"Her son! Your words have pierced my heart!" he said. "Oh, if he but survives the traitor's sword

"Look there, my lord!"

"The mother and her son! Both dead? How cursed I am!"

"No, no, my lady lives!"

Their words seemed to pierce the numbed senses of the distracted mother. She struggled to her feet and tossed her arms wildly in the air, exclaiming,

"My son! my son! my beautiful and brave! How proud I was of you and of your valor! Now all my hopes, with you, are dead. A little while I was a wife! a mother not so long! What am I now? What shall I be? My son, my husband, call me! Yes, I hear, I come!"

Springing to her feet, she ran distractedly from the spot. Anna followed her, at Lord Randolph's request. While the nobleman stood there, torn with sad emotions, old Norval entered, and seeing what had happened, burst into a storm of grief, flinging himself madly on the ground beside the dead body of him whom he had cherished as a son. "My lord! my lord!" cried Anna, who now returned, her eyes distended with mortal fright.

Speak: what new horror! Matilda!"

"Is no more. She flew like lightning up yon rocky hill, and from its precipice leaped headlong down, to dreadful death!"

"Wretch that I am, 'twas I that drove her

to it!" exclaimed the half-maddened nobleman. "Would that I had died too! Mother and son, both slain by that base villain !-by me rather; for 'twas my jealousy that wrought their death! What is there left for me, but in the battle's van to seek release from life's sad bonds? I go; the foe that checks me there must threaten worse than death!"

And with slow steps and bent head the sad old nobleman withdrew from that scene of death, feeling that life for him had ceased, and that he who should first plunge a sword into his breast would be his dearest friend.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.

BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

[OF the literary skill of Oliver Goldsmith we have no occasion to speak. Whatever he touched he adorned; and his writings, alike in poetry, the drama, fiction, essay, and other fields of literature, are among the choicest legacies of thought from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth.

This distinguished author was born at Pallas, in Longford, Ireland, in 1728, obtained his education at Trinity College, Dublin, and passed an adventurous life, in which he showed a much better faculty in getting rid of money than in getting it. After trying his hand at almost every varity of literary production, and always with success from a literary point of view, he ventured into the field of the drama; his first play, "The Good-Natured Man," being produced in 1768, with some success. In 1773, a year only before his death, appeared his great dramatic triumph, "She Stoops to Conquer," which still remains one of the most popular of English comedies. As a man, Goldsmith was thoughtless and improvident, and spent the most of his life in pecuniary diffi

culties; but he was warm-hearted and generous, and full of love and charity for his fellow-beings. As a writer, humor and pathos are deftly mingled in his style, which has a native charm which few writers have equalled, and which will make him a favorite while English literature survives.]

In a roomy hill-side mansion of Southern England, at a considerable distance from the metropolis, dwelt a genial but old-fashioned country squire named Hardcastle, with a family consisting of his wife, a woman largely made up of whims and follies; his daughter Kate, a handsome and sensible young lady; his wife's ward Miss Neville, Kate's bosom friend; and his step-son, Tony Lumpkin, his mother's darling, but an unmanageable cub, who spent his days in low company at roadside inns. As for the young ladies, Mr. Hardcastle and his wife had laid plans for their future happiness, or misery, as it might prove. The fortune of Miss Neville consisted principally of jewels, which had been left in trust to Mrs. Hardcastle, who had firmly made up her mind to keep them in the family. With this intent she had arranged in her own fancy a match between her lady ward and her son Tony. The courting, however, was principally done by the mother, her undutiful son having little fancy for being tied for life to a fine lady. Miss Neville, for purposes of her own, affected to favor the suit. She was really in love with a young gentleman of very

different calibre from Tony, but felt it necessary to cajole the old lady, until she could get her jewels into her own possession.

While Mrs. Hardcastle was thus arranging a marriage for the ward, Mr. Hardcastle was doing the same thing for the daughter. He had selected a suitor much more likely to prove agreeable to the young lady,-Charles Marlow, the son of his old friend, Sir Charles Marlow,-a handsome and cultivated young gentleman, but noted for his exceeding bashfulness with ladies of reputation, though he was credited with assurance enough with women of a lower grade in society. He was now on his way to Mr. Hardcastle's house, in company with his intimate friend, Mr. Hastings, Miss Neville's lover, who had joined him with the warm desire to see his lady love.

Kate Hardcastle had made the following compact with her father. A year or two's residence in London had filled her head with fashionable ideas, and she was much fonder of "gauze and French frippery" than her old-fashioned parent approved of. She had therefore agreed that, if he would let her dress to please herself in the morning, she would wear a housewife's dress to please him in the evening, and change her fashionable gayety at the same time for the plainest country manners, if he desired. This compact was destined to give rise to the strangest series of misunderstandings, and produce results of which the contracting parties never dreamed.