filial affection, at length so wrought upon her heart, that she first consented to listen to her mother's proposals on the part of Mr. Fleming, and at length to listen to Mr. Fleming himself.

She persuaded herself, that Clifton being lost, there was no other hope of happiness for her; and with her usual romantic tendency, determined to sacrifice herself for her mother; quieting her conscience on the subject of her love for another, by the intention of making an exemplary wife. Perhaps, too, unknown to herself, she was influenced by the perfect silence of Augustus-a silence that was tacitly insinuated to have arisen from the certainty that he had obtained of her having no fortune.

This idea she rejected, however, indignantly; but still the silence the apparent and total abandonment she had experienced, had its effect upon feminine pride-(and what woman is without it ?)—and helped her mother's schemes.

Poor Augustus, always in extremes-influenced by the arguments of Lady Mary, generously and at once sacrificed his feelings to what he considered the interests of Agnes; and having once come to this determination, he did it completely. But could Agnes have beheld him in his solitary chambers, gazing on every remembrance he possessed of their short and unhappy loves; could she have known of his sleepless nights and have beheld his pale wan cheek growing hourly paler and thinner, not even the love she bore her mother-not even her high sense of duty would have made her relinquish him.

Well-Mr. Fleming was at length admitted; brought and formally introduced, in his character as an approved lover, by Lady Mary, and left alone with Agnes to tell his own tale.

As she coldly listened to his formal address, how did her poor heart sicken at the contrast between the set terms, the studied sentences, the etiquette of his declaration, and the fire and feeling of Clifton, when an accidental circumstance drew from his bursting heart the full and free confession of a first and genuine love.

But this thought was dangerous, and she did not indulge it. She reflected on her mother's reduced means-she anticipated something like the return of pleasure in adding to her comforts, and she accepted Mr. Fleming.

From this moment, all was bustle and importance on the part of Lady Mary. Paragraphs in the public papers hinted

at the approaching union-friends poured in with congratulations-her sisters, relieved from the dread of her being a poor unportioned dependent; all contributed to give eclat to, and to hasten the accomplishment of their mother's wishes. Agnes had scarcely any time left for thought; and she herself felt its indulgence to be too dangerous to encourage it. Augustus read in the solitude of his chambers paragraph after paragraph, with initials the same as those which were inscribed on a pale gold ring, the only gift of his adored Agnes. As the nuptials approached, the papers spoke out more plainly; and at length, the approaching union of "the rich Mr. Henry Fleming with the youngest daughter of the fashionable Lady Mary Dornton," was openly announced. His eye was fascinated to the paragraph. It was in vain he tried, with a temporary assumption of coolness and a kind of hysteric laugh, to read it to the end. Something about Rundell and Bridge, and diamonds, and Brussels lace, and white satin, danced before his eyes. But he comprehended it not; or rather, his comprehension was so acute as to render him for a moment insensible to the extent of the agonizing information it contained. He threw down the paper-he walked to the window-he gazed into the Temple-gardens, and on to the Thames, busy with the hum of men-but he saw nothing. He strode back to his chair-he tried to resume his studies-he fancied that he could bear the shock with a fortitude worthy of a man of strong mind, and he burst into tears. The flood-gates of his grief were open; the full tide of agony rolled in burning drops down his cheeks it was in vain that he bit his lip till the red stream mingled with his tears--'twas in vain that by a muscular compression of his forehead and hands, he attempted to obtain that iron rigidity of nerves necessary to restrain the ebullition of his feelings. The result of his efforts only ended in convulsed hysterical sobs, in sighs that were almost screams, and in ejaculations of indifference; the truth of which every tear and every groan denied. It was the final ruin of the first hopes which he had formed in life; the confirmation of the blight of his first youthful feelings and affections. And who is there that has not experienced the same agony that at this moment overpowered the manliness of Augustus Clifton?

He had vainly thought that his mind was made up to the event which he felt must one day or other be accomplished; he imagined that he had wrought his heart into that state of

insensibility, that would enable him to contemplate with stoicism the catastrophe of his first love.

Poor youth!-at three-and-twenty he attempted a task which nothing but constant collision with a cold-blooded world can enable any warm heart to accomplish.

Ashamed of the ebullition of feeling, he rushed from his solitary chambers, in the hope of forgetting his agony in a crowd. "At any rate," he said, "I shall there have pride to aid me in the repression of these womanish tears. He walked down to the courts with his heart burdened and sick; he forced himself into the bustle of the world. Here he found all busy :-every look important; every eye animated. Old barristers gliding about, loaded with papers which they seldom read. Here a young lawyer, delighted with his first brief, which he had learned by heart; and there an antiquated judge, jesting with his "learned brothers," while the fortunes of the suitors were depending on the charge issuing from his lips.

And there he sat among all his brother aspirants for wealth and fame, without the possibility of withdrawing his mind from the circumstance that rivetted it with a basiliskian tenacity.

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable," did all this bustle before him appear to his eyes! How did his heart sicken at the struggles of wigs and gowns for pre-eminence! and yet but a few short months before this period, he had entered this arena of forensic eloquence and of legal quibble -this bridge of sighs and tears for clients, and of fees and fun to lawyers--with all the high and animated hopes of youth. He thought his first brief but the stepping-stone to that fortune which was to be shared with Agnes; and the idea of her love, the hope of her hand, smoothed the passage from the bar to the bench. He already imagined a silk gown upon his shoulders, and a sergeant's wig upon his head; and considered these appendages as the main object of his ambition. How different were his feelings now! the motive of action lost--his occupation gone-he sat the victim of that silent agony of the heart, which made him wonder at the importance which all around him seemed to give to trifles.For trifles did all the business of this world now appear to the eyes of Augustus.

At this moment an attorney put into his hands a brief. Augustus stared at him with an astonishment that quite sur

prised the poor attorney. Recalled, however, to recollection by the circumstance, he attempted to rally the powers of his mind to the task before him. At this moment he observed a celebrated barrister just sitting down, after an able and animated speech-a reply, in which he had called up all the precedents which the Term Reports afforded, as evidences of his case; and showed the profundity of his knowledge, by summoning to his assistance every particle of our complex laws that was applicable to his argument-though he knew that the heart of this very barrister was bursting under the loss of a beloved wife, lying, at that very instant, an unburied corpse at that home of which she had been the beneficent and presiding spirit. The animation of his subject passed away as the advocate sat down among the approving murmurs of the court, and his countenance became immediately clouded by the domestic grief which weighed upon his heart. This was a powerful lesson to the young Augustus, that private feeling must give way to public duty, and that the common business of life must go on in spite of the private heart-aches which may oppress the individuals concerned in their progress. Agnes, on her part, was not less unhappy; but feminine delicacy prevented its appearance any where but in the silence of her chamber; there she still indulged those recollections which a few weeks would now render criminal. She still looked on every token of her first lover's affection, as they lay humbly by the side of Mr. Fleming's more splendid, but far less cherished, gifts, on her toilet-table.

She had been gradually working up her mind to the necessity of sacrificing these tokens; but she still preserved them to the last possible moment, that she could retain and gaze upon them without a crime. She would not run the risk of communication, or of hurting the feelings of Augustus by returning them; nor would she hazard their ever being worn by any but herself. They were consecrated to the first and only love she had ever experienced; and she consigned them to destruction along with the passion of which they had been the tokens. At length, on the evening preceding the morning fixed for her marriage, she worked up her mind to the dreaded task-she desired her maid to replenish the fire in her dressing-room, and retire for the night.

For some time she moved restlessly about her room, without being able to assume sufficient resolution. She determined to curb this restlessness, and sat down doggedly to the fire. Her

ese sue withdrew her eyes,

they up. white satin, trimmed with lace from the loom and Brussels, and ornamented round the throat wn that might rival the drifted snow in whiten e cheval glass hung, carelessly tied round one o ers, a white satin Spanish hat, looped up in front f diamonds that sparkled brilliantly in the fire-lig nk with a cold shudder from the contemplation esses, when she recollected the use for which t signed: they brought the sacrifice she was going ore palpably to her imagination, and rendered the i destruction she contemplated more necessary th

eized upon the few ornaments she had received fro kissed them again and again-gazed upon them-a ne committed them to the fire, which was now inten to accomplish their destruction easily. She had mo in parting from the letters and poems. Each was a on of the heart of the writer, and of the passion b e was inspired. Every line brought the moment o osition fresh to her recollection, with all the vivi which accompanied it.

earer, however, she found them to be, the greater sho necessity for their destruction. Wet with her tears. w them one after another into the flames; and they opped in sparkling and blackened fragments on the it illustrations of her darkened prospects and destroyed

e watched the destruction of the first sonnet he had ever d to her, and which she had reserved till the last, a grief issued in sighs and groans from her overwhelmed