tempted the violator and murderer-suppose | had forsaken. As free from sin himself as him both-yea, that man at the bar-sworn to might be mortal and fallen man-mortal beby all the parish, if need were, as a man of cause fallen-he knew from Scripture and from tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded nature, that in "the lowest deep there is still a -in the lust of lucre, consequent on the satiat- lower deep" in wickedness, into which all of ing of another lust-to rob his victim of a few woman born may fall, unless held back by the trinkets! Let loose the wildest imagination arm of the Almighty Being, whom they must into the realms of wildest wickedness, and yet serve steadfastly in holiness and truth. He they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for knew, too, from the same source, that man cana moment the union of such appalling and not sin beyond the reach of God's mercy-it such paltry guilt, in that man who now trembled the worst of all imaginable sinners seek, in a not before them, but who seemed cut off from Bible-breathed spirit at last, that mercy through all the sensibilities of this life by the scythe the Atonement of the Redeemer. Daily-and of Misery that had shorn him down! But why nightly-he visited that cell; nor did he fear try to recount, however feebly, the line of to touch the hand-now wasted to the bonedefence taken by the speaker, who on that day which at the temptation of the Prince of the seemed all but inspired. The sea may over- Air, who is mysteriously suffered to enter in at turn rocks, or fire consume them till they split the gates of every human heart that is guardin pieces; but a crisis there sometimes is in ed not by the flaming sword of God's own Serman's destiny, which all the powers ever aphim-was lately drenched in the blood of lodged in the lips of man, were they touched the most innocent creature that ever looked on with a coal from heaven, cannot avert, and the day. Yet a sore trial it was to his Christiwhen even he who strives to save, feels and anity to find the criminal so obdurate. knows that he is striving all in vain-ay, vain, would make no confession. Yet said that it as a worm-to arrest the tread of Fate about was fit-that it was far best that he should to trample down its victim into the dust. All die-that he deserved death! But ever when hoped-many almost believed that the pri- the deed without a name was alluded to, his soner would be acquitted-that a verdict of tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an "Not Proven," at least, if not of "Not Guilty," | impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen would be returned; but they had not been sworn to do justice before man and before God-and, if need were, to seal up even the fountains of mercy in their hearts-flowing, and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle as that bar presented-a man already seeming to belong unto the dead!

He

to conscience and confess-he that prayed shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease-cease to torment me, or you will drive me to deny my God!"

No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been missing from In about a quarter of an hour the jury re- Moorside, and was seen next morning-(where turned to the box-and the verdict, having been he had been all night never was knownsealed with black wax, was handed up to the though it was afterwards rumoured that one Judge, who read, "We unanimously find the like him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming prisoner Guilty." He then stood up to receive darkened, on the very spot of the murder)— the sentence of death. Not a dry eye was in wandering about the hills, hither and thither, the court during the Judge's solemn and affect- and round and round about, like a man stricking address to the criminal-except those of en with blindness, and vainly seeking to find the Shadow on whom had been pronounced the his home. When brought into the house, his doom. "Your body will be hung in chains senses were gone, and he had lost the power on the moor-on a gibbet erected on the spot of speech. All he could do was to mutter where you murdered the victim of your unhal- some disjointed syllables, which he did continlowed lust, and there will your bones bleach ually, without one moment's cessation, one unin the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the in- intelligible and most rueful moan! The figure sects and the birds of the air have devoured of his daughter seemed to cast no image on your flesh; and in all future times, the spot on his eyes-blind and dumb he sat where he had which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, perpetrated that double crime, at which all hu- with his shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his manity shudders, will be looked on from afar forehead, and the fixed orbs-though stoneby the traveller passing through that lonesome blind at least to all real things-beneath them wild with a sacred horror!" Here the voice flashing fire. He had borne up bravely-alof the Judge faltered, and he covered his face most to the last-but had some tongue syllawith his hands; but the prisoner stood unmov-bled his son's doom in the solitude, and at that ed in figure, and in face untroubled-and when all was closed, was removed from the bar, the same ghostlike and unearthly phantom, seemingly unconscious of what had passed, or even of his own existence.

Surely now he will suffer his old father to visit him in his cell! "Once more only-only once more let me see him before I die!" were his words to the clergyman of the parish, whose Manse he had so often visited when a young and happy boy. That servant of Christ had not forsaken him whom now all the world

instant had insanity smitten him!

Such utter prostration of intellect had been expected by none; for the old man, up to the very night before the Trial, had expressed the most confident trust of his son's acquittal Nothing had ever served to shake his conviction of his innocence-tnough he had always forborne speaking about the circumstances of the murder-and had communicated to nobody any of the grounds on which he more than hoped in a case so hopeless; and though a trouble in his eyes often gave the lie to his lip

Tree!

There was no bell to toll there-but at the very moment he was ascending the scaffold, a black cloud knelled thunder, and many hundreds of people all at once fell down upon their knees. The man in white lifted up his eyes, and said, "O Lord God of Heaven! and Thou his blessed Son, who died to save sinners! accept this sacrifice!"

when he used to say to the silent neighbours, | any thing could have been seen, had been shut "We shall soon see him back at Moorside." fast against all horrid sights-and the horses' Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and hoofs and the wheels must have been muffled his trust in God that that innocence would be that had brought that hideous Framework to the established and set free, been so sacred, that Moor. But there it now stood-a dreadful he blow, when it did come, struck him like a The sun moved higher and higher up hammer, and felled him to the ground, from the sky, and all the eyes of that congregation which he had risen with a riven brain? In were at once turned towards the east, for a dull whatever way the shock had been given, it had sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling been terrible; for old Gilbert Adamson was feet, seemed shaking the Moor in that direcnow a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in tion; and lo! surrounded with armed men on Moorside-not keepers from a mad-house-for horseback, and environed with halberds, came his daughter could not afford such tendence- on a cart, in which three persons seemed to be but two of her brother's friends, who sat up sitting, he in the middle all dressed in whitewith him alternately, night and day, while the the death-clothes of the murderer-the unpityarms of the old man, in his distraction, had to ing shedder of most innocent blood. be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an end now; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks; and people were afraid to go near the house. It was proposed among the neighbours to take Alice and little Ann out of it; and an asylum for them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at all their entreaties; and as, in such a case, it would have been too shocking to tear her away Not one in all that immense crowd could by violence, she was suffered to remain with have known that that white apparition was him who knew her not, but who often-it was Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been said-stared distractedly upon her, as if she almost jet-black, was now white as his facehad been some fiend sent in upon his insanity as his figure, dressed, as it seemed, for the from the place of punishment. Weeks pass grave. Are they going to execute the mured on, and still she was there-hiding herself derer in his shroud? Stone-blind, and stoneat times from those terrifying eyes; and from deaf, there he stood-yet had he, without help, her watching corner, waiting from morn till walked up the steps of the scaffold. A hymn night, and from night till morn-for she sel- of several voices arose-the man of God close dom lay down to sleep, and had never undress- beside the criminal, with the Bible in his uped herself since that fatal sentence-for some lifted hands; but those bloodless lips had no moment of exhausted horror, when she might motion-with him this world was not, though steal out, and carry some slight gleam of com- yet he was in life-in life, and no more! And fort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or was this the man who, a few months ago, the gloom in which the brain of her Father flinging the fear of death from him, as a flash swam through a dream of blood. But there of sunshine flings aside the shades, had dewere no lucid intervals; and ever as she mov- scended into that pit which an hour before had ed towards him, like a pitying angel, did he fu- been bellowing, as the foul vapours exploded riously rage against her, as if she had been a like cannons, and brought up the bodies of fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, them who had perished in the womb of the had lived to see the murdered corpse of her earth? Was this he who once leaped into the dearest friend-murdered by her own only devouring fire, and re-appeared, after all had brother, whom, in secret, that murdered maid-given over for lost the glorious boy, with an en had most tenderly loved that murderous brother loaded with prison-chains, and condemned to the gibbet for inexpiable and unpardonable crimes-her father raving like a demon, self-murderous were his hands but free, nor visited by one glimpse of mercy from Him who rules the skies-after having borne more than, as she meekly said, had ever poor girl borne, she took to her bed quite heart-broken, and, the night before the day of execution, died. As for poor little Ann, she had been wiled away some weeks before; and in the blessed thoughtlessness of childhood, was not without hours of happiness among her playmates on the braes.

infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to eddy back, that they might seathe not the head of the deliverer, and a shower of blessings fell upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom, and made the heart of the widow to sing for joy? It is he. And now the executioner pulls down the cord from the beam, and fastens it round the criminal's neck. His face is already covered, and that fatal handkerchief is in his hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, and one multitudinous sob convulses the air;when wild outcries, and shrieks, and yells, are at that moment heard from the distant gloom of the glen that opens up to Moorside, and three figures, one far in advance of the others, The Morning of that Day arose, and the come flying, as on the wings of the wind, to Moor was all blackened with people round the gibbet. Hundreds started to their feet, and the tall gibbet, that seemed to have grown, ""Tis the maniac-'tis the lunatic!" was the with its horrid arms, out of the ground during cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hillthe night. No sound of axes or hammers had side, that seemed hardly accessible but to the been heard clinking during the dark hours-goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few despenothing had been seen passing along the road; rate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected the windows of all the houses from which he would have been dashed in pieces, alighted

No need was there to hold the miserable man. He who had been so furious in his manacles at Moorside, seemed now, to the people at a distance, calm as when he used to sit in the elder's seat beneath the pulpit in that small kirk. But they who were near or on the scaf---a thousand voices cried; and the murderer, fold, saw something horrid in the fixedness of his countenance. "Let go your hold of me, ye fools!" he muttered to some of the mean wretches of the law, who still had him in their clutch-and tossing his hands on high, cried with a loud voice, "Give ear, ye Heavens! and hear, O Earth! I am the Violator-I am the Murderer!"

unclasping a knife, that, all unknown to his keepers, he had worn in his breast when a maniac, sheared them asunder as the sickle shears the corn. But his son stirred not-and on being lifted up by his father, gave not so much as a groan. His heart had burst-and he was dead. No one touched the gray-headed murderer, who knelt down-not to pray-but to look into his son's eyes-and to examine his lips-and to feel his left breast-and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to assure himself-and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field after hush of the noise of battle-that this was death. He rose; and standing forward on the edge of the scaffold, said, with a voice that shook not, deep, strong, hollow, and hoarse-"Good people! I am likewise now the murderer of my daughter and of my son! and of myself!" Next moment the knife was in his heart—and he fell down a corpse on the corpse of his Ludovic. All round the sultry horizon the black clouds had for hours been gathering-and now came the thunder and the lightning-and the storm. Again the whole multitude prostrated themselves on the moor-an he Pastor, bending over the dead bodies, said,

MORNING MONOLOGUE.

"KNOWLEDGE is Power." So is Talent-so | sing "many a lovely lay," that perished like is Genius-so is Virtue. Which is the greatest? It might seem hard to tell; but united, they go forth conquering and to conquer. Nor is that union rare. Kindred in nature, they love to dwell together in the same "palace of the soul." Remember Milton. But too often they are disunited; and then, though still Powers, they are but feeble, and their defeats are frequent as their triumphs. What! is it so even with Virtue? It is, and it is not. Virtue may reign without the support of Talent and Genius; but her counsellor is Conscience, and what is Conscience but Reason rich by birthright in knowledge directly derived from the heaven of heavens beyond all the stars?

And may Genius and Talent indeed be, conceive, and execute, without the support of Virtue? You will find that question answered | in the following lines by Charles Grant, which deserve the name of philosophical poetry :

:

Talents, 'tis true, quick, various, bright, has God
To Virtue oft denied, on Vice bestow'd;
Just as fond Nature lovelier colours brings
To deck the insect's than the eagle's wings.
But then of man the high-born nobler part,
The ethereal energies that touch the heart,
Creative Fancy, labouring Thought intense,
Imagination's wild magnificence,

And all the dread sublimities of Song-
These, Virtue these to thee alone belong.

Such is the natural constitution of humanity;
and in the happiest state of social life, all its
noblest Faculties would bear legitimate sway,
each in its own province, within the spirit's
ample domains. There, Genius would be
honoured; and Poetry another name for reli-
gion. But to such a state there can, under the
most favouring skies, be no more than an ap-
proximation; and the time never was when
Virtue suffered no persecution, Honour no
shame, Genius no neglect, nor fetters were not
imposed by tyrannous power on the feet of
the free. The age
of Homer, the age of Solon,
the age of Pericles, the age of Numa, the age
of Augustus, the age of Alfred, the age of Leo,
the age of Elizabeth, the age of Anne, the age
of Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron, have they
not been all bright and great ages? Yet had
they been faithfully chronicled, over the mise-
ry and madness of how many despairing spi-
rits fraught with heavenly fire, might we not
have been called to pour forth our unavailing
indignations and griefs!

the flowers around them, in praise of the Power at whose footstool they "stooped their anointed heads as low as death." Even then has Genius been honoured, because though it ceased to be august, still it was beautiful; it seemed to change fetters of iron into bands of roses, and to halo with a glory the brows of slaves. The wine-cup mantled in its light; and Love forgot in the bower Poetry built for bliss, that the bride might be torn from the bridegroom's bosom on her bridal night by a tyrant's lust. Even there Genius was happy, and diffused happiness; at its bidding was heard pipe, tabor, and dulcimer; and to his lips" Warbling melody" life floated by, in the midst of all oppression, a not undelightful dream!

But how has it been with us in our Green Island of the West? Some people are afraid of revolutions. Heaven pity them! we have had a hundred since the Roman bridged our rivers, and led his highways over our mountains. And what the worse have we been of being thus revolved? We are no radicals; but we dearly love a revolution-like that of the stars. No two nights are the heavens the same-all the luminaries are revolving to the music of their own spheres-look, we beseech you, on that new-risen star. He is elected by universal suffrage-a glorious representative of a million lesser lights; and on dissolution of that Parliament-how silent but how eloquent!-he is sure of his return. Why, we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen belowit is no longer called Reform-were it to fling up to free light from fettered darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. But we look abroad and see strutting to and fro the sons of little men blown up with vanity, in a land where tradition not yet old tells of a race of giants. We are ashamed of ourselves to think we feared the throes of the times, seeing not portentous but pitiable births. Brush these away; and let us think of the great dead-let us look on the great living--and, strong in memory and hope, be confident in the cause of Freedom. "Great men have been among usbetter none;" and can it be said that now there is "a want of books and men," or that those we have, are mere dwarfs and duodecimos? Is there no energy, no spirit of adventure and enterprise, no passion in the character of our country? Has not wide over earth

"England sent her men, of men the chief,

Under despotic governments, again, such as have sunk deep their roots into Oriental soils, and beneath Oriental skies prosperously expanded their long-enduring umbrage, where might is right, and submission virtue, noble-To plant the Tree of Life, to plant fair Freedom's Tree?” minded men-for sake of that peace which is Has not she, the Heart of Europe and the ever dearest to the human heart, and if it de- Queen, kindled America into life, and raised scend not a glad and gracious gift from Heaven, up in the New World a power to balance the will yet not ungratefully be accepted when Old, star steadying star in their unconflicting breathed somewhat sadly from the quieted bo- courses? You can scarce see her shores for som of earth by tyranny saved from trouble-ships; her inland groves are crested with have submitted, almost without mourning, to towers and temples; and mists brooding at in

Yet still the patriot cry is of sinecures. Let the few sluggards that possess but cannot enjoy them, doze away on them till sinecures Yet base, blind and deaf (and better dumb) and sinecurists drop into the dust. Shall such must be he who would deny, that here Genius creatures disturb the equanimity of the maghas had, and now has her noblest triumphs; nanimous working-classes of England? True that Poetry has here kindled purer fires on to themselves in life's great relations, they loftier altars than ever sent up their incense need not grudge, for a little while longer, the to Grecian skies; that Philosophy has sounded paupers a few paltry pence out of their earndepths in which her torch was not extinguishings; for they know a sure and silent deathed, but, though bright, could pierce not the "heart of the mystery" into which it sent some strong illuminations; that Virtue here has had chosen champions, victorious in their martyrdom; and Religion her ministers and her servants not unworthy of her whose title is from heaven.