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thing that loves darkness rather than light, but in vain; for Guido's anxious eye looked at last on my face as the light fell on it, when, uttering a fierce shriek of dismay and despair, he dropped me from his arms, and, starting from the ground like one made instantly mad by some sudden stroke upon the brain, or hurt of the heart, he rushed, staggering and strengthless, but wildly, to the cliff. I clung to him heavily, to prevent him from leaping into the sea again; but I did not dare to speak to him, save by feeble, inarticulate cries. He glanced at me a look which shrunk me to the soul, and shaking me like a serpent to the earth, with a terrible cry, flung himself from the cliff into the sea. I could see him beating his way back to the wreck, as the lightning momentarily flashed from the firmament; and, at length, I saw him grasp at some white burden on the back of the waters, and turn for the shore again: but on the sudden his right arm ceased to strike out; and though I kept my breaking eyes fixed through the dense darkness on the same spot, when the next lightning flashed I saw that he had sunk; when, crying to God in my despair, I fell on my face, and was insensible to all about me.

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Within these peaceful and holy walls years have since passed over me. But the thought of that dreadful hour, and of the still more dreadful guilt which it brought upon my soul, lives ever present in my mind. The images of Guido and his murdered bride rise between me and all rest,-between me even and devotion. My wealth has been given to the pious uses of our convent, and my penance and my prayers are proportioned to my great guiltiness. But the calming and restoring influence even of religion cannot wholly lull the troubled agony of a memory like mine. Still, in the trust of

God and the holy saints, I look with joyful hope to the term of all human suffering.-Oh! if the intensity of any earthly suffering can extenuate and atone for earthly guilt-then even I may dare to look with confidence towards Heaven.

SUNDAY; OR MY OPPOSITE NEIGHBOURS.

The seventh day this; the jubilee of man.
London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer.
Then thy spruce citizen-wash'd artizan,
And smug apprentice, gulp their weekly air.
Thy coach of Hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair,
And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl,
To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair,
Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.
CHILDE HAROLD, Canto I.

WHAT a variety of sensations does this one day create! How many eyes are turned towards the east, with an anxious enquiry as to the prognostics which it may exhibit, -how many hearts flutter as to the events the day may produce, and how many would willingly prolong its hours through the remainder of the week, insensible that it derives more than half the pleasures for which they love it, from the very circumstance of its recurring but once in the seven days.

There is scarcely a person, excepting in the monotony of haut-ton, where every day is passionless and pleasureless, because it is the same,-upon whose mind this day has not some species of influence. The merchant,-who finds his repose in calculating the profits of the week's speculation;-the tradesman,-who quits for twentyfour hours the little parlour, commanding the rich pros

pect of his till, for the drawing-room ten feet square, whose shutters are never open but when those of the shop are closed, and whose chilling comforts are, through the thriftiness of his spouse, only on that day permitted to be warmed;-the clerk,-who shovels about sovereigns which are not his own for six days in the week, with no "star of hope," but the pleasure of spending the one which is his own, on the seventh, and whose dry pursuits are only relieved by dreams of tilburies, and hackneys, and Rotten-row; or floating ideas of sailing-boats, and Chelsea-reach ;-the lover,-whose only chance of catching a glimpse of "the blue eye he loves to look upon," or of gazing upon the black eye which may one day be his own,-is at the parish-church, where he contrives to utter the "We beseech thee to hear us," so loud as to penetrate to the heart of his mistress, who, with a little egotistical variation of the text,-not at all uncommon in the fair part of the creation,-contrives to appropriate the sentence to herself; — the debtor,-who looks upon it as a day of freedom from the duns of creditors and the dread of bailiffs;-all have their separate hopes and expectations, as they awake from the sleep which has relieved them from their Saturday night's fatigues or fears, and are greeted by the unattended-to bell for morning prayers, that ushers in the day of their anticipated pleasures. Nor has Sunday a less extended influence upon that sex who are the "blight or bloom of every man's happiness "—from the fat Mistress Kidneykin, in the "taty line," who goes to church with the religious hope of seeing envy sparkle in the saucer-eyes of the crockery-dealing Mistress Grundy; -to the tender Miss-in-her-teens, who, just beginning to feel herself a woman, finds that she has a heart, only when she is on the point of losing it; and who ventures to cast one glance at her enamorato over the side

of the pew, as she utters the words, "That it may please thee to give us a heart to love," while her mamma is buried in a profound nap, under the shade of her black beaver in the winter, or beneath the lighter covering of her Leghorn cabriolet in the summer. Ah, those poke bonnets!-so delightful, when they prevent the surveillance of mammas,-so detestable when they impede the operation of "love's artillery" on the daughters. For my own part, I have often wished that the young ladies would adopt the modern improvement in cabriolets, and have windows in the sides of these enormous pokes, with which they preserve their complexions, though they lose their hearts, as I am convinced such an alteration would tend greatly to the convenience both of themselves and others a greater improvement would be, the abolition of them altogether from those faces which are worth looking at. For many a sly glance might be given and received unbetrayed, were it not for the enormous evolution which the slightest movement of the head within produces upon the external circumference of these prodigious projectile roofs,-an evolution which can never be performed without attracting the attention of mamma, whose poke immediately turns in the same direction, and whose rubicund visage becoming inflamed with anger, as she intercepts the ardent glance that was intended for her daughter, appears to the affrighted beau, from the depth of her black beaver, tied close under the chin, like a red-hot ball, glowing at the bottom of a four-and-twenty pounder. I beg pardon for this digression upon poke bonnets,-my readers must be content, as I have often been compelled to be, to put up with them, though they may be in the way.

Let us return, however, to the contemplation of that day in which the religious man settles his account with Heaven, and the worldly man balances his accounts in

his ledger,-in which the clergyman prides himself upon his new sermon, and his wife upon her new pelisse,which in other countries is characterized by masses, homilies, operas, quadrilles, and fandangoes, and in this by prayer and pleasure-religion and rioting-going out without fear of molestation, and being "at home to single knocks," without the dread of their being the precursor of a dun, or of a bailiff, and in which every person out of the pale of polite life,—for it is truly unpolite to make any difference on a Sunday,-finds some variation from the monotony of existence, and makes up for the fag of the last six days by laying up recollections to amuse the tedium of the six ensuing. To this contemplation I have been particularly led by the observations which, as an idle man, I have been tempted to make upon my opposite neighbours. But before I proceed to a description of their movements upon this important day, I would not wish it to be thought that I am insensible how many there are upon whom it exerts its proper influence. For there are numerous individuals, and numerous families, who rise with a full sense of its importance upon those points for which we are taught that it was set apart,-and who, in the calm pursuit of religious enjoyment,—in the quiet preparation for their morning worship,—and in the unaffected solemnity of that evening devotion, in which the infant kneels with the mother, and the servant mingles his aspirations to Heaven with those of the master,-find a truer pleasure, as they quietly repose their head upon their pillow, at the close of a day spent in this holy communion of spirit and of sentiment, than those who have sought their enjoyment in an idle excursion-their mirth amidst the riot and confusion of a tavern, or their consequence in a well-appointed equipage.

It is truly said, that, in a metropolis, a man may exist

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