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vacation with my future relative, that he should have sought with so much precipitancy a hand which few were likely to forerun him in asking. The six beauties of Letchworth Lodge were certainly, I reflected, not his rivals-the parsonage without a curate;—and Robert himself, against the laws of friendship and likelihoood, had never spoken a syllable of the secret to his Lady's brother during many months of College familiarity. Mrs. Therfield's epistolary zeal had fringed his looking-glass during the Spring terms, I remembered afterwards, with endless letters, fragments of which he read me as they came, full of Cecilia's witty sayings and excellencies. But I then reckoned the writer so provokingly incapable of really estimating that dear creature's merits, in their height and peculiarity, that I thought nothing of Robert's extracts except to reflect with a little shame, that the whole budget would be unendurable. Not to love a friend's next of kin is terrible; one feels as if the sentiment must speak itself aloud, or somehow transpire, when in his company; I think indeed it always does. Perhaps Robert was conscious of this feeling, and interpreted it with the curious timidity which is at the heart of the courage of love, into a conviction that my thought was, that he was unworthy of his aspiration. Ah who could be worthy?-To love Cecilia might well indeed make his natural reserve more reserved, and decide him to maintain silence towards me, until her own little "I will" had determined at once his happiness and my happy acquiescence in the triumph.

So entirely had this conduct thrown me off my guard, that I attributed to my own attractions the frequent visits with which the Rectory was now honoured. Robert was even ironical enough to read aloud one day (and rather to my annoyance) a short sermon or tract on the Blessedness of Single Life, (by some theologian perhaps not more successful at home than our illustrious Richard Hooker), and assert with that peculiar dogmatism of conviction that we see in serious people on serious subjects, that the old divine's quasi-High Church opinions on the celibacy of the clergy were to him at least, as an intended clergyman, more than half convincing. This was perhaps the one occasion when Robert displayed any ironical turn; Love no doubt and assured success inspiring him with that ingenuity. Three days after, my dear mother, meeting me in one of the passages, kissed me there and then in broad daylight; from her staid and orderly nature a pleasure quite unexpected. Morning-Eveningand the return from a journey-By the deviation from this routine I could have at once conjectured the imminence of some singular event, even if

the tears in her joyful eyes had not suggested it. A betrothal is the highest victory of private life, and the news more inspiriting than Gazettes in all their glory. But, unlike these, there is a joyous absence of care, a sense of something delicately comic about it, (as when a couple come down on the floor in waltzing), that leave even the nearest auditors and most interested free at once to canvass circumstances, suggest amendments, or remark that the campaign had been observed, and the triumph prophesied. "Our dear prudent Cecilia!" I cried, "how many months ago was the proposal made?—nothing less than a year I should have thought could have been enough for her deliberations." "This morning-no, yesterday evening" my mother said, "Cecilia I believe allowed him at night of uncertainty—a wakeful one, I should hope-but indeed it is—I hope it will be "—and she pressed my hand, turning to smile once more through those tears with an arch look, as she opened the door of her daughter's room. In my dear mother's whole life, every circumstance considered, this was, I suppose, the crowning moment; the hour of most unalloyed happiness; especially as there could be no whisper yet of the day!-In heaven itself if the hours that go by on earth are marked there on any celestial calendar, I have sometimes fancied she must, as the anniversary passes, recall that pure instant of delight, with some strange thrill of old human feeling.

Except that tears were naturally more abundant, Cecilia's first greeting after the news announced of course much resembled her mother's. "You wondered at my at the haste with which things were settled," she said, after the prefatory minute of hesitation and unfinished words, “I know you did, dear brother and that you were not called into council too" she added, taking my hand with a delightful gravity. "I did indeed," I said, "and that I hoped another time"-"Another!"-and then her seriousness would have satisfied Robert himself. "But indeed it was not so very sudden: I mean that I wish I hardly know how to say it

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but I wish you did not think me so very prudent, so very wise" she said with half a laugh, "you may be sure I shall disappoint you."

"Never, darling," and I tried to kiss her back to cheerfulness. But the dear child was fairly overcome; she sat hastily down. "I do not know what it is" she said at last, and checking her sobs, "indeed I do try not to be over hasty, but in this I knew it could not be otherwise it was as if a voice spoke for me. And I am so happy, dear Edmund, only he is so much too good for me."

There was a sound of wheels on the gravel as Cecilia spoke, and then her mother's voice calling her with a peculiar humourous tenderness. "She is so happy" Cecilia whispered, running hastily by-but to her own room. Marie, promoted since her young lady's last birthday from Nurse to Maid, came up, (by her dear Mistress' direction it must have been), looking more like fifteen than fifty in her daintily-shaped, tightlyrounded striped dress, knocked at Cecilia's door, gave me a look of provoking goodnature, and pointed downstairs-all in the course of the same moment. I understood the hint, and went obediently to make a few minutes' diversion with Robert in his "bride's" favour; admiring meanwhile and enjoying the spring of life which this event had opened suddenly in the quiet household. I asked myself whether I in my hour should ever be the occasion of such perplexity of feelings and unwonted demeanour to any lady: whether in fact I should conscientiously have the right to put a girl to so much trouble,—to become the cause of such rovesciamento. -What young man, with visions of a "not impossible She" dimly before him, has not been tormented with like foolish fancies?

(To be continued.)

F. T. PALGBave.

SICILIAN SKETCHES, III.

THE dominant feature of Sicily for all ages, has been of necessity, the barren lava mass of Etna. Through the mellow distance of twice a thousand years the old-world life of Syracuse stands out as clearly as that of Palermo, illuminating the days of a medievalism long since decayed and dead.

But above all ages and all cities, towers the malignant mountain, unhallowed, uncouth, and awful in its fiery desolation. Seen from the distant height of Taormina, with a mantle of moonlight thrown over the snows of its summit, and the glow of the fire flushing now and again the black lava shadows at the foot of the crater, it is beautiful enough: but climb at noontide up the hot wearisome paths to where the great Valle del Bove opens its yawning chasms amid the black twisted cliffs, and it is a very landscape of the Inferno.

The earthquake-riven walls of the miserable villages that lie on the slope of Etna bear witness to the destructive power even at work beneath the scanty soil. A peculiarity of this volcano is that it seldom erupts from the summit; when an eruption takes place, a new crater bursts forth at some unexpected part of the mountain side, and the lava pours out in a new direction, devastating most likely the vineyards that have escaped for centuries.

Those who have never witnessed anything of the sort, can have but a faint conception of the horrors of a volcanic eruption; the dense sulphureous atmosphere, the intense heat, the terrible sense of insecurity conveyed by the constant quaking of the solid earth or rock, all combine to produce a disquieting anxiety, that soon amounts to positive terror among an ignorant and superstitious peasantry, such as inhabit the slopes of Etna. The following passages, taken from an account written by an English gentleman, who with one other, was the sole witness of the 1879

eruption, during its entire progress, will give some idea of the awful grandeur of the sight in the immediate vicinity of the crater.*

"Just as it was getting dark we arrived at our destination, tied up our mules in a beech copse a little below the brow of the hill, and ran up to the top, in the midst of a din resembling the thunder of the great guns of a fleet of ironclads. Our feelings, upon witnessing the sight that burst upon us, were those of nervousness and alarm. In the twilight of the dying day it was impossible to see the intervening ground, and there seemed to open at our very feet, a line of fourteen or fifteen craters, all throwing molten lava to a height of several hundred feet, and which promised every moment to overwhelm us: they did not seem fifty yards away. In reality they were over half-a-mile off, and as it grew darker the flames lit up the ground, and put us at our ease by showing us the real distance.

To the right, about a mile away, was another group of eight large craters and several small ones, at the foot of a hill called Monte Nero, all engaged in pouring lava without an instant's cessation. Each of these streams converged to the centre of the valley, and united they ran down a steep slope, through a portion of the forest of Castiglione, and went coiling far into the plain below, like a huge glowing red snake. Behind us were two big craters, vomiting immense columns of black smoke, now and then lit up with fitful flashes of fire, which spread like a black and fearful pall over the sky, and afforded a great contrast to the scene in front. From time to time some huge pine would catch fire, and blazing up like a torch be burnt away in half a minute. Now and then the smoke was blown between us and the craters, making the lava assume a blood-red hue instead of its usual brilliant golden yellow. From three of the craters in front of us, immense blue flames, like gigantic blow pipes, rushed out to the height of twenty or thirty feet, with a shrieking roar impossible to describe....... The whole ground was shaking and moving beneath us, and each moment we expected some new crater to break out in our midst..... . . The craters in front being near one another, the fire from each was always crossing and recrossing, and had the appearance of a most beautiful display of fireworks.......... The effect at night was much more awful and impressive than by day, as you could see every atom of

I am indebted to the courtesy of a friend for permission to publish these hitherto unprinted extracts.-J.D.E.L.

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