his friend knew there was little chance of appeal; and he turned away with an ill-suppressed sigh of regret, and paced backwards and forwards in the room for some minutes, in deep silence. Then stopping suddenly, he questioned General Montgomery as to what he had done with his pistols; for he felt a conviction that the report he had heard, when in the library, proceeded from some sort of fire-arms, and by this inquiry he thought to obtain farther knowledge of the fact.

66

My pistols are safe, Pennington, let that suf fice: force me not to repeat in stronger terms my determination never to divulge aught more of this night's adventure than you already know; and you will best act the part of a friend, if you yield to my wishes and cease to urge me upon it."

"But the appearance of such a strange visitor is enough to make the whole parish talk! The

"If the servants gossip, or any one ask questions, I wish you to reply that it was an idle frolic to astound us; but not being relished, had better not be spoken of more. You will please me, Tom, and you may serve me by observing my request. And now good-night. I wish to be

alone-I am better: and you may leave me safely. Go to my nieces and tell them so. Good-night."

"It is very strange," said Colonel Pennington, as he walked slowly out of the apartment; "it has no savour of good in it. It has been a stormy and dark night, and will usher in, I fear, a long and dreary day. It is strange," he went on repeating, as he advanced to the drawing-room,

66

passing strange!" and the events of the evening continued to pursue him long after he had sought oblivion on his pillow.

"

CHAPTER V.

Your most intimate friend, however dull, may be guilty of a statistical quarto; your youngest daughter may, unknown to you, write all the poetry for a magazine, besides having a volume of fragments in prose and verse, almost ready for publication. Oh! glorious days for the rag-gatherer and the paper-maker! Oh! lamentable days for the wings of the grey goose and the PHANTASMAGORIA.

crow.

WHEN Lord Mowbray took his sudden departure from the Hall, he betook himself to a villa he possessed on the banks of the Thames, near Windsor. To this place he retired, with a firm intention to come to some resolution in regard to his future life. It was a sylvan scene of English beauty; and here he thought to lose sight of certain uneasy sensations, which recent events had forced irresistibly and involuntarily upon him.

But we cannot always fly from ourselves at the moment we wish it; and while he mused on the stream as it coursed along, now bending the heads of the bulrushes by its pressure, now buoying up the large circular leaves of the water-lily, whose blossom, like the Naiad queen of the element, floated on its surface, he drew a fanciful resemblance between these objects and himself.

"My youth," he said, "where is it? hurrying fast away like the current of the river, and like it, soon to be swallowed up in the immeasurable ocean of eternity! My pursuits and prospects resemble only those reeds, now bent and changing in their direction, now showing an evanescent blossom, that depends for its support on an uncertain element, which bears but too apt an analogy to my own restless mind; for I too have cherished and supported some flowers that bloomed upon the surface of my precarious affections; but I have dealt rudely with their fragile texture, and they are sunk and overwhelmed."

Had any body told Lord Mowbray that he was poetising on life, he would have smiled in derision; but when the feelings are roused, the most torpid imagination becomes poetical, and,

unknown to himself, he now looked upon existence from that height which renders the dullest view of it sublime. He saw, in his own character, the gifts of nature and of fortune despised, misused, squandered, contemned; he felt that he might have been a statesman, a warrior, a man of letters, or a Mæcenas; a patron, at least, of pursuits which, if he had not energy sufficient to prosecute, he had fortune enough to encourage, and he was deeply alive to their charm and influence. He felt within himself (nor was he mistaken in the feeling) the power of these many varied gifts; and he had essayed in turn the different careers which they opened; but, satisfied with the proof thus given to the world that he might have excelled in any that had been his choice, he withdrew from the competition abruptly, even as though he disdained the goal for which he had started.

In fact he did so, for there had been hitherto no preponderating power in his mind, no defined sense of moral obligation to fill the duties of his station, which could give efficacy or stability to his choice, or fix on Lord Mowbray's actions the stamp of character; the "A quoi