almost irresistible, and he felt them to be so; the struggle was violent: but pride, a new sensation, at last came to his aid. Why will you not," he said, "be guided by my advice? Have I not in everything sought your welfare? and you blame me because I seek to make our home a more wealthy one! Bear this absence of a few months with patience, and then I will come and bring you to our home." She rose, and spoke not another word of complaint or sorrow; and soon after he parted from her kindly as ever, and sought his own dwelling on the hill. On the following day she left her home, and went to the distant town. And now the curate knew no rest night or day. He was not long in deciding in what adventure to place his money; and yet the moments of suspense ere he came to that decision were beautiful. He traversed the whole neighbourhood every day with rapid and eager steps, canvassed with his own eyes the bearings and value of every enterprise. But how different were his air and tone! No longer bending and dependent, but firm, elevated, and clear. And many attentions and civilities were paid him; for, as the precise amount of the bequest was not known, people began to imagine it much greater than it was. At last he fixed upon a very flourishing, or rather promising, copper mine, that had not been discovered more than twelve months; and here he embarked the whole of his property. The moment he had done this, a devouring thirst and gnawing anxiety seized on his soul: the traveller, dying in the desert, does not long more intensely for the cooling water, than the curate did for the gains that were so soon to flow from his adventure. Religion; the sermons and prayers of the Sabbath; the visiting of the sick; the comforting of the dying-all these were light as the autumn leaf, compared to the beloved, the glowing, the golden speculation. He was thin before, but now he wasted to a shadow. Murmurings began to rise in the parish at his neglect and insensibility; several people, who lived at the distance of many miles, in their last moments had longed for the sacrament, and seemed to linger on life's fading shore, unwilling to leave it without that consolation: yet it never came. But the misery or happiness of others was now become quite indifferent to him: he rose with the earliest light, quitted the house before either of its inmates was stirring, and repaired, over the moor, to the scene of the distant mine. The living object of his attachment he visited once or twice in the distant town, and told her with a sparkling eye of his ardent hopes; but no lover ever hung with more fondness over the untimely grave of his mistress than the curate did, morn and eve, over the black heaps that rose at his feet, in which he felt his own fate involved. He sat beside them, took the moist stones in his hand; minutely, darkly, distinctly traced were the veins of the rich mineral; and then he retraced the path to his dwelling, and sat down silent and abstracted. The puny income, that had so long been his sole resource, he now thought of with perfect contempt. "Ten pounds a quarter!—he had not the slightest intention of retaining his cure beyond the time when the returns of the mine began to pour in." And these returns really seemed, for a short time, about to realize his most sanguine anticipations: a small vein of valuable copper was cut into; the shares rose greatly in price; and his own, for which he had given nearly a thousand pounds, might now be sold for fifteen hundred. A few months before the receipt of this sum would have been felt to be the greatest blessing that ever fell to man; but now the prospect of the future was so glorious, that he received the tempting offer with no small scorn, observing, "that he should be a fool to part with what would soon gain him many thousands." Could a man whose every thought and imagination were thus deliciously occupied, attend earnestly to the poor, cold, rugged realities that called every moment for his exertions? It is a painful and a bitter thing, however, when our enjoyments depend wholly on the uncertain chances of each coming day and hour: the reports from the mine beneath were not always favourable; there were some moments when the vein of copper began to be less productive, at others a tofal extinction was threatened. The curate gazed on the countenances of the miners, just ascended from the scene of toil, with a lynx and scrutinizing eye, that said, ere the tone could utter, "Oh say that my hopes still live!" But death came at last, and the curate felt the barbed arrow in his soul. Not the extinction of being-that, perhaps, had been mercy; but the withering for ever of every happy and every golden hope. After a few weeks of thrilling suspense and joy the vein of ore failed utterly: other parts of the ground were explored, and excavations made in every direction, but all in vain; and in a few months the whole speculation fell through. The legacy was entirely gone, and not the slightest addition had been made to the real comforts and enjoyments of the possessors. The miserable man now allowed the truth of this, and the words of his mother fell awfully on his ear: they were fierce, unsparing, and ceaseless; and he listened to them in silence, but not in calmness. There was a voice that would have brought comfort, that he loved to hear; but it was afar, and he had long been a stranger to its sweet tones; for, during the fever of speculation, he had neglected the orphan girl, and had lately heard that she had gone to a more distant residence. Nearly twelve months passed away: the curate's mind, that had borne calmly the long pressure of real poverty, could not support the fearful blow that cut off his expectations: a deep despondency grew on his spirits daily, and the care of his parish seemed to be a heavy burden. It was strange, but his thoughts still hovered around the scene of his ruin. One evening he had wandered thither, and was seated on one of the scattered heaps that attested with what avidity riches had been sought: it was an evening in autumn, and the rays of the sun, setting in the sea, that was full in view, were thrown on the waste spot. The stones, containing a portion of the rich mineral, gleamed with a golden hue, as the fading beams rested on them, as if in mockery of the hopes of the wretched man who sat there. But he needed no illusions of fancy to swell the sum of real anguish: thought after thought coursed wildly through his brain, and in them were despair, remorse, and blasted love. Raising his eyes from the barren soil, he saw a female advancing slowly over the moor, as if her steps were turned to the neighbouring village. The path led through the ruined mine, and as the stranger drew near to the despairing curate she paused, and the eyes of each were fastened intensely on the other. It was Mary, the object of his affection, of whom he had often thought with self-reproach, and a longing desire to see her again. And now she stood before him. He who has bent beneath misery and desertion can tell how welcome are the returning glance and form of those who love us. The curate clasped his hands fervently, and a deep flush came to his wasted features. Mary," he said, "you are come to comfort me: I thought you would not forget or forsake me." The girl stood silent for a few moments; but it was not the silence of a full heart. She was deeply changed: the look of simplicity and candour had given place to one of haughtiness; the spirit, too, it was evident, had been affected by the scenes of dissipation and splendour in which she had resided. "James," she said, "I am come, but not to be your wife-that hour is past; and as to forsaken, you never came to see me for many months, till I thought you had forgot me." He spoke in sincere and glowing words of his bright and prolonged hopes, and how they had wholly occupied his mind; and of former moments of her destitution, and his fidelity. Still she listened coldly: he knelt before her, and gazed on her beauty, in agony at the conviction that it never could be his; and then he told of the hour of her father's death, and how, in that last moment, she had been given to his care. She turned pale, and seemed to be struggling with remembrances. "Mr. Collins," she said at last, "it is of no use to talk of this now; I cannot feel as I did then: remember the time when I kneeled before you, and prayed with tears that I might not leave my home, and that you would prefer my love to the love of gold. You would not, and now it is gone from you: not because of the ruin you have met with, but in the places where I have dwelt, other feelings, and prouder ones, have been nurtured. Farewell, my kind and generous protector, may every blessing attend you! but-but I never can be your wife." She turned from the spot with a quickened step: he gazed after her retreating figure as long as it remained in sight, and then he turned to the solitude of his own heart. "Is that my Mary?" he said, with a miserable smile, "the dear devoted girl that I watched over when her father died? Surely she was to be my wife, my beautiful wife! and was to comfort me in my misery." He would have sat down once more on the glittering pile beside him; but a sudden thought crossed his brain, and he started from the spot as if a serpent had stung him: he clenched his hand fiercely, and gnashed his teeth:-“ There, there," he said, wildly, "was my ruin; my love, my fortune, all my joy on earth, and hope in heaven, were sold for these accursed heaps. I sold my bride, with all her tenderness and beauty, for these detested stonesha! ha!-that now mock me like so many fiends." The night had set in darkly ere he went to his wretched home; his spirit was utterly crushed, and his frame soon sank also. Before long he was unable, as well as unfit, to attend to his ministerial duties; and his numerous flock saw with pity that their pastor's career, it was probable, would soon draw to a close. Six months had not passed when the girl he loved, and whose attachment was the last silver cord to which he had clung, was married to a young farmer in the neighbourhood. Even had she been faithful, what prospect remained to the curate of supporting a wife on the miserable pittance to which the loss of his bequest reduced him? But his feelings were embittered by the knowledge that she had brought a small portion to her husband, which was bequeathed to her by the will of the lady whom she had served. Another curate also was found to supply the wide parish of Calartha; but the people, in kindness, continued to allow their former minister his poor salary, from the conviction, perhaps, that he would soon cease to be a burden to them. He still loved, when his failing strength permitted, to walk out into the wild paths that had so long been familiar to him; and his feet, it was observed, though they sometimes fainted by the way, seemed to wander mechanically to the scene of his dazzling hopes and of his ruin; and there he would stay for hours, grasping, at times with a trembling hand, some stray stones, richly veined with the mineral, while his hollow eye and attenuated form showed that poverty and wealth would soon be alike indifferent to him. One day he had been absent from his home much longer than usual, and his mother and sister went forth to trace his steps to the well-known scene, and found him reclined peacefully there; but the flitting remains of strength had been exhausted beneath the heat of the day. They called on his name, and bade him come to his home: but he heard them no more; for life was extinct, and it seemed, from the expression of his features, that he had welcomed death. I DO CONFESS THOU ART SAE FAIR. BY ROBERT BURNS. I do confess thou art sae fair, I wad been o'er the lugs in love, Had I not found the slightest prayer That lips could speak thy heart could move. I do confess thee sweet, but find Thou art sae thriftless o' thy sweets, Thy favours are the silly wind, That kisses ilka thing it meets. See yonder rose-bud, rich in dew, Amang its native briers sae coy: How sune it tines its scent and hue, When pu'd and worn a common toy! Sic fate, ere lang, shall thee betide, Though thou may gaily bloom awhile; Yet soon thou shalt be thrown aside, Like any common weed and vile. INFANTINE INQUIRIES. BY JAMES PENNYCOOK BROWN. "Tell me, O mother! when I grow old, "He said-but I knew not what he meant That his aged heart with sorrow was rent. "He spoke of a home where, in childhood's glee, He chased from the wild flowers the singing bee; And followed afar, with a heart as light As its sparkling wings, the butterfly's flight; Of the sun's fair light, by his own blue streams;-- "Calm thy young thoughts, my own fair child! It was there that the old man longed to be! "For he knew that those with whom he had played, "Though ours be a pillared and lofty home, And leave us with woe, in the world's bleak wild! Poetical Bphemera. THE STOLEN SHEEP. BY JOHN BANIM. The Irish plague, called typhus fever, raged in its terrors. In almost every third cabin there was a corpse daily. In every one, without an exception, there was what had made the corpse-hunger. It need not be added that there was poverty too. The poor could not bury their dead. From mixed motives of self-protection, terror, and benevolence, those in easier circumstances exerted themselves to administer relief in different ways. Money was subscribed-(then came England's munificent donation-God prosper her for it!)wholesome food, or food as wholesome as a bad season permitted, was provided; and men of respectability, bracing their minds to avert the danger that threatened themselves, by boldly facing it, entered the infected house, where death reigned almost alone, and took measures to cleanse and purify the close-cribbed air, and the rough, bare walls. Before proceeding to our story let us be permitted to mention some general marks of Irish virtue, which, under those circumstances, we personally noticed. In poverty, in abject misery, and at a short and fearful notice, the poor man died like a Christian. He gave vent to none of the poor man's complaints or invectives against the rich man who had neglected him, or who he might have supposed had done so, till it was too late. Except for a glanceand, doubtless a little inward pang while he glanced at the starving, and perhaps infected wife, or child, or old parent as helpless as the child, he blessed God, and died. The ap sunk into a corner himself, under the first stun of disease, long resisted. The only persons of his family who have escaped contagion, and are likely to escape it, are his old father, who sits weeping feebly upon the hob, and his firstborn, a boy of three or four years, who, standing between the old man's knees, cries also for food. We visit the young peasant's abode some time after. He has not sunk under "the sickness." He is fast regaining his strength, even without proper nourishment; he can creep out of doors, and sit in the sun. But in the expression of his sallow and emaciated face there is no joy for his escape from the grave, as he sits there alone, silent and brooding. His father and his surviving child are still hungry-more hungry, indeed, and more helpless than ever; for the neighbours who had relieved the family with a potato and a mug of sour milk are now stricken down themselves, and want assistance to a much greater extent than they can give it. "I wish Mr. Evans was in the place," cogitated Michaul Carroll; "a body could spake fornent him, and not spake for nothin', for all that he's an Englishman; and I don't like the thoughts o' goin' up to the house to the steward's face-it wouldn't turn kind to a body. May be he'd soon come home to us, the masther himself." Another fortnight elapsed. Michaul's hope proved vain. Mr. Evans was still in London; though a regular resident on his small Irish estate since it had come into his possession, business unfortunately-and he would have said so himself-now kept him an unusually long time absent. Thus disappointed, Michaul overcame his repugnance to appear before the "hard" steward. He only asked for work, however. There was none to be had. He turned his slow and still feeble feet into the adjacent town. It was market-day, and he took up his place among a crowd of other claimants for agricultural employment, shouldering a spade, as did each of his companions. Many farmers came to the well-known "stannin," and hired men at his right and at his left, but no one addressed Michaul. Once or twice, indeed, touched perhaps by his sidelong looks of beseeching misery, a farmer stopped a moment before him, and glanced over his figure; but his worn and almost shaking limbs giving little In the early progress of the fever, before the promise of present vigour in the working field, more affluent roused themselves to avert its worldly prudence soon conquered the humane career, let us cross the threshold of an indi- | feeling which started up towards him in the vidual peasant. His young wife lies dead; his man's heart, and, with a choking in his throat, second child is dying at her side; he has just | poor Michaul saw the arbiter of his fate pass on. pearance of a comforter at his wretched bedside, even when he knew comfort to be useless, made his heart grateful, and his spasmed lips eloquent in thanks. In cases of indescribable misery-some members of his family lying lifeless before his eyes, or else some dying,stretched upon damp and unclean straw, on an earthen floor, without cordial for his lips, or potatoes to point out to a crying infant,-often we have heard him whisper to himself (and to another who heard him!), "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Such men need not always make bad neighbours. 2D SERIES, VOL. I. 114 He walked homeward without having broken of virtue, which we have heard him utter, was his fast that day. "Bud, musha, what's the not cant. In early prosperity, in subsequent harm o' that," he said to himself; "only here's misfortunes, and in his late and present excess the ould father, an' her pet boy, the weenock, of wretchedness, he had never swerved in praewithout a pyatee either. Well asthore, if they tice from the spirit of his own exhortations to can't have the pyatees, they must have betther honesty before men, and love for, and depenfood-that's all;-ay-" he muttered, clench- dence upon God, which, as he has truly said, ing his hands at his sides, and imprecating he had constantly addressed to his son since fearfully in Irish-"an' so they must.' his earliest childhood. And hitherto that son had, indeed, walked by his precepts, further assisted by a regular observance of the duties of his religion. Was he now about to turn into another path? to bring shame on his father in his old age? to put a stain on their family and their name, "the name that a rogue or a bould woman never bore?" continued old Carroll, indulging in some of the pride and egotism for which an Irish peasant is, under his circumstances, remarkable. And then came the thought of the personal peril incurred by Michaul; and his agitation, incurred by the feebleness of age, nearly overpowered him. He left his house again, and walked a good way to beg a few potatoes. He did not come back quite empty-handed. His father and his child had a meal. He ate but a few himself; and when he was about to lie down in his corner for the night, he said to the old man, across the room "Don't be a crying to-night, father, you and the child, there; bud sleep well, and ye'll have the good break'ast afore ye in the mornin'." The good break'ast, ma-bauchal?1 a-then, an' where 'ill id come from?" "A body promised it to me, father. "Avich! Michaul, an' sure its fun your making of us now, at any rate. Bud, the good night, a chorra,2 an' my blessin' on your head, Michaul; an' if we keep trust in the good God, an' ax his blessin', too, mornin' an' evenin', gettin' up an' lyin' down, He'll be a friend to us at last: that was always an' ever my word to you, poor boy, since you was at the years o' your own weenock, now fast asleep at my side; an' it's my word to you now, mabauchal; an' you won't forget id; and there's one sayin' the same to you, out o' heaven, this night-herself, an' her little angel-in-glory by the hand, Michaul a-vourneen.' Having thus spoken in the fervent and rather exaggerated, though every-day, words of pious allusion of the Irish poor man, old Carroll soon dropped asleep, with his arms round his little grandson, both overcome by an unusually abundant meal. In the middle of the night he was awakened by a stealthy noise. Without moving, he cast his eyes round the cabin. A small window, through which the moon broke brilliantly, was open. He called to his son, but received no answer. He called again and again all remained silent. He arose, and crept to the corner where Michaul had lain down. It was empty. He looked out through the window into the moonlight. The figure of a man appeared at a distance, just about to enter a pasture-field belonging to Mr. Evans. The old man leaned his back against the wall of the cabin, trembling with sudden and terrible misgivings. With him, the language He was sitting on the floor, shivering like one in an ague-fit, when he heard steps outside the house. He listened, and they ceased: but the familiar noise of an old barn door creaking on its crazy hinges came on his ear. It was now day-dawn. He dressed himself; stole out cautiously; peeped into the barn through a chink of the door, and all he had feared met full confirmation. There, indeed, sat Michaul, busily and earnestly engaged, with a frowning brow and a haggard face, in quartering the animal he had stolen from Mr. Evan's field. The sight sickened the father-the blood on his son's hands, and all. He was barely able to keep himself from falling. A fear, if not a dislike, of the unhappy culprit also came upon him. His unconscious impulse was to re-enter their cabin unperceived, without speaking a word; he succeeded in doing so; and then he fastened the door again, and undressed, and resumed his place beside his innocent grandson. About an hour afterwards Michaul came in cautiously through the still open window, and also undressed and reclined on his straw after glancing towards his father's bed, who pretended to be asleep. At the usual time for arising old Carroll saw him suddenly jump up and prepare to go abroad. He spoke to him, leaning on his elbow. |