When they were nailing up the coffin, the young widower rushed from my arms into the room, tore open the lid, and threw himself on the body. We could scarcely oblige him to let the operation proceed, whilst he incessantly exclaimed that we were burying his Eveline alive; as she lay in her bridal attir ein the coffin, for his bewildered imagination conceived she was still living. No force could drag him from the apartment, though every blow of the hammer upon the lid of the coffin seemed to strike upon his breast. When the body was carried out, he sprung to the door, and was scarcely withheld by his domestics and myself from useless opposition to the bearers. His Eveline was at length separated from him forever; and his grief, from being outrageous, subsided at length into melancholy and total silence. She was buried in the church-yard next his demesne, and he was seldom to be found far distant from her grave. His pleasure was to lean on one shoulder of the slab which bears her name, and ruminate o'er the long grass which waves to and fro over the turf that covers her remains. A premature decay carried him off at the end of the year, and he now lies beside her in the same grave. FOR THE BOWER OF TASTE. NATIVE SKETCHES, NO. II. REMINISCENCES OF A STUDENT. my return, would be impossible.— In my infancy, ere I had learned to lisp his name, I lost a fond and benevolent father-oppressed by misfortunes and calamities, he left ine not wealth, but a treasure far more valuable-a worthy example, and a name unblemished, which it shall be my pride to maintain. How often amidst my secret reveries as the thought of him passes over me, have I exclaimed,—' Ye heavenly powers! assist me in these feeble resolutions, and may no act of mine offend his departed spirit. Oh! grant me as pure a life, and as honorable a death! A kind mother in a few years followed him. Reason had just began to dawn upon my mind; I felt I had sustained a loss, but was ignorant of the magnitude. When our mother died, well do I remember how my sisters wept; when they folded me in their arms! I also wept, although I had no idea of death. My eider and only brother, was at that period absent, pursuing his studies under the direction of one of my father's old and intimate friends. The news having reached him of our common bereavement, in agony and despair he returned home-and for what! merely to become a victim to that tomb which had just closed over our mother. Leaves have their time to fall, 'And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 'And stars to set---but ah! "Thou hast, all seasons for thine own, oh! death.' IT was in the month of June, on one of those beautiful mornings, I shall pass over the many. trivwhen nature appeared arrayed in ial circumstances of my earliest her gayest livery, that, after hav-days-nothing important occuring passed a long noviciate in a ing till my seventeenth year. The distant country, I returned to the land of my birth. < The dearest spot on the face of the earth.' To describe my own sensations, and the joy that was evinced at idol of four sisters, (all of whom were married) I was most happy in their affection, while they, ever anxious for my welfare, wished if possible to see me, (as they flatteringly expressed it) an ornament much this separation has disconcerted me, replied she. Have you never, my Julia, seen the sun rise cataract was roaring in unison with the distant thunder, and then have you never seen the powerful king of day throw off his mantle of clouds, and cast his splendor on all the surrounding objects? Oh, my Julia, how grateful is this change! the flowers resume their beauty and the grass its brightness; the birds again wake their cheerful lays, and even inanimate nature seems to rejoice in the restoration of beauty, harmony and love! This, Julia, may be our fate; I feel a presentiment that I shall return and we shall be happy. You know that I love you, and I have no reason to believe that my love is unreturned; in a few days to my family, of which Iwas now the only one that bore the name. They proposed that I should repair to one of the northern states (un-in full splendor, when not a cloud der the guidance of some friend) was to be seen floating in the for the completion of my educa- vast expanse of the blue heavens? tion. Being naturally of a roman- When perhaps, suddenly, a storm tic disposition, such a proposition would gather and the whole scene was delightful; only one circum- be darkened: when the lowering stance tended to render it disagree-clouds would burst in torrents upable-how could I part with the on the mountain, while the loud society of my dear sisters? With 'Julia' the lovely companion of my childhood, for whom, forgive me I beseech you,' I now felt that tender passion which the poets call 'first love.' The very thought of separation was cruel; yet I knew it must be. In two weeks I was to take a long farewell of home and all that was dear to me, perhaps never to return, never again to behold my dear Julia. But youth is the season of hope, and I thought how pleasant it would be after having finished my studies, to return home and see joy and satisfaction beaming in every eye. With how much gratification then could I proffer my hand and heart to her, without I must leave you-permit me ere whom,it appeared to me, life would be no longer desirable. While thus absorbed in meditation and lost to every thing around me, a soft voice spoke my name, it was Julia's, whom that moment I had resolved to go in search of, to make known my intentions. Oh! M. how very glad I am to see As I observed before, having you, exclaimed she, I have just served out a long and tedious nonow seen your sister, and she tells viciate in a distant land, I returnme you are a going to leave us, ed to the seat of my ancestors. and for so long a time too-is all And though time had brushed raththis true? Yes Julia, but too true. er rudely many of my old friends, You must be well aware, that it is yet Julia arrayed in all the charms now necessary that I should apply of innocence and beauty, was still myself strictly to study in order the same lovely picture, matured to obtain an education suitable to by the graces of womanhood. No carry me through life with honor one can describe or even conceive to myself and family; I shall prob- the pleasure I realized, when I ably be absent three or four years. again pressed her lilly hand to my But you cannot conceive how I bosom. And (now oh! ye powers!) I depart to exact of you one promise, that until I return you will continue as Miss. Yes my dear M. I do promise, and neither lapse of time nor distance shall impair or efface the affection I feel for you, and until you return, my name shall remain unaltered. THE subject of the following tale has long ceased to exist, and there is not in the place of his nativity, a being who bears his name. The recital will, therefore, wound the feelings of no one; nor will it disturb the ashes of the dead, to give the world the story of his madness, rather than his crime. The name of John Mackay appears on the criminal records of the town of Belfast, in the north of Ireland. He was the murderer of his own child! It is unnecessary to dwell on the character of this unhappy man; suffice it that, from early education, and deeply rooted habits, he was a fatalist. An enthusiastic turn of mind had been wraped into a superstitious dread: and the fabric, that might have been great and beautiful, became a ruin that betokened only death and gloom. Yet into his breast the Creator had infused much of the milk of human kindness, and his disposition peculiarly fitted him to be at peace with all men. The poison had lain dormant in his bosom, but it rankled there. Domestic sorrows contributed to strengthen his gloomy creed; and its effects were darker, as it took a deeper root. Life soon lost all its pleasures for him: his usual employments were neglected; his dress and appearance altered; his once animated countenance bore the traces of shame or guilt; and a sort of suspicious eagerness was in every look and action. He had an only child, one of the loveliest infants that ever blessed a father's heart. It was the melancholy legacy of the woman he had loved; and never did a parent doat with more affection on an earthly hope. This little infant, all purity and innocence, was destined to be the victim of his madness. One morning his friend entered his apartment, and what was his horror at beholding the child stretched on the floor, and the father standing over it, his hands reeking with the blood of his babe. 'God of heaven!' exclaimed his friend, 'what is here?' Mackay approached and calmy welcomed him, bidding him behold what he had done. His friend beat his bosom, and sunk on a chair, covering his face with his hands. 'Why do you grieve?' asked the maniac; 'why are you unhappy? I was the father of that breathless corpse, and I do not weep; I am even joyful when I gaze on it. Listen, my friend, listen; I knew I was predestined to murder, and who was so fit to be my victim, as that little innocent to whom I gave life, and from whom I have taken it? He had no crime to answer for;-besides, how could I leave him in a cold world, which would mock him with my name? Even before the commission of the crime, he had sent to a magistrate, whose officers shortly entered, and apprehended him. He coolly surrendered himself, and betrayed no emotion; but he took from his bosom a minature of his wife, dipped in the blood of his babe, and, without a sigh or tear, departed. It was this circumstance that made many loath him, and created against him a sentiment of general abhorrence; but when he afterwards, in prison, declared to his friend the storm of passions, to which that horrid calm succeeded-that he had torn his hair until the blood trickled down his forehead, while his brain seemed bursting his skull, his friend was satisfied and still loved him. In the prison he was with him: though all others deserted him, he pitied and wept. Still, almost superhuman strength, had struggled with its effects until he fell dead before the court. He was buried in the church yard of of earth marked his grave, but there was neither stone nor inscription to preserve the name of one so wretched. It is almost unnecessary to add that a more pernicious error than the doctrine of fatalism cannot take possession of the mind of man. Innumerable and varied crimes have been perpetrated under the influence of this enemy of FOR THE BOWER OF TASTE. ESSAY ON THE MORAL EFFECT OF PHILOSO PHICAL INVESTIGATION. even to the last, he believed he had but fulfilled his duty in the death of his child; and often, when he described the scene, and told how the infant smiled on its fath-his native village, where a mound er at the moment he was prepared to kill it, lisping his name as the weapon was at his throat, he I would start with horror at his own tale, and cursed the destiny which had decreed it, but always spoke of it as a necessary deed. The time appointed for his trial approached; he contemplated it without dread, and talked of the fate that awaited him-without a shudder. But his friend had ex-human reason. erted himself to procure such testimony of the state of mind, previous to his committing the dreadful act, as to leave little doubt of the result; yet he feared to awaken hopes in the unhappy prisoner, which might be destroyed, and MAN is called into existence, and never mentioned it to him. The surrounded not by a dark and morning of the trial arrived; he gloomy void of endless night, withwas brought to the bar; his hol-out an object on which the wanlow eyes glared unconsciously on dering thoughts may rest, and left his judge, and he gave his plea, as to contemplate in solitude the if the words not guilty,' came mysteries of himself alone, but from a being without life. But he is placed in the midst of a his recollection seemed for a mo- magnificent and beautiful system, ment to return, he opened his lips whose vastness eludes the ken of and gasped faintly, as if he wished human intellect, and whose comto recal them. The trial com- plication leads the philosophic menced, and he listened with the mind from one object and relation same apathy; but once, betraying to another, till it is involved in feeling, when he smiled on his dim conjecture and lost in endless friend beside him. The evidence mazes. Since then, there is such had been heard; the jury returned an infinite variety of objects to a verdict of insanity, when a groan attract the attention, so great a from the prisoner created a mo- multiplicity of phenomena to exmentary pause, and he dropped cite the admiration of man, a pelifeless in the dock. He had for culiar interest would attend an some minutes shadowed his coun- inquiry into the causes of that tenance with his hand, and no one general indifference to this world but his friend perceived its dread- of wonder, in which we live.— ful alteration. He attributed it Many circumstances may contrito the dreadful suspense of the bute to the production of this inmoment, the agony between hope difference, but one great cause and despair. Its cause was a must be the gradual expansion of more awful one; he had procured the intellectual powers, and the poison, had taken it, and, with an force of habit in destroying every states of mind with which they enter their contemplation. The same objects affect different persons in a variety of ways according to the various habits of thought, which they cultivate, and the different sentiments, which they entertain. The knowledge of our situation does not burst in upon us at once, but creeps gently and imperceptibly upon the mind, till the great outlines and principal objects of By the mathematician, every the scene around us, become what thing is reduced to the abstract we call common and natural ap- qualities of number and figure. pearances. In this state of in- Every work is read with the care sensibility to the charms of and accuracy of demonstration. creation, is buried the great The statesman, through the remass of mankind. Without, how-fractory medium of his habitual ever, inquiring further into the studies, sees the gigantic spectre causes of this insensibility, but taking it as a matter of fact, obvious to all, we would speak of the effects of philosophical investigation in freeing the mind from those prejudices, which arise from our situation, in exciting that admiration which would swell the soul of a being, who for the first time looked abroad on created nature. Then we see its effect upon the moral feelings and happiness of man. of the body politic marching on before him through every subject of his contemplation. All the various orders, and species of things, have the appearance of so many ranks and classes of men, engaged in the different pursuits and employments of life. The beautiful, sentimental and sublime, color all the various objects of the poet's world. The embellishments of his fancy give a kind of sacred enchantment to the whole scene of human life. His associations plume every incident and every circumstance with the soft down of borrowed beauty. That, in the material world, there must be certain primary elements, from the various combinations of which, the vast variety of substances are formed, we are There is another habit of by necessity compelled to believe, thought which gives the universe unless we would adopt the absurd new beauty, regularity and order; hypothesis that analysis is infinite. and, which in some degree, restores So that there are in man certain that native grandeur and sublimity, original principles, must be ac- those feelings of wonder and adknowledged by all, who would not miration, which accompanied the suppose him the mere creature of existence of man, when he first experience. These principles are stepped forth on the shores of time. capable of receiving innumerable This is a habit of philosophical modifications from diversities of investigation; an act of the mind, education, and peculiarities of in- whose constant endeavour is to dividual habit. Hence the effect search into the causes of the vawhich different studies and differ-rious phenomena of nature, and to ent habits of association have on discover those relations, which are moral character and happiness. invisible to the vulgar eye. The same objects affect the same persons in different ways according to the different views which they take of them, and the different This habit of thought becomes legible in some characters at a very early period; and from their history we may learn the beneficial effect, |