who by the way is a great favorite of ours, an ancient maiden of Amazonian stature, and a very strikingly drawn and original character; and finally to the heroine of the story, Ellen Bruce, a beautiful vision of feminine sweetness, loveliness, and rectitude of heart and understanding. In the same house in which Mr Redwood was confined, there lay, on the night after his disaster, the corpse of Edward Allen, a young man who had died of a broken heart; and his grandmother, Mrs Allen, was performing the customary duty of watching with the dead. We pass over the pathetic scene between the aged woman and a young girl, the object of Edward's youthful affections, who in the darkness had stolen in to weep over his corpse. Another set of visiters now arrive.

'Ellen opened the outer door for the two females, who entered, dressed in the Shaker uniform, only remarkable for its severe simplicity and elaborate neatness. Both wore striped blue and white cotton gowns, with square muslin handkerchiefs, pinned formally over the bosom, their hair combed back, and covered with muslin caps with straight borders, and white as the driven snow. Susan, the elder, was between forty and fifty years of age; she was tall and erect; and though rather slender in proportion to her height, well formed. There was an expression of command in all her movements that seemed natural to her, and sat gracefully upon her. Her face had the same character of habitual independence and native dignity; the hues of youth had faded, but a connoisseur would have pronounced her at a single glance to have been handsome, Her features were large, and all finely formed; her eye, there, where the "spirit has its throne of light," beamed with intelligence and tenderness. It was softened by a rich dark eye lash, and of that equivocal hue, between grey and hazel, which seems best adapted to show every change of feeling; but vain is this description of color and shape. It was the expression of strong and rebuked passions, of tender and repressed affections, of disciplined serenity, and a soft melancholy, that seemed like the shadow of past sufferings, which altogether constituted the power and interest of her remarkable face.

'The younger female was short and slightly formed. Her features were small; her blue eyes, light hair, and fair complexion, would have rendered her face insipid, but that it was rescued by an expression of purity and innocence, and a certain appealing tender look that suited well her quiet and amiable character.

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'As they entered, Ellen threw her arms around the younger sister, exclaiming in a tone of the tenderest concern, dear Emily, why did you not come sooner?" Emily trembled like an aspen

leaf, and her heart beat as if it would have leaped from her bosom, but she made no reply. The elder sister grasped Ellen's hand, "Is it even so?" she said; she rightly interpreted Ellen's silence and sadness; "I foresaw," she continued, "that our coming would be worse than in vain ;" then turning to her young companion, she said, "put thy hand on thy mouth, and be still, my child. The Mighty One hath done it, strive not against him, for he giveth not account of any of his matters."

A loud groan was heard in the apartment of the dead. Susan Allen started, and exclaimed, "is my mother here? then, mother Anne be with me!" She paused for a moment, and added in a calm tone, "fear not, Emily, my child, in your weakness strength shall be made perfect; we shall not be left without the testimony." Her words were quick, and her voice raised, as if she felt that she was contending against rebellious nature. She entered the room with a slow and firm step. Emily followed her, but it seemed, not without faltering, for Ellen had passed her arm around her, and appeared to sustain half her weight. Her face was as pale as marble, and as still.

"Pray speak to them Mrs Allen," whispered Ellen; "yes, speak to them," said Debby, in a voice of authority, "what signifies it, they are your own children and there is no denying it."

"They were my children, but they have gone out from me, and are not of me," replied the old woman, in a voice scarcely audible. "I am alone; they are uprooted; I am as an old oak, whose leaf has withered; judgment has come out against me."

"She is going clean distracted," whispered Debby to Ellen, "you can do anything with her; make her hear to reason, while she has any left, and get her to go out of the room with you."

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""No, no," said the old woman, who had overheard Debby's whisper, "have no fear for me, my spirits are a little fluttered, and my soul is in travail for these wanderers to get them back to my rest, and under my wing; but the Lord's own peace is in my heart, and none can trouble that. Oh," she continued, bursting into tears, as she turned her eyes from Emily to fix them on Susan, was it not enough that you were led captive by Satan, enough for you to put on his livery, but you must tempt this child to follow you in your idolatries?" Strong sensibility is, perhaps, never extinguished; but Susan's was so subdued, that obedient to the motion of her will, it had soon returned to flow in its customary channels. She replied to her mother's appeal in her usual deliberate manner. "The child is not my captive, mother, she has obeyed the gospel, and," added she, looking at Emily with affectionate complacency, "she has already travelled very far out of an evil nature, and the believers are looking to see her stand in the foremost light, so clear VOL. XX.-NO. 47. 34

is the testimony of her life against all sin." Susan had an habitual influence over Emily; she felt that she commanded the springs that governed the mind of her timid disciple. Emily felt it too, and was glad to be saved from the effort of self-dependence. She approached Susan, who had seated herself by the bedside, when her grandmother took her by the hand, and drawing her towards her, she said in a voice scarcely audible, for sorrow, infirmity, and despair almost deprived her of utterance; "Oh, Emily, my child, my only child, has she bewitched you?" She drew the unresisting girl towards the bed of her brother," there, look on him, Emily, though dead he yet speaketh to you, and if nature is not quite dead in you, you will hear him, he calls to you to break to pieces your idols, and to come out from the abominations of the land whither ye have been carried away captive." Emily sighed heavily, and wept, but said nothing. Susan moved to the other side of her, and seeming to lose the spirit of controversy in some gentle remembrance, she said, "Edward was a good youth, and lived up to the light he had. There is one point where all roads meet; one thing certain, mother," she added, an intelligent smile brightening her fine face, 66 we shall all be judged according to the light we have; some have a small, and some a great privilege."

"She has hit the nail on the head for once," whispered Debby to Ellen," and now, Ellen, before they get into another snarl, do separate them.' ."" vol. i. pp. 89-93.

Ellen interposes her mild exhortations, and has just succeeded in bringing the mother and daughter to regard each other with returning complacency and affection, when—

'The outer door again opened, and Reuben Harrington, that one of " the brethren," whom Debby had characterised as the "master devil," entered. He seemed to have arrived at that age, which the poet has characterised as the period of self-indulgence; and certainly he bore no marks of having disobeyed the instincts of nature by any mortifications of the flesh. He was of a middling stature, inclining to corpulency; with a sanguine complexion, a low forehead, deeply shaded with bushy black hair, that absolutely refused to conform to the sleekness of his order; a keen grey eye, which had a peculiarly cunning expression, from a trick he had early acquired, and of which he could never rid himself, of tipping a knowing wink; a short thick nose turning upward; a wide mouth with the corners sanctimoniously drawn down, and a prominent fat chin following the direction of his nose. In short, he presented a combination and a form to awaken the suspicions of the most credulous, and confirm the strongest prejudices against a fraternity, that would advance such a brother to its highest honors-or, to use their own

phrase, to the dead. Reuben advanced to the bedside quite unceremoniously, and seemed to survey the dead and the living with as much indifference as if he did not belong to their species. No one spoke to him, nor did he speak, till his attention was arrested by poor Anne, who had shrunk away from the side of the bed, and sat on a low chair at its foot, enveloped in her shawl, and sobbing aloud apparently unconscious that any one saw or heard her. "Who is that young woman," inquired Harrington of Debby, "that is making such an unseemly ado, is she of kin to the youth?"

"No!" uttered in her harshest voice, was all the reply Debby vouchsafed.

"Some tie of a carnal nature, ha ?" pursued Harrington. "No such thing," said Debby, "Eddy was her sweetheart." ""Yea, yea, that is just what I meant, woman." "Well," continued he, with a long drawn guttural groan, "the children of this world must bake as they have brewed, they are in the transgression, and they must drink the bitter draught their own folly has mixed." After this consolatory harangue, he turned from the bedside, and began, not humming but shouting with the utmost power of his voice, a Shaker tune, at all times sufficiently dissonant, and that now, in this apartment of death and sorrow, sounded like the howl of an infernal; to this music he shuffled and whirled in the manner, which his sect call dancing and labor worship.

""Stop your dumb pow-wow!" cried Debby, seizing him by the arm, with a force that might have made a stouter heart than Reuben's rejoice in the protection of the convenient principle of nonresistance.

"Nay, ye world's woman, let me alone," said he, extricating himself from her grasp, and composing his neckcloth, which Deborah's rough handling had somewhat ruffled; "know me for a peaceable man, that wars not with earthly powers."

""True," replied Debby, "your war is with heavenly powers; but while the Lord is pleased to spare the strength of my right arm, I'll keep you peaceable, Peaceable, indeed! one would have thought all Bedlam had been let loose upon us-peaceable! your yells almost scared the old lady's soul out of her body."

El

'Poor Mrs Allen, to whom Reuben's singing had sounded like a shout of victory from the infernal host, now really seemed in danger of such a catastrophe. She could scarcely raise her heavy eyelids, and the low moaning sounds that escaped her, betrayed the infirmity of age, and the grief that words cannot express. len renewed her entreaties that she would retire to her own room. No longer capable of resistance, she silently acquiesced, and Ellen conducted her to her bed, and watched over her, till she perceived that her wearied nature had sunk to repose.' vol. i. pp. 94-97.

The funeral of Edward Allen, which immediately follows, is a copy from the life, given with a graphic fidelity. We have, however, no room for it, nor for any extracts from the retrospect, which is taken of the early history of Ellen Bruce. She had resided, it seems, from a very tender age, alternately in the families of an episcopal tory, and of a calvinistic republican, both of whom had taken a strong affection to this interesting orphan. The lady of the former, a highly educated female, undertook the cultivation of her mind, and the polish of her manners; while the wife of the latter, a plain, sensible, benevolent woman, initiated her into household arts and domestic duties, and under their mutual and well bestowed instructions she had grown up, accomplished, refined, single hearted, affectionate, beneficent, and religious, in the true spirit of our religion, without bigotry. All this is very well imagined and delightfully told. We must also pass over an excellent colloquy between Mrs Lenox and Ellen, in which the former, with all her sagacity, is unable to comprehend why Ellen should be unwilling to encourage the addresses of her son, George Lenox, a pious minister, a man of education and talents, a good son, and who was certain to make a good husband.

By and by comes Charles Westall from Virginia, the son of an old friend of Mrs Redwood, a very good, genteel, well educated young man, with nothing peculiar about him, except that he has just completed his professional education, and is ready for a wife. He was accompanied by Mrs Westall, his mother, a polite and affable lady, with a strong spice of worldliness in her composition, and willing to manoeuvre a little for the sake of seeing her son well settled in life. Westall is struck with the resplendent beauty of Caroline, and she in her turn is delighted and flattered by his admiration. She soon, however, begins to observe that Westall has eyes for other qualities besides beauty and wealth, and has become somewhat interested by the unpretending goodness and worth of Ellen. The attempts of Caroline to make Westall regard her supposed rival in an unfavorable light, the malignant misinterpretations put by her upon Ellen's conduct, and the beautiful and well contrived incidents by which these attempts are rendered unavailing, and these misinterpretations exposed, and the prepossessions of Westall, wrought up into