all tranquillity! The very suddenness of that ease, that stop of his heart's long palpitation was of itself a shock.

"Going to sleep, my precious? One kiss first, mine own darling, -mine own sweet boy! Forgive foolish father,-forgive him all his cruel—"

Bending over him in the dusk, he saw a pretty quiet smile on the Iwan little face, but it was not at him. The lips had a dreadful form. ality in their closure; it was the chin-band applied to the falling jaw which the woman was tying, and which he mistook for the cap. The truth flashed upon him just as he uttered the word father, and he knew that he was now, indeed, no father. The frightful appearance of two eyeholes instead of eyes (those beautiful eyes!) produced by two small coins, which the woman had placed there, (according to idle custom,) confirmed the sad impression. He jerked back his head in horror, for his own lips and those of clay, his eyes and those eye-sockets, had nearly met. He uttered one deep groan, expressive of combined agony and horror, and fell at full length on the floor. It was but a minute's respite. Again he was on his feet, standing at the bedfoot, like some effigy, with its stony eyes fixed on vacancy, gazing stupified on the sad object which the officious nurse had now covered with a sheet, so that he looked only at the ghastly outline of the small corpse, with projecting face and feet.

Up to the day of the child's burial David hardly left the fatal chamber, and moved about, looking a thousand dreadful emotions, but venting none, in almost total dumbness. He would not look on that last frightful duty imposed by a foul and dire necessity for the sake of survivors, but mounting horse, rode off in the direction of Cwm Carneddan, his wife's residence. Whether revenge for the fatal lie which had desolated it was up and raging in his breaking heart, and hurried him towards that miserable mother, or that a reeling mind led to rush abroad without object, while a depth of earth was being interposed between that fair object, now becoming a horror and an offence, and the living, whom its beauty had so lately gratified-from one of these causes, David was absent till the middle of the second night. But of his return I shall speak n the conclusion.

I was summoned in haste soon after to Llandefelach. I was led up stairs, where I found the haggard form of the master, apparently searching everywhere for something lost, and followed mournfully by two of his shepherds. He turned his hollow eyes on me with a look of confused recollection, then giving up his search, said disconsolately, "He is not here can you tell me where is Peter-my Peter? I look across the world, and he is not there. I look up to Heaven, and ask him of God, and God will not hear me-not answer me. I listen for his little voice all night, and cannot hear it; yet I hear it calling in my heart for ever. I shall never see him more, hear it more!"

never

The unhappy man had, I learned, reached Carneddan, and found his wife in her coffin. The shock of his furious and abrupt parting had quickly overpowered her remains of life. Whether or no his intellects were at that time already gone, must for ever remain unknown, and unknown, therefore, what was the object of his visit. On his return he was wild in his deportment and looks; he had lost his hat; he appeared to have been immersed in a bog; his horse was

discovered loose on the hill, among the pits of black peat (or mawn), where, doubtless, his frenzied rider had passed one dismal night.

Some years after the death of the child I was entering a town at a little distance from Llandefelach, one fine summer's night, by a cloud. less moon. A peal of bells (a rather rare accompaniment of our Welsh churches,) reached my ears, from the church seen dim on an eminence above the humble town, shrouded by venerable trees, from amidst which the mossy thatches of the houses, in their grey antiquity, peeped through thick foliage. Cows wandered about the rude streets of half green rock, steeply sloping down to a little river tumbling in a craggy channel, and keeping a perpetual gentle roar, which, deadened by the banks, produced an effect as lulling, if not as melancholy, as those distant bells. The voices of a few children, tempted out to play round a huge oak tree, on a green sward in the middle of this lonely village town, alone broke the monotony of those mingled sounds, except when an owl was heard from a small ruin of a castle on a mound beyond that mountain brook.

Knowing this to be the native place of David Beynon, where his aged mother still resided, I thought of that unfortunate man, whom the last report I heard stated to be in the condition of raving insanity, in a receptacle for the mad. I thought of the time when he played like one of those little ones, round that tree, and obeyed the pretty summons, which I now heard from them, in English,

Boys and girls come out to play,

Now the moon shines bright as day," &c.

On their chanting their song, I was startled by the sudden appearance of a tall old man, in tattered clothes, with long hair and beard quite white, who had been sitting at the foot of the tree, and who, on the children pulling him by the withered hands, laughed shrilly, and awkwardly joined in their wild dance, to their seeming great amusement. Nothing but his stature, and something mournful and infantile in his half hysterical laugh, distinguished his manners from those of the real children, whose companion rather than sport, he seemed to be. It was not till I had inquired about this poor harmless being at the rustic inn, that I knew that this was David Beynon come home to his decrepit mother, to finish his mindless existence under the roof where it began.

SONNET FROM PETRARCH.

"Se la mia vita dall' aspre tormonte."

LADY, if all the torments I sustain

This bitter misery-these ceaseless tears,
Do not destroy my life-I may with pain

View thy bright eyes grow dim in after years;
Sce silver threads mix with thy golden hair;

Youth's garlands wither from their summer glow,
And thy cheek fade. The wreck of one so fair
Will in its sadness mock each lighter woe.

Then, love will give me courage to reveal
(When all thy pride of beauty will be gone,)

The martyrdom that I have felt, and feel

For hours, days, years of anguish lingering on.

If this, my future hope, may never be,

These sighs relieve me, though they reach not thee.

M. T. H.

THE QUARANTINE.

BY CAPTAIN MEDWIN.

Be it known to all travellers that there is, or was, a steam-boat to Civita Vecchia from Marseilles. I had passed the winter there, if winter it can be called,-for the myrtle, indigenous to that coast, never loses its flowers, in bud or blossom, and the orange and the ci tron, and many of the most delicate of the tropical productions were growing in the open air.

An

The carnival was drawing to a close, and I was anxious to reach Rome in time for the offices and ceremonies of the Settimana Santa, -to hear the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel,-to receive the Bene. dicite in the Great Square of St. Peter's,-to behold the illumination of that greatest of temples, and the fire-works on St. Angelo. other cause for my departure was, that I had become tired of green peas, excuse my being so unsentimental as to name them, and, for these reasons, you will think me very confidential,-I embarked on board this steamer for Genoa.

It was the month of April. I basked in the sunshine, and inhaled with delight the genial breeze, as we ran along the shore. The deck was covered with flowers; and it seemed to me that the pilgrim voyage from the Pyræum to Delphi could not have been a more continual fête.

And now the dark blue waves of the Mediterranean glittered in the distance, whilst the water, placid as that of a lake, appeared to fly be. hind the vessel. In front that key to the two seas, the stupendous rock of Gibraltar, presented itself; whilst to the right those of Tetuan and Ronda lifted their aerial summits into the clouds. There is not on the face of the whole world a spot that in sublimity can match with this, uniting, as it does, in one point of view, outlines so varied and picturesque; exciting emotions so profound, and reviving recollections so heroic. For we behold, on either hand, two continents, where civilisa tion and barbarism meet; two quarters of the globe the most dissim ilar, and hostile to, each other.

As we rounded the peninsula of Gibraltar the giant mountains of Africa developed themselves, and the last rays of the setting sun gleamed on the old ramparts of Tarifa. Further off could be descried Algesiras and its smiling plains, where was fought the celebrated battle of Rio Salado, in which Don Alfonzo annihilated the innumerable armies of the Moors; where, and at Las Novas di Toledo, was decided the question whether the cross should triumph over the crescent, or all Europe bow to the Mahomedan yoke. But, without here indulg ing in any further reflections,-which, after those of Gibbon, would be trite and superfluous,-I will introduce you to one of our party, our "pars maxima rerum.

The lady was of a certain age,-which means no age, or any age; one of those old maids who, to the astonishment of foreigners, swarm about the Continent, without either servant or protector, singly, as in this instance, or in twos or threes, in innumerable others. I had fallen in with her more than once during my Swiss tour, and we passed the night together I mean no scandal-in a cowhouse on the Grimsal, the wretched accommodation of its solitary

inn having been pre-engaged by a large family; so that our faces, at least, were familiar to each other.

Speaking of Switzerland, she had traversed almost every pass on the Alps; slept among the snows, and crossed fissures in the ava lanche on a single plank: exploits that obtained for her among the guides the name of the "Cheval Anglaise." Pierre Terraz told me he had once saved her from congelation by the animal magnetism of one of his legs,-a strange mode of keeping up the vital heat, and a hint taken from the practice of the brigands of Calabria-vide "Tales of a Traveller." Only think of putting into the same sentence a brigand and a spinster,-necessitas non habet leges, without the e. It is an applicable adage; and, I hope, if she sees this mention of hers, she will not be so much offended as Henry Quatre's queen was, when the cotton-spinners at Dijon presented her with a pair des bas-to cover what queens should not be supposed by their subjects ever to have-legs.

Mauvaise honte was a feeling to which you may suppose our maiden lady was a stranger. Her height and figure, happily by no means common among our countrywomen, rendered her sex, to outward appearance, extremely problematic; she was scraggy withal; her small sunken eyes, of a sombre hue, were tinged with circles even deeper in colour; and her complexion, either from exposure to the weather, spleen, or excess of bile in the rete mucosum, was about as dark as that of a Chichi, or Anglo-Asiatic.

This will not be thought a flattering likeness. All I can say is, that none of our party would have thought the portrait overcharged, or wanting in fidelity; and, if it were, caricature is pardonable in some cases. There are wrongsLet me keep my temper.

Morning had just dawned when Genoa rose out of the sea, and its coast in the distance seemed spotted with luminous points that grew more distinct at every revolution of the wheels, till her palaces, domes, spires, villas, and convents, with the barrier of her fortresses in the horizon, were revealed to sight.

She may well be called the Superba; and Alfieri was for once a poet when he thus addressed her :-

"O, thou who sitt'st in haughtiest majesty,
Glassing thyself in the Ligurian sea,

And towering from thy curved shores to the sky,

I count at thy back, the mountains mantling thee,

In moles and palaces proud, which Italy,

Though great and fair, boasts not to rival. Why

Are not thy governors, as thine should be

In thought, mind, conduct, somewhat worthier thee?"

It was only the beginning of the sonnet that suggested itself to the mind. We were soon doomed to learn the truth of the two last lines of the apostrophe from sad experience.

And now the boat entered between the two Moles; gigantic out. works of the time when she was queen of the Mediterranean. I had never visited that magnificent city; and, as Madame de Staël exclaimed with enthusiasm, "Demain je m'éveillerai en Rome!" so, as I gazed on the glorious spectacle, I said to myself, " In half an hour I shall be there."

I was well acquainted with the convulsive scenes of which that

republic had been the arena.

The struggles for power of the Adorne and Fregose, its Guelphs and Ghibellines.

Here stood the Doria Villa, with its terraces, quarries of marble; its frescos, painted by Perin del Vaga, one of Raphael's most distinguished pupils. To the left I saw the San Pier D'Arena, through which old Andrea fled after the death of his nephew Jiannettino. On the hill to the right was pointed out to me the site of La Inviolata, the palace of his rival, the princely Fieschi.

I visited, in thought, the D'Arena, where he sank in all his ar. mour, on crossing a plank to a mutinous galley; and the gate against which was nailed the head of the Bratus of the conspiracy, Verrina.

I walked in idea through these streets of marble palaces-the Balbi, Nuova, Novissima, and Carlo Felice, and entered the splendid churches of San Lorenzo and San Sirio. Just as I was indulging in all these reveries the harbour-master came on board.

I did not acquaint you, as I should have done, that the cholera had broken out at this time in England, and thence extended itself to some of the sea-ports on the south of France. I imagine it is owing to the ravages which the plague has made in Italy, especially at Genoa, that the quarantine laws are there enforced with a rigour unknown in any other part of the world.

The first inquiry this officer made was for the list of the passen gers, in order to identify it with the passports.

We were marshalled on the deck, and of course the vieille demoi. selle appeared among us.

The lady had the precedence, and our inquisitor, addressing her, said,

"Laissez passer librement, Mademoiselle Pigou et son domestique'

"Dove é il domestico ?" asked the harbour.master.

"I had no servant," said the lady, with embarrassment.

"She had no servant!" exclaimed the captain in alarm.

"She had no servant !" echoed the passengers all, with one breath, in consternation.

The servant might well be missing, since he was a mere nominis umbra,—not even his ghost could have been raised,-no servant of her's ever came on board. Either vanity or thoughtlessness had led her to falsify her passport.

"The domestico, then, died on the passage," said the officer, trembling lest he should have caught the infection,-" died of the cho lera. Produce the servant, or go into quarantine," added he, addressing the captain.

It was in vain that we all asserted the truth. Entreaties, threats were of no avail. He ordered that we should immediately be set on shore at the lazaretto, and that the vessel should be moored in the quarantine ground, under the Lanterna.

At this moment I no longer wondered at the surprise of Iphigenia. In barbarous times, our ancient virgin would certainly have met with the fate of Arion, without a chance of being saved by a dolphin. As it was, the captain's curses were loud, and our own not less deep, though less vigorously expressed.