approached him, all ease and sweetness, ready to fall upon his bosom, or hang about his neck.

The purpose of reproach with which he came melted away before the power of her presence-before the moral power of the beautiful feeling with which she was animated.

What moves you, Robert?' she asked, placing one hand on his shoulder, as with the other she caught the breast of his coat.

He did not immediately reply; but at length he said solemnly, as he gently disengaged himself from her hold, You know who was carried from your boudoir just now.'

Yes-yes,' she stammered, I recollected him afterwards,'and her eye sunk under the reproachful gaze of her brother,'poor Hubert Walton.'

Isabella, Isabella!' exclaimed Mr. Hervey, sinking into a seat, 'well may the poet describe your sex as

"Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,

And best distinguished as black, brown, or fair."

Love traces impressions on your hearts with some such pencil as paints the butterfly's wing: upon ours he works with a graver, and breaks the mould before the image that he has marked there can be marred.'

Isabella burst into a laugh at this estimate of the relative impressibility of the sexes. All her brother's sternness returned, and anger flashed in his eyes as he exclaimed,

Forbear, unfeeling girl, forbear! Walton is dying-the victim of your caprice. Do not let your laugh be his death-knell.' I cannot believe you,' she rejoined, subduing her levity, yet still affecting more than she felt, for

"Killing eyes, and wounded hearts,

And all the artillery of darts
Are long ago exploded fancies,

And laughed at even in romances.'

Then let me tell Miss Hervey,' said her brother, 'that you are likely to have, not a romance, but a tragedy, in this very house. Dr. Bassett has just left the unfortunate Mr. Walton, and gives little hope of him; he says he never beheld a being so reduced, except by famine.'

But why attribute all this to me?' said Isabella.

Seek no shelter in subterfuge,' rapidly replied her brother; I know all, from his mother-from his sister-from himself. I have gained my information piecemeal, but it is perfect and conclusive. If Walton dies, you are a murderess. Yes,' he continued, eager to work on her awakened feelings, he saw you; that you could not help. You caught his fancy-captivated his heart; neither, perhaps, was that your fault. But, when aware of your power, to go and hold the intoxicating cup of hope to his lip; to soothe him with the voice of love; to gladden him with its

smile; to let all this be with a predetermined resolution to dash and darken all with despair, was fiendish-devilish !'

A silence followed this burst of indignation, which Mr. Hervey first broke.

'How,' he added, will you repair this wanton mischief? how atone for this vile cruelty? for the sleepless nights of lacerated feelings the revulsion of disappointed hopes?' "What can I do?' she exclaimed.

such results as these.'

Indeed I had no idea of

Tush! ejaculated Mr. Hervey, do not tell me this: the incendiary who fires one house, and brings down a whole neighbourhood, has just as valid a plea. No, Isabella, what I ask of you is to receive this as a lesson;-to reflect and reform; and if Walton should recover, and you can do so without violence to your own feelings, reward his love. I know he is a poor man; but all the mines upon the globe could not purchase you such a heart.'

eyes

The tears rushed into Mr. Hervey's eyes, in spite of his struggle to master his feelings: some compunctious pangs, but yet more sympathy with her brother, called answering tears into the of Isabella. From that hour she joined her brother in nursing Walton; she watched with him beside the bed of delirium; heard the wild outpourings of thoughts, visions, feelings which had been too long pent under the condensing force of silence, secrecy, and unparticipated anguish, till, bursting forth like electric fire, they shattered the brain and bosom they had already ravaged, almost to dissolution.

Isabella closed her house, and had it given out that she was gone to a remote part of the country, thus to keep off the insects of idle curiosity. She invited Walton's mother and his sister to her house; and all that tenderness and care could suggest was essayed.

The patient's youth, the doctor's skill, and last, not least, the co-operation with him of intelligent nurses, slowly effected a triumph. Health came like a timid vestal and kissed the fever from Walton's brow; but strength, shaken as he had been, was slow of returning. When conscious light again came forth from his languid lid, his mother was the first to meet it. Never had the endearing name been sweeter to her ear, when first lisped forth to her by her first-born, than now when it reassured her she had still a son. In low murmurs, at intervals, he talked with his mother, till, leaning forward, he fell asleep upon her bosom. Dr. Bassett appeared the moment after. "Tis well!' he exclaimed softly; if he can sleep in that position, 'tis a sign he is getting strength.'

Isabella's ministry now ceased at the sick bed; but she still played the gentle and attentive friend to the afflicted relatives. This was the first lesson upon moral duties she had ever received,

and a mind like hers needed but have a new region open to her to explore it-the walls of circumvallation, which she could not overleap, removed, to walk beyond them. Mrs. Walton was a high-minded woman, and soon impressed Isabella with respect and affection; who in return won upon the anxious mother's heart, making her half forgive the ruin she had caused.

Mr. Hervey,' said Mrs. Walton one day, as leaning on his arm she walked round the garden, I have somewhere seen it said that it is a dangerous thing to employ a steam-engine to turn a lathe at a toy-shop. Some such dangerous thing has been, and is being done, as regards female talent. Waste power will employ itself—if not for the purposes of good, for those of evil.'

We see that every day,' said Mr. Hervey, in the misapplied energy and ingenuity of untaught, half-taught, and mistaught

men.'

'Do not confine your views exclusively to men,' resumed Mrs. Walton.

"To women?' he asked with a smile.

Neither so. Direct them to human nature, of which one sex is as important a part as the other. Human nature can only be understood by a perfect knowledge of both human nature can only be served by an equal advancement of both. Much has to be put from our literature, institutions, laws, customs, and manners, to redeem man from the degrading marks of his own ignorant pride, as well as to raise woman from her miserable vassalage.'

Åll this is new to me,' said Mr. Hervey, but I listen to you with pleasure.'

To aspire is the privilege of humanity,' resumed Mrs. Walton, warming with her subject. The erect attitude, the perceptive powers, the reflective faculties, all attest how much man has the privilege of looking far beyond, far above himself; but the first aspiration of this sentiment (capable of illimitable expansion) was ignorant self-esteem-a vulgar desire of superiority, relatively, not really; finding it difficult to raise himself, he thought of the expedient of sinking woman, and so holding a comparative elevation at a safe and easy rate. Pitiful was the idea, and wretched have been the consequences! The same notion is present to the religious fanatic who fancies that he raises the Creator by the vilest abasement of himself. How little he knows of elevation who thinks that any crouching wretch can, even by contrast, increase another's altitude!-to know that there is a cowering, grovelling reptile is in itself lowering.'

Mr. Hervey smiled; as people are wont to do at those who feel strongly, and express themselves so. He felt acutely the miseries which women bring on men, but never paused to look into the causes for these inflictions; if he thought of remedy or relief, it was some such reproof as he had given his sister, fol

lowed by profound reflections and pathetic lamentations over the weakness and vileness of that unhappy compound-woman. It was, in fact, the dame-school business done in the drawing-room; the lecture and the lollipop, and leave to do mischief again.

'I suppose,' said Mr. Hervey, taking the Paradise Lost' out of his pocket, in future editions of Milton we must strike out this line of the book, in which he speaks of the condition of the

sexes:

"He for God only, she for God in him."

We must expunge from the character of Eve the flattering humility which makes her say,

"God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more

Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise."'

'No, no;' said Mrs. Walton, touch not a line of John Milton's. I love him as a poet and a republican; but be there notes appended to the text, to enlighten the purblind as to the defects of his moral philosophy. Let every being go for himself, or herself, as much as possible to the fountain-head of knowledge—seek, and accept no mediums, if they can help it; the further from the fount the less likely is the stream to be pure; and, I assure you,' she added with a playfulness that reminded Mr. Hervey of her youth, I assure you, whatever you and Milton may think and say, I do not deem you the most transparent and speckless medium through which we may look "through nature up to

nature's God."

The first day that Walton left his room, he was placed upon a sofa, and his mother had fondly contrived, in case he fell asleep, to fasten a curtain to a picture which hung over it. Gradually every prop to which he had been accustomed, or from which he could draw support, had been gathered round him; and he was become resigned, serene, and grateful. Emma, his sister, had taken her seat near the sofa to read to him: when she observed a reverie, into which he had fallen, melt into slumber, she gently drew the curtain and left him.

One hour of deep refreshing sleep was on him, and he woke with that sense of strength which sometimes visits the convalescent. He opened his eyes widely and suddenly; a figure as suddenly glided behind the curtain; he felt that he was awake, yet the figure of his dream had just flitted by his couch; he tore aside the curtains-Isabella stood before him!

The colours of the May-time morning sky are less beautiful than were those which emotion threw upon his face. His luminous and dilating eye, his extending and collapsing nostril, alarmed her; she advanced to him-she put her hand into his. Hubert! I come to ask your forgiveness: to thank you for the love I have lost-lost deservedly.'

• Lost!' he repeated. When I am lost to all, and all is lost

to me, then-only then- He could utter no more; he would have sunk at her feet, but she forbade the effort, by folding him to her bosom.

Walton's silence about Isabella had deceived even his mother. It was thought that he had conquered his passion, and assurances to this effect perhaps piqued Isabella; yet a sweet, a holy feeling had led her to his couch, and, before she quitted it, she pledged to him the tenderest vows. The probation she had suffered had not restored all her early acute sensibility, but it had opened her mind, and made it seize on true principles, and, what cannot be said of every coquette, she did not carry that character into conjugal life.

M. L. G.

The sun is above you;

How the leaves glisten!

How the flowers glow with his cheering ray!—
Love is the sun that lights my way.

With woodland voices the depths are stirred-
You are my breath-my shade-my bird.

You ask if I love you;—

Hearken!

When night comes above you,

And shadows darken,

Gaze on the heavens in their starry light

You are the heaven to bless my sight.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

S. Y.

A Picture of the new Town of Herne Bay. By a Lady. London: Macrone.

THIS little volume is from no common guide-book manufactory. Accurate and ample in its details, it combines with them indications of taste and acquirement such as are usually appropriated to works of a higher literary grade. Every species of information required by the traveller,