of business. Mr. De Trevor had neither seen nor communicated with his daughter during that long period, in which she had known none of the happiness belonging to childhood, none of the joyous buoyancy and fresh vigorous hopes of youth. Perhaps he could scarcely be blamed. He held strictly to his first resolution. The destroyer of his peace, he said, must ever be a stranger to him.

Now, his man of business came to communicate to the outcast daughter, in a severe, dry, formal manner (for he too looked on her as a criminal who had somehow undeservedly escaped punishment) the fact that her hand would be bestowed in marriage on Mr. Castlebrook, the only son of a neighbour of Mr. De Trevor, who had lately lost his father and succeeded to a small estate. This young gentleman's land joined the De Trevor estate, and I believe the match was especially desirable for the purpose of uniting the territories which would thus be rendered doubly profitable. For this reason it seemed that young Mr. Castlebrook, in compliance with a wish expressed by his deceased father, had voluntarily proposed for Miss De Trevor, fully comprehending her family position, and, on that account, terms were made so restrictive and onesided that any other family would have certainly resented such proffered alliance only as insult. But it did not appear that my grandfather viewed the proposal in any other light than as a profitable offer for an unsaleable piece of goods. His daughter was expected to consent without expostulation. She did so. She would, indeed, have implicitly agreed to any wish or command of her father. Obedience, she said, was her only expiation. Bitter, indeed, proved to be that obedience which she had to render to one who treated her, all her life-time, only as an unwelcome incumbrance to the property he was to gain by this marriage. Years after her death I learned that even in her grief and remorse she had faintly begun to indulge a dream of being beloved; but she crushed at once, with an iron hand of self-immolation, all such dear hopes, and accepted her cross, as part of that atonement which she believed to be her sole business on earth. Her heart, and one other, alone knew the magnitude of her trial in wedding with an unknown and uncared-for individual.

On his own part, Mr. Castlebrook had disappointed such affections as he possessed, by giving up a young girl, the daughter of a tradesman who resided in the University town where this young gentleman had matriculated, and where he had also greatly distinguished himself, I fear, as a graceless spendthrift, who had already impoverished his small inheritance, and gained the reputation of being an idle and dissolute student.

I shall often in this narrative require the reader's consideration, for sometimes I may appear to forget I am writing of a father. He, alas! set me the example by often forgetting

that he was one.

Had not this marriage been arranged, I believe it had been Mr. De Trevor's intention

to have alienated the estate (unentailed) from my mother; as it was, my father consented to take the name of De Trevor before his own of Castlebrook.

The sacrifice, in due time, was achieved. My mother was married. She left kind and wellwishing friends, associations of youth and girlhood, to enter the cheerless home of one who loved her not, and abhorred the necessity of the promise which had forced him to take her for a wife. Somewhere about the same time, a marriage, not unsimilar, was contracted in a Royal House, the result being to both wives alike-oppression, insult, and injury!

CHAP. II.

When I was ten years old, being her only child, her solace, and her companion, my dear mother related to me this her sad history. I, too, had given proofs that I possessed a quick and irritable temper, which required the most judicious restraint to prevent it from marring for life my happiness. With no words,_save those of love, did she ever correct me. those dear lips I never heard a harsh sentence. This gentleness was a great mercy to me; for, from my father, whenever he was compelled to address me, I received nothing but roughness and severity.

From

pour

I am well assured that my mother endured the agony of this confession to an only and adoring child simply as a penance. She might have even anticipated that the daughter, who was the sole tie binding her to earth, would testify towards her a hatred excited by this account of her infant fratricide; but I loved her too dearly, and besides, I could in no manner connect my dear grown-up, gentle parent, with the picture of the passionate little creature whom she trayed. Young as I was, the strongest impression which remained on my mind was that Ellen, the nursemaid, should herself have been hanged for teazing my mamma into a passion. I remember asking my mother what became of this girl; but she answered that she only knew that she had been discharged from my grandfather's service after the sad event, which had chiefly been brought about by her own mischievous and aggravating disposition.

Many things come crowding on my memory as I write; pictures of my own childish lifetrifles perhaps, but which serve as landmarks to recall those days when, if I had a stern, disdainful father, I had that precious treasure, a tender, loving mother to weep with me, to soothe and console me in every little trial and sorrow. I know, too, now, that all love is feeble compared with the affection of a parent towards a child. I can think of myself, at one time, as a little creature in a black frock-worn, I believe, for my grandfather; and the notion I retain of myself in this costume is strengthened by the recollection of a little picture in water colours, done by my mother herself, wherein I

am represented as coming from an ascent down towards the picture-frame, with my short black frock caught up in my hands, and filled with roses, displaying rather a robust pair of legs, clothed in white socks and sandalled shoes. I think, too, now, what an emblem of my future this picture was-such a heap of black, and but few flowers, those few doomed early to wither, leaving behind only their thorns.

Ever since my birth my parents had resided in London. Mr. Castlebrook had pleasures and society apart from his wife. I can still recall our walks in the Green Park, near which our house was situated. I remember being taken by my nurse to some fair or merry-making held in the park, when the woman, to please me, put me on the back of an apparently quiet cow, who, belying her placid appearance, set off with me at a trot. I feel my fright again, just as I felt it when this dreadful monster eloped with me, as I believed, to certain and instant destruction.

Again I am a lonely child, playing in a large empty garret at the top of our house, having all my toys there, and falling in whirlwinds of passion at little obstacles in my play. I can see | myself (uproarious in my mirth) frozen by an unexpected Presence, one which always frowned upon me, angrily bidding those about, to take

me away.

I hear again my mother's low sobs, as I mingle my tears with hers, at some harshness, some dreadful rebuke, and I behold myself in total darkness, seated in her chamber, which looked on the street, gazing out of win dow through my tears at the lamps, and wondering if the rays round them resembled the glory which I had seen in certain holy pictures. I recall, I say, all these things, and, shuddering, wonder if I feel most terror or grief for those days, now dimly looming in the far-off distance of the irrevocable past.

Once more I am a fair-haired, blue-eyed child, standing by my mother's knee, patiently surmounting the difficulties of my alphabet, and coaxing her afterwards to read some child's book, while I reposed luxuriously on a sofa, she by my side. In this manner I was brought through many of my childish disorders. I can recall, too, with exquisite delight, my joy, when my mother, who received a very inadequate allowance quarterly, took me out with her, shopping. Again, in idea, I visit the delicious bazaars, all smelling so delightfully of wax-dolls, scent, new toys, and gift-books. Again I go home, laden with the choicest treasures. I see once more the pictures in my new story-books, and listen to my mother's expounding of them. "Industry and Idleness" was one-a book with a very large folding lithograph, representing the heroines in two compartments-Idleness lolling about, all rags, at an untidy cottage-door; Industry, well attired, going virtuously to market. I remember the deep interest I took in the fortunes of these children, as well as in a relation of how Industry invested savings, the produce of making pincushions with pieces of silk, mu

nificently bestowed by some lady patroness-a means of acquiring riches which fired my imagination, and which I should have immediately put into practice but for two impediments; one being want of materials, the other want of purchasers, supposing I had created a supply of goods for the pincushion market. To this day I have occasional twinges of remorse at not having devoted more time to pincushionmaking. Then I had, too, the "Arabian Nights," and, when I could read them for myself, fairy-tales; and crowning glory, on one happy birthday, the "Vicar of Wakefield " himself, bound as I have never seen him bound since, and probably never shall again-in red calf-skin, a kind of maroon red, soft and glossy to the touch, and soothing to the eye, with beautiful woodcuts over each chapter, representing interesting phases of the sorrows and trials of dear Doctor Primrose-sorrows impressed then on my heart, and never, no, never, to be effaced.

After these books followed "Philip Quarl," "Robinson Crusoe," and stories by Maria Edgeworth, who, I read the other day in a review, is entirely forgotten now as a writer, and deservedly so. I wonder if that sapient critic ever derived the pleasure from "Harrington and Ormond," from those many delightful stories by her pen, that lent a charm to my young days! Hardly, or common gratitude must have interfered, and suppressed so cruel a judgment, one which will be contradicted by each rising generation till fiction is no more a means of teaching or being taught. Such, then, were the books which formed my friends and companions, my sole playfellows. Luckily these remain, and mothers and fathers can procure them for the children still; but a new race has sprung up, pushing the child's good literature aside a race more fraught with brain than heart. Fairy tales are regarded with contempt and ill-concealed mistrust: the 'ologies lie concealed in the ambush of some clumsy story, and spring on the little reader unawares, like those black figures which in my youth were made to spring up out of French snuff-boxes, when the unwary took a pinch of rappee. Science has usurped the throne occupied by Sindbad the Sailor, and the burden of carrying the Old Man of the Sea was nothing, compared to the millstones of knowledge we hang about the tender necks of our children, By-and-by, there will be no children's books; neither will there be any children—a state we are fast sinking into! We shall all be born, Minerva-like, with the helmet and shield of knowledge ready developed.

Advancing in age, sometimes I crept into my father's library during his absence, and, unseen, devoured some of the romantic lore I found there. The Great Magician had not then arrived, and some sad trash of the newlyestablished Minerva-school was there; but there were many excellent books, and silently I fed upon this miscellaneous food; and my mind was neither starved nor corrupted, although I

sometimes pored as often over Beaumont and Fletcher's pages, or Boccaccio's "Decameron," as over the "One-handed Monk," and stuff of that kind-less deleterious, be it observed, than kindred books of these days, which if more talented, are also even more vicious and enervating.

I review all these phases of my child-life silently, and see myself out of the black frocks, arrayed in one of scarlet cloth quilted broadly at the hem, with satin quilting.

Then intervened periods spent at the sea-side Margate I believe, or Ramsgate. Time at these places passed but unpleasantly, for my father went with us, and instead of our large London house, we had narrow confined lodgings; so that my mother and I felt under great restraint, and experienced much difficulty in demeaning ourselves entirely to Mr. Castlebrook's satisfaction. We seemed always too noisy or too silent, too bold or too fearful to please my father. These things, mingled with reminiscences of terror at being bathed by a very corpulent female-a personage to this day inseparable, in my mind, from a watering place-who, I was persuaded, had a secret design to drown me, with visions of immense prawns, which we ate at breakfast every morning, combined with star-fish gatherings, and shells and sea-weed, seem to close in my childhood's scenes. After these things an interval of darkness succeeds in memory, and then my mind seems suddenly to have expanded, and I find myself reflecting with much satisfaction that in four more years I shall be fifteen, and therefore quite a woman.

It was not long after I had arrived at this conclusion, that I suffered the first misfortune of my life: I lost my own dear mother. Even now I can scarce bear to dwell on the details of her death. I saw not-for I was too young and inexperienced-and no one else cared to see, that she was daily fading away. Doubtless the tortures of her sensitive spirit, ever ill at ease with itself, had sown in the body the seeds of that decay, which caused her early and premature death.

I stood by her, one day, my arms round her neck, whispering little prophecies that she would soon be quite well, and able to go for our usual walks. She made no answer, but kissed me long and tenderly, solemnly blessing me as her consolation here, and charged me to look forward to a happy meeting hereafter. That blessing still lingers in my ears, as plainly as when it trembled on her pale lips, and she dropped her head on my neck. How heavy that dear head felt! Thinking my mother had fainted I screamed for assistance. They tried to take me away from her, but I resisted and clung still closer. Then roughly and without any soothing preparation, they told me the truth. I heard no more, long after that I was insensible for many hours. The tender guardian who watched my least indisposition was taken from me. No one else cared if I lived or died. A doctor was sent for, and I was left with a

hired nurse, to be well or ill, sustained or sinking, as I and nature thought proper.

When next I saw my mother, there was only a waxen form folded in white raiment, whose icy lips repelled even the awed kiss of a child's love. Death to me was a sight so strange and terrible, that, when I met him for the first time face to face, the dread mysterious visitor seemed with his ghastly inexorable presence to turn my brain. I became ill again-ill for a long and weary time. When I recovered all was over. A vault in St. George's Church hid from my sight for ever, all traces of one so sorrowful and so deeply loved. They told me she had died of heart complaint, and remembering her sufferings, I can easily believe it.

CHAP. III.

The actual commencement of life I date from

the period of my mother's death: I mean the struggle we must all go through in this probationary state. Behold me launched without the pilot Affection to guide my frail bark; no helm, no rudder, no land-mark, save the good mother's knee. principles I had gathered as I stood by my

Yet, many trees, carefully trained, fenced round, guarded from malevolent winds, disappoint those who, with skill and patience, have undertaken to rear them, in the belief that so watched, so sheltered from ill, and from contaminating touch, the young plants must grow straight, and tall, and strong; and then, behold !-no one knows how or why-they become suddenly gnarled, knotted, warped, dwarfish, and barren; while others, left to the free winds of heaven, exposed to the storm, scorched by the sun, prostrated by the shower, arrive at maturity erect, sturdy, strong; apt perhaps to bend before a blast too searching, but never breaking; bearing in due season leaves, buds, flowers, and fruit. Who shall say how these things are guided? Who shall say what is education or what is not? When the great truth, that it is the heart and not the head which needs careful cultivation, is believed and acted upon, we shall perhaps know. The hotbed of intellect, in producing flowers ere the tender plant has put forth a leaf, withers it, dries up its sap and vigour, causes it to perish even at the very roots.

Save my father, I had the singularity of possessing no relatives. My mother's decease rendered her family totally extinct; her own father and mother having been only children. My father, too, had been the sole child of his parents; I had therefore no near connexions to make up so far as such a loss could be made up, for my bereavement. Thus circumstanced, on entering my twelfth year, I found myself literally alone, deprived of kindness and sympathy. I wonder now that my heart did not harden. That I escaped this worst of fates, was owing only to the fact that my dear mother had

fashionable dinner-parties, or to procure himself the luxuries for which alone he lived, with the excitement furnished by the gaming-tables of his noble hosts, who seldom objected to winning the unlucky wit's money, but which, from his own base perversion, have been inadequate to hand him down to this generation with the fame bestowed on him by his own. His dressedup dolls of heroines, whose sole qualifications are pretty faces and good figures, might be the soulless houris of a Turk's harem, for any great or good attributes they possess. A facility for intrigue characterizes even the best of them; and their pourtrayer never tries even to disguise the contempt he feels for the entire sex, considered as reasonable human beings, or partakers in the enterprizes and functions of a grand world.

My mother made no attempt to drive me up the steeps of learning: she led me on step by step, pointing out by the way the brambles and thickets likely to impede my progress. My intense love of reading made the study of history and biography pleasing to me, and I soon gained some elementary knowledge of French and Italian. Accomplishments I had few, except one, on which many girls have large sums squandered with little result. My mother was instinctively a musician, and by careful cultivation had become actually a very fine one. She took great delight in imparting to me that glorious "mystery;" and Nature had been kind in bestowing on me those gifts of ear and voice, which artificially, can never be gained in! perfection. I could play Mozart, Handel, and Haydn, and sing difficult Italian masters, with great facility, even at the early age when I was left to my own resources. This was all. I could not paint, I had never been taught to dance, and would have sunk with nervous terror had I been asked to sing before any one but my own mother. Sometimes when I was practising I have heard my father desire the servants to stop "that cursed noise!" and then, my poor heart sinking, I would shut the instrument, feeling as if I had been guilty of some flagrant offence, reflecting bitterly that other girls were lauded and admired for their progress in the art I loved so dearly. I had once heard my father himself praise the Misses Singsmall, who lived next door, for being models of harmony; but though, judging from the sounds occasionally wafted towards our windows by the wind, I could have outsung them any day-I had the pain of knowing that no effort of mine could win approbation from this unloving father.

That stern look and cold deprecation soon came to make me always inclined to doubt my own abilities for anything. Such doubts, next to overweening and blind confidence, produce on characters like mine the most unhappy results.

But after my mother's death I did not touch my piano for months. I took refuge in reading, Even the brain of a child must have some resource in grief. I read all I could lay my hands on, and confirmed thus by indulgence a solid

and enduring taste for books, which has throughout life, next to trust and submission, been my greatest soother in all affliction.

"ROW AND RETAKE."

BY MRS. ABDY.

"What inscriptio can be more to the purpose, more inspiring to action, more full of promise as to the result, than the cheerful Row and Retake' of the Riddells?"-MOTTOES AND THEIR MORALS. By Caroline A. White.

Oh! soul-stirring motto, you rouse us to action,

And teach us to conquer as well as to bear; You clear the dense vapours of dull stupefaction, And cast a glad ray on the slough of Despair. Too long have we passively mourned o'er our losses, Deploring that Fortune our path should forsake; No matter-Life's web is not all made of crosses, The way lies before us to "Row and Retake"! Methinks, on the bright, rapid tide of existence,

Our boat, ready trimmed, our attention demands — We care not for danger, we care not for distance, We lack not brave spirits nor diligent hands. Of Life's choicest gifts we were once in possession, Our foes must prepare reparation to make; 'Tis Justice we ask-we endure not oppression, When armed with the watchword of "Row and Retake"!

SACREDNESS OF TEARS.-There is a sacredness

in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, of unspeakable

love. If there were wanting any argument to prove that man is not mortal, I would look for it in the strong, convulsive emotions of the breast, when the soul has been deeply agitated, when the fountains of feeling are rising, and when the tears are gushing forth in crystal streams. Oh, speak not harshly to the stricken one weeping in silence. Break not the deep solemnity by rude laughter, or intrusive footsteps. Despise not women's tears-they are what make her an angel. Scoff not if the stern heart of manhood is sometimes melted to tears-they are what help to elevate him above the brute. I love to see tears of affection. They are painted tokens, but still most holy. There is a pleasure in tearsan awful pleasure. If there were none on earth to shed a tear for me, I should be loth to live; and if no one might weep over my grave, I could never die in peace.-COBBETT.