morning in passing through the village church-yard, she stopped in the middle of it; and after pausing a few minutes, and looking earnestly at a particular spot, she said in a low, yet calm voice, 'Tell my mother, if I die in this place, there is the spot in which I will be buried!' I endeavoured to smile; but I was so convulsed, that I was necessitated to walk on, without saying a word. Julia in a few moments herself broke the silence: a load seemed suddenly to be removed from her heart; and she continued to address me for some time with a calm and uninterrupted eloquence, almost as if her spirit had been already disembodied from all earthly impediments; and human sorrows, except for those she left behind, had already ceased to trouble her. I was awe-struck, and heard her without the power of reply; sometimes trembling; sometimes in tears; and sometimes lifted into exalted delight, as if aërial music was breathing in my ear. She seemed to look with the kindest pity on my agitation; and once she took my hand, and pressing it, said, 'Be calm: all will be over soon; and I shall ascend, where I will intercede for you; and you shall yet be happy!'

"She leant on my arm, as we returned to the house, and I thought she supported herself with difficulty: but her cheerfulness and calmness did not leave her. For myself, I sat as in a trance almost the whole remainder of the day. When I could at all recover myself, to observe what was passing round me, I perceived in Julia's eyes a dazzling brightness, from

which I turned with the most frightened and insupportable admiration. Her sister sat down to the piano-forte to terminate conversations, with which all were too much affected; and Julia, unlike herself, begged she would accompany her in a pathetic song, which I had never before heard her sing. Her voice that evening was inspired with new modulations; and her mother and sister were, like me, astonished and overcome with its soft and pathetic clearness. The sounds yet vibrate on my ear; and will never leave me, while my memory lasts.

"I passed the night in agitated slumbers, which represented to me all that occurred in the day, heightened by a thousand wild combinations. In the morning I found Julia at the breakfast table; but she looked pale, and exhausted. I thought a tear stood in her eye, as I entered; and she addressed me in a tone alarmingly tremulous. A short time, however, recovered her; and her cheerfulness returned. Her eyes again shot unusual brilliance; and an exquisite colour tinged her cheeks. Her sister again resorted to music, to relieve her from the fatigue of conversation; and I was watching her with her eyes lifted upward, as if intensely pleased with a favourite composition, when I observed a sudden and tremendous pallidness overspread her face: she sunk back with a gentle convulsion; and before I could spring to her chair, she had breathed her last.

"I cannot describe the remainder of that aweful and afflicting day. All I can remember is, a

burst of shrieks; and that I myself was torn by the attendants from her arms, while uttering screams of incoherent distraction. During the afflicting interval of four succeeding months all is a blank to me; or worse than a blank; an horrible chaos of conflicting images of pain, and sorrow, and rage.

"My bodily strength has returned. If it were not impious, I had almost said, I wish it had not returned! The fever of my brain has subsided; and my reason has resumed its power: and I have learned the explanation of a mystery; which, perhaps, I had better never have known. Julia Bruce was the daughter of the unhappy man, whom in my own defence I had killed in a duel. Mrs. Bruce had discovered it, before the renewal of my acquaintance with her, and this was the secret obstacle to my union with Julia, who yet could not conquer her attachment to me.

"The accumulation of afflictions soon destroyed the health, already delicate and declining, of Mrs. Bruce; and grief has hung heavy on her surviving relatives.

"As to myself, I am a wanderer, tired of the world; and always jealous that I am the mark of scorn, and reprobation. Change of place; activity of body; ardent occupations of mind, drive off for short intervals my horrible and maddening recollections: but in the hour of stillness and solitude, they often return with double force. Then no language can describe the terrors that haunt my fancy; and the pangs that convulse my body! My hard-hearted and

malignant neighbours call me mad: if madness arise from imaginary woes, I am not mad; for mine are real!

“Julia's grave was made in the spot in which she desired to be buried: and I have built a little cottage on the cliff, not far from the church-yard; and there spend a portion of every season of the year, to watch over her relics. As I sit upon the grave, I love to hear the sea beat against the shore, and retire again with a loud and hollow murmur. Sometimes I soothe my tumultuous feelings, by invoking her spirit as I stand as I stand upon the brink of the cliff by twilight, while the blasts that cross the ocean cover me with the spray of the waves.

"I have made an acquaintance with the fishermen of this place; and on any very perilous scheme when a storm is expected, or the nights are dark, I have often bribed them to suffer me to partake of the expedition: and often have we been on the point of going down, when some miraculous intervention has saved us. These toils generally calm the feverish restlessness of my body; and I can enjoy my cottage, when I return to it, till leisure and vacancy again bring on my mental and bodily diseases.

"I wished once to be a great poet; and at another time a leading statesman. The poetical ambition lasted longest. But its ardours wore me out; my temperament was already too warm; and I could not bear what inflamed it still more. According to the principles of true poetry, which I held the ma

jority of candidates for its honours had mistaken the right path; and were by far too artificial and cold for me. It was not difficult to put forth such technical compositions, as many of them had produced, without much waste of passion and feeling; and I might have amused myself in this way, without at all exhausting the strength which was already consuming itself by the violence of its operations. But though real poetry is the most remote from trifling, these are trifles which have not even the recommendation of pleasure.

"But if I have written no poetry worthy of the world, I have decked the grave of Julia with offerings almost as numerous as those of Petrarch to his Mistress. They are so wild, and my sorrows have so far exceeded those of common lovers, that the public eye is too profane for what will be deemed so romantic. I am sure that I have conversed with the spirit of Julia since her departure; and often it glides along the surface of the waves, as I sit looking on the ocean from the windows of my cottage by moonlight.

"There have been periods of my diversified life, when I have conversed intimately with poets, and literati. The gifts of the Muse are dangerous to the possessor: if kept in constant play, they will unfit him for the business of the world; if regulated, and controuled, they will probably be blighted. Whenever I came from any long intimate intercourse with poetry, I found my aptitude for success in political ambition utterly