and and when we called each other Lucy when we described all that we had thought in absence—and all we had felt when present-when we sat with our hands locked each in each and at last, growing bolder; when in the still and quiet loneliness of a summer twilight we exchanged our first kiss, we did not dream that the world forbade what seemed to us so natural; nor-feeling in our own hearts the impossibility of change-did we ever ask whether this sweet and mystic state of existence was to last for ever! "Lucy was an only child; her father was a man of wretched character. A profligate, a gambler-ruined alike in fortune, hope, and reputation, he was yet her only guardian and protector. The village in which we both resided was near London; there Mr. D had a small cottage, where he left his daughter and his slender establishment for days, and sometimes for weeks together, while he was engaged in equivocal speculations-giving no address, and engaged in no professional mode of life. Lucy's mother had died long since, of a broken heart-(that fate, too, was afterwards her daughter's)-so that this poor girl was literally without a monitor or a friend, save her own innocence and, alas innocence is but a poor substitute for experience. The lady with whom I had met her had known her mother, and she felt compassion for the child. She saw her constantly, and sometimes took her to her own house, whenever she was in the neighbourhood; but that was not often, and only for a few days at a time. Her excepted, Lucy had no female friend. - "One evening we were to meet at a sequestered and lonely part of the brook's course, a spot which was our usual rendezvous. I waited considerably beyond the time appointed, and was just going sorrowfully away when she appeared. As she approached, I saw that she was in tears-and she could not for several moments speak for weeping. At length I learned that her father had just returned home, after a long absence-that he had announced his intention of immediately quitting their present home and going to a distant part of the country, or- perhaps even abroad. * "It is an odd thing in the history of the human heart, that the times most sad to experience are often the most grateful to recall; and of all the passages in our brief and checkered love, none have I clung to so fondly or cherished so tenderly, as the remembrance of that desolate and tearful hour. We walked slowly home, speaking very little, and lingering on the way-and my arm was round her waist all the time. There was a little stile at the entrance of the garden round Lucy's home, and sheltered as it was by trees and bushes, it was there, whenever we met, we took our last adieu-and there that evening we stopped, and lingered over our parting words and our parting kiss-and at length, when I tore myself away, I looked back and saw her in the sad and grey light of the evening still there, still watching, still weeping! What, what hours of anguish and gnawing of heart must one, who loved so kindly and so entirely, as she did, have afterwards endured. I "As I lay awake that night, a project, natural enough, darted across me. would seek Lucy's father, communicate our attachment, and sue for his approbation. We might, indeed, be too young for marriage but we could wait, and love each other in the meanwhile. I lost no time in following up this resolution. The next day, before noon, I was at the door of Lucy's cottage-I was in the little chamber that faced the garden, alone with her father. "A boy forms strange notions of a man who is considered a scoundrel. I was prepared to see one of fierce and sullen appearance, and to meet with a. rude and coarse reception. I found in Mr. D- a person who early accustomed-(for he was of high birth)-to polished society, still preserved, in his manner and appearance, its best characteristics. His voice was soft and bland; his face, though haggard and worn, retained the traces of early beauty; and a courteous and attentive ease of deportment had been probably improved by the habits of deceiving others, rather than impaired. I told our story to this man, frankly and fully. When I had done, he rose; he took me by the hand; he expressed some regret, yet some satisfaction, at what he had heard. He was sensible how much peculiar circumstances had obliged him to leave his daughter unprotected; he was sensible, also, that from my birth and future fortunes, my affection did honour to the object of my choice. Nothing would have made him so happy, so proud, had I been older-had I been my own master. But I and he, alas! must be aware that my friends and guardians would never consent to my forming any engagement at so premature an age, and they and the world would impute the blame to him; for calumny (he added in a melancholy tone) had been busy with his name, and any story, however false or idle, would be believed of one who was out of the world's affections. "All this, and much more, did he say; and I pitied him while he spoke. Our conference then ended in nothing fixed;-but-he asked me to dine with him the next day. In a word, while he forbade me at present to recur to the subject, he allowed me to see his daughter as often as I pleased: this lasted for about ten days. At the end of that time, when I made my usual morning visit, I saw D- alone; he appeared much agitated. He was about, he said, to be arrested. He was undone for ever -and his poor daughter!-he could say no more his manly heart was overcome and he hid his face with his hands. I attempted to console him, and inquired the sum necessary to relieve him. It was considerable; and on hearing it named, my power of consolation I deem ed over at once. I was mistaken. But why dwell on so hacknied a topic as that of a sharper on the one hand, and a dupe on the other? I saw a gentleman of the tribe of Israel-I raised a sum of money, to be repaid when I came of age, and that sum was placed in D- -'s hands. My intercourse with Lucy continued; but not long. This matter came to the ears of one who had succeeded my poor aunt, now no more, as my guardian. He saw D-- and threat ened him with penalties, which the sharper did not dare to brave. My guardian was a man of the world; he said nothing to me on the subject, but he begged me to accompany him on a short tour through a neighbouring county. I took leave of Lucy only for a few days as I imagined. I accompanied my guardian-was a week absent — returned and hastened to the cottage; it was shut up-an old woman opened the door-they, were gone, father and daughter, none knew whither! "It was now that my guardian dis closed his share in this event, so terribly unexpected by me. He unfolded the arts of D--; he held up his character in its true light. I listened to him patiently, while he proceeded thus far; but when, encouraged by my silence, he attempted to insinuate that Lucy was implicated in her father's artifices-that she had lent herself to decoy, to the mutual advantage of sire and daughter, the inexperienced heir of considerable fortunes, my rage and indignation exploded at once. High words ensued. I defied his authority-I laughed at his menaces-I openly declared my resolus tion of tracing Lucy to the end of the world, and marrying her the instant she was found. Whether or not that my guardian had penetrated sufficiently into my character to see that force was not the means by which I was to be guided, I cannot say; but he softened from his tone at last-apologized for his warmth condescended to soothe and remonstrate-and our dispute ended in a compromise. I consented to leave Mr. S—; and to spend the next year, preparatory to my going to the university, with my guardian: he promised, on the other hand, that if, at the end of that year, I still wished to discover Lucy, he would throw no obstacles in the way of my search. I was ill-contented with this compact; but I was induced to it by my firm persuasion that Lucy would write to me, and that we should console each other, at least, by a knowledge of our mutual situation and our mutual constancy. In this persuasion, I insisted on remaining six weeks longer with S- and gained my point; and that any letter Lucy might write, might not be exposed to any officious intervention from S- or my guardian's satellites, I walked every day to meet the postman who was accustomed to bring our letters. None came from Lucy. Afterwards, I learned that D, whom my guardian had wisely bought, as well as intimidated, had intercepted three letters which she had addressed to me, in her unsuspecting confidence-and that she only ceased to write when she ceased to believe in me. "I went to reside with my guardian. A man of a hospitable and liberal turn, his house was always full of guests, who were culled from the most agreeable circles in London. We lived in a perpetual round of amusement; and my uncle, who thought I should be rich enough to afford to be ignorant, was more anxious that I should divert my mind, than instruct it. Well, this year passed slowly and sadly away, despite of the gaiety around me; and, at the end of that time, I left my uncle to go to the university; but I first lingered in London to make inquiries after DI could learn no certain tidings of him, but heard that the most probable place to find him was a certain gaming-house in K-Street. Thither I repaired forthwith. It was a haunt of no delicate and luxurious order of vice; the chain attached to the threshold indicated suspicion of the spies of justice; and a grim and sullen face peered jealously upon me before I was suffered to ascend the filthy and noisome staircase. But. my.search was destined to a brief end. At the head of the Rouge et Noir table, facing my eyes the moment I entered the evil chamber, was the marked and working countenance of D "He did not look up-no, not once, all the time he played; he won largely -rose with a flushed face and trembling hand-descended the stairs-stopped in a room below, where a table was spread with meats and wine took a large tumbler of Madeira, and left the house. I had waited patiently-I had followed him with a noiseless step-I now drew my breath hard, clenched my hands, as if to nerve myself for a contest-and as he paused a moment under one of the lamps, seemingly in doubt whither to go I laid my hand on his shoulder, and uttered his name. His eyes wandered with a leaden and dull gaze over my face before he remembered me. Then he recovered his usual bland smile and soft tone. He grasped my unwilling hand, and inquired with the tenderness of a parent after my health. I did not heed his words, 'Your daughter,' said I, convulsively. "Ah! you were old friends,' quoth he, smiling; you have recovered that folly, I hope. Poor thing! she will be happy to see an old friend. You know of course. "I did not answer-I let him depart. "It was a little while after this interview-but I mention it now, for there is no importance in the quarter from which I heard it-that I learned some. few particulars of Lucy's marriage. There was, and still is, in the world's gossip, a strange story of a rich, foolish man, awed as well as gulled by a sharper,, and of a girl torn to a church with a, violence so evident that the priest refused the ceremony. But the rite was. afterwards solemnized by special license, in private, and at night. The pith of that story has truth, and Lucy was at once the heroine and victim of the romance. Now, then, I turn to somewhat a different strain in my narrative. “You, A——, who know so well the habits of a university life, need not be told how singularly monotonous and contemplative it may be made to a lonely man. The first year I was there, I mixed, as you may remember, in none of the many circles into which that curious and motley society is split. My only recreation was in long and companionless rides; and in the flat and dreary country around our university, the cheerless aspect of nature fed the idle melancholy at my heart. In the second year of my college life, I roused myself a little from my seclusion, and rather by accident than design-you will remember that my acquaintance was formed among the men considered most able and promising of our time. In the summer of that year, I resolved to make a bold effort to harden my mind and conquer its fastidious reserve; and I set out to travel over the North of England, and the greater part of Scotland, in the humble character of a pedestrian tourist. Nothing ever did my character more solid good than that experiment. I was thrown among a thousand varieties of character; I was continually forced into bustle and action, and into providing for myself—that great and indelible lesI son towards permanent independence of character. "What?' for he hesitated. "That Lucy is married!' "Married!' and as that word left my lips, it seemed as if my very life, my very soul, had gushed forth also in the sound. When-oh! when, in the night - watch and the daily yearning, when, whatever might have been my grief or wretchedness, or despondency, when had I dreamt, when imaged forth even the outline of a doom like this? Married! my Lucy, my fond, my constant, my pure-hearted, and tender Lucy! Suddenly, all the chilled and revolted energies of my passions seemed to re-act, and rush back upon me. seized that smiling and hollow wretch with a fierce grasp. 'You have done this you have broken her heart-you have crushed mine! I curse you in her name and my own!-I curse you from the bottom and with all the venom of my soul!-Wretch ! wretch! and he was as a reed in my hands.' "Madman,' said he, as at last he extricated himself from my gripe, my daughter married with her free consent, and to one far better fitted to make her happy than you. Go, go-I forgive you-I also was once in love, and with her mother!' "One evening, in an obscure part of Cumberland, I was seeking a short cut to a neighbouring village through a gentleman's grounds, in which there was a public path. Just within sight of the house (which was an old, desolate building, in the architecture of James the First, with gable-ends and dingy walls, and deep-sunk, gloomy windows,) I perceived two ladies at a little distance before me; one seemed in weak and delicate health, for she walked slowly and with pain, and stopped often as she leaned on her companion. I lingered behind, in order not to pass them abruptly; presently, they turned away towards the house, and I saw them no more. Yet that frail and bending form, as I too soon afterwards learnedthat form, which I did not recognisewhich, by a sort of fatality, I saw only in a glimpse, and yet for the last time on earth,—that form-was the wreck of Lucy D-— ! "Unconscious of this event in my destiny, I left that neighbourhood, and settled for some weeks on the borders of the Lake Keswick. There, one evening, a letter, re-directed to me from London, reached me. The hand-writing was that of Lucy; but the trembling and slurred characters, so different from that graceful ease which was wont to characterize all she did, filled me, even at the first glance, with alarm. This is the letter-read it-you will know, then, what I have lost : "I write to you, my dear, my unforgotten the last letter this hand will ever trace. Till now, it would have been a crime to write to you; perhaps it is so still-but dying as I am, and divorced from all earthly thoughts and remembrances, save yours, I feel that I cannot quite collect my mind for the last hour until I have given you the blessing of one whom you loved once; and when that blessing is given, I think I can turn away from your image, and sever willingly the last tie that binds me to earth. I will not afflict you by saying what I have suffered since we parted-with what anguish I thought of what you would feel when you found me gone-and with what cruel, what fearful violence, I was forced into becoming the wretch I now am. I was hurried, I was driven, into a dreadful and bitter duty-but I thank God that I have fulfilled it. What, what have I done, to have been made so miserable throughout life as I have been! I ask my heart, and tax my conscienceand every night I think over the sins of the day; they do not seem to me heavy, yet my penance has been very great. For the last two years, I do sincerely think that there has not been one day which I have not marked with tears. But enough of this, and of myself. You, dear, dear L-, let me turn to you! Something at my heart tells me that you have not forgotten that once we were the world to each other, and even through the changes and the glories of a man's life, I think you will not forget it. True, L-, that I was a poor and friendless, and not too-well educated girl, and altogether unworthy of your destiny; but you did not think so then-and when you have lost me, it is a sad, but it is a real comfort, to feel that that thought will never occur to you. Your memory will invest me with a thousand attractions and graces I did not possess, and all that you recall of me will be linked with the freshest and happiest thoughts of that period of life in which you first beheld me. And this thought, dearest L--, sweetens death to me-and sometimes it comforts me for what has been. Had our lot been otherwisehad we been united, and had you survived your love for me (and what more probable!) my lot would have been darker even than it has been. I know not how it is-perhaps from my approaching death-but I seem to have grown old, and to have obtained the right to be your monitor and warner. Forgive me, then, if I implore you to think earnestly and deeply of the great ends of life; think of them as one might think who is anxious to gain a distant home, and who will not be diverted from his way. Oh! could you know how solemn and thrilling a joy comes over me as I nurse the belief, the certainty, that we shall meet at length, and for ever! Will not that hope also animate you, and guide you unerring through the danger and the evil of this entangled life? "May God bless you, and watch over you-may He comfort and cheer, and elevate your heart to him! Before you receive this, I shall be no more—and my love, my care for you will, I trust and feel, have become eternal.-Farewell : 'L. M.' "The letter," continued L struggling with his emotions, was dated from that village through which I had so lately passed; thither I repaired that very night-Lucy had been buried the day before! I stood upon a green mound, and a few, few feet below, separated from me by a scanty portion of earth, mouldered that heart which had loved me so faithfully and so well!" New Monthly Magazine. A JEW said to the venerable Ali, in argument on the truth of their religion, "You had not even deposited your prophet's body in the earth, when you quarrelled among yourselves." Ali replied, "Our divisions proceeded from the loss of him, not concerning our faith; but your feet were not yet dry from the mud of the Red Sea, when you cried unto Moses, saying, Make us gods like unto those of the idolaters, that we may worship them.'" The Jew was confounded. W. G. C. THE RESIDENCE OF FEW of the original houses of Genius* will excite more interest than the above relic of SPENCER. It is copied from a lithographic drawing in Mr. T. Crofton Croker's "Researches in the South of Ireland," where it is so well described, that we can spare but few lines in our abridgement of the passage : THE POET SPENCER. "Sometimes. misguided by the tuneful throng, Judging from what remains, the ori- Kilcolman Castle is distant three English miles from Doneraile, and is seated in as unpicturesque a spot as at present could have been selected. Many of the delightful and visionary anticipations had indulged, from the pleasure of visiting the place where the Fairy Queen had been composed, were at an end on beholding the monotonous reality of the country. Corn fields, divided from pas. turage by numerous intersecting hedges, constituted almost the only variety of feature for a considerable extent around; and the mountains bounding the prospect partook even in a greater degree of the same want of variety in their forms. The ruin itself stands on a little rocky eminence. Spreading before it lies a tract of flat and swampy ground, through which, we were informed, the "River Bregog hight" had its course; and though in winter, when swollen by mountain torrents, a deep and rapid stream, its channel at present was completely dried up. We have the pleasure of informing our esteemed correspondent, H H. of Twickenham, that the very interesting memorial of GRAY, to which he alluded in his last letter, will illustrate an early number of the Mirror. Kilcolman was granted by Queen Elizabeth, on the 27th June, 1586, to Spencer (who went into Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey), with 3,028 acres of land, at the rent of 171. 3s. 6d. ; on the same conditions with the other underwhom the forfeited Desmond estate was takers (as they were termed) between divided. These conditions implied a residence on the ground, and their chief object seems to have been the peopling Munster with English families: a favourite project of Elizabeth's for strengthening the English influence in Ireland, by creating the tie of consanguinity between the two countries. It is supposed that this castle was the principal residence of Spencer for about ten years, during which time he composed the works that have chiefly contributed to his fame. But the turbulent and indignant spirit of the Irish regarded not the haunts of the muse as sacred, and wrapped the poet's dwelling in |