Father Francis, on again meeting with Edward, invited him to join the party at his cottage. This was another of the good priest's customs: each Sabbath a certain number of the villagers partook of their old friend's meal in due rotation, so that thus additional familiarity was raised up between them, and a new spur given to the people of the village, who never enjoyed, without benefit, the society of Father Francis. There was a happy and a merry party that day in the old man's cottage; for he banished not mirth or innocent pleasure from a day intended for our happiness. Kate Westrill remained, of course, in her own retirement, but Edward did not fail to see her. In the kitchen was Willie Bats, enlivened by his recent conversation with the "charmer," who kindly entertained an admiring circle with legends of treasure-hunting for forty long years past, and Cicely, as she heard them, "looked and sighed, and sighed and looked again," to think that one who had endured so much should have fixed upon her his fond affections. In the little parlour, among the group of happy villagers, Father Francis led the conversation into such channels as might interest and instruct his friends, until they again parted for church, when the former scene was repeated. Each then returned to his own house to spend the evening, as he might think most proper, in social intercourse and family prayer. Thus passed the Sabbath at Ellerton; and upon its peace we have rested with the greater pleasure, since soon the course of this history will plunge us into scenes of a far sterner character;-leading us to homes, the abodes of Vice, and Misery her attendant, to which the Sabbath rest hath never penetrated, to view the workings of hearts seared by sin, and the throes of a pure heart that another's sin hath tortured. Sin and sorrow, sin and sorrow-rightly do the names come linked together; but while we peer into the darkness of sin, and fathom the depths of sorrow, let not the image of Ellerton fade from our memories; let us not forget that there is bright happiness too upon earth, where modest Virtue dwells. RUINS. "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the win- THERE is a feeling of no common interest excited by the contemplation of the crumbling walls of a ruined edifice, which springs up, not only in the mind of the poet, the painter, the antiquary, and the philosopher, whose " trade it is to talk " "Of life's vicissitudes and vanities," but which is present, in no slight degree, even to the idle and unlearned spectator. Things which have been fair in the days of “hoar antiquity,” and are now mouldering in their return to the nothingness from which they came, seem to carry with them a reverence like that so scrupulously paid to the grey head by all the ancient nations, and so rigorously enjoined by the law of Moses. It is a strange thought that the ruins we now contemplate were once the scene of mirth and enjoyment-that the soil, now overgrown with the nettle and the brier, was once trodden by feet as light as our own-that the walls, round which we still see the green ivy clinging, like Childhood embracing Age, which now echo but the solitary tread of the lonely moralizer, once rang with the shouts of revellers who laughed at the saws of the aged which told of desolation and decay-and yet it was even so. Even the stately edifices of our own day, on which we now look with pride and exultation, may one day be a ruin too-ay! and many a goodly city, stretching out, as in sleep, its gigantic outline beneath the meridian glory of the noontide sun, may in some yet unborn age, lie, even as in death, a sightless and unlovely wreck, "Its dwellings down-its tenants past away," beneath the faint rays of the fading eve, or the cold shadows of the midnight moon. Ruins! ruins!—all creation utters its voice, and proclaims aloud Decay! decay!" The faded flower, the grey hair, and the autumnal tints embrowning all nature far and wide; all these give out, with a voice like that "which he Who saw the Apocalypse, heard cry in heaven," VOL. II.-NO. I. D the majestic and awful warning," Decay! decay!" In short, as one of the greatest of our living writers magnificently expresses it, all that is most beautiful is "but one vast panorama of death." But there are ruins far more melancholy to contemplate than the decayed palaces of our fathers-ruins more awful, more sublime-ruins of the mind-ruins of the heart. The maniac, as he paces his dreary cell in the prison of a madhouse, presents to us a ruin more terrific, more grand than the wrecks of empires. The fierce passions, perverted from the use they were destined to fill, tearing in their fury "the wall of flesh" which imprisons them, furnish to the moralist a ruin not elsewhere to be found. The victim of love and friendship despised, or ill requited--the prey of the demon Poverty, cast from luxury and ease, are ruins too. But what are we all-all mankind-but desolate and unseemly wrecks? Once happy and perfect, man was the friend of his Creator; how little yet remains of his pristine happiness and perfection! Who could trace, in the fallen and frail descendants of Adam, "half dirt, half deity," the sublime image of his heavenly Creator? No! once the pride of his Maker, he now lies on the surface of the moral world, a ruin as unsightly as the fallen temples of other times. Thus does all Nature open her page to teach us how short-lived and frail we are, and points to the sky and the heaven above us, bidding us look thither, where, gaze as we will, we find all fair, all perfect, without a single ruin. LINES ON A CHILD MUSING. CHILD of the sunny hair, and eye of light, Do dreams of sadness cloud that brow so fair, Or doth some vision woo thee thus to stay C. H. H. Far from the greenwood bower, and childhood's play? Why not for darker years those shadowy pleasures keep? N.E. THE MAIDEN'S BLUSH. WITHIN a bower of roses, stood Eve, the beauteous mother of mankind; within one of Eden's bowers, that her own fair hands had planted, stood Eve, the tempted and the lost:-"Wo me!" she exclaimed, 66 wo me, that I have brought sorrow upon earth! wo me, that through my sin the joys of Paradise are fled! Into a barren world, we wander hence-a world that yields no produce to weak hands of mine; and man must labour, while I, the author of his misery, look idly on. From the souls of my daughters all trace of Paradise shall fade-Eden, lovely Eden, oh that I could bear hence one thought of thee, one that might mock the advance of time, and sanctify the hearts of my daughters!" And the unhappy Eve hid her face in her white hands, while tears forced their way between her slender fingers, as she sighed in agony of spirit. In vain the tender flowers yielded in sympathy their fragrant incense; all unheard was the sigh of the pitying zephyr, as it passed that lovely bower. And Eve twined a chaplet of the fairest flowers, and bound them around her temples; these she would bear with her into the world, to remind her of the joys she had lost. But the Spirit of the Rose looked with pity upon the sufferer, and, as a gleam of the departing sun over the green hills of summer, she stood, decked in beauty, by her side. "Weep not," whispered the spirit, "sweet mother of a beauteous race; weep not for delights that are no more; the memory of Eden not utterly shall fade! The soft breath of heaven shall kiss the garland on thy brow, and those flowers of Paradise shall cast their seed upon the earth, and arise in their beauty, to deck its barren waste. And the joy thou bewailest as fled, shall yet dwell concealed in the breasts of thy daughters ;-if man be doomed for them to labour, theirs shall it be, smiling, to reward; theirs shall it be to share those lingering joys of Paradise with the soul that knoweth sympathy. And, lo! I bestow a boon upon thee, that shall descend to thy children, for evermore: hitherto hath happiness been equal, hitherto hath emotion been unknown; but in the world is sin and sorrow: behold, then, I will plant my blush within thy heart, and it shall be to thee as a remembrancer of Eden. If the rude tongue of sin offend thee, into thy cheek that monitor shall mountthen shall thy bosom swell with the memory of early innocence; if purest pleasure move thee, let my blush rise, while Eden lives again, and man beholds a Paradise in thee!" And the words of the spirit were fulfilled, and the blushing rose became white. And Eve plucked one of the white roses to cherish in her bosom. And Adam and Eve went forth from the Garden of Eden, and the world was waste. Then fell the fertile seeds from the chaplet Eve had woven, and flowers sprang up around her footsteps; her presence scattered still the delights of Paradise; joy then was at her heart--she blushed, and recognised the spirit's boon. And to her daughters hath that boon descended: still doth the blush on woman's check bring memories of purer Eden, and even now is it the maiden's pride to bear upon her bosom the white rose, sweet emblem-flower of purity; while the kindred rose that, as it grew not in that bower, retains its former hue, to this day men call "THE MAIDEN'S BLUSH." HAL. LOVE'S EYES. "MAIDEN with the mirthful eye, And the tread of fairy; "Go not to the greenwood glen; * "Maiden with the tearful eye, Whither now, my Mary? Sorrow's step and sorrow's sigh,— "Father, I went to the greenwood glen, You advised, and I went there natheless, 'My Robie sat on the green grass-plat, "And so I have returned, and a lesson I've learned, For they cannot mislead thee, my Mary!" HAL. |