oh, my dear ill-fated sister, may it mitigate the keenness of your affliction, to learn that you have not been the greatest sufferer!

In one part of this story I must ever have been obscure and insincere, but that fate has snatched away the worshipped objeet, of whose character we judged in so different a manner. Oh, pardon me, allgracious Heaven, if my opinion has been erroneous!-Pause here, Matilda, if your rising soul has taken the alarm, and weigh well the love you bear me, for I shall need it all, unless I falsify the fact.

On the memorable day, when Heaven decided the destiny of the one sister, and perplexed that of the other, by presenting to the eyes of both the favourite of Elizabeth, how diametrically opposite were the impressions each took of his character! Astonishing that two agreeing in every instance till that moment, should for the first time differ in so decided a manner! and more astonishing that every following day only confirmed the separate judgments! The darling alike of art and of na

ture, the eye or mind could demand no more than was comprised in the person of lord Leicester; but here, in my opinion, the charm ended. His heart, not warm by nature, had been rendered in a great degree callous, from its having expanded in the chilling atmosphere of a court. Unbounded in his projects, timid and subtle in his actions, tyrannic in his pursuits, the object he could not govern never long attached him. Ambition, pride, and vanity, those leading traits in almost every character, were in his so exquisitely blended and corrected by the frost of his nature, that they might often be mistaken for nobler passions. You were presented to his eyes in early youth, a finished pattern of beauty, endued with royalty, in the tender bloom of a newly-awakened love. Uniting thus in your own person the strongest powers of charming, with such as were peculiarly congenial to the heart you wished to win, it laid itself at your feet. Oh, woeful moment when it did so, as it entailed upon you all the miseries of a mutual passion without half its enjoyments!

Alas, Matilda, had you really been adored -yet what could that have done more than severely to aggravate all you were born to suffer?-and as the apparent passion of lord Leicester had to you the charms of reality, I am to blame perhaps thus to represent it; but the season of dissimulation is past, and my tortured heart will utter nothing but truth. So fixed was this opinion of his character, that though there was a moment of my life when my fate seemed wholly in lord Leicester's hands, I could not then enough esteem him to venture his decision. Yet, still a tender pity for your unmerited and everlasting passion should have suppressed this (in your mind) harsh judgment, but that I once more repeat, my own actions must ever then have appeared eccentric and enigmatical.

How deeply both father Anthony and I regretted the imprudence, which introduced into our solitary asylum so dangerous a visitor, it were needless now to repeat. Prudence was for once on the side of passion, and your fate was, by the will of your only remaining guardian, for ever

united with that of your lover. I soon found it vain to oppose the ascendancy he had gained in your affections; and as my own were yet unoccupied, I looked no farther than the present moment, and followed you to Kenilworth Castle without repining. Nevertheless I admired the delusions of love, which in a moment reconciled you to a situation apparently so obscure and abject, and still more that total blindness to your own exquisite perfection, which could make you fancy that low state would ever appear to observing spectators your natural one. What then must be my astonishment to see lord Leicester's love impose such humiliations on an object nature and fortune had placed so far above him, and meanly content himself with monopolized indulgences!

Hardly were we alone, when the presumption of that wretch, Williams, filled both of us with a terror which required an immediate remedy. Every faculty of my soul revolted against the abject compliances your entreaties exacted from me; but even those only served to strengthen the con

tempt which began to predominate in it. Lord Leicester's return gave us a temporary relief, but his method of getting rid of the villain appeared to me alike unsafe and mean, and the only proper mode of ending our fears never once seemed to occur to him-I mean acknowledging his marriage, which perhaps might at that period have been done, without any great danger of offending Elizabeth, whose withering heart was becoming every day less sensible of affection, and whose vanity was so highly gratified and possessed by the addresses of the duke of Anjou. But it was the interest of my lord to break the match with the French prince, and to that golden idol his every passion bowed. We were again left to work tapestry; and when he had succeeded in his favourite project, he suffered the queen in turn to bewail alone the loss of her last lover, and came once more to amuse himself at Kenilworth.

But he was not always to succeed-the jealousy of Elizabeth had now just provocation, and in her sudden arrival at Kenil