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and beautify my house? In the same proportion that my last abode shall be tranquil, solemn, and confined, should this I now inhabit be spacious, gay, and busy. All the persons I love best shall live with me beneath its roof, or at least, assemble often there, for the purposes of joy and friendship. Yes, joy shall consecrate these walls; peace shall be our inmate; the gentlest slumbers shall refresh our senses; and never shall the tear of despair fall on our unsullied boards. I then paused: "Merciful God," exclaimed I, raising my hands to heaven, after a moment of recollection, "how vain a being is man, when he depends on a constant series of prosperity! This house may exist for a hundred years! How many different persons may in that interval be its inhabitants!-Every room may witness the tears of misfortune, and every bed be the receptacle of a corporeal sufferer! It will, perhaps, belong to some wretched martyr to the gout, and its walls will echo no other sounds for forty years than his cries. At this moment, I see before me the father of a family on his death-bed; his wife, with his children at her side, contemplating, in the silence of despair, the wasted figure of her expiring husband! But, gracious God! it cannot be, that no sounds but those of grief shall here be heard! No; happiness shall have its turn with sorrow,

in

my dwelling; should I at some time or other experience the rigours of fate, I would say with a smile"this I have merited. But my wife! my brother! Oh God! their sufferings I could not support! should fate pursue either of these with misfortunes, where should I find consolation? Ah! had I but a child! he, ignorant of sorrow, would smile and sport around us;

or, were he more advanced in age, would, with his hopes and projects, rejoice our anxious hearts."

rise upon

But, wherefore do we for ever complain? is there a being so unfortunate, on whom a ray of hope does not shine, as the first rays of the sun penetrate through the darkness of night? Does not the light of eternal life the unfortunate, as the sun in the midst of darkness? Is not the unfortunate permitted to unfold all his griefs to the being whom he loves, and by whom he is beloved? God of infinite goodness! can this consolation be taken from the most unhappy of the human race? If he is alone in the world, if he has not a single friend to whom he can communicate his sorrows, may he not cast his eyes to heaven? Will he not there find a friend, a protector, a father? If misfortune must ever enter within the threshold of my door, ah! let it be in the form of a weeping angel! not as a fury to destroy the tranquillity of my soul.

Dark and small is our last abode, but there is peace. Let me approach it with resignation, even with pleasure. And, oh! if ever I must quit this dwelling, let it be with the same resignation, the same pleasure which I felt when I entered it.

Ah! I have one more wish, but I desire what is impossible; yet it is the nature of man to form new wishes. May we all, my wife, my brother, and I, quit this dwelling at the same instant.

GONDOLINE.

A Ballad.

In the Style of the Ancient Reliques.

THE night it was dark, and the moon it shone

Serenely on the sea,

And the waves at the foot of the rifted rock
They murmur'd pleasantly.

When Gondoline roam'd along the shore,
A maiden full fair to the sight;

Though love had made bleak the rose on her cheek,
And turn'd it to deadly white.

Her thoughts they were drear, and the silent tear
It fill'd her faint-blue eye,

As oft she heard, in fancy's ear,
Her Bertrand's dying sigh.

Her Bertrand was the bravest youth
Of all our good king's men,

And he was gone to the Holy Land
To fight the Saracen.

And

many

a month had passed away,

And many a rolling year,

But nothing the maid from Palestine

Could of her lover hear.

Full oft she vainly tried to pierce

The Ocean's misty face;

Full oft she thought her lover's bark
She on the waves could trace.

And every night she plac'd a light
In the high rock's lonely tow'r,
To guide her lover to the land,

Should the murky tempest low'r.

But now despair had seiz'd her breast,
And sunken in her eye:
"Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live,
And I in peace will die."

She wander'd o'er the lonely shore,
The curlew scream'd above,

She heard the scream with a sickening heart,
Much boding of her love.

Yet still she kept her lonely way,
And this was all her cry,

"Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live,
And I in peace shall die.”

And now she came to a horrible rift
All in the rock's hard side,
A bleak and blasted oak o'erspread
The cavern yawning wide.

And pendant from its dismal top
The deadly night-shade hung,

The hemlock and the aconite

Across the mouth were flung.

And all within was dark and drear,
And all without was calm,

Yet Gondoline enter'd, her soul upheld

By some deep-working charm.

And, as she enter'd the cavern wide,
The moonbeam gleamed pale,

And she saw a snake on the craggy rock,
It clung by its slimy tail.

Her foot it slipp'd, and she stood aghast,
She trod on a bloated toad;

Yet still, upheld by the secret charm,
She kept upon her road.

And now upon her frozen ear
Mysterious sounds arose,

So, on the mountain's piny top

The blust'ring north-wind blows.

Then furious peals of laughter loud Were heard with thund'ring sound,

Till they died away, in soft decay,

Low whisp'ring o'er the ground.

Yet still the maiden onward went,
The charm yet onward led,
Though each big glaring ball of sight
Seem'd bursting from her head.

But now a pale-blue light she saw,
It from a distance came,
She follow'd, till upon her sight
Burst full a flood of flame.

She stood appall'd; yet still the charm Upheld her sinking soul,

Yet each bent knee the other smote,

And each wild eye did roll.

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