these?-Tears? My good child, you should dry our tears instead of adding to them. Where are your children? Let me see-ah! my heart-let me feel them, I mean-let me take them in my arms. My little angels! Oh! If I could only open my eyes for one moment to look upon you all-but for one little instant-I would close them again for the rest of my life, and think myself happy. If it had happened only one day-one hour after your arrival-but the will of Heaven be done! perhaps even this moment, when we think ourselves most miserable, He is preparing for us some hidden blessing." Once more the pious widow was correct in her conjecture. It is true, that day, which all hoped should be a day of rapture, was spent by the reunited family in tears and mourning. But Provi dence did not intend that creatures who had served him so faithfully, should be visited with more than a temporary sorrow, for a slight and unaccustomed transgression. The news of the widow's misfortune spread rapidly through the country, and excited universal sympathy for few refuse their commiseration to a fellow-creature's sorrow-even of those who would accord a tardy and measured sympathy to his good fortune. Among those who heard with real pity the story of their distress, was a surgeon who resided in the neighbourhood, and who felt all that enthusiastic devotion to his art, which its high importance to the welfare of mankind was calculated to excite in a generous mind. This gentleman took an early opportunity of visiting the old widow when she was alone in the cottage. The simplicity with which she told her story, and the entire resignation which she expressed, interested and touched him deeply. 66 It is not over with me yet, sir," she concluded, "for still, when the family are talking around me, I forget that I am blind; and when I hear my son say something pleasant, I turn to see the smile upon his lips; and when the darkness reminds me of my loss, it seems as if I lost my sight over again!" The surgeon discovered, on examination, that the blindness was occasioned by a disease called cataract, which obscures, by an unhealthy secretion, the lucid brightness of the crystalline lens, and ob. structs the entrance of the rays of light. The improvements which modern practitioners have made in this science, render this disease, which was once held to be incurable, now comparatively easy of removal. The surgeon perceived at once by the condition of the eyes, that, by the abstraction of the injured lens, he could restore sight to the afflicted widow. Unwilling, however, to excite her hopes too suddenly or pre maturely, he began by asking her whether, for a chance of recovering the use of her eyes, she would submit to a little pain? The poor woman replied, "that if he thought he could once more enable her to behold her child and his children, she would be content to undergo any pain which would not endanger her existence." "Then," replied her visitor, "I may inform you, that I have the strongest reasons to believe that I can restore you to sight, provided you agree to place yourself at my disposal for a few days. I will provide you with an apartment in my house, and your family shall know nothing of it until the cure is effected." The widow consented, and on that very evening the operation was performed. The pain was slight, and was endured by the patient without a murmur. For a few days after the surgeon insisted on her wearing a covering over her eyes, until the wounds which he had found it necessary to inflict, had been perfectly healed. One morning, after he had felt her pulse and made the necessary inquiries, he said, while he held the hand of the widow "I think we may now venture with safety to remove the covering. Compose yourself now, my good old friend, and suppress all emotion. Prepare your heart for the reception of a great happiness." The poor woman clasped her hands firmly together, and moved her lips as if in prayer. At the same moment the covering fell from her brow, and the light burst in a joyous flood upon her soul. She sat for an instant bewildered and incapable of viewing any object with distinctness. The first on which her eyes reposed, was the figure of a young man bending his gaze with an intense and ecstatic fondness upon hers, and with his arms outstretched as if to anticipate the recognition. The face, though changed and sunned since she had known it, was still familiar to her. She started from her seat with a wild cry of joy, and cast herself upon the bosom of her son. She embraced him repeatedly, then removed him to a distance, that she might have the opportunity of viewing him with greater distinctness and again, with a burst of tears, flung herself upon his neck. Other voices, too, mingled with theirs. She beheld her daughter and their children waiting eagerly for her caress. She embraced them all, returning from each to each, and perusing their faces and persons as if she would never drink deep enough of the cup of rapture which her recovered sense afforded her. The beauty of the young mother-the fresh and rosy colour of the children-the glossy brightness of their hair-their smiles-their movements of joy-all afforded subjects for delight and admiration, such as she might never have experienced, had she never considered them in the light of blessings lost for life. The surgeon, who thought that the consciousness of a stranger's presence might impose a restraint upon the feelings of the patient and her friends, retired into a distant corner, where he beheld, not without tears, the scene of happiness which he had been made instrumental in conferring. 66 Richard," said the widow, as she laid her hand upon her son's shoulder and looked into his eyes, "did I not judge aright, when I said, that even when we thought ourselves the most miserable, the Almighty might have been preparing for us some hidden blessing? Were we in the right to murmur ?" The young man withdrew his arms from his mother, clasped them before him, and bowed down his head in silence. GRIFFIN.* THE FIRST AND LAST RUN. Belay there, my hearties, and ease off your crack, While the grog round the table in oceans flows free, "ОCH hone agra, Denis, mavourneen, is it kilt ye are? Spake to the poor ould mother that bore ye. Och, may the curse of the widy and the childless light on the villain that fetcht ye that wipe athwart yer brow; and if I catch the murtherin' thafe, I'll set my tin commands on 'im, by tare and ounty I will. Alas! alas! yer gon from me intirely now! Ye'll never more grasp the tiller, or rin out another reef in this world; but it's ye that shan't want a mass t' help ye in the next, tho' I should never whiff another caubeen for it; yer sowl to glory, amin. Dry your peepers, Rose, ma-colleen. Weepin' 'll do 'im no good, that lies there dead and gon."—"Oh Nancy, I can't help it when I see him stretched so, and when I think that he'll never more smile on his poor Rose, never again; but hasn't Ned gone for the doctor ?"— -"True for ye, a cushla ma chree, he maybe's there by this, tho' I'm mightily 'fraid his lifelines are cut away, and he must be stowed under the boord like his father afore 'im. Och whirra, sthrew my poor boy! -Och the blessings on yer face, docther, avourneen, it's me that "Tales of the Five Senses." aint glad to see ye mayhap," said the old woman to the doctor, as he entered the room of the hut in which they were; and while he's doing his best to bring his patient to, we'll say a few words to our readers in explanation of the above. The small town or fishing village of F, on the south-east part of England, was, at the time of our story, one of the chief and most hoted haunts of the smugglers of that wild coast. The whole of the population, from their infancy up, were taught, both by precept and example, to consider the free trade as the chief and most glorious end of their lives. The house of each person was, in some manner, adapted for escape or concealment. Steps for the feet, and holds for the hands, were cut in several of the chimneys, and on the roofs several planks were always kept in readiness, to be placed from the ledge of one house to another, in order to facilitate escape, which was the more easily managed, as the streets were narrow, and the top story of each domicile jutted out in the oldfashioned style of the architecture of the time in which they were built. The floors likewise of the rooms could all be taken up, discovering large spaces, capable of holding many a bale of silk and tobacco. Among so many hardy and reckless men, there was always some one who held a kind of tacit authority over the rest, won by many a deed of skill and daring. For many years Matthew, or Big Mat Smith, as he was generally called, had been their leader. To a frame of iron, he added a mind fearless and unshrinking, and fertile in every expedient necessary to ensure success in their undertakings. He was now sinking into the "sere and yellow leaf," and the only prop of his declining days was his fairhaired, blue-eyed daughter Rose. Of five stalwart sons, not one now remained to him. Two perished in the storm,-the rest fell fighting by his side. Success full often awaited on the smuggler's undertakings, and many a whisper of hoarded shot in his locker was rife in the town. 'Twas no wonder that the doctor and the apothecary thrived, for hardly a Saturday night passed withou! numerous broken heads; for Rose, to no small share of beauty, added the more substantial charms of Plutus; and this, combined with the almost certainty, that whoever was the favoured one, would in all probability succeed to the skippership of the place, caused such a flow of blood to the fingers of the free traders, that when not busy in breaking the pates of the sharks, they were fully employed in toasting the pretty Rose, and giving each other striking proofs of their admiration of the " pride of F--" After much drinking, dancing, and fighting, Denis M'Carthy at last opened a pretty clear road for himself, by beating all his opponents, and lighting a little bit of a spark in Rose's breast, which he was not the boy to let go out for want of fanning; and old Mat himself saw with pleasure his child fixing on Denis for her future pilot through life-for the young Irishman had always borne himself spiritedly and weil, both afloat and ashore, and had once even saved the old man's life, by flinging himself before him, and receiving the stroke of a man-of-war's cutlass intended for Mat. Denis, being young and of a hardy constitution, soon recovered, and became prime favourite with his Rose's father. "Tis mighty odd intirely," said his mother to him, one night as they sat croonin' over their bright fire and clean wiped hearth, "what confidence that same thafe, love, puts into the most fearful little colleen of us all. Faix, not more nor a month agon', there was that same Rose couldn't lift up her peepers from the grund, and ax a crathur, How d'ye do ?' but now she'll go hangin' on yer oxter the whole day, an' look into your face too as bold as brass. The blessin's on her! Och, but ye're the boy for 'em, Deny alanna! Luff up to that port, ma bouchal, for it's it that's a warm un." Nancy and her husband had left Ireland soon after they were married, and after being tossed here and there, at last came to anchor for good at F. McCarthy soon joined the smugglers, and plied his vocation with the greatest assiduity, having, as he himself said, "not the laste bit of objection in the world at all at all agen it." Working away thus, he managed to get on pretty well for about three years, when, one fine moonlight night, as he was pacing the deck of the "Speed," which was going at a glorious rate before the wind, with the spray dashing like falling snow over her bows, he was most unluckily met by a leaden messenger from a cruizer, which ran across their bows, and which just gave him time to exclaim, "D-d unjontlemanly behaver this, by the big piper of Leinst-" when death stept in, and cut his soliloquy short. Nancy was now left, "a poor lone widy on the wide world, wid a poor faderless bit of a gossoon to provide for;" and nobly she did her duty towards her orphan boy. Many a cruise did Nancy take "wid the boys," and many a run did she lend a by no means useless hand in, till at last "ould Nancy was well to do, plase God, and thrivin'." Such was the state of affairs on the morning of the day on which our "veritable historie" commences. The pier, the harbour, the town, and all the manifold objects therein, had just begun to emerge from the dim obscurity of night, and to stand broad out in the rays of the rising moon, which, kissing the crests of the dancing waves, glanced on and illumined with one blaze of purple light the "eternal cliffs," and gradually faded away into the distant sea, showing, in one coup d'œil, the grand superiority of nature over the works of the sojourners of earth. From every house, street, and alley, the people now began to issue, |