Love

sible, if she imagined his affections to be disengaged, he determined to impart to her the state of his feelings with reference to her friend Julia, and inquire whether she could enable him to follow up the dictates of his heart, by throwing any light upon the dark cloud that hung over the fate of Mr. Strickland. and curiosity, both of which were sufficiently ardent in his bosom, might thus be gratified at once; and if his communication produced no other result, it would at least show to Constantia, that he had nothing but the most fervent gratitude to offer her in return for her inappreciable services.

In their next interview, he accordingly declared to her, though not without considerable embarrassment, that as she might perhaps take an interest in the happiness of the man, whose life she had preserved, he trusted she would not refuse to give him any information it might be in her power to bestow, relative to the history of Julia Strickland, or to the causes

which had occasioned her father to be thus excommunicated by all mankind. He proceeded to state the indelible impression which Julia's numerous attractions had made upon his heart; concluding with the avowal, that he should have implored her to unite her fate with his, had he not been deterred by the universal anathema that seemed to have been pronounced 'against her unfortunate parent.

During the delivery of his speech, Constantia had been sitting with her hands loosely held together in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon them, while a burning blush diffused itself over her face and neck. After its conclusion, she remained in the same attitude for a few seconds, until apparently roused from her reverie by the silence, she lifted up her head, shook aside the curls that had fallen over her large and lustrous eyes, and exclaimed, while her countenance was lighted up with an unusual animation." I knew it-I foresaw it

I predicted it. Beauty, and innocence, and

talent, such as Julia's, were not to be encountered with impunity, especially when united with that vivacity which men love more than all the rest. And have you, unfortunate that you are, have you thrown away this pearl above all price, from a vague and cowardly apprehension of that vacillating scare-crowthe world ?"

"If I could have felt confident that my friends" said Jocelyn.

"Friends!" interrupted Constantia—“ where are the friends to be put in competition with a wife, and, above all, such a wife as Julia? Envy, selfishness, inconstancy, are perpetually laying siege to every other attachment; and in a wife alone is there a security for unalterable friendship, because in her alone is there an absolute identity of interest. In her alone will it remain unalloyed by prosperity, and undiminished by reverses. Friends!- Mr. Strickland was for a long time the idol of his countrymen; he had youth, beauty, health, fortune,

power, popularity: all, all have vanished; the whole world has turned against him: of all his numerous blessings, one only has remained to him-the affection of his wife: an affection not only unsubdued, but exalted, refined, sublimised by the fire of persecution, through which her husband has been compelled to pass. Is it possible that you can have remained so long in the castle of Haelbeck, and have not appreciated the value of a virtuous woman's love ?"

"I have reason to believe," said Jocelyn, "that Miss Strickland could not have been induced to quit that dreary abode."

"But you might have remained to share it with her," replied Constantia ; " and by what she has endured for her father, you might have judged what she would dare and do for a husband."

"If I could ever have been sure that she would listen to my love-"

"Love!" interposed Constantia. "Beware, Sir, of desecration. Bestow not that sacred name

upon a pusillanimous and transient admiration, which crouches down and shrinks into nothing, if a finger or voice be lifted up against it. We are compounded of heavenly and of earthly elements, from whose mysterious union spring the two master-passions that ennoble our nature-religion and love. Devotion to one object above, devotedness to one object below; these are all-sufficient for the soul and for the heart: they lift us out of ourselves; they exalt us above this fleshly scene; they form for us a world within ourselves, shutting out the external world, and rendering us, for the time, independent of fate and fortune. They establish in our bosom an empire of our own, where the heart sits enthroned in the calm majesty of its own virtuous happiness. Oh, if you had truly loved Julia, the innocent Julia, who is thus sacrificing her youth to a sense of filial piety, with what an indignant scorn would you have spurned at society with all its conventional injustice! With what a proud fervour would