never cross my threshold; and I never broke my word yet, as you know," bowing to her with mock civility.

He left the room, and his bewildered hearer remained long standing in the same attitude, utterly confounded by the words he had spoken. "Was it true? Had he, indeed, said he did not love her? Was every hope gone from her for ever? Was her very presence hateful to him? Oh, that she had died in the blessed belief that he loved her! Where could she turn for help, for advice? Her dream of happiness was past; nothing could restore it." Such were the thoughts that passed across her mind again and again; and, in truth, it was a hard thing for a heart so young, and so loving, to feel itself desolate and forsaken.

After a time, the hope of winning his affection rose within her, and long and patiently she strove to realise it; but alas, in vain! Months passed on, and the hour drew near in which she expected to become a mother. When a son was born to her, once more her hope revived. "Surely," she thought, "for the sake of his child he will love me." But again she was disappointed. He had returned to his old friends, and to his old amusements; and she felt at last, however unwillingly, that she could never fill a place in his heart.

Eight years elapsed between the time of her marriage and the scene with which our tale opened. All that she had endured in that interval, none may know. Her eldest boy, as soon as he was able to talk, became his father's plaything, and quickly learned to laugh at his mother's authority. A second son, who was still dearer to her than the first, because she was still more unhappy at the time of his birth, lived only a few months; and she wept alone beside his grave. Her youngest darling, a bright, rosy girl, with dimpled smile, and eyes full of gladness, was little more than a year old at the time the lady of Elm-wood lay on her death-bed.

We return to that death-bed, where we left the dying sufferer breathing aloud the sorrows that had weighed down her spirit for years. Exhausted at length, she had once more sunk into silence, when a light knock was

heard at the door, and, in a few moments, the nurse admitted a woman carrying a lovely infant. The lady clasped the child in her arms, kissed again and again its cheeks and lips, and almost smiled when she felt the touch of its cool hand on her brow. "You must leave her with me tonight, Alice," she said, turning to the young woman who had carried the child. "I will undress her. Nurse, help me to get up."

It was in vain that the old nurse remonstrated, the lady persisted; and, supported by pillows, she sat up in her bed, and tenderly loosened the baby's clothes, and wrapped it in its little night-dress. She even played with it as of old, and smiled to hear its merry laughter. She dismissed Alice, but, recalling her as she was leaving the room, said, earnestly,

Alice, you love this child: she will soon be motherless, there will be none to care for her. Oh, be faithful to your charge! Cherish her, do not desert her; and may the blessing of her dying mother be with you to your last hour!"

Its

The young woman left the room in tears, the nurse sighed as she turned away; and the lady lay down with her beautiful baby on her bosom. Her heart was full of prayer, though her voice was hushed, lest she should disturb the slumber that was stealing over the child. calm, regular breathing was music to her ear; the smiles that broke, like gleams of sunshine, on its sweet, sleeping face soothed her, and stole into her thoughts. Full of faith and hope, she commended that precious one to the care of her Saviour; and when some struggling wish would arise, that she might have lived to protect and cherish it, still she could say in sincerity, "In Him is my trust.'

Long past midnight, the old nurse was awakened from a deep sleep by a hasty step advancing across the apartment. It was the lord of Elmwood, who thus tardily-his evening's amusement being concluded —answered his wife's summons.

"I am here, Eleanor," he said, withdrawing the curtain; "why did you send for me?" No voice replied; and he moved the lamp, so as to throw its light on the bed. The light that met his eyes touched even him. There lay his wife, dead; and,

on her bosom, its rosy cheek touching her cold lips, its round arm thrown about her neck, lay her infant, in its calm, happy sleep. He bent over them-he gazed upon that faded form, now awful in its stillness, and on that joyful infant so full of life and happiness. He remembered, as he looked on the dead, her patience, her humility, her unfailing submission to his capricious will; he remembered to what a life of solitude he had condemned her, and then he thought of her as she was when he first saw her, and when those eyes looked lovingly upon him. Only a few hours ago, she was even as his slave, trembling at his word, obedient to his will. Now, perhaps, she was pleading her cause against him before the throne of God. Oh, if he had but come earlier! if he could only have heard one word of forgiveness from those lips, which, in their silence, seemed yet to whisper that he had been a murderer!

He turned away: "Take the child," he said, hoarsely. "Take it away from her,--she is dead." He left the room. The nurse followed, and put a paper into his hand :

"My lady bade me give you this after she should be gone," she said.

He thrust it into his bosom, and hurried into his study, where, having carefully closed the door, he again drew it forth, and began to read. It was a short letter, dated but two days back.

Something I must say to you,"-so it was worded,-" something I must say, of all the thoughts that now, in my last hours, crowd upon my brain. I have no friend to sit beside my death-bed, and listen to my last words; no friend to go with me to the threshold of the grave, and uphold me when my faith falters.

46

'Alone, and uncared for, I wait for death; sometimes full of fear, sometimes eagerly longing for its coming. For years I have had no friend but my God; He alone has heard the voice of my sorrows, and He alone is with me now.

"Do not fear a word of reproach from me. My short life has been a sad one; but it is to you I owe the only dream of gladness that has cheered it. For those few months, during which I believed I was dear to you, I was perfectly happy. I know my belief was vain; but I do not blame you. Our love is not our own to give and take back as we will. "It is strange, that though years have

passed since I was undeceived-years in which you have repulsed all my efforts to win your confidence, and to be to you even but a companion, when others failed you, yet now, all that long interval of grief is forgotten; and every kind word you spoke in that happier time seems sounding in my ear once more.

But, why do I say this to you? Those kind words came not from your heart; and I am nothing to you now. I can appeal to you only as a dying woman, and pray you, by Heaven's mercy, to attend to my last wish. My baby, my fair, happy baby! Oh, look with pity upon her when she is motherless! Do not let her grow up among those who will not love her! It is a dreadful thing to live on year hy year with a heart full of love, and yet to have that love despised and rejected. If I might dare ask of you compliance with my last wish, 1 would say, let her be placed with Mrs. Paterson, I am sure she will be happy in that home of peace.

"Farewell! I linger over these last words. Would that I might lay my head on your bosom, and breathe away my life, dreaming once more that you loved me! My presence has been a burden to you. Even now you will not come to It is almost over!

me.

"Ouce more, I commend to you my child. You surely will love her. There is nothing in her sunny face to remind you of me. I am weary, and can write no more; perhaps, even now, I have said too much; but my poor heart was full, and I had none to comfort me. May God bless you!"

The letter fell from his hand, and he wept like a child. A change had come over his feelings towards his wife, but it was too late.

Some days after the lady had been laid in her grave, a group of vil lagers gathered round the old nurse, questioning her as to all that had happened at Elm-wood.

"You see he must have been very fond of her after all," said one. "He has asked Mrs. Paterson to take the baby, as my lady wished; and did you see how he cried at the funeral ?"

"Bah! don't talk to me of such love," said the old nurse, impatiently. "If he'd shewn but a quarter of the kindness towards her a year ago that he's shewn since she was dead, and could feel it no longer, she'd have been a happy living woman this day. Heaven preserve us all from love like his !"

IF our readers expect that we are going to help them to an explanation of the harlequin tricks that have been played of late in the highest political circles, we beg, at the outset of this paper, to undeceive them. The whole series of events is a mystery to us. We cannot even guess why Sir Robert Peel's government should have come to a dead-lock at all, far less assign a plausible reason for the resignation by all its members of their offices. It is the ordinary practice, we believe, when differences occur in cabinets, that the minority shall give way to the majority, whosoever the individuals composing the adverse factions may be; and it sometimes happens, if the dispute run very high, or the point under discussion be regarded as a vital one, that the dissentients retire. So it was with Mr. Huskisson and his friends in the famous East Retford case; so with Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, who quitted Lord Melbourne's administration rather than be parties in any way to the spoliation of the church's property in Ireland. Neither is the secession of the head of the government, if he find himself at issue with his colleagues, by any means unprecedented. The late Earl Grey gave place among the Whigs to Lord Melbourne, not because he found himself unable to do the work of premier, but because his suggestions were resisted by the younger members of his cabinet. And if we go back to the days of the Butes, and the Rockinghams, and the Portlands, we shall discover cases of the kind befalling continually. But the sudden abandonment of their posts by a body of noblemen and gentlemen whom the sovereign had called to her councils, and the nation trusted to an extent unparalleled in modern times, that was an occurrence for which people were unprepared. Moreover, as if the measure of the people's astonishment required some farther filling up, it turns out, after all, that this fugitive cabinet is forced back again, bodily, into power, not through any intrigue on the part of the statesmen composing it, nor yet by a vote of the House of Commons, or the results of a general election, but through the sheer inability of

their rivals to undertake the task which Sir Robert Peel and Co. had voluntarily assigned to them. If our readers expect that we are going to account for all this,-to explain why the Conservatives broke down, or how they have contrived to set the state omnibus in motion again, they give us credit for an amount either of intelligence or ingenuity to which we cannot lay claim. But though we be unable to trace recent events to their causes, there is nothing, as far as we can see, to prevent us, or any other of her majesty's reflecting subjects, from gathering out of the circumstances by which we seem to be surrounded a lesson which it may be worth while to remember. Let us see whether our notions in regard to the general position of affairs be either rational in themselves, or likely to find an echo in the opinions of those on whose judgments in such matters we have hereto been accustomed to place some reliance.

And, first, it may be necessary to notice the rumours which are floating about on the surface of society, some of which, we must confess, appear to us almost too ridiculous to be gravely entertained. These are not days for the creation of kings-consort, or even for the appointment to the command of the English army of a young foreign prince, however amiable. It may be distressing to the feelings of an exalted personage, that one whom she has honoured with her hand should not be permitted to claim at the courts of other nations the foremost place, which is freely conceded to him here. And with all our hearts we wish that the grievance could be got rid of. But to suppose that on ground so silly, for a reason so puerile, the idea of seeking a crown matrimonial could have been entertained is to outrage all decency, and to offer to the illustrious individuals most deeply concerned in the supposed arrangement a direct insult. No minister, Tory, Whig, or Radical, would dare to propose such a thing to a British parliament; no parliament, if any minister were found hardy enough to broach the project, would entertain it for a moment. There is neither scope nor pliability in the constitution for

such an interpolation on the rights of the royal family; and we are altogether without a precedent which might help us to bend it to our purpose, were it desirable to do so. The case of William and Mary is not a case in point. They came in, conjointly, to fill up a breach, or an assumed breach, in the regular line of succession. They were elected by the people of England acting through a convention, which convention did not become a parliament till after William, equally with Mary, had been offered and had accepted the crown. Moreover, the act of convention which thus disposed of the crown decreed, that in the lifetime of Mary, the "sole and full regal power should be in the prince;" yet that, in the event of the death of Mary without issue, the succession should be in the Princess of Denmark and her children. To look, therefore, to the Revolution of 1688 as affording any sanction or precedent for the engrafting of a new branch on the old royal stock would be ridiculous. We have, however, a case in point of not much more than a century's standing. Prince George of Denmark, though the husband of Queen Anne, continued Prince George to the end of his days, without so much as a patent of precedency having been made out for him, or any other step taken to place him at the head of society even in England.

So much for one rumour, which seems to carry the refutation of its truth upon the face of it; neither are we inclined to allow greater credit to another, which is likewise going about. With all possible respect for Prince Albert, we must use the freedom to say, that he is every way unfit to be placed at the head of the English army. His royal highness is, we believe, a good man in all the relations of life; nor is it because we distrust his talents, whether as a tactician or as the administrator of a machine, however great, which he understands, that we thus express ourselves. But he does not understand-indeed it would be miraculous if he did-the construction of the British army. Put him at the head of his father's forces, and we are persuaded that he would manage them well; but the British army is so different from all the other armies of the world, both in the materials of

which it is composed and the order of the duties which it is required to perform, that we defy any man, except a native born Englishman, be his natural and acquired powers what they may, to command it properly. This was conspicuously shewn in the instance of William III. William was a soldier, and a tried one, too; yet his manner of conducting the affairs of the English army was such as to produce universal discontent, and here and there to provoke mutiny. Now, we do not suppose that Prince Albert would act with the sternness of precipitation which more than once characterised the proceedings of the Prince of Orange. His physical temperament is milder, and he is a younger man-too young, indeed, even if all the other requisites were present with him for so grave an office; and youth, and a temper constitutionally gentle, would restrain him from outraging the feelings, or even jarring the prejudices of veterans old enough, many of them, to be his grandfather. But he lacks that intimate acquaintance with the tastes, habits, manners, and capabilities of all ranks and orders in the British community, which no foreigner can acquire were he resident among us twice as long as the Prince has been; and without which it would be fatal in any man, be his position what it might, to attempt the establishment of any degree of authority over our army. For the British army is governed now, and every day will but confirm and strengthen the system, much more by moral than by physical influence. A commander-inchief among us, must not only know how to issue orders and come to decisions which are wise, but he must be able to satisfy the country that they are the wisest that could have been attained to; and that they deserve to be respected because of their perfect adaptation to the circumstances of the parties to which they apply. And his royal highness, with the utmost deference be it written,

is very little familiar with the habits of any circle of society, beyond that of the palace. He never mixes, as far as we know, with the gentlemen of the land. He speaks the English language but imperfectly. We doubt whether he could put a battalion of the Guards through the simplest