be so; but I hate thee. Boy-hence! Tempt me not to slay thee even on this sacred spot! Away! or there will be blood shed! Hence! thy sight is agony. Leave me! leave me! Let this spot be peaceful!-Seest thou!" His diseased brain, once more excited, conjured up before his superstitious mind the old illusions. "See!" cried he. "See there! the grave-the grave is open!— the coffin lid melts away!-Esther lies there enshrouded !—her eyes are fixed on me. Look! she is rising,-how pale and wan her figure. Esther!-Esther!" He threw himself on one knee before the imaginary figure. "She takes my hand in hers!- how chilly cold!-she standeth between me and thee. Esther! let me kiss thy hand;-'tis air! Now it is Beatrice standeth beside thee, younger and fairer than Esther;-but Esther, when first I saw her, was young and fair as she;-Beatrice, in wedding garments, as when she wedded me and ruin; Beatrice, with a garland on her brow, such as I wove for her then; in her bosom the myrtle sprig that told my first tale of love. Why comest thou to me thus? I am not here to receive thee such as I then was; years-years have rolled onward since that time; and every one hath added to the list of unpardonable crimes that oppress me. Ha! the festive garb hath fallen-it concealed the shroud and grave clothes: a mask is off her face-it concealed care and death. Such was Beatrice at last; such as now standeth there, and is vanishing from my view. There," added he, violently, turning to Edward, "there standest thou-a sight more agonizing to me than all these: therc-flesh and blood-there standest thou, a living witness, to remind me of crimes past; to urge me to future sin. My brain is crushing under its load I feel, I hear it giving way! Oh, oh, that the past could be recalled!—that I were young again! Would I had not been born!" "Away! away!" cried Sir Richard furiously, "thou temptest that thou mayst betray; thou canst not love me. Hence! my blood is hot, my hand ready for thy death, Esther's grave is the only barrier between us, even that I will overleap if thou urgest me farther! Hence, I say, hence! Thou wilt drive me to madness if thou remainest. Would we were on some other spot!-Listen !— This mound of earth is sacred to me; I have hallowed, I love, I would not desecrate it; to look in solitude on Esther's grave and mourn her loss is the only consolation that is left on earth-this is the only bright spot I love-leave me but this!-thy presence disturbeth me-in pity, go!" Edward finding that he could remain to no good purpose, slowly and sadly quitted the churchyard. "Yes," said Sir Richard, turning to the grave when again alone, "here resteth the dear corpse I love; the spirit of Esther hovereth around this hallowed spot ;-it will hear my words and vows, and it will count my bitter sighs! After death there will be no communion between a soul like mine and a spirit pure as Esther's. No, no-here I will tell, here I will give proof of my love; on this dear clay I may perhaps rest peacefully." Heringford, meanwhile, who, when he visited his poor friend's grave, had little expected such a scene as this, returned to meet Mat Maybird by appointment at De Vermont's lodgings. Annette was from home; De Vermont's spirits appeared much depressed. "We are grateful, Sir Edward," said he; "lonely as we are in this strange land, my poor sister's loss is most acutely felt; your friendship, and that of Master Maybird, form our greatest consolation." "Poor Esther!" said Edward; "little of happiness did she know in life; to herself, at least, was her release a blessing." "Little happiness," said De Vermont, "shall that wretch know who, not content with having doomed his victim to a life of misery, must embitter by his cruelty her dying moments. I will avenge my sister! Yes, Esther, thou no longer livest to plead for the villain, to palliate his conduct; he hath sealed thy doom and his own;-no rest for him on earth!-ever at his heels, I will hunt him down.-I will not take his life; not so, not so!-years of misery, such as Esther knew, these shall he endure ;-I will pursue him through every turn of his existence, until, driven to distraction, he shall rue the day when he ruined the peace of my unhappy sister!" De Vermont, in agitation, threw himself upon a couch. "Look there," said he, again rising, "that was Esther's seat; there her pale, anxious face would be turned to us, inquiring for the news of Richard! That was Esther's work-table; and see," added he, with tears in his eyes, taking up a piece of embroidery, "this was her last work! There is her lute, which she would tune to the plaintive song that bewailed her lonesomeness. And, when she died, what thinkest thou we found in Esther's bosom? There, where it had lain through all her years of trouble; there, where her broken heart had beaten with slow, grief-impeded stroke against it; there was the first written note that assured her, with a thousand lying vows, of her Richard's faith and lasting love. Are not these things sad, heart-rending-but, by them all, I swear, by all these remembrances of Esther's wrongs, I am admonished, and vow a terrible vengeance on the head of the destroyer!" 66 De Vermont, for some time, hurriedly paced the room; by degrees he became more calm. Edward then asked after Annette. My girl," replied De Vermont, "is as well as sorrow will let us be; she is gone to seek laurels to deck her poor aunt's grave. I promised to go with her, but I fear the trial. Even this room, with old associations of my sister, is more than I can bear to see unmoved!" "If we might bear her company," said Mat, "on this sad errand, it would spare the pain without denying to Mademoiselle the mournful pleasure she expects from paying her tribute to poor Esther's memory." "It is kindly offered," said De Vermont, "and my daughter, I doubt not, will be grateful for thine escort :-she is here to answer for herself." Annette entered from her walk, the laurels in her hand. Her wonted vivacity had given place to sadness; the traces of sincere mourning were in her face. The smile that welcomed Heringford and Maybird was not now the merry, roguish one of former days; there was melancholy even in that. Her father having explained to her the subject on which they were speaking, she, after vainly endeavouring to persuade De Vermont to accompany her, assented to the arrangement. On the way few words were interchanged; Mat Maybird intruded not on Annette's sorrow, and the walk was completed in silence. Arrived at the churchyard gate, Edward saw that Sir Richard, enveloped in his cloak, still stood over the grave of Esther; he was doubting how to act, when the other perceived them, and turning from the grave, passed over the low wall from the churchyard. Mat Maybird then lead Annette to the grave side, and deposited at her feet the laurels he had carried. But the grave was decked -with myrtle! (To be continued.) LITERARY LIFE. Ah," said Aram, gently shaking his head, "it is a hard life we bookmen lead-and yet the harsh world scowls upon us: our nerves are broken, and they wonder we are querulous; our blood curdles, and they ask why we are not gay; our brain grows dizzy and indistinct, and, shrugging their shoulders, they whisper their neighbours that we are mad;-I would I had worked at the plough, and known sleep, and loved mirth,-and-and-not been what I am." BULWER'S Eugene Aram. "However, of all princes, thou Shouldst not reproach rewards for being small or slow : And that, too, after death." COWLEY'S Complaints. THERE is, perhaps, no passion more strongly rooted in the human heart than a disposition to regard with envy the lot of others, and to complain of its own fortune as the most bitter and miserable in life. So long ago as the reign of Augustus, the greatest philosopher and moralist of his day, looking upon the world before him, exclaimed with wonder "Qui fit, Mæcenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem and, although nineteen centuries have well nigh rolled by since his description of the feelings of men was written, it needs but little more than to lay open the book of the world and the page of the poet together, to see how slightly we differ from the men of his own time in this unhappy temper. Still does the weather-beaten veteran, whose "feats of broil and battle" have ploughed his cheeks with furrows and his brows with scars, speak with envy of the peaceful lot of the home-dwelling merchant ;-still does the merchant, sick of the inglorious toil in which he is engaged, long for the soldier's life, and the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war"-panting to stake life against victory, and to "stand the hazard of the die; "-still does the citizen, "juris legumque peritus," envy the simple rustic;-still the rustic praise the lot of the citizen; and so is it "through all the employments of life." Each complains that he alone is ill-treated by the world-when, for the most part, the cause of the evil rests entirely with himself. But if there be any class of men, whose complaints can be made to stand on juster grounds than others, it is that class of men who lead a literary life. I do not speak of those mere selfish drones who collect the precious gold of knowledge to lay it up in its rude heap in the storehouse of their memories, merely to look upon the uncoined ore with a miserly eye-or those cuckows of the literary aviary, who lay their worthless eggs in the nest of some more useful birds (I mean those empty critics who, unable to build a pyramid for themselves on their own foundation, gain a paltry fame by defacing the goodly edifices which others have erected by the frequent scratching of their own names thereon)—but of those poor, unfriended geniuses, who toil throughout life without enjoyment, and, in the end, die in penury.-From beginning to end, the life of the literary man seems compassed about with every misery and anxiety unfitted by very nature for all other more useful and lucrative employments, he may well echo the words of the unfortunate Cowley 66 Thou slackenest all my nerves of industry, By making them so oft to be The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy.” Poverty, neglect, and disappointment, stare him in the face at the very threshold of the temple of the Muses; and as he toils up the steep of Parnassus, he sees nothing before him but a worthless posthumous celebrity to encourage him to proceed. His journey through life is characterised only by the absence of all those enjoyments of which other men partake, and the total want of society;-for to the cultivated mind, the converse of all others less so is irksome; while genius, longing to soar with eagle-wings through the immensity of space, and to bring the laurel wreath back to the poet and the author, too often finds itself chained and fettered down by "Those twin gaolers of the human heart- Want of patronage is, too, the means of repressing great and original talent; and while "some mute inglorious Milton" sings his melodious strains to the lark and the nightingale alone, some titled scribbler is dinning his bombastic blank verse into "the ears of the groundlings" at one of our national theatres, which might and |