in the calmness of his courage, that, if we awaited it, our escape from it was hopeless, cried out, "Father, take thou the care of the Lady Erminia, as I will of my Giulietta, and let us at once leap beyond this reef into the sea, and struggle for the land."

And now shrink not as from the serpent-fiend, to hear me tell the story of that crime which has cursed me here, and shall hereafter. After these words, he again cried out, "Giulietta, my beloved, where art thou?" The fatal love which had fed upon me like a flame upon a living sacrifice, even in this awful hour burnt sensibly in my hateful heart; and prompted by that miserable passion, and the love of him and of life, some fiend answered surely with my tongue, "Here!" -and he caught at me as a desperate drowner doth at a floating weed, and leaped with me into the sea, crying to the old Baptista, "Follow me, father, follow me!" But the old man heard him not; for I saw that he was dead, and had fallen on his swooned child, who, as we leaped into the sea, shrieked out, and told my hard heart audibly that she still lived, though my sinning yet struggling soul would fain have quieted its conscience with the thought that she was dead, and so have palliated to itself, if it failed afterwards to Guido and to God, its dark and damnable deceit. Guido heard not her cry, or if he did, took it, in the indistinct turbulence of the tempest's roar, for mine. For a long time he buffeted the fierce-warring waves with a giant's strength, and a courage that could not be weakened, though the body that contained it might; and still as he beat the waves aside, or breasted them like a living rock, he cried, "Be of cheer, my Giulietta, I shall save thee yet!" And when I heard him call on her name, my heart smote so fearfully within me that though I was sure

of death if I had disclosed that I was Erminia, I thrice had nearly confessed the dreadful truth; but the love of life, and more, my cruel and wicked love of him, stifled my voice. Twice I saw, in the glaring flash of the lightning, that he gazed upon me, to see if I had life; for the fear of disclosure, and the peril of the waters, made me voiceless and strengthless, and I lay like a lifeless load in his clasping arm, as he struck through the waves with the other. But when he looked on me, the waters had washed my loose long hair over my face, so that he knew me not; and still he clasped me to him tenderly, and beat his burdened way through the sea. Long time thus he contended resolutely with death, when, just as he was spent in strength, and had bidden me commit my soul to Heaven, he descried lights not far before us, and faintly told me still to hope, for we were near land; but this thought nerved him anew, and he plied his way lustily, till at length we touched a dark and rocky shore, where, summoning a desperate man's might, he clambered up the low craggy cliffs, and touching the firm earth, dropped both his burden and himself to the ground, from utter exhaustion. I knew not what for some time occurred, for safety then seemed more dreadful to me than the dangers I had passed through, and I swooned. When I recovered, I found Guido bringing the life back again, by cherishing me in his bosom. And ever and anon he would call, as strongly as he might, for help to the distant fishermen's cottages, where he had first discerned that guiding light which led him to the shore.

At length we descried a torch coming to the spot where we lay, still on the ground, and could hear the loud halloo of the comers; and after some time, guided by his continual cry, a fisherman came up with a torch. As it neared us, I shrank from it like a foul and guilty

thing that loves darkness rather than light, but in vain ; for Guido's anxious eye looked at last on my face as the light fell on it, when, uttering a fierce shriek of dismay and despair, he dropped me from his arms, and, starting from the ground like one made instantly mad by some sudden stroke upon the brain, or hurt of the heart, he rushed, staggering and strengthless, but wildly, to the cliff. I clung to him heavily, to prevent him from leaping into the sea again; but I did not dare to speak to him, save by feeble, inarticulate cries. He glanced at me a look which shrunk me to the soul, and shaking me like a serpent to the earth, with a terrible cry, flung himself from the cliff into the sea. I could see him beating his way back to the wreck, as the lightning momentarily flashed from the firmament; and, at length, I saw him grasp at some white burden on the back of the waters, and turn for the shore again: but on the sudden his right arm ceased to strike out; and though I kept my breaking eyes fixed through the dense darkness on the same spot, when the next lightning flashed I saw that he had sunk; when, crying to God in my despair, I fell on my face, and was insensible to all about me.

Within these peaceful and holy walls years have since passed over me. But the thought of that dreadful hour, and of the still more dreadful guilt which it brought upon my soul, lives ever present in my mind. The images of Guido and his murdered bride rise between me and all rest,-between me even and devotion. My wealth has been given to the pious uses of our convent, and my penance and my prayers are proportioned to my great guiltiness. But the calming and restoring influence even of religion cannot wholly lull the troubled agony of a memory like mine. Still, in the trust of

God and the holy saints, I look with joyful hope to the term of all human suffering.-Oh! if the intensity of any earthly suffering can extenuate and atone for earthly guilt-then even I may dare to look with confidence towards Heaven.

SUNDAY; OR MY OPPOSITE NEIGHBOURS.

The seventh day this; the jubilee of man.
London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer.
Then thy spruce citizen-wash'd artizan,
And smug apprentice, gulp their weekly air.
Thy coach of Hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair,*
And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl,
To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair,
Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.
CHILDE HAROLD, Canto I.

WHAT a variety of sensations does this one day create! How many eyes are turned towards the east, with an anxious enquiry as to the prognostics which it may exhibit, -how many hearts flutter as to the events the day may produce, and how many would willingly prolong its hours through the remainder of the week, insensible that it derives more than half the pleasures for which they love it, from the very circumstance of its recurring but once in the seven days.

There is scarcely a person, excepting in the monotony of haut-ton, where every day is passionless and pleasureless, because it is the same,-upon whose mind this day has not some species of influence. The merchant,-who finds his repose in calculating the profits of the week's speculation;-the tradesman,-who quits for twentyfour hours the little parlour, commanding the rich pros

pect of his till, for the drawing-room ten feet square, whose shutters are never open but when those of the shop are closed, and whose chilling comforts are, through the thriftiness of his spouse, only on that day permitted to be warmed[;-the clerk,-who shovels about sovereigns which are not his own for six days in the week, with no "star of hope," but the pleasure of spending the one which is his own, on the seventh, and whose dry pursuits are only relieved by dreams of tilburies, and hackneys, and Rotten-row; or floating ideas of sailing-boats, and Chelsea-reach ;-the lover,-whose only chance of catching a glimpse of "the blue eye he loves to look upon," or of gazing upon the black eye which may one day be his own,-is at the parish-church, where he contrives to utter the "We beseech thee to hear us," so loud as to penetrate to the heart of his mistress, who, with a little egotistical variation of the text,—not at all uncommon in the fair part of the creation,-contrives to appropriate the sentence to herself; - the debtor,-who looks upon it as a day of freedom from the duns of creditors and the dread of bailiffs ;-all have their separate hopes and expectations, as they awake from the sleep which has relieved them from their Saturday night's fatigues or fears, and are greeted by the unattended-to bell for morning prayers, that ushers in the day of their anticipated pleasures. Nor has Sunday a less extended influence upon that sex who are the "blight or bloom of every man's happiness "-from the fat Mistress Kidneykin, in the "taty line," who goes to church with the religious hope of seeing envy sparkle in the saucer-eyes of the crockery-dealing Mistress Grundy; -to the tender Miss-in-her-teens, who, just beginning to feel herself a woman, finds that she has a heart, only when she is on the point of losing it; and who ventures to cast one glance at her enamorato over the side