Lady Martha was alarmed. She now, for the first time, noticed the wild and pallid looks of her nephew. "Gracious Heaven!" she exclaimed, "what is the matter?"

The dreadful explanation Lord Mortimer now found himself under a necessity of giving; the shame of acknowledging he was so deceived, the agony he suffered from that deception, joined to the excessive agitation and fatigue he had suffered the preceding night, and the present day, so powerfully assailed him at this moment, that his senses suddenly gave way, and he actually fainted on the floor.

What a sight for the tender Lady Martha! She saw something dreadful had happened, and what this was Lord Mortimer, as soon as he recovered, informed her.

He then retired to his chamber. He could neither converse nor bear to be conversed with. His fondest hopes were blasted, nor could he forego the sad indulgence of mourning over them in solitude. He felt almost convinced that the hold Amanda had on his affections could not be withdrawn; he had considered her as scarcely less than his wife, and had she been really such, her present conduct could not have given him more anguish. Had she been snatched from him by the hand of death, had she been wedded to a worthy character, he could have summoned fortitude to his aid; but to find her the prey of a villain was a shock too horrible to bear, at least for a long period, with patience.

THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL.

[THOMAS CAMPBELL: A Scotch poet and author; born July 27, 1777, in Glasgow, where he attended the university, and made great local fame by his translations of Greek poetry and drama. During his travels on the Continent (1800-1811) he was an eyewitness of the battle of Hohenlinden. He settled in England; edited the New Monthly Magazine (1820-1830); was lord rector of Glasgow University (1827-1829); died at Boulogne, June 15, 1844, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Campbell's chief poems are: "The Pleasures of Hope" (1799), "Gertrude of Wyoming, ," "The Exile of Erin," "Ye Mariners of England," "Lochiel's Warning," "Hohenlinden," "O'Connor's Child," "The Battle of the Baltic," "The Soldier's Dream,” “Lord Ullin's Daughter."] AT SUMMER eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky?

Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Thus, with delight, we linger to survey
The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been,
And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.
What potent spirit guides the raptured eye
To pierce the shades of dim futurity?

Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power,
The pledge of Joy's anticipated hour?

Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man
Her dim horizon bounded to a span;

Or, if she hold an image to the view,

'Tis Nature pictured too severely true.

With thee, sweet HOPE! resides the heavenly light,
That pours remotest rapture on the sight:
Thine is the charm of life's bewildered way,
That calls each slumbering passion into play.
Waked by thy touch, I see the sister band,
On tiptoe watching, start at thy command,
And fly where'er thy mandate bids them steer,
To Pleasure's path, or Glory's bright career.
Primeval HOPE, the Aönian Muses say,
When Man and Nature mourned their first decay;
When every form of death, and every woe,
Shot from malignant stars to earth below;
When Murder bared her arm, and rampant War
Yoked the red dragons of her iron car;
When Peace and Mercy, banished from the plain,
Sprung on the viewless winds to Heaven again;
All, all forsook the friendless, guilty mind,
But HOPE, the charmer, lingered still behind.

Thus, while Elijah's burning wheels prepare
From Carmel's heights to sweep the fields of air,
The prophet's mantle, ere his flight began,
Dropt on the world a sacred gift to man.

Auspicious HOPE! in thy sweet garden grow
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe;
Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour,
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower;
There, as the wild bee murmurs on the wing,

What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring!
What viewless forms th' Æolian organ play,

And sweep the furrowed lines of anxious thought away.
Angel of life! thy glittering wings explore
Earth's loneliest bounds, and Ocean's wildest shore.
Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields

His bark careering o'er unfathomed fields;
Now on Atlantic waves he rides afar,

Where Andes, giant of the western star,

With meteor standard to the winds unfurled,

Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world!

Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles,
On Behring's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles:
Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow,
From wastes that slumber in eternal snow;
And waft, across the waves' tumultuous roar,
The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore.

Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm,
Sad are the woes that wreck thy manly form!
Rocks, waves, and winds, the shattered bark delay;
Thy heart is sad, thy home is far away.

But HOPE can here her moonlight vigils keep,
And sing to charm the spirit of the deep:
Swift as yon streamer lights the starry pole,
Her visions warm the watchman's pensive soul;
His native hills that rise in happier climes,
The grot that heard his song of other times,
His cottage home, his bark of slender sail,
His glassy lake, and broomwood-blossomed vale,
Rush on his thought; he sweeps before the wind,
Treads the loved shore he sighed to leave behind;
Meets at each step a friend's familiar face,
And flies at last to Helen's long embrace;
Wipes from her cheek the rapture-speaking tear!
And clasps, with many a sigh, his children dear!
While, long neglected, but at length caressed,
His faithful dog salutes the smiling guest,
Points to the master's eyes (where'er they roam)
His wistful face, and whines a welcome home.

Friend of the brave! in peril's darkest hour,
Intrepid Virtue looks to thee for power;
To thee the heart its trembling homage yields,
On stormy floods, and carnage-covered fields,
When front to front the bannered hosts combine,
Halt ere they close, and form the dreadful line.

When all is still on Death's devoted soil,
The march-worn soldier mingles for the toil!
As rings his glittering tube, he lifts on high
The dauntless brow, and spirit-speaking eye,
Hails in his heart the triumph yet to come,
And hears thy stormy music in the drum!

And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore
The hardy Byron to his native shore-

In horrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep
Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep,
'Twas his to mourn Misfortune's rudest shock,
Scourged by the winds, and cradled on the rock,
To wake each joyless morn and search again
The famished haunts of solitary men;

Whose race, unyielding as their native storm,
Know not a trace of Nature but the form;
Yet, at thy call, the hardy tar pursued,
Pale, but intrepid, sad, but unsubdued,
Pierced the deep woods, and, hailing from afar
The moon's pale planet and the northern star,
Paused at each dreary cry, unheard before,
Hyenas in the wild, and mermaids on the shore;
Till, led by thee o'er many a cliff sublime,
He found a warmer world, a milder clime,
A home to rest, a shelter to defend,

Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend!

Where is the troubled heart consigned to share
Tumultuous toils, or solitary care,
Unblest by visionary thoughts that stray
To count the joys of Fortune's better day!
Lo, nature, life, and liberty relume
The dim-eyed tenant of the dungeon gloom,
A long-lost friend, or hapless child restored,
Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board;
Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow,
And virtue triumphs o'er remembered woe.

Chide not his peace, proud Reason! nor destroy
The shadowy forms of uncreated joy,
That urge the lingering tide of life, and pour
Spontaneous slumber on his midnight hour.

Hark! the wild maniac sings, to chide the gale
That wafts so slow her lover's distant sail;

She, sad spectatress, on the wintry shore,

Watched the rude surge his shroudless corse that bore,

Knew the pale form, and, shrieking in amaze,

Clasped her cold hands, and fixed her maddening gaze: Poor widowed wretch! 'twas there she wept in vain, Till memory fled her agonizing brain;

But Mercy gave, to charm the sense of woe,
Ideal peace, that Truth could ne'er bestow;
Warm on her heart the joys of Fancy beam,
And aimless HOPE delights her darkest dream.

Oft when yon moon has climbed the midnight sky, And the lone sea bird wakes its wildest cry,

Piled on the steep, her blazing fagots burn

To hail the bark that never can return;

And still she waits, but scarce forbears to weep

That constant love can linger on the deep.

And, mark the wretch, whose wanderings never knew
The world's regard, that soothes, though half untrue;
Whose erring heart the lash of sorrow bore,
But found not pity when it erred no more.
Yon friendless man, at whose dejected eye
Th' unfeeling proud one looks—and passes by,
Condemned on Penury's barren path to roam,
Scorned by the world, and left without a home
Even he, at evening, should he chance to stray
Down by the hamlet's hawthorn-scented way,
Where, round the cot's romantic glade, are seen
The blossomed bean field, and the sloping green,
Leans o'er its humble gate, and thinks the while
Oh! that for me some home like this would smile,
Some hamlet shade, to yield my sickly form
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm!
There should my hand no stinted boon assign
To wretched hearts with sorrow such as mine!
That generous wish can soothe unpitied care,
And HOPE half mingles with the poor man's prayer.
HOPE! when I mourn, with sympathizing mind,

The wrongs of fate, the woes of human kind,
Thy blissful omens bid my spirit see
The boundless fields of rapture yet to be;
I watch the wheels of Nature's mazy plan,
And learn the future by the past of man.

-

Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime;
Thy handmaid arts shall every wild explore,
Trace every wave, and culture every shore.
On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along,