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ELLEN LYNDHURST;

A TALE OF TRIAL AND TRIUMPH.

BY THE EDITOR.

AUTHORS Who write tales for the million have a certain mode of treatment which those who look into popular works cannot fail to be familiar with. Their heroines are extremely beautiful, having long raven hair, jet black eyes, pallid cheeks often flushed with hectic tinges, ruby lips, pearly teeth, breath as sweet as the odour of flowers, and voices extremely musical. They sing, dance, play, draw, and talk French or German with native fluency; the latter capabilities being illustrated by numerous common-place quotations, exhibiting absurd errors of spelling and application. Their heroes are seldom under six feet,of course they have high intellectual foreheads, they are at once graceful, modest, and courageous. They have a keen sense of honour, and would rather endure the most terrible adversity than utter a word of prevarication. Those who support the diablerie of the plots are also painted in the most positive colours; they have no element of goodness, they are an incarnation of lies and wickedness, and seem to live upon the wretchedness of others rather than upon the establishment of happiness for themselves. The plot always has a strong savouring of love and jealousy; next to which ambition, avarice, and hatred, take their places. Pick these elements out of the most popular stories, and nothing remains but the gossip of old women over the tea-table, and a few dashes of sentiment put in to give the book a little moral tone. In the following story, made up from incidents of real life, we hope to depart in many respects from the beaten track of Authors to which we have just adverted. Our object will be to bring together, into one focus, the histories of some remarkable lives that have fallen under our own observation; and we shall endeavour to show that the errors and sufferings of the wicked may be made, if rightly viewed, beacons to guide the footsteps of those who have yet their lives before them, with temptations besetting their daily paths. Whether our heroes and heroines are beautiful or not, we shall leave to the imagination of the reader, asking for them a judgment of their whole development, rather than that partial examination which looks only to the beauties of the surface, leaving the higher charms of heart and mind unappreciated.

CHAPTER I.

WHICH OPENS THE GATE THAT LEADS TO

OUR STORY.

"Is this the way to Windmere?" asked a young boy of fourteen, as he halted at the doorway of a little house standing by the side of a toll-gate on a country road.

"It is," said an old woman who was sitting upon a three-legged stool, her back bent into a perfect arch, her elbows resting upon her knees; and after she had replied, she tried by repeated efforts to rekindle the light in the ashes of a tobacco-pipe, from the narcotic weed in which she had already exhausted the vitality. "Keep straight on," she said,

VOL. VIII.-NO. LXXXVI.

as she knocked the ashes out of her pipe; "until you come to the four cross roads, and then take the way to the left, where the Saracen's Head stands, and that will bring you right into Windmere."

"How far is it from this?" asked the boy.

Well, from here to the Saracen's they reckon two miles, and from there to Windmere Market-place, may be four or five more," said the woman.

"That's a long way!" rejoined the boy, sadly, and he eased his shoulder of the weight of a little bundle that was perched upon a small crook stick, and thrown across it. "I've already walked nine

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heard that he wasn't one of those men that would make his child marry for fortune or for name; he didn't care to make her a duchess, or anything of that sort, but he did want to marry her to a heart and a soul, in fact to a man, and he saw such marks of ignorance and dissipation about young Mathews, that he both implored and threatened his daughter, to induce her not to throw herself away. But she would, and did. She turned a deaf ear to her father's advice-and what was the consequence! The old man disposed of his property in some way that she couldn't touch a shilling of it, and having lived long enough to see that all his opinions of Mathews were true, and that his only daughter, whom he loved with all the strength of a father's devotion, was becoming demoralized in the eyes of a great circle of admirers among whom she once shone as a star, he died of grief. From that moment his daughter, who had already sunk low enough through Mathew's bad treatment, abandoned herself more and more to wretchedness, and there she is now, a monument of the misery which often descends upon those who turn a deaf ear to the advice of parents.'

"And he a living proof of the disgrace and misery which overtakes those who yield themselves to intemperate appetites," observed the boy.

"That's true," said the wagoner, "I was once pretty likely to go in his way myself, but thank God I've found out a better road, and these horses are not less frequently in a beer shop than I am. They are bad places, young man-bad places, depend on't. A glass of water in a man's own house, is sweeter than wine in the haunts of the wicked."

The boy listened with marked attention to many observations of a similar tendency for as his own experience had proved, he too could tell of the sorrows of a home, made desolate by the errors of a father's life. Of that, however, hereafter. "I should like," said the lad, to try to do something for the old woman. She seemed delighted to go for the water for me; and for that she was beaten."

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"I'm afraid, young master, there's little chance of doing her any good. She's gone crazed one or twice, through the treatment of that brutal man, and has

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"No, no, not by no means, for the father was dead, and the Manor House had passed away from the family. All the people about were strange. Well, there was music and dancing, and coloured lights along the grounds. The windows of the drawing room, which opened on to the lawn, were thrown open, and guests in fine garments, and wearing rich jewels, and all that sort of thing, were walking about, when Maggie reached the spot. The glare of light, and the sounds of music, only increased the frenzy of poor Maggie's mind. She got over the fence, crept stealthily along the shrubbery, until she got near to the drawing-room, when in a moment, as the dance was going on, she glided into the room, and gazing around, cried aloud for her father. There were some there who knew her, who had danced with her in that very place, when she was her father's pride, and the belle of the room. They bore her away from the affrighted guests, and then they drew around in groups, while her story was told. This sad interruption so depressed the party, that it was soon broken up-the music was heard no more that night, the lights were speedily extinguished, and the people all went to their homes. Not a bright beauty in that room, young master, but learned a solemn lesson that night-not one of them, depend upon it, afterwards slighted the word of a loving father, who saw reasonable grounds for objecting to a foolish and soulless attach

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