The child is mine!' interrupted Lord Mowbray, with passionate vehemence: 'let him remain with me, and I will undertake that he shall have the education and fortune that befit the son of a nobleman.'

'My lord,' said Mr Clare,' you are a married man, and this child might prove a cause of contention between yourself and Lady Mowbray; but while I live, he shall never be reproached with his mother's fault. You say that you will give him the breeding meet for a nobleman's son, I will give him that of a humble Christian; and while I possess a morsel of bread to share with him, I will not receive on his account anything that is in your gift.'

Lord Mowbray would have made arrangements respecting the funeral of Ellen, but her father replied: 'No, my lord, it shall not be: poor as I am, I shall find means to provide my unhappy daughter with a grave, without being indebted to the charity of him who has brought her there.'

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Lord Mowbray had fondly anticipated glory in his military career, but he arrived in the Peninsula only to share in the hardships of the disastrous retreat to Corunna. He had sighed for laurels, and at length he gathered them; but it was on that fatal plain where victory was only the herald of flight. He returned to England with the loss of an arm, broken in constitution, and with a settled gloom on his mind, to take possession of the estates and earldom of Rosecourt, to which his father's recent demise entitled him; but the first news that greeted him there was, that his wife had died in giving birth to a son, who had only lived to receive a name, and was laid with his mother in the family vault of the proud Mowbrays.

Lord Mowbray had married this lady in compliance with his father's commands, while his affections were centered in the beautiful but lonely girl to whom he had pledged his false vows. But the amiable qualities of Lady Mowbray had won his esteem; her connections had aggrandised his family, and he had reckoned on enjoying

years of quiet happiness in her society, and on seeing a lovely offspring growing up around him, who would carry down his honours to posterity. It was not to be: neither peace nor domestic ties were in store for him. A long and dangerous illness, brought on by distress of mind, next attacked him, and during the weary hours of his protracted convalescence, conscience was perpetually reminding him that his punishment, however heavy and hard to be borne, was less in proportion than his crimes had merited, and his lonely pillow was incessantly haunted with troubled dreams and self-upbraiding thoughts of Ellen Clare and her child. That child, did it still live? Dared he hope to be permitted to see and embrace it once more? The strong yearnings of parental instinct had been powerfully awakened in his breast by this infant, even in that dark and sorrowful hour in which he first became conscious of its existence; and now that he had been bereaved of every other tie on earth, he clung to its idea with the most impassioned tenacity. At last, his feverish longings to behold it once more became so overpowering, that, as soon as it was possible to endure the fatigue of travelling, he ordered four horses to his post-chariot, and scarcely tarried on the road for rest or refreshment till he found himself once more in the precincts of Mr Clare's humble parsonage. Two years only had elapsed since the day when he had parted with the luckless Ellen, but they had been marked with events which had converted them into an age of wo, and scattered gray hairs prematurely among his golden ringlets. It was with a faltering and irresolute hand that he knocked at the lowly portal. His summons was unanswered; and after repeating it several times in vain, finding the door was on the latch, and feeling himself unable to conquer impatience which now became painfully mingled with alarm, he entered, and turned towards Mr Clare's study, for he was only too familiar with the ways of the house. His hand was already on the lock, when the voice of lamentation from within struck his ear. He started and turned pale. It was the passionate burst

of female sorrow, apparently in that abandonment of wo which refuses comfort. He thought of Ellen, but her broken heart was mingled with the dust; of her child— of his child; on the doubtful possibility of whose existence he had dared to build delusive schemes of carthly happiness amidst the darkness and desolation of his soul; and, forgetful of every other consideration, he entered the room unannounced, and stood for a moment an unnoticed spectator of a scene which for ever extinguished the trembling hope that had lingered within his bosom.

The light was partially excluded from the room by the half-closed shutters, but the slanting beams of the setting sun stole through the feathery wreaths of clematis which mantled over the casement, and, entering the apartment, notwithstanding all obstruction, cast a brightening glory on the silvery locks and pale countenance of Ellen's father, who was kneeling beside a little coffin, over which Phoebe Colton was bending in a mournful attitude, while her tears fell fast on the face of a beautiful dead infant, in whose cold hands she was placing the last pale roses of the year. 'It is my child, my only one!' exclaimed Lord Mowbray, springing forward with a cry of despair, for he had recognised the lovely features of its lost mother, which were.blended with lineaments which as truly bespoke it a scion of his own proud race. The impress of perfect peace rested on its polished brow; and the long black silken lashes, so nearly resembling those of its unhappy mother, reposed on a rounded cheek, whereon the tender bloom yet lingered. There was a death-smile of angelic sweetness on its lips, and it looked a flower more fair than those which its fond nurse had scattered round it.

'My lord,' said Mr Clare, 'you have rightly claimed the young child. It is your own, your only one, you say. I, too, had once a child-an only one; but of her I will not speak. You can now understand the feelings of the bereaved parent, whose only child has gone down to the dust before him. But the death of yours was according to the course of frail mortality. The

flower was smitten in the bud, and it withered. The gentle spirit passed away without a struggle, and, unstained by sin or sorrow, returned to the bosom of its Creator, pure as it came from his hands. Mine was a sorer grief, yet God forbid that I should reproach you with your sin in an hour like this. I would only ask you whether it would have been just, that from your guilty love, a branch of comfort should have sprung up, under whose shadow you might have found peace and repose in your latter days?'

Mr Clare did not long survive the death of his grandson; but the latest office of his sacred calling was, to read the burial-service over the remains of the last Earl of Rosecourt, who was interred, without funeral pomp, in the village church-yard beside the graves of Ellen and her child.*

LOUIS LE GRAND.

LOUIS XIV. of France, whose subjects bestowed upon him the title affixed to this paper, was a monarch marked by so many striking points of character, and spent a long life in circumstances altogether so remarkable, that we have resolved to make him the subject of a brief sketch. Born in the year 1638, he succeeded his father in his fifth year, and thus may be said to have scarcely ever known any other condition in life than that of a sovereign. His long reign of seventy-two years, during which Britain was governed by no fewer than eight successive potentates, was spent in almost uninterrupted wars, the chief purpose of which was his own aggrandisement; and few periods of equal duration in the history of any country, have produced so many men eminent in arms, in arts, and in letters. But the expenses of this monarch impoverished his country; his policy enslaved it; and his own personal qualities, so far from being its honour,

*Contributed to Chambers's Journal, 30th December 1837.

are in many respects its disgrace. The grand aim of Louis was to cause himself to be thought something above mortality—a kind of demigod; and in whatever way this end was to be brought about, whether by the extension of his dominions, or the cultivation of personal dignity, he was alike indefatigable. As a monarch, he was, or rendered himself, absolute; he had not even ministers, except of a merely subordinate kind. But on the death of his first wife, a Spanish princess, in 1683, he formed a secret matrimonial connection with Madame Maintenon, a beautiful woman, whose former husband was the celebrated Scarron, the novelist; and this person, in time, became a kind of prime-minister. The Duke de SaintSimon, in his memoirs, gives the following insight into the qualities and habits of Louis:

Though a young man and a king, Louis was not altogether without experience. He had been a constant frequenter of the house of the Countess de Soissons, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, the resort of all that was distinguished, both male and female, that the age could produce, and where he first caught that fine air of gallantry and nobleness, which characterised him ever afterwards, and marked even his most trifling actions. For though the talents of Louis XIV. were in fact rather below mediocrity, he possessed a power of forming his manners and character upon a model, and of adhering to it, which is often more valuable in the conduct of life than the very greatest abilities. By nature, he was a lover of order and regularity; he was prudent, moderate, secret—the master both of his actions and his tongue. For these virtues, as they may be called in a king, he was perhaps indebted to his natural constitution; and if education had done as much for him, certainly he would have been a better ruler. He had a passion, however, or rather a foible that was vanity, or, as it was then called, glory. No flattery was too gross for him-incense was the only intellectual food he imbibed. Independence of character he detested: the man who once, though but for an instant, stood up before him in the consciousness of manly integrity