tion, the same vacancy. Why do I, therefore, torment myself with speculations on what is, and must be, my destiny?-Those dried leaves that I see rolling about, now taken up in eddies by the wind, and floating in mazy circles in mid air-now scattered far and wide to mingle with the dust, are doubtless made to fulfil their destiny; and I shall, I conclude, fill mine, just like them, just like every body and every thing else, without knowing why or wherefore." Lord Mowbray forgot he was endowed with other faculties than the leaf of the desert, or the breath of the blast.

As the carriage passed through the little hamlet of Abbotsbury, composed chiefly of fishermen's huts, many of its hardy inhabitants, with their wives and families, prompted by curiosity, thronged the highway to catch a glimpse of the new Lord of the Castle, and to indulge in conjecture whether they should be the better for his presence. No advantages certainly had accrued to them, or the surrounding district, from his immediate predecessor, who, whether from dislike to the residence, or from

indolence, had never lived among them; and had scarcely even visited this property, though derived from an ancient line of noble ancestry, and justly therefore entitled to his care. The consequences of such an absence, and the apparent neglect attached to it, had long been felt, and at length became visible in an almost hereditary dislike to the very name of Mowbray; so that the present successor to its wealth and honours found himself at the same time doomed, however innocently, to inherit a proportion of the odium thus unfortunately incurred. As the gathering crowd gazed at the equipage on its way to the humble inn, this feeling evinced itself in a thousand little incidents-and Lord Mowbray, descending from the carriage, walked forward whilst the horses were refreshed.

At a cottage on the skirts of the hamlet, he perceived an elderly woman standing on the threshold, who called loudly to a man that followed close behind Lord Mowbray.

"I say, Jem, hast seen um ?—I wonder what thou'st been at the pains to come so far for. This new one will be just as bad as the old,

I doubt not. You know, the new leases are to be set, and he's only cum'd to see what he can get. I would not stir a step to look on him, not I; for all the good we have ever got from t'other is his dead bones, that are brought home to be buried in the family vault to-morrow."

"One may hear something worth hearing," said Lord Mowbray to himself, "even where one least expects it."

At that moment, the outriders and the carriage came up-it stopped-the step was let down. Its splendour and that of the servants dazzled the eyes of the old cottager. She dropped many obsequious curtseys; and, as Lord Mowbray returned her civility with a low bow, she stood rooted to the spot with amazement, and something too of terror, at the idea that the new Lord, as she called him, of the Castle had overheard her conversation.

At a very short distance, Mowbray Castle became visible, standing finely upon a bold and projecting rock which jutted into the sea; its situation being rendered still more magnificent and

commanding from the flatness of the surrounding ground. It had been a place of strength in the days of the Eighth Harry, whose prudence caused the coast towards France to be guarded with many a fortress of similar description; and it had continued so till the jealousy of the Puritans, during the Civil Wars, had led to the dismantling of every strong-hold wrested from the Cavaliers, lest the fortune of war might again place them in the hands of their former owners. Nothing now remained, therefore, of the original warlike greatness of Mowbray Castle, save a few vestiges, which were only to be traced by the antiquary; but, as a castellated building, it had an imposing air, and, standing forth in fearless defiance of the raging element of waters, to which it was exposed, it claimed a tribute of admiration from its very loneliness: time too, with its magic hand, had spread over the ruins that vague and indefinite interest which it ever sheds, even over the beauty it destroys; and recollection, therefore, was busy in association. The park attached to the Castle, though it had small

title to the name, was a vast, barren piece of land, with here and there a stunted tree, bent from the blasts of the sea, that made desolation appear more desolate. A few patches of yellow blossomed furze were interspersed among the white rocks that lay scattered over its surface, with a sprinkling of the sea-daisy raising its hardy flower in that short thymy herbage, where the sheep found sweet but scanty pasture. A pretty steep descent led through this barren scene to a piece of marshy flat ground, which at certain times of the tide was completely covered by the sea, and must have cut off all communication with the fortress except by water. The ruins of a drawbridge, which lay scattered around, told that this circumstance had once been a valuable defence to its inhabitants; but now a little boat, fastened to the stump of some decayed tree, afforded a ready access to every passenger, when, during the high tides, it might not be safe to cross the inlet.

"I do not wonder," said Lord Mowbray, as the carriage jolted alternately over the huge