allow you to read the poem you have volunteered to stand sponsor for."

Mowbray was too anxious to express some of the thoughts contained in it to wait for another command; and having drawn his chair closer to the table, or, in other words, closer to Julia's, he began the following very beautiful

“PRAYER OF ADAM ALONE IN PARADISE.

"O Father, hear!

Thou knowst my secret thought.
Thou knowst with love and fear

I bend before thy mighty throne,
And before thee I hold myself as naught.
Alas! I'm in the world alone!

All desolate upon the earth;

And when my spirit hears the tone,
The soft song of the birds in mirth,
When the young nightingales
Their tender voices blend,

When from the flowery vales
Their hymns of love ascend;

O, then I feel there is a void for me!
A bliss too little in this world so fair;
To thee, O Father, do I flee:

To thee for solace breathe the prayer.
And when the rosy morn

Smiles on the dewy trees,
When music's voice is borne
Far on the gentle breeze;
When o'er the bowers I stray,
The fairest fruits to bring,
And on thy shrine to lay
A fervent offering;
Father of many spheres!

When bending thus before thy throne,
My spirit weeps with silent tears,

To think that I must pray alone!

And when at evening's twilight dim,
When troubled slumber shuts mine eye,
And when the gentle seraphim

Bend from their bright homes in the sky;
When angels walk the quiet earth,
To glory in creation's birth,

Then, Father, in my dreams I see
A gentle being o'er me bent,
Radiant with love, and like to me,
But of a softer lineament;
I strive to clasp her to my heart,

That we may live and be but one-
Ah, wherefore, lovely beam, depart?
Why must I wake and find thee gone?

Almighty, in thy wisdom high,
Thou saidst that when I sin I die;
And once my spirit could not see
How that which is, could cease to be.
Death was a vague, unfathom'd thing,
On which the thought forbore to dwell;
But love has oped its secret spring,
And now I know it well!

To die must be to live alone,

Unloved, uncherish'd, and unknown,
Without the sweet one of my dreams,
To cull the fragrant flowers with me,
To wander by the morning's beams,
And raise the hymn of thanks to thee.
But Father of the earth,

Lord of the boundless sphere!
If 'tis thy high unchanging will
That I should linger here,

If 'tis thy will that I should rove

Alone o'er Eden's smiling bowers,
Grant that the young birds' song of love
And the breeze sporting 'mong the flowers
May to my spirit cease to be

A music and a mystery!

Grant that my soul no more may feel
The soft sounds breathing everywhere;
That nature's voice may cease to hymn
Love's universal prayer!

For all around, in earth or sea,
And the blue heaven's immensity,
Whisper it forth in many a tone,
And tell me I am all alone."

"Beautiful!" said Fanny; "beautiful!" echoed every one except Julia; but she had made a great many false stitches in a rosebud she was embroidering; she left the room to get some more silk, and when she returned Mowbray was gone.

"If the bright lake lay stilly

When whirlwinds arose to deform,

If the life of the lily

Were charm'd against the storm,

Thou mightst, though human,

Have smiled through the saddest of years

Thou mightst, though woman,

Have lived unacquainted with tears!"

From the German of JOHANN THEODOR DRECHSLER.

THERE is but one real actual present on earth, but one period in which we feel our own identity independent of our imagination, and that is the time we pass with the one we love; the mere sense of existence is then an all-sufficient happiness, and this sense it is which alone can rivet or create for us that vague thing, the present. The reason is obvious: then, and then only, the boundless void of the human heart is filled; then alone we want nothing beyond what we have; and this it is that constitutes the actual, the present. So allpervading is this feeling, that, in the presence of a beloved object, we dread even thinking our own thoughts, lest the illusion, the spell of consciousness, which is then in itself happiness, should be broken; lest the wild and swift-winged present should be startled into flight, never to return.

This mysterious presence alone has the power of bringing all our widely-ranged feelings, thoughts, and passions into one focus; quit it but a moment, and then do our jarring atoms again separate, to war within us like chaotic spirits struggling for pre-eminence; memory turning us back, hope leading us forward, jealousy

maddening, fear chaining, suspense taunting, despair paralyzing us; all lashing us over the shoals and quicksands of our own individuality, from the far but pleasant seas of the past, into the unknown and unfathomable ones of the future. But the present-where is it? gone! fallen, like a star from its sphere; and we ask our hearts, but ask in vain, "Will it ever return? will there ever again be a present for us?"

It was now the beginning of September, and Lord de Clifford had decided upon leaving Milan for Rome by the end of the month: they were to take Venice in their way, on account of Madame de A.'s ball. It seemed to Julia as if this ball was to be the last place where she would meet, where she would be with, Mowbray. Twenty times a day her lips repeated, "I hope it may; it is better that it should ;" and then a chill ran through her veins, and a faintness stole over her, that seemed like the prelude to dissolution. It is one of the greatest punishments of illicit love, that it compels us to make a penthouse of our own hearts, for the two most corroding of human feelings, shame and sorrow. In all other afflictions we can claim and receive that greatest of earthly anodynes, sympathy; but unlawful love is a parricide, that stales the heart which gave it birth it occasions a sort of personal civil war between our conscience and our affections; and, like all other civil wars, it generally ends in the destruction of our best interests.

:

In order to banish the ever-recurring remembrance of Mowbray, Julia had tried, but tried in vain, to elicit a word, a look, however transient, of kindness from her husband: if he had shown, or even affected to show, the slightest interest in her, she felt she could reso lutely have banished every unworthy feeling from her heart. But no; he preferred every one's, or any one's society to hers: they had not a thought, a feeling in common. She felt herself a sort of human spider, whose destiny it was to extract poison from everything. She had all the disadvantages, without any of the advantages, of marriage; for to the most humiliating neglect, Lord de Clifford contrived to unite the most harassing and degrading surveillance; as his wife, he thought no one could pay her sufficient respect; but to herself individually, when he could separate her identity from her position, which he did with regard to his own fam

ily, no contempt was too offensive: the boundless laxity of his principles with regard to the privileges of his own sex, led him not only into a total disregard of her feelings, but into a disregard for all the conveniences of society: provided it gave him pleasure, he thought it his wife's duty(!) to feel a rebound of delight at seeing him make love to another woman before her face; and, as is always the case with men who frame such a liberal code for themselves, his ideas of female propriety were narrow and arbitrary, in an inverse ratio.

Their child was no cement between them, for its father looked upon it in no other light than that of an additional expense in his establishment. But there are no feelings so hardening and demoralizing as egotism and selfishness; and Lord de Clifford had both pre-eminently. Egotism is indeed the theory of selfishness; and selfishness, the practice of that theory, about the only one, unfortunately, which human nature is infallible in carrying into action.

The night before they were to leave Milan, Julia had, with a weakness that is húman (but for that reason not the more pardonable), made a collection of all the gloves and ribands she had worn on the days and evenings she had passed with Mowbray, and all

"Those token-flowers, which tell

What words can never speak so well,"

which he had given her. She was ashamed and afraid that her maid should either see or suspect this transaction, and had therefore sealed them up herself, and was going to deposite them in her jewel-box in her dressingroom, when, at the head of the stairs, she met Beryl, looking as only ladies' maids can look when they are 'big with the fate of" hats, caps, blondes, and velvets, and the progress of their packing has been impeded by some unlucky "contretems."

"I'm sorry to say, my lady," said the irrate Abigail, "that, as usual, Mr. Herbert is with my lord in your dressing-room, smoking away, and spoiling everything. I only just went down to supper (after Mr. Carlton had been up for me twice), and left the Imperial, with all your court dresses in it, wide open, and the cap-case, with your Huguenot chip hat, and the two new Moabite turbans, from Herbault's, all at sixes and sevens, not meaning to be away ten minutes; nor was I, for I never