suming the folds of a Mahratta's turban in tranquillity, when I interrupted him with

Miss Bertram, sir?

How old is

How should I know, Miss?-about your own age, I suppose.'

Older, I should think, sir. You are always telling me how much more decorously she goes through all the honours of the tea table-Lord, papa, what if you should give her a right to preside once and for ever!'

• Julia, my dear, you are either a fool outright, or you are more disposed to make mischief than I have yet believed you.

Oh, my dear sir! put your best construction upon it-I would not be thought a fool for all the world.'

Then why do you talk like one?'

Lord, sir, I am sure there is nothing so foolish in what I said just now-every body knows you are a very handsome man,' (a smile was just visible)

that is, for your time of life,' (the dawn was overcast) which is far from being advanced, and I am sure I don't know why you should not please yourself if you have a mind-I am sensible I am but a thoughtiess girl, and if a graver companion could render you more happy'

"There was a mixture of displeasure and grave affection in the manner in which my father took my hand, that was a severe reproof to me for trifling with his feelings. Julia,' he said, 'I bear with much of your petulance, because I think I have in some degree deserved it by neglecting to superin

VOL. I.

24.

tend your education sufficiently closely. Yet I would not have you give it the rein upon a subject so delicate. If you do not respect the feelings of your surviving parent towards the memory of her whom you have lost, attend at least to the sacred claims of misfortune; and observe, that the slightest hint of such a jest reaching Miss Bertram's ears, would at once induce her to renounce her present asylum, and go forth, without a protector, into a world she has already felt so unfriendly.'

"What could I say to this, Matilda ?-I only cried heartily, begged pardon, and promised to be a good girl in future. And so here am I neutralized again; for I cannot, in honour, or common good nature, teaze poor Lucy by interfering with Hazlewood, although she has so little confidence in me; and neither can I, after this grave appeal, venture again upon such delicate ground with papa. So I burn little rolls of paper, and sketch Turks' heads upon visiting cards with the blackened end-I as sure you I succeeded in making a superb HyderAlly last night-and I jingle on my unfortunate harpsichord, and begin at the end of a grave book and read it backward.-After all I begin to be very much vexed about Brown's silence. Had he been obliged to leave the country, I am sure he would at least have written to me-Can it be possible that my father can have intercepted his letters? But no

that is contrary to all his principles-I don't think he would open a letter addressed to me tonight, to prevent my jumping out of window tomorrow-What an expression I have suffered to

escape my pen! I should be ashamed of it, even to you, Matilda, and used in jest. But I need not take much merit for acting as I ought to do—This same Mr. Vanbeest Brown is by no means so very ardent a lover as to hurry the object of his attachment into such inconsiderate steps. He gives one full time to reflect, that must be admitted. However, I will not blame him unheard, nor permit myself to doubt the manly firmness of a character which I have so often extolled to you. Were he capable of doubt, of fear, of the shadow of change, I should have little to regret.

"And why, you will say, when I expect such steady and unalterable constancy from a lover, why should I be anxious about what Hazlewood does, or to whom he offers his attentions?—I ask myself the question a hundred times a-day, and it only receives the very silly answer, that one does not like to be neglected, though one would not encourage a serious infidelity.

F

"I write all these trifles, because you say that they amuse you, and yet I wonder how they should. I remember in our stolen voyages to the world of fiction, you always admired the grand and the romantic-tales of knights, dwarfs, giants, and distressed damsels, soothsayers, visions, beckoning ghosts, and bloody hands,-whereas I was partial to the involved intrigues of private life, or at farthest, to so much only of the supernatural as is conferred by the agency of an eastern genie or a beneficent fairy. You would have loved to shape your course of life over the broad ocean with its dead

calms and howling tempests, its tornadoes, and its billows mountain high,-whereas I should like to trim my little pinnace to a brisk breeze in some inland lake or tranquil bay, where there was just difficulty of navigation sufficient to give interest and to require skill, without any great degree of danger. So that, upon the whole, Matilda, I think you should have had my father, with his pride of arms, and of ancestry, his chivalrous point of honour, his high tal⚫ents, and his abstruse and mystic studies; you should have had Lucy Bertram too for your friend, whose fathers, with names which alike defy memory and orthography, ruled ever this romantic.country, and whose birth took place, as I have been indistinctly informed, under circumstances of deep and peculiar interest-You should have had, too, our residence surrounded by mountains, and our lonely walks to haunted ruins And I should have had, in exchange, the lawns and shrubs, and green-houses, and conservatories of Pine-park, with your good quiet indulgent aunt, her chapel in the morning, her nap after dinner, her hand at whist in the evening, not forgetting her fat coach-horses and fatter coachmen. Take notice, however, that Brown is not included in this proposed barter of minehis good humour, lively conversation, and open gallantry, suit my plan of life, as well as his athletic form, handsome features, and high spirit, would accord with a character of chivalry.

cannot change altogether out and out, must e'en abide as we are.”

So as we

I think we

CHAPTER XXXI.

I renounce your defiance; if you parly so roughly I'll barri. cado my gates against you-Do you see yon bay window? Storm,-I care not, serving the good Duke of Norfolk.

Merry Devil of Edmonton.

Julia Mannering to Matilda Marchmont. "I RISE from a sick bed, my dearest Matilda, to communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and the extraordnary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! And to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to bend over the brink of a precipice holding by the frail tenure of a half-rooted shrub, or to admire the same precipice in the landscape of Salvator. But I will not anticipate my narrative.

"The first part of my story is frightful enough, though it had nothing to interest my feelings.You must know that this country is particularly favourable to the commerce of a set of desperate men from the Isle of Man, which is nearly opposite. These smugglers are numerous, resolute, and formidable, and have at different times become the dread of the neighbourhood, when any one has interfered with their contraband trade. The local magistrates, from timidity or worse motives, are become shy of acting against them, and impunity has rendered them equally daring and desperate.—