acting as I ought to do. This same Mr. Vanbeest Brown is by no means so very ardent a lover as to hurry the object of his attachment into such inconsiderate steps. He gives one full time to reflect, that must be admitted. However, I will not blame him unheard, nor permit myself to doubt the manly firmness of a character which I have so often extolled to you. Were he capable of doubt, of fear, of the shadow of change, I should have little to regret.

to

'And why, you will say, when I expect such steady unalterable constancy from a lover, why should I be anxious about what Hazlewood does, or whom he offers his attentions? I ask myself the question a hundred times a-day, and it only receives the very silly answer, that one does not like to be neglected, though one would not encourage a serious infidelity.

I write all these trifles, because you say that they amuse you, and yet I wonder how they should. I remember in our stolen voyages to the world of fiction, you always admired the grand and the romantic-tales of knights, dwarfs, giants, and distressed damsels, soothsayers, visions, beckoning ghosts, and bloody hands, whereas I was partial to the involved intrigues of private life, or at farthest, to so much only of the supernatural as is conferred by the agency of an eastern genie or a beneficient fairy. You would have loved to shape your course of life over the broad ocean with its dead calms and howling tempests, its tornadoes, and its billows mountain high, whereas I should like to trim my little pinnace to a brisk breeze in some inland lake or tranquil bay where there was just difficulty of navigation sufficient to give interest and to require

skill, without any great degree of danger. So that, upon the whole, Matilda, I think you should have had my father, with his pride of arms, and of ancestry, his chivalrous point of honour, his high talents, and his abstruse and mystic studies; you should have had Lucy Bertram too for your friend, whose fathers, with names which alike defy memory and orthography, ruled over this romantic country, and whose birth took place, as I have been indistinctly informed, under circumstances of deep and peculiar interest-You should have had, too, our residence surrounded by mountains, and our lonely walks to haunted ruins―And I should have had, in exchange, the lawns, and shrubs, and greenhouses, and conservatories of Pine park, with your good quiet indulgent aunt, her chapel in the morning, her nap after dinner, her hand at whist in the evening, not forgetting her fat coach-horses and fatter coach-men. Take notice, however, that Brown is not included in this proposed barter of mine— his good humour, lively conversation, and open gallantry, suit my plan of life, as well as his athletic form, handsome features, and high spirit, would accord with a character of chivalry. So as we cannot change altogether out and out, I think we must e'en abide as we are.'

CHAPTER XXXI.

I renounce your defiance; if you parly so roughly I'll barricado my gates against you-Do you see yon bay window? Storm-I care not, serving the good Duke of Norfolk.

Merry Devil of Edmonton.

JULIA MANNERING to MATILDA MARCHMONT. 'I RISE from a sick bed, my dearest Matilda, to communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and the extraordinary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! And to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to bend over the brink of a precipice holding by the frail tenure of a half rooted shrub, or to admire the same precipice in the landscape of Salvator. But I will not anticipate my narrative.

The first part of my story is frightful enough, though it had nothing to interest my feelings. You must know that this country is particularly favourable to the commerce of a set of desperate men from the Isle of Man, which is nearly opposite. These smugglers are numerous, resolute, and formidable, and have at different times become the dread of the neighbourhood, when any one has interfered with their contraband trade. The local magistrates, from timidity or worse motives, are become shy of acting against them, and impunity has rendered them equally daring and desperate. With all this, my father, a stranger in the land, and in

vested with no official authority, had, one would think, nothing to do. But it must be owned, that, as he himself expresses it, he was born when Mars was lord of his ascendant, and that strife and bloodshed find him out in circumstances and situations the most retired and pacific.

'About eleven o'clock on last Tuesday morning, while Hazlewood and my father were proposing to walk to a little lake about three miles distant, for the purpose of shooting wild-ducks, and while Lucy and I were busied with arranging our plan of work and study for the day, we were alarmed by the sound of horses' feet, advancing very fast up the avenue. The ground was hardened by a severe frost, which made the clatter of the hoofs sound yet louder and sharper. In a moment two or three men, armed, mounted, and each leading a spare horse loaded with packages, appeared on the lawn, and without keeping upon the road, which makes a small sweep, pushed right across the lawn for the door of the house. Their appearance was in the utmost degree hurried and disordered, and they frequently looked back like men who apprehended a close and deadly pursuit. My father and Hazlewood hurried to the front door to demand who they were, and what was their business. They were revenue officers, they stated, who had seized these horses, loaded with contraband articles, at a place about three miles off. But the smugglers had been reinforced, and were now pursuing them with the avowed purpose of recovering the goods, and putting to death the officers who had presumed to do their duty. The men said, that their horses being loaded, and the pursuers gaining ground upon them, they had filed

to Woodbourne, conceiving, that as my father had served the king, he would not refuse to protect the servants of government, when threatened to be murdered, in the discharge of their duty.

'My father, to whom, in his enthusiastic feelings of military loyalty, even a dog would be of importance if he came in the king's name, gave prompt orders for securing the goods in the hall, arming the servants, and defending the house in case it should be necessary. Hazlewood seconded him with great spirit, and even the strange animal they call Sampson stalked out of his den, and seized upon a fowling-piece, which my father had laid aside, to take what they call a rifle gun, with which they shoot tygers, &c. in the east. The piece went off in the awkward hands of the poor parson, and very nearly shot one of the excisemen. At this unexpected and voluntary explosion of his weapon, the Dominie (such is his nickname) exclaimed 'prodigious!' which is his usual ejaculation when astonished. But no power could force the man to part with his discharged piece, so they were content to let him retain it with the precaution of trusting him with no ammunition. This, excepting the alarm occasioned by the report, escaped my notice at the time, you may easily believe; but in talking over the scene afterwards, Hazlewood made us very merry with the Dominie's ignorant but zealous valour.

"When my father had got every thing into proper order for defence, and his people stationed at the windows with their fire-arms, he wanted to order us out of danger-into the cellar, I believe; but we could not be prevailed upon to stir. Though terrified to death, I have so much of his own spirit,