A TALE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

"

De nos jours ceux qui aiment la Nature sont

accusés d'etre romanesques"

LOCHANDHU.

CHAPTER I.

Oh mother, yet no mother!-'tis to you
My thanks for such distinguished claims are due.
You,-unenslaved to Nature's narrow laws,
Warm championess for Freedom's sacred cause,
From all the dry devoirs of blood and line,
From ties maternal, moral, and divine,

Discharged my grasping soul;-pushed me from shore,
And launched me into life without an oar.

Estos rasgos de mi tan conocidos,
Esta carta, estos tristes caracteres,
Por tan preciosa mano dirigidos,
Cien veces los he visto.

SAVAGE.

JOJOE.

On his arrival at Sanderson Mains, Amherst was disappointed to find that Cleaver had gone with his friend Macauley, to visit the town where that officer was stationed; and he felt his friend's absence still more, when he, the next morning, received the following letter:

A

"How shall my pen tell that which my lips could not utter! How shall I address you, whose name recals those happy visions, once deemed substantial, but now faded for ever!-Yet they are sweet for memory to dwell upon !—To deny that I have loved-that I still love, would now be impossible. How, then, can I bring myself to divulge the agonizing secret, that must for ever crush all hope, and convert even the inward throbbings of my heart into a species of criminality?-For, Amherst, I never can be yours!!— the proud and ancient house of Oakenwold never can admit into its bosom the tainted child of infamy. How shall I proceed?--I am not the niece of Lord Eaglesholme,-I am his daughter, -the daughter of Lady Déborah Delassaux,— born during her husband's life..!

"The dreadful truth is told, and my heart is broken!-May Heaven dispose you to forget the existence of a wretch who cannot long burden this earth!-On you may its choicest blessings be .showered!-And-yes-I may at least look for

that; for, surely, though visited by the cruel condemnation of mankind, I am yet faultless in the eye of an all-just and merciful Being.-That we may meet without offence in Heaven, is the only prayer, the only hope that clings to the decaying heart of her, who (though now without a name) once called herself

"ELIZA MALCOLM."

This communication was the grave of Amherst's lingering hopes. He threw himself down on his bed in an agony of despair, where he lay almost without consciousness for nearly an hour. Ten thousand contradictory thoughts then darted across his mind, like the flashes of lightning athwart the troubled sky, leaving, like them, no trace behind them. Recollecting how very proud his father was of the high antiquity, and the unsullied purity of his ancestorial descent, he felt convinced, that no marriage, not having high family connection to recommend it, would be palatable to him. But to think of nuptials calculated to produce a positive blot in the family escutcheon, -of a description, too, so very objectionable !-it would drive the old man mad!-Yet to aban