it did come, had smitten him like a hammer, and felled him to the ground, from which he had risen with a brain rent and riven? In whatever way the shock had been given, it had been terrible; for old Gilbert Adamson was now a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in Moorside-not keepers from a mad-house-for his daughter could not afford such tendance-but two of her brother's friends, who sat up with him alternately, night and day, while the arms of the old man, in his distraction, had to be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an end now; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks; and people were afraid to go near the house. It was proposed among the neighbors to take Alice and little Ann out of it; and an asylum for them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at all their entreaties; and as, in such a case, it would have been too shocking to tear her away by violence, she was suffered to remain with him who knew her not, but who often-it was said -stared distractedly upon her, as if she had been some fiend sent in upon his insanity from the place of punishment. Weeks passed on, and still she was there-hiding herself at times from those terrified eyes; and from her watching corner, waiting from morn till night, and from night till morn-for she never lay down to sleep, and had never undressed herself since that fatal sentence-for some moment of exhaustsd horror, when she might steal out, and carry some slight gleam of comfort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or the gloom in which the brain of her Father swam through a dream of blood. But there were no lucid intervals; and ever as she moved towards him, like a pitying angel, did he furiously rage against her, as if she had been a fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, had lived to see the murdered corpse of her dearest friend-murdered by her own only brother, whom, in secret, that murdered maiden had most tenderly loved-that murderous brother loaded with prison-chains, and condemned to the gibbet, for inexpiable and unpardonable crimes-her father raving like a demon, self-murderous were his hands but free, nor visited by one glimpse of mercy from Him who rules the skies-after having borne more than, as she meekly said, had ever poor girl borne, she took to her bed quite heart-broken, and, the night before the day of execution, died. As for poor little Ann, she had been wiled away some weeks before; and in the blessed thoughtlessnes of childhood, was not without hours of happiness among her playmates on the braes! The Morning of that Day arose, and the Moor was all blackened with people round the tall gibbet, that seemed to have grown, with its horrid arms, out of the ground, during the night. No sound of axes or of hammers had been heard clinking during the dark hours— nothing had been seen passing along the road-for the windows of all the houses from which anything could have been seen, had been shut fast against all horrid sights-and the horses' hoofs and the wheels must have been muffled that had brought that hideous Frame-work to the Moor! But there it now stood—a dreadful Tree! The sun moved higher and higher up the sky, and all the eyes of that congregation were at once turned towards the east, for a dull sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling feet, seemed shaking the Moor in that direction; and lo! surrounded with armed men on horseback, and environed with halberds, came on a cart, in which three persons seemed to be sitting, he in the middle all dressed in white--the death-clothes of the murderer, the unpitying shedder of most innocent blood. There was no bell to toll therebut at the very moment he was ascending the scaffold, a black cloud knelled thunder, and many hundreds of people all at once fell down upon their knees. The man in white lifted up his eyes and said, "O Lord God of Heaven! and Thou his blessed Son, who died to save sinners! accept this sacrifice!" Not one in all that immense crowd could have known that that white apparition was Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been almost jet-black, was now white as his face-as his figure, dressed, as it seemed, for the grave. Are they going to execute the murderer in his shroud? Stone-blind, and stone-deaf, there he stood-yet had he, without help, walked up the steps of the scaffold. A hymn of several voices arose the man of God close beside the criminal, with the Bible in his uplifted hands-but those bloodless lips had no motion —with him this world was not, though yet he was in life-in life and no more! And was this the man, who, a few months ago, flinging the fear of death from him, as a flash of sunshine flings aside the shades, had descended into that pit which an hour before had been bellowing, as the foul vapors exploded like cannons, and brought up the bodies of them that had perished in the womb of the earth? Was this he who once leapt into the devouring fire, and re-appeared, after all had given over for lost the glorious boy, with an infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to eddy back, that they might scathe not the head of the deliverer, while a shower of blessings fell upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom, and made the heart of the widow to sing for joy? It is he. And now the executioner pulls down the cord from the beam, and fastens it round the criminal's neck. His face is already covered, and that fatal handkerchief is in his hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, and one multitudinous sob convulses the air;-when wild outcries, and shrieks, and yells, are at that moment heard from the distant gloom of the glen that opened up to Moor side, and three figures, one far in advance of the other two, come flying as on the wings of the wind, towards the gibbet. Hundreds started to their feet, and ""Tis the maniac-'tis the lunatic!" was the cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hillside, that seemed hardly accessible but to the goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few desperate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected he would have been dashed in pieces, alighted unstunned upon the level greensward; and now, far ahead of his keepers, with incredible swiftness neared the scaffold-and, the dense crowd making a lane for him in their fear and astonishment, he flew up the ladder to the horrid platform, and, grasping his son in his arms, howled dreadfully over him; and then with a loud voice cried, "Saved-savedsaved!" So sudden had been that wild rush, that all the officers of justice - the very executioner stood aghast; and lo! the prisoner's neck is free from that accursed cord-his face is once more visible without that hideous shroud-and he sinks down senseless on the scaffold. "Seize him-seize him!" and he was seized-but no maniac-no lunatic was the father now--for during the night, and during the dawn, and during the morn, and on to midday-on to the HOUR OF ONEwhen all rueful preparations were to be completed-had Providence been clearing and calming the tumult in that troubled brain, and as the cottage clock struck ONE, memory brightened at the chime into a perfect knowledge of the past, and prophetic imagination saw the future lowering upon the dismal present. All night long, with the cunning of a madman--for all night long he had still been mad-the miserable old man had been disen gaging his hands from the manacles, and that done, springing like a wild beast from its cage, he flew out of the open door, nor could a horse's speed on that fearful road have overtaken him, before he reached the scaffold. No need was there to hold the miserable man. He who had been so furious in his manacles at Moorside, seemed now to the people at a distance, calm as when he used to sit in the elder's seat beneath the pulpit in that small kirk. But they who were on or near the scaffold, saw something horrid in the fixedness of his countenance. "Let go your hold of me, ye fools," he muttered to some of the mean wretches of the law, who still had him in their clutch-and tossing his hands on high, cried with a loud voice, "Give ear, ye Heavens! and hear, O Earth! I am the Violater-I am the Murderer! "" save a father from ignominy and death! "O monster, beyond the reach of redemption ! and the very day after the murder, while the corpse was lying in blood on the Moor, he was with us in the House of God! Tear him in pieces-rend him limb from limb-tear him into a thousand pieces!"-" The Evil One had power given him to prevail against me, and I fell under the temptation. It was so written in the Book of Predestination, and the deed lies at the door of God!"-"Tear the blasphemer into pieces! Let the scaffold drink his blood! ”—“ So let it be, if it be so written, good people! Satan never left me since the murder till this day-he sat by The moor groaned as in earth- my side in the kirk-when I was quake and then all that congrega- ploughing in the field-there-ever tion bowed their heads with a rust- as I came back from the other end ling noise, like a wood smitten by of the furrows-he stood on the the wind. Had they heard aright head-rig-in the shape of a black the unimaginable confession? His shadow. But now I see him nothead had long been grey-he had he has returned to his den in the reached the term allotted to man's pit. I cannot imagine what I have mortal life here below-threescore been doing, or what has been done and ten. Morning and evening, to me, all the time between the day never had the Bible been out of his of trial and this of execution. Was hands at the hour set apart for fa- I mad? No matter. But you shall mily worship. And who so elo- not hang Ludovic-he, poor boy, is quent as he in expounding its most innocent;-here, look at him-here dreadful mysteries! The unrege--I tell you again-is the Violater nerate heart of man, he had ever and the Murderer !” said-in scriptural phrase-was "desperately wicked." Desperately wicked indeed! And now again he tossed his arms wrathfully -so the wild motion looked-in the wrathful skies. "I ravished-I murdered her-ye know it, ye evil spirits in the depths of hell!" Consternation now fell on the minds of all-and the truth was clear as light-and all eyes knew at once that now indeed they looked on the murderer. The dreadful delusion under which all their understandings had been brought by the power of circumstances, was by that voice destroyed the obduracy of him who had been about to die, was now seen to have been the most heroic virtue the self-sacrifice of a son to But shall the men in authority dare to stay the execution at a maniac's words? If they dare not— that multitude will, now all rising together like the waves of the sea. "Cut the cords asunder that bind our Ludovic's arms"-a thousand voices cried-and the murderer, unclasping a knife, that, all unknown to his keepers, he had worn in his breast when a maniac, sheared them asunder as the sickle shears the corn. But his son stirred not-and on being lifted up by his father, gave not so much as a groan. His heart had burst—and he was dead! No one touched the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down-not to pray-but to look into his son's eyes-and to examine his lips-and to feel his left breast-and to search myself!" Next moment, the knife out all the symptoms of a fainting was in his heart-and he fell down' fit, or to assure himself,—and many a corpse on the corpse of his Ludoa corpse had the plunderer handled vic. All round the sultry horizon on the field after hush of the noise the black clouds had for hours been of battle,—that this was death. He gathering-and now came the thunrose; and standing forward on the der and the lightning-and the edge of the scaffold, said, with a storm. Again the whole multitude voice that shook not, deep, strong, prostrated themselves on the moor hollow, and hoarse-"Good people! and the Pastor, bending over the I am likewise now the murderer of bodies, said, my daughter and of my son! and of "THIS IS EXPIATION !" THE MONKS OF OLD. BY THE AUTHOR OF RICHELIEU, DE L'ORME, &c. No bonds they felt, no ties they broke, Peaceful they lived-peaceful they died; They loved not, dream'd not,-for their 'Held not joy's visions; but the tear I envy them-those monks of old; I wish my heart as calm and still And pangs that pay joy's spendthrift thrill With bitter usury. THE DEVIL'S PROGRESS. A PUNGENT satire on the public characters of our times-occasionally in good taste, but much more frequently sacrificing feeling to fun, has just appeared, with the above title. It is affected to be palmed on the Editor of the Court Journal, which is altogether a bungling failure; since not a scintillation of resemblance can be traced in the two works; and it can be neither credit nor advantage for the author of the Devil's Progress to revolve around that orb of illustrious dullness. His genius merits brighter company; The opening is warm and glow- And gazing out, with a pensive air, The Devil, who can be sad, at times, And grave, though not so prosy quite And the Devil-whose mirth is never loud- As he thinks how well his serpent tricks Of Eden and of England, soil'd Of those who preach with adder-tongues, Towards the close is the following: He stood beside a cottage lone, One summer eve, when the breeze was gone, The stream was staid, and the maples still, That-half a vow, and half a prayer- As sweet and low As he had heard-oh, woe! oh, woe!- "By every hope that earthward clings,. And pangs And for its soft and sole reply, And, yet, they made the waters start For, they told of a most loving heart, Of a heart that loved-though it loved in vain! Like trees that never grow to fruit, Like ships, that sail'd for sunny isles, A flower that, in its withering, And the Devil fled like a lated ghost, For he felt how lovers' own sweet breath And he knew that love," as strong as death," And, from the country of its birth, Brings thoughts-in sorrow or in mirth- Like angels, earthward tempest driven, This passage and the Hebrew's prayer, still further on, are the best portions of the poem; and in such writing evidently lies the writer's forte. There are five etchy illustrations; but the would have poem been "most adorned by their omission. THE GOLDEN CITY. MR. JOHNSON was a brewer in a small country town, and as the natives were not very well-bred people, he carried on a flourishing trade, and was generally said to be making money. He had neither wife nor family, or, as the newspapers, by a happy and polite synonyme, express the same condition, he was "without incumbrance ; and to supply the want of both heirs and partners, he had introduced into his business a distant relative, by name Jonathan Maurice. The young man, or rather boy, who had no better prospects, was highly delighted with an offer so promising, and continued for some years an active and cheerful superintendent of the manufacture of ale. An intimacy with the neighboring family of a wealthy farmer formed one of his chief pleasures, and no higher ambition disturbed an incipient attachment for his youngest daughter, Juliet. But in an evil hour, as he was on the point of being constituted a partner in the business, he received a pressing invitation from an old school-fellow; and having obtained a month's furlough, set out to pay the required visit. His friend was one of a family who had risen in the |