Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o'er the billow,
From love to titled age and crime,
And an unholy pillow-

From me, and from our misty clime,

Where weeps the silver willow!

That these lines were written in English-a language with which I had not believed their author acquainted-afforded me little matter for surprise. I was two well aware of the extent of his acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazo ment. It had been originally written London, and afterwards carefully overscored; but not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I might as well here mention, that I have more than once heard that the person of whom I speak was not only by birth, but in education, an Englishman. It was also rumoured that he had at one time met the Marchesa di Mentoni in the British capital.

"There is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy, "there is still one painting which you have not seen." And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.

Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her matchless beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the ducal palace stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom; with her left she pointed downwards to a curiously-fashioned vase. One small fairy foot alone visible, barely touched the earth, and scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately-imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend. "Come," he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled and massive silver, upon which a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be Vin de Barac. "Come! let us drink! It is early, but let us drink! It is indeed early," he continued thoughtfully, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise. "It is indeed early (dwelling ominously upon the words)—but what matters it? let us drink! Let us pour out an offering to the solemn sun, which these gaudy lamps and censers are so vainly eager to subdue!"

And, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine.

"To dream," he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases,—“ to dream has been the happiness of my life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of Venice, could I have erected a better? You behold around you, it is true, a medley of artistic embellishments. The chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and sphynxes of Egypt are stretching upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a theorist—but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for my purpose. Like these Arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing on fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams, whither I am now rapidly departing. Thus saying, he confessed the power of the wine, and threw himself at full length upon an ottoman.

A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the room, and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent words,—“ My mistress! My mistress! Poisoned! Poisoned! Oh, beautiful!-oh, beautiful Aphrodite !"

Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavoured to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were rigid-his lips were livid -his lately beaming eyes were riveted in death. I staggered back towards the table-my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet-and a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.

FOREST WORSHIP.

AND whence can the prayer of affection
More purely ascend to the sky,
Than from temples whose glorious erection
Still betrays the great architect nigh;
Deep woods, in whose solemn recesses
Tall pines, 'neath whose pillars of might

The spirit looks upward and blesses,

And the shadows grow sacred to sight.

Can the prayer that is breathed by devotion,
Thus hallowed by silence and thought,

And nursed by the deepest emotion

That ever religion has taught,

Be unworthy God's ear because offer'd
In a temple whose majesty shames
The proudest that heart ever proffer'd,

For His sacred acceptance and Fame's.
The soul that has drunk from the chalice
Of sorrow and love, and is bow'd,
Needs none of the pomps of the palace,
Nor the cold measured rites of the crowd;
It rather implores the dim regions

Of shadow and silence, and there,*
In the sweet hallow'd twilight, are legions
Of angels, to sanction its prayer.

There gather, in pity down-bending,
The blessedest hopes of the heart;
Dear children, that, never offending,
Have been bidden, while pure, to depart;
Sweet angels, in shapes that have perished,
The mother, the sister, the wife;

All the bright ones that life ever cherished,
All striving to lift us to life.

Their shrine wafts no earthly oblation,
Their temple, pure, lovely and grand,
Still rises, as when, at creation,

It bloomed forth, the work of His Hand:
And well may the devotee falter,

As he thinks on the races of yore,
The myriads who 've bow'd at an altar,
Where myriads yet must adore..

Oh! vain is that worship whose vision'
Still craves for the gold on the shrine;
Still looks, with an eye of derision,

On the rude scattered emblems of mine;

More blessed by far if the blossom

Of faith may be nourish'd and known,
In the depths of the wood, where his bosom,
Can feel but God's glory alone.

And think not the prayer of that being,
O'er whom fortune for ever hath smiled,
Can be grateful to him, the All-seeing,
As the offering of misery's child;
Though the former in palace most splendid
The rites of acknowledgment gave,
While the latter's frail offering is blended
With the winds of the desert and wave.

MY FLOWERS.

"My flowers!" the gentle maiden cries-
Herself the fairest flower of all-
A "floral language" who denies

Her presence would convert and thrall.

7. W.

A SPANISH TALE.

"ANDALOUSIA? why Spain? Cannot you relate something of our native land? Is merry little England so deficient in anecdote that you are forced to seek interesting facts elsewhere? Cannot you find, in the great emporium of the world, in this far-famed London, every thing but, as it would appear, what you are seeking? Is nothing sufficiently highly coloured in the romance of real life around us to attract your attention, and captivate ours, that you must journey to Spain, Italy, Germany, France, in short, to the antipodes, to find some subject either raked from the musty mouldering remains of antiquity, or some living monster of iniquity, some Liliputian wonder of Tom Thumbism, seen through the magnifying spectacles of one of the tale-tellers-fashionable Lord of-at a penny a line? One becomes sick of these eternal far-fetched stories; and lovely truth, as the simplicitty of nature exhibits it, would be indeed Caviar to the million.""

In the first place, I could answer, that I am not a romancist; in the second, that I am not the least anxious to narrate a tale; and in the third, whoever says I am a story-teller, a story tells himself. I have not, nor ever had, any inventive faculties in this line. I have ever been much too plainly spoken to please; my candour generally exceeds my civility; and though it is said that the truth should not at all times be spoken, I have ever thought, perhaps too much for my own advantage, that the truth should always, and upon every occasion, be spoken, whether it pleases or not. Moreover, as the truth shall be spoken by me, I am at this moment in a very bad humour, not likely to be much improved by knowing that what I have to perform must be done "bon gré, mal gre;" "point d'argent, point de suisse;" in plain English, no song no supper. It, however, gives me an opportunity of having a hit at humanity, and that will be some consolation to me. Should any smiling idea flit across my moody mind, in truth you shall have it; but I do not feel very much disposed to seek it, if it lies even but a little out of my way. "I'm not in the mood."

Why Spain? Why, because Spain is a spot extremely commodius for all adventures; because Spain is scarcely ever free from them, and because Spain is little known to any one; because Spain has ever been a country less influenced, and, so to say, less unnationalized than her other civilized neighbours; and finally, because it happens that it was in Spain the anecdote I am about to narrate did occur, and I know it to be true, for I have it from one of the interlocutors of the recital, a gentleman, and a brother officer, whose veracity no one can dare question. May I therefore at length be permitted to commence.

In the month of December, 1839, an elderly and a young man, my friend, and a friend of his, were leisurely walking towards the principal promenade of

Grenada; the first was grave and silent, being one of those unhappy mortals who only retains the unpleasant features of existence, and views every thing through the medium of gloomy discontent; the other gay, happy, exceedingly well satisfied with himself, looking at the passing scenes of life with a determination to be pleased, bidding dull care stand aside, and, thanks to his school of philosophy, possessing an amiable indifference upon those misfortunes it has pleased Providence to inflict upon fellow creatures, those mundane evils common to mankind, though to some much more largely apportioned than to others. The jovial man did all he could to dispel the sombre thoughts of his taciturn companion, when a carriage, passing at the moment, unlocked his lips.

"Ah! there goes another instance of woman's frailty; they are all alike; it is perfect folly to believe in their constancy; in fact, poets and romance writers would not make such a fuss about love if there were any truth in it, they would find it too common place for their pens; it is only when instances occur of exextreme rarity, that from their being so. they merit notice, in juxta-position with the perpetual occurrences of woman's infidelity. Love! Nonsense! Mankind came into the world and go out of it; the worms crawl in and the worms crawl out; my turn to-day, yours to-morrow; but as for love and constancy, it is all a dream, shear nonsense!"

"What, harping upon my daughter still, my friend? still chaunting the old requiem to love? The rosy little cupids must have sorely tormented you in your early days to make you so very angry with them, for you never see a pair of sparking eyes, but puff, 'up comes your steam to high pressure power in a trice, and scalds every petticoat wearer within its expansive force. Now, as you are generally not particularly loquacious, and always too well bred to prevent my being so, I will in the present case save you a great expense of steam by setting your proposed observations in locomotion, you can travel on with less fatigue to yourself, and not consign me to the misery of holding my tongue for the rest of the journey, and every now and then I will throw in another dose of aid, while you are raking up the embers of your imagination. Now, in that carriage there doubtless sits some extremely pretty girl, whom you could not persuade to fall in love with your long solemn phiz, some one as prudent as she is pretty, who could not be persuaded by you that you never could prove inconstant to her; some dear little senohra, who was silly enough to think her old father not quite such a brute as you would fain persuade her, or that a rope-ladder was the most respectable conveyance to matrimony. Upon this you are about to make up a most woeful tale of what you are always preaching about—woman's inconstancy, the folly of love and the ill treatment man experiences from the dear creatures. Do as I do, resign yourself to whatever happens; if you are unlucky at first, try again, man, don't be downcast. None but the brave deserve the fair. Persevere, the hardest