which a perusal of this book has suggested to us. We perused it before one of our evening winter-fires; and, when we retired to rest, we attempted in vain to "cry ourselves," like Caliban, "to sleep again.”

The effect, of which we complain, is the more intense because much of it arises from the beauty of the writing. The loveliness, the endurance, the innocence, and the simplicity of Margaret, cannot be surpassed. It is for this reason that we were the less able to sustain the weight of pity with which our bosoms labored, as we perused her trials, the trials of the purest and the humblest of created beings. Though we are critics, we are "not stocks and stones." How, therefore, could we read with dry eyes the account of her father's abandonment of his helpless family, as it occurs in the following passage? The feelings of Walter Lyndsay (a printer) had been perverted by deistical opinions, and his reverence for his old pious mother underwent a sad alteration when he began to regard her as a bigot. At length, in the natural progress of corrupt dispositions, he became changed towards the wife of his bosom the family sank into poverty and distress; and Margaret, after having seen her wretched father in confinement on a charge of high treason, was reserved for sharper adversities.

Walter Lyndsay was never brought to trial. It appeared that he had been made the dupe of designing men in a superior station; and as some of them were under indictment of high treason, the poor printer was liberated from prison. The heavy nailed door was opened, and he was turned out into the street without a single hiss or huzza, and unobserved by the few persons passing along on their own business.

The infatuated man had not the virtue to go straight to his own family at Braehead. Perhaps he was ashamed to show himself to the neighbours in daylight, skulking home in contempt and poverty; so, at least, he tried to persuade himself, and said inwardly, that it was better to wait till the dusk of the evening but this was not the cause of his conduct. He then walked sullenly down a narrow lane near the prison, and ascending a dark narrow winding stone-stair, knocked at a garret-door. It was cautiously opened by a female hand, and he entered that room in which he had first become a hopeless and infatuated sinner. The woman who had lived for some months in this garret, had been either the wife or the mistress (she said the wife) — of one of Walter's brother-reformers. He had treated her with great brutality, and having once struck her a blow on the bosom, Walter chid him, and thereby excited first his anger and then his jealousy. But there is no need to give the history of Walter's unfortunate and wicked connection with this beautiful but unprincipled female. Suffice it to say, that her husband left her,

and

and that this weak man, believing that her desertion had been owing solely and entirely to himself, thought he was bound in honour, for by this time he had abandoned his religion, to give her protection, if he could not give her support. She loved him with a violent and engrossing passion, for Walter Lyndsay was a handsome man, and his manner and deportment far above the common level. Nor was she without talents, and something that was amiable about her disposition; she had also a fine person, a face singularly elegant, and a natural fascination that seemed just adapted to seduce into sin a mind and a heart so distracted, and it may almost be said, so depraved as those of Walter Lyndsay had been for two or three years. She indeed loved him better than she did any other man, and she had been faithful to her paramour, even in uttermost destitution of the common necessaries of life.. Of his wife and family she never had suffered him to speak; at their names her eyes seemed to burn with shame, anger, and hatred, and then would overflow with bitter and scalding tears. To her bosom he had now gone on his liberation from prison, and he told her truly that he had not yet spoken a word to any one else since he had left his cell. She embraced him eagerly, and pressed his body to hers, both emaciated, for a garret had been her prison, and if pride had made Walter abstemious in his cell, so had necessity kept from her lips all but water and a crust..

The jailor had put into Walter's hand, as he let him out of the prison, a couple of guineas which he had got for that purpose from some one of the more generous reformers. So the wretched pair had a love-feast, regaled themselves with meat and wine, and were merry. They swallowed them in recklessness and despair, with ghastly laughter between, and fatal embraces. All the world seemed changed for ever to the eyes of Walter Lyndsay. His character and credit were utterly ruined in Edinburgh, .he saw no possibility of being able to support his family by any exertion there, his domestic peace had long been destroyed,entirely, as he felt, by his own guilt. She, for whom he had made that wretched sacrifice, had her arms round his neck, and her cheek on his; - and long infatuated, and now maddened by a thousand passions, he started up, and offered to go with her to some distant place, to live, if they could, by his trade, however poorly, if they could not, to die of starvation. "The sooner

the better, perhaps, we die," groaned out Walter; "but let us swear never to part till that hour; let us swear, not by the Bible, on which fools may pledge their faith, but on your forehead, and on mine, which is rending with pain, but which may this night ache no more, when resting, as it has often done, upon your bosom." They grasped each other by the hands, vowed eternal truth, and agreed to take their departure next day. Meanwhile, he said he would go to Braehead and bid farewell to his family, to prove to her the inflexible determination of his heart. Love, vanity, pride, madness, delusion, and sin heaved the breast of the friendless, forlorn, deserted, impassioned, and beautiful woman, at these evil and wicked words; and fearless REV. JAN. 1824.

с

now

now of the power of his wife and children, she offered to accompany him to Braehead, to wait at a little distance till he came back to her from his farewell to the inmates, - and then to go with

him to face poverty and death.

It was late when he reached the door of his own house, and had not his brain been inflamed with wine into a temporary madness, there was not wickedness enough in his breast to have suffered him to put his desperate purpose into execution. He violently threw open the door, and entered with a face on which the flush of debauchery looked fearful on the wan and ghastly hue brought there by the blue damps of a stone-cell. Alice and Margaret were sitting together, beside a small turf fire; but neither of them could move on this great and sudden joy. They had known he was not to die; but they had expected everlasting expatriation. Now he stood before them in his own house, - by the light of his own fire, - and their hearts died within them. A sigh, a groan, a gasp, was his only welcome. He well knew the cause of such silence, but he determined to misunderstand it, that he might, by his own injustice and cruelty, fortify the savage resolution of his soul. "What kind of a reception is this for a husband or a father returning from long,. cruel, and unjust imprisonment? But it matters not. I am come hither for a few minutes to say farewell to you all. Edinburgh is no place for You both know that I will send you all the money I can. But I must leave this to-night. So, wife, give me your hand :I hope you are glad I am set free."

me.

These words struck upon their hearts just as they were recovering from the shock of joy. They both hung down their heads, and, covering their faces with their hands, both sorely wept, The infatuated man sat down between them, and spoke with a little more gentleness. But still his words were so hurried, and his looks so wild, that each thought within herself, that his confinement or his liberation had affected his reason; and both likewise hoped, that for a little while only, it might be even so. But soon they were sure that he was lost to them, perhaps for ever; for there came a sterner expression over his countenance; and in speaking of his departure, he used fewer words, but these were calm, unequivocal, and resolved. "I have sworn, and I will keep to my oath, in face of persecution, and poverty, and death, to leave this accursed Edinburgh, and all that belong to it. I will send you money when I can. But you have been able to support yourselves for some time. Alice don't attempt to utter one word. -I will, and must go. What, Margaret, will you dare to lift up a look or a word against your father?" Margaret had risen from her stool, on which she had for years sat at night by her father's knees. But his stern voice stopt her, as she was about to take his hand, and beseech him not to leave them all in despair. She remained motionless, with her pale and weeping face leaning towards him, almost in fear, while her mother sat still, covering her face, and knowing, in the darkness of her sight and her soul, that all was lost.

• At

At that moment, all eyes were turned from the fitful glimmering of the peat-fire, towards the door of the small room in which the old woman lay, and which seemed slowly opening of itself. "God have mercy upon us!" said Walter Lyndsay, as his mother, who had been so long bed-ridden and palsy-stricken, came trembling and tottering towards them, with her long grey locks hanging over her dim eyes and withered cheeks, and her hands held up in angry and melancholy upbraiding of her sinful son. "If thou leavest thy wife and children, Walter, take with thee the curse of thy mother, along with the curse of thy conscience, and the curse of thy God!" And with these words, she, who had, till this moment, been for years a palsied cripple, fell down upon the floor, and, without motion or groan, lay as if she were dead.

hoping

It all past in a moment of wonder and amazement; but the apparent corpse was soon lifted up and laid upon its bed. Alice and Margaret were busy in trying to restore her to life, it might be but a swoon, from the grievous fall. Her miserable son, seeing that she was dead, rushed out of the house, with her curse yet shrieking in his ears, and knew that, in this world, his misery was perfect.'

If a gleam of kindlier fortune peeps out for a while amid these sad vicissitudes, it is only transient, and renders the darkness still more desolate. Hope and love sing their syren strains of enchantment, and Margaret is for a moment blest with the sweetest vision that can play around the heart of a chaste and virtuous maiden; for her brother, who had just returned from sea, introduces to her one of his young c companions. The opening beauties of Margaret extort from him the first sighs of love: but these buddings of joy are soon withered by the chilling blast of adversity. She was engaged to go with her lover and her brother to church on a summerSunday.

Her heart was indeed glad within her, when she saw the young sailor at the spot. His brown sun-burnt face was all one smile of exulting joy, and his bold clear eyes burned through the black hair that clustered over his forehead. There was not a handsomer, finer-looking boy in the British navy. Although serving before the mast, as many a noble lad has done, he was the son of a poor gentleman; and as he came up to Margaret Lyndsay, in his smartest suit, with his white straw-hat, his clean shirtneck tied with a black ribband, and a small yellow cane in his hand, a brighter boy and a fairer girl never met in affection in the calm sunshine of a Scottish Sabbath-day.

"Why have not you brought Laurence with you?" Harry made her put her arm within his, and then told her that it was not her brother's day on shore. Now all the calm air was filled with the sound of bells, and Leith Walk covered with well-dressed families. The nursery-gardens on each side were almost in their greatest beauty, so soft and delicate the verdure of the young imbedded

C 2

The

imbedded trees, and so bright the glow of intermingled early flowers. "Let us go to Leith by a way I have discovered," said the joyful sailor, and he drew Margaret gently away from the public walk, into a retired path winding with many little white gates through these luxuriantly cultivated enclosures. insects were dancing in the air, — birds singing all about them, the sky was without a cloud, — and a bright dazzling line of light was all that was now seen for the sea. The youthful pair loitered in their happiness, they never marked that the bells had ceased ringing; and when at last they hurried to reach the chapel, the door was closed, and they heard the service chaunting. Margaret durst not knock at the door, or go in so long after worship was begun; and she secretly upbraided herself for her forgetfulness of a well-known and holy hour. She felt unlike herself walking on the street during the time of church, and beseeched Harry to go with her out of the sight of the windows, that all seemed watching her in her neglect of Divine worship. So they bent their steps towards the shore.'

and

"See," said Harry, with a laugh, "the kirks have scaled, as you say here in Scotland, the pier-head is like a wood of bonnets. Let us go there, and I think I can shew them the bonniest face among them a'." The fresh sea-breeze had tinged Margaret's pale face with crimson, and her heart now sent up a sudden blush to deepen and brighten that beauty. They mingled with the cheerful, but calm and decent crowd, and stood together at the end of the pier, looking towards the ship. "That is our frigate, Margaret, the Tribune; - she sits like a bird on the water, sails well, both in calm and storm." The poor girl looked at the ship with her flags flying, till her eyes filled with tears. "If we had a glass, like one my father once had, we might, perhaps, see Laurence." And for the moment she used the word "father" without remembering what and where he was in his misery. "There is one of our jigger-rigged boats coming right before the wind.Why, Margaret, this is the last opportunity you may have of seeing your brother. We may sail to-morrow; nay, to-night." — A sudden wish to go on board the ship seized Margaret's heart. Harry saw the struggle, and wiling her down a flight of steps, in a moment lifted her into the boat, which, with the waves rushing in foam within an inch of the gunwale, went dancing out of harbour, and was soon half-way over to the anchored frigate.

The novelty of her situation, and of all the scene around, at first prevented the poor girl from thinking deliberately of the great error she had committed, in thus employing her Sabbathhours in a way so very different to what she had been accustomed ; but she soon could not help thinking what she was to say to her mother when she went home, and was obliged to confess that she had not been at church at all, and had paid a visit to her brother on board the ship. She knew that she had almost deceived her mother from the beginning; and remembered her former fault in going to the theatre, and then being accessary to a falsehood in order to conceal it. And now the loud laughing merriment that