met his own so fearlessly. She saw her advantage, and seized it. At a glance, her nuns ceased their hymn, and a deep silence succeeded the voice of singing, and the clanging steps of armed men. "Not for pity, nor even for time, cruel and grasping man! do I now speak;" and her clear distinct voice sounded unnaturally loud, from the echoes of the arched roof and hollow tombs. "Turn the golden vessels sacred to thy God to purposes of vain riot and thankless feasting, even as did the Babylonian monarch; -take the fair lands, from whose growth the pilgrim has been fed and the poor relieved — take them, as the unrighteous king of Israel took the vineyard of his neighbour, by force ;— but take also the curse that clings to the ungodly. I curse the father who shall possess the race who are to inherit. Thy young men shall be cut off by the sword; and sickness, worse than an armed man, shall take thy maidens in the bower. In the name of the faith thou hast deserted the God thou hast outraged the curse shall be on thy race, till it be extinguished, even as this light." She dashed down the torch she held, descended from the altar-steps, and left the chapel before any of her opponents were sufficiently recovered from their dismay to stop or molest her passage. All the nuns were either not so fortunate or so resolute. Certain it is, that one of them, and a namesake too, Bertha de Neville, a few weeks after, married this very Sir John Arundel. The legend went on to state, that the nuptial merriment was disturbed by the sudden appearance of a pale spectral figure, who entered, as it contrived to depart from the banquet-hall unobserved, and denounced the most awful curses on bridegroom and bride. A similar appearance was said to have attended the christening of their first child. Years passed away; and the story of the White Prioress was one of those which belong of right to all ancient families. A ghost only pays an old house a proper attention by an occasional visit. And now that Arundel Hall was, for the time at least, deserted—and Emily was the last of her race, just, too, on the eve of her departure for foreign parts, together with ⚫ the apparition seen by the gardener—such an opportunity for aught of superstitious record might never occur again. Traditions, omens, appearances, prophecies, came thick and threefold; till, what with inventions and remem brances, not a grandfather or grandmother, not an uncle or aunt of her race, had ever, by common report, remained quiet in their graves. Early as it was next morning, not a cottagedoor but sent forth its inhabitants to take a farewell look at Miss Emily. Many a little sun-burnt face ran beside the carriage, and many a little hand, which had since sun-rise been busily employed in selecting her favourite flowers, threw nosegays in at the window. Emily eagerly caught them, and her eyes filled with tears, as, at a turning in the road which hid the village, she threw herself back on the seat. How many years of youth and of happiness - how many ties of those small kindnesses, stronger than steel to bind - how many memories of early affection, was she leaving behind! At that moment the beautiful answer of the Shunamite woman seemed to her the very morality of happiness and certainty of content"I dwell among mine own people." How many familiar faces, rejoicing in our joy, sorrowing with our sorrow-how many cares, pleasant from habit-sickness, whose suffering gave a tenderer character to love mirth, the mirth of the cheerful hearth or the daily meal — mirth, like home-made bread, sweeter from its very home liness — the sleep, sound from exercise-the waking buoyant with health and the consciousness of necessary toil-the friends to whom our childhood was a delight, because it recalled their own! "I dwell among mine own people :" a whole life of domestic duty, and the happiness which springs from that fulfilment which is of affection, are in those words. Emily might have revolved all this in her own exaggerated feelings, till she had convinced herself that it was her duty to have staid in her native village and solitary home, but for Lady Mandeville, who, though very willing to make all due allowance for her young companion's depressed spirits during the first ten miles, was not prepared to extend the said allowance to twenty. Our sympathy is never very deep unless founded on our own feelings;- we pity, but do not enter into the grief we have never known and if her Ladyship had expressed her thoughts aloud, they would have taken pretty much this form: "I really cannot see so much to regret in an empty house, a village where there is not a creature to speak to, some old trees, and dirty children." Politeness, however, acts the lady's-maid to our thoughts; and they are washed, dressed, curled, rouged, and perfumed, before they are presented to the public; so that an unexpressed idea might often say to the spoken one, what the African woman said to the European lady, after surveying the sweep of her huge bonnet and the extent of her skirt, "Oh, tell me, white woman, if this is all you!" It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself. We have already recorded Lady Mandeville's thoughts; but she spoke as follows:- "When at Rome, Emily, you must get a set of cameos. You are among the few persons I could permit to wear them. It quite affects my feelings to see them strung round some short, thick throat of an heiress to some alderman who died of apoplexy; clasped round an arm red as if the frost of a whole winter had settled in the elbow; or stuck among bristling curls, as if to caricature, by contrast, the short, silly, simpering face below. 'The intelligible forms of ancient poets'-'the fair humanities of old religion'— the power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, |