reclining upon a sofa. She trembled violently when one of her women announced the advocate Loubet, and suddenly starting up, exclaimed: 'What does he want with me?'

He entered. On seeing him so pale and haggard, the Marchioness was seized with vague terror.

Good day to you, Master Loubet,' said she, striving to smile; 'it is a long time since you have been here.'

He approached trembling, and replied in a low tone: I have just returned from a journey, a fatal journey, Madame, and am about setting

forth on another.'

But for a short time, I presume.' 'Perhaps forever.'

She looked at him, struck more by his manner than by what he said, and stammered some unintelligible words.

I wished to bid you adieu, Madame,' continued he; I wished to tell you what public rumor would have made known to you to-morrow, perhaps to day. I am a fugitive; I am about flying to a foreign land. I have been engaged in a duel, and have had the misfortune to kill my adversary.'

The Marchioness uttered a faint exclamation, and averted her head. The world will say that I have slain this man to avenge the honor of my family,' continued the advocate, and I will let them believe it; but to you I will declare the whole truth. The villain dared to boast in my presence that he was your lover that you were his mistress. I have avenged you, Madame.'

And you have killed Lansac! Lansac dead!' shrieked the Marchioness, raising herself to her full height.

There was a moment's silence: Madame d'Argevilliers strove again to speak, but her voice failed her; an expression of frightful despair marked her look and gesture.

'Ah!' murmured the advocate, struck by a horrible conviction; 'did he then speak the truth!'

The Marchioness had fallen senseless. He gazed upon her for a moment, with an air of bewilderment; then glided silently from the apartment, and hastened across the country.

On the evening of the same day, the cadet Beauregard arrived from Avignon with the sad news that the advocate Loubet had killed captain Hector de Lansac in a duel.

Marius Magis hastened amongst the first to the hotel of the Black Mule, where all the idlers of the city were soon collected to comment upon the mysterious circumstances of this affair. Amazement was raised to its highest pitch, when the cadet Beauregard affirmed upon his honor that the fair Loubette, who had been missing for fifteen days, had not eloped with captain Lansac. Some said that one of the other officers of the Royal Guard must have taken her off; others were confident that she was doing penance in a convent. In the midst of these conflicting opinions, Marius Magis bustled about, to give himself a degree of importance on the occasion, and officiously offered his services to the cadet Beauregard in the measures taken in relation to the property of the deceased. It was not very ample, and barely sufficed to pay his debts.

Next morning, the cadet Beauregard and Marius Magis, accompanied by a notary, proceeded to the garden, which had not been visited since the evening of Saint John, for the purpose of taking an inventory of the furniture of the little summer-house.

The poor captain!' said the cadet Beauregard, on entering the garden, GoD preserve his soul! who would have predicted so speedy a termination to his life and his amours?'

It had rained during the night; the foliage, green and fresh, exhaled a delicious perfume; flowers of the most brilliant hue were blooming around; the birds were warbling on the slender branches of the young fruit trees; and every thing in the little enclosure was calm, beautiful, and joyous.

'This is a hermitage dedicated to the god of love!' exclaimed Marius Magis, seized with a mythological reminiscence; 'let us examine the cell.'

He opened the door of the summer-house, and suddenly started back with a loud cry; the notary and cadet Beauregard looking over the shoulder of Marius Magis, also fell back, and with hair erect, and cold drops on their brows, exclaimed simultaneously: Oh! horrible! horrible!'

The ghastly corpse of a female was lying, with face to the earth, at the farther extremity of the summer-house, the floor of which was covered with large stains of dried blood. Marius Magis immediately recognized, from its dress, the disfigured body to be that of the fair Loubette.

'Gentlemen,' said he, closing the door, and speaking with an air of solemn importance, 'the first thing to be done is to summon the officers of justice.'

An hour afterward an inquest was held upon the spot where the crime had been committed. Near the body, which was pierced with many wounds, were found a black silk glove and a knife with a boxwood-handle, which the cadet Beauregard remembered to have previously seen lying on a table in the summer-house.

All were in a state of high-wrought excitement, but neither of these mute witnesses revealed the murderer. A few voices were heard accusing Captain Lansac.

I did not quit him during the whole evening of the fête of Saint John!' stoutly asserted the cadet Beauregard. I came here with him to keep an appointment he had made with the fair Loubette; he called to her, he entered this summer-house, and I now remember, as he closed the door he said to me: There is a smell of blood in that place!' He could see nothing in the darkness, but I am now sure that Loubette must have been lying there dead, at the time: I am satisfied of it!'

6

Here Marius Magis came forward, and, as if struck by a sudden remembrance, exclaimed with outstretched hand and quivering lip, in the midst of profound silence:

'I saw a person come from this place on the evening of Saint John, about ten o'clock. I know who has committed this crime; it was Catharine Loubet; and I am ready to make my deposition before the officers of justice!'

THE original of the following poem was found in a very ancient edition of the ANTHOLOGIA, and is ascribed to JULIAN, a King of Egypt, who wrote some elegant poems in the style of ANACREON. The translator has adhered as closely as possible to the meaning of the text, and has made a literal interpretation of many of the terms found in the Greek, on account of the difficulty of adapting English expressions to the style and idiom of the original; believing that in such a case, the force of accuracy would be preferable even to the elegance of a paraphrase.

G. W. W.

VOL. XXIV.

A BUTTERFLY clung to a moss-mantled flower,
Just bedewed by the drops of a fresh summer shower,
But she sipped not the moisture that clustered around,
Nor tasted the nectar she there might have found.
The butterfly's life was as brief as 't was bright,

Like those flowers that are born and that die with the light;
And now she has come, without murmur or sigh,
To kiss the sweet rose-bud, and kissing to die;
For much was she wearied of all that she knew,
The flower and its fragrance, the leaf and its dew.

From the moment she sprung from her tomb into birth,
She had known all the treasures of air and of earth;

And sporting along on her glittering wings,

Had strayed 'mid the sweetest and brightest of things;

The honey and dew had been her's ere she sought,

And she'd drank of the perfumes the Zephyrs had brought.
At first all the beauties that burst on her sight

To her heart bore a wild and a thrilling delight;

And the odors that rose from the gardens and groves,

Where the nightingale sings and the humming-bird roves,
Were so deeply delicious her senses were drunk,
And her soul in the languor of luxury sunk.
But soon she was sated with rapture like this,
And she started again in her search after bliss;

For she'd learned that Delight was the offspring of Change,
And that Joy ever flowed from the new and the strange.
'Twas in vain-still in vain; for the earth would not yield
A sweet not inhaled, nor a tint not revealed;

And drooping her wings on a fair summer day,

To the rose thus she sighed, as her life ebbed away:

FAIREST of flowers! my languid heart

From things of Earth, from thee must part;
I leave thy charms behind; I go

Where joys from change forever flow,
And where the sense is never cloyed
With sweets too constantly enjoyed!

I've wandered ever since my birth
Amid the richest scenes of earth,
And sought for pleasure many a day,
That would not sate nor pass away;
But never, never have I won

The peace my hopes were fixed upon!

I looked upon the tranquil sea
When all its waves slept beauteously,
And when the gentle zephyr sigh'd
His music on the purple tide,

I thought it lovely-know'st thou why?
Because the tempests' rage was nigh!

4

MAY 16TH.. A beautiful day! The sky is blue; the earth is green; the trees are putting forth their first leaves, with here and there a blushing or snowy blossom; the air is balmy from the west; the birds are singing gaily during the intermissions in their labors of nest-building; all nature is busy, and beautiful, and happy. How am I? I was happy when I awoke, and for some time after; but as I was sitting on my bed-side, and quite near the window, the latter was opened, and I saw how brightly every thing looked out of doors, felt the soft wind on my cheek, and heard the cheery notes of the birds. They appealed to memory; they called up forgotten or dimly-recollected feelings and scenes; they raised the ghost of my former self, and made me long once more to be free; to roam over the earth, to sail over the waters, to climb the trees, swim in the rivers, gallop my horse over the plain, or plunge in the surf of the ocean-beach! I longed to partake again unrestrainedly of outward and animal life; and thought wistfully of the spiritual food which also might thus be gathered. Man was not made to live in a chamber, and subsist wholly on the bolted flour of intellectual aliment books; he needs to labor and struggle for his soul's food in the broad field of the outward world, and swallow it GRAHAM-like, bran and all! Ah!' thought I, with what a different eye should I now look on the wonders of God's world! After years of confinement it would appear to me as a new creation. Even thus does it strike me now, as I catch but this partial and restricted glimpse of its glories. Oh! that I had better improved my opportunities when I was in the world! Give me back my youth! give me back my health! and I will render a better account of the future than I can of the past. ('Bold mortal!' whispered a mysterious voice.) Thus I thought; thus I longed; my equanimity was disturbed; my chamber looked gloomy and narrow; my old chamber! at the thought of leaving which I once wept. I became discontented; I felt unhappy. Seat me in my chair; shut down the window, and turn my back to it; truly, comparisons are odious.'

The ghost is laid, and I am myself again; my present, not my former self; I hear that same mysterious voice saying: 'It is not so bad, after all, to live in a chamber, and have the quintessence of all things brought in the shape of books, and laid on your table. Out in the world there is nothing to be found but 'sour grapes ;' but it is only the eau de vie distilled from them that ever reaches you. Never desire that which cannot be obtained. Resign yourself to Providence, and be as happy as you can be.'

MAY 18TH.Oh, the green and flowery meadows! The groves, melodious with birds and redolent of perfume; the dark pine woods, with their solemn and eternally-whispered hush! how do I long once more to roam over them and through them! It is impossible to do it bodily, and I will not repine thereat, but desire rather to be thankful that the mind is free; that I am yet able to roam in the spirit. Memory, conjure up the beautiful Past! Present reality, vanish! Past reality, become present! And oh, beloved Imagination! take me by the arm and let us once again wander, and adore Nature and her GOD. Yet it is no wandering, devious though the path may seem; for, rambling thus in the right spirit, we are on the straight road to Heaven. Now to the past!

It is the Sabbath of the LORD. We are far away from church or meeting-house, but this blue sky shall be our cathedral dome; these sweet birds our choir; this boat shall be our pew, and all nature our prayer-book and sermon. Step with me into this light skiff, thou who lovest Nature in her quietness. There is no breeze; the waters of the stream are like a mirror; and as we pass along, hardly dipping the paddle once in the space of a minute, look at the little minnows, scudding away as the shadow of the boat covers them, and then stopping to see what is the matter! And see the long eel-grass and thatch, streaming away before the current, pointing earnestly toward the head of the stream, but advancing not one inch! When the tide turns they will point just as eagerly the other way. They are like the courtiers of a despotic government, always subservient to the reigning tyrant; or the demagogues of a republic, ever ready to do the will of the multitude. Hark! 'tis the sound of Newington-bell, calling the farmers and their wives and children to worship. It has passed over a league of land and water before it reached our ears, mellowed by the distance into a soft and bewitcing treble. Hark! once more; and now we have the bass, as miles away down the broad Piscataqua, the deep-toned bells of Portsmouth add their solemn voices to the anthem. Nothing harsh or dissonant reaches us; we hear not the stroke of the hammer; only the most spiritual portion of the sound strikes our ear. Trembling, wavering, swelling, sinking-it is like the voice of a celestial windharp swept by the breezes of Paradise; and it breathes into the soul a spirit of rapt devotion akin to that which one might imagine a seraph to feel. This is perhaps sentimental religion,' but a little of it is good in this work-day world, and is certainly in accordance with this scene. Often thus have I felt myself carried from earth to heaven on those