me I had no thought to perceive her presence. She took my hands tenderly within hers, and sat down beside me on the floor. She lifted up my head from the boards, and supported it on her knees. I believe she spoke to me many times without my replying. At last I heard her, and rose up at her entreaties. "You are ill, your hands are burning, my beloved," she said. "Go to bed, I beseech you. You need rest." I did as she told me. She thought I slept that night, but the lids seemed tightened and drawn back from my burning eye-balls. All the next day I lay in the same hot and motionless state, I cannot call it repose.

For days I did not rise. I allowed myself to sink under the weight of my despair. I began to give up every idea of exertion.

My mother, one morning, came to my chamber. She sat down by my bedside, and spoke to me. I did not, could not, care to notice her who spoke to me. My mother rose, and walked round to the other side of the bed, towards which my face was turned. There she stood and spoke again solemnly. "Henry," she said, "I command you to rise. Dare you to disobey your mother? No more of this unmanly weakness. I must not speak in vain, I have not needed to command before. My son, be yourself. Think of all the claims which this life has upon you; or rather, think of the first high claim of Heaven, and let that teach you to think of other duties, and to perform them! Search your own heart. Probe it deeply. Shrink not. Know your real situation in all its bearings. Changed as it is, face it like a man ; and seek the strength of God to support you. I speak the plain truth to you. Your child is an idiot. You must answer to God for your crime. You will be execrated by mankind, for your hand struck the mind's life from him. These are harsh words, but you can bear them better than your own confused and agonizing thoughts. Rise up and meet your trial. Tell me simply, that you obey me. I will believe you, for you never yet have broken your word to me. I replied immediately, rising up and saying, "I do promise to obey you. Within this hour I will

"

meet you, determined to know my duties, and to perform them by the help of God." Oh! with what a look did my noble mother regard me, as I spoke. "God strengthen you, and bless you,” she said; "I cannot now trust myself to say more.' Her voice was feeble and trembling now, her lip quivered, and a bright flush spread over her thin pale cheek: she bent down over me and kissed my forehead, and then departed.

For

Within an hour from the time when my mother left me, I went forth from my chamber with a firm step, determined again to enter upon the performance of my long-neglected duties. I had descended the last step of the grand staircase, when I heard a laugh in the hall beyond. I knew there was but one who could then laugh so wildly; and too well I knew the sound of the voice which broke out in tones of wild merriment ere the laugh ceased. some moments my resolution forsook me. I caught hold of the ballustrade to support my trembling limbs, and repressed with a violent effort the groans which I felt bursting from my heart-I recovered myself, and walked into the hall. In the western oriel window, which is opposite the doors by which I entered, sat my revered mother: she lifted up her face from the large volume which lay on her knees, as my step sounded near: she smiled upon me, and looked down again without speaking. passed on, but stopped again to gaze on those who now met my sight. In the centre of the hall stood my wife, leaning her cheek on her hand. She gazed upon her son with a smile, but the tears all the while trickled down her face. Maurice was at her feet, the floor around him strewed over with playthings, the toys of his infancy, which he had for years thrown aside but had discovered that very morning, and he turned from one to the other as if he saw them for the first time, and looked upon them all as treasures. An expression of rapturous silliness played over the boy's features, but, alas! though nothing but a fearful childishness was on his face, all the childlike bloom and roundness of that face were gone. The boy now looked indeed older by many years.

I

The

smiles on his thin lips seemed to struggle vainly with languor and heaviness, his eyelids were half closed, his cheeks and lips colourless, his whole form wasted away. My wife came to me, and embraced me; but Maurice noticed me not for many minutes. He looked up at me then, and, rising from the ground, walked towards me. I dreaded that my mournful appearance would affright him, and I stood breathless with my fears. He surveyed me from head to foot, and came close to me, and looked up with pleased curiosity in my face, and then whistled as he walked back to his toys, whistled so loudly, that the shrill sound seemed to pierce through my brain.

August the 15th.

This day I have passed some hours with my poor boy. He is changed indeed. All his manliness of character is gone: he has become timid and feeble as a delicate girl. He shrinks from all exertion, he dislikes bodily exercise.-The weather was so delightful this morning that I took Maurice out into the park; he gazed round upon the sky, and the trees, and the grass, as if he had never looked upon them before. The boy wandered on with me beyond the boundaries of the park into the forest; he made me sit down with him on the bank of a narrow brook, and there he amused himself with plucking the little flowers that grew about in the grass, and throwing them into the water. As we sat there, I heard afar off the sounds of huntsmen; soon after a young stag came bounding over the hill before us, and crossed the stream within twenty yards of the spot where we sat. The whole heart of the boy would once have leapt within him to follow in the boldest daring of the chase; but now he lifted up his head, and stared at the stag with a look of vacant astonishment. The whole hunt, with the full rush and cry of its noisy sport, came near. Up sprung the boy all panting, and ghastly with terror. "Make haste, make haste," he cried out, as I rose; "take me away;" he threw his arms round me, and I felt the violent beating of his heart as he clung to me. I would have hurried him away; but as the dogs and the huntsmen came up close to

us, the boy lost all power of moving. I felt him hang heavily on me, and, raising his face from my shoulder, Í saw that he had fainted. I took him in my arms, and carried him along the banks of the stream till we were far from all sight and sound of the chase; and then I laid him on the grass, and bathed his face and hands with water. He recovered slowly, and lay for some minutes leaning his head upon my bosom, and weeping quietly; his tears relieved him, and he fell asleep, I raised him again in my arms, and carried him still asleep to his chamber.

August the 19th.

My poor injured child loves me. I cannot tell why, but for the last few days he has seemed happier with me than with any other person. He will even leave his mother to follow me. I feel as if my life were bound up in him; and yet to look on him is to me a penance, at times almost too dreadful to be borne. How he did sit and smile to-day among the books, for whose knowledge his fine ardent mind once thirsted. They are nothing to him now-he had been before amusing himself by watching the swallows which were flying and twittering about the windows; when, taking up a book, I tried to read. Maurice left the window, and sat down on the low seat where he had been used to learn his lessons. He placed a book on the desk before him, and pretended to read; he looked up, and our eyes met. Again he bent his head over the volume: I had a faint hope that he was really reading; and, passing softly across the room, I looked over his shoulder. The pages were turned upside down before him, and he smiled on me with his new, his idiot smile: he smiled so long, that I almost felt as if he wished to give a meaning to his look, and mock the anguish which wrung my heart.

August the 20th.

I had ordered the Arabian horse to be turned out, and this morning I took Maurice to the meadow where Selim was grazing. The little courser raised up its head as we approached, and, recognizing its master, came towards us. Maurice had not noticed the horse before, but then he re

Monday, we shall perhaps enjoy a whole week of sunshine!" Thus they congratulated themselves, and thus also I thought as, with the Eclogues of Virgil in my pocket, I walked out to enjoy one of the best gifts of heaven, a rainless, windless, cloudless day. The country around Henley is well calculated to attune to gentlest modulations the rapturous emotions to which the balmy, ambient air, gave birth in my heart. The Thames glides through grassy slopes, and its banks are sometimes shaded by beechwood, and sometimes open to the full glare of the sun. Near the spot towards which I wandered several beautiful islands are formed in the river, covered with willows, poplars, and elms. The trees of these islands unite their branches with those of the firm land, and form a green archway which numerous birds delight to frequent. I entered a park belonging to a noble mansion; the grass was fresh and green; it had been mown a short time before; and, springing up again, was softer than the velvet on which the Princess Badroulboudour walked to Aladdin's palace. I sat down under a majestic oak by the river's side; I drew out my book and began to read the Eclogue of Silenus.

A sigh breathed near me caught my attention. How could an emotion of pain exist in a human breast at such a time. But when I looked up I perceived that it was a sigh of rapture, not of sorrow. It arose from a feeling that, finding no words by which it might express itself, clothed its burning spirit in a sigh. I well knew the person who stood beside me; it was Edmund Malville, a man young in soul, though he had passed through more than half the way allotted for man's journey. His countenance was pale; when in a quiescent state it appeared heavy; but let him smile, and Paradise seemed to open on his lips; let him talk, and his dark blue eyes brightened, the mellow tones of his voice trembled with the weight of feeling with which they were laden; and his slight, insignificant person seemed to take the aspect of an ethereal substance (if I may use the expression), and to have too little of clay about it to impede his speedy ascent to heaven. The curls of his

dark hair rested upon his clear brow, yet unthinned.

Such was the appearance of Edmund Malville, a man whom I reverenced and loved beyond expression. He sat down beside me, and we entered into conversation on the weather, the river, Parry's voyage, and the Greek revolution. But our discourse dwindled into silence; the sun declined; the motion of the flequered shadow of the oak tree, as it rose and fell, stirred by a gentle breeze; the passage of swallows, who dipt their wings into the stream as they flew over it; the spirit of love and life that seemed to pervade the atmosphere, and to cause the tall grass to tremble beneath its presence; all these objects formed the links of a chain that bound up our thoughts in silence.

Idea after idea passed through my brain; and at length I exclaimed, why or wherefore I do not remember, -"Well, at least this clear stream is better than the muddy Arno."

Malville smiled. I was sorry that I had spoken; for he loved Italy, its soil, and all that it contained, with a strange enthusiasm. But, having delivered my opinion, I was bound to support it, and I continued: "Well, my dear friend, I have also seen the Arno, so I have some right to judge. I certainly was never more disappointed with any place than with Italy-that is to say, taken all in all. The shabby villas; the yellow Arno; the bad taste of the gardens, with their cropped trees and deformed statues; the suffocating scirocco; the dusty roads; their ferries over their broad, uninteresting rivers, or their bridges crossing stones over which water never flows; that dirty Brenta (the New River Cut is an Oronooko to it); and Venice, with its uncleaned canals and narrow lanes, where Scylla and Charybdis meet you at every turn; and you must endure the fish and roasted pumpkins at the stalls, or the smell-"

"Stop, blasphemer!" cried Malville, half angry, half laughing, "I give up the Brenta; but Venice, the Queen of the sea, the city of gondo→ las and romance—”

"Romance, Malville, on those ditches?"

"Yes, indeed, romance!-genuine