MURRAY'S FIRST LOVE.

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was, I think, the most perfect and faultless specimen of female beauty that ever I saw in my life. I gave them letters to Lord Lansdowne and others in London, and he gave me a letter for his venerable father at Geneseo. It was there that I met his sister, and I believe that in less than a fortnight our fates were sealed. She was less beautiful, but but more intellectual, more winning and attractive (at all events to me), than his wife. I visited them again before leaving America, and our former ties were confirmed and riveted. Then came a protracted correspondence of parents,— mine would not hear of my abandoning my country and settling in America, and her father would not hear of his only remaining daughter leaving him to settle in England. Moreover, if he had allowed it, I believe her sense of filial duty would have prevented her from availing herself of the permission. The letters on both sides became more peremptory, and at last the whole engagement was broken off, and all communication between us positively forbidden. For fourteen years, during which she refused several of the highest and best offers in America, did she keep her pure steady love in her heart unchanged by time and unsupported by hope, and it was only after her father's death, when we met accidentally in Scotland, that I learnt that I could still claim her as my own. You know the rest of her short and sad story. For a week after little C.1 was born she nursed him, oh with what joy and love! . . . She said to me suddenly, 'Charlie, is this death?' I

1 Charles James Murray, Esq., M.P. for Coventry.

could not speak, for I knew there was little hope; then she desired that all others might leave the room, and she made me come, and she kissed me and comforted me, and told me that the one year of unbroken happiness that we had spent together was worth a lifetime, and that not one word of unkindness or cloud of doubt had ever come between us. Then she took my hand in hers and said to me solemnly, 'Promise me that when you have recovered from this blow you will marry again. I want you to be happy again in this world, and you never can be so without a wife whom you can love.' I need not tell you that my lips were unable to utter any such promise; but I turned her thoughts again to the horizon céleste, and I read her the communion and other prayers, and as her life-blood was ebbing away she repeated faintly after me the Lord's Prayer as far as 'Thy will be done,' when with a sweet smile upon her face her spirit returned to her Father and her God! Why do I repeat all this to you, my sweet darling? Why, because you are part of myself, and poor James Wadsworth's death has brought it all home to me to-day in my solitary walk, and all that is in my thoughts and heart should be unburthened to you, blessed darling, whom God has given to me to be my joy and comfort, the future of all my sad memories as well as of my present happiness; and if her beautiful spirit can see what now passes on earth, she too will bless you, Mavourneen, for realising her last earthly wish concerning me, and for your sweet tender affection for her child."

THE SONG OF AH-TO-MENŌ.

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I have stated in a former chapter that, during these long years of waiting, Murray held no communication with Miss Wadsworth, save indirectly, through the channel of his published romance— the 'Prairie Bird.' There was a single exception to this silence. The following Indian poem was translated by him from the Delaware and sent to Miss Wadsworth, to whom the significance no doubt was perfectly clear :

SONG OF AH-TO-MENŌ OR WOUNDED EAGLE.

Ah-to-menō lies on the far Prairies; he puts his ear to the ground, he hears the tread of horses and the voices of the Chiefs, but he hears not the Song of Oolita.

Where is the soft-voiced Prairie-bird? Is she silent from sickness? Perhaps her heart is changed; perhaps she whispers to another warrior, and the wind brings not the sound to Ah-to-menō.

The wounded Eagle's wigwam is cold, an arrow has struck him deep, he has gone to smoke the pipe of peace among great chiefs of a far tribe, but he is a Delaware; his heart is strong; he can hear the mocassin of a creeping Sioux; he can see the squirrel if he stirs a twig on the highest hemlock-then let the Prairie-bird sing at the door of her lodge, Ah-to-menō's ears are open.

Oolita is still silent is she sad, let her look up to the Manitto; he is good, he will pity Oolita and make her face bright.

Ah-to-menō dwells with the chiefs of the tribe; among their lodges he is welcome; their daughters have eyes like the antelope, and their tongues are like the mocking-bird, but the wounded Eagle remembers the soft voice of Oolito.

AH-TO-MENŌ NEVER FORGETS.

That is the whole touching tale-fifteen years of constancy almost destitute of hope, and without a syllable of direct intercourse, written or spoken ; an unexpected meeting; a year of perfect happiness; a crushing blow; eleven years of solitary mourning, mitigated only by the duties of an incessantly active life and the care for his child; then-happiness once more; union with another, with whom, to the end of his days, Murray lived in perfect harmony and love.

Human relations of this nature are delicate matter for a stranger's hand. Discretion is prone to err in resolving what to reveal and what to withhold; yet the story of Murray's life would be incomplete without a reference, however brief, to the peace which he found in his second marriage. From a long series of letters to Lady Murray which are before me it will suffice to make a single other extract from one written the day before that quoted from above, which may serve to show the nature and extent of the confidence which existed between them and endured to the end. Murray had been reading a French book, 'Horizons Célestes,' which was a favourite of his wife.

HORIZONS CÉLESTES.'

Hon. Charles Murray to his Wife.

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"EISENACH, 25th May 1864.

"I have been reading your 'Horizons Célestes,' my darling, for an hour. There are thoughts and expressions of almost unearthly beauty, and somehow I can scarcely imagine it written by a Frenchman! In some respects I feel with shame that the writer is too good for me, and that his spirit soars into regions where I would fain follow him, but cannot! Some of his reasonings which I can follow must be taken with a certain reserve; as, for instance, where he reproves, as human weakness and infidelity, feelings which are really a natural and necessary result of the circumstances in which God has placed us in this world. Speaking of our once loved but long since dead, he says, 'Si l'on venait vous dire, "Il est là !" vous vous trouverez plus embarrassé que ravi.' Very often this would happen; but, as I maintain, not from any untruthfulness or degradation in our nature. Suppose a son who is deeply and devotedly fond of his father, and that father, who is a prince or man of great possessions, dies when the youth is eighteen; say that after five years he married, has children, and suppose that five years again after that, when he has formed all these new ties and accustomed himself to the discharge of all the duties of his position, some one could enter and say to him, 'Your father is alive again, and is at the door,' would he not naturally be 'plus embarrassé que ravi'? Or take my own case. You will not doubt that I loved Charlie's mother; you know that I