heard that we had met often since, and he found me now at her feet, her hands clasped in mine. These things had an aspect black as guilt could wear.

He furiously demanded instant satisfaction. I refused it; I submitted to be called coward; I was patient now, when patience availed so little; inexpressible contempt for me seemed to restore his selfpossession; he turned from me as from a reptile unworthy hatred, and folding his arms, looked sternly into the face of his mute, but heart-stricken wife. "For you, fair serpent, you shall live as long as Heaven will let you. From this day I devote myself to your punishment. The world shall not know your shame, for your shame is mine and my child's; you shall live under my roof, but you shall neither know peace nor rest; my ears shall be deaf to your prayers, my eyes shall be blind to your beauty. I divorce you from my heart henceforth and forever. Penitence may serve you in another world, but I am no God, that I should forgive so black a wrong as this."

of her beloved infants. Before they had learned to he thought an assurance of his wife's attachment lisp her name, almost before they could distinguish to me. He knew I was once her admirer; he had her by the first sweet recognitory smile that glad dens a mother's heart, they were successively cut off. These repeated bereavements her superstitious fancy ascribed to a deserved judgment on her clandestine interviews with me. In vain I represented that our conversations were such as might be published to the world with honor to her, and that they were all that enabled me to endure a miserable being; still, the mystery, the secrecy with which they were attended, wounded her tender conscience. Her youngest and only child, Jessie, I think it was called, had lived several months, and gave promise of a healthful constitution, when, at the usual time, I paid my visit. Anxiety and fear had thrown the fond mother into a low nervous fever, as the period of my coming approached. She was confined to her bed when I arrived, and sent her nurse to inform me of her inability to see me, and to intreat my forbearance, at least, this year. I complied, and the event seemed to justify her former fancies, for her child continued to live. I myself began to fear that uneasiness of mind, fostering an inherent delicacy of constitution, might be the remote cause of her trying calamities. Touched with compassion, and doubting the permanence of my favorable dispositions, I resolved to put it out of my own power to harass her further by going to India. Accordingly, I wrote to her, stating my determination to quit these kingdoms on condition that she would permit me to take a last farewell of her. I received her joyful, grateful assent, and we again met, for the last time on earth.

She sat beside me in a small recess formed by the rock, considerably above the beach, and almost on a level with the adjoining valley. As I gazed on her faded cheek and altered eye, I rejoiced that I had agreed to her wishes before it was too late. Misjudging fool! it was already too late. She spoke to me more kindly than she had ever done since her marriage; yet I perceived that she was solicitous to shorten the interview. When about to leave me for the last time, she held out both her hands to bid me farewell. I seized and pressed them to my lips and heart, shedding sadder, but purer and sweeter, tears than any I had ever known. Suddenly a sharp tread rung upon the rocks above us, and, before I could look round or recognize the intruder, I received a pistol-shot in my right arm.

"Base villain!" shouted the infuriated Logan, "has it not reached your wicked heart? Oh! for another weapon!"

The wound I had received rendered me faint but not insensible. Lily remained motionless as the rock on which she sat. I saw with horror and ineffectual remorse the fatal effects of my passionate and selfish conduct. I valued not my life, could I but restore my hapless victim to her husband's confidence. I attempted to explain, to state the simple truth; as well might I have talked to the raging sea. Some officious, but, perhaps, well-intentioned person had acquainted him with our correspondence. He had hastened up from town and witnessed what

The mistaken, but not, therefore, less miserable man, after uttering these words with almost maniacal vehemence, rushed down the rocks towards the beach. Lily rose to follow him, saying to me in a changed, hollow voice, "Are you much hurt, unhappy man?"

“Ay, to the heart's core with vain remorse. How you must hate me!"

"No, oh no, indeed, you are not more guilty now than you were five minutes since, when I called you my friend. Be still my friend, and to prove it, leave these kingdoms instantly. You have my pity, for your misfortunes have far outweighed your crimes; farewell, and may God bless you! My prayers shall follow you to the ends of the earth."

Ah! noble and tender heart that never yet was pierced, but it gave forth balm.

She hastened after her husband, fearless in her innocence, and in her noble simplicity convinced that truth had but to speak and be believed. Her low but clear tones were borne to me by the balmy evening breeze.

"Dear Richard, what frenzy is this? Am I not your own loved and loving wife ?"

66

Fawning hypocrite, begone! Dare not to touch me!"

"Richard, as I hope to meet my heavenly judge, I am innocent in thought-in word—in deed."

"Devil! but I will not kill you. I will not put you out of pain. My revenge shall be as deep and lasting as my torments." He threw her slight, clinging form from him with a violence that pros trated her on the sand; then, raising his hand men acingly towards me, cried, "Pitiful poltroon! if Scotland holds you to-morrow, the earth shall be rid of you or me before to-morrow night."

Having said this, he strode out of sight. Faint with grief and loss of blood, I sat listening to Lily's convulsive sobs as she lay on the spot where her

unhappy husband had cast her. I dared not ap-aged them as a refuge from painful thought, but proach to offer assistance. At last she arose, and they gained strength; and when, shortly before her waving her handkerchief to me in adieu, pointed to death, his once loved wife wrote him a long, exculthe sea in intimation of her wish for my departure, patory letter, imploring forgiveness and a last emthen proceeded slowly towards her changed and brace, he was incapable of reading or comprehendmelancholy home. ing it. She died (and terrible to her it must have been so to die) unpitied and deserted; and the love and justice which she had so long and vainly craved were lavished without measure on her memory.

In less than a month after, I was on my voyage to India. I had been there five or six years, when I read in an old newspaper that—" Lily, wife of Richard Logan, died of a lingering disease, esteemed and lamented by all who knew her."

There is no need "to point the moral" of my tale. All may read it in my childless, hopeless, and unhappy old age. It was perhaps more the fault of another than my own that I lost the object of my early affection; yet even then happiness was not placed beyond my reach. When the impassable barrier was placed between my lost love and me, had I left her alone with her destiny, she would soon have made it a happy one. For myself, absence, and the death of hope, would have been the death of passion, and I might, in time, have made another and more fortunate choice. But I spent the prime of manhood in madly cherishing an attachment which finally drove me into exile, haunted by a remorse which left no space for gentler passions. It may seem strange that being so conscious of the source from which my misfortunes have sprung, I should still yield to the transports of a temper which render me a plague to myself and to my friends. To this I can only reply that age, and sorrow, and disease, are sorry sweeteners of a temper that was not sweet even in the "morn and liquid dew of youth."

I wrote to my sister, requesting her to learn from her nurse the particulars of Lily's death, and of her husband's treatment of her. She did so, and the intelligence infixed still more deeply the deadly arrows of remorse. Logan kept but too fatally his vow of vengeance. His incomparable wife, loving him sincerely, and compassionating a mistake which, with her usual heavenly indulgence, she considered an ample apology for his worst harshness, tried every feminine, every affectionate art, to win back his esteem and love. With trembling solicitude she adorned her lovely person, in hopes to catch one favoring glance, she sent humble and loving messages by the lips of their only child, but he was immovable-nay, savage. Doting on her as he had done, he was stung to madness by the fact, which she could not deny, that she had married him while her heart was mine; and he laughed to scorn her assurances of after love for him, knowing, as he did, that she had privately continued her former acquaintance with me. Still he was careful of her reputation, and perhaps it was with the intention Youths and maidens, if you would choose a wife, of accounting to the world for his changed conduct if you would choose a husband, let temper be your to her, that he rushed at once into habits of intoxi- first-second-and third consideration. cation. Perhaps he might have originally encour

66

[OMAI THE SANDWICH-ISLANDER.]

"I ONCE was with him at an elegant repast, where stewed morello cherries were offered, which being mistaken by him, he instantly jumped up, and quitted the room. Several followed him; but he gave them to understand that he was no more accustomed to partake of human blood than they were. He continued rather sulky for some time, and at last it was only by partaking of some of them ourselves that he would be convinced of his error, and induced to return again to the table.

"Lord Sandwich one day, at Hinchinbrook, proposed that Omai should dress a shoulder of mutton in his own manner; and he was quite delighted, for he always wished to make himself useful. Having dug a deep hole in the ground, he placed fuel at the bottom of it, and then covered it with clean pebbles; when properly heated, he laid the mutton, neatly enveloped in leaves, at the top, and having closed the hole walked constantly around it, very deliberately observing the sun. The meat was afterwards brought to table, was much commended, and all the company partook of it. And let not the fastidious gourmand deride this simple method; for are not his own wheat-ears, or his field-fares, now frequently brought to table wrapped in vine leaves? And are not his pheasants or partridges, smothered up in cabbage, almost as well known in St. James'street as in the purlieus of the Palais-royal?

"But the most memorable circumstance I recollect, relative to Omai, was when he was stung by a wasp. He came in whilst we were at breakfast at Hinchinbrook, his hand was violently swelled, and he appeared to be in great agony, but could not explain the cause. At last, not being in possession of the word wasp, he made us understand that he had been wounded by a soldier bird. We were all astonished; and Dr. Solander very well remarked, that considering the allusion to the wings and the weapon, he did not know that any of the naturalists could have given a more excellent definition.

"But now the time for his quitting England was fast approaching; for government judged his return to his own country necessary, lest the natives might fancy that we had murdered him; and his stay might have rendered the cause of bringing him abortive. He was loaded with trinkets, but did not seem much to regard them; and after I had arrived in Leicestershire, I was informed that he was not at all concerned at the thoughts of leaving any of us; and, indeed, I felt rather vexed that we should have wasted so much anxiety about him; but suddenly returning to town, I unfortunately met Omai on the raised pavement in Parliament street, leading to the admiralty, and there he strongly convinced me to the contrary. He was miserable, and I was never much more affected."—Cradock's Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, vol. i., p. 127.

CHAP. XVII.-MADELINE'S DIARY CONTINUED.

should fail me. When I set my foot on the deck one wild, terrible thought of my baby shot into my

I HAVE a very confused recollection of that heart; but I drove it from me as though it had night. I do not wish to make it more distinct; been a serpent; for I felt that if it remained with it is with a shudder and a struggle that I remem- me, I could not wrestle against it. I hurried to ber it all. Yet I do not know why this should my miserable couch, and was soon overcome by be, for certainly the cool and conscious thought welcome palsy of mind and body. There was a which succeeded it was incomparably more pain-storm. I remember well how I hoped that the ful. I remember sitting down at the foot of a ship might go down. God, forgive me! I will tree and resting awhile, in an exhaustion that was not dwell on this. not sleep, but a kind of stupefaction of the senses, I did not learn till afterwards the circumstances and, therefore, welcome. And I have before my which prevented the discovery of my escape. Of eyes even now, more vivid than any visible repre- course, my absence was not known till the mornsentation, the picture of the sudden dawn-a yel- ing; and then, I suppose, it created some dismay; low streak along the far horizon, narrow at first, although I do not believe there was one in the then rapidly widening, and then the springing up house would regret it in any true sense of the of the glorious sun, filling the earth with beauty, and word. I can fancy the scared maid betaking herthe heavens with splendor, as it were, in a mo- self to her master after knocking repeatedly at my ment. I can see one solitary bush that stood a door in vain; then the assaults renewed; the suglittle to the left, on a space of smooth green-sward; gestion that an entrance might be made by the bal1 c can hear the outburst of song from a grove of cony; the open window causing some wonder, and olives on the other side; I note the form, though the untenanted bed a good deal more. Then they neither striking nor lovely in itself, of a particular looked at each other, and were puzzled, and perhillock in the foreground, which broke the line of haps my father grew a little pale; and they went the distance, and at which I kept looking, stead- out into the garden, with no very definite idea of fastly and vacantly, till my eye-balls seemed to be what they expected to find; and they wandered aching as it engrossed itself upon them. How about, vainly looking for indications of something. strange, that these alone of all the sights and And something at last they found a white laced sounds which must have passed during those hours, pocket-handkerchief, gleaming white among the and which I heeded no more than one born blind weeds at the river side, close to the path on which and deaf, should have associated themselves with the very side-gate by which I had gone forth, the suffering, and become a part of it; framing, so opened. I did not even know that I had dropped to speak, the everlasting picture of remembrance! it, and little guessed that a deceitful gust of wind I have hated a sunrise ever since; there is to me had wafted it just there, and made it the unconinexpressible desolateness in it. Earth seems to scious asserter of a lie. I suppose they felt some be dressing herself out like a victim for the sacri- horror when they saw it. Sudden death is always fice. I never feel the light upon my eyelids with- terrible, if it be only a dog that dies; and perhaps out thinking of the myriad griefs which have, the reflection that the last words we had ever experhaps, been temporarily forgotten, and which changed had been words of anger, may have hung are beginning anew. I seem to hear a jarring a little coldly and heavily about my husband's summons as the day goes forth, "Now begin heart. But, on the whole, when the shock was again to bear life!" Happy those whose fragile over, it must have been a relief to him. It may natures are crushed at once under the burthen!

seem dreadful to write this; many things that men dwell upon in their thoughts seem dreadful when they are written down. And so we dress up our thoughts even to ourselves, as a child dresses up a figure, and afterwards looks at it, and almost believes it is alive. But we cannot make the reality less hideous by disguising it; the ut most we can do is to talk cant about it, and to call those men coarse and unfeeling who are brave enough to strip off the tawdry wrappers and encounter it in its true unsightliness. There are not many such men in the world; and, indeed, it is well for the world's self-complacency that they are so few.

As the light came my consciousness returned; that is, returned so far as to enable me once more to pursue and grasp my purpose. In terror lest I should have endangered its success by a pause, the duration of which I was wholly unable to estimate, I once more rose, and hurried onwards. I cannot go through the details of this history. I have already compared the cunning which directed my movements to the craft of insanity, and, I repeat, I believe they were closely akin. I obtained a conveyance to the sea-port town to which I have before alluded; secured my passage in a vessel about to sail for England; parted with some of my jewels, having previously taken the precaution Why should I write any more? All the rest of breaking them out of their settings, lest they of life has been a blank-faint, dreary, unineaning. should by possibility be recognized; procured my- There came a time when I retraced the past delibself a decent outfit, and took possession of my berth; erately, and with cold, cruel gaze examined every all this with no longer intermission than was ab- step that I had taken in my self-deception. How solutely necessary for taking some nourishment; I disdained myself! I felt that I had fallen too an act which I performed not because I felt the low even for pity. I was a subject for scorn and need of it, but because I feared lest my strength very ridicule. So poor a counterfeit had I em

braced as a reality! I was like one who should carry it to the jeweller in person, and fair to conbuild a miserable pagoda at the foot of Mont clude that he might be in league with some gang, Blanc, and, sitting within its puny shadow, believe to a member of which he had entrusted it. The that it overtopped the mountain; and now I had punishment which he suffered, on conviction, was risen and moved but a few steps, and, lo! I dis- certainly no more than he deserved; and as it cancovered how mean and contemptible had been my not be supposed that he was habitually a scrupuillusion! Not only was all happiness taken from lous truth-teller, he had no reason to complain if me forever, but I had to confess that it had never one of his rare truths passed for a lie. been mine at all. I was robbed even of the luxury of regret.

My poor friend! She had only one idea of consolation; and that was to coax or compel the sufferer to eat ;--food was her solitary refuge from grief. What did I not endure whilst with her! I still seem to feel the wretched heart-sinking with which, as I lay or sat in dreamy, miserable stupor, I used to see the door softly turn upon its hinges, to admit her kind, hospitable, tormenting face. If I were warned soon enough, I could always feign sleep; and then, after one inquiring

had come. But if a movement or a glance betrayed me, she would enter cautiously, and approach my sofa with some unhappy compound in her hand, expressly devised for my restoration. The sole picture which my memory forms of her is that of a figure carrying a basin of broth!

There was but one person to whom I could go the humble friend who had been my companion in happier days. I knew her to be weak and gentle, but scrupulously true; and I trusted to her habit of yielding to my stronger will, and was not mistaken in supposing that I could bend her to my purpose. Once having obtained her promise, that she would keep my secret, I knew that I was secure; a breach of that promise would have haunt-look, she would withdraw as noiselessly as she ed her conscience like a ghost. Yet she condemned herself for giving it, and used all possible argument and persuasion to induce me to return to what she called " my duty," and it was curious to see how very criminal she thought me; and yet how quietly she submitted, without any keen self-reproach, because a few hasty words had I have often thought how strangely circumbound her before she clearly understood the cir- stances combined to favor my concealment. My cumstances-bound her, as she believed, so close- friend had changed her residence some months ly, that action was simply impossible. There are before I came to her—not a creature in the neighpersons to whom a sin of sharp outline seems so borhood had ever seen me. She pressed me to much deadlier than one of great substance-in remain with her. I was at that time so feeble whose eyes an act is far more awful than a habit; both in soul and body, that might have easily and she was one of these. Then, out of her mere been induced to acquiesce. I was almost passive gentleness and gratitude, she would have done any- in her hands ;—had her will been strong enough thing in the world to console and help me. She to induce her to take me back to my husband, nursed me through a long, dangerous illness, which I believe I should have gone. Every spark of followed my arrival in England; and by her means energy was extinguished within me; even the I was finally settled at Croye, to wear out, as best power of feeling pain was so far deadened that the I might, in retirement and daily labor, the wretch- idea of it created no horror. But she had a way ed years left to me. I suppose it is strange that my of talking to me which I could not bear; and this escape was never discovered; yet there was only it was which finally goaded me from her. She one circumstance which could possibly have led to thought it her duty to remonstrate, though she had its detection-the change of dress, and the ab- not courage to decide. Whenever she considered straction of my most valuable jewels. Singularly me strong enough to listen to her persuasions, she enough, this solitary evidence was rendered of no began them anew; and the topic chosen was ineffect. variably that which she thought would be most effective-my child. Every day I was asked how I could bear to leave him; every day I had to encounter some new form of useless torture. At last I was stung into sufficient resolution to go, and I left her. Good, simple woman! How could I ever dare to despise a life of quiet duty?

One of the household took advantage of the general confusion to abscond with as many valuables as he could collect. Among other things, he took my jewel-case, which he must have found rather less amply stocked than he expected, and a considerable part of my wardrobe. He was pursued and apprehended, the box being found upon his person; but, of course, no one credited his asseverations that the deficiencies observable in it were not caused by him. And when, some time afterwards, a bracelet (which, in my hurry, I had sold without previously defacing) was discovered at an obscure jeweller's in this only appeared a fresh proof of the thief's falsehood. had been offered for sale by a woman, commonly dressed, and apparently somewhat agitated, who brought it to the shop an hour after day-break on the morning after my supposed death. It was natural enough that the thief should have feared to LIVING AGE. VOL. XXII. 33

CCLXXVIII.

It

I had meant to write more, but I cannot; even this seems more than enough. I wish only to account for my life, and for its end. The details which follow our separation can have no interest for you-perhaps even what I have written will be flung aside. If I have prevented your happiness, you see that I have been miserable myself; if you condemn me, I assure you my self-condemnation is stronger and bitterer. Nay, I do not even blame you for anything but the last deception. It was my own insane vanity which led me to mistake kindly interest for love. I had no right

me.

soul.

to watch looks and interpret tones; it was un-ings which had thus been laid bare before her, reasonable it was unwomanly. Yet are not my and the acts in which they had resulted, were such loveless childhood and youth some excuse for me? as she could scarcely contemplate without shrinkThe impulse had been dormant so long, that when ing. A vast and tender pity filled her whole it awoke and sprang up, I knew not how to guide it; it bore me away, irresistibly, whither it would. Had I possessed a mother, a sister-nay, even one friend, this could never have befallen But I was so solitary, that it was no wonder that I clung to the first outstretched hand. If you had left me, I should have recovered, and that speedily;-pride is strong enough to stifle an unreturned affection, especially in a woman. I should never have remembered you without bitterness and shame; and soon have learned to wonder that I could ever have associated brighter thoughts with you. But the wrong which you did me by returning, is ineffable-the cruelty of that false pity has been irreparable. It was, dishon-bly and long; but now she would do right, and it orable, too—the basest of frauds; knowingly and deliberately, you gave me a cold, disguised, tinsel compassion, in exchange for the purest gold of love. Now I am a bankrupt indeed!

She thought of herself as a helpless and timid child walking by night amid dangerous pitfalls and deadly snares, but so encircled by gentle arms, and led by kind starlight, that it was impossible to stumble or to miss the safe path. Madeline was only another child, equally frail and feeble, and placed in equal danger, but to whom the guardianship and the guidance were wanting, and who could not choose but fall. Ida's thought was therefore instantly and chiefly how she could help her to rise again, and to heal the wounds from which in natural terror she averted her eyes. Almost instantly, after the first yielding to grief she began to hope. Madeline had suffered terri

:

would surely please God to give her happiness. Ida could not exactly see how this was to be; but, nevertheless, her hope was so strong and joyful that it well nigh became a faith. It is so happy to be hopeful; and, thank God! it is so natural! It is so natural to look into the black dark

It seemed that the writer had here paused abruptly in her melancholy narration, and never re-ness, and think of the golden fringe of dawn-to sumed it. Afterwards, and evidently at a later period, she had written the following words :God forgive me for the wrath and bitterness of these pages! I have never dared to read them over. Oh! that I had strength to confess all to those who would guide me to do right! I have now friends, I have now counsellors; I am no longer alone in the world. But for my bitter secret, I might believe that I was learning holiness -I might hope some day to be happy. But if my heart essays to rise only for a moment, that thought straightway falls upon it and crushes it. I dare not speak it; I dread to be told that I must do that for which I have not strength, and which I will not do, cannot believe that I ought to do. Perhaps before I die I may do it; and surely the struggle cannot last much longer.

Then followed-too solemn for insertion here -a prayer for her unknown child, wrought out of the agony of the mother's self-reproach and sor

row.

And then these few words :

It is possible that my child may be taught to remember me-nay, even to commend my soul to God's keeping, in his innocent prayers. May not such prayers avail when mine are powerless?

This was the last entry. Ida's tears had flowed fast while she read, and when she laid down the book, she hid her fair face upon her hands, and gave them free course for a few minutes. She was bewildered with sorrow and wonder. The radiant veil of life had been pulled aside, and so stern a face looked at her from behind its folds that she drew back in terror. And well might she do so; for in truth she now found herself, for the first time, face to face with evil. She had no thought of condemning Madeline, though the feel

gaze upon the pale wasted face, and think of the first tints of returning health-to grieve for the estranged friend, and dream of the joy of forgiveness-to seal up and stifle the unrequited affection, yet all the while to fix the eyes upon an union in the future, deeper and more perfect, because it has been so long in ripening! All these may be disappointments-cold, cruel, desolating; yet the hope has nevertheless been real; it is a possession in and for itself; never let us give it up! If it please God to cover the sky with clouds, let us not, therefore, extinguish our own poor lamps, but rather cherish and tend them the more carefully, because they are all we have. Let us thank Him that he has so formed us that we are buoyant and hopeful, even in the midst of sorrows, never bowing our heads, save when the hurricane prostrates us for the moment, and eagerly raising them again as soon as the pressure is of every earthly hope, that the habit and the past. And if it is to be only by the destruction strength of a divine hope can be fully built up in us, let us remember that gloom is as fatal to the one as to the other ;-let us beware how we mistake despondency for resignation, callousness for courage, scorn for patience;-let us labor with all our hearts to love and fulfil that true, sweet duty-the "duty of delight." Who is there who cannot remember some sudden brightness on the horizon of life-some secret nest, stirred by the unconscious foot, and sending forth in an instant its gush of heavenward song-some hour of unlooked for joy-some salvation from grief that seemed inevitable-some treasure of unknown affection which has been our own, though we dreamed not of it, and deserved it not-to reproach him for the veriest beginning of misanthropy,