hung that morning. One by one they came out upon the scaffold. I looked at every face and I knew them all. The first man was obliged to be supported as he walked on, and notwithstanding his deadly paleness, and his sunken cheeks, which shewed that he had felt and felt most bitterly, he now seemed quite stupified, his whole body shook violently, and they were obliged to hold him and do every thing for him, as he stood like a senseless creature. The clergyman came up to him and spoke in the kindest manner; but the poor creature only stared at him, and then seemed again to forget every thing, and to sink back into a sort of waking dream. That man was my first companion in guilt."

I was horror-struck all over, but I think I was more affected by the sight of another man whom I had also known; he was an infamous wretch; but he came running up the steps till they shook beneath his feet, he stood on the scaffold at his full height, and looked round boldly, and spoke to the mob boldly and loudly. Oh, God! it was all forced; I could see his lips and his temples moving, and his hand twitching, all the time. The last who came out was a young lad, a beautiful lad of seventeen or eighteen, one whom I had known a dear, innocent child; one who had sate upon my knee, and hung with his little arms round my neck, and gone to sleep on my bosom. I can't speak of that boy without weeping," said the man, and his voice was choked with sobs, "he was born in this part of the country,” he continued "poor dear boy; but his own father encouraged him to steal, and there he stood at last looking so young, so very young, to die. His heart was touched, and he prayed aloud with the good clergyman; he came forward and spoke a few words to the mob, he seemed to look at me, and I pulled down my hat over my eyes. I turned, and tried

to get out of the crowd, but it was impossible; I saw their last struggles, then I did escape. I never stopped as I rushed away. I never stopped walking, or running, till I was many miles from London. I left the high road, and crossed over the fields till I was far away from any house; I threw myself down in a ditch at the end of a lone field, and there I lay, I know not how long; I felt as if I could not rise up, I wished to die in that ditch. Oh how I wished myself at the bottom of a deep, deep grave, and the cold heavy earth pressed hard down upon me for ever, where no one might find out even that grave. Once I made up my mind to kill myself, and I clutched hold of my throat, and tried, devil that I was! to strangle myself; then all at once the last words of that poor lad seemed to ring in my ears, and I dropped my hands, and prayed; yes, for the first time I prayed to God to look upon me, and break my hard heart so that it might but be changed. And then I thought I would give myself up to justice for that murder which had not yet been found out; but I hated to think that I should be led forth to be stared at by all the careless mob. I feared man, and the love of life came rushing back with fresh force, as if to mock me by making my own feelings contradict themselves, and I shook all over with cowardly fears, and crept farther in among the bushes and hemlock that grew over the ditch, for I listened till I fancied every little noise the voice of some one in pursuit of me ; then I held in my breath and buried my hot face in the damp earth, my head seemed bursting asunder with scorching heat. At last those fears went away, and I turned round, for it had begun to rain, and the sweet cool drops fell upon my head and soaked through my hair. I opened my shirt collar, and spread open my hands, for every drop seemed to give me fresh life. I went to sleep, with the

rain streaming over my eyelids; but my sleep was heavy and I started up out of a horrid dream. The rain was over, the stars were shining above my head, but I was cold and stiff; and so giddy, that I could hardly get up." Here the poor wretch stopped; Susan reproached herself that she had allowed her interest in his story to make her forget his illness. He, gasped for breath his eyes rolled, and he seemed overtaken by death. Susan called hastily to those below, and he again slowly revived, although he did not appear to notice any one. stole from the room, and immediately returned home; she was now too occupied by all that she had just heard to think of the dreary gloom of the way, or indeed of any external objects. The next day Susan's father returned from London, and he visited the dying man, who survived for a few days longer. Susan Lee blessed God that the murderer was spared even for so short a time, that her father could be with him and pray with him.—

Susan

One day when Mr. Lee had gone up to the chamber of the dying man, two strangers stopped at the door of the hovel, and inquired if JN were at home. His mother went out to them, and said, "I am his mother; he is very, very bad. The old woman only was at home at that time they begged immediately to see her son; they were well dressed, civil-spoken men, and the poor mother tottered up the stairs to inform the clergyman of their arrival. Mr. Lee came out on the stairs when he heard her approaching; and she was about to speak, when the men who were close behind her, bowed respectfully to the clergyman, and pitying the age of the poor woman, gently entreated her to return for a short time to the room below. Mr. Lee, who suspected the truth, joined in the request, andshe, rather unwillingly, obeyed. When

the men had reached the chamber, the clergyman closed the door; they said nothing, but put into his hand a paper; he looked a moment at it, and beheld a warrant for the body of JN on a charge of murder. Thank God, said he, as he pointed to the bed. The men approached the bed; but they found there only a pallid corpse, with eyes yet unclosed. They were humane men; five minutes had scarcely elapsed when they returned to the room below, and one of them said kindly to the old woman, "We had business with your son, but it is too late to settle it now." He put some money into her trembling hand, and they both departed.

The aged parents have not yet heard that their son was a murderer.

MEN OF GENIUS.

A FRAGMENT.

66

Poets in their youth begin in gladness,

"But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." WORDSWORTH,

THERE is no wreck which is more a sight for pity than that human ruin, an unfortunate man; and no human ruin more pitiable than genius wrecked and ruined by the winds and waves of adversity. I have looked on the ivied remains of some ancient and decayed castle, once a young bulwark and strong hold for war, and have lamented its pride made humble, its strength laid prostrate, or tottering ere it fall, like an aged man's-its halls, where thronged the mailed man of war and chivalry, the maidens of peace and daughters of beauty, now the dull home of the

nightly bat, and toad, and thing obscene, where, for the music and roundelay of the hoary minstrel,

"The moping owl doth to the moon complain
Of such as wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign."

I have looked, with such eyes as sorrow sometimes looks through, at that no less noble wreck, that floating castle of the sea, a dismantled and broken-up vessel of war; lying with bare ribs, and battered hulk, and broken timbers, on the ignoble bank of a narrow tributary river to its proud parent the sea, who bore it on her bosom as a mother bears her child,-where it was now left by the forsaking tides like a leviathan of the waters, deserted on a shore too shallow for its mighty bulk to float over; -and bave thought of its century of pride, when it was a thing of motion, and almost a creature of life,—when its corpulent sails made the proud waves break before its course, as a plough breaks up the stubborn earth with its forceful share;—and have heard with my imagination the surly thunders of its guns, and seen the deadly destructiveness of its thunder-bolts, crushing its enemies as with the hand of death. I have looked with mental seriousness at these mighty things no longer mighty, but none of them can inspire man with that awe and regret which the sight of human intellect in its decay, or worse, in its neglect, strikes on the heart, and draws from the eyes. That a mind which might have enlightened its country, and, perhaps, the world, should have been hidden by the dark clouds of obscurity, till its own inward light, "self-fed and self-consumed," has grown dim, and "pales its ineffectual fire," throwing out only those faint, flickering, intermittent flashes which a dying taper flings momentarily from its socket ;-that a voice, which might, but for these neglects, have been heard