stood opposite to him with folded arms, and eyes bent on him with earnest scrutiny. Altham caught and returned his glance with courage, not with defiance. It was a deep and prolonged silence; the one sought to read the other, and that other seemed to lay

open his soul to the scrutiny, with heroic fearlessness of its result.

"Thou art worthy of the vocation whereunto thou hast devoted thyself," said Lewen. "He who would do thus

for a frail human object, will do infinitely more in the service of Omnipotent perfection! My youthful brother, the passions with which you struggle at present, will be deadened in the life we

shall lead together, they will be deadened to the world, and they will be the more intensely devoted to our common master! Thou art mine! I have won a soul to Heaven! Thou art mine! and

we shall consummate our holy union in eternity?"

"I am thine! And on earth, even on earth will our union begin!" returned the Page, clasping his hands, and leaning on the shoulder of Lewen.

They meditated, both meditated. Neither saw the other, and yet each was the thought of the other. It was a moment in which imagination dwells on a present object, as if memory recalled it during absence.

A laugh of mirth proceeding from a party passing the door of the apartment, roused them from their reverie. Altham

withdrew himself from Lewen, seated himself, and seemed to sink immedi ately into his page-like flippancy of cha

racter.

"Aye, there be the revellers," said he," arguing profoundly on the cut of the Lady Blanche's robe, and demon

strating with mathematical accuracy the precise height of her shoe-heel, I dare swear. It is amazing to me for what purpose such ephemera were sent into the creation, a larger species of fly buzzing here and there, who have neither beauty to excuse their inutility, nor use to plead for their want of comeliness. It is fairly to be inferred, therefore, that they were placed here to heighten the loveliness and beneficence of those who have both, by relieving the exquisite light with their mass of shade. It were a sight to draw tears from angels, to see the covey of laughing faces, vapid in idiotism and dulness, who surrounded the Lady Evelyn in her hunt to-day, a cloudy mass blackening-aye, despite their mirth and their antics,-blackening around that face, which,—also despite of its sadness and melancholy-shone like a fair, dewy moon in a dark, starless heaven. It.

moved me, by heaven, it moved me to wrath, that they should smile and smile

and simper-and snuff a jest with the air their nostrils breathed, and vault, and capriole, and curvet, and do their exquisite feats, whilst she, the queen of all, and who well deserved to be so, rode sadly onwards, neither turning to the right hand nor to the left, nothing diverted by their foolish quips, not a whit tempted from her melancholy, by their broad laughs, or the blast of the horns, or the notes of the huntsmen or the freshness of the air. Dull folly in truth irks me, for it is the passing of a counterfeit coin for the sterling gold of wisdom. But your laughing-jesting

merry-smart fool, is an animal to make me die of spleen,-he apes madness so bravely. Who but a madman would shout in mirth, as those flames play around his head, which are finally to consume him? And when do they

not play? Is not the air on fire with them? Is not the earth parched with them? Do not the waters blaze, and boil, and hiss, with them? All nature groans for us, and yet we can laugh still! Creation weeps for man, and he returns her tears with fantastic tricks and maniac gambols, and mocks the grief that should move him to wisdom!"

"Brother," said Lewen gravely, "I am well pleased that you mark the errors of worldlings, but comment on them with temperance, and employ your ardour and your zeal in efforts to correct them. Man is fallen and frail, and forgets that he was made a little lower than the angels, that he might be crowned with glory and honour; every day he sinks lower, and communion with the world sometimes obliterates the original impress of divinity. But there are stars yet amongst us which shall be guides to men, like that eastern