ment I had not been quite so warm in my protestations.

"You are right, Eulalie," I said; « my heart is, indeed, devoted to a lady, so sweet, so kind, so beautiful -I wish you knew her, Eulalie."

“Is she tall or little ?"

"Just about your own height, I should think-but that detestable robe you wear hinders me from seeing whether you resemble her in any thing else."

"Hush-the Lady Alice."

And the same tall majestic lady I had seen in London walked steadily into the room. Though she had evidently worked herself up for some great exertion, she started when our eyes met.

"Edward," she said, "I have steeled my heart to the performance of a strange duty. Ere many months are past, the door that divides me from the world will have closed on me for ever. I have but one pang in leaving it-If Eulalie had but a home!"

"Madam," I said, "if you will intrust her to my care."

"But this is weakness,” continued the Lady Alice, without having heard my words. "I suffered so fearfully in my youth from a concealment of my real feelings; and one other whom I need not name to you, was an equal victim, that I resolve that Eulalie's sufferings, if sufferings she is doomed to endure, shall not arise from the same cause. I have spoken of you to her so often; I have praised your character so highly; your friend, Sir Wilfred Seymour, has joined me in these praises so heartily, that you have but to speak to make Eulalie happyand me contented."

I remained silent-thoughts of my engagement to Lady Adeline kept crowding into my heart.

"You speak not! You reject her! Eulalie, my poor Eulalie!"

"Nay, stop, madam," for Eulalie was resting her head on the shoulder of Lady Alice, and I could not bear to see her distress. "I shall soon be able to offer her the protection of a home, where one, whom I feel certain you would love, if you only knew her, will be a sister to her, and I-a brother".

"And who is that one-I"-
"Mother, dear mother, ask him

no questions," said Eulalie; "I am rejected, but I rejoice, I assure you, I rejoice in the rejection. Let me but speak to him a few minutes in private."

"Speak on," said the Lady Alice, "I will not listen."

Eulalie then tript across the room, and putting her arm into mine, led me to a recess in the apartment, and said to me in a whisper

"You have done well to break the Lady Alice's heart, by rejecting her daughter's hand. But remember, by this, that you have ruined Sir Wilfred's hopes, and opened fresh wounds in the breast of your father."

"Did they know of the Lady Alice's intention ?"

"Yes; and approved of it. I have even been at Ellersby and seen your father."

"Eulalie! Eulalie! will nothing move you to compassion. I have told you I love another."

"But that other does not love you better than I do. I know the Lady Adeline O'Carrol,"

"You amaze me, Eulalie. She is a Protestant, and, so far, will be pleasing to my father."

"A Protestant! and so am I."
"What! in these habits?"

"Ay; would you debar me from assuming the only dress that enables me to be useful to my mother?"

"The Lady Adeline has my promise."

"And so have I. Do you deny that till you came to Rome there was no one you preferred to poor Eulalie."

"I do not deny it. But why torment me with all these questions?"

"For this reason. My mother, whose grief grows heavier every new mortification she inflicts upon herself, has resolved finally to abandon the world next Easter. After that she will not even see me, unless for a few days at the Christmas of each year. She is anxious to see me happy before that time, and thinks no one is so likely to render me so as the son of Edward Lonsdale. And yet you reject me, though I have wealth and rank, and what the world calls beauty."

"You torture me, Eulalie. I am true to another."

"What if that other were to absolve you from your vows?"

THAT human affairs are now undergoing a great and durable alteration; that we are in a transition state of society, when new settlements are taking place, and the old levels are heaved up, or displaced by expansive force from beneath, is universally admitted; but the world is as yet in the dark as to the ultimate results, whether for good or evil, of these vast and organic changes. While the popular advocates look upon them as the commencement of a new era in social existence-as the opening of a period of knowledge, freedom, and general happiness, in which the human race, freed from the fetters of feudal tyranny, is to arrive at an unprecedented state of social felicity-the Conservative party every where regard them as fraught with the worst possible effects to all classes in society, and to none more immediately than those by whom they are so blindly urged forward-as conducing to the destruction of all the bulwarks both of property and freedom. While these opposite and irreconcilable opinions are honestly and firmly maintained by millions on either side of this great controversy, and victory inclines sometimes to one side and some times to another in the course of the contests, civil and military, which it engenders, "Time rolls on his ceaseless course;" the actors and the spectators in the world's debate are alike hurried to the grave, and new generations succeed, who are borne along by the same mighty stream, and inherit from their parents the passions and prejudices inseparable from a question in which such boundless expectations have been excited on the one side, and such vital interests are at stake on the other.

The symptoms of this transition state distinctly appear, not merely in the increase of political power on the part of the lower classes in almost every state of western Europe, but the general formation of warm hopes and anticipations on their

parts inconsistent with their present condition, and the universal adaptation of science, literature, arts, and manufactures to their wants. Supposing the most decided re-action to take place in public feeling in the British dominions, and the most Conservative administration to be placed at the helm, still the state is essentially revolutionized. The great organic change has been made, and cannot be undone. Government is no longer, and never again will be, as long as a mixed constitution lasts, a free agent. It is impelled by the inclinations of the majority of twelve hundred thousand electors, in whom supreme power is substantially vested. At one time it may be too revolutionary, at another too monarchical, but in either it can only be the reflecting mirror of public opinion, and must receive, not communicate, the impulse of general thought. France is irrecoverably and thoroughly revolutionized.

All the checks, either on arbitrary or popular power, have been completely destroyed by the insane ambition of its populace; and its capital has been transformed into a vast arena, where two savage wild beasts, equally fatal to mankinddespotic power and democratic ambition-fiercely contend for the mastery, but where the fair form of freedom is never again destined to appear. Spain and Portugal are torn by the same furious passions-a Vendéan struggle is maintained with heroic constancy in the north-a Jacobin revolution is rapidly spreading in the south; and amidst a deadly civil war, and the confiscation of church and funded property, the democratic and despotic principles are rapidly coming into collision, and threaten speedily there, as elsewhere, to extinguish all the securities of real freedom in the shock.

It is not merely, however, in the political world that the symptoms of a vast organic change in Western Europe are to be discerned. Manners and habits evince as clearly