relate it in my own language and with my own feelings, and in reliance on the fidelity of my recollection, I dare vouch for the accuracy of the narration in all important particulars." The story, in itself is simple enough. MARIA ELEONORA SCHONING Was the daughter of a Nuremberg wire-drawer. She received her unhappy existence at the price of her mother's life, and at the age of seventeen she followed as the sole mourner, the bier of her remaining parent. From her thirteenth year she had passed her life at her father's sick bed, and beheld the diet of heaven only when she went to fetch food or medicines. "She grew up in tears, a stranger to the amusements of youth, and its more delightful schemes and imaginations. She was not, however, unhappy. She attributed, indeed, no merit to her virtues, but for that reason were they the more her reward. The peace, which passeth all understanding, disclosed itself in all her looks and movements. It lay on her countenance, like a steady, unshadowed moon-light; and her voice, which was naturally at once sweet and subtle, came from her, like the fine flute-tones of a masterly performer, which still floating at some uncertain distance, seem to be created by the player, rather than to proceed from the instrument. If you had listened to it in one of those brief sabbaths of the soul, when the activity and discursiveness of the thoughts are suspended, and the mind quietly eddies round, instead of flowing onward-(as at late evening in the spring I have seen a bat wheel in silent circles round and round a fruit-tree in full blossom, in the midst of which, ag within a close tent of the purest white, an unseen nightingale was piping its sweetest notes)*-in such a mood you might have halffancied, half-felt, that her voice had a separate being of its own, that it was a living something, whose mode of existence was for the ear only: so deep was her resignation, so entirely had it be come the unconscious habit of all she did or said-so perfectly were both her movements and her utterance without effort and without the appearance of effort!" But this affectionate and gentle being was turned out of her home like an unfledged dove fallen from its mother's nest"-by the officers of the commission court, the whole of the property which her father had left, having been confiscated to the City Treasury, because the deceased had not regularly payed the losung, or ransom tax. "The night came, and Maria knew not where to find a shelter. She tottered to the church-yard of St. James' church in Nuremberg, where the body of her father rested. Upon the yet grassless graye she threw herself down; and could anguish have prevailed over youth, that night she had been in heaven. The day came; and like a guilty

This is a good specimen of Mr. Coleridge's management of a parenthesis; but the one here quoted is brief in comparison with many. This conversationwhich is equally elegant and poetical as his writings, is the most remarkable I ever heard, and abounds with these discussive" salliess:

thing, this guiltless, this good being stole away from the crowd that began to pass through the church-yard, and hastening through the streets to the city-gate, she hid herself behind a garden hedge, and there wept away the second day of her desolation. The evening closed in the pang of hunger made itself felt amid the dull aching of self-wearied anguish, and drove the sufferer back again into the city. Yet what could she gain there? She had not the courage to beg, and the very thought of stealing never occurred to her innocent mind. Scarce conscious whither she was going, or why she went, she found herself once more by her father's grave, as the last relict of evening faded away in the horizon. I have sate for some minutes with my pen resting. I can scarce summon the courage to tell, what I scarce know, whether I ought to tell. Were I composing a tale of fiction, the reader might justly suspect the purity of my own heart, and most certainly would have abundant right to resent such an incident as an outrage wantonly offered to his imagination. As I think of the circumstance, it seems more like a distempered dream. Alas! what is guilt so detestable other than a dream of madness-that worst of madness-the madness of the heart? I cannot but believe, that the dark and restless passions must first have drawn in the mind upon themselves, and as with the confusion of imperfect sleep, had in some strange manner taken away the sense of reality, in order to render it possible for a human being to perpetrate what it is too certain that human beings have perpetrated. The church-yards in most of the German cities, and too often, I fear, in those of our own country, are not more injurious to health than to morality. Their former venerable character is no more. The religion of the place has followed its superstitions; and their darkness and loneliness tempt worse spirits to roam in them, than those whose nightly wanderings appalled the believing hearts of our brave forefathers! It was close by the newmade grave of her father, that the meek and spotless daughter became the victim to brutal violence, which weeping and watching and cold and hunger had rendered her utterly unable to resist. The monster left her in a trance of stupefaction, and into her right hand, which she had clenched convulsively, he had forced a half-dollar."

Poor Maria-now, indeed, almost maddened into misery, rushes frantically into the street, and is taken to the watch-house. After being discharged the next morning by the magistrate she forms the resolution of drowning herself in the river Pegnitz. In her way thither, however, she meets soldier's wife, whom her father had occasionally employed as a chare-woman. The poor woman, alarm ed at Maria's disordered apparel, and still more disordered looks, questions her as to the cause-and-to use the beautiful simile of an author-as a frightened child throws itself into the arms of its mother, and hiding its head on her breast, half tells amid sobs what has happened to it, so did she throw herself on the neck of the woman who had uttered the first words of kindness to her

since her father's death; and with loud weeping she related what she had endured, and what she was about to have done-told her all her affliction and her misery, the wormwood and the gall!

She goes home with the poor woman, and lives with her a whole year, when the efforts of the widow have failed, and herself, Maria, and two children are about to starve. Maria resolves to succour them-and in an extraordinary manner. By the regulations of the city, if the parents of a child were executed for any crime, the children were admitted into the orphan house, and there well provided for. Maria delivers herself up to the civil power as an infanticide, having, according to her own confession, been delivered of an infant by the soldier's wife-who, with herself, had deprived it of life. This wild fantasy procures for both the death so much desire. Harlin, the soldier's wife is beheaded-but the executioner was not wanted for Maria. She had already gone; and her body was found as cold as if she had been dead for many hours. The flower had been snapt in the storm, before the scythe of violence could come near it!

Such is a brief outline of one of the most tragic events which ever occurred-but it is impossible, even from the extracts I have given, to form an adequate conception of the powerful diction in which it is narrated. It is one deep and moving poem from one end to the other.

R

INTRODUCTORY VERSES FOR A LADY'S ALBUM.

The old have visions of their own, reflections of the past,
More lovely than reality, from memory's mirror cast;
For to the pensive eye of age, how beautiful appears,

Each object that recalls to mind, the days of youthful years,

All things of ocean, earth, or sky, the tender or sublime,

That soothed or stirred the heart and soul, in life's voluptuous prime :

The stately forest mantling o'er the mighty mountain's side,

Or gay parterre, profusely clad in all its floral pride.

Each flwoer that bloomed beside our path, is dearer to our view,

The very weed we trampled on, is robed in beauty's hue.

We love each well-remembered sound, recalling pleasures gone,
Young Zephyr's sympathetic sigh, old ocean's sterner tone;
The lov'rock's lively orison, the throstle's vesper song,
The cooing of the cushat dove, the greenwood glades among ;
The relics too, of those we loved, are hoarded up
with care,
However trifling in themselves, a ring or lock of hair,
To each successive glance, they seem, more lovely than before,
And still the older they become, we value them the more.
Then, friends of mine, your off'rings bring, secure that they will here
Be cherish'd thus, and valued more, thro' each succeeding year;
Neglected, they will bloom again, like seeds at random cast,
When they become, as soon they must, memorials of the past.

A. W.

STANZAS,

(Written under a picture of Scottish flowers.)

Early feelings are gone, early friends are no more,
And the mind but remembers their loss to deplore;
But with thought of the flowers of our far father land,
We feel our brows brighten, our bosoms expand;
Uncultur'd they flourish, they die without pain,
And the spring-tide revives them in beauty again.

All that liv'd, all that lov'd, are departed or chang'd,
Forgetting, forgotten, or dead or estranged:

But we know that the bright blooming copse and the wild wood
Still shade and adorn the lov'd land of our childhood;
That the primrose and gowan still border her fountains,
That the furze and the heather still mantle her mountains

ELLEN SEYMOUR.

A. W.

In my earlier days, it was frequently my custom to pass the summer afternoons in the pretty village church-yard of $

and amuse myself by reading the epitaphs of the numerous “gentle and simple," whose last resting places surrounded me. There finding food for the imagination, in ideas of the state and family of those who slumbered beneath the more elegant monuments, and of the domestic happiness and comfort of those, whose records were more humble, has many an hour rolled away more pleasantly, than when engaged in the jovial games of my light-hearted companions. I recollect, at this distant period, that there was one tomb which particularly attracted my attention. In the midst of mementos of a noble family, who had formerly been the lords of that part of the country, a small white tablet, engraved with the name of Ellen Seymour, peeped from beneath clusters of violets and the monthly rose, contrasting with its young and fresh appearance, the ivygrown mausoleums of the now forgotten nobility. Often and often had I endeavoured to discover over whom this simple tablet had been reared; I knew not the name in the village, and all my enquiries on the subject had been vain, until one day the following anecdote was related to me by an old man, whom I afterwards learned was the son of a domestic of the family, of which Ellen Seymour was a member.

In the summer of 1791, the family of Mr. Seymour, which consisted only of himself and daughter, visited France: and, amidst the pleasures of its gay metropolis, contracted an intimacy with the young Phillippe de la Cour, and this acquaintance was again renewed by the murder of Louis the Sixteenth, in January 1793, which brought many of the lovers of the ancien regime to England.

At Seymour house, Phillippe de la Cour found a return of that hospitality he had displayed in his native land, and the pang and misery of exile were softened and subdued by the kindness of his English friends. Beautiful in person, of an accomplished mind, and amiable disposition, she was the idol of her father's tenants, and it seemed as though envy itself was lost in the contemplation of her charms, for she moved the centre of a circle within whose magic circumference, a principle of holy love alone existed.

Being an only child, the affections of her father, who had long been a widower, were lavished upon her, and nothing, which by any possibility could contribute to her happiness had been a moment denied her, yet with all this indulgence she knew not one selfish feeling, but would, at any time, sacrifice her own personal comfort, rather than that others should suffer the slightest inconvenience. Equals and inferiors (superiors she had none) ever bore testimony to her goodness of heart, and endeavoured to compete with each other in manifestations of their regard to her.

It was not to be wondered at, that Phillippe de la Cour, whose fine spirit and noble feeling were objects of delight with every one, should have found favor in the eyes of the lovely Ellen, nor was it possible that his heart could have remained long unimpressed by the force of so many charms. Still, the thought of more than friendship never entered into either mind, and although, perhaps, an expression of deep enthusiasm, and even passion, might now and then escape his lips, it was never construed as a confession of an affection beyond that of simple regard. Thus, in the society of each other, several months passed away, until Phillippe received a communication from his agent at Paris, requesting his immediate appearance, in order to settle certain affairs, which could not be done away from the spot. Arrangements for his entry into and departure from Paris were made so secretly, that to all appearance he would be able to elude the pursuit of the blood-thirsty emissaries of the Republic, who were always vigilantly on the search for suspected persons. At this moment, and not till now, did he perceive to what extent he loved, and fears of a thousand kind, both for himself and his beloved, racked and tortured his mind. At length, only one day would elapse before his departure, and he formed the resolution of baring his whole soul, and unfolding his dearest wishes before her. They took their accustomed walk, but a deep melancholy pervaded. each bosom, and in place of the sprightly conversation, which usually sweetened the walk, a silence was kept by both parties; at length, Ellen said, "Then you go to-morrow, Phillippe, but ere we part, I have one request to make, which is, that in whatever circumstances you may be placed, you will, throughout your journey, gaze, as we both do now, on the sunset, that there may be a consolation to us to think we are daily engaged in the same delightful occupation, and this employment will make the sunset hour sacred to the memory, and the more deeply engrave each others names on our hearts."