found a reverence, and so deep an apprehension of losing his present happy existence, should he venture to renew his suit, that he dared not give utterance to his wishes, otherwise than by that homage of the heart which tells its tale without the assistance of words.

Thus fleetly sped four happy months, at the end of which term Kirby again appeared upon the scene, to announce to Philip that a small farm in Upper Canada, the lease of which had just fallen in, awaited his acceptance, provided he would pledge himself to reside upon it, and never return to Europe. At any other time an offer so exactly suited to him would have filled him with transport, but the thought of being separated from his beloved Susan was not to be endured, and the tears ran down his cheeks as he communicated the proposal to her, adding, that he had determined to reject it, as he did not feel that he could enjoy a day's happiness in a lonely home.

"You are quite right," said Susan, smiling; "but why should your home be lonely? I told you that I would never marry you, because I thought you were a deceiver and a scapegrace. I have now given you a fair trial; I find you a completely changed character; and I do not consider it any violation of my vow when I declare that if think I can contribute to your happiness, and aid you in recovering and maintaining an honourable position in society, I am now ready to marry you, and accompany you to any part of the habitable globe."

you

An ardent embrace from Philip and an impassioned kiss ratified the

contract.

Lat

They have now been settled upwards of two years on the banks of the Ottowa, and a happier couple or a better conducted man than Philip the whole province does not contain. The poor old father does his best to make himself useful in the farm, seldom missing an opportunity of turning the pigs into the flower-garden, where they upset the beehives and get miserably mauled for their pains; of driving the horses into the corn, and milking the cows into pails half full of hogswash, when he invariably exclaims, "Well, to be sure! only to think! la! how funny!" terly, however, he has been placed under the care of Unicorn, who watches his movements with a vigilant solicitude, and will not allow him to make a fool of himself. That faithful and sagacious animal is, if possible, a greater favourite than ever. On catching sight of his master when he returns from the fields, he runs for his slippers; he is a parlour dog, a watch dog, a shepherd's dog, and when we last heard of him he was sitting on his haunches, silently rocking a cradle, in which reposed a baby of two months old!

One word, in conclusion, as to Peter Crawley, whose treacherous conduct having transpired, he was dismissed from the office; every respectable solicitor refused to employ him, and he became a slave to the law-stationers, toiling for weeks to raise a few pounds, which he invariably risked at a low gambling-house, sometimes increasing it for a time, but always destined in the end to see it roll away from him like the stone of Sisyphus. In this degrading round of toil and poverty he is rapidly sinking into rags, wretchedness, and a premature old age.

THE PYRENEES.

"WHERE are you going to, Achille ?"

"To the Pyrenees. Whip away, driver," answered the most witty of archæologists, M. Achille Jubinal, as he started to exchange the canicular heats and political tempests of Paris for the secluded vales and refreshing snow-clad summits of the Franco-Iberian mountains.

So great was his speed and so anxious did M. Jubinal feel to place the greatest amount of space between his own worthy person, and the menacing aspect of his fellow Parisians, that the tower of Montlhery, with its reminiscences of Louis IX. and of Louis XI. ; the Aurelianum of the ancients; the Château d'Amboise, which tradition traces back to the times of Hugh Capet; Bordeaux, the most beautiful of French towns; Toulouse, the city of the capitouls-nor even Auch, with its cathedral and window of 1513,-could stop him on his way; M. Jubinal only took breath when he found himself safely deposited at Tarbes, in the house of a relative who, he informs us, received him with open arms and heart.

Tarbes we know by personal experience to be one of the best points at which to approach the Pyrenees. The great chain which extends from sea to sea, appears from thence to rise out of a boundless level cultivated plain, like a great wall that stretches up from the earth to the heavens. Out of that giant chain the observer can at once distinguish, by its sharp outline the Pic du Midi, the Emperor of the Pyrenees, the still loftier Vignemale-the father of storms-to the left, and whose diadem of snow has never yet been trod by human foot; and still further off the culminating point of the whole chain, Mont Perdu, rival even to Mont Blanc, and lying like a bear's cub amidst perpetual glaciers, contemporaneous with chaos itself.

Anxious as every one feels on contemplating a vision of so much grandeur, to enter at once into its mysterious recesses, and to explore the country of eagles; M. Jubinal, like a true poet, first did homage to the Adour. The flowery banks of this river, so often the theme of the troubadour's song, are almost as apocryphal as "the bowers of roses by Bendemeer's stream;" the water itself is rather deficient in quantity (nay at Vieux Boucau, the old mouth of the river is altogether wanting), but still M. Jubinal found heart to prostrate himself before it, as he says he would have done before the Xanthus or the Jordan. This also from the old bridge upon which St. Grin was decapitated; not a very apt illustration of the lessons that came from the sunny banks of the river to which the giver of all peace went forth from Galilee to be baptised.

As the traveller approaches Pau, he rapidly nears the mountains, heath and brake announce rocky lands, and hills and stony acclivities alternate with open lands and pastures covered with flocks and herds. On such a journey, the traveller may, if he likes, amuse himself with the ever changing scenery of the road, or if he prefers it, he may, like M. Jubinal, meditate upon the great epochs in the history of the mountain chain before him. The geological origin of that granite axis which bears upon its crest a diadem of fossil shells and madreporites, tilted up and not deposited there, as M. Jubinal would have us believe; the times of Hannibal and of his Carthaginians, of Kar-le-magne (the modern orthography for

Charlemagne) of the Round Table, and of Roland, and the other knights of Roncevaux; of the Saracens, according to M. Jubinal, driven in slavery into the recesses of the Pyrenees under the name of Cagots, a theory we have elsewhere disposed of; and last, but not least, in a Frenchman's eyes, Napoleon! "In presence of that superb name," says M. Jubinal, "which resounds like thunder, it behoves us only to be silent and to reflect." Reflections on the progress and termination of the peninsular war are, however, no less gratifying to our national pride than to a Frenchman's, and the memory of the "Iron Duke" will hover over the crest of the Pyrenees as long and as honourably, as that of the great Napoleon himself.

But let us on to Pau-that noble city of the Bearnais which so adorns the luxurious valley of the Gave-and whither M. Jubinal hastened with a letter of introduction to Mistress Anna, the mistress of one of those worthy Irish families, says M. Jubinal, who have fled from the political agitations of their country to seek for peace and tranquillity in the most picturesque sites in France. They were two at least in as far as this was concernedno wonder, then the excitable sympathies of M. Jubinal, who is so enthusiastic in his praise of Mistress Anna. "Charming and spirituel young woman, thinking of nothing but of the proper education of her children, the model of the mother of families in Great Britain, in a straw bonnet and a robe d'Indienne, who do not blush, as our ladies do, at their age, their duties, or at their maternity."

at

This domestic picture is almost as pretty as any thing at Pau or in the renowned castle of the Bearnais. Even to its tower of Lethe, or the chamber in which Jeanne d'Albret chaunted in the pains of child-bed, verses, only one line of which has been preserved,

Notre-Dame du bout du pont, aidez moi à cette heure ;

or the tortoise-shell, which it is said first received the new-born, or last and not least, the great iron fork, with which Henry IV., still a baby, was fed !

The bout du pont reminds us of the etymology of Pau. A sovereign of Bearn, it is related, wearied with the incursions of the Saracens, built a castle at the end of the Pont-long, as it was called, in order that he might live in security, and he first marked out the spot with three stakes, pieux in French, péou or pau in Bearnais, who pronounce the name of the town not, as is commonly done, Po but Pow. The beautiful park, in which Queen Margaret tant badine et folastre ès choses de cœur, as Le sire de Brantôme describes her, took so much delight in, is now called the Promenade des Anglais. "Thus passes away the glory of this world!" exclaims M. Jubinal,-the glory of the park, we suppose, he

means.

On quitting Jurancon, the traveller enters the valley of Nèes on the first line of mountains. An ascent to the upland of Sevignac, displays to the right the beautiful plain of Oleron, to the left the peaks of Ossau; on the descent beyond and near Bielle, is the old fort called Castel-jaloux, built by Gaston Phoebus, and finally Eaux-bonnes, well known to tourists as composed of about fifteen houses, built into the rocky side of a mountain. Larruns must be returned to from Eauxbonnes to reach Eaux-chaudes.

ASCENT OF THE PIC DU MIDI.

This is a little village (says M. Achille Jubinal), in the same style as Eaux-bonnes, watered by the Gave-d'Oleron, which has its sources at the southern extremity of the valley. The mountain air having roused my appetite, my first anxiety was to inquire for breakfast, my second to procure a guide.

"I have one who will just suit you," said the landlord, "so eat your breakfast in peace."

If the worthy man had not thus set my mind at ease I should not have lost a bite the less, but his word of a landlord enabled me to breakfast with all the greater comfort.

In about a quarter of an hour, a fat fellow, with a smiling face and muscular limbs, made his appearance and approached the table with awkward gestures, and turning his woollen cap in his hands.

"Sir, I am"

-"the guide of the house?" I interrupted. (He answered In that case come back in half an hour," and I con

by a nod of the head.) tinued my breakfast.

Ten minutes afterwards I again saw my future conductor before me, but this time he was loaded with two tremendous sticks, four pieces of iron in the form of crosses, and two pairs of sandals made of rope. I asked him if he carried all these things for ballast?

66

we may possibly also want a

"Oh! this is not all, sir," he replied, hatchet." "Bah! what for? do you want to bring back a faggot with you ?"

"Not at all, but I have no wish to tumble down a glacier, and if no recent snow has fallen we shall have to make holes for our cramp-irons to obtain a hold."

I began to entertain serious thoughts of postponing my expedition to the next day, but the fear of being taken for a coward prevented me, and the landlord having remarked that if we intended to be back the same night, we must bestir ourselves, I got up from table at once, drank to a happy journey, put on the rope sandals, and started.

The walk was at first a pleasant one, for the road was not too rugged. Peter (that was the name of my guide) gave me the names of the villages and mountains, and bade me be of good cheer; but as we approached the Col-desMoines, and I saw our road winding three thousand feet above my head, at an angle that is usually given to a ladder, I compared within myself the point of departure, with that of the arrival, the motive powers with what there was to overcome, and I obtained as a result-we shall never get there!

"Nonsense," said Peter, "you will see before an hour is over that we are always getting the re!"

And as he promised, in an hour's time we arrived at the splendid forest of Gabas, from whence timber was derived in the times of Louis XIV., the hospital was before us, which served as a place of refuge, in times of storm, to those who are passing into Spain, and beyond was the immense and frightful plain of Bius, terminating in the distance in the monumental rocks of Canfranc. Without stopping to describe this vast solitude, which filled my mind with dark forebodings, I shall lead you at once to the gorge of Labroussette.

This gorge presents an imposing contrast to the plain that precedes it. It is about a league in length, and is clad throughout with centenary pines and larches. Every one of these trees is a giant; it has been essayed to transport them, to be converted into masts, but the difficulty is so great, that the project was of necessity abandoned; consequently these wild tribes grow in unrestricted freedom, sometimes upon the side of rocks that have no vegetable earth; sometimes upon the wreck of their own ancestors, like men upon the graves of their fathers. I do not know any spectacle that is so productive of melancholy as that of aged forests with their indistinct noises; you may imagine then the sensation which such produce when framed in amid mountains.

My guide, who was not like myself absorbed in poetical contemplations, suddenly awoke me from my dreams by remarking that there still remained a good bit of road between where we were and the Pic. Well, let us walk on, Peter--and climbing like chamois, helping ourselves with our hands, our feet, and our sticks, we arrived at the plateau of Ancou, where my courage completely failed me. To say the truth, I believed myself to be at least half way, but when, after four hours' fatigue, I saw, at the extremity of the path which we were following, that I was only at the foot of the peak, and I saw its summit of snow and rock sparkling like a sea of pearls, at least three thousand feet nearer to the skies, I sat down upon the ground almost resolved not to attempt the ascent. Nevertheless, when I had reposed myself a little, I allowed Peter, who had been using all his eloquence to keep my spirits up, once more to tie on the sandals, and taking a pull at a gourd which he had had the good sense to provide himself with, we started onwards, thinking of that passage in the Scriptures which says Bonum vinum lætificat cor hominis. The more I continued to ascend the more my resolution increased; for we had arrived at that point where the vast panorama of mountains began to unfold itself. Up to this period, the circle of our vision had been so narrowed, that the most gigantic masses lost their dimensions; but now, we in our turn hovered over them at every step a new peak disclosed itself, presenting a new form; the atmosphere was becoming lighter, and imparted elasticity to the lungs; a feeling of voluptuous enjoyment pervaded the frame. Nevertheless, the obstacles were far from being overcome. The declivities became so steep, and fallen masses of granite so encumbered the slopes, that we every moment ran the risk of mutually crushing one another; it was necessary to walk abreast.

Soon a light whitish zone announced to us the region where the snow never melts.

Peter asked me if I wished to put on the cramp-irons; I answered that I could walk as well without them: and we advanced upon the region of ice and snow.

We had a distance of about six hundred paces to traverse. The guide fathomed with his stick; I followed him, not without an increased pulsation of the heart, for if my foot had slipped, I should have gone to break my head against the rocks 300 feet below.

We were twenty-five minutes in crossing the glaciers; after which we reached the compact mass of argillaceous schist which forms the crest of the peak, that is to say, we breathed at an altitude of about 18,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was one of those visions which neither pen nor pencil can give expression to, and which nature has reserved to herself to offer to man, like the aurora of a new day, or the immensity of the ocean.

To the south, the warm air of Spain played with its pure light and thousand undulations around the Aragnes; to the north the Landes stretched out like a desert; to the east the enchanted towers of the Marbore, which I was soon to visit, rose up between the Som de Soube and the Badescure, which attains an elevation of nearly 16,000 feet, and to the west, with the aid of a telescope, Bayonne and the Bay of Biscay might have been seen. I shall never forget

this moment.

Nevertheless, time crept on. My guide, who had witnessed this grand scene, opened his mouth to such an extent as to make me fearful that he would require to have recourse on his return to an operator. I was obliged to descend; but on contemplating the acclivity that sloped away before us like a precipice, I involuntarily shuddered to think that a first false step would most assuredly secure me from ever making another; and as reflections of this description are not always diverting, I hesitated a moment before I risked the first step.

Peter observed my hesitation. "Are you frightened, sir?" he inquired. "No; but I acknowledge that I should prefer a highway."