element hath become a constituent part of the general sympathy; and from this it might be that Hume not only continued to endure Miss Pearce, but even loved her with the affection of habit.

One might have supposed, that ere the time to which our narrative now refers, Miss Pearce would have been tired of intrigue, and would have seen the folly of being jealous in the favour which she had proved exactly, and from which she knew so little was ever to be gained or lost; but a Jesuit would be a Jesuit still, were the Church of Rome utterly annihilated, and petty intrigue merely for its own sake, and little selfish arrangements of circumstances, although nothing was to be gained, constituted the very breath of Miss Pearce's nostrils; and, therefore, it is not to be wondered at, that, when Mrs Mather stated her de sign of adopting the two Italians, as above mentioned, she heard it with that umph, and nod, which express not that a thing has been assented to but merely that it has been literally and distinctly heard. Her objections were entered under a masked battery, She began by praising Mrs Mather's unbounded benevolence of heart. She hoped they would be grateful; they could not be too grateful; nay, they could never be grateful enough. She al lowed the conversation to take a gene ral turn, then tried to control it gra dually to her purpose, and found an opportunity of relating, as if incidentally, how a certain lady, whom once she knew, had been ruined by a foreign protegée whom she had unwisely cherished. She touched upon swind ling, vagrants, and obscurely alluded to legislature, and the alien act. Not withstanding all such hints, however, the thing was settled in the affirmative; the boy Antonio was sent to stay with Mr Baillie, and Charlotte commenced work under the immediate auspices of her new patroness. The regularity and certainty of her new mode of life, soon subdued the roving qualities which her character might have slightly acquired, and which quickly give a corresponding wildness to the features. Her dark and comely beauty remained quick and expressive, but it was sobered under the accompaniments of an English dress, and tamed by the meek offices of our country's excellent morality. Her eye was

still drunk with light as when morning comes upon the streams, but it waited and took commands from the looks of her mild hostess. The footstep of the reclaimed wanderer might still be light and airy, but now she went about the house softly, under an excellent ministry. In health she became Mrs Mather's delight, and still more so when the infirmities of the good old lady required delicate attentions. Like the glorious Una of Spenser's Fairy Queen, the kind eyes of this beautiful Italian, even amidst affliction, “ made a light in a shady place."

Frederick Hume forgot not his pro mise to wait upon Signora Romelli, and inform her, that his minstrel-patient was quite well on the morning after the day when he was ill in her house. At the same time, he presented a card from Mrs Mather, requesting a mutual acquaintanceship. A friendly intercourse grew up accordingly, and, ere the fall of the season, Signor Romelli and his daughter were at least once every week at Greenwells Cottage, to the huge dismay of Miss Pearce, but the delight of our young surgeon, who began most deeply to love the beautiful Julia Romelli. She was taller and fairer than the maid Cardo: her locks were nut-brown: her eye was a rich compromise betwixt the raven and the blue dove, a deep violet,

"like Pandora's eye, When first it darken'd with immortal life." She was quick, capricious, and proud; bold in her pouting displeasure, which was like a glancing day of sunshine and stormy showers: but then she was ardent in her friendships, and very benevolent; ready, withal, nay in haste, to confess her faults, in which case her amende honorable, and her prayer for pardon, were perfectly irresistible. A heart of her ambition, and so difficult to be won, insensibly exalted her in the eyes of the dashing and manly Frederick; who, without any ostensible calculation of selfish vanity, loved her the more deeply, that she was a conquest worthy of boldest youth. Notwithstanding her superior qualifications, and the ardour of his suit, we infer that the fair Julia kept shy and aloof, and at the same time that her lover was only the more deeply deter mined to make her his, from the cir cumstance that, in a few months, he

had condescended to calculate how he stood in her father's affections, and was studious to accommodate himself to the manner of the Signor, who was grave in his deportment, and almost

saturnine, seldom moved to smiles, and never to laughter; and who, though he could talk fluently, and with eloquence, seemed, in general, to wear some severe constraint upon his spirit.

THINGS were in this state when the winter session came round, which called Frederick to Edinburgh, to prose cute still farther his medical studies. The summer following he continued in town studying botany; and after making a tour through the Highlands of Scotland, it was about the middle of autumn ere he returned to Green wells Cottage.

He found Charlotte Cardo improved in beauty and accomplishments, and advanced in favour with every one who knew her; even Miss Pearce her self condescended to patronize her publicly and privately. But what pleased him most of all, was to find that Julia Romelli was still a frequent visitor at the Cottage. The season of harvest, too, had given a vacation to Mr Baillie's scholars, and Antonio Cardo was now at home beside his sister; and the harp and the song of the Italian twins were not forgotten when the sweet gloaming came on. Deeply occupied in spirit as Hume was with thoughts of his fair and shy Signora, he was yet constrained to attend to the abrupt and strange manifestation of Antonio's character, which broke forth, from time to time, mocking the grave tenor of his ordinary behaviour. According to his reverend tutor's statement, he had been a very diligent scholar; and he testified it thus far, that he talked English with great force and propriety. With the boys of his own age he had consorted little, and seemed to take no delight in conversing with any one, though now and then he would talk a few minutes to the old men of the village, and sometimes to the children. He was now equally taciturn at Mr Mather's; but occasionally he broke forth, expressing himself in rapid and earnest eloquence, and shewing a wonderful power of illustrating any point. From his manner altogether towards Miss Romelli, his devoted attentions at one time, and at another his proud shyness; and from his dignified refusal, often, to play on the harp when Hume wished to dance with that lady,

Frederick could not but guess that he was a rival candidate for Julia's love. But the most striking and unaccountable demonstration of the boy's character, was the visible paleness which came over his face, the current-the restless flow of his small features, and the impatience of his attitudes, now shrinking, now swelling into bold and almost threatening pantomime, whenever Signor Romelli came near him. Visibly, too, he was often seen to start when he heard his countryman's deep voice: He spoke to Romelli always with an eloquent empressement in his tone, as if his thoughts were crowding with his crowding blood: He looked him eagerly in the face: He often went round about him, like an anxious dog.

One night Romelli, more open and talkative than usual, had told two or three stories of the sea, when Antonio, who had listened, with a sharp face, and his whole spirit peering from his eyes, came forward, and sitting down on the carpet before his countryman, looked up in his face, and said, “ I will now tell you a legend of the sea, Captain Romelli."

Cardo's Legend.

A RUDE Captain in the South Seas had murdered his mate, an excellent youth, for pretended disobedience of orders; and for this crime God sent the black-winged overtaking tempest, which beat his ship to pieces, and he was cast alone upon a desert island. It was night when he recovered from his drenched dream, and sat down on a green bank above the sea-marge, to reflect on his situation. The stormracks had fled away: the moon came peering round above the world of seas, and up through the cold, clear wilderness of heaven: the dark tree-tops of the forest, which grew down to the very sands, waved in the silver night. But neither this beauty after the tempest, which should have touched his heart with grateful hope, nor the sense of his deliverance, nor yet the subduing influence of hunger, could soften that mariner's soul; but he sat till morn

ing, unrepentant of his murder, fortifying himself in injustice, hardening his heart, kicking against the pricks, About sunrise he climbed up into a high tree, to look around him. The island, so far as he could see on all sides, seemed one wild and fenceless forest; but there was a high hill, swathed in golden sunlight, perhaps three or four miles inland, which, if he could reach and climb it, would give him a wide prospect, and perhaps shew him some inhabited district. To make for this hill, he descended from the tree, and struck into the woods, studious to pursue the straight line of route which he laid down for himself, in order to reach the mountain.

The forest was full of enormous trees, of old prodigious growth, bursting into wild gums, and rough all over with parasitical plants and fungi of every colour, like monstrous livers; whilst up and down the trunks ran strange painted birds, pecking into the bark with their hard bills, and dotting the still air with their multitudinous little blows. Deeper from the engulfed navel of the wood came the solitary cries of more sequestered birds. Onward went the wicked Captain, slowly, and with little caution, because he never doubted that he should easily find the mountain; but rough and impervious thickets turned him so oft, and so far aside, that gradually he forgot his proposed track, and became quite bewildered. In this perplexity, he again climbed a high tree, to discover the bearing of the hill; but it was no longer to be seen. No thing was before him and around him, but a boundless expanse of tree-tops, which, under a sky now darkened to a twilight, began to moan and surge like a sea. Descending in haste, he tried to retrace his steps; but this it was out of his power distinctly to do; and he only went deeper into the wood, which began to slope downwards perceptibly. Darkness, in the meantime, thickened among the trees, which were seen standing far ben, as in a dream, crooked in their trunks, like the bodies of old men, and alto gether unlike the trees of an upper world. Every thing was ominously still, till all at once the millions of leaves were shaken, as if with small eddying bubbles of wind. Forthwith came the tempest. The jagged lightning lanced the forest-gulfs with its

swift and perilous beauty; whilst overhead the thunder was crushed and jammed through the broken heavens, making the living beams of the forest to quiver like reeds. Whether real or imaginary, the wicked Captain thought that he heard, at the same time, the roar of wild beasts, and saw the darkness spotted with their fiery eyes; and to save himself from them, he climb➡ ed up into a tree, and sat in its mossy clefts. As the storm above and be neath ranged away, and again drew nearer and nearer, with awful alternations, the heart of the wicked Captain began to whirl within him, tugged at by immediate horrors, and the sense of ultimate consequences, from his helpless situation. In his agony, he twisted himself from branch to branch, like a monkey, braiding his legs, and making rings with his arms; at the same time crying out about his crime, and babbling a sort of delirious repentance. In a moment the tempest was over-blown, and every thing hushed, as if the heavens wished to listen to his contrition. But it was no contrition: nothing but an intoxicated incontinence,-a jumble of fear and blasphemy; such a babbling as a man might make if he were drunk with the devil's tears, gathered, as they came glittering like mineral drops down the murky rocks of damnation, in bottles made of the tough hearts of old vindictive queens.-Holy Mother! Do you hear me, Signor Romelli? By the Holy Mother of Grace! you and I, Signor, think he ought to have repented sincerely, do we not?-Well, what next? God does not despise any working of the sinner's heart, when allied, even most remotely, to repentance: and because the wicked Captain had felt the first tearings of remorseful fear, God sent to him, from the white land of sinless children, the young little Cherub of Pity. And when the wicked Captain lifted up his eyes and looked into the forest, he saw far off, as at the end of a long vista, the radiant child coming on in naked light; and, drawing near, the young Being whispered to him, that he would lead him from the forest, and bring a ship for him, if he would go home, and on his knees confess his crime to the aged parents of the youth whom he had murdered, and be to them as a son, for the only son whom they had lost. The wicked Captain readily vowed to perform these

murdered and thrown overboard, and whose corpse had been brought hither by the tides and the wandering winds. So the wicked Captain sunk for ever in the waters.

conditions, and so the Babe of Pity led him from the forest, and, taking him to a high promontory above the sea shore, bade him look to the sea: and the promised ship was seen hanging like a patch of sunshine on the far blue rim of the waters. As she came on and came near, the heart of the wicked Captain was again hardened within him, and he determined not to perform his vow.

"Your heart has again waxed obdurate," said the Figure, who still lived before him like a little white dial in the sun; " and I shall now turn the ship away, for I have her helm in my hand. Look now, and tell me what thou seest in the sea." The wicked Captain looked for the ship, but she had melted away from off the waters; and when he turned, in his blind fury, to lay hold on the White Babe, it was vanished too.

"Come back to me, thou imp," cried the hungry blasphemer, whilst his face waxed grim with wild passions," or I will hurl this dagger at the face of the Almighty." So saying, he drew a sharp clear dagger from his side, and pointing it upwards, threw it with all his might against the sky. It was now the calm and breathless noontide, and when this impious dagger was thrown up, not a breeze was stirring in the forest skirts or on beaked promontory; but ere it fell, a whirling spiral blast of wind came down from the mid-sky, and, catching the dagger, took it away glittering up into the blue bosom of heaven. Struck with a new horror, despite of his hardened heart, the wicked Captain stood looking up to heaven after his dagger, when there fell upon his face five great drops of blood, as if from the five wounds of Christ. And in the same minute, as he was trying to wipe away this Baptism of Wrath, he reeled and fell from the lofty promontory where he stood into the sea, into the arms of the youth whom he had

"Now, Signor Romelli," said the boy Antonio, after a brief pause, "what do you think of my Legend?"

Ere an answer could be returned, a broad sheet of lightning flashed in at the window, (for the sky all day had been thunderous and warm,) and instantly it was followed by a tremendous peal of thunder, which doubly startled the whole company sitting in the twilight room.

"Get up, foolish boy," said Romelli, his deep voice a little tremulous, whilst at the same time he struck Antonio gently with his foot. Not more quickly did the disguised Prince of Evil, as represented by Milton, start up into his proper shape at the touch of Ithuriel's spear, than did the young Italian spring up at the touch of Romelli's foot. His very stature seemed dilated, and his pantomime was angry and threatening, as for a moment he bent towards the Signor; but its dan gerous outline was softened by the darkness, so that it was not distinctly observed; and next moment the youth drew back with this remark," By Jove, Captain, there was a flash from the very South Sea island in question! What a coincidence! what a demonstration was there! and O what a glorious mirror plate might be cut from that sheet of fire, for the murderer to see himself in. Thank God, none of us have been in the South Seas, like the wicked Captain in the Legend."

There was no farther reply to this, and Signor Romelli was silent and unusually pale during the remainder of the evening. After waiting one hour, during which there followed no more thunder and lightning, and then a second hour till the moon was up, he arose with his daughter and went home.

AGAIN the season came round, which called Frederick Hume to town for another session, to finish his medical studies, and get his degree as a physician; and once more he prepared to take a tender leave of his Julia, whom he loved more than fame or life. Overcome by his deep passion, he confess VOL. XXIV.

ed it all to the maiden; and when he caught her trembling at his declaration, how could she explain her emotion otherwise than by confessing, despite of her pride, that their love was mutual? or answer for it better than by pledging her troth for ever, in re◄ turn for his vow of constancy? 4 Y

About Christmas, Antonio Cardo came from Mr Baillie's, to spend a few holidays at Greenwells Cottage. One night Signora Romelli gravely assumed the character of a prophetic improvisatrice, and told the future for tunes of Mrs Mather's household.

"And now," said she to Antonio, "come forward, young harper; you look there for all the world as if you were about to be set down for a murderer."

The boy started and went out, but in a few minutes he returned, and, flinging himself on his knees before Miss Romelli, he prayed her, for the love of heaven, to reverse her ungentle prophecy.

Up, foolish boy," said Julia, "why you look indeed as if your conscience were fairly measured; as if the red cap fitted you. Well, Antonio, you are either waggish or simple to an uncommon stretch."

The boy rose with a groan, and Julia's father entering the room at this moment, he took up a small knife from the table, and shaking it at the Signor Captain, said, in a voice trembling with emotion, "Your foolish daughter, sir, says that I am to be a murderer." On no answer being returned, he bit the handle of the knife for a moment, and then laid it down. Next evening, a party being assem bled at the cottage, and Julia Romelli being there, she was of course an object of general attention and the most assiduous gallantry. During a dance, Antonio, who had refused to play on the harp, sat moodily in a corner, watching the graceful Signora, and louring against the smiles of her partner; heedless at the same time of his sister, who, when she stopped near him in the dance, gently chid him one while, and then, smiling in her happy mood with a tearful glance, which asked him to share her joy, patted him below the chin, and bid him rise and dance merrily. Miss Romelli saw the sisterly love of Charlotte; and, in her good-nature, a little while after, she made up to the youth, and speaking to him as if he were merely a shy and timid schoolboy, insisted upon his taking part in the dance.

"Prithee, do not think me quite a boy," said he in return.

Signora, as the best rejoinder, repeated her invitation, upon which he started up, and flinging his arms with mad violence around her neck,

saluted her before the whole company. Julia disengaged herself, blushing. There was bridling on the part of the ladies; hearty laughter and cheers from old bachelors; and some of the young gallants looked very high, and ready to call the offender to account. Signor Romelli looked grave and moody after the strange salutation; and poor Charlotte hung down her head, and gradually withdrew from the room. As for the culprit himself, he walked haughtily out, and was followed by Mrs Mather, who took him to task in another apartment. The amiable Miss Pearce had likewise followed to approve her former prophecy of trouble from such guests; but her patroness was not in the vein for tolerating officious wisdom, and forestalling that virgin's charitable pur pose, she turned her to the right about

in a moment.

"And now, mad boy," demanded the old lady, "what meant this outrageous solecism? For my sake, what did you mean, Antonio Cardo?"

"Kind and gracious lady," he re◄ plied, "do not question me just now. But if you would have me saved from perdition, bind me hand and foot, and send me far away over seas and lands.”

"If this is all you have to say for yourself," returned Mrs Mather, “it is certainly a very pretty speech: though it is far above my comprehension. No-no; the thing was a breach of good manners; but I don't exactly see that your precious soul's endangered, or that you are entitled to be sent to Botany Bay for stealing a bit kiss-doubtless your first offence."

"Well, my excellent apologist," said Antonio, "if you will use a little address, and bring Signora Julia hither, I will ask her forgiveness perhaps."

You are a very foolish young man indeed," returned the old lady, who was one of those persons whose humour it is, without abating from their real good-nature, to rise in their demands or reproaches when any thing like concession has been made. “I say it a very foolish boy; and I have a great mind to let the young lady be angry at you for ever; and so I don't think I shall either bring her or send her."

Cardo knew very well that these words of his hostess, as she left the apartment, implied any thing but a decisive negative; and he sat still waiting the entrance of Julia, who, af