THE

satirizing the models upon which his pupil was to be formed. He discovered, with surprise, that his heart, for once, had taken the lead of his inclination.

They returned to the country, where every hour caused new embarrassments to our four friends. The Countess found it more and more difficult to sustain with Verneuil the part that she had assumed. She spoke to him less frequently of the Marquis, and oftener of himself; she observed, with pleasure, that Helen was seldom the subject of his conversation; and felt, in the progress of her plan, a gratification far more intense than the mere amusement that she had anticipated.

Verneuil, without suspecting himself of inconstancy, became more and more inconstant from day to day; Helen, still persuaded that she loved Verneuil, found the Marquis incomparably amiable; while he thought her simple charms well worth the brilliancy of the Countess. All four had believed themselves to have adventured in a merely sportive engagement; but the heart was not thus to be thrown out of the question.

The Parisian pair accused each other of want of address in effecting the scheme which they had concerted together. The Countess taunted her admirer with the resistance which a simple country girl had opposed to his arts, and he retaliated in the same tone, and with equal reason. In the midst of their debate they saw the young lovers in close conversation, and stationed themselves in an arbour to listen.-Our situation, said Sericour, is none of the newest; but not so with the motive that has induced us to take it.

Confess, said Verneuil, that you prefer the capital to the solitudes of the Valais.-I have no wish to deny it, replied Helen; especially when I see you so completely reconciled with Paris.— By the way, returned Verneuil, the conversation of the Marquis is exceedingly brilliant; and he never shines so much as when he talks with you. -And the Countess, said Helen-how beautiful! how fascinating!

Sericour and the Countess congratulated each other on the certainty of their success. I should have been astonished beyond measure, said the first, if your charms had failed-And 1 still more, replied his companion, if your skill had been foiled.

As they reached the door of the Chateau, the Baroness appeared with a face of despair, with a letter in her hand, announcing the loss of the suit on which her fortune depended.-What, she cried, will become of these poor children? I hoped to leave them in possession of a splendid fortune; but now they may perhaps be even forced to leave the home in which they have been brought up.-Both her young friends were sensibly afflicted with this misfortune; and Verneuil joined the Marquis and the Countess in attempting to re-assure the desponding Baroness.

The party at length separated; and each retired to rest and to reflection.-Poor Verneuil, thought the Countess, was never born for a state so humble as that to which he seems condemned. Young, elegant, noble, intellectual, he is worthy

of the most enviable lot; but, banished to his native mountains, how can he hope to rise? Let me, then, make amends for the injustice of Fortune. I have yet formed no indissoluble engagement with the Marquis; and, if appearances have not deceived me beyond imagination, he will delight to do for Helen what I propose to do for her lover.

The lady was right; for the Marquis was engaged in thoughts precisely similar to her own. After all, said he, they who would accuse me of inconstancy must acknowledge the motive to be generous. I offer the Countess the example of a noble act; and, more than that, I spare her the embarrassment of being beforehand with me. But in this point he was mistaken; for she was already taking measures for the execution of her new scheme. She drew Verneuil into conversation, the next morning; and, with the art of which few women are destitute, told him all that she felt, while seeming anxious to conceal it. He was astonished at his own penetration; so quickly, so thoroughly, reading the secrets of her heart. Flattered beyond measure at the sentiment he had awakened, his emotion was extreme; but pride, and not for the first time, came to the aid of virtue, and saved him where fidelity and affection alone would have failed. To renounce his first love at the moment when Fortune had deserted her! The thought restored him to himself. It is true, said he to the Countess, my Helen and myself must prepare for circumstances less enviable than those to which we have been accustomed to look forward from our childhood. But, to renounce each other for such a cause! how should we deserve the scorn of all faithful hearts!-The worst that could be said, replied the Countess, would be that you had yielded to your destiny; and how do you know that Helen herself-Ah! interrupted Verneuil, for her I would answer with my soul; and even if mistaken, I shall secure myself against selfreproach. Let me say, too, he added, in a tone of mingled respect and tenderness, that I feel this to be the last of my trials. Too sensible to your charms, and grateful beyond expression for your kindness, need I tell you of the conflicting emotions that have been striving for the mastery in my bosom?

This avowal satisfied the Countess more completely than the most unanswerable reasons that could have been alleged to justify the rejection of her proposal. Her pride was saved, and this was enough; for she was not susceptible of a passion of which the disappointment could cloud her spirit.

Verneuil was yet at her feet, when the Marquis and Helen appeared. The latter retired with an air of embarrassment; while her companion was so intent upon a letter which he held open in his hand, that the Countess, unobserved, was near enough to hear his soliloquy.-Cruel girl! he exclaimed, thus to reject the homage of a sincere and ardent heart!-She is wrong, certainly, said the Countess. Had she consulted me, your vows should not have been vain.

The Marquis, taken off his guard, was thrown into confusion for the first time in his life. Verneuil, who had been too distant to hear his words, applied to Helen for an explanation; and she, after some moments of hesitation, took her letter from the hands of Sericour, and placed it in those of her lover, who read it in a tone that reached the ears of the Countess. It was in these words: -"Unable to collect myself sufficiently to reply in another mode, I have resolved, perhaps indiscreetly, to write to you. Believe me sincere in assuring you that I am not ungrateful for the offer you have made me, of your heart and hand. But the misfortune, that hangs over Verneuil and myself, should only unite us more closely to each other; and I feel it impossible to desert him, especially when his prospects are less bright than in other days."

Well, madam, said Sericour to the Countess, you possess my secret. I could not endure the thought of seeing our lovely young friend reduced to a condition beneath her merits; if that be a crime I submit to your reproaches.-You need fear none from me, she replied; and, to make you perfectly easy, I confess that I was ready to second your generous designs.

Verneuil and Helen could not treat the affair quite so lightly. Confused and agitated, he

assured her that he was profoundly sensible of the value of the sacrifice she had made to her early affection. He ventured to hint, however, that he found some cause for uneasiness in the tone of her reply to the Marquis; and she defended herself by asking whether he was willing to tell what he had said when kneeling to the Countess. The latter came to their relief, declaring that his words had been in the same strain with her letter; and the conversation was ended by the appearance of the Baroness, displaying, with exultation, a letter from her old friend the Duke, who had written to announce the favourable issue of the affair that had brought her to the capital. The officious friend from whom the previous intelligence was received, had been more eager to transmit ill news than careful to assure himself of its truth.

Sericour and the Countess congratulated their old friend, and sought no longer to interfere with her projects; feeling that two lovers, willing to encounter with each other the pains of adversity, were not to be separated when Fortune smiled.

Helen and Verneuil were shortly after united; and the Parisian pair soon followed their example. Each of the four, though perfectly happy and contented, acknowledges that the heart is a dangerous play-thing.

AND is my dear Papa shut up in this dismal place, to which you are taking me?" asked the little Lady Lucy Preston, raising her eyes fearfully to the Tower of London, as the coach in which she was seated with Amy Gradwell, her nurse, drove under the gateway. She trembled, and hid her face in Amy's cloak when they alighted, and she saw the soldiers on guard, and the sentinels with their crossed partisans before the portals of that part of the fortress where the prisoners of State were confined; and where her own father, Lord Preston, of whom she was come to take a last farewell, was imprisoned, under sentence of death. " Yes, my dear child," returned Amy, sorrowfully, "my lord, your father, is indeed within these sad walls. You are now going to visit him; shall you be afraid of entering this place my dear ?"

“No,” replied Lady Lucy, resolutely, “I am not afraid of going to any place where my dear papa is." Yet she clung closer to the arm of her attendant, as they were admitted within the gloomy precincts of the building, and her little heart fluttered fearfully as she glanced around her: and she whispered to her nurse-" was it not here that the young princes, Edward the Fifth, and his brother Richard, Duke of York, were

murdered by their cruel uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester."

"Yes, my love, it was; but do not be alarmed on that account; for no one will harm you," said Amy, in an encouraging tone. "And was not good Henry Sixth murdered also, by the same wicked Richard ?" continued the little girl, whose imagination was filled with the deeds of blood that had been perpetrated in this fatally celebrated place; many of which had been related to her by Bridget, the housekeeper, since her father had been imprisoned in the Tower, on the charge of high treason.

"But do you think they will murder papa, nurse?" pursued the child, as they began to ascend the stairs leading to the apartment in which the unfortunate nobleman was confined.

with her kisses. Lord Preston was greatly

affected at the sight of his little daughter, and

overcome by her passionate demonstrations of fondness, and his own anguish at the thought of his leaving her an orphan at the tender age of nine years, he clasped her to his bosom, and bedewed her innocent face with his tears. "Why do you cry, dear papa?" asked the little child, who was herself weeping at the sight of his distress. "And why will you not leave this dismal place and come to your own hall again?" "Attend to me, Lucy, while I tell you the cause of my grief," said her father, seating the little girl upon his knee. “I shall never come home again-for I have been condemned to die for high treason; and I shall not leave this place, till they take me forth on Tower Hill, where they will cut off my head, with a sharp axe, and set it up afterwards over Temple Bar, or London Bridge."

At this terrible intelligence, Lady Lucy screamed aloud, and hid her face in her father's bosom, which she wetted with her tears. "Be composed," my dear child, said Lord Preston," for I have much to say to you; and we may never again meet in this world." "No, no, dear papa! they shall not kill you; for I will cling so fast about your neck, that they cannot cut your head off;-and I will tell them all how good and kind you are; and then they will not want to kill you." "My dearest love, all this would be of no use," said Lord Preston. "I have offended against the law as it is at present established, by trying to have my old master, King James, restored to the throne, and therefore I must die. Lucy, do you remember that I once took you to Whitehall to see King James, and how kindly he spoke to you?"

“Oh, yes, papa-and I recollect he laid his hand on my head, and said I was like what his daughter, the Princess of Orange was at my age," replied Lady Lucy, with great animation. "Well, my child, soon after you saw King James at Whitehall, the Prince of Orange, who had married his daughter, came over to England, and drove King James out of his palace and kingdom; and the people made him and the princess of Orange king and queen in his stead!"

"But was it not very wicked of the Princess to take her father's kingdom away from him? I am very sorry King James thought me like her," said Lucy earnestly.

"Hush! hush my love-you must not speak thus of the queen. Perhaps she thought she was doing right to deprive her father of his kingdom, because he had embraced the Catholic religion, and it is against the law for a king of England to be a Catholic. Yet I confess I did not think she would consent to sign the death-warrants of so many of her father's old servants, only on account of their faithful attachment to him," said Lord Preston with a sigh.

"I have heard that the Princess of Orange is of a merciful disposition," said old Amy Gradwell, advancing towards her master," and perhaps she might be induced to spare your life, my lord, if your pardon were very earnestly intreated of her by some of your friends."

66

Alas, my good Amy, no one will undertake the perilous office of pleading for an attainted traitor, lest they should be suspected of favouring King James."

"Dear papa! let me go to the queen, and beg for your pardon," cried Lady Lucy, with a crimsoned cheek and a sparkling eye. "I will so beg and pray her to spare your life, dear father, that she will not have the heart to deny me."

"Dear, simple child! What could you say to the queen, that would be of any avail?" "God would teach me what to say," replied Lady Lucy.

Her father clasped her to his bosom-" But," said he," thou wouldst be afraid of speaking to the queen, even should you be admitted to her presence, my child."

"Why should I be afraid of speaking to her, papa! Should she be angry with me, and an-` swer me harshly, I shall be thinking too much of you to care about it; and if she send me to the Tower, and cut off my head, God will take care of my immortal soul." "You are right, my child, to fear God, and have no other fear," said her father. "He perhaps has put it into thy little heart to plead for thy father's life; which if it be his pleasure to grant I shall indeed feel it a happiness that my child should be the instrument of my deliverance; if it should be otherwise, God's will be done. He will not forsake my good and dutiful little one, when I am laid low in the dust."

"But how will my Lady Lucy gain admittance to the queen's presence?" asked old Amy, who had been a weeping spectator of this interesting

scene.

"I will write a letter to her godmother, the Lady Clarendon, requesting her to accomplish the matter."

He then wrote a few hasty lines, which he gave to his daughter, telling her that she was to go the next day to Hampton Court, properly attended, and to obtain a sight of Lady Clarendon, who was there in waiting upon the queen, and deliver that letter to her with her own hand. He then kissed his child tenderly, and bade her farewell.

Though the little girl wept as she parted from him, yet she left the Tower with a far more quiet mind than she had entered it; for she had formed her resolution, and her young heart was full of hope.

The next morning, before the lark had sung her matins, Lady Lucy was up, and dressed in a suit of deep mourning, which Amy had provided as the most suitable garb for a child whose only parent was under sentence of death. As she passed through the hall, leaning on her nurse's arm, and attended by her father's confidential secretary and the old butler, all the servants shed tears, and begged of God that he would bless and prosper her. Lady Lucy was introduced to the Countess Clarendon's apartment, before her ladyship had left her bed; and having told her artless story with great earnestness, presented her father's letter.

Lady Clarendon was very kind to her little god-daughter; but she told her plainly that she did not dare to ask her father's life, because her husband was already suspected of holding secret correspondence with his brother-in-law, King James. "Oh," said Lucy, "if I could only see the queen myself, I would not wish any one to speak for me. I would plead so earnestly that she could not refuse me, I am sure?"

"Poor child! What could you say to the queen," asked the Countess, compassionately. "God will direct me what to say," replied Lady Lucy. "Well, my love, thou shalt have the opportunity," replied Lady Clarendon, "but much I fear thy little heart will fail when thou seest the queen face to face."

Impressed with the piety and filial tenderness of her god-daughter, she hastened to rise and dress that she might conduct her into the palace gallery, where the queen usually passed an hour in walking, when she returned from Chapel. The Countess, while waiting for the arrival of her majesty, endeavoured to divert the anxious impatience of her little friend, by pointing out the portraits to her notice, "I know that gentleman well," said Lucy, pointing to a noble full-length portrait of James the Second.

"That is the portrait of Queen Mary's father; and a striking likeness it is," observed the Countess, sighing" But hark! Here comes the queen and her ladies from the chapel. Now, Lucy, is the time. I will step into the recess yonder; but you must remain alone, standing where you are. When her majesty approaches, kneel, and present your father's petition. She who walks before the ladies is the queen. Be of good courage."

Lady Clarendon then made a hasty retreat. Lucy's heart beat violently, when she found herself alone; but her resolution did not fail her. She stood with folded hands, pale, but composed, and motionless as a statue, awaiting the queen's approach; and when her majesty drew near the spot, she advanced a step forward, knelt and presented the petition.

The extreme beauty of the child, her deep mourning, the touching sadness of her look and manner, and above all the streaming tears which bedewed her face, excited the queen's attention and interest. She paused, spoke kindly to her, and took the offered paper; but when she saw the name of Lord Preston, her colour rose, she frowned, cast the petition from her, and would have passed on: but Lucy, who had watched her countenance with an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, losing all awe for royalty in her fears for her father, put forth her hand, and grasping her robe, cried in an imploring tone, "Spare my father! my dear, dear father, royal lady!"

Lucy had meant to say many persuasive things: but in her sore distress she forgot them all, and could only repeat, "Save my father, gracious queen!" till her vehement emotions choked her voice and throwing her arms round the queen's knees, she leaned against her majesty's person, and sobbed aloud.

The intense sorrow of a child is always pecu

liarly touching; but the circumstances under which Lucy appeared were unusually interesting. Queen Mary pitied the distress of her young petitioner; but she considered the death of Lord Preston as a measure of political necessity; she therefore told Lucy mildly, but very firmly, that she could not grant her request.

"But he is good and kind to every one," said Lucy, raising her blue eyes, which were swimming in tears, to the face of the queen. "He may be so to you, child," returned her majesty; "but he has broken the laws of his country, and therefore he must die."

"But you can pardon him," replied Lucy, "and I have learned that God has said Blessed be the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' "It does not become a little girl like you to attempt to instruct me," replied the queen, gravely, "I am acquainted with my duty. It is my place to administer justice impartially; and it is not possible for me to pardon your father, however painful it may be to deny so dutiful a child."

Lucy did not reply-she only raised her eyes with an appealing look to the queen, and then turned them expressively on the portrait of King James. The queen's curiosity was excited by the peculiarly emphatic manner of the child; and she could not refrain from asking why she gazed so earnestly upon that picture. "I was thinking," replied Lady Lucy," how very strange it was, that you should wish to kill my father, only because he loved yours so faithfully."

This wise and artless reproof, from the lips of childish innocence, went to the very heart of the queen. She raised her eyes to that once dear and honoured parent, who, whatever had been his political errors, had ever been the tenderest of fathers to her, and when she thought of him, an exile in a foreign land, relying upon the bounty of strangers for his daily bread, while she was invested with the royal inheritance, of which he had been deprived, the contrast between her conduct as a daughter and that of the pious child before her, smote on her heart, and she burst into tears.

"Rise, dear child," said she-"I cannot make thee an orphan. Thou hast prevailed; thy father shall not die! thy filial love has saved him!"

HOME.

Home can never be transferred-never repeated in the experience of an individual. The place consecrated by paternal love; by the innocence and sports of childhood; by the first acquaintance with nature; by linking the heart to the visible creation, is the only home. There is a living and a breathing spirit infused into nature. Every familiar object has a history; the trees have tongues, and the air is very vocal. There the vesture of decay doth not close in and control the noble function of the soul. It sees, and hears, and enjoys, without the ministry of gross and material substance.-Hope Leslie.

SEATED in front of a splendid specimen of the ingenuity of the Chinese-a gilt and richly inlaid table, covered with a variety of beautiful minerals, shells, and articles of virtu-the author, after having been duly announced by Prudence, her bower-woman, found her cousin Penelope, on his entrance into Miss Mary's brilliant boudoir. Miss Mary was standing, attired for a ride, near her fair kinswoman; and aunt Elinor, the very pearl of the ancient sisterhood of spinsters, entered the apartment before the usual greetings were concluded.

"Your cousin, young ladies," said aunt Elinor, "wishes to look round Miss Mary's boudoir again, to see if anything has escaped his notice."

This was a very mysterious announcement. Miss Mary, after looking earnestly, first at her aunt, and then at Penelope, as if she were desirous of reading an explanation in their eyes, exclaimed: "Escaped his notice, aunt! I cannot conceive what you mean."

"Why, it would seem, child," was the old lady's reply," that the arrangement and decorations of your boudoir, have, in some degree, attracted his admiration; although, for my own part, to speak candidly-and you know I love you equally-Penelope's seems to me by far the more preferable of the two; indeed, with one or two alterations, it might be pronounced perfect." "The fault of Penelope's boudoir," said Miss Mary," is superlative neatness: it looks as prim as herself; casting a glance round it, your first feeling of admiration at its order, is subdued in an instant, by a disagreeable conviction of the pains it must have cost her to drill her little squadron of embellishments so as to produce such an effect. My dear Pen! you may smile, but you are positively as precise as a mathematician; old Euclid seems to have been schoolmaster to the Graces who preside at your toilet. But, would you believe it?" added the lively Miss Mary, turning to the author, "notwith

B

standing she dresses in drab, and looks demure, cousin Penelope, sir, I can assure you, is as brilliant as possible on a birth-day; for when she does condescend to be splendid, I must confess, that few, if any of us, eclipse her."

"Yet allow me to remark," said Penelope, "that the rich and profuse negligence which reigns in your boudoir is the result of thrice the toil that I have employed in decorating mine."

"That is true enough, Penelope," said Miss Mary, while a slight blush tinged her cheek; "but the toil you speak of is not apparent. I look upon my boudoir (pardon the comparison) as upon a fine picture, in which those splendid dashes of light, which charm us; those fine touches of brilliant beauty that seem to fall from a mass of foliage to gild the bold edge of a ruin, and finally descend to illumine and ennoble a daisy, appear to have been the work of a moment;"

"Or, to help you with a more high-flown simile, Miss Mary," said her cousin, who was now turning over a portfolio of engravings," they seem to have been produced by the Muse of Painting, at a single dash of her brush newly dipped in the fountain of light!"

"And yet," continued Miss Mary, smiling at Penelope's simile, " they are, in fact, produced only by labour, both of the mind and the hand. This apparent carelessness of arrangement has, I admit, cost me considerable pains; but every body admires the effect, because the art which produced it is concealed. Here, for instance, in this recess, is a beautiful cabinet picture-a charming landscape, partly veiled, but not hidden, by a common, but, in my opinion, remarkably elegant creeping-plant, which extends far enough round the corner to twine about the carved ebony frame, and festoon the polished surface of an old-fashioned glass, which I prize because it was my grand-mamma's: here, again, you may perceive it wandering downward, and