a window which opened into a sort of valley formed by the roofs of the Hotel de Poitiers and the Malmaison, which united in that place. Nothing can possibly explain the joy of his heart, unless it be the vow which he forthwith made to the Holy Virgin of instituting a mass at Tours in honour of her, in the then celebrated parish church of l'Escrinnolles.

After he had examined the high and spacious chimneys of the Hotel de Poitiers, he began retracing his steps to take up his poinard. A chill and deadly shivering ran through his limbs, as he beheld a light brightly illuminating the staircase, and then Cornelius himself, in his Dalmatian gown, holding a lamp in his hand, with his eyes wide open, and fixed steadfastly upon the lower end of the corridor, at the top of which he appeared like a spectre.

"Should I open the window and leap out on the roof, he will surely hear me," said the young man to himself.

Still the dreaded Cornelius continued advancing-advancing like the hour of death on the condemned criminal.

In this critical extremity Goulenoire, protected by love, recovered all his presence of mind. He slipped softly into the recess of the doorway, squeezed himself up towards the corner, and in that manner waited the approach of the miser. When the old usurer, holding the lamp before him, came just into the current of wind, which the other managed to produce with his breath, the light was suddenly extinguished. Cornelius growled out a few inarticulate words, seasoned with a Dutch oath, and turned back the way he came. Then the young spark ran

to his chamber, and snatched up his weapon-regained the window in the very nick of time-opened it gently, and jumped out upon the roof. Once again at liberty, and beneath the vault of heaven, whose air he breathed, he felt himself fainting from very happiness, or perhaps from the excess of agitation, into which the dangers he escaped, or his own rashness had thrown him. Placing his hand on a gutter, he sprung up lightly upon it, and said to himself,

"Through which of these chimneys shall I go down into her apartment."

He surveyed each of them in turn, and at last, with an instinct which can only be taught by love, he proceeded to feel them, in order to discover that one in which there had lately been fire. Then, when he had decided that point, the hardy gallant thrust his poinard fast into the joint of two stones, hung his ladder from that, cast it down the mouth of the chimney, and ventured, without a fear, upon the faith of his good blade, to descend into the chamber of his mistress; not knowing whether Saint Vallier might be awake or asleep, but determined to fold the Countess in his arms, though the lives of two men were the price at which he might purchase the gratification.

Cautiously he placed his feet on the still warm embers, then stooping a little, the happy lover beheld the Countess sitting in an easy chair, revealed by the light of a lamp, pale with joy, and trembling with anxious expectation, while she pointed with her finger to Saint Vallier, who lay stretched in sleep on a couch a few yards from her.

Oh! what a burning and silent embrace. It had no echo but in their own hearts.

My dear ***

Glasgow, July, 18 —.

Although it is but a few hours since I placed a letter for you in the post, and but one hour since I lay down with a resolution to seek repose, here I am, with, if not like, a perturbed spirit, labouring for your annoyance. It is impossible for me longer to resist the impulse which constrains me to unbosom to you my secret burden. Peace of mind I have not. Sleep will not come to me while I am wasted by an untold sorrow. Nay, I feel that I ought not to have rest, while, from an unpardonable fastidiousness, I leave undischarged a duty which I may have but short time to fulfil, and to the speedy performance of which my very restlessness may be a gracious warning. Forgive me, my dear friend, if I cause you any vexation by the confidence I am about to repose in you; and even if you think me silly, do not be unmeasured in your reproofs. This I ask for your own sake. In a few weeks hence, you may find it soothing to think that you have spared yourself the remembrance of a harsh or hasty expression.

I have a solemn presentiment on my mind, that my present journey will have a fatal ending, and I wish you to be aware of my anticipations, that you may take such measures as are fitting, for the welfare of those for whom we both feel an interest, but in whom, I may say, as far as I belong to this world, I live and feel.

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Whatever you may think of the unreasonableness of my apprehensions, you will admit that all these measures may be taken without involving in their consequences any thing prejudicial. I would not act rashly in obedience to what I may consider warnings. I would not violate an

engagement, or even abandon the pursuits in which my proper business lies; but, to feel, as I do, perpetually recurring intimations that some trouble is at hand, and not to have recourse to all safe and permitted means of alleviating calamity when it has come, would be to renounce the privileges of a soul that looks before and after, or to insist on the unworthy and impossible condition, that every presage of the future which is to be regarded, shall have been first rendered apprehensible to a faculty which can take cognizance directly of no time but the present.

Believe me, my friend, the scepticism which prevails on the subject of presentiment, is too haughty and indiscriminating. Conjectures are not presentiments ; nor are the wandering doubts and fears which chequer the sunny prospect of every man's future. These are clouds which an ardent fancy, in the very wantonness of its power, may exhale from the region upon which they cast their slight and transitory shadows. Presentiments are not of these, nor among them. For my part, I can see no reason why they should not be entitled to respect equally with anonymous warnings of impending danger, in which the nature of the danger is not clearly defined. If calamity be at some future period to overtake me, why may it not at this moment have commenced its pursuit. It seems admitted, that the young of the more timid animals manifest symptoms of terror, to themselves, I dare say, inexplicable, when the roaring of the lion is heard. It is confessed that the great phenomena of the seasons are preceded by alterations in the atmosphere, which science has rendered, as it were, visible to all, but which are directly felt or discerned by animals of the inferior species, and by some who are among the more susceptible of our own. Why

should it be taken for granted that the spiritual regions are less qualified to transmit notice of coming change than the physical ;-or why shall it be rashly denied that the presentiment by which I am oppressed, is-not a groundless apprehension of something yet to be-but an actual sensation conveyed to the mind or wrought within it, by elements which have, at this moment, existence and activity, and which send sadness and mystery to my soul, while they are shaping out the disaster which may, to-morrow, befal me. Nor have I been left altogether to the presentiments of a saddened spirit for the warning of evil to come, if (which it is not) it be right to name any visitation an evil. Incidents, also, which I am constrained to accept as omens, have admonished me. When these things do so conjointly meetmental inquietude without apparent cause, followed or attended by circumstances calculated to produce it-"let not men say these are their causes, they are natural." They are not natural, my friend, or if they be, nature is very unlike what is dreamed of in your philosophy. Attend, while I detail to you how outward events kept pace with or responded to the persuasion which depressed my spirits. I spare you the recital of such things as the sudden stopping of my watch-the mal-adjustment of my horse's harness-his rearing and backing, an offence which I had never known him to commit before. I proceed to more important matters. When my eldest child had kissed me, and said with his accustomed benison," God bless you, papa-good bye," he walked quietly into the drawing-room, where, looking in immediatly after, I saw he had gone to weep. His sister soothingly said, "Papa will soon return from Belfast;" but he said "No, he is going to Scotland-I will kiss him again,"and presently he had his arms a second time about my neck speechless, and weeping, One of the two sore bereavements by which my maturer life has been afflicted, was preceded by just such an omen. But, I had corroborating evidence of what is to come. The child's mute farewell sensibly affected me, the pain of parting blending with the previously existing apprehension, gave to vague presentiment a direction and an object, and I can truly say, that had a death

bell tolled as I unclasped my child's little arms and laid him down, it would have been a voice so congenial to the state of my mind, as probably not to be noticed, but, certainly, not to occasion a new alarm. You can judge, therefore, how heavily the first hours of travel passed over me, and how eagerly, when, arrived at my destination for the night, I sought distraction from thoughts which, in the solitude of my inn, whither the gloom and storm of an inclement evening had driven me, acquired a degree of power with which I felt myself incapable of contending. Now, mark the ally I was fated to procure. I wished to be relieved from the persecuting remembrance of my poor child's prophetic farewell. "It is the only book in the house, Sir," said the waiter, handing me a volume of Carleton's second series of Traits and Storiesone which I had not seen before. I opened the book eagerly, and read with an interest which caused the circle of ideal personages, among whom I now lived, to shut out for a time all thoughts of personal apprehension. But "all occasions do inform against me"-the story I read was Tubber Dearg, and in it an omen like that from which I would escape, and the melancholy sequences it boded, are invested with the attributes of beauty and terror, which the poetic imagination alone can bestow, and which secure for every subject they adorn an imperishable place in the memory.

But in order that you should understand how much the influence of my omen has increased, what vitality has been imparted to it by the story of Tubber Dearg, you should know how frequently my admiration of the author's powers brings his works to my remembrance. Of all the writers who, in our latter days, have made fiction the vehicle by which the national traits are delineated, I look upon Mr. Carleton as pre-eminently the first. Miss Edgeworth, to whom was given the divining rod by which the unseen springs of feeling and poetic interest were detected under the most rugged and unpromising surface of Irish life, I do not include among the later writers; nor Lady Morgan, whose Irish novels, in general, have their scenes laid in courtly places, where our native character has the strangeness of an exotic.

I speak of a class of writers, and perhaps I might add subjects, altogether different. Those, I mean, to which we owe the stories of crime and conspiracy, and the displays of that national spirit, so unacquainted with, and so careless of English custom and law, that it could be likened to the mountain distillation, whose high privilege it is never to see the face of a guagera privilege collaterally derived from the dignities of those touchy spirits of elder time, who claimed as their right (and used as their convenience,) exemption from entering any walled town. We have writers-men of genius too, who have taken, as the materiel of their stories, the present character and condition of our people, who seem to regard the ornaments of fiction as useful especially in attracting attention to a correct picture of very unhappy circumstances, and of good and evil qualities; and among those, or rather of these, I regard Mr. Carleton as the first. I can admire the graphic descriptions of the O'Hara Family-the art with which their stories are evolved-the surprise and suspense of their incidents-the spirit of their dialogue, and the force and fidelity with which they delineate character. I have been absorbed in the pathos and gaiety, the glimmer and gloom of the Munster Festivals, and, in the terrific interest which their author has communicated to some of his splendid but impossible "situations," and in my momentary forgetfulness of their improbability, have convincing proof that if he had little prudence in avoiding difficulties, he has shown surpassing genius and art in sustaining them. The author of "To-day in Ireland," gives sufficient proof of qualities of mind which promise much; but he wrote of Ireland, one would say, while he was learning the character of her children. He seems not to have been of those of whom he writes, nor to have grown up among them, but to have made the advantage which a man of superior powers can always make of the opportunities thrown in his way, and the portions of information he had gathered. To the author of " Irishmen and Irishwomen," we have often, (always, indeed, when jealous duties allowed us the indulgence of conversing on subjects of domestic fiction,) offered the tribute of our unavailing

praise. I need not say to you how much I admire the simple and unpresuming form of his stories, and the judgment with which he enhances their pathos and spirit, by the accurate and seemingly unornamented truth of his dialogue and his details. He imparts life to his characters-they act and speak after their own manner, and by their own volition. I need not remind you how truly I admire his performances, and honor his motives. Many others have laboured, with credit and good effect, in this late explored field, but none, in my judgment, so successfully as the writer of the “Traits and Stories." He has written tales which are not so much pictures of Irish life, as admirable contrivances to make real agents tell their own story ;through which, as through a kind of moral glass-hives, the passions, and tendernesses, and humours of his countrymen can be seen working. In grace and finesse he is excelled by many, in the adventitious embellishments which are gathered as the results of cultivation, other stories are more adorned than his; but in the power to sound every note in the character of his countrymen, in accurate knowledge of their condition, in the boldness and industry with which he appears to have explored the more remote and hidden causes of their miseries and crimes, in the singular tact and discrimination with which he has threaded the perilous mazes of party and faction, and the clearness and force with which he exhibits the result of these anxious and important inquiries, Carleton's "Traits and Stories" seem to me unrivalled and unapproached. You may judge, then, with such an opinion of these tales, with a disposition to quote them as though they were political authorities, with a persuasion that legislators could learn more, and of more use, from them, than from the voluminous reports of committees and commissioners to inquire into the state of Ireland; you can judge whether the omen which I sought to chase away, did not gather a deeper and more appalling blackness from the verified prognostics in the story of Tubber Dearg.

I had serious thoughts of returning to my home, and they for some time maintained a sharp conflict with what I hope I may call my better resolution. I combated them, as my letters, dated