selves, which stood out like so many blackened spectres against the dull grey sky, as if they formed the dreary portals to the infernal regions.

After walking through this dismal rookery for some time, the very inhabitants of which flitted about like so many disembodied spirits, Rudd turned down a narrow alley, and presently entered a dark, dingy room, dragging Herbert roughly after him.

THE SPANISH LADY.

TO THE MEMORY OF AN EARLY FRIEND AND PRECEPTRESS.

THE dark-eyed Spanish lady came of pure and ancient race,
She sang the songs of other lands, and danced with native grace,
As bounding with the castanet, on light and fairy feet,

Her clear and brilliant laugh oft rang a cadence wild and sweet.

She was the child of music, and of music's noblest strain;
Old memories of glorious days, ne'er to be seen again;
Legends of sunny lands, where the golden orange glows,
Where grand and pillared Moorish halls in solitude repose.

She sang heroic gallant deeds of chivalrous renown,
The clash of cymbals, pomp of war, and Saracenic frown;
She chanted low the patriot hymns to her own soft guitar,

So often breathed 'mid vine-hung bowers, beneath the evening star.

She spake of love, and pale her cheek, and dim her lustrous eyes : That lady came from southern climes, where passion never dies. Enchanting smiles and bounding smiles her birthright seemed to be; But tears of anguish sometimes fell, and told her history.

Turned she not from this cold land, this boasted island free?
Mourned she not her sunny home, her blighted destiny?
Her ancient race, her buried hopes, her early wealth and power,
All gone! nought left save the brave soul, a noble woman's dower!

She struggled long with poverty, that harassing, dread foe,
The worst that gentle, gifted souls in this bleak world can know!
She gave her hand without a heart; her heart had long been dead.
Oh woe! for mortal happiness, when thus it dares to wed!

She struggled long with dread disease, for death had marked his prey, While jewelled robes adorned the bride on many a festal day.

That dark-eyed Spanish lady, she resisted to the last;

But death was stronger than her might; death held his victim fast.
C. A. M. W.

SONG.

WHEN winter's frown broods o'er the earth,
And leafless every spray,

When looming clouds float through the sky,
And cast a gloom on day;

When winds are chill, like friends who leave
When fortune's smiles are o'er;

When from the bleak and biting north
Snow flakes in showers pour.

When brooks that sported all day long,
And sparkled in the sun,

Are still, as though the wand of death

Its havoc had begun ;

When winds roam mournful through the woods,

And sweep the barren moor;

When twitting sparrows beg around

The humble cotter's, door;

Then let gay mirth her revels hold,
And bar the door on care;

Then let soul-stirring music fill

The heart that would despair;
And gentle maids, with lightsome feet,
The merry dance prolong,

Or listening, hear some loving tale
Breathed forth in plaintive song.

OH! bring me flowers of the brightest hue,
To crown the brow of the mountain maid:
Young roses gemmed with the crystal dew,

And violets plucked from the greenwood shade.
Bright be the garland we cull to her merit;

Fresh be the wreath that we hang at her shrine :-
As bright and as fresh as her own pure spirit,
That blooms and glows with its gifts divine.

Go, visit the bowers of fairy land,

And bring me a harp that has golden strings,
Of ivory, white as the maiden's hand,

And light, as if swept by a seraph's wings;
Oh, then, when the dying sunlight lingers,
On glittering spire, and storied pane,
We shall hear the sound of her magic fingers,
On that fairy harp, to some mountain strain.

When bridal snows the greenwood shroud,

And the yule-log glows on the Christmas hearth,

And the echoing laugh rings long and loud,

And the bounding strings wake the soul of mirth,Oh, then, when the praise of "old grey-hair'd December" Is sung by some bard 'neath the holly's shade, There's one bright name we shall all remember, And pledge the cup to the mountain maid.

THE DAUGHTER.

BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS.

CHAPTER I.

"Ye good distressed!

Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up awhile;
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deemed evil, is no more;

The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,

And one unbounded spring encircle all."-THOMPSON.

THE fatal effects of the exceedingly dry and unproductive summer of 1825, so ruinous to the country in general, and to the county of Kent in particular, were felt by no person more severely than by Mr. Harcourt, a highly intelligent farmer, in a retired part of the isle of Thanet.

The extreme and long continued drought most fearfully affected his early crops, coupled with the naturally arid and chalky soil almost universal there; and day after day, he wandered over the desert-like plains, beholding, with a distracted eye, the tender blades withering beneath the unrelenting rays of a scorching sun, and with them withering also the hopes, which even the promises of the Almighty sanction, of a fruitful and abundant harvest, to reward the labours of the trustful husbandman, and give him that daily bread decreed to be earned by the sweat of his brow. For hath he not said, "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease?"

His cattle gradually consumed the valuable rick of fine old hay, treasured up carefully from the preceding more lavish season; then the straw; then the scanty foliage of the few trees which adorned his small paddock; and in fact, everything, native or foreign to their nature, in the shape of food; and yet they dwindled perceptibly, and were at last sold at an June, 1848.-vOL. LII.-NO. CCVI.

M

infinite sacrifice, to those who fancied they had more ample means of keeping them over the perilous dearth, when their value would rise proportionably.

With all his efforts to guard against despondency, and to rely with becoming confidence and resignation on Him who never fails to assist those who truly and fervently seek His aid—the idea of a dark and inevitable poverty, overshadowing the sunset of a calm and well-spent life, completely took possession of his mind; and he who had been up to that moment the most cheerful in heart, the most sanguine in anticipation, the most grateful to providence, a pattern of fortitude, a bright star of Christian patience, now sank into a state of pitiable murmuring, and sorrowful discontent, painful to all around to witness. And when at the termination of that disastrous year, he found himself, after disposing of everything bordering on luxury, retrenching even common comforts, and contracting to penuriousness his moderate domestic expenditure, actually compelled to intrench on the little store. religiously accumulated as a future provision for his only child, his darling and delicate Lucy, to liquidate his arrears of rent,the death-blow was struck-he gave way to the most immoderate despair, exclaiming, as he raised his feeble and trembling hands above, while the tears coursed rapidly down his furrowed and venerable cheeks, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" then continued,

"Oh, if Lord Morton's obdurate steward had but allowed me a brief space, I might have prevented this total annihilation of my pardonably fond paternal hopes! Oh, if I could but see his lordship myself! I feel assured, lost as he is in the vortex of pleasure, he could not refuse a merciful delay to a father's supplications! my prayers, my anguish, must wring from him an assurance that my Lucy should not be a beggar!

"The young are generous," he continued; "they only require to have their sympathy awakened, to act on its sweet and godlike impulse. And who so likely to touch the chord that thrills responsive to another's woe, as a pocr old man, borne down by age and affliction even unto the grave? But how, alas! obtain the opportunity of pleading my cause to him, of pouring my unvarnished tale of misery into his, perhaps, compassionate ear, and receiving from his lips the glad words which rekindle the spark of hope, decaying amid the ashes of despair?

"Absorbed in his own amusements, revelling in luxury, he is unconscious that one of his oldest tenants is threatened with a death of famine and disgrace. Yet I blame him not, I blame him not; for how could he remedy the evil of which he is