me, and I am a widow. How great an error it is to term youth happy! Life's first sorrows, be they ever so insignificant, inflict a deeper pang on the heart, as yet untried or hardened by experience; though perhaps at a later period, when more deeply initiated in the woes of life, we may look back with a smile to the cause which drew forth our bitter tears."

"Argyle," said the queen, turning to the young duke, who stood by her side, "does not she speak as sagely as a matron? But do you think she is right?"

"I differ greatly from the countess in considering the sorrows of youth insignificant," returned the young man. "No sorrow we experience in early life is trivial, for the sensibility and the poignant feelings of youth render every misfortune doubly acute; nor shall we ever look back with compassion to the real misfortunes of our youth, as if they had been follies of the moment."

"To hear these young people talk, Countess Comenes," said the queen, smiling, "it would seem they had quite got the start of our old-fashioned wisdom; they explain all we have felt in silence throughout our lives; yet, in spite of their advanced reasoning, they are glad to profit by our experience when it comes to the point to act. Tell me, good Comenes, is this proud child as wise as her words proclaim when she is called upon to act ?"

"Ah! indeed she is," returned the countess.

"This young lady puts age and experience to shame; youth and wisdom go hand-in-hand with her."

"Beautiful Urica!" said the queen, kindly, highly gifted, be unhappy?"

can you,

who are thus

"The countess forgets the only means of being happy," cried Argyle, "which is to give happiness. Those who forget their destination cannot hope to enjoy that for themselves which they deny to others." "What an accusation, Argyle!" cried the queen, smiling. you make me believe that you are at once the judge and party concerned. And how do you defend yourself, lovely widow?"

“Why,

"Defend!" repeated Urica, turning half round towards the Duke of Argyle with a haughty look. "Defend! There can be no question of defence where no personal reference exists; and every observation designed to draw this conversation beyond the limits of general reflections is misplaced. Your majesty is certainly the only one who has a right to demand my answer, if this discourse begins to apply to me."

"There, now," laughed the queen, 66 we have offended her. Madame van Marseeven, assist me to pacify your irritable cousin."

"Oh, forgive me!" cried Urica, quickly, as she bent over the queen's hand and kissed it. Henrietta smiled, and shook her finger at the countess, as she passed on to dismiss the assembly. After a kind word to each she retired to her apartment.

Urica, too, sought her chamber, and, longing for fresh air, approached a large bow-window which looked out into the court. A deep silence now reigned below; the air was mild and balmy, and a cooling breeze was wafted across the roofs of the low houses from the sea, whose bright mirror contrasted strikingly with the dark heavens. Urica's eye rested on the bright line in the horizon that marked the sea, and she heaved

a deep sigh, and pressed her hand for a moment to her feverish brow.

"He is right! he is right!" said she, sadly. "But I cannot do otherwise—a secret voice whispers he is not the one! What I feel is not love he is too proud and selfish-too vain and confident towards It can never be. If he possessed a right to utter such proud and presumptuous words as I have just heard, and I were forced to listen in silence, in consequence of the rights he had acquired over me, I think I should die of mortification."

women.

Mynherr van Marseeven was right when he said Urica had never felt the influence of love; yet her insensibility did not proceed from coldness, but from the exalted, perhaps overstrained, idea her enthusiastic and lofty mind had formed of this feeling. She was so accustomed to excite love and admiration, that she at length considered the homage she received as simply her due, yet despised, as an unmanly weakness, the raptures into which her numerous admirers were thrown by the power of her charms.

The Duke of Argyle was distantly related to the Countess Urica. She had met him at the court of England at a time when the state of the country was a topic of general interest and conversation. Argyle highly disapproved of the measures adopted by the court, yet was personally attached to the royal family. He possessed great discrimination, a shrewd understanding, and a clear and unbiassed judgment. Urica's turn of mind led her to take great interest in the political state of the country, and the young duke found in her an attentive and sympathising listener, who infinitely surpassed the generality of her sex in quickness and comprehension.

Urica fancied she had at length found one who did not make it his first object to do homage to a woman. She believed him superior to the little interests of love, and so absorbed in the great interests of the world and his country as to be able to forget the charms of a wife and make her his confidant. She thought he had overcome the first impressions of her beauty without falling into the ecstasies which had so disgusted her in others. He had offered her wit and mind instead of love-politics instead of verses. This was a species of adoration she had never before received; and such she thought must be the man to whom she could, without degrading herself, surrender her independence, and who should teach her to feel love—such love as she had dreamt of-grand, noble, and disinterested-refined and purified from all desire of sensual gratificationrejoicing rather in the existence than the possession of its object—a love rather of the soul than of the heart.

But Argyle was incapable of maintaining himself in this elevation of feeling. Though absorbed in the interests of his country, his heart was not proof against the powerful fascinations of Urica. The confidence that arose between them, through the mutual interchange of thoughts and plans, became even more dangerous to him than the attractions of youth and beauty; he felt deeply and passionately in love. Urica did not immediately notice the change that had taken place in his feelings, since her own remained unaltered; but no sooner did she suspect it than she waged war against every demonstration. She would not be loved by Argyle in the common acceptation of the word, and her interest in him

diminished in proportion as she perceived he was, like the rest of his sex, susceptible to the full influence of her personal charms.

Argyle, on his part, from the moment he felt this magical influence, half enraged at the loss of his liberty, determined to vanquish the being whose dominion he feared, since she threatened to turn his thoughts from the interests to which he had devoted himself.

But the violence of his passion blinded him to the course his calculating nature pointed out as most likely to win one of Urica's character. He was betrayed into an impetuous declaration of his feelings.

From what we have said it will be easily believed that Urica neither felt flattered nor rejoiced by this disclosure; but, on the contrary, heard it with coldness almost amounting to displeasure.

"You

"Arise, my Lord of Argyle!" said she to her prostrate lover. forget yourself. Let us avoid these commonplace ebullitions of feeling,-they do not suit us, and have no connexion with the great interests which unite us, and should engage our thoughts."

The duke started to his feet on hearing these words; love and wounded vanity struggled in his breast.

"Ha!" he cried, involuntarily; "it was madness, indeed, to think you could feel the influence of love."

"My lord," said Urica, softly, after a pause, during which she appeared lost in thought, while her eyes were fixed on the ground, "you judge unjustly; the simple views my breast and soul have taught me to form of love are perhaps different from what most persons call by the name; but this I should fear as an unworthy bondage, the other I would fain cling to as a hallowed and ennobling feeling-an impulse to great and lofty deeds and thoughts. Such love I should be proud to feel. Forgive me if I doubt that my feelings for you will ever deserve this name; yet there is none other who possesses a greater right to my interest at this moment."

Though this speech was so little calculated to give satisfaction or raise hopes, Argyle seemed determined to interpret it in his favour; and inwardly resolved not to relinquish his hopes or his determination of winning Urica.

This scene, which had occurred a day or two before, recurred to Urica's mind as she stood thoughtfully at her window.

"Alas!" she exclaimed in a melancholy tone-"alas! that there should be no man worthy of love!"

She sank down on a seat, and remained for a long time absorbed in a deep and gloomy reverie.

"THE NILE BOAT."*

MR. SAMUEL SHARPE, the historian of Egypt, whose writings have contributed largely to the work now before us, dwells much, and not without reason, upon the important fact that the Egyptians are the earliest people known to us. When Abraham entered the Delta from Canaan they had already been long enjoying all the advantages of a

*The Nile Boat; or, Glimpses of the Land of Egypt. By W. H. Bartlett, Author of "Forty Days in the Desert." Hall, Virtue and Co.

settled government and established laws. While Abraham and his countrymen were moving about in tents and waggons, the Egyptians were living in cities. They had already cultivated agriculture, and parcelled out their valley into farms: they reverenced a landmark as a god, while their neighbours knew of no property but herds and moveables. They had invented hieroglyphics, and improved them into syllabic writing, and almost into an alphabet. They had invented records, and wrote their kings' names and actions on the massive temples which they raised.

Emblem art thou of Time, memorial stream,

of

wrote Sir John Hanmer of this renowned river; and none have ever visited its broad valley and not brought away with them the memory that "busiest travel and softest rest" which are so strangely united in that land of ruin and loneliness, yet so favoured by nature. What a change, too, is coming over this land of olden memories! "To visit Egypt's land, a long and dangerous way," said the author of the "Odyssey," and Strabo repeated the very words ten centuries afterwards. In our times a wag of the press has proclaimed that the source of the Nile is the umbrella-stand of the Egyptian Hall! And certainly, after a peep at Mr. Bonomi's interesting and picturesque painting, Christmas visitors cannot do better than secure a copy of Mr. Bartlett's less perishable and more portable volume. They will find it to be a bock of gems.

There are not merely hieroglyphics in Egypt. That country affords subjects of observation and meditation which no traveller can entirely neglect, whoever he may be, if he have eyes to see, a memory to remember, and a sprinkling of imagination wherewith to dream. Who can be indifferent to the tableaux of unaccountable nature on the banks of the Nile?-at the spectacle of this river-land, which no other land resembles? Who will not be moved in the presence of this people which of old accomplished such mighty things, and now are reduced to misery so extreme?

Mr. Bartlett has done everything that an artist could do to bring this land "of glorious structures and immortal deeds" before the reader by pen and pencil. As much variety as possible has been brought within the smallest compass. The clay-built village, buried in its graceful grove of palms, the desert and the Lybian chain of hills,-monk-made hermitages, in which a hyæna might feel lonely,-man-made rivers, excavated hills, colossal temples, and mountain-pyramids,—are all brought before us. The style of the earlier or Pharaonic monuments, as at Thebes, may be contrasted at leisure with the later Ptolemaic style as at Edfou and Philæ; and these again with some of themost beautiful specimens of the Arabian at Cairo. Such a pictorial and literary treat will assuredly be well received by the public.

THE COUNTESS DE RUDOLSTAD T.

FROM THE FRENCH OF GEORGE SAND.

BY MATILDA M. HAYS.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

In the first moments Consuelo, passing from an apartment where shone the lustre of a hundred torches, to a place lighted only by the small lamp she held, could distinguish nothing but a luminous mist around her, through which her sight could not pierce. But by degrees her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, and, as she perceived nothing terrible between her and the threshold of an apartment in size and form exactly like that she had just quitted, she gathered courage to approach and examine the strange characters on the walls.

It was one long inscription, arranged in several circular lines which extended around the hall, the walls of which presented no opening. As she made this observation, Consuelo did not ask herself how she should get out of this dungeon, but what could have been the use of such a construction. Gloomy thoughts, which she at first repulsed, pressed upon her mind, and soon these ideas were confirmed by the inscription, which she read, walking slowly, and lifting her lamp to a level with the characters:

"Contemplate the beauty of these walls formed by the rock, four-andtwenty feet in thickness, and standing for a thousand years. Neither the action of time nor the labours of workmen have been able to injure them! This chef-d'œuvre of architectural masonry was raised by the hands of slaves, doubtless to conceal the treasures of some magnificent master. Yes! to secrete in the bowels of the mountain treasures of hatred and

revenge. Here have perished, here have suffered, here have wept, raved, and blasphemed, twenty generations of men, the greater part innocent, some heroic, all victims or martyrs; prisoners of war, revolted serfs too heavily taxed to pay new taxes, religious reformers, sublime heretics, the unfortunate, the conquered, fanatics, saints; also villains, men inured to the ferocity of the camp, to the law of murder and pillage, subjected, in their turn, to a terrible retribution. Here are the catacombs of feudality, of military or religious despotism. Here the habitations which men in power caused to be constructed for their oppressed fellow-beings, that they might stifle the cries and conceal the corpses of their conquered and enslaved brethren. Here, with no air to breathe-where not a ray of daylight penetrates-where there is not a stone on which to lay the head; only iron rings fastened to the wall through which to pass the prisoner's chains, and prevent him from choosing a place of repose on the damp and chilly soil. Air, light, and nourishment admitted only when it pleased the sentinels to open the cavern for a moment to throw in a piece of bread among a hundred unfortunate creatures heaped upon one another the day after a battle, and wounded or bruised for the most part. Sometimes, still more horrible, one alone remained alive, dying in suffering and despair in the midst of the putrefied corpses of his companions, not unfrequently eaten by the same worms before death, and falling into putrefaction himself before the feeling of life and the horror of reflection were annihilated in his brain. Here, oh neophyte! is the source of human