ful, therefore, mayst tnou be, as the dove in the sunshine on the Tower-top-and as the dove serene, when she sitteth on her nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood! Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing finger from a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lost all their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the sole delight of her grayhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joy extinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness been beloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor her heart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? All that we know is her name and age-you see them glittering on her coffin-" Anabella Irvine, aged xix years!" The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back to Ambleside; and, although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerous than before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must not indulge too long in a mournful mood-yet let us all sit down under the shadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay of Rydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears. Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too well acquainted with your taste, feeling, and judgment, to tell you on what objects to gaze or glance, in such a scene as the vale and village of Grassmere. Of yourselves you will find out the nooks and corners from which the pretty whitewashed and flowering cottages do most picturesquely combine with each other, and with the hills, and groves, and old church-tower. Without our guiding hand will you ascend knoll and eminence, be there pathway or no pathway, and discover for yourselves new Lake-Landscapes. Led by your own sweet and idle, chaste and noble fancies, you will disappear, single, or in pairs and parties, into little woody wildernesses, where you will see nothing but ground-flowers and a glimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes; you know, is best society, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels or voyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attained in little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is an incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet of nature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song-and of the hearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing the meadow in rows, how sweet the cheerful echo from Helm-crag! Grassmere appears Thirty years ago-how short a time in naby far the most beautiful place in all the Lake- tional history-how long in that of private country. You buy a field-build a cottage-sorrows!-all tongues were speaking of the and in imagination lie (for they are too short to enable you to sit) beneath the shadow of your own trees! In an English village-highland or lowland -seldom is there any spot so beautiful as the churchyard. That of Grassmere is especially so, with the pensive shadows of the old churchtower settling over its cheerful graves. Ay, its cheerful graves! Startle not at the word as too strong-for the pigeons are cooing in belfry, the stream is murmuring round the mossy churchyard wall, a few lambs are lying on the mounds, and flowers laughing in the sunshine over the cells of the dead. But hark! the bell tolls-one-one-one-a funeral knell, speaking not of time, but of eternity! To-day there is to be a burial-and close to the wall of the Tower you see the new-dug grave. Hush! The sound of singing voices in yonder wood, deadened by the weight of umbrage! Now it issues forth into the clear air, and now all is silence-but the pause speaks of death. Again the melancholy swell ascends the skyand then comes slowly along the funeral procession, the coffin borne aloft, and the mourners all in white; for it is a virgin who is carried to her last home. Let every head be reverently uncovered while the psalm enters the gate, and the bier is borne for holy rites along the chancel of the church, and laid down close to the altar. A smothered sobbing disturbeth not the service-'tis a human spirit breathing in accordance with the divine. Mortals weeping for the immortal-Earth's passions cleaving to one who is now in heaven. Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives for ages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which genius has allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leaves heart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed have well been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks now almost like a fallen wall-at best, the remnants of a cattleshed shaken down by the storm. death that there befell, and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that the funeral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd on the hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows not even their name, much less the story of their afflictions. It was inhabited by Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, known familiarly in her own small world by the name of Lucy OF THE FOLD. In almost every district among the mountains, there is its peculiar pride-some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, and whose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority of mind and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object of attraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unending year. Such a darling was Lucy Fleming ere she had finished her thirteenth year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her loveliness, often dropt in, as if by accident, to see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Her parents rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reason why they should dislike the expression of delight and wonder with which so many regarded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird but as fond too of her nest; and, when there was nothing near to disturb her, her life was almost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sad ness, and from sadness to joy; from silence to song, and from song to silence; from stillness like that of the butterfly on the flower, to motion like that of the same creature wavering in the sunshine over the wood-top-was t Lucy as welcome a change as the change of hights and shadows, breezes and calms, in the mountain-country of her birth. the hearth around which was read the morn ing and the evening prayer. What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of very impossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be in over her being, till in a new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away perennial and self-renewed. In a few years the bright docile creature will have the soul of a very angel-and then, before God and at his holy altar, mine shall she become for ever here and hereafter-in this paradise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise of heaven." One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house, and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they would let him have lodg-place of all the world. I will myself shed light ing with them for a few months-a single room for bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family. Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of imagination. He had come into the free mountain region from the confinement of college-walls, and his spirit expanded within him like a rainbow. No eyes had he for realities-all nature was seen in the light of genius-not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All was beautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded in the soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends, colleges, cities-all sunk away into oblivion, and HARRY HOWARD felt as if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in all languages; and there was much wondering talk over all the countryside about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at the Fold. Every day-and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts among the hills, every hour was Lucy before the young poet's eyesand every hour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr. Howard was, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but none doubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had ever conversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so bland and free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injured the humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy of the Fold. It was indeed even so-for, before the long summer days were gone, he who had never had a sister, loved her even as if she had slept on the same maternal bosom. Father or mother he now had none-indeed, scarcely one near relation-although he was rich in this world's riches, but in them poor in comparison with the noble endowments that nature had lavished upon his mind. His guardians took little heed of the splendid but wayward youth—and knew not now whither his fancies had carried him, were it even to some savage land. Thus, the Fold became to him the one dearest roof under the roof of heaven. All the simple on-goings of that humble home, love and imagination beautified into poetry; and all the rough or coarser edges of lowly life, were softened away in the light of genius that transmuted every thing on which it fell; while all the silent intimations which nature gave there of her primal sympathies, in the hut as fine and forceful as in the hall, showed to his excited spirit pre-eminently lovely, and chained it to | Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in the change, imper. ceptible from day to day, but glorious at last, wrought on Lucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcely could her parents believe it was their same child, except that she was dutiful as before, as affectionate, and as fond of all the familiar objects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had now grown to woman's stature-tall, though she scarcely seemed so except when among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling, and far more than fulfilling the fair promise of her childhood. Never once had the young strangerstranger no more-spoken to daughter, father, or mother, of his love. Indeed, for all that he felt towards Lucy there must have been some other word than love. Tenderness, which was almost pity--an affection that was often sadwonder at her surpassing beauty, nor less at her unconsciousness of its power-admiration of her spiritual qualities, that ever rose up to meet instruction as if already formed-and that heart-throbbing that stirs the blood of youth when the innocent eyes it loves are beaming in the twilight through smiles or through tears. these, and a thousand other feelings, and above all, the creative faculty of a poet's soul, now constituted his very being when Lucy was in presence, nor forsook him when he was alone among the mountains. At last it was known through the country that Mr. Howard-the stranger, the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much, but whom every body loved, and whose father must at the least have been a lord, was going-in a year or less-to marry the daughter of Allan Fleming-Lucy of the Fold. Oh, grief and shame to the parents-if still living-of the noble Boy! Oh, sorrow for himself when his passion dies-when the dream is dissolved-and when, in place of the angel of light who now moves before him, he sees only a child of earth, lowly-born, and long rudely bred-a being only fair as many others are fair, sister in her simplicity to maidens no less pleasing than she, and partaking of many weaknesses, frailties, and faults now unknown to herself in her happiness, and to him in his love! Was there no one to rescue them from such a fate-from a few months of imaginary bliss, and from many years of real bale? How could such a man as Allan Fleming be so in fatuated as sell his child to fickle youth, who would soon desert ner broken-hearted? Yet kind thoughts, wishes, hopes, and beliefs prevailed; nor were there wanting stories of the olden time, of low-born maidens married to youths of high estate, and raised from hut to hall, becoming mothers of a lordly line of sons, that were counsellors to Kings and Princes. In Spring, Mr. Howard went away for a few months-it was said to the great city-and on his return at midsummer, Lucy was to be his bride. They parted with a few peaceful tears, and though absent were still together. And now a letter came, saying that before another Sabbath he would be at the Fold. A few fields in Easedale, long mortgaged beyond their feesimple by the hard-working statesman from whom they reluctantly were passing away, had meanwhile been purchased by Mr. Howard, and in that cottage they were to abide, till they had built for themselves a house a little further up the side of the silvan hill, below the shadow of Helm-crag. Lucy saw the Sabbath of his return and its golden sun, but it was in her mind's eye only; for ere it was to descend behind the hills, she was not to be among the number of living things. Up Forest-Ullswater the youth had come by the light of the setting sun; and as he crossed the mountains to Grassmere by the majestic pass of the Hawse, still as every new star arose in heaven, with it arose as lustrous a new emotion from the bosom of his betrothed. The midnight hour had been fixed for his return to the Fold; and as he reached the cliffs above White-moss, according to agreement a light was burning in the low window, the very planet of love. It seemed to shed a bright serenity over all the vale, and the moon-glittering waters of Rydal-mere were as an image of life, pure, lonely, undisturbed, and at the pensive hour how profound! "Blessing and praise be to the gracious God! who framed my spirit so to delight in his beautiful and glorious creation-blessing and praise to the Holy One, for the boon of my Lucy's innocent and religious love!" Prayers crowded fast into his soul, and tears of joy fell from his eyes, as he stood at the threshold, almost afraid in the trembling of life-deep affection to meet her first embrace. In the silence, sobs and sighs, and one or two long deep groans! Then in another moment, he saw, through the open door of the room where Lucy used to sleep, several figures moving to and fro in the light, and one figure upon its knees, who else could it be but her father! Unnoticed he became one of the pale-faced company-and there he beheld her on her bed, mute and motionless, her face covered with a deplorable beauty-eyes closed, and her hands clasped upon her breast! "Dead, dead, dead!" muttered in his ringing ears a voice from the tombs, and he fell down in the midst of them with great violence upon the floor. Encircled with arms that lay round him softer and silkier far than flower-wreaths on the neck of a child who has laid him down from play, was he when he awoke from that fit -lying even on his own maiden's bed, and within her very bosom, that beat yet, although soon about to beat no more. At that blest awakening moment, he might have thought he saw the first glimpse of light of the morning after his marriage-day; for her face was turned towards his breast, and with her faint breathings he felt the touch of tears. Not tears alone now bedimmed those eyes, for tears he could have kissed away; but the blue lids were heavy with something that was not slumberthe orbs themselves were scarcely visible-and her voice-it was gone, to be heard never again, till in the choir of white-robed spirits that sing at the right hand of God. Yet, no one doubted that she knew himhim who had dropt down, like a superior being, from another sphere, on the innocence of her simple childhood-had taught her to know so much of her own soul-to love her parents with a profounder and more holy love--to see, in characters more divine, Heaven's promises of forgiveness to every contrite heart-and a life of perfect blessedness beyond death and the grave. A smile that shone over her face the moment that she had been brought to know that he had come at last, and was nigh at hand and that never left it while her bosom moved -no-not for all the three days and nights that he continued to sit beside the corpse, when father and mother were forgetting their cares in sleep-that smile told all who stood around, watching her departure, neighbour, friend, priest, parent, and him the suddenly distracted and desolate, that in the very moment of expiration, she knew him well, and was recom mending him and his afflictions to the pity of One who died to save sinners. Three days and three nights, we have said, did he sit beside her, who so soon was to have been his bride-and come or go who would into the room, he saw them not-his sight was fixed on the winding-sheet, eyeing it without a single tear from feet to forehead, and sometimes looking up to heaven. As men forgotten in dungeons have lived miserably long without food, so did he—and so he would have done, on and on to the most far-off funeral day. From that one chair, close to the bedside, he never rose. Night after night, when all the vale was hushed, he never slept. Through one of the midnights there had been a great thunderstorm, the lightning smiting a cliff close to the cottage; but it seemed that he heard it notand during the floods of next day, to him the roaring vale was silent. On the morning of the funeral, the old people-for now they seemed to be old-wept to see him sitting still beside their dead child; for each of the few remaining hours had now its own sad office, and a man had come to nail down the coffin. Three black specks suddenly alighted on the face of the corpse-and then off-and on-and away-and returning-was heard the buzzing of large flies, attracted by beauty in its corruption. "Ha-ha!" starting up, he cried in horror-"What birds of prey are these, whom Satan hath sent to devour the corpse?" He became stricken with a sort of palsy-and, being led out to the open air, was laid down, seemingly as dead as her within, on the green daisied turf, where, beneath the shadow of the sycamore, they had so often sat, building up beautiful visions of a long blissful life. The company assembled, but not before his | then with groans, too affec ing to be borne by eyes-the bier was lifted up and moved away down the silvan slope, and away round the head of the Lake, and over the wooden bridge, accompanied, here and there, as it passed the wayside houses on the road to Grassmere, by the sound of psalms-but he saw-he heard not; when the last sound of the spade rebounded from the smooth arch of the grave, he was not by-but all the while he was lying where they left him, with one or two pitying dalesmen at his head and feet. When he awoke again and rose up, the cottage of the Fold was as if she had never been born-for she had vanished for ever and aye, and her sixteen years' smiling life was all extinguished in the dust. those who heard them, he would ask why, since she was dead, God had the cruelty to keep him, her husband, in life; and finally and last of all, he imagined himself in Grassmere Churchyard, and clasping a little mound on the green, which it was evident he thought was her grave, he wept over it for hours and hours, and kissed it, and placed a stone at its head, and sometimes all at once broke out into fits of laughter, till the hideous fainting-fits return. ed, and after long convulsions left him lying as if stone-dead. As for his bodily frame, when Lucy's father lifted it up in his arms, little heavier was it than a bundle of withered fern. Nobody supposed that one so miserably attenuated and ghost-like could for many days be alive-yet not till the earth had thrice revolved round the sun, did that body die, and then it was buried far away from the Fold, the banks of Rydal-water, and the sweet mountains of Westmoreland; for after passing like a shadow through many foreign lands, he ceased his pilgrimage in Palestine, even be neath the shadow of Mount Sion, and was laid, with a lock of hair-which, from the place it held, strangers knew to have belonged to one dearly beloved-close to his heart, on which it had lain so long, and was to moulder away in darkness together, by Christian hands and in Weeks and months passed on, and still there was a vacant wildness in his eyes, and a mortal ghastliness all over his face, inexpressive of a reasonable soul. It scarcely seemed that he knew where he was, or in what part of the earth, yet, when left by himself, he never sought to move beyond the boundaries of the Fold. During the first faint glimmerings of returning reason, he would utter her name, over and over many times, with a mournful voice, but still he knew not that she was dead -then he began to caution them all to tread softly, for that sleep had fallen upon her, and her fever in its blessed balm might abate-a Christian sepulchre L'ENVOY. PERIODICAL literature is a type of many of the most beautiful things and interesting events in nature; or say, rather, that they are types of it-the Flowers and the Stars. As to Flowers, they are the prettiest periodicals ever published in folio-the leaves are wire-wove and hot-pressed by Nature's self; their circulation is wide over all the land; from castle to cottage they are regularly taken in; as old age bends over them, his youth is renewed; and you see childhood poring upon them pressed close to its very bosom. Some of them are ephemeral-their contents are exhaled between the rising and setting sun. Once a week others break through their green, pink, or crimson cover; and how delightful, on the seventh day, smiles in the sunshine the Sabbath Flower-a Sunday publication perused without blame by the most religious-even before morning prayer! Each month, indeed, throughout the whole year, has its own Flower periodical. Some are annual, some biennial, some triennial, and there are perennials that seem to live for ever-and yet are still periodical-though our love will not allow us to know when they die, and phoenix-like reappear from their own ashes. So much for Flowers-typifying or typified;-leaves emblematical of pages --buds of binding-dew-veils of covers-and the wafting away of bloom and fragrance like the dissemination of fine feelings, bright fancies, and winged thoughts. The Flowers are the periodicals of the earth -the Stars are the periodicals of heaven. With what unfailing regularity do the numbers issue forth! Hesperus and Lucifer! ye are one concern. The Pole-star is studied by all nations. How popular the poetry of the Moon! On what subject does not the Sun throw light? No fear of hurting your eyes by reading that fine clear large type on that softened page. As you turn them over, one blue, another yellow, and another green, all are alike delightful to the pupil, dear as the very apple of his eye. Yes, the great Periodical Press of heaven is unceasingly at work-night and day; the only free power all over the world-'tis indeed like the air we breathe-if we have it not, we die. Look, then, at all paper periodicals with pleasure, for sake of the Flowers and the Stars. Suppose them all extinct, and life would be like a flowerless earth, a starless heaven. We should soon forget the Seasons. The periodicals of the External would soon all lose their meaning, were there no longer any periodicals of the Internal. These are the lights and shadows of life, merrily dancing or gravely, stealing over the dial; remembrancers of the past -teachers of the present-prophets of the future hours. Were they all dead, Spring would in vain renew her promise-wearisome would be the interminable summer days the —fruits of autumn tasteless—the winter ingle blink mournfully round the hearth. What are the blessed Seasons themselves, in nature and and in Thomson, but periodicals of a larger growth? We should doubt the goodness of that man's heart, who loved not the periodical literature of earth and sky-who would not weep to see one of its flowers wither-one of its stars fall-one beauty die on its humble bed-one glory drop from its lofty sphere. Let them bloom and burn on-flowers in which there is no poison, stars in which there is no disease-whose blossoms are all sweet, and whose rays are all sanative-both alike steeped in dew, and both, to the fine ear of nature's worshipper, bathed in music. Pomposo never reads Magazine poetry-nor, we presume, ever looks at a field or wayside flower. He studies only the standard authors. He walks only in gardens with high brick walls-and then admires only at a hint from the head-gardener. Pomposo does not know that many of the finest poems of our day first appeared in magazines-or, worse still, in newspapers; and that in our periodicals, daily and weekly, equally with the monthlies and quarterlies, is to be found the best criticism of poetry any where extant, superior far, in that upretending form, to nine-tenths of the learned lucubrations of Germany- though some of it, too, is good-almost as one's heart could desire. What is the circulation even of a popular volume of verses-if any such there be-to that of a number of Maga? Hundreds of thousands at home peruse it before it is a week old-as many abroad ere the moon has thrice renewed her horns; and the Series ceases not-regular as the Seasons that make up the perfect year. Our periodical literature say of it what you will-gives light to the heads and heat to the hearts of millions of our race. The greatest and best men of the age have not disdained to belong to the brotherhood;-and thus the hovel holds what must not be missing in the hall-the furniture of the cot is the same as that of the palace-and duke and ditcher read their lessons from the same page. Good people have said, and it would be misanthropical to disbelieve or discredit their judgment, that our Prose is original-nay, has created a new era in the history of Periodical Literature. Only think of that, Christopher, and up with your Tail like a Peacock! Why, there is some comfort in that reflection, while we sit rubbing our withered hands up and down on these shrivelled shanks. Our feet are on the fender, and that fire is felt on our face; but we verily believe our ice-cold shanks would not shrink from the application of the redhot poker. Peter as a notion that but for that redhot poker the fire would go out; so to humour him we let it remain in the ribs, and occasionally brandish it round our head in |