victim and purpose had made my heart so deeply palpitate, that a degree of irritable fever had come over me. The fair Julia was too kind and tender: I fell madly in love with her ;-I almost forgot my stern duty of revenge. You cannot guess the choking strug gles between my two master passions. Yielding so far to the former, I compromised my pride in another point, and consented to be a dependant of Mrs Mather's. By Heaven! I was not born with a soul to wait at palace doors -I would have rejoiced, under other circumstances, to live with my sister, free as the pretty little finches that hunt the bearded seeds of autumn; but love and revenge, mingled or separately, imposed it upon me to accede to your charity and Mrs Mather's, that I might be near the two Romellis. In her playful mood, perhaps, Julia one evening prophesied that I should become a murderer. You cannot conceive the impression which this made upon me. I had begun to flag in my first great purpose, but now again I thought myself decreed to be an avenger; and to avoid stabbing Romelli that very night in your house, I had to keep myself literally away from him. Now, judge me, my friend. Was it not by him that I was shut up in a madhouse? Yet, for your sake, and Mrs Mather's, and Charlotte's, and Julia's, and perhaps mine own, (for I have been too weak,) again I refrained from slaying him in your house-Nay, I left the place and neighbourhood altogether, and went to London. I engaged to sing and play in an operahouse, and made enough of money. My heart again grew up dangerous and revengeful. I returned to Scotland to pay Mrs Mather for having kept us, to send Charlotte to a seaport town, whence a ship was to sail for the Continent on a given day, then to call Romelli to account, and thereafter to join my sister a few hours before the vessel sailed. On my arrival again in your neighbourhood, to make preliminary inquiries, I called at the house of a young woman, who was Mrs Mather's servant when first I came to the cottage; but who about a year afterwards went home to take care of her mother, an old blind woman. So, then, Charlotte was dead! My sister Charlotte! My young Charlotte Marli!-and all in my most damnable absence! I heard it all, and your own

noble generosity: But nothing of Julia's marriage with Stewart, which my informant, in her remote dwelling, had doubtless not yet heard. All this might change my line of politics. In the first place, I imposed secresy as to my arrival on my young hostess, who readily promised to observe it, in virtue of having loved me for my music. I had now to concert not only how best to strike Romelli, but, at the same time, how to prevent for ever your marriage with Julia. You know my double scheme in one. The brother of my hostess had, in former years, been an organist, and one day I took his instrument, which the affectionate lass had carefully kept for his sake, and went to the remote churchyard to play a dirge over Charlotte's grave. You were there, and I found it an excellent opportunity of forwarding my scheme, by making you promise to meet me afterwards in the aisle; which you did, when Signor Romelli happened to be there. Ha! ha! how came he there, the foolish man? Before naming to you the precise night of our threefold meeting, I had been prudent enough to find out that the excellent Signor had just come home from some jaunt, and in all probability would not again, for at least a few days, leave his house. To make sure, however, I instantly forwarded to him my letter of invitation. How expressed? how signed? I remember well (for nothing of that dreadful night will easily pass from my mind) the sailor's name whose story broke my father's heart. So, under his name, I scrawled a letter to Romelli, stating, that if the Signor would know the immediate danger in which he stood in consequence of certain things which once happened in a boat in the South Seas, when he was captain of the Arrow; and if he would not have these points now brought publicly to light, he must meet the writer alone, at the door of the given aisle, on Saturday night, precisely at eleven o'clock. I was much afraid that he would guess the true writer of the letter, and so would not come. However, about ten o'clock on the appointed night, I crouched me down, with a dark-lantern in my pocket, beneath Charlotte's tombstone, upon which, I may here mention, I had got a mason from the village, for a large bribe, to put a slight inscription relative to my brother,

which he secretly executed between Friday evening and the dawn of Saturday. Almost contrary to my expectations, Romelli came; but I think, somewhat after the hour appointed, with a dark-lantern in his hand; and, finding the door of the aisle open, he advanced into the interior, and began, I suppose, to read the inscription, which, to heighten the effect of my revenge, as above stated, I had caused to be written the preceding night. In a moment, I started up, and ordered him to fall down on his knees, and confess his crimes; but, instead of obeying me, no sooner did he see who I was than he drew a pistol, and shot at me, missing me, however. My turn was next, and I missed not him. He fell: I locked the aisle door that you might see through the grating, but not interfere. I had him now beneath my will and power. You know the rest! Hugo Marli is avenged: and I am willing to die."

Such were the prisoner Marli's explanations, partly won by the crossexaminations of Hume, but in general given continuously, and of his own accord.

"And now, Frederick Hume," continued the prisoner, after a long pause of mutual silence, " you alone, of all the human race, are dear to me; will you promise to lay my head in the grave, despite of the ill which Charlotte and I have done you?"

"Bethink you of some other reasonable request, and I shall do it for you to the utmost," answered Frederick; 66 you know the above is impossible.'

"No, no," cried Marli, impatient ly; "you shall lay me beside her in your own aisle."

"Antonio Marli," returned Frederick, solemnly, must I remind you of your sad sentence?"

"Oho! you mean the dissection? The precious carnival for Dr Pry and his pupils?" said the Italian, laughing

grimly. "But if I can accomplish the half-If I can get quit of the claim of the law in that respect, would you so bury me, my brother?"

"Talk not of this any more," said Hume, not comprehending what the prisoner meant; "but cry for the purifying mercy of Heaven ere you die."

"You are from the point, sir," replied Antonio; "but hear me :-I will leave one request in a letter to you after my death, if you will promise, and swear-nay, merely promise (for I know your honour in all things) to fulfil the same."

"Let me hear it, and judge,” said Hume.

"I will not,” said the Italian; "but yet my request shall be simple, and your accomplishment of it very easy. Moreover, it shall be offensive neither to your country's laws, nor to your own wise mind. Give me this one promise, and I die in peace."

"Be it so then," said Frederick; "I will do your request if I find it as you negatively characterise it."

"Then leave me-leave me for ever!" cried Marli." But if my heart and body, and all my soul, could be fashioned into one blessing, they would descend upon thy head and thy heart, and all thy outgoings, thou young man among a million.-Oh! my last brother on earth!" So saying, Marli sprung upon Frederick's neck, and sobbed aloud like a little child; and so overcome was Frederick by the sense of his own unhappiness, but chiefly by pity for the fate of the poor Italian boy, in whose heart generosity was strongly mingled with worse passions, that he gave way to the infectious sorrow; and for many minutes the two young men mingled their tears as if they had been the children of one mother. At length Marli tore himself away, and flung himself violently down with his face upon his low bed.

THE very next day word was brought to Frederick Hume, that the Italian had killed himself in prison by striking his skull against the walls of his cell, and at the same time the following letter was put into Hume's hands:

"I claim your promise-I forbore distinctly stating to you my purpose last night, because I knew you would have teased me with warnings and exhortations, which, despite of my respect for your wisdom, could no more have stayed me in my antique

appropriation of myself, than you could make a rain-proof garment from the torn wings of beautiful butterflies. Did you think my soul could afford to give such a spectacle to gaping boors? Well, we must be buried in the first instance (for the law and the surgeon have lost our limbs) among nettles, in unconsecrated ground, at a respect ful distance from Christian bones, in the churchyard of this town. But now for my request, and your vow to fulfil it. I demand that you raise my body by night, and take it to your aisle, and bury it beside Charlotte Marli's beautiful body. This request, I think, implies nothing contrary to the laws of your country, or which can startle a wise heart free from paltry superstitions about the last rites of suicides. Moreover, you can do the thing with great secresy. Then shall I rest in peace beside her whom my soul loved; and we shall rise together at the last day: and you shall be blessed for ever, for her sake and for my sake. Farewell, my brother.

"ANTONIO MARLI."

Hume prepared without delay to obey this letter, and providing himself with six men from the village of Holydean, on whose secresy he could well depend, he caused three of them by night to dig up the body of Marli from the grave-yard where it had been buried, whilst the other three, in the meanwhile, prepared another grave for it in Mrs Mather's aisle, as near as possible to his sister Charlotte's. The complexion of the night suited well this strange work, darkening earth and heaven with piled lofts of blackness. Frederick himself superintended the work of exhumation, which was happily accomplished without interruption. Leaving two of his men to fill up carefully the empty grave, with the third he then accompanied the cart in which, wrapped in a sheet, the body of Marli was transferred to Holydean churchyard. There it was interred anew beside his sister's remains, and the grave being filled up level with the surface, the remains of the earth were carefully disposed of, so that, without a very nice inspection, it could not be known, from the appearance of the ground, that this new burial had taken place in the aisle. Thus was Antonio Marli's singular request faithfully accomplished.

Next morning Hume visited the aisle, to see that all was right. The history of the Marlis, and their late living existence, and his own share in their strange destinies, all seemed to him a dream; yet their palpable tombs were before him, and prostrate in heart from recurring recollections of their fate and his own so deeply intertwisted, he remained one last bitter hour beside the graves of these wild and passionate children of the South.

Julia Romelli heard, too late, how she had been imposed upon, in reference to Hume's supposed inconstancy of affection; but, for their mutual peace of mind, she determined never to see him more, and never to exchange explanations with him. As for Frederick, he too had resolved steadfastly to observe the same forbear

ance.

But though Julia could be so self-denied, she was not the less inwardly racked, as she reflected on her own unhappy rashness. Her father's murder was a dreadful aggravation to her distress, which was still farther heightened by the harsh treatment of her husband, Stewart, who was conscious, probably, that his wife had never loved him. The loss of her first-born boy, who was, unhappily, drowned in a well, brought the terrible consummation. Poor Julia went mad, and night after night (for her brutal husband cared little for her) she might be seen, when the image of the full moon was shining down in the bottom of the well, sitting on its bank, and inviting passengers to come and see her little white boy swimming in the water. From week to week she grew more violent in her insanity, and after many years of woful alienation, she ended her days in that very cell where Antonio Marli had once lain.

A few days after the second burial of Antonio Marli, Frederick Hume went to London. There he found means of being present at a ball to see the great Nelson, who was that year in this country. It was most glorious to see the swan-like necks and the deep bosoms of England's proudest beauties bending towards him, round about, when he entered-that man with his thin weather-worn aspect. And never did England's beauties look so proudly, as when, thus hanging like jewels of his triumph around their manly and chivalrous sailor, who

had given his best blood to the green sea for his country. He, too, felt his fame, for the pale lines of his face, as if charged with electricity, were up and trembling, as in the day of his enthusiastic battle.

At sight of this unparalleled man, Frederick was struck to the heart. He bethought him how much more noble it was, since his life was now of little value to him, to lose it for his

country, than waste it away in selfish unhappiness. Accordingly, our Doctor gave up his more peaceful profession, and with the consent, and by the assistance of his patroness, Mrs Mather, he entered the navy. In his very first engagement he found the death which he did all but court, and his body went down into the deep sea for a grave. T. A.

ABOUT eighty, or, it may be, a hundred years ago, lived that very celebrated personage, Ralph Hammerer, the youngest, the shortest, the ugliest, and the wisest, of four brothers, all tinners in a certain Cornish bal, or mine, which, in the language of the place and time, was called the Huel-Rose. His fame, however, might be said to be of a very domestic nature, and flourished in a narrow circle, being, as far as I know, confined to the aforesaid mine, and a neighbourhood of about ten or twelve miles, which neighbourhood included a small town, four villages, and divers cottages, with the usual quantum of gossips, male and female, dogs, pigs, poultry, and children. The three elder brothers, John, Richard, and Philip, were men of uncommon strength and stature, whose whole wit lay in their muscles, goodhumoured withal, and in nothing else remarkable, except it was for their attachment to Ralph, to whom they were as bounden vassals, notwithstand ing their disparity of age, he being a lad of fifteen, while the youngest of them was at least two and twenty. But it was not only with his brothers that Ralph was all-powerful; he had contrived to establish the same exclusive dominion over every one of his fellow miners, and from the age of twelve he might be considered as the autocrat of the mine, a fact that was the more surprising, as it must be confessed that his bad qualities were in the proportion of two to one to his good; he was thievish as a magpie, greedy as a wolf, mischievous as a monkey, and uncertain as a weathercock; while in the opposite scale could

only be thrown in an uncommon invention and an inexhaustible fund of humour, that, when he thought proper to exert them, were sure to amuse the dullest, and subdue those who had both cause and disposition to be angry. By the help of these two staple qualities, he was, indeed, the best of all possible companions, and in virtue of his boon companionship, his faults were forgiven; and though, with the exception of his brothers, no one could be exactly said to love him, still his authority was with all unquestionable. In nothing was his influence more shewn, than in the transference of his own work from his own shoulders, though nature had seldom given shoulders better calculated for labour; for, if he had not grown much upwards, after the usual fashion of men, he had, to make amends, shot out prodigiously in a lateral direction, so as to form a square-built, strong-set figure, that seemed to belong to twenty ra ther than to a lad of fifteen. But the fact was, he did not choose to work, except by fits and starts, which fits were of rare occurrence, and when they did occur, of short duration, never lasting so long as to endanger his health by any excess of labour.

A phrenologist, had any existed at the time, would probably have read his character, such as I have described it, in the lumps and bumps of his head; a physiognomist certainly would have discovered much of it in his face, which, though neither very ugly nor very handsome, was in other respects not a little remarkable. It was exceedingly long, without being thin; the nose resembled a parrot's beak,

and the eyes were small and of a bluish grey; but the most singular feature was the upper lip, which was large and flexible, always in strong action when he spoke, and giving a decided character of animal voluptuousness to the whole face. The forehead seemed as if it consisted of two stories, or as if nature in a freak had piled one skull upon another, without much consideration of the fitness of the two parts to each other; and this prodigious building was thatched with a quantity of shining black hair that hung down stiff and straight without the slightest symptom of a curl.

General was the lamentation when one day this worthy character was found missing from the mine, and various were the conjectures set afloat as to the cause and nature of his absence. The eldest brother surmised that he had been decoyed away by the eloquence of a recruiting sergeant, who had lately been beating up for heroes in the neighbouring village; the next opined that he had been spirited off by a band of gipsies,-no bad conjecture, considering the absentee's general propensities; but the youngest of the brothers rejected both these opinions, and stoutly argued for his having been cajoled into the clutches of the giant, Tgagle, in revenge of his many mockeries; for Ralph, though so young, was a mighty sceptic in the affairs of ghosts and goblins, and, if the vicar of St Just might be credited, in more weighty matters also.

For the two first years the partizans of these various opinions severally maintained, that the subject of them had become a captain of dragoons, a king of gipsies, and a favourite of the giant; for such was their idea of his superior genius that, however they might differ in other respects, they were all agreed in one point, namely, that he must succeed, let his purpose be what it would. In the third year their belief in his infallibility waxed colder and colder. In the fourth they concluded him dead, and each in a manner corresponding with his previous faith, the first brother imagining that he had been shot as a soldier, the second, that he had been hung as a gipsy, and the third, that he had met his fate from the hands of Tregagle, for which last opinion the adopter of it had this very convincing reason, he had heard the voice of Ralph hail

ing his own name from the sea one clear moonlight night. Drowned, therefore, he must be, unless they would deny the belief established in Cornwall for time immemorial, though the manner of his drowning was yet a point for question. Upon this head they could still dispute, and consequently they did dispute for six whole months, when the subject being tolerably well worn out, they dropt it altogether, and from that time forward the name of Ralph was scarcely mentioned. But, just as others had ceased to talk of him, Ralph appeared to talk of himself, not having been shot, hung, or drowned, and furthermore, giving the lie to all his prophets by his return in a character totally opposite to that of a dragoon, an Egyptian, or the favourite of any one, man or giant.

It was a rough evening, about six years from the time of Ralph's absence, when the three brothers, in company with two other work men, descended to their labour in the Huel Rose. As the hours of toil had been doubled upon them from a late increase of the ore, they, as usual in such cases, commenced their operations by sleeping out a candle, that is by lighting a candle and sleeping till it was burnt out, after which they worked briskly for two or three hours, and then took a touch-pipe, or, in the language of men of the upper earth, rested half an hour and smoked, while their employers believed, or were supposed to believe, that they were killing themselves with exertion. On the present occasion their leisure was agreeably interspersed with eating, drinking, and a violent exercise of the lungs under the somewhat inappropriate name of singing; but, loud as their clamour might be, there was above their heads a yet more horrible uproar. The Huel Rose, no very uncommon case with mines in Cornwall, extended its length full eighty fathoms under the sea, which in times of storm would shake the arches of the lode, till the whole seemed ready to fall together in one mighty ruin; and even now the dashing of the waves, driven along by a wild summer gale, and the rolling of sands and rocks under the same influence, kept up a hur ly-burly, that, to unpractised ears, must have been truly astounding. It was, however, no drawback on their merriment, or, if any thing, they ate