sitting attitude, as I have before described. In order to prepare their beds it was necessary to pass through that room, into which she had not ventured since she had recovered from her stupor. She was perplexed and distressed, but at last, having stated to the captain her difficulty, he at once ordered the steward to go and make the requisite arrangements. The master and mate having been thus provided for for the night, some blankets were given to the steward, who slept on the hearth, before the kitchen fire. In the morning the latter was sent to dig a grave for poor John Lent, while the other two, having procured the requisite tools, made him a coffin, into which he was placed with great difficulty, from the rigidity of his limbs. The little pony was then harnessed to the sledge, and the body was followed by the family and their guests to its last resting-place. The beautiful burial-service of the church was read over the deceased by the captain, amid the heartfelt sobs of the widow, the loud lamentations of the children, and the generous tears of the sailors. The scene was one that was deeply felt by all present. There was a community of suffering, a similarity of situation, and a sympathy among them all, that for the time made them forget they were strangers and feel towards each other like members of one family. The mariners had twice narrowly escaped death themselves: first, from shipwreck, and then from the intensity of the weather; while seven of their comrades had been swept into eternity before their eyes. The poor widow, in losing John Lent, appeared to have lost every thing-her friend, her support, her companion, and protector; the husband of her heart, the father of her children. If their losses were similar, their mutual sorrows were similar also. She had afforded them food, shelter, and a home. They had aided her in a most trying moment with their personal assistance, and comforted her with their sympathy and kindness. The next morning her guests visited the sea-shore, in order to ascertain whether any portion of the cargo of their vessel could be saved. When they arrived at the scene of their disaster, they found that the vessel

was gone; she had either fallen off from the precipitous cliff upon which she had been thrown by the violence of the sea, or been withdrawn by the reflux of the mountain waves, and had sunk into the deep water, where her masts could now just be discerned under its clear and untroubled surface. The cabin, which had been built on the deck, had been broken to pieces, and fragments of it were to be seen scattered about on the snow. Some few barrels and boxes from the steward's pantry had been thrown on shore, containing stores of various kinds, and also the captain's hammock and bedding. These were divided into two small lots of equal weight, and constituted two sleigh loads, for the travelling was too heavy to permit them all to be carried at once. The captain presented them, together with a purse of ten sovereigns, to the poor widow, as a token of his gratitude for her kindness and sympathy for his distress. She was also recommended to examine the shore from time to time after violent gales of winds, as many loose articles would no doubt hereafter float to the surface; and these, by a written authority, he empowered her to apply to her own use.

On the succeeding morning the postman returned with his mail, and furnished a conveyance for the steward. The captain and mate followed under his guidance, with Mrs. Lent's little pony and sledge, which were to be returned the following mail-day by Ainslow. They now took an affectionate leave of each other, with mutual thanks and benedictions, and the widow and her family were again left to their sorrows and their labours. From that day she said an unseen hand had upheld her, fed her, and protected her, and that hand was the hand of the good and merciful God of the widow and the orphan. There were times, she added, when the wounds of her heart would burst open and bleed afresh; but she had been told the affections required that relief, and that Nature had wisely provided it, to prevent a worse issue. She informed me that she often saw her husband of late. When sitting by her solitary lamp, after her children had fallen asleep, she frequently perceived him looking in at the window upon her. She would some.

times rise and go there, with a view of conversing with him, but he always withdrew, as if he was not permitted to have an interview with her. She said she was not afraid to meet him; why should she be? He who had loved her in life would not harm her in death. As soon as she returned to her seat, he would again resume his place at the window, and watch over her for hours together. She had mentioned the circumstance to the clergyman, who charged her to keep her secret, and especially from her children, whose young and weak nerves it might terrify. He had endeavoured to persuade her it was the reflexion of her own face in the glass; that it was a natural effect, and by no means an unusual occurrence. But no one, she added, knew so well as those who saw with their own eyes. It was difficult, perhaps, for others who had not been so favoured and protected to believe it, but it was, nevertheless, strictly true; and was a great comfort to her to think that his care and his love existed for her beyond the grave. She

said many people had advised her to leave that place, as too insecure and inconvenient for a helpless woman; but God had never failed them. She had never known want or been visited by illness, while she and her children had been fed in the wilderness like the chosen people of the Lord. He had raised her up a host of friends, whose heart he had touched with kindness for her, and whose hands he had used as the instruments of his mercy and bounty. It would be ungrateful and distrustful in her to leave a place he had selected for her, and he might perhaps turn away his countenance in anger, and abandon her in her old age to poverty and want. And besides, she said, there is my old man; his visits now are dearer to me than ever; he was once my companion-he is now my guardian angel. I cannot and I will not forsake him while I live, and when it is God's will that I depart hence, I hope to be laid beside him, who, alive or dead, has never suffered this poor dwelling to be to me a "LONE HOUSE."

THE novelist, the dramatist, the lyrist, is now a peer of France. The bold defender of the liberty of the stage, the spirited pleader before the Tribunal de Commerce, sits on the benches of the noblesse viagère: the author of the interdicted drama,* of the supposed offence against the family of Orleans, is installed among

the constitutional nominees of Louis Philippe. Long life to him at the Luxembourg-the Baron Victor Hugo! Whether he will attempt in the upper chamber the ambitious rôle of his friend and brother bard, De Lamartine, in the lower, remains to be seen. We trust that he will not avail himself of his position as a senator to press those Rhenane, and (he must pardon us) insane pretensions which produced that marvellous political paper from the tourist; otherwise we shall be compelled to part company, and to range ourselves, with hostile look intent, against one with whom, admiring him as we do, we would fain continue upon terms of cordial intimacy. It is not, however, in the arena of political controversy that we are now to seek him; so let us have no unfriendly anticipations. We resume the pen to fulfil an engagement made to our readers to increase their acquaintance with the bard whom we introduced in a former paper; and it now devolves upon us to exhibit him in the exercise of his art upon other subjects than those, the admirable treatment of which has justly earned for him the title of Historical Poet par excellence. There is no lack of variety in Victor. Few are the children of song in whom will be found a greater diversity of matter, a more free and facile multiformity of style. Ennui is a state of feeling he is never likely to produce in his readers; for want of transitions and novelty none will cast him aside. Besides the materials of history,wars, revolutions, politics,-in his dealings with which we have already displayed something of his spirit, abundant are the subjects which engage his muse--which his taste se

lects, his imagination embellishes, his sympathy associates itself with, and his voice interprets. Into the feeling-fraught heart of humanity he enters, and inly dwells; with beautybreathing nature he respires; with calm-inducing, thought-suggesting, love-fostering nature he meditates, and quickly feels. Gentle, domestic affections; home, parents, children, friends; the love of infancy, and the reverence for age; kindly cheerfulness and chastened sorrow; a calm, meditative melancholy dwelling upon recollections of early hopes and dreams gone by-these are among the feelings which occupy him, who at other times, with the eye at once of poet, patriot, and sage, regards the changing scenes and actors in the great drama of nations. Pensive, serene, peaceful, glides among homely haunts, by the household hearth, amid the fields, the hamlets, and the woods, the verse that elsewhere rolls its mighty stream around kings and conquerors, triumphs and trophies, and shattered thrones, and contending factions. To him may be applied in their comprehensiveness the words of one with whom he, Frenchman though he be, has much in common:

We confidently recommend such study to all who desire the gratification of delicate taste, and deep and truthful feeling, contenting ourselves with producing here a few specimens of the versatility of Hugo's powers. We have seen that he can build the lofty rhyme in the shape of Ode Historical. In many an effusion of less pretension, he exhibits not less excellence; in many a happy strain of individual sentiment, in some delicious ballads. His lays of love have a surpassing delicacy and tenderness; his verses which respect personal emotions and experience, be they enjoyments or regrets, mourn they or exult, have an intensity communicating itself by a charm that attests the truth of the feeling, and the felicity of the expression. Imparting his own emotions he seems but to be the echo of yours. It is thus that the true poet is known and approved-he is felt: he speaks for the incapable man; his language is your feeling, clothed as you would clothe it, had Heaven but willed to endow you with that glorious "art divine of words;" and your heart leaps with gratitude to the interpreter of that, which, beating in your breast and crowding your brain, had never found freedom and expression but for him whose magic voice sets open the gates, and liberates thought from its silent chamber, and struggling, fluttering, panting passion from its cage. So is it, in many a strain of personal intensity, that Byron has made himself the voice of the burning longings of the heart; so that Campbell has breathed the breath of delicate passion in verse of such sensible fragrance, that, as you read, you inhale a rich atmosphere of which you had dimly dreamed, but never tasted before. These are they that relieve the burdened heart from its incapability, and give form and vocality to the vague, the bodiless, and the unexpressed. What the spirit has dreamed, what the soul has imagined and felt, has at length been told to it-to itself, better than itself yet knew; the wondrous, the all-expressive, the very words it has never been able to devise for its emotions, they have been spoken; and the "Eureka!" of the philosopher was not more joyous, or more sincere, than the recognition which the heart at