the two young heads of the old factions-blows were exchanged, for Mark had been aggravated beyond all bearing; and I was trying to force myself between them, when I saw my father stretched upon the green, in the very hour and act of revenge and sin. It was by a blow from a Lawler-the old man never spoke another word-and the suddenness of his death (for he was liked by one and hated by the other) struck a terror in them all--the sticks fell to their sides --and the great storm of oaths and voices sunk into a murmur while they looked on the dying

man.

Oh' bitter, heart bitter, was my sorrow. 1 shrouded my father with my arms, but he didn't feel me; the feeling had left his limbs, and the light his eyes; however hard his words had been, the knowledge that I was fatherless, and my mother a widow, made me forget them all! While some of the neighbors ran for a priest, and others raised the cry, my brother-darker than I had ever seen him--fell upon his knees, and dipping his hands in the warm blood that poured from the old man's wounds, held it up in the sight of the Connels. Boys,' he shout ed, and his voice was like the howl of a wild beast-Boys! by this blood I swear, never to make peace till the hour of my death with one of the name who have done this, but to hackle and rive, and destroy all belonging to the Lawlers.'

And the women who war about me cried out at my brother, and said, sure his sister was a

6

Connel; but he looked at me worse than if I was a sarpent, and resting his hand-wet as it was-upon my head, turned away, saying, She is marked with her father's blood in the sight of the people.'

I thought I should have died, and when 1 came to myself I found I was in a poor woman's cabin, as good as half-way home, with two or three of the neighbors about me; and my husband, the very moral of a broken heart, by my side. 'Avourneen gra!' he said, striving to keep down the workings of his heart; Avourneen gra! I had no hand in it at all. God knows I wouldn't have hurt a hair of his white head.' I knew it was the truth he was telling, yet somehow the words of my brother clung about me1 was marked with my father's blood. And the Connels put the old man's corpse upon a cart, and laid a clean white cloth over it; and carried him past my own little place-keening over it and cursing the hand that gave him his death: hundreds of the neighbors mixed with my own people, my widowed mother and my dark brother following; and so they passed by our door; for miles a long the road I could hear the loud scream of the mother that bore me high above the voices of all the rest. it was a horrid sound and a horrid sight! 'His death was talked of far and near; the magistrates set to putting down the factions, and the priest gave out from the altar, Sunday after Sunday, such commands, that, without flying in his reverence's face, they could not keep on

Oh!

my wheel, as clear as a blackbird's; and if it stopped but for a minute, my heart would sink like death; and it's to the door I'd be. If I woke in the night, I could not go to sleep again without my arm across his shoulder to feel that he was safe and my first and last prayer to the Almighty, night and morning, was for him.

My brother was very fond of children, and though he had gone to live at the other side of the parish, I managed to meet him one evening and place, little Mary before him; but his face darkene 1 so over the child, that I was afraid she might be struck with an evil eye, and, making the sign of the cross on her, I covered her from his sight with my cloak; after that, I knew nothing would turn his hatred, except the grace of God; and though I wished that he might have it, whenever. I tried to pray for it for him, my blood turned cold. I've often thought,' she continued, after a pause, what a blessing it is, that we have no knowledge of the sorrow we've born to; for if we had, we could not bare life. I had that knowledge; Mark never smiled on me that I did not feel my flesh creep, lest it should be his last. He'd tell sometimes of how things were mending, how there was much bitterness going out of the country; and though there was no talk of temperance then, he saw plain enough, that if men would keep from whisky they'd forget to be angry. And every minute, even while I trembled for the life of his body, the peace and love that was in him made me easy as to the life of his soul. At last i per. suaded him to leave the country; a new hope came to me, strong and bright, and I thought we might get away to America, and that, mayb, then he d have a chance of living all the days that were allotted at his birth. I did not tell him that, but having got his consent, I worked night and day to get off it was all settled; the

day fixed; and none of the neighbors, barring one or two of the Lawlers, knew it, and I knew my brother would not hear it from them; and then my mother lived with him. The evening before the day was come, that time to-morrow we were to be on ship board. 'I'll go,' says my husband, I'll go to the priest this evening, who christened, confirmed, and married me, and who knows all that was in me from the time I was born; his blessing will be a guard over us, and we ll go together to his knee.'

We went; and though the parting was sad, it was sweet; we walked bomewards- both our hearts full At last Mark sai, that only for me he'd never have thought of leaving the old sod; but, maybe, it would be for the best. I op ned my mind to him then intirely, and owned more than ever I had done before; how the dread of the factions had disturbed me day and night; though I did not tell him how my father's blood had been laid on me by my own brother. He laughed at me his gay wild laugh-and said he hoped my trouble was gone like the winter's snow. Now, this is a simple thing, and yet it always struck me as mighty strange intirely; we were walking through a field, and, God help me, it was a weak wonian's fancy, but I never thought any harm could come to him when I was with him, and all of a sudden-started, maybe, at his laugh a lark sprung up at our feet; we both watched it, stopped to wateh it, about three yards from the ditch, and while it was yet clear in sight, a whiz-a flash as of lightning-the sound of death-and my husband was a corpse at my feet.'

The poor woman hung her apron over her face to conceal her agitation, while she sobbed bitterly The spirit of the factions, she continued, was in that fatal sh t. Oh that he, my blessing and my pride, should have been struck

in the hour of hope! Oh, Mark! Mark long ago you, that I loved so well, were turned into clay-many a long day ago; and still I think when I sit on your green grass grave, I can hear your voice telling me of your happiness; the heart of the youngest maid was not more free from spot than yours, my own darling! And to think that one of my own blood should have taken you from my side. Oh, then it was I who felt the curse of blood!

'And was it was it?' we would have asked, 'was it your brother?'

'Whisht!' she whispered, Whisht, avourneen, whisht! he's in his grave, too-though I didn't inform - I left him to God When I came to myself, the place around-the very sky where the lark and his soul had mounted togetherlooked dismal, but not so dark as the dark-faced man who did it: he had no power to leave the spot; he was fixed there; something he said about his father and revenge, God help me! sure we war nursed at the same breast. No one

knew it but me, so I left him to God-1 left him to God! And he withered, lady! he with ered off the face of the earth-withered, my mother told me, away, away-he was eat to death by his conscience! Oh, who would think a faction could end in such crime as that!'

Ah! people who live among the flowers of the arth know little of the happiness I have in taking my child, and sitting beside her on her father's grave; and as month afther month goes by, I can t but feel I m all the sooner to be with him!' When she said this, it was impossible not to feel for her daughter; the poor girl cast such a pite ous look upon her mother, and at last, unable to control herself, flung her arms tightly round her neck, as though she would keep her there forever.

Again and again did her mother return her caresses-murmuring, M colleen-dhas will never be widowed by faction now; the spirit is all gone, praise be to the Lord: and so I tell him when I sit upon his grave.'

ANONYMOUS

Perhaps there is no country in Europe where the young and beautiful wives of the aristocracy receives so little personal protection from their husbands as in England. This assertion, at the first moment, may appear extravagant and unfounded; but those who have had the opportunity of observ n, more narrowly than the mere superfices afford, the manners and habits of persons in fashionable life, and the various causes in it of domestic alienation, will be compelled to agree with me that it is, lamentably, only too true.

For instance-clubs, the turf, shooting, hunting, and the senate, furnish incessant, and, in the opinion of most men, imperative and legitimate reasons or abandoning their wives to their own resources and to the guardianship of their own honor; and highly indeed does it redound to the credit of my fair and fascininating coun try women that so tew, so very few comparatively, fall a sacrifice to the stupendous security thus inconsiderately, if not cruelly, placed in them-there n ver having been yet a young female so isolated, with even only moderate pretensions to beauty, who did not find herself the object of the vicious designs of the libertine, and who, although she escaped pure and unsul lied from his invidious snres, still painfully felt the consciousnes of her own weakness, and the

want of a husband's protection in the hour of danger and temptation. For, even to the most virtuous, flattery is a temptation to a certain extent, few female hearts being totally insensible to the witchery of long-continued and respectful assiduity, however surrounded by the bulwarks of chastity and decorum.

But that they do often escape such perils, and triumphantly too, solely and entirely by their own powers of resistance and innate high principle, will be demonstrated in the following simple and true story.

I shall not enter into a minute and uninteresting detail respecting the earlier years of my heroine, which could only prove tedious to my readers, she having passed them precisely like every other happy girl, cradled in the lap of luxury, with hea th, beauty, ta'ents, unbounded spirits, and blindly indulgent parents, at the age of eighteen, and just four months after her union with the object of her first artless affection, a rich, handso.ne, and adoring young man of twenty-two.

When Agnes Bouverie, after a short and uninterruptedly, happy courtship, accompanied Horace Wilmer to the altar, to pl ght her heart's vows of eternal love and fidelity to him, she was perfectly delirious with delight at the prospect of felicity thus suddenly presented to her view.

Without an atom of experience on either side, full of the wild exuberance and gorgeous anticipations of youth, in the flush of hope and prosperity, with joy and laughter swelling the sails, the young couple were launched on the ocean of pleasure and dissipation, to steer their

course through its dangerous shoals and quick sands as it might please chance; or rather Providence, to direct their frail bark-for there ever is a watchful One hovering over the young and inexperienced, so long as the errors they com mit proceed from thoughtlessness alone, and not crime.

Agnes had besides, the strongest guarantee a woman can possess against the seductions of flattery, and the insinuations of art, in the boundless affection and admiration she felt for her hus. band. She wanted no more knowledge of the world, no deeper acuteness, to be proudly conscious of his vast superiority over the whole crowd of adulators who worshipped at the shrine of her superlative and unrivalled beauty. Love instructed her to compare him with others, and invariably to make the comparison in his favor.

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman' whole existence.'

Not that this opinion of the caustic but elegant Byron could apply to Horace in the remotest degree; for if Agnes made her affection for him the sole cause of her delight to her existence, he, in return, appeared to live only for her. Hourly, indeed, did he feel his adoration in. crease for the devoted trustfulness, the sweet child-like dependency, of his young and lovely wife. At first, he did not deny, even to himself, that it was her mere personal attractions that awakened the passion which induced him to make her his; but the amiability of her disposition, the rare qualities of heart he discovered in her, the reliance she placed in him, the confidence she inspired that it was in his power alone to render her really happy, rivetted the chain of affection round his heart-chains, he felt, would and must last forever, for they were forged by beauty, and linked by virtue. As day after day thus glided past in serenity of mutual endearment, without a cloud to dim love's iris,

my

of fond approval? is not his smile of greeting as sincere, and his parting kiss as ardent, as they were at the first hour of our union? and when did his voice possess a deeper, a dearer emphasis of tenderness than now? when did his own love, as he always called me since that happy union, thrill my soul with greater bliss than the last time he utered it? Men might be changeable naturally, no doubt; but my Horace will and must ever be the same. Yes, yes, I am sure he must. Then why torment myself with groundless fears, and unfounded anticipations of evil?'

Poor Agnes! She was just at that self-delud. ing age when the chrysalis, engendered in the heart, from her very being, bursts its transpa rent envelope, and the imprisoned butterfly Hope, expands its broad beautiful wings over it, to the exclusion of all the more terrible and chilling realities of life. Then it is that the eye is radiant with soul-born brilliancy, the cheek warm with the deepest blush of vitality, the step bounding and elastie, and woman appears the bright animated personification of glad, joyous, trustful expectation-only, alas! to be crushed, to be bowed, to be annihilated, by the ponderous arm of disappointment, that awful machine, that pulverizes as it were to dust every sanguine anticipation of youth, to be scattered abroad by the tempestuous blasts of experience.

About this time, a vacancy occurred in the representation of his native town, the liberal member having died of a sudden attack of apoplexy, from over-exerting himself at a public the subject of all his political labors and desires, meeting respecting the repeal of the corn-laws, and for the obtaining of which he really did consider life a cheap sacrifice; and as Horace's political opinions were precisely the same on that head, his friends urged him to offer himand highly popular as he was, hw could he do self as a candidate for it. Young, rich, eloquent, better? they observed. How, indeed! particularly as he was literally without a pursuit, and began to feel the want of some active and abHe therefore stood, and sorbing (ccupat on. had the gratification of being returned by a most triomphant majority, always a proud era in a man's life

'I do not expect a miracle to be wrought in my favor,' she would mentally exclain, after med tating profoundly on the subject ever present to her imagination, and to which these remarks of her more experienced friends added a painful and lively interest, the continuance of her husband's affection, but I cannot perceive a shadow of change in him. Does not his eye follow my every movement with the same glance

seems to have flown for ever

A if increase of appetite grew with what it fed on.' There was so much actual business, however, to be transacted after his return, that the first month of their being in town passed away without affording Agues an opportunity of visiting one of the above mentioned places, accompani

ed by her husband; and, insatiable as she was in the pursuit of pleasure, her fond philosophy taught her that it would defeat its own object to seek it without him; so that, in fact, she lived, and in the very height of the season too, even more retired than when in the country, being continually surrounded by a circle of attached friends and relatives, all studious to promote her happiness.

Then unless she could contrive to dine when every other fashionable woman was sipping her chocolate, there was not the slightest chance of her partaking of that hitherto prolonged meal with her beloved Horace; for, attend the House he must;-there were such important measures just now in agitation, so much at stake, that a man who really wished the good of his country must consent to waive all minor considerations of personal comfort and convenience to be at his post, the least display of ap. pathy or supineness being taken immediate advantage of by the opposition party, who were only too much on the alert already.' Agnes, therefore, submitted, unmurmuringly to this innovation of domestic comfort for the sake of patriotism, making her moderate dinner at any hour, however primitively early, that suited his arrangements, for the feast of Apicius would not have afforded a banquet to her unshared by her husband. Indeed, such was the lively and anxious interest she took in all that concerned him, that for several weeks she sat up until his return, let the debate have been ever so pro tracted, to participate in his success, or to soothe the irritability and chagrin of his disappoint

ment.

But such long and solitary vigils began to undermine her constitution and prey upon her spirits, particularly when, with the tact of a sensitive, delicate-minded woman, she discovered that the sacrifice was not duly appreeia ed by the idolized being for whom it was alone made-then, indeed,

'A change came o'er the spirit of her dream.' Horace was altered' He had become cold, indifferent, and petulant-fatigued, harassed, and frequently smarting under the infliction of mortified vanity, occasioned by the bitter sarcasins of his talented opponents, when he returned to her, after hours of patient watchings, no smile of grat tude repaid the welcome almost wept upon his bosom, no kind word of encouragement cheered her on in her self-imposed task of love and duty, bat perhaps a chilling reproof, for being so tiresome as to wait up for him, was all the return she received for her unbounded and anxious tenderness. Ah! it requires much severe and bitter schooling to convince the lond loving heart of woman that any thing it has done for the object of its dearest affections is a sacrifice; but when once it is taught the fearful lesson, it retains it with a tenacity fatal to every hour of its after happiness. Then does every act of self abnegation, every act of humiliation, every act of privation, so willingly, so unconsciously endured, rise up reproachfully to upbraid it with the blindness of its partiality-for

there is nothing so proudly just to itself as neglected affection; and this Agnes felt in its fullest force, when, even in the morning, Horace could not find time to inquire into the causes of her declining health or dejected spirits, every moment being eagerly devoted to the examining how the newspapers reported his speeches, to writing to his constituents, to reading petitions, to replying to solicitations of patronage, (and, of course, promising it,')-for where is the dashing corset who has not been assured that his dream of a company' is about to prove no fiction?— the daring midshipman, whose shoulder has not ached, or rather throbbed, with pride, under the weight of the glittering epaulette?—or the starving author who, while he drew out his last solitary shilling for that loaf of bread which was to prolong yet a little space the existence of creatures entwined around his very soul, has not felt his purse heavy with the gold promised for his next work by the new and popular M. P. ? In fact, business multiplied so upon his hands, that he found it utterly impossible to attend to the less intportant wishes and pleasures of his wife. If you are so dull at home, my love,' he would frequently observe, in reply to her tender remonstrances, you really must try and find amusement for yourself by visiting more generally. You have plenty of friends who will be delighted to show you every attention, and it is not to be expected that, now I am in parliament, I can find time to dangle about to all the balls and routs you may desire to go to, Agnes. Look at other men's wives! How do they act? Why, reasonably, to be sure, by going where they like without their husbands, and enjoying themselves too.'

But it was in vain that Horace Wilmer adopted this worldly-minded line of argument—the gentle, the susceptible Agnes could not become a convert to it. She could derive no consolation from the certainty that other women were able to endure the anguish and knmiliation of being despised and neglected by those who had sworn before God to love and cherish them; she only wondered that their hearts did not break, as she felt hers assuredly must, at this dreadful blow to all its dearest hopes.

'Alas! the love of woman! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
For all of theirs upon that die is thrown,

And if 'tis lost, life has no more to bring To them but mockeries of the past alone.' It was with Horace as with most other young men of desultory habits and unstable principles, that the last novelty becomes the favorite hobby, to the partial, if not total, exclusion of the preceding idol erected by fondness or whim in the bosom. Thus Agnes was forced to yield sovereignty to ambition, and love to be deposed in favor of patriotism. But if any one had hinted to him that his oratorical vanity and pride of place were breaking his wife's heart, by monopolizing all his thoughts, or exposing her to the insidious arts of these noxious reptiles (the blase libertines) ever found crawling in the wake of beauty and innocence, intent to aggravate the gangrene of blighted affections, and to reap the