praise was hardly exaggerated. As each day the distress deepened, her character deepened too. She had undertaken to nurse her neighbours, was her answer to one who expostulated with her as to the risk she was running, and with God's help she would go through with it. We can but

die once,' she added, and I may never be so fit again as now.' This was the only allusion she was ever heard to make to herself, or the peril to which she was exposed. But every thing shewed that she was looking it steadily in the face, while to those to whom she was ministering, her language was invariably that of cheerfulness and hope. She seemed intuitively to know how to say that which would best support the sufferers' spirits, and prevent their giving way to that despondency by which so many a patient has signed his own death-warrant. The consequence was that each face brightened as she approached it. No one but Sally could smoothe the pillow, or raise the head aright; from no one but Sally would the sick child receive its medicine. Sally was all in all to them.

"The clergyman of the parish was not slack in giving what aid he could; the farmers were very kind in supplying wine and all the 'kitchen physic' so much needed; and two elderly females helped to sit up at night, and washed the patients' linen. But even thus, the stress of the work fell upon Sally, and on two occasions, when, in consequence of a fresh outbreak of the disease, a complete panic seized the village, she was left for many hours without any help whatever beyond that which the clergyman could give. Between them on those occasions they did all but wash the linen. That they left in soak till other help could be found.

"Yet all this while, when a timid or a selfish person would have given way altogether, and thrown up her charge, Sally dauntlessly persevered; still ready for every call upon her, shewing a bright contented face, and making the best of every thing. I believe that for several weeks she never went to bed, and only took off her clothes to put on clean linen. A very few hours of sleep, often taken on the outside of the bed of a sick child, sufficed her; and for the remainder of the day and night her whole time, and care, and thoughts, were given to the sufferers round her.

"Nor was this all. Through the complaints of her worthy

husband it was discovered that almost every shilling of her wages she received was spent in buying comforts for the sick, or securing the more decent burial of the dead; and at length, when the frightful hemorrhage (which terminated the disease in several cases) soaking through the bedding, had made mattresses scarce, she surrendered her own, thus literally leaving herself without a place whereon to lay her head. She knew, she said, when it was accidentally discovered, that the gentlemen would make it up to her by and by; and that she had not felt the want of it; she had laid down on a rug before the fire at John Burgess's and had got a comfortable sleep.

"Alas! she had forgotten that through her own excessive care to keep the dwellings clean, she had 'swilled down' and mopped the lower room of the cottage, and that she had, in fact, laid down to sleep on a very damp brick floor.

"The next day she went about her work as usual, though feeling chilly and uncomfortable; but she had not time, and it was not her way, to think much of herself. In that house of John Burgess's, lay, at that time, his eldest son dying; his wife, near her confinement, in the low muttering delirium of typhus; and five or six children in various stages of the malady. On all of these Sally Smith was attending: how could she think about herself?

"Providentially others were thinking of her. It had been by her own earnest request, and from respectful delicacy in interfering with one who was labouring with such self-devotion, that a nurse had not been already engaged from a distance. But the clergyman had all along blamed himself for yielding to her wish, and had already made application for aid from our Institution. We never send young nurses into the midst of fever, and it happened that all who were advanced in life were at that moment employed. This circumstance caused a delay of three or four days. But I arrived at Newton on the evening of the day after that on which poor Sally had begun to feel so cold and chilly.

"The cold taken from the damp floor was destined to render her susceptible of the influence of the disease in the midst of which she had been so long living; the spark that was to set her blood on fire was at last to be kindled. Every bone in her body was now aching, her head was confused and painful, noise in her ears, failure in her sight.

In short, the poison was in her veins, and she knew it well. As long as she could, she kept her own counsel, yet quickly getting everything into order so that whoever succeeded her would find the medicines and all other things required by her patients ready to hand.

"She gave one look at herself in the glass, recognised but too plainly the brown, dry tongue; sent one of the old women down to the vicarage with a message to the clergyman that she was but poorly, and would be glad to see him,' and then sank into a chair by the fire-side.

"And there we found her. "Thank God for that! Thank God for that!' she exclaimed, when it was explained to her who I was. 'I am so glad you are come. What would Mary Burgess and all these children have done without a nurse?' And she wept tears of joy; her last thought for others, even as her first had been.

"Of course, Sir, you will anticipate the result. A constitution so worn by previous exertion had no chance whatever against so virulent a disease. But her illness was far more lingering than could have been expected.

"Very severe suffering was followed by long delirium, in which all her muttered ravings referred to those whom she had tended so faithfully and at such a cost. And then came a day or two of silent stupor. And then she was at rest."

Tears filled the speaker's eyes at the recollection of the scene; and a lump came into my own throat which prevented my utterance. So we were both silent for a minute or two.

My fellow-traveller was the first to renew the conversation.

"Well, Sir, if statues are the appropriate recompense to the benefactors of mankind, do you not think that poor unknown Sally Smith has a claim to be set upon a pedestal?"

"Indeed I do," was my earnest reply. "I trust the people at Newton have, at any rate, erected a monument to her memory. Her grave should not be unmarked, were it only for the sake of example."

"So thought the Vicar of Newton," replied the nursingsister; "and after her funeral he offered to erect a headstone at his own cost; but her husband declined it." "Declined it ?"

"Yes, he said he should put one up himself. But within

six months he married again, and a grassy hillock is all that now marks Sally Smith's last resting-place."

"But the best is," writes old Fuller, "that God's calendar is more complete than man's best martyrologies; and their names are written in the Book of Life, who on earth are wholly forgotten."

MODERN SPANISH POETRY-ZORRILLA.

SINCE the palmy days of Spain, when she took high rank among European states, when her poets enjoyed an extended reputation, and Lope de la Vega, Calderon, Garcilasso, Ercilla, Gongora, Manrique, and the Argensolas, were known and honoured far beyond the limits of their native land, the waters of the Spanish Helicon seemed for a long time to have dried up, or to have trickled unseen through shallow channels. Wars foreign and intestine, factions, corruption, the discouragement of learning, and the perplexities of entangled politics, have formed an atmosphere very unfavourable to the muses. But the spring of poesy, though hidden like a fountain that has been covered by moss and fallen leaves, has not been exhausted; the soil that has been trodden by the romantic races of the Moors and ancient Spaniards is not arid though neglected; the ghosts of departed chivalry and liberty still linger there, and whisper the inspiration of their traditions to some highsouled mourner for the past, or aspirant for the future.

During the last quarter of a century the poetic mind in Spain has been awaking from sleep like a giant refreshed; and the names of Zorrilla, Jovellanos, Larra, Martinez de la Rosa, Espronceda, Quintada, &c. have claimed and obtained. respect and admiration. In the foremost rank among these resuscitators of Spanish poetry Zorrilla is worthily placed, both from the power of his genius, and from the abundance, as well as the beauty, of his effusions.

Don José Zorrilla was born February 21, 1817, at Valladolid, where his father, an eminent lawyer, held an official situation under the Spanish government. From Valladolid

the elder Zorrilla was moved to various other cities in succession, and at last to Madrid; and there he placed his son for his education in the academy of the nobles: but in his scholastic career the youth in no way distinguished himself from his compeers, save by his predilection for writing verses, to the great annoyance of his father, whom, like Audrey, "the gods had not made poetical." The lawyer having, by some means, lost the favour of the government, and with it his place, retired into the country in the province of Castille, where he was joined by his son, on whom he laid his positive commands to devote himself to the study of the law, a profession for which our embryo poet had an invincible repugnance. Strongly against his will therefore, was he entered in the university of Toledo, where his progress as a student during the year that he remained there, was so unsatisfactory to his tutors and his parent, that the latter thought it advisable to change him to Valladolid; for Toledo with its romantic traditions and historical associations, its fine Gothic edifices and its mediaval air, had but fostered the poetic inclination which was considered his besetting sin. But at Valladolid the case was no better; the young José read nothing but poetry, shunned society, addicting himself to lonely walks and dreamy solitude, and was considered half mad by the workday world, and at last fell in love with whom we are not informed; but from the internal evidence in some of his poems we infer that the object of his first attachment died young.

The elder Zorrilla now despairing of his son as a member of any learned profession, sent for him, intending to employ him in the agricultural business of his estate. But the young man, though an enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of nature, had none of the bucolic genius of Virgil. He had no taste for cultivating the fields and the muses at the same time. He sighed for rural scenes to dream, but not to work in. To have attempted bowing down a wild and fervid spirit, like that of José Zorrilla, to farming, would indeed have been to realize Schiller's pleasant apologue of "Pegasus under the Yoke."

On his way home in the charge of the persons whom his father had sent to escort him, Zorrilla contrived to escape from them, by the help of a relative of his, at whose house