O! that I could wrest her from the old man’s arms!”

“And what is the harshness of thy fate to mine?” uttered a fresh voice, in deep sepulchral tone, mocking the passion of the last speaker. “My very body is in bondage to Signor Cavalcanti—I owe old Plutus eight thousand crowns—O! that I could wrest my attested bond from the old man’s money chest!”

Lorenzo had been absent many years from his native city; his acquaintance with youthful cavaliers of his own rank was necessarily very slight, and of the prevailing themes of scandal, and of its victims, he was almost wholly ignorant; but it were easy to perceive he was listening to a group of young cox-combs, endued with all the arrogance and mendacity characteristic of the class; and Della Scala would fain have walked onward with a sneer on his moustached lip—but no! he was no longer master of himself! A thorn was in his side—the venom of distempered fancy already at work—and he heaved a sigh of self reproach, as he felt himself riveted to the spot.

“It would be well for the peace of our poor Visconti,” exclaimed one, in sentimental tone, “if he could transfer his passion to this universal idol, Cavalcanti—but he has been frantic since his return from Spain to find his Bianca wife of the proud count.”

“What does the lover deserve who seeks the Spanish shore when he should be watching nearer home?” asked Giuseppe.

The reply of Visconti’s friend was to the purpose, that he believed himself safe in that quarter, so long as Francesca, the artful intriguing Francesca, attendant and waiting-woman of Bianca, remained faithful to his interests. She had sufficient art to scare away a fresh lover, and was in the pay of Visconti.

As the young cavalier proved himself so well acquainted with his friend’s affairs, and seemed much disposed to babble thereon, he was not suffered to remain silent, but plied with fresh questions, till the whole detail of the lovers’ history was laid bare to the chagrined and enraged listener beneath. It appeared Guidoni was not altogether ignorant of his daughter’s attachment, but as he had never countenanced the Signor Alberto Visconti, he was not disposed to make his love for Bianca an obstacle to the suit of the rich and illustrious Della Scala. The repugnance of the daughter, and the finesse and stratagem of the waiting-maid, were of no avail against a despotic father, more especially in the absence of the lover, who might have conjured a more desperate resistance to parental authority.

“I know Visconti well,” exclaimed his friend, “and he would never have suffered the shame of that marriage if he had been in Verona.”

“Indeed!” muttered Lorenzo between his teeth. His hand grasped the hilt of his poniard, but he quickly recovered presence of mind, and was again an attentive listener.

“It matters little,” observed one of the party sarcastically, “what he would have done if he had been here—the all-important question is, what will he do now? Can you answer that, Signor Jeronimo Fabrizio?”

“Can you tell when the fox was ever caught sleeping?” replied Fabrizio contemptuously. “Visconti has too much prudence, caution and reserve to suffer his plans to travel to your ears!”

“If he show as much prudence in future movements as he exhibits caution in choice of a confidant,” remarked the other, “he will speed as well as those ought to do, who deposit secrets with the discreet Signor Fabrizio!—but see! the pinnace heaves in sight—who will follow me?”

“Stay, you have forgotten, signor,” exclaimed his antagonist, in anger, “take that with you.”

Lorenzo, from his place of concealment, heard a slight, hurtling noise, as though a missive had been flung by Fabrizio at the offender. It was followed by the reiterated cries of the party that they would have no quarrelling on that day, but all should embark in the pinnace. The count took occasion of the confusion, and stole away unperceived.

“His Bianca!” muttered Della Scala, as he walked gloomily onward. “Visconti’s Bianca! Have a cure, Alberto Visconti! thy ancestors and mine fought for the mastery of Verona—wilt thou revive the old feud?”

But anger gave way to grief as he contemplated the abyss in which his happiness was wrecked. The coldness and constraint of Bianca were now fearfully, harrowingly, accounted for. Why was he kept ignorant of what was already common talk? Had the house of Della Scala no friend or kinsman to warn its chief? Was he then dupe of the avaricious Guidoni? But if he were dupe of the old man, shall he continue blind to the threatened practices of Visconti? let him look to it, and dread the vengeance of Della Scala!

The count’s thoughts lent accelerated speed to his movements—he retraced his way to the city, endeavoring to conceal, by open brow, the agony at heart. The streets of Verona were now alive with the busy steps of citizens—the stately signor or magnifico walked heedless of the continually recurring mendicant’s prayer from porch or pillar, per amor di Dio, while the signora, whether masked, veiled, or disclosing her features, accompanied by ancient attendant or youthful waiting-maid, tripped by with busier step, yet found leisure to listen to and requite the vagrant’s appeal—perchance through pure charity—perchance out of propitiation, with view of invoking indulgence toward sinful nature—or, may be, deed of atonement for past pecadillo. Approaching the church Sun Zeno, Lorenzo saw, among others, ascending the steps, a lady so much resembling the Countess Bianca, in figure and deportment, that he felt certain of the identity. He smiled with contempt. For whom prays she? if for herself, ’tis well—she needs it—for her father, for me? no! no! the one she deems a cold, tyrannical old man, the other an obstacle to her passion. For Visconti, dare she proffer prayers? Huh! let both beware!

He entered the church, alike impelled by jealousy, lest her visit to the sanctuary were the fulfillment of an assignation, and prompted by savage curiosity to pry unseen on devotions which, to him, wore the semblance of profanity and mockery. In the spacious interior, there was scarcely a chapel or shrine without one or more votaries, deeply absorbed in silent prayer, all unheedful of the many visiters, whose only aim was to escape the wearisomeness of idleness, or enjoy the cooler air and pavement of the holy precincts. Lorenzo at length beheld the lady he sought, kneeling at the entrance to a small chapel, decorated with a large painting of the Blessed Virgin, represented in act of bestowing alms to the aged and destitute. He approached stealthily, and stopping at only a short distance from the suppliant, stood gazing at her with strong yet suppressed emotion. Her veil was uplifted—the face presently averted momently from the shrine—he drew back to avoid being seen, but the clatter on the pavement caused her to look in that direction—it was not Bianca! To escape the imputation of being a spy on the lady’s actions, he feigned to have been deeply engrossed with the pictorial embellishment of the shrine, but the fair dame once disturbed, renewed not her devotions—perhaps frightened by the presence of the cavalier. She crossed herself devoutly and hastily withdrew.

What tempts Lorenzo to linger before that picture? He looked long, earnestly, sadly, even till a tear came to the eye! True, it is the Holy Virgin assuaging the sorrows of crowding petitioners, whilst others, recipients of relief, are hastening joyfully away. The Catholic hierarchy, with subtlest policy, ever employed the ideal breathing pencil of genius to array the Virgin with tenderness and grace more than human, so that the portraiture wore a divine, beatific aspect. Was it this character moved Lorenzo? Not wholly—but the secret charm was in the strong resemblance borne to the Countess Bianca—’twas her features, beatified, purged from trace of earthly passion. The masters of the art were accustomed to paint from nature, even for ideal subjects; perhaps an ancestress of Bianca was chosen “to sit” for the representation on which Della Scala now gazed. He looked, the eyes of Bianca beamed mildly, innocently upon him, suffused with that divine, tender light, snatched only by genius in moments of inspiration. The heart of the Italian was softened—jealousy buried in saddened admiration. Should he not, he at length asked himself, yet endeavor to win Bianca to the bosom of her lord? ’Twas not her crime she loved another ere she beheld him—she was yet innocent in act, if not in intention—might yet be recovered to a sense of duty first, and then affection! One jarring discord alone broke the harmony of his thoughts; it was as the images of Visconti and the pert, intriguing favorite of Bianca stole upon the mental vision. His fingers crept toward his breast, the lips writhed, but anger lasted only a moment—he bent reverently and lowly before the shrine, and left the arching domes of old San Zeno.

Evening approached, and the count was ascending the staircase which conducted to the principal floor in the Palazzo Della Scala, with intention of visiting the countess, when Francesca suddenly presented herself in the act of passing down. The count had taken a secret dislike to Francesca, even before he heard her character so freely commented on in the pavilion; her features were handsome, her form light, elegant, attractive, but an expression of deep cunning and espièglerie, from which the face was never wholly free, counterbalanced the effect of high personal charms—at least in the eyes of a husband whose wife had chosen such an attendant. Francesca started on seeing the magnifico—she murmured a few words expressive of intention to acquaint the countess of monsignor’s approach, and was about to retreat up the staircase for that purpose, when Della Scala seized her by the wrist.

“Nay,” he exclaimed, looking intently at the girl, “I will be my own herald—you may retire.”

Francesca uttered a slight scream, accompanied by a contortion of features expressive of physical pain, which first made the count aware that he had unconsciously grasped her wrist with extreme violence; ’twas, indeed, a grip worthy to embrace threat of Turk or Tartar in mortal conflict, but far beyond the endurance of slim, Christian maiden. He smiled at this proof of emotion, and told Francesca in kindly strain, that she should have a bracelet of gold to hide the bruise. The waiting-woman’s evident eagerness to prepare her mistress for the visit, reawoke Lorenzo’s jealousy, but pride and love strove with the bitter passion, mastered it—and so Della Scala determined not to intrude his suspicions on the countess’ privacy, but retired to his own chamber, and sent an attendant to notify his purposed visit.

Bianca rose to meet her lord, but she could not sustain his ardent glance; her eyes fell, her step faltered, and she could scarcely find speech to welcome him. He led her to the window which overlooked the garden of the palazzo. The perfumed air, rich with fragrant breath of flowers, wandered over the saloon; the red light of the departing orb of day threw its golden shafts across the cool verdure of the lawn, flickered over the scroll work of the chamber wall, lit up and surrounded the face of Bianca with a halo which concealed its deadly paleness and dismay. The count gazed with admiration; illumined by the rich glow, the features beamed angelic, like the Madonna of the shrine.

“Bianca,” he exclaimed, “when the guests unmask to-morrow at midnight at the Palazzo Cavalcanti, let these pearls reflect the softened lustre of a brow—Verona’s boast and Della Scala’s pride!”

“How large and lustrous!” said Bianca, bending over the gift, the rather that her eyes might not encounter the glance of Lorenzo, “such as these, nay, not so large, came lately from Aleppo—brought there by the Indian Caravan—and were sent to Venice. Not finding a buyer there, the goldsmith came to Verona with his rich freight, and every day—as the countess tells me—Count Ubaldini feasts his eyes upon them, tells his wife at evening what a rich second dower he will bring home on the morrow; but when morning comes he shakes his head, talks of the mortgage on his forest-lands, and bids her wait another day!”

“I know it well, Bianca,” rejoined Lorenzo, “these are the pearls which Ubaldini dallied with—and now his countess loses. I bought them this afternoon, after a prayer for the welfare of our house, put up in old San Zeno.”

“I cannot go to Cavalcanti’s house—O! no! I am sure not,” cried Bianca, hysterically; “O! pray excuse me!” And she burst into tears.

Lorenzo, at first deeply angered by the sudden intimation of staying away from Cavalcanti’s festa, was softened by her tears, and leading the countess away from the window, grew alarmed at her continued hysterical sobbing. With vain fondness he believed her heart was touched, that it struggled against its affection for Visconti—that she was moved by the solicitude shown by him to whom alone affection was due. He endeavored to soothe her by painting the future in the brightest colors, displaying sources of happiness yet at command—but his eloquence proved in vain—its reiteration seemed to add to her misery. She at length pleaded illness, prayed to be left alone—that repose would bring back her wonted spirits, which had—she knew not how—fallen into a melancholy train. If Della Scala would but leave her till the morning, she said—sinking on her knee—she would meet him with happier face, and thank him for all he had done to make her happy.

“The Countess Della Scala,” exclaimed Lorenzo, in a tone grave though not unkind, “is not a child asking a blessing of a parent. Let her remember her own dignity—the most illustrious in Verona—to her all hearts vow honorable fealty and courtesy. ’Tis hers to command, not to entreat! Signora,” he added, with an attempt at a smile, “I obey your request, and take my leave, yet fail not to send for Agostino.”

He led her to a seat, and again pressing her to command the attendance of the house physician, Signor Agostino, quitted the saloon with the deference of a gallant lover.

Bianca reposed on a rich couch, her beauty disordered with weeping. ’Twas night—and the saloon was illumined by the many-branching lustre. Francesca stood beside her mistress.

“This is no more than I expected, signora, from his visit,” said the favorite, “a demon’s fire glowed in his eyes when I met him, which made me tremble for you, signora—the incarnate brute!”

“Whom mean you, Francesca?” cried the countess starting up.

“Whom should I mean, signora, but the count?” replied the girl.

“You do him wrong—Alberto does him wrong—you are both bent on my ruin,” cried Bianca, with eyes flashing indignation; “have I not told you all he said—how tenderly he spoke! those princely pearls he gave? Alas! ungrateful wretch that cruel fate has made me!”

“Yes,” uttered Francesca with a sneer, “and I can boast his gifts—a gold bracelet—and for what? look at this arm, signora—this is the work of the tender Count Della Scala! There may not be more generosity in the gift to the mistress. But let us forget the proud tyrant. I have news, good news, in store; Alberto prays to see you this evening in the garden, at the same hour as he saw the signora last night.”

“Did I not solemnly declare, Francesca,” cried Bianca, grasping her maid’s arm with frenzied agitation, “did I not vow, that last night should be the first and last interview I granted Alberto—till—till—”

“Till the signor was prepared to carry us both off to some happier land,” cried the attendant; “I know it well! but the signora gripes as tightly as monsignor.”

Bianca flung off the woman contemptuously.

“I meet rare treatment at all hands!” remarked Francesca in petulant tone; “I had well nigh forgotten the signor’s letter.”

“Where—where is it?” cried Bianca with eagerness.

The countess snatched her lover’s epistle, and, retiring to a distance, read it o’er and o’er till her eyes melted into tears. Francesca watched with secret joy the effect of Visconti’s soft pleading. Bianca’s heart again renewed the fetters which bound her to her first love.

“Yet I cannot—dare not—see him to-night!” exclaimed she, unconsciously giving utterance to thought.

“I dread telling poor Alberto this,” said Francesca, who overheard the soliloquy; “not see him! How often has he lamented to me his bitter fate, deprived of the delight when you stole to see him, after the old Count Guidoni had gone to rest—and those moonlight walks on the shore of the lake in the Tyrol! Poor signor! he is not the same gentleman he used to be before his fatal journey. Did not the signora mark the change?”

In this strain continued the artful Francesca, when she found Bianca was touched, bringing to fond memory all happy, blissful records, when love was innocent, or guilty of no higher crime than refraining to seek a harsh father’s approving glance. Bianca’s heart was torn in twain—Lorenzo’s generosity, still more, his lofty disinterestedness, won upon her gratitude, if not her love—but alas! she had, as she confessed, yielded the previous evening to an interview with Visconti. It look place in a balcony which overlooked the garden, whither the daring lover ventured, spite of the imminent danger. Reluctantly she consented; assent was only won by Francesca declaring Alberto’s intention, in the event of refusal, to force his way through the palazzo and die at her feet. But this fatal meeting served to rivet the links of a passion now criminal. Alberto, warned of her irresolution and wavering, was not slow to detail his scheme of flying with her and Francesca to Spain, where were situate his lately acquired estates, and to gain possession of which had caused the disastrous journey. Once beyond reach of Della Scala, or the Veronese and Venetian authorities, leisure would be afforded to set at work his interest with the Spanish court to procure a dispensation from Rome, annulling her marriage with Lorenzo, on the plea of being forced to the union by a despotic father, when she was, as it might be well averred, secretly betrothed to the absent Visconti. Francesca, in such a suit, would prove an invaluable witness, her zeal readily supply what was wanting in her testimony. The time selected by Alberto was nightfall, when all Verona would be in commotion with the bustle of guests approaching the magnificent, masked festa. The countess and her attendant might easily pass through the streets, masked, without especial observation, and repair to the spot where Visconti would be found waiting with horses and servants. A sloop, well manned, was in readiness at a small port, and would be under weigh so soon as they were on board—long ere pursuit was available. The countess, as Alberto suggested, might accompany Della Scala to the palazzo, mix awhile with the guests, then retire to where the faithful Francesca stood prepared to escort her mistress. Nay, if the signora thought Lorenzo would grow jealous if he missed his wife’s mask at an early hour, it might be remedied by hiring one, in the same costume, and bearing resemblance to the figure and style of the countess, to wear the disguised honors of the house of Della Scala. Several, he knew, would play the part to admiration, and take a pleasure in it, without knowing more than need safely be told.

Such was the nature of the proposed elopement, consented to by Bianca, amidst tears, weeping, fainting. Attend the festa! accompany Lorenzo, to quit him with such bitter mockery, she could not! He was, indeed, worthy of a love which she could not requite—but his affection she dare not so coldly insult. Then must she plead illness! Poor Bianca! with lover, dearly loved, at thy feet, threatening to slay himself if thou didst not link thyself with his fortunes! and the artful serpent of thy own sex, with skillful pleading, making the worse appear the better reason, what snares beset thee!

It was the day subsequent to this interview that witnessed the meeting we have narrated, between Bianca and her lord. Noble Lorenzo! wert thou not a day too late? What might not have been hoped if thou hadst displayed thy generous feelings but one day earlier?

The distracted Bianca was but too glad when Della Scala quitted her presence—she was humbled, even to the dust, by consciousness of her criminal hypocrisy—penetrated with a keen sense of the wrong and misery she was about to inflict on one who, at her hands, deserved a happier fate.

It was Visconti’s letter which, while a prey to remorse after Lorenzo quitted her, rekindled the shattered soul, reawoke the lamp of life and affection. That handwriting! the sight of which, in days gone by, gave such intense delight, now renewed old and irresistible associations. He should linger, he said, through the evening, hovering near the palazzo with the hope that she would grant even but a moment’s interview, but if cruel prudence forbade, then let her remember, that on the evening of the morrow, so soon as Delhi Scala had departed—and sharp watch should be kept on the count’s exit—he would repair to the little balcony, close to the door leading to the domestic offices, and ring the bell, a signal for Francesca to appear above. On receiving assurance that no obstacle interposed delay, his intention was to retire immediately to the shrine of Santa Croce—a wayfarer’s ruined chapel beyond the walls of the city—where horses and two faithful domestics would be in waiting. It might excite suspicion, he said, if he joined the countess immediately she quitted the palazzo. But should any obstacle occur—as Della Scala through sickness or jealous feeling staying at home, or remaining on the watch—then let not Francesca await his appearance beneath the balcony, but forewarn him by signal at the post whence he intended to watch the count’s departure. Impressing these precautionary measures on Bianca, the epistle relapsed into the lover’s strain.

Francesca, beholding her mistress resolute not to see Visconti that night, and foreseeing the danger of too much pressing, which might occasion a relapse favorable to Lorenzo’s happiness, she immediately undertook to pacify Alberto with the assurance that all matters should be ordered as advised. Night closed upon the palazzo Della Scala, but peace and calm repose were banished its walls!

Lorenzo, on leaving his countess, quitted her with mind ill at ease. He was vexed that he had not succeeded better with Bianca—there was a mystery in her conduct which he could not unravel. ’Twas plain his munificence, joined to solicitude which she could not mistake, had moved her—had caused distress of mind, to cover which she pleaded sickness. But yet—yet—there was no effort made to soothe him—to carry hope to his heart! How delighted would he have been with the bare intimation that she must strive to regain health to accompany him the morrow night! But no—on landed knee, she pleads fatigue, and craves till to-morrow—to join in his pursuits—share his happiness? alas! no—coldly to thank her lord for all he had done to make her happy!

Restless with these sad reflections, he sought not chamber or study, but strayed out in the cool air of evening. Occasional solitude had become habitual. Whilst general of a numerous and well disciplined army, many a time had he strolled at night, alone, through the camp, reviewing past enterprises, maturing the steps of future achievements. Now in Verona’s streets was brought to mind how oft in the hush of the tented field had he thought of home, of the happiness that might be enjoyed there!

But who is that damsel tripping by so furtively? The air and step are familiar to the count. It is Francesca! Whether strays she? Her appearance in the street, at that hour, when evening is fading into night, bodes no good. He watches closely—follows her steps, hidden by the shade of lofty walls—she is accosted by a cavalier—they confer awhile—he hands a letter, which she places away carefully, and then returns in the direction of the palazzo. The cavalier departs in an opposite direction. Lorenzo hangs on his footsteps—tracks from street to street—till the stranger halts at the portal of the dwelling in which Signor Visconti has resided since his return from Spain.

“Thy hour, Visconti, has not yet come,” muttered Lorenzo, as he turned on his heel, “but it approaches on quickened wing!”

The dark cloud again lowered over the domestic fortunes of Lorenzo. He could not, would not believe Bianca in correspondence with the enemy to his peace, but he could not avoid the conviction, that as Visconti and Francesca were in league, the billet given to the latter was intended for the eye of the countess. Another pang! what if there were indeed a connection between this secret correspondence and the expressed intention of Bianca to absent herself from the masked revel? A planned assignation whilst he was in the halls of Cavalcanti? He could not pursue the train of thought—’twas too harrowing, suicidal of happiness.

The count was visited next morning by the family physician, to report the state of Bianca’s health. The disorder, he said, was neither imminent nor dangerous—a lowness of spirits and melancholy, in fact, hysteria. To Lorenzo’s question, whether she could bear the fatigue of a visit, the physician thought it advisable—though his opinion was formed from a wish hinted by the countess, rather than from the nature of the malady—that monsignor should defer seeing the patient. But she had one request to make—one favor to ask the count.

“Ah!” exclaimed the pleased magnifico, “it is granted ere asked.”

It was to the effect, as the learned doctor said, that the count would not defer his promised pleasure of partaking the festivities through her indisposition—it would add to her illness and distress if she knew he staid away. The count let fall a beadroll of gold, which he had been passing through his fingers.

“Is monsignor sick?” exclaimed the physician, remarking the paleness and agitation of his patron.

“No!” replied Lorenzo impatiently; “tell me—did the countess herself say what you have just recounted?”

The Esculupian replied that he had already quitted the signora’s chamber, ere the request was entrusted to his delivery by the waiting-woman, Francesca.

“The accursed fiend!” exclaimed the count emphatically. The physician betrayed a discreet surprise, but Lorenzo bade him be silent as death as to what had escaped his lips. He was then commissioned to return to the sick chamber, and make happy the invalid with the assurance that Della Scala should be found among the maskers that night, and would as carefully absent himself from the side of his wife’s sick couch.

“Monsignor?” exclaimed the medical retainer in tone expostulatory.

“Nay—then soften it as you will, Signor Agostino,” rejoined Lorenzo with a curl of the lip.

Evening approached, and the count stood alone in his dressing-room, contemplating in silence a magnificent suit of apparel, the costume of a mixed monastic and warlike order of German knighthood, of which he was a leading dignitary. This was the array chosen to adorn a form worthy to sit beside the peerless Bianca, on an occasion in which he felt touched by vanity to display to his countrymen how improved was the half forgotten youth who, in years long past, had forsaken the vales of sunny Italy, and a dolce far niente existence for the turbulence of grim war—how worthy to match with the loveliest mate Verona boasted!

The rich robes were presently flung aside with a bitter smile. He selected a far humbler suit, a close habit of dark velvet, sprinkled by the embroiderer’s hand with leaves of gold, which, with cloak, domino-mask and cap, without plume or decoration, completed an equipment that rather betokened intention of intrigue or adventure than desire of revelling in the merriment and grandeur of the scene.

“Now the fox against the fox—if it must be so!” exclaimed the count sorrowfully. Over the dark cloak he threw a military mantle of bright scarlet, and surmounted the close velvet cap-in-ordinary with a plumed hat.

Though loath to indulge in suspicion, yet once suspecting, Lorenzo exhibited a wary subtle spirit, which had oft outwitted the warlike foe, and now rendered him a dangerous adversary to Visconti. He made no confidant, employed no spy, lest the honor of Bianca should be compromised; but, acting on the impression that his departure would be watched, kept a wary eye, searching everywhere through the gloom in his progress to the mansion of the Signor Cavalcanti. Foiled in the first survey, he entered the wide spread doors, but turned aside from the halls of revel, and dolling mantle, mask and plumed hat, found exit by the garden gate, and was again in Verona’s streets, the dark cloak shading the face, hiding the well-known figure of the count. He approached stealthily his own domicile, sometimes forced to turn aside to avoid being recognized in the glare of torch and flambeau lighting beauty to the scene of gaiety.

The night was gloomy but quiet—the Palazzo Della Scala in view. Should he—yes—the thought must have utterance though it choke him—should he find Visconti within? A shade moved along the wall—it pauses—turns the western angle, stops beneath a balcony, projecting from a window, which Della Scala remembered gave light to a corridor leading to Bianca’s suite of chambers. Will the intruder dare scale the palazzo? The count approaches warily, his hand on his poniard. Is it Visconti? No, for the stranger pulls the chain affixed to the bell—it is a love affair with some menial of the household. Ah! no—it is the enemy to his honor! Lorenzo has caught a glimpse of his face. “Bianca—hasten—our moments are precious!” murmured Alberto, unconscious of his chiding soliloquy being overheard.

“Ah! that name profaned by thee!” exclaimed the count, seizing his rival by the throat.

“Della Scala!” cried Alberto, in utter alarm and confusion, feeling for his weapon.

“Visconti!” rejoined Lorenzo. The sharp dagger’s stroke was sole echo to the exclamation.

“The traitor’s path—the traitor’s law!” muttered the count, as he flung the inanimate, bleeding corpse out of view from the balcony window.

The frame of Lorenzo shook with the strong indignation of his soul—should he rush in and wreak vengeance on—whom? Francesca—Bianca? Were they both guilty? Had he proof of Bianca’s guilt? The window opened above, and the count stepped moodily beneath the balcony, with scarcely mastery over his feelings to practice the dissimulation. “Signor—are you below?” was whispered by the well-known voice of Francesca. Della Scala ground his teeth in silent rage—he could not speak, but his very soul was bent on knowing to what extent the tempted as well as the tempters had erred—so he thrust up his hand to intimate his presence. No words were spoken, but he felt a billet placed between his fingers—he grasped it—and the window was immediately closed. Lorenzo withdrew to the lamp suspended over the side entrance to the offices.

Good heavens! what sees he? ’tis the handwriting of Bianca! her own slightly traced, delicate character! In one hour from the present, she will quit the palazzo with Francesca—meet him behind the ruined Santa Croce Chapel to fly to a happier land—may God forgive her the flight!

Lorenzo was unnerved, reclined stupified against his palazzo—’twas a total wreck of happiness he experienced—no hope, no sympathy. He wept the ruin which had fallen—which love had blinded him to! But vengeance was yet unsatisfied, its torch could only be extinguished by the punishment of all—the tempter and the tempted—the destroyer and the destroyed!

In one hour! the time was but short to prepare the means of vengeance. He had no near kinsman, no cherished friend in whom he might confide, was almost the only scion of the ancient house whose name he bore. With a sigh, he called to his aid Roberto, a military valet who had shared the dangers of his many campaigns. By Roberto’s assistance, the corpse of Visconti was removed to a place of security, and the trustiest household retainers of Della Scala arrayed in secret, under cover of the night.

In Bianca’s dressing-chamber was a silver crucifix, before which she had often bowed in prayer. How fearfully and askance she now looked at it—now, whilst the ready, active Francesca was preparing for flight! Poor Bianca! she would have knelt, but dare not. Sunk on her couch, she turned an idle eye on the rapid movements of the waiting-maid.

“Signora, I am ready, pray have courage for the last effort!”

“Would I knew the end of this—I fear the count will die of grief!” said Bianca.

“Not he—the race of them are made of stronger stuff,” replied Francesca; “but I know the ending—I have had it foretold. The signora has heard of her they call the Sybil, who lives in a tower in the Strada di Vicenza?”

“I know her not,” rejoined the countess with a vacant stare.

“I will relate all to the signora as we walk to the Santa Croce,” said Francesca, who, seeing the necessity of acting a resolute part, tendered her arm to assist her mistress to rise. Bianca obeyed the gentle force—she cast a look toward the toilet over which hung the crucifix—but amidst the golden coin which Lorenzo had placed at her disposal, her eyes encountered the casket which held his peerless gift. She hurried away, whilst the maid thought her mistress uttered a slight cry.

Beyond the walls of Verona, to the northward, far from any habitation, stood the ruins of the Santa Croce, where, in ancient times, had dwelt a small brotherhood of monks, whose principal vocation was the dispensation of food and shelter to poor travelers, more especially pilgrims coming from the far north to visit the miraculous shrines and relics of Italy. Hither wended alone, not without fear and trembling, Bianca and her attendant, both concealed from the recognition of prying eyes by masks, and shrouded in riding mantles.

“See, signora! they are coming to meet us!” cried Francesca to encourage her mistress. She pointed out three horsemen who emerged from behind the ruins. The chief approached, and dismounting, placed his finger across his mask, a signal accompanied by a half turn of the head in the direction of his companions, as though he were afraid the voice of Bianca or her maid would be recognized, and wished to impress the necessity of silence. He conducted the countess with great show of tenderness to a commodious litter, whose burthen was borne by two horses harnessed abreast.

“I fear Alberto expects pursuit—how he trembles! his hand quite shook as it grasped mine,” whispered Bianca to her attendant, as the latter was placed beside her mistress; “horror surrounds me—I dread evil will befall us—I feel cold, forlorn—pray for me, Alberto,” exclaimed the grief-struck lady, now addressing her lover, as he drew close the curtains of the litter and was preparing to mount.

“Pray for us both. Bianca!” replied he, in a low voice, as he spurred forward to take the lead.

The night wore on in gloom, but occasionally the wind made rent in the driven cloud rack, and the moon or stars peering through, distinctly marked the character of the territory in which they traveled. On the left lay the broad river, on the right a hilly country, softened by vineyards, gardens, villas and backed by mountains which mingled with the Tyrolean masses.

Often, during the journey, did Bianca silently wonder Alberto came not to the litter to soothe her, whilst the same feeling found vent in Francesca in loud lamentation, mixed with reproaches against the whole tribe of unfeeling lovers. Left to their own consolation, however, they came to the conclusion that it behoved Visconti to be ever on the alert, and that he could not trust himself with tender thoughts. The road after awhile grew more rugged and uneven, and the litter was much jolted. On drawing aside the curtains, they found themselves ascending a sleep, winding hillside, shadowed by overhanging forest trees. Gloomy and more gloomy grew the path, the sound of rushing water was heard, and, turning a sharp angle, they crossed a bridge spanning an abyss, beneath which roared the sullen cataract. Branching from this road, the cavalcade entered a dense forest track, and emerging thence, Francesca, who had been on the lookout, uttered a cry of delight on beholding the façade of a country palazzo with long colonnade. Lights gleamed to and fro—indication of guests being expected—and even Bianca felt a comparative freshness of spirits, which she had been a stranger to during the journey. Crossing a sluggish canal, they halted beneath the piazza. Lorenzo came forward, assisted Bianca from the litter, and led her into a handsome vestibule. Francesca was prevented following her mistress by one of the horsemen, on some plea unheard by Bianca.

Lorenzo, without unmasking, conducted the countess from the vestibule to a saloon brilliantly lighted.

“How grand! Is the villa thine, Alberto? Would I had the spirits to be pleased with this splendor! But why retain the mask—is there a meaning in it? some sportive fancy? alas! the occasion is unsuited for mirth!”

Lorenzo only replied by placing his finger across the mask, and leading the astonished countess to a second saloon; it was yet more magnificent, and elicited her admiration.

“Have you guests, Alberto? Are we safe so near Verona?” exclaimed she.

He replied only by pointing to a half closed door, from which gleamed forth light. They entered—it was the most superb saloon of the suite. She looked round in amazement. The most conspicuous decoration was a large portrait, representing a youth in hawking costume. She started.

“How like it is to him!” exclaimed Bianca, “let us leave this room, dear Alberto—those eyes follow me!” and she assumed a winning, playful look to persuade him to return.

“It is him—and I am he!” cried the figure in a stern voice, whilst the falling mask disclosed the face of Della Scala.

Bianca’s hand was held in the firm grasp of Lorenzo. Her features yet retained somewhat of their mirthful expression, as though conviction of the awful change came slowly—was too great for the mind to realize. Bereft of utterance, she gazed on the unexpected apparition—appalled, petrified with dismay—and as horror gradually fixed its seal on her features her form shrunk crouching from the fixed gaze of Lorenzo. He loosened his grasp, and, with a wild cry, she sunk on the floor.

“Bianca Guidoni!” exclaimed Della Scala.

“Lorenzo! O! cover me, earth!” cried the unhappy lady, burying her face in her hands. She heard him move, and beholding in imagination the uplifted poniard, threw herself on her knees, imploring by silent gesture his mercy. To and fro, he several times passed before her, with slow step, as though debating the mode of revenge—his stern unbending glance cast upon her beseeching figure, whilst the thick breathing denoted the inward struggle of his soul. Tears at length came to her relief, and she ejaculated—

“Have you brought me here to die?”

“Why wantest thou to know—hast any parting wish?” asked Lorenzo.

“O! spare Alberto, if he is thy captive,” she exclaimed, “judge him not too harshly—we loved when love was no offence, and did intend to fly together beyond my cruel father’s reach. I crave only mercy for him—with me is the fault, let mine be the penalty—it was I who tempted him!”

“Liar!” cried Lorenzo fiercely, “it was he who tempted thee—but he is dead!”

Bianca shrieked fearfully, as though her soul were flown, and fell prone on the floor in a deep swoon. Lorenzo contemplated her prostrate form in silence. Tears fell from his eyes.

“Yes! he is dead! and dead be now my revenge! O! Bianca!” exclaimed the count, bearing the insensible lady to a couch, “if we had known each other earlier, how happy might have been our fate! Farewell! and since thou knowest it not, one more adieu!”

Bending over her, Lorenzo for the last time placed his lip to hers, and fled the saloon.

Francesca, by the count’s secret order, had been hurried into the litter and conducted back to Verona, whither Della Scala repaired, having first conveyed his instructions to the household respecting the countess. After a long conference with Count Guidoni, followed by interviews with the kinsmen of Visconti (whose domestics at the Santa Croce had been captured and held in durance by Della Scala’s retainers, who took their post,) and with the authorities of the city, he quitted Verona, quitted Italy, a forlorn, unhappy man, seeking, in the military struggles of European warfare, the happiness he missed in domestic life.

Bianca found an instance of the clemency of Lorenzo in her permitted retention of the honors and privileges attached to the house of Della Scala, together with life use of the villa to which she had been conveyed. But she preferred the penitential seclusion of a convent, and lived to regret and mourn, not the fatal mistake of Francesca, which betrayed the lover’s plans, but her own fatal mistake in yielding to temptation, which urged her to fly to the indulgence of a criminal affection, from hallowed bonds which cannot be broken without infringing laws both human and divine.

Francesca, unworthy of Lorenzo’s vengeance, was banished the state of Verona, at the instance of Count Guidoni, whilst the sad history we have narrated was long talked of, and added one more to the time-honored legends of Verona.

BY ROBERT T. CONRAD.

NEGLECT.

THE RICH AND POOR.

HEREDITARY HONOR.

GRATITUDE.

ITALY, WHEN FREE.

AYLMERE IN THE COLISEUM.

OPPRESSION OF ENGLAND.

LONDON.

TRIFLES.

AMBITION.

CONSTRAINT INSPIRES THE LOVE OF LIBERTY.

LAW OF NATURE.

FREEDOM.

PREMATURITY OF BEAUTY.

CONSEQUENCES OF OPPRESSION.

SAY AND AYLMERE

DEATH.

POWER OF RIGHT.

INSINCERITY.

HONOR AND RANK.

THE MOB.

HYPOCRISY.

GLORY.

POPULAR FLATTERY.

AFFLICTION.

DEATH.

LIBERTY NOT THE MEANS OF HAPPINESS.

LIFE.

SUDDEN GREATNESS.

LIBERTY.

PARTIAL FREEDOM.

COURAGE.

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

“Your arguments are most cogent, and you are an eloquent pleader, my dear Anne; nevertheless, I am a confirmed bachelor.”

“Wedded to your art; married to your pictures, I suppose you would say, Cousin Fred. Well, your painted beauties will make but sorry companions for your old age, and the Art which you have found so jealous a mistress will scarcely repay you for the loss of a wife’s tenderness.”

“You mistake me, Anne; I am wedded to a memory—a shadow more unsubstantial than the dream of fame which I once cherished; and my heart has become the shrine of an image whose perfect loveliness far exceeds the fairest vision of the poet or the painter’s fancy.”

“Then you have been really and truly in love, coz; for the honor of the sex I cannot but rejoice that your insensibility to female charms is not the result of stoical indifference.”

“How little you know of my true character if you could suspect such a thing. From my very boyhood my soul was imbued with a deep and passionate love for the beautiful. The whole earth seemed to me redolent of loveliness; and poetry, music, painting, were but varied expressions of this all-pervading attribute. I was a visionary, a dreamer, and the rich coloring which my imagination thing over every thing in life, like the light falling through a painted window, imparted its own sublimity and beauty to that which would else have seemed tame and homely. I loved painting less as a means of fame than as a medium for the expression of my own deep emotions. Had my lips been touched with the fire of genius—could I have poured forth the burning words of passion in the language of poesy, I should never have become an artist. But my tongue was condemned to silence, and to my hand was given the power of depicting, on the speaking canvass, the visions which thronged around my solitude. An enthusiast in every thing, I possessed the soul of a poet, but the hand of a painter, and doubly doomed in this world of disappointment is he, who, to the refined taste and vivid fancy of the one, unites the passionate temperament and acute sensitiveness of the other.

“With this deep love for the beautiful and the good, (since virtue is but another name for moral beauty,) it would be strange, indeed, if I had been insensible to the attractions of woman. From the time when I stood at my mother’s knee, and learned in her sweet looks the harmony which exists between the gentle heart and the placid brow, I have been a student of the ‘human face divine.’ Unlike most persons, who become fastidious from a frequent banquet of beauty, I can find something redeeming even in the least attractive countenance, as the bee draws honey from the coarsest flowers.”

“How then does it happen, Fred, that you are so confirmed a bachelor? Have you been so general a lover that you have lost the power of individualizing your affections? or have your eyes been so ‘blasted with excess of light’ that you are now quite blind to feminine beauty?”

“I have been a wanderer in many lands, Anne, and I have seen beauty in its most glorious forms. The daughters of Spain, with that stately step and flashing glance which give to even the meanest of them the semblance of a princess of romance—the high browed dama and the tender eyed peasant girl of Italy—the fair haired belles of northern Europe, whose dazzling complexions and cold manners remind one of their own wild legend of the Snow-woman—even the romantic loveliness of the houris of Eastern life, have left their image upon my memory and their similitude upon my pictures. But how cold, how tame, how lifeless are all such recollections now! One heavenly vision has forever dimmed their brightness, and I am like the child in the old ballad who returned from the glittering scenes of Fairyland, only to pine and die amid the dullness of actual life.

“I had spent several years in Europe, and had revisited England with the intention of embarking from thence for the United States, when the circumstance occurred to which I have just alluded. I had become almost weary of sight-seeing, and it was rather a sort of listlessness, which required quiet and seclusion, that led me one day, while I still lingered in London, to enter a gallery of pictures, by the old masters, where I had passed many an hour. It was a large room, shaded to that tender, delirious light which is so grateful to the weary eye, and soothing to the excited mind. The pictures, too, with their mellow tone of coloring, their sombre tints, their softened outlines, and the beautiful chiaroscuro, so characteristic of the works of the old painters, were all in harmony with the stillness and solitude of the apartment. The season for fashionable visiters was long passed, and the few who now entered the gallery were, like myself, enthusiasts or students. Two or three persons were scattered around, fixed in silent admiration before some favorite picture; and, throwing myself in an arm-chair that stood in the deep shadow of an alcove, I gave myself up to that vague, sweet reverie which is the purest of all voluptuous enjoyments.

“How long I had been thus dreaming I do not know, but I was at length aroused by a light step near me, and as I raised my eyes I beheld a creature of such perfect loveliness as even my wild fancy could never have fashioned. Standing before one of the pictures, in the attitude of deep thought, with her arms folded upon her bosom, and the folds of her rich shawl falling, like the drapery of some Grecian statue, around her tall figure, was a lady of such surpassing beauty that, for a moment, I could not but believe I was gazing on an unsubstantial vision called up by the influences of the place. Words would be vain to describe the glorious beauty of that countenance. I might tell of the classical symmetry of her chiseled features, of the exquisite form and setting of her full dark-blue eye, of the pearl-like purity of her clear complexion, of the delicate rose tint on her oval cheek, of the soft pale-brown curls which fell from beneath her simple cottage bonnet; but what language could depict the soul which dwelt in the depths of those clear eyes, of the sweetness which sat on those calmly folded lips, of the intellect which had made its shrine on her high, fair brow, of the feeling which spoke in the varying hues of her transparent skin? I was spell-bound—fascinated—every faculty was absorbed in intense admiration, and, as I sat unobserved in my darkened nook, watching every movement of her graceful form, it seemed to me that the very atmosphere had become purer, as if refined by the presence of some being from a holier sphere. At length she spoke, and, as the low tones of her melodious voice fell upon my ear, I aroused myself from my trance sufficiently to notice her companion. He was a youth whose delicate beauty betrayed his relationship to the fair being at his side, and I fancied I could detect a degree of lender solicitude in her manner, which led me to believe that his boyish figure and pale check were the results of infirm health. Nothing could be more beautiful than the grouping of these two exquisite forms us they stood together in the soft light surrounded by images of loveliness; and I watched them until my senses were overpowered by that delicious, indescribable faintness which, in me, ever attends such overwrought feeling.

“For more than an hour I gazed unnoticed on this magnificent woman, and it was not until she gathered up the folds of her shawl and glided from the room, that I could summon energy enough to rise. As the door closed behind her, it seemed as if the sunlight had suddenly been shut out—a gloom fell upon every thing, and I hastily left the apartment. An impulse which I could not restrain led me to inquire of the doorkeeper the names of the persons who had just quitted the gallery, but he was unable to afford me any information, and I hurried home in a state of excitement which Byron has well described as ‘dazzled and drunk with beauty.’ The next day I returned to the picture gallery in the hope that the lady might be induced to revisit it. Hour after hour I sat amid forms of beauty and miracles of art—silent, abstracted, patient—waiting for a renewal of my beatific vision; until a gentle intimation that the exhibition was closed for the day sent me sad and disappointed to my solitary home. Day after day I took my station in that hall, vainly hoping that I might once more behold that exquisite face. My paintings stood unfinished on the easel, my books lay unread, my friends were neglected, the preparations for my home voyage were deferred, and I gave up my whole heart to this vain homage, offered unto one whose very name was unknown to me. You will think me mad, Anne, but I tell you that the moment my eye fell upon that noble woman, the inward voice, which never speaks in vain, the prophetic voice of the soul whispered that in her I beheld my destiny. Aye, I knew it then, when she had been but as a glimpse of Heaven to my eyes, even as I know it now, when for years I have lived upon her memory.

“Some weeks later, as I was returning from my solitary vigil, I passed the door of a celebrated jeweler, just as a carriage drove up. As I drew aside to avoid the shower of mud thrown up by the feet of the prancing horses. I caught a glimpse of the well-remembered countenance which had now become the idol of my dreams. Anticipating the lady’s intentions, I entered the glittering shop, and, pretending to examine some curiously engraved seals, lost not a single look. She conversed in a low tone with the jeweler, and seemed to be giving directions respecting the setting of a miniature, while I was drinking in new draughts of hopeless and passionate love from her exquisite beauty. As she returned to the carriage I hastened to engross the attention of the polite Mr.——, and soon contrived to be allowed a glance at the miniature. It was a small and highly finished likeness of the brother who had been her companion in the gallery, but the jeweler could afford me no other information than that it was to be set in plain gold, with the initials C. M. on the back, and that it must be finished by the next evening, us the lady intended leaving town. The next evening found me again at the shop, but I was destined to disappointment; the brother came, received the miniature and departed, leaving me no possible clue to the object of my cherished interest.

“Wearied and disappointed, I lingered in London with that aimless and idle spirit of loitering that now so fully possessed me, until a friend, from whom I had received many kindnesses, insisted upon my accompanying him to his country house previous to my leaving England. The beauties of rural scenery in that noble island can never be viewed too often, and I gladly found myself in the quiet of a sequestered village, where, with the genuine hospitality so well understood in England, I was surrounded by all the means of enjoyment, and then left to choose that which best suited my mood. I visited every place in the neighborhood which contained objects of interest, and found much to divert the melancholy that was rapidly settling upon my feelings, but still I had become morbidly sensitive, and wherever I went I seemed to find new food for my love-sick fancy. Accidentally hearing of an old baronial residence some twenty miles distant, which, though somewhat dilapidated, like the fortunes of the family to which it belonged, still contained some fine pictures, I determined to visit it. My friend dissuaded me by assuring me that I would scarcely obtain admission, as the owner usually occupied the mansion, and was somewhat eccentric and unsocial. ‘He is a Catholic, is said to be in bad health, and to live in great seclusion on account of his sister, who is under some ecclesiastic vow.’ This account, instead of deterring me, only stimulated my curiosity, and, taking advantage of a beautiful autumnal day, I rode alone to Mordaunt Hall.

“I always find a passion for rumbling over old houses, and the newness of everything in America makes us all peculiarly alive to the charm of gray antiquity abroad. It was with no little regret, therefore, that I found myself excluded from the old hall by a venerable man who looked as antique as the oaken door which he kept so inhospitably closed. Mr. Mordaunt was absent; he said, ‘he had left home only two weeks before, in the hope that the climate of Italy might restore him to health, and the rooms were not in proper order for a strangers inspection.’ Upon my informing him, however, of my vocation, and my desire to behold only the pictures, he consented to admit me, and after I had entered, he summoned the old housekeeper, who received me with a degree of stately civility which would have done honor to a dowager duchess. The old lady was glad to find some one who was willing to listen to her garrulity, and the attention which I paid to her long stories about the buckram squires and shepherdess ladies in the picture gallery, so far won her favor that she wanted me to visit the tapestried chambers, where were still preserved the relics of bygone splendor. Charmed with the interest I took in these old-world matters, she finally conducted me into that part of the mansion usually occupied by the family.

“ ‘This is Miss Helen’s room,’ said she, as she opened the door of a beautiful apartment, lighted by a large stained glass window.

“ ‘And who is Miss Helen?’ I asked, as I observed the traces of elegant occupation in the music, the books and the implements of drawing, scattered around the room.

“ ‘She is the sister of my young master; their parents died while they were yet children, and they have ever since lived here with their grandfather, at whose death, two years since, Mr. Charles Mordaunt came into possession. But I am afraid he will not long live to enjoy his estate. He inherits his mother’s delicacy along with her beauty, and I who sat beside his cradle, may yet live to watch beside his deathbed. Miss Helen manages every thing for him, she saves him all trouble, and indeed she is like an angel to every body. We always keep her picture curtained when she is not here, for it is too beautiful to be spoiled by dust and sunshine?’

“As she spoke, the old woman drew aside a heavy crimson curtain and displayed the exquisite features of her whom I had so long sought in vain. The lady of the gallery was at length made known to me, and in Helen Mordaunt I beheld the idol of my dreaming fancy.

“I need not tell you how gladly I now listened to every reminiscence of the family, how fondly I dwelt upon every thing which concerned Helen, and how eagerly I gathered even incident which could confirm me in a belief of her nobleness of character. I learned that their seclusion was the consequence of Mr. Mordaunt’s ill health, and yet there seemed to be some mystery connected with the manner in which Helen was associated in this loneliness. The story of her religious vows was utterly untrue, but still her devotion to her brother did not altogether account for her close retirement, and there seemed something which the old housekeeper did not wish to remember. But whatever was the nature of that mystery, it certainly was nothing derogatory to the noble nature of Miss Mordaunt. With her moderate fortune she had managed to diffuse comfort and happiness in many an humble cottage. She had the kind heart, the soft voice, the ready hand which adds redoubled value to every bounty, and from hillside and valley ascended the prayer of many a grateful peasant on her gentle head. I was fully disposed to credit the old lady’s assertion when she said that Miss Helen was too good and too beautiful for this world, but I did not then know by how frail a tenure she held the life which was so great a blessing to others.

“I learned that the brother and sister were on their way to Florence, and after feeding my wild passion with every excitement to be found amid the scenes which had once enjoyed her presence, I resolved to follow them into Italy. You will ask with what purpose I thus sought her presence. Alas! I had none—no hope—no design, save that of once more beholding her wonderful beauty. She had unconsciously woven a spell around me, and I sought not to be disenthralled. That face which was henceforth to be the load-star of my life rose before me whenever I looked upon the features of woman—it was with me in the vague happiness of my nightly dreams—it outshone the brightness of joyous moments, and illumined my hours of solitude and sadness.

“There is a madness of the heart which often resembles the madness of the brain. The passions often become masters over the intellectual powers, and men, while in full possession of reason, do things which nothing but the wildness of delirium could excuse. Perhaps such was my conduct—such it certainly would seem in the eyes of a wordly and unimaginative being. I abandoned my intention of returning to America, and again sought the shores of Italy—that fair land of shadows, where the passionate dreams of youth and genius are embodied in the sculptured image or portrayed on the eloquent canvass—that noble country, whose blue sky is but as a cloudless dome above a glorious panorama of natural beauty and physical perfection. To a visionary like myself, the very climate of Italy brings danger. There is something so enervating in its genial gales and sunny heavens—so fascinating in the indolent enjoyment which is common to all from the prince to the beggar—so soothing in the ‘dolce far niente’ which is universally practiced amid sounds of harmony and sights of beauty, that a stranger inevitably falls into those habits of idleness and reverie, which, however delightful at first, have a reaction not less terrible than that which attends the bliss-giving opiate of a Turkish elysium. Had I sought to subdue my wild passion, I would never have returned to Italy. Active life, with all its excitements and its duties, would, perhaps, have changed the course of my feelings, but there was a romantic mystery in my strange attachment which suited too well my peculiar temperament. It was like the revival of an old tale of sorcery—I was subjected to some secret power which took from me even the volition to be free. Alas! how often do we forge our own chains, and then complain of the fate which has hung fetters on our will.

“I wandered through Italy as one in a dream. Wherever I went I heard of those for whom I sought, for they had been before me along the whole route. I occupied apartments which they had quitted, traveled in coaches they had used, traversed picture galleries they had explored, and found their names on the records of visitants at all the places of note. Yet they seemed always to elude my view, and like the early navigators in their search for the Fortunate Isles, I was ever near, yet never within sight of the object of my desires. But my patience was at length rewarded. A difficulty in obtaining post-horses had detained me at a miserable inn on the confines of Italy, and I was preparing with an ill grace to submit to its discomforts through the night, when I was started by the low sweet tones of a well-remembered voice. I listened—the words were Italian, and addressed to the slatternly landlady whose unwashed kerchief and long gold ear-rings had attracted my attention—but the voice was not to be mistaken. It was indeed Helen Mordaunt, whom the sudden illness of her brother had detained in that miserable place, and who was thus left unaided in the midst of strangers. To make myself known to her and proffer my services was my first impulse, though the agitation of my manner was sufficient to awaken her surprise, if not her distrust. But she was too far above guile to suspect it in others; she accepted my offers with graceful and dignified gratitude, while the attentions which I was thus enabled to bestow upon her brother laid the foundation of a warm friendship in her gentle heart.

“You will think it strange, Anne, when I tell you that of those blissful days of passionate existence I retain only a vague and dreamlike recollection. I might tell you of a few striking incidents which stand out in bold relief, but the details of that period of my life seem to have become blended into one indistinct remembrance of happiness. When I look into the chambers of mine imagery I see only the exceeding beauty of her who was now my earthly idol; all the accessories of the picture, beautifully and delicately as they were depicted by the hand of love, have become blended in the indistinctness of time’s mellowing tints. Charles Mordaunt gradually recovered, and he rallied his little remaining strength in the hope of reaching Geneva, where he purposed passing the summer. With some difficulty we succeeded in reaching the desired place, and when there he seemed quite recruited, but my blissful moments were at an end. The isolation which had led to our close intimacy no longer existed—the world had come in between us—I was still the friend, but no longer the only friend of Helen Mordaunt.

“What a creature she was!—how noble in character!—how refined in feeling!—how self-forgetting!—how devoted to her brother!—how utterly free from every selfish emotion! Full of intellect, with feelings so profound, so earnest that they would have been passionate had they not been so pure, she seemed never to entertain a thought which angels might not have cherished. Yet her loftiness was not that of pride, it was rather the elevation of a heavenly nature, the nobleness of a soul which retained too bright an impress of its immortal birth to bear one stain of earth. And then she was so beautiful! Good heaven! when I remember that glorious countenance lighted up with all the splendor of such a mind and heart—when I recall the image of that stately and graceful creature whose footstep fell upon the earth like the snowflake upon wool—when I live over again those blissful hours in which her voice was the daily music of my life, and her smile its sweetest light, I wonder that I am yet a denizen of this dull earth, when its melody and its sunshine have forever vanished.

“Yet Helen shared not—knew not my feelings. Devoted to her failing brother she seemed to have no room for another affection in her heart, and I dared not disturb the pure current of her feelings by the shadow of a less holy love. She regarded me as her brother’s friend, she was grateful for my attentions to the invalid, and the smile, the kindly clasp of the hand with which she daily met me, were but emanations of her sisterly tenderness.

“ ‘Is she not a noble creature?’ said Charles Mordaunt to me, one day, as she glided from the room in search of some flowers to deck his apartment. ‘Oh if you but knew half her devotion, half her goodness! beautiful as she is—and God never made a fairer being—her spirit is more angelic than her seraph body.’

“I know not what power impelled me, but at these words the fountains of my sympathy were broken up, and I poured forth the resistless torrent of my long repressed feelings. I told him of my first meeting with his sister in the picture gallery—of my vain search for them—of my visit to their ancestral home—of my quest through Italy—and finally, in the eloquent words of passion, I told him of my wild and earnest love. I had not ventured to look toward him while I uttered my confession, but when he still remained silent, I raised my head, and observed a spot of burning red on his thin cheek, while a tear slowly gathered in his unnaturally bright eye. For a moment he hesitated, then grasping my hand he said:

“ ‘I will not disguise from you, my friend, that the time has been when my ire would have risen to fever heat had any but the scion of a noble house sought the hand of Helen Mordaunt. My family have fallen from their high estate, yet I cannot forget that the blood of princes runs in the veins of the two last descendants of a race once loftiest in my own proud land. You, as an American, can share none of this feeling, and can sympathize little in this vain pride, yet it is inborn in the child of noble lineage, and I can easier part with every other prejudice than with that which places me above the reach of fortune’s frowns. Yet this objection to your suit which would not, perhaps, be insurmountable in Helen’s mind, (who shares none of my weaknesses, not even that of family pride,) is not the only one. We are a singularly doomed family. You know that we hold the ancient faith, and my mother, who was one of the most rigid of devotees, had early destined Helen and myself to the seclusion of a cloister. The death of an older brother and sister induced her to relinquish her resolution, but, when the sudden death of my father was followed by my gradual decline of health, she remembered her broken pledge to the church, and bowed down in the dust beneath the judgment which her ill-kept faith had brought upon her. My grandfather would not consent to immure in a cloister the only heir to his fading honors, and my mother went down to her grave mourning over her broken vow, and praying her darling Helen to make expiation for the sins of all, by the devotion of her life to seclusion. Helen knew that my mother’s wish would doom her to a convent, but from this her enlightened piety revolted. She was a sincere Christian, but she saw more duties in the world than the dull round of monastic rites could embrace, and, in devoting herself to the last years of her aged grandfather, and now in giving up her whole thoughts to me, she feels that she is fulfilling the spirit, if not the letter, of my mother’s vow. But in one respect she has religiously obeyed my mother’s desire. She has kept herself unspotted from the world, never mingling in its amusements, never sharing its vanities, never yielding her heart to its affections. Perhaps the consciousness of her own feeble hold on life has made the task one of less difficulty, and has assimilated her pure and noble nature to those angelic beings whose company she may be called to join at a moment’s warning.’

“Horror-stricken at these last mysterious words, which reminded me of some vague hints uttered by the old housekeeper of Mordaunt Hall, I forgot my mingled feelings of pride and disappointment, and only thought of the doom which seemed to impend over Helen. Eagerly I demanded an explanation, and it was given in a few words. From childhood she had been the subject of an organic disease of the heart, which shows itself only in increased pulsation, and the rapidly changeful hues of her complexion, inflicting no pain, and scarcely making itself felt, yet destined to be fatal at some sudden and unexpected moment.

“ ‘She has long known her fate,’ said Charles; ‘she lives as one who may be summoned to the world of shadows without hearing a single footfall of the King of Terrors, and the very sublimity of her character is perhaps the result of such conviction of the continual presence of death. Life is to her but an Egyptian feast; an image from the grave sits ever beside her, and though she has ceased to tremble, nay, can even decorate the hideous spectre with the festal robe and wreath, she is not the less conscious of its presence. Helen will never marry; she has never known any warmer affection than that which nature implanted in her heart for me. She loves me with a depth and fervor which would be almost idolatrous, were it not so holy. The knowledge of your wild passion might cloud the pure current of her thoughts, but could never win you an adequate return. She is devoted to higher aims, and the marriage bond would ill suit one who is already the bride of Heaven.’

“I shall never forget the bright and seraphic expression of the youth’s face as he uttered these last words. Never had he so strongly resembled his beautiful sister, and had he asked the sacrifice of my life at that moment it would have been freely given. ‘Promise me,’ said he, ‘that while I live you will not proffer your suit to my sister. Let me still behold her in all her maiden purity of thought, free from even the shadow of another love. When I am gone her own noble nature must be her guide, and to that I can surely trust.’ I promised, and the painful interview closed with varied and mingled feelings on both sides.

“I cannot dwell on the painful details of Charles Mordaunt’s last illness; my heart sinks and my eyes fill with tears which seem to sear my cheeks as they fall. The injunction of the dying man was obeyed, and while I was constantly ministering to his wants, and sharing all his sister’s cares, though our hands often met in his feeble grasp, and my pulse bounded us if my veins ran lightning when I felt the cool touch of her rose-tipped fingers, though our brows were often bowed down in prayer upon the same pillow beside him, yet I breathed not the love which, pure as I knew it to be, seemed utmost sacrilegious at such a moment. Helen never spoke of herself, but the holy calmness with which she contemplated her brother’s approaching death seemed an evidence of her belief that she should not long survive him. He declined gradually but surely; suffering little pain, and retaining every faculty of his mind unimpaired, he yielded day by day to the debility which was slowly wearing his life away. To sit beside that noble brother and sister, to watch the varied beauty of their glorious countenances, to listen to the ‘converse high’ between the dying youth and the doomed maiden, such were my precious, my painful privileges. Alas! I linger upon these moments, even as the condemned criminal seeks to prolong the time which intervenes before his execution.

“Helen and myself watched beside Charles until he drew his latest breath; when the final moment came, his face shone even as the face of an angel, as his beautiful lips parted with a smile of seraphic sweetness, and the words, ‘Helen—my sister!’ died upon his failing accents. I had dreaded the last scene on Helen’s account, for I knew the danger of any sudden stroke of sorrow to one so frail, but her brother’s life had been prolonged until the whisper of death was even as the breath of the evening zephyr closing the flowers in slumber. Calm, but tearful and feeble as a child, she suffered me to lead her from the room, and giving her in charge of her faithful attendant, I busied myself in arrangements for the last sad offices to my departed friend. I will not attempt to describe my emotions. I had learned to love Charles Mordaunt like a brother, and my affection for Helen was now as far superior to the visionary passion which had first led me to seek her as are the stars of heaven above the icicle which glitters in their rays. But at such a moment I thought not of myself, my anxiety was only for her who was now dearer than life.

“The sun was just rising above the horizon when the spirit of Charles winged its flight to purer realms, and the same bright sun was glowing on the verge of evening when I again sought his silent chamber. Stretched on a couch, the rigid outline of his delicate limbs clearly defined beneath the snowy sheet which covered his remains, lay the pale and beautiful form of the youth; while kneeling by his side, with her face bent down upon his bosom, and the golden sunlight falling like a halo around her bright hair, I beheld the devoted sister. Unwilling to disturb her grief, I silently withdrew; keeping watch at the door till she should come forth. An hour—a long, long hour elapsed and still she came not. Her maid, distressed at her prolonged stay in the chamber of death, would not be denied entrance, and, with less delicacy than discretion, intruded herself upon the mourner’s privacy. The door had scarcely closed behind her, when a piercing shriek from the woman almost froze my blood. I sprang into the apartment and beheld the lifeless form of the fairest of God’s creatures. Helen Mordaunt was dead!

“ ‘They were lovely in their lives and in their death they were not divided.’ One grave holds the brother and sister, and in that grave lie buried all my fondest affections. If I look on beauty now, it is only to be reminded of her transcendant loveliness; if I listen to noble sentiments, it is only to remember her glorious intellect; if I watch the varying emotions of others, it is only to recall the perfect, the exalted purity of her heaven-devoted heart; and therefore it is, Anne, that woman, fair though she be, delights me not, for

FROM THE GERMAN.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

LITERARY WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES.

LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY.

Mrs. Sigourney, formerly Miss Huntley, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, about forty-five years ago. In her childhood she was distinguished for remarkable precocity. When three years of age she read with fluency, and at eight she wrote harmonious verses. In her twentieth year—at which early period she had charge of a popular seminary for young ladies—she gave to the public her first volume, under the title of “Moral Pieces.” From that time until now she has been known as an author. No one of her sex in America has been more constant or more successful in devotion to literature.

In 1819 she was united in marriage to Mr. Charles Sigourney, a gentleman of taste and fortune, in the city of Hartford. Her appreciation of the duties of her sex, in their highest relationships, is shown in her admirable “Letters to Young Ladies,” and “Letters to Mothers,” both of which works, happily for the women of our country, have had a wide popularity. She has in her own life well illustrated the lessons inculcated in her writings.

The winter of 1840-41 Mrs. Sigourney passed in Europe, where her reputation had preceded her. While in London a metropolitan bookseller issued an edition of her poems, which were well received by the English critics. She has published, altogether, six or seven volumes, beside her prose works, and she has now in press, we believe, notices of her foreign travel. One of the most recent critical notices of her poetry which we have seen was written for the September number of the “Democratic Review,” by the Hon. Alexander H. Everett, and we give his estimate of her powers, rather than attempt an expression of our own. “Her compositions,” says this able and eminent critic, “belong exclusively to the class of short poems, for the Pocahontas, which is the longest of them, does not, as we have said, exceed thirty or forty pages. They commonly express, with great purity, and evident sincerity, the tender affections which are so natural to the female heart, and the lofty aspirations after a higher and better state of being, which constitute the truly ennobling and elevating principle in art, as well as in nature. Love and religion are the unvarying elements of her song. This is saying, in other words, that the substance of her poetry is of the very highest order. If her powers of expression were equal to the purity and elevation of her habits of thought and feeling, she would be a female Milton, or a Christian Pindar. But though she does not inherit

she nevertheless manages the language with great ease and elegance; and often with much of the curiosa felicitas, that ‘refined felicity’ of expression, which is, after all, the principal charm in poetry. In blank verse she is very successful. The poems that she has written in this measure have not unfrequently much of the manner of Wadsworth, and may be nearly or quite as highly relished by his admirers.”

CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK.

Miss Sedgwick’s family is one of the first in America. On her father’s side, she is descended from a Major General in the army of Cromwell, who died in the great expedition against the Spanish West Indies; her father, Theodore Sedgwick the elder, was an eminent jurist and statesman; and many of her other near relations have distinguished themselves in the military and civil service of the country. She was born at Stockbridge, one of the most beautiful of the rural towns in Massachussets, where she still resides, not more applauded for her genius than loved for her many admirable social qualities, by the large circle of which she is the centre and the brightest ornament.

The first of Miss Sedgwick’s published works was the “New England Tale,” originally intended to appear—so we learn from the preface—as a religious tract. It grew beyond the limits of such a design, and was reluctantly given to the world in a volume. Fortunately its success was so great as to induce her to continue in the field of letters. The “New England Tale” was followed by “Redwood,” a novel which placed her in the front rank of the writers of her sex. It was reprinted in England, and soon after translated into the French and Italian languages, and every where alike admired. “Hope Leslie,” of which a new edition has just appeared, was her third work, and, perhaps, her best. It is one of the most beautiful fictions in our language. The next of her larger productions was “Clarence,” and the last, save the “Letters from Abroad,” was “The Linwoods.”

Beside these she has written “Le Bossu,” one of the “Tales of Glauber Spa;” “Home;” “The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man,” and several other shorter works, all of which are distinguished for elegance of style, dramatic interest, and original and finished portraitures of individual character.

We have not room for a critique upon any of Miss Sedgwick’s writings. We can simply commend them earnestly to all who are not already familiar with them. They are all of the useful classes. They are all as creditable to her heart as to her intellect. In all she exhibited cheerful views of life; and in all are the purest morality, and the most just religious sentiments.

FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.

Mrs. Osgood is the daughter of the late Mr. Joseph Locke, a merchant of Boston, in which city she was born, on the 18th of June, 1815. Her early years were passed in the beautiful village of Illingham, where her poetical talent was developed even in childhood. She had not to encounter the difficulties and discouragements which so often chill the feelings of the youthful aspirant, for her parents were themselves silent poets, possessing the “vision,” if not the “faculty divine.” To her father, a man singularly gifted both in mind and heart, and possessing, with a warm imagination, an enthusiastic love of nature, she probably owes her susceptibility to the beautiful in the outer and the inner world.

Some of her precocious efforts—verses written in her early school days—attracted the attention of Mrs. Child—one of the cleverest women, not of our country only, but of the age—who was then conducting a “Juvenile Miscellany” of much celebrity. In that magazine Miss Locke made her first appearance in print, under the signature of “Florence,” which she retained for many years.

At an exhibition of paintings, in the Athenæum Gallery at Boston, we have been told, she was first introduced to Mr. S. S. Osgood, the artist. He invited her to sit for her portrait, and before the picture was finished they were engaged. Soon after their marriage, in the autumn of 1835, they went to England, where they remained nearly four years—the husband successfully plying his art, and the wife winning fame and admiration by her literary productions. It was during her residence in London that she published her “Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England,” a volume of poems which was received with remarkable favor by the critics, and which has passed through one or two editions in this country. She also gave to the press, while in the great metropolis, “The Casket of Fate,” a miniature book, containing one of her most beautiful effusions; and since her return she has edited an elegantly embellished souvenir, entitled “The Poetry of Flowers and Flowers of Poetry,” the value of almost every page of which is enhanced by extracts from her own writings. She now resides in New York, where her husband is pursuing his profession with distinguished success and reputation.

Several of Mrs. Osgood’s finest productions have appeared in this magazine. “The Daughter of Herodius,” in our number for July, would have done honor to any of the poets of the time; and “Truth,” a simple and beautiful story in our last issue, and “The Coquette,” in our present, show that her abilities as a prose writer are of an admirable order. All her writings are distinguished for singular naturalness and simplicity, some of them for a happy playfulness, and others for a delicate tenderness of idea and expression. She invests the most common and prosaic subject with poetic grace—the dull and oftentimes wearisome commonplaces of life with interest and beauty. Her glowing mind is like a fairy alchemist, “from seeming evil still educing good.”

MRS. SEBA SMITH.

This lady is a native of Portland, where her earliest years were passed. She has long been a frequent and admired contributor to our literary periodicals, but the efforts upon which her reputation chiefly depends, are comparatively recent. The “Sinless Child,” a poem in seven cantos, was published during the present year. It is designed to illustrate the spiritual agency of Life and Nature upon the soul of childhood. The abstract theory developed, partakes largely of Wordsworth’s philosophy, but in its details, the story displays a fancifulness and glow wholly distinct from the bard of Rydal Mount. Eva is the heroine of this sweet tale:

We refrain from entering more fully into the merits of this production, because it is about to be given to the public in a more permanent form. In point of elevated moral design and delicate beauty of imagery, we regard it as one of the most happy efforts of the American muse. Within a few weeks a prose tale, intended to illustrate the time of Tecumseh, has appeared from her pen. This work has been widely commended for graphic descriptions of scenery and graceful simplicity of style.

Among the women of genius which this country has produced, there is none to whom we revert with more pride and kindly interest than the subject of this article. Rare endowments of mind, however brilliant, depend so much for their value upon the moral qualities with which they are united, that, abstractly considered, it is often difficult to decide whether they are a bane or a blessing. We may wonder at an intellectual phenomenon as we do at the extraordinary displays of nature, but it is only when a gifted mind is linked with noble sentiments and pure affections that we can cordially hail it as a glorious boon. If this is true of men, how much more does it apply to women. What mental power or grace can atone for the absence of tenderness and truth in woman? What extent of attainment in a female mind can ever compensate for the lack of those sympathetic qualities in which consists the charm of the sex?

We make these inquiries in order to fix the attention of our readers upon the truly feminine character of Mrs. Smith’s genius. This we consider its peculiar distinction. There is a delicacy of conception, a simple grace of language, and an exultation of sentiment about her writings, not only admirable in themselves, but beautifully appropriate to her character and mission as a woman. In a literary point of view, undoubtedly many of her productions bear the mark of haste. A higher finish and more careful revision would render the fruits of her pen more tasteful and permanent in their influence. But such defects are ascribable to circumstances rather than to want of perception or power. She has often written from the spur of necessity. Her nature is one which, in a more prosperous condition of things, would find its whole delight in expatiating amid the genialities of nature and society. She has resorted to the pen rather as a duty than a pleasure. We do not mean to say that in any event she would not have written. A mind of this order must at times “wreak itself upon expression.” Mrs. Smith sympathizes too readily with the beautiful, not sometimes cordially to utter hymns in its praise. Human life presses with too deep a meaning upon her heart not to leave results which crave utterance. To breathe such thoughts is as natural as for the glad bird to utter its song, or the unfettered stream to leap up to the sunshine. Still, friendship and nature, society and literature would amply fill such a mind, were it indulged with the leisure and freedom from care, which fortune bestows. For the sake of poetry and the promotion of elevated views of life, we cannot mourn the destiny which made such a woman known to fame. We doubt not that many of her sweet fancies and holy aspirations, winged by the periodical press over our broad land, have carried comfort to the desponding and bright glimpses to the perverted. We hope that not a few of her sex have hailed these manifestations in language of what is highest in their own souls. For ourselves, we are happy to recognize in this lady one who has given worthy utterance to sentiments of faith and duty, to the sense of the beautiful and the capacity of progress, which are the redeeming traits of human nature.

MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

Mrs. Embury is a native of the city of New York. She is a daughter of Dr. Manly, an eminent physician in that metropolis. Her native interest in literature was manifested by an early appreciation of the works of genius, and her poetical talents were anon recognized and admired. Under the signature of Ianthe, she gave to the public numerous effusions, which were distinguished for vigor of language and genuine depth of feeling. A volume of these youthful, but most promising efforts, was selected and published, but we believe it has long been out of print. Since her marriage, Mrs. Embury has given to the public more prose than poetry, but the former is characterized by the same romantic spirit which is the essential beauty of verse. We know of no American female writer who has composed so great a number of popular tales. Many of these fictions, we should judge, are founded upon a just observation of life, although not a few are equally remarkable for attractive invention. In point of style, they often possess the merit of graceful and pointed diction, and the lesson they inculcate is invariably of a pure moral tendency. “Constance Latimer, the Blind Girl,” is, perhaps, better known than any other of her single productions, and, as a specimen of her insight into some of the delicate shades of human passion, we would instance “Silent Love,” which appeared recently in our own pages, and an admirable story in our present number. Mrs. Embury at present resides at Brooklyn, L. I., and is not less distinguished for domestic virtues than literary ability.

BY MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

A BALLAD.

BY THE LATE THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY.

MUSIC BY S. NELSON

To write a good novel, under any circumstances, is a work at this age of the world of no slight difficulty; to write a novel of which the basis shall be American life is almost the Egyptian task of making bricks without straw. In Europe the modern novel is the fruit, the last accomplished result of the labors of many generations of literary artisans; it is the quintessence of social life matured, polished and refined, to receive the last touch of the author. It is not till systems have been long formed, till social manners have subsided into habits, till the aggregate of individuals furnishes some one of more marked character than the rest, to stand forth as the representative of the class, to be universally known and admitted as such, that the novelist’s work is light. Before this period has arrived the delineation of society cannot be fairly appreciated. He may leave his work to after ages as the most faithful of histories, truer to the spirit of the age, more suggestive of the humanity of the time than the record of professed historians, but by his own generation he will be regarded as an innovator, as one dealing with common subjects, base matter, that finds no sympathy in the taste of readers, (a faculty built upon the past, on old precedents of the elegance of our fathers,) that, while it is familiar as the aspect of the pavements and the air of the streets, seems also far fetched and remote, because it is narrated for the first time. An unpardonable sin is that of originality until it has become fashionable.

The successful writers of America have been thus far imitators. They have not been unconscious of the great advantage to minds wanting the vigor and courage to open new paths in literature, of an appeal to recognized modes of thought, to familiar forms of writing, to the very established terms of expression. Our past authors have been content to follow those of England humbly, submissively. We have followed her fashions to the very trick of a shoe tie and the fold of a cravat. We have borrowed her pulpit dress to preach in; her professor’s gown to lecture; her theatrical wardrobe to play the harlequin. Her parliament robes, her trappings of royalty, we have left untouched. The American statute book is the great gift of America to the world. But in all that relates to literature, properly he called, we have been a servile herd. We have had (in the popular phrase, adopted, too, by ourselves) an American Addison, an American Scott, an American Coleridge, (very American said Coleridge when he heard of it,) an American Carlyle, and lastly an American Boz. When in the fullness of time we might look for a decay of this feeble system, when the resources of the country have been developed, and learning and leisure would inspire a demand for a more genuine product, a new fact in our history arises which bids fair, unless timely checked, to throw us back again on our past literary infirmity. We allude to the improvements in the art of printing, and the extraordinary facility given, in the absence of an international copyright law, to the exclusive preference of a foreign literature.

What one man can create a new school of literature? What one arm is so potent to turn back this tide of foreign aggression? To the humblest efforts, conceived in a noble spirit, we say, hopeless as seems the encouragement, thrice welcome. In the end, the right will prevail. Though no one can at once build a bridge over the impassable stream which separates us from what we covet, yet the bearer of a single pebble may help to build the foundation of the future structure.

We have spoken of a twofold difficulty in the efforts of any American author, the newness of his subject and his legally oppressed condition, (for the absence of a just law may be us oppressive as the positive enactment of a bad one.) The first of these is the most pressing, the other onerous enough but easy of remedy.

Mr. Mathews, the author of the work we have placed at the head of this article, for review, has made efforts to overcome both. He has manfully undertaken the championship of the copyright law, in which the gratitude of the authors of both hemispheres must bear him onward. He has also made several practical attempts at least to fix his attention on original subjects of purely an American interest. With one of them we are at present concerned. The novel of Puffer Hopkins is supported on American ground, by American incidents and American characters. As he himself has elsewhere said, in answer to the outcry for a foreign literature, “he has been content to describe the life which his simple-witted countrymen are content to lead.”

How has he succeeded? Has he described fresh, original scenes, caught from the living manners of the day? Has he told a story well, worth telling at all? To this we may broadly answer, he has. Not forgetting many faults, to which we shall presently allude, we may state that he has sustained the two unexceptionable claims of vigor and originality. If he has not altogether escaped the dangers of each, we may freely forgive the errors that spring from so noble an adherence.

Puffer Hopkins is a twofold tale of life. Intermingled with the public advancement of a politician, crossing the path ever and anon, is a private career of wrong and suffering, upon which the domestic interest of the story is suspended. Its characters are those of a corrupt miser, who has fed his soul on injuries and revenges till his cankered villany lays him at the foot of the gallows; a repentant old man, who has been his accomplice, whose last sorrow is depicted with a power that bids us fear while we pity; a wearied, humble artisan, who drops down at noonday, the sun yet shining on the fair fields of the world, which ripen no harvest for him; a simple-minded country girl, bold in her timid confidence, and anticipating the love and prudence of womanhood; a motley throng of politicians and their rout of retainers; such materials as courts of justice afford; and the humorous phases of city life as it grows rankly among the masses of the population.

There is very little satisfaction in giving the mere plot of a story disconnected with the vivid words and artful incidents of the narrator. We shall prefer a different course, and one we believe more satisfactory to the reader.

From the more serious portions of the work we might, did our limits permit, present some powerfully written and affecting passages. In reading it we had marked to extract the suicide of Leycraft, the victim who is haunted by the vision of a child he had once abandoned in the wood; and a scene in the chamber where Fob, the poor tailor—from first to last a genuine creation of the author—is passing his last hours in company with the young girl to whom we have alluded. But the staple of the book it its humorous descriptions. These are of the most varied character, built up in all manner of every-day conceit, arrogance and impudence (for which Mr. Mathews has a special eye and a ready pen) and the petty weaknesses of his subjects. In all there is no malice, no ill will. He has made no illegitimate use of the privileges of literature. His work will not be least popular among the very classes from whom he has drawn his material. This is saying much, not only for the author’s honesty of intention, but also for his ability. Without the same instinct of genius he could not have painted freely political life, courts, judges and the multifarious characters that throng his pages, and not injured a single individual. No interior humorous writer could so rise to portray the manners of a class.

In some of the court scenes the author’s cleverness in comic satire is well exhibited—especially in the trial of Mr. Fyler Close, on a charge of arson. The next chapter opens into the jury-room, a scene we believe perfectly original, never having seen it attempted before. We give this chapter entire, at the risk of depriving the reader of any favorable impression he might have gained from numerous passages we had marked for insertion.

THE JURY-ROOM.

We could have wished to present at full length the powerful chin of Round Rimmers of East Bowery, “a fraternity of gentlemen, who in round crape bound hats, metal mounted blue coats, tallow-smoothed locks, and, with the terrible device of a pyramid, wrought of brassy buttons, upon their waistcoats, carry terror and dismay wherever they move,” and of their observances at Vauxhall, which are faithfully and historically described. A word, too, we would have said for Mr. Halsey Fishblatt and his characteristic declamation upon newspapers. The following contains the gist of the long article in the Foreign Quarterly. “This,” taking up a newspaper, said Mr. Fishblatt, “is edited by a man in Ann-street, who does his thinking on the other side of the Atlantic. Never mind that—give us more. This people can never be free, Mr. Hopkins, thoroughly and entirely free, till every man in the country edits a newspaper of his own; till every man issues a sheet every morning, in which he’s at liberty to speak of every other man as he chooses. The more we know each other, the better we’ll like each other—so let us have all the private affairs, the business transactions and domestic doings of every man in the United States, set forth in a small paper, in a good pungent style, and then we may begin to talk of the advancement of the human race.” And so we might go on dipping into the work at random, secure on almost every page of meeting something quotable. Though Mr. Mathews never quotes as a novelist, by the way never should, he will stand Dr. Paris’ test remarkably well, that a book is good for nothing unless it can be quoted from.

We have attributed to Mr. Mathews some genius for the work he has undertaken, and have given our proof of the position in the freedom from personalities in a work touching closely upon every-day life and familiar character. Another test is not less deceptive. Like every genuine humorous writer from the hand that penned Falslaff, from Hogarth to Scott, Boz and Harry Lorrequer, our author’s humor overflows in tears. Side by side with Comedy is Tragedy; twin sisters, the two, imaging the dualism of life, its sorrow its laughter. Let no line of separation be drawn between them, let them not be divided as if one were the property of angels, the other of demons. They are both human, both portions of our experience. Dear to us are our tears as our smiles. It is by the spontaneous exhibition of such associations, so deeply interwoven with life, that nature betrays herself on the printed page. In the echo of our own thoughts, in the image of our sensations lies the power of delineation—he to whom it has been conveyed from a book will hold that book forever after sacred.

The author, in his Preface, deprecates a common mode of censure applied to all new works of fiction—a sweeping charge of exaggeration. This, we would remind Mr. Mathews, a writer is liable to in proportion as his work is original. The very newness of an author’s ideas presents a source of difficulty. Another censure may be offered, and in admitting its partial justice, we would cover all that we had to say of the defects of the work. It is that the style is not seldom betrayed into a mock incongruity and burlesque. This fault, too, may be forgiven as the rankness of the weeds sometimes betrays the fertility of the soil. Burlesque is the extreme tendency of a humorous writer, as bombast is of an eloquent or imaginative one. The animal spirits of the humorist outrun the tame currents of ordinary minds. The very eagerness of genius betrays it into absurdity, for the efforts of humor, unlike those of fancy, have not the same latitude of indulgence; they must be ever tied down to reality. How many judgments are to sit upon the same incident; to the mind of one it is not only possible but familiar, to the mind of another it awakens no association, appeals to no knowledge, is aided by no kindly effort of the imagination, and sounds as idle us the mere incoherencies of a madman. Before a writer has made for himself a reputation the world expects him to write down to their level; when he has attained the summit the world is willing to creep up to him.

We might take a work of strong humor, original in its character, and give it to the public to receive such opinions as the world would have ready for it, and we might predict this result—there would not be a single passage which would not be rejected by some one—there would not be a single passage that would not have its defender.

Of the standing and powers of the writer we offer no estimate. We recommend his work to the reader as the work has recommended itself to us. He is young, the world is yet before him, the large field of his city and country, and there is much to be done. Prudently and with all faith, too, should he persevere, trusting boldly where confidence is needed and subduing difficulties where difficulties occur. May our next meeting with the author be as agreeable as this.

This is the most interesting work published in the United States during the last quarter. Mr. Norman—an intelligent bookseller of New Orleans—passed several months among the Antiquities of Central America; and he has given us his impressions of what he saw in a clear and satisfactory manner. The volume, is beautifully printed, and illustrated with numerous spirited engravings from drawings by the author. We regret our inability to give in this number a more extended notice of it.

The Past, the Present, and the Future.—If the reader will glance at the volumes of this magazine for the last ten years he will perceive a steady and rapid improvement in its typography, embellishments and literary character. In 1842 it contained a succession of articles by the most eminent writers of this country, by which it was made superior not only to itself in earlier periods, but to every cotemporary monthly in the United States. With this number we commence another volume and another year, and we doubt not that it surpasses in all respects every former issue of this or any other periodical. In addition to new articles by Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow, and others, it embraces the first contributions to our pages by Washington Allston, T. C. Grattan, N. P. Willis, and R. T. Conrad, who, with the above mentioned authors, will continue to write for us. Our succeeding numbers will also contain articles by J. K. Paulding, Richard H. Dana, Fitz Greene Halleck, C. F. Hoffman, Henry W. Herbert, and several others whose names are familiar to our readers. The splendid embellishments of our present number will likewise be followed by others not less attractive. In all ways, indeed, it will be our aim—and who, knowing our past history, will doubt that we shall be successful—to keep Graham’s Magazine where it now is—far in advance of all the other literary periodicals of the country.

New Works.—Notices of “The Quod Correspondence,” a very clever novel which appeared originally in the Knickerbocker Magazine; “The Condition and Fate of England,” by Mr. C. E. Lester, Consul of the United States at Genoa; Merle D’Aubigne’s admirable “History of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland,” and of several other works received since our last, are unavoidably omitted this month. They will appear in our next number.

Errata.—We perceive that several errors passed uncorrected in Professor Longfellow’s admirable poem, “The Belfry of Bruges.” In the second line of the sixth stanza “flowers of gold” should be “fleece of gold;” and the beginning of the third line of the last stanza should be read “hours had passed away like minutes.”

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Some photographs have been enhanced to be more legible.

A Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience.

[The end of Graham's Magazine Vol. XXII No. 1 January 1843 edited by George Rex Graham]