I, who had been moving listlessly about the room till the moment before, when I caught a glimpse of his approaching figure, and sat down satisfied, answered with a careless ease, "Really!" "He was here yesterday," observed Miss Eliza. I did not think this speech demanded a reply, so I was silent. "And the day before!" chimed in Miss Barron. They both waited as if they expected me either to deny or defend the fact; but as I maintained a profound silence, they felt a little puzzled, and had only time to say, 66 Really, my dear!" both at once, with peculiar savageness, twice over, when the entrance of Mr. Tyrrell himself cut the remonstrance short. He paid his compliments to the party, but, noticing me only by a slight shake of the hand, addressed himself at once to Miss Barron. He had brought her a specimen of a flower which she particularly wanted for her hortus siccus, and had hitherto been unable to procure. The Misses Barron were devoted to dried flowers. One miserable colourless little sprawling skeleton of a plant, strapped down on its sheet of white paper, was inore beautiful in their eyes than a whole canopy of living roses, pouring out fragrance and sparkling with dew. The animation with which they instantly began to quarrel about the name, habits, and favourite localities of this new treasure, proved beyond mistake that they were highly delighted. Mr. Tyrrell joined for a few minutes in the discussion, and then turning to me, asked to see my last sketch, which he criticised and condemned in that half authoritative, half jocose manner peculiar to himself, and by virtue of which he was able to say and do things such as no other man ever said or did without giving offence. In five minutes more we were established over our drawing-book, and my morning's occupation was fixed quite satisfactorily to myself. "I can't praise this last production of yours," observed he, as he examined and unsparingly criticised a sketch in crayons, of which I was particularly proud. "The outline is as hazy and uncertain as a lady's logic!" He looked provokingly in my face as he pronounced the last words, for we often contested the questions of the relative intellects of the two sexes, half in play half in earnest-an unpleasant lurking consciousness that he thought I plumed myself upon my abilities, giving more than the usual quantity of asperity to my repartees. Well do I remember, even now, the glow of pleasure that shot through me at these words-words to which I doubtless imputed double their real significance. Oh! the exquisite delight of praise from one to whom we look up, but who is at once reserved, fastidious, and just-who is not given to petty raptures or shallow admiration, but who quietly watches actions, measures them by a true, and therefore a high standard, and so decides for the most part that they may best be treated with a charitable silence. To find unexpectedly that such a one approves, commends, admires-to detect it, if only in a gesture, much more in a smile or quiet word-these are among the few bright moments of life, which, like flashes of sunlight across a dreary landscape, lend it a transient beauty hard to part with, impossible to forget. Miss Barron, quick to discover, resolute to disturb any intercourse which might presume to transcend the limits of formal disquisition or dull jocularity, here interposed. She made the most unpleasant observation that can possibly be made when you are enjoying a little genuine conversation. Pray," asked she, "what are you talking about?" Mr. Tyrrell gave me a comic look, but immediately answered, "We were discussing friendship, ma'am." The lady seemed not a little scandalized; friendship, she thought, was far too dangerous a subject to be discussed without the intervention of a chaperon, so she immediately asked another question, the first she could manage to think of. "What sort of friendship?" was her inquiry. 66 Friendship between a man and a woman," he rejoined, evidently determined to plague her. "Ah! you look incredulous, Miss Barron; you are one of those who consider such friendship has no real existence. That it must needs either rise into love or degenerate into convenience. But I don't see why this should be. I believe the relation between friend and friend to have roots as deep and sanctions as divine as that between husband and wife; and, were I a woman, no senseless conventionalities of etiquette should prevent my seeking nourishment for the inner life in such a relation." "It is not her part to seek, but to be sought," remarked I. "True," he said; "but she must respond to and meet the seeker, suffering herself to be led to the ground on which he desires to place her, and showI-ing, by the alacrity and frankness of her cordiality, that she neither distrusts the reality of his affection nor mistakes its nature." "And the haziness serves the same purpose in both, I suppose you would say," rejoined "namely, that of concealing defects?" "Well," replied he, "I don't think I should be disparaging you if I were to say so. Ladies ought not to be logicians." "It would be very inconvenient for gentlemen if they were," retorted I. He laughed heartily, and made me a low bow. "You have the victory," he said. "I confess I gave you a fair opening for checkmate, and you took advantage of it." "You deserve to be defeated," answered I. "It is so common-place to say that women are deficient in reasoning powers; it is a mere stock commodity of ordinary small-talk, quite below the notice of an adventurous speculator like yourself. I wonder you were not ashamed to say it!" "I think I might well be ashamed to maintain it against you," he replied. "I thought you never paid compliments?" was "The poor woman!" cried I-"this she may do; but what will the result be? She will perhaps overlook and despise the wretched gossip which besets her path at its outset, like the mocking voices on that mountain in the Arabian Nights,' always eager to bewilder and check the adventurer, who presumes to rise above the level of the valley; but she can neither overlook nor despise the disappointment which she is sure to encounter in the ascent itself. It is very rare to find a man who is not too fickle or too vain to form a true friendship with a woman: either he will fancy she is falling in love with him, and think it quite necessary to discourage her, or he will change his mind, and cease to need her just when he has made himself necessary to her. I will give you the rule and definition of masculine friendship, if you like; it is this: make all the use you possibly can of your friend; be frank, confiding, familiar, attentive, cordial, so long as it suits you; and as soon as it ceases to suit you, drop her quietly, without the compliment of a pause or the racter that he should do so. mere decency of gradation." As we are on the subject of Madeline's story, and intend to make our extracts from that portion of the book, we will give the following, which is a well-known truth, gracefully putgrace, by the way, is the most prominent quality in our author's style, and is very attractive: About three weeks after this conversation-three weeks of close, habitual, familiar intercourse, Mr. Tyrrell returned to London. He was a perfect gentleman, and so could not, under any circumstances, neglect the courtesies due to a lady: he paid his farewell visit at Stanbury Hall, and was profuse in his polite regrets-had even a warmer look, a softer word, a longer shake of the hand for me-hoped I would not forget my drawing or my drawing-master, &c., &c., and went. I felt sure he would write: day after day passed, and no letter. Oh, the dreary bitterness of that time of expectation! No bell rang, no door opened, even at the most unreasonable and impossible hour of the day, that I did not look round with stealthy quickness, expecting to see the servant enter with a letter for me. I learned to know the sound of a footstep on the gravel-walk, while it was yet too far off to be audible to ears less eagerly acute-to calculate to a nicety the time which must elapse ere the visitor should come within sight of a particular corner of a particular window in the drawing-room, at which I always established myself with some seeming occupation; to wait, watch, argue with myself, tell myself that I expected nobody, receive my disappointment, and quietly withdraw my eyes from that miserable pane of glass, without any human being suspecting what was passing within me twenty times a-day. There is a species of hope which seems only to exist for the sake of enhancing disappointment. It does not cheer you while it is present, for you have no faith in it; but nevertheless it contrives to afflict you when it departs, as keenly as though it com Her discovery that he married her out of compassion, and not from love-her sudden flight upon that discovery, and her persistence in concealment afterwards, are all good points in the romance, because they are true to the character of the woman. The way in which Madeline's story is woven with that of the fair Ida and the Lee family is sufficiently vraisemblant. Ida is an only child and an heiress, brought up in seclusion by a At the age of charmingly romantic father. eighteen she is introduced to the various branches of her family. Among the young gentlemen cousins she is to choose a husband. To our thinking they are none of them worthy her acceptance. They are of what in slang phraseology may be termed the muff specieslike Waverley, of whom Scott himself said that he was a sneaking piece of inanity.” And though the young Messrs. Lee are not inane, and do not sneak, yet they have not sufficient bone and muscle about them to "give the world assurance of a man." Still there is no denying that they have as much manhood about them as many an individual of our acquaintance of whom we may say "Nature made him, and therefore let him pass for a man;" but as S. M. has idealized nature fairly and legitimately in her two chief women, why not have given the men something of heroism, and artistic beauty, too? She has been a little unfair, we think, in her portraiture of young men : but to make amends, she has given us an injured husband, who is really a hero in thought, feeling, and conduct. Mr. Tyrrell is a careful and life-like presentiment of an intellectual man, who has erred in conduct, and can acknowledge his own error, and forgive that of another towards himself. By Ida's intervention he learns the past history of his fugitive wife; and when she is sufficiently recovered from severe illness, he is admitted to an interview. He enters the chamber in silence, and takes a seat beside her : manded your fullest confidence. Gradually, however, I waked up to the consciousness that I had made a blunder the blunder of a woman's life, which she is as loath to believe as slow to forsake which even in the deep privacy of her own thoughts she cannot confess without an agony of shame. I had imagined myself beloved, and it was not so. She observed the merest trifles-that a corner of Bitterer even than this-the feeling which I had the hearth-rug was displaced by the leg of his chair mistaken for love was not even friendship-it was no-that a fly had settled on his arm, and travelled feeling at all it was a cheat, a plaything, a mockery! Yet would it have required a far greater credulousness to believe that it did not exist than to have supposed that it did, before inexorable facts thus forced upon me. Even now, when I recall the constancy and closeness of our intercourse, which, though allowed by me, was assuredly sought by him, it seemed to me quite impossible that it should utterly cease in a moment of time, and that he should feel no void, no vacancy, no want! How could I have thus been for awhile all to him, and then suddenly nothing? I little knew the instability of man, and the omnipotence of circum-dressing her. stance. along the coat-sleeve till it reached his hand, and was shaken off by a slight involuntary movement. The picture never rose up before her thoughts afterwards without the fly and the fold in the carpet. When she lifted a momentary glance to his facenot his eyes, those she could not meet-she saw that his colour came and went rapidly; she felt, rather than heard, that there was suppressed agitation in the calmness of his voice, and this helped to strengthen her. Yet his manner was deliberate, assured, and very gentle. "I fear I have startled you," said he, again ad"If you are not strong enough to see me, to listen to me, I will go. I can wait till you are more completely recovered." The way in which Madeline's marriage with Mr. Tyrrell is brought about is, we think, one I am quite strong enough," she answered. of the best things in the story. It is not in he, "I will not distress you long; I have only a few "Then if that be the case I will speak," replied accordance with the highest moral principles words to say. My object is not to distress you, but that that gentleman should ask to make her his to relieve you. It is better, I think, at once wife, but it is quite in accordance with his cha-to-." He hesitated. to "I understand," interposed she quickly, and bowing her head-it is better." Why was this tone of commiseration so inexpressibly bitter to her? And for what was it preparing her? For silence! He did not speak again for some minutes; the pause was intolerable, and at last she lifted her eyes, and met his earnest, melancholy gaze fixed immoveably on her face. It seemed to fascinate her, and she surveyed him as though taking note of the change of years. A little more expansion of the lofty forehead, a line or two of thought, a shade of pathos, a touch of softness-the picture was mellowed, not faded. And how was it with her? The radiancy and buoyancy of her beauty were gone for ever; nor could she guess how much of loveliness time, sorrow, and discipline had given in its place. She knew not how the gradual moulding | of the heart had traced its work upon her countenance; she thought herself a wreck, a mere phantom of the past, and involuntarily she shook her head as he gazed upon her, her lips parting with a painful, yet half-deprecating smile. Madeline," said he at length, and the name fell upon her ear like a stroke upon an open wound, we have both been Wrong-nay," putting up his hand, "hear me. My fault has been as great as yours: I feel; it so. We have both suffered-you the most for you had not that consolation which has been the innocent charm and study of my life." He hurried over this reference to their child as if he feared to agitate her too powerfully. "Now I am not looking to the past with any bitterness, nor to the future with any romance. I see the whole truth, clearly, strongly, coldly if you will; and seeing it, I am ready, anxious to resume the duty to which I was once as faithless as yourself. I disguise nothing; this is my wish. But not for an instant will I be a restraint upon you; you shall decide for yourself and for me. 66 66 She had covered her face with her hands, but he felt that she was listening; he felt, too, how stiff and heartless were his words. Doubt of her feelings, desire to spare them, pride, shame, all united to constrain him; yet his voice softened and faltered as he proceeded:-" Whatever you may once have felt," said he, rather hurriedly, "I know that indignation, and the lapse of years, and the sense of wrong, must long since have effaced it. I know you, Madeline: I appeal to no past feelings: I was unworthy of the gift which I first sought, and, whatever your offences may have been, I deserved that it should be withdrawn." "No, no," answered she, sobbing, and keenly feeling the generous delicacy of his words: "let there be truth between us! I was sorely tried, and my sin was heavy: the depth of my humiliation has avenged it!" "You are right," he exclaimed, taking up her words with a mixture of vehemence and solemnity : "there must be perfect truth between us now. Listen, then, to THE TRUTH. When we were together, seven years ago, I was a mere man of the world: my standard of life was neither natural nor supernatural, but artificial; and to it my feelings, sympathies, conceptions, hopes were all bound, as with hands of adamant. You were a woman with infinite capacity, of womanly perfection, but without one help, one guidance, one healthful memory of instructed childhood, one habit of wise discipline, ere the tender will had hardened itself in opposition. I need not go on. Such as you were, I took you, and took also the duty and the privilege (you gave me the power) of making you that which you were capable of becoming. How did I fulfil this duty? Do you suppose I have never thought of this?-never asked myself with keenest reproach why, when you opened to me a way into the very depths of your character, through your generous, self-abandoning, confiding heart, I repaid you by obstinately refusing to use it? You did not know me; and I stood aloof and suffered you to destroy your own happiness and mine, rather than by a word enlighten you. Do you suppose, Madeline," he continued, dropping his voice as he drew nearer to her, “that in solitude, at nightfall, in those hours when conscience is suddenly revealed to the soul, as an angel of judgment, beneath whose sentence it must needs fall prostrate-that at such times I have never told myself, with bitter, ineffectual tears, that if she whom I had irrevocably lost could be restored to me, I would be to her other than I had been? We have all such thoughts of the dead in our tender moments, and when there has been real wrong they make the helpless remorse of a lifetime. But you and I are happier, for we have the power of reparation. And when my boy -our child-" 'Oh, no more! no more! Have mercy upon me!" she exclaimed, and with a sudden, irresistible movement, flung herself at his feet. "Give me your pardon; say to me, 'Go in peace,' and let me hide myself again for ever!" Tyrrell felt that he had conquered. How gently he raised her! "I have forgiven everything!" said he, as with grave tenderness and authority he took her hands in his. "But I retract my former words; I will not leave you liberty of choice; I decide for you. A year hence you shall abandon me if you will; till then, my wife, come back to me, and have faith in me!" Is not the above scene touching and powerful in an uncornmon degree? We confess to having been deeply moved by it, in spite of the proverbial hardness of critics. There is a lofty Christian spirit about the philosophy of this book, which gives it perhaps its greatest value. Without containing any dogmatic exposition, we gather from its pages that the authoress is a thorough and sincere churchwoman; though it does not belong to the class of religious novels a class of works in our opinion as false in taste as futile for direct instruction. It is a veritable, genuine novel, interesting on purpose, and indirectly a vehicle for the inculcation of true religious principles, raising the soul above the daily cares and small aims of life. J. M. W. SPRING ASPIRATIONS. BY FREDERICK ENOCH. Twitter and flit along the shining air, Where the rude sunlight o'er the green earth rushes, Twitter and flit along the crystal air With a great swoop-e'en as the spirit gives, Long winter-prisoned, when again it lives, Pinioned anew, th' all-given joy to share. Hast thou been in the beautiful places Which men call palaces, or homes, or graves, In storied lands, beyond the moon-led waves? To me thou bringest the old familiar faces And memories, by which soul-aspiration Playeth in rainbows through my half-glad tearsHalf-glad-to grow in gladness with the years, And faith in joy beyond the now probation. Thus Grief is only Love, with wings all wet Twitter and flit along the shining air, Ön gold evening's heavenward amber stair; When from the young-leaft woods the singing comes And other realms; even in spirit seeking On loftier wings than thought pursuing thee, LOW DOWN IN THE BROOM* BY CALDER CAMPBELL. She is waiting for me Where I never can come; They have springed the free fowler ; For the sound of his steps Ne'er shall reach it again. The mosses are cold where she stands in the gloom They came in their strength And the breadth of my blood; Yet patiently waits she, unguessing my doom, Oh, her heart thrilled with glee The sounds of my footsteps Fell distant, but clear: A sound that shall reach her As it wails through the bushes Like the rustle of serpents shall seem in the gloom She will not believe What they tell her. In vain But I am not insane. A glow-worm appears In my dungeon-'tis Hope! Beside her, too, Hope like a flower springs in bloom THE SONNET.-The unity which characterizes a good sonnet imparts to it a majesty and might which even the noblest thoughts cannot possess if allowed, as in philosophical poetry they generally are, to run into a series, and thus to become merged into each other, as parts subordinated to a whole. balanced on its centre, and, for a thoughtful reader, A true sonnet is a complete whole. It hangs selftruth. It issues from the contemplative even more teems forth perpetually a new face to the light of than from the meditative order of mind, implying a power among the rarest and most arduousthat of resting upon a single idea, and viewing it Which to earth's wanderer, after darkness, brings stepping-stone to other ideas. It requires not less in all its aspects, rather than that of using it as a gaze, Following with holy flight which knows no daze, I soar beyond thy bound, however brave it be. TIMOTHY PETTIGREW'S WIFE'S HUSBAND. (An American Sketch.) BY MISS LESLIE. (Continued from page 15.) PART II. "Ain't they used to half-feeding in their own country?" said Betsey, "and half the time no "You don't say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Corndaffer. "It's true," said Betsey," as true as preachin', I tell you." "But what sort of people could they get to board with them?" inquired Gideon. "Oh! Irishmen, to be sure. Who but Irish would go and board with such as they? They have two Irishmen that are bricklaying up at the new meeting-house." Where did you hear this?" asked Martin. "Why, in Manypenny's store, this very afternoon. The first that told me of it was Sally Sawyer, as we were looking at the new ginghams. And, lo and behold! who should come in at the very nick of time, but one of them very Irishmen, to get something for a new shirt! And who should he be but Dennis O'Harrow that helped with your hay-harvest last summer! I remember everybody. So I ups and asks him at once, if he and another had not took boarding with the Pettigrews down at Stony Lonesome. And he allowed he had, and said the Pettigrew woman had sent her husband fishing about at the new building to pick up boarder's among the work people, and he promised them good fare at a dollar-and-a-half a week, and beds on the kitchen floor. But Timothy could not persuade anybody to come, so she sent her big boy (he having more sense than his father), and he picked up Dennis O'Harrow and Nulty M'Name; and there they are. I would have asked Dennis what sort of victuals they got at their great boarding-house, only I was in such a hurry to tell you the news. The Pettigrews are cutting up high, ain't they?” If they have two men besides themselves," said Mrs. Corndaffer, "they must all be rather on short allowance, for I did not calculate on sending them much more than enough for their own family." "True," said her husband, "I am afraid they ain't able to do justice to their boarders. Margy, you'll have to increase the things. Send them ás much more as you please, only don't trouble me about it." "Why, Hilary Corndaffer!" ejaculated Betsey Buffum, who, our readers are aware, was a privileged person. "And why not?" resumed the farmer. "How can the Paddies have strength to do their work if they're only half fed ?" feeding at all?" "More's the pity," observed Margy. “It must be a terrible sight to see one's fellowcreatures suffering for food." "And the more reason why they should have plenty when they get to our country," said Corndaffer. 66 "And still," continued Betsey, as soon as ever they come among us, and are ten times better off than ever they were in their lives, the airs they take is unbearable." After supper, when the family were taking the evening air in the moonlight porch, a man came up, whom they all recognized as the identical Dennis O'Harrow-so called in the neighbourhood, but born O'Hara. He came, as he said, to ask if there would be some fall farmingwork for him when the meeting-house was finished. The farmer replied that he had already engaged hands enough for the fall, but that he knew his neighbour Wheatley would want some help; and to him he advised Dennis to apply. Mrs. Corndaffer asked the Irishman if it was true that he and another were boarding with the Pettigrews. "Indade and it is, then, and too true besides," was his answer. "But I don't know how long we shall stay with 'em; for it's only to-day that they gave us puddin' without any dip to sauce it. So we sot waiting with our plates afore us, and the woman asked us why we didn't begin to ate?' So Nulty M'Name, he speaks up, and says, We're a waiting for the dip.' And think of that woman setting her arms akimbor, and saying, Eh! and what would you have? Puddin's good enough without dip. And either of them's more than you've had a chance of in that country of your own, without you ate the puddin' one day and the dip the next.' 66 Margy," said the farmer, "what is dip made of?" "Oh! the ignorance of men!" ejaculated Betsey. "There is several sorts of pudding dip," said Margy, sententiously. "The best is made of melted butter, nutmeg, wine, and lemon-juice if you have it. The second best is cream and sugar. The next is good milk sweetened with molasses." Well, well," said Corndaffer, "it's a pity |