his brow a painful consciousness of the subjugation of his country. Burying himself in retirement, he turned his attention to such pursuits as might not rouse the jealousy of despotism, though the temper of his mind was rather to court the storm than to cower beneath it. The dismemberment of his native realm, her loss of a seat among the nations, and the oppressive dynasty of Russia, darkened his meditations and imbittered his solitude.

But in his own home was a spirit of peace, suggesting endurance, or striving to awaken hope. Ulrica, the gentle and beautiful one, with whom a union of ten years had left his love unimpaired, employed the whole force of her influence to win him from melancholy themes. Deep acquaintance with historic lore, and warm native sympathies, led her feelingly to deplore the immolation of her country; but the spirit of piety which had taken possession of her soul taught her to deprecate every vengeful and hostile purpose, and to view the voluntary shedding of blood, not only as an evil to be dreaded, but as a sin to be shunned. Capable of appreciating the higher and bolder energies, her happiness was embosomed in domestic duties and affections, and she sought to inspire all her household with that love of peace which preserves the fountains of bliss untroubled. It was her delight to lull her infant with such low, quiet music, that sleep would hang long suspended upon the half-closed lids, itself a listener. Even the little trusting sparrow, that in pursuit of crumbs had ventured to pass the threshold, would seem to linger at the sound of those exquisite melodies, standing long upon one foot, and turning its head rapidly from side to side, as if longing to bear to the children of its own nest those soothing and tuneful strains. She loved to instruct her daughter in those accomplishments that render home delightful, and by the influence of a sweet, subduing smile to recall her if her young spirit wandered or was weary. But most of all, she loved to cheer his despondence whose heart reposed its confidence on hers; and when it encountered those thorns and brambles with which the curse of Adam hath sown the earth, to restore in its own sanctuary some image of cloudless Eden. Yet their bower of bliss was not free from the intrusion of care. Ulrica felt deep anxiety for her little son, in whom she could not but perceive the incipient tastes of a warrior. The piercing eye and raven locks, which he inherited from his father, gave to the ex ceeding beauty of his childhood a lofty expression, which no beholder could witness without repeating the gaze of admiration. His mother, discerning the structure of his mind in infancy, laboured continually to stamp upon its waxen tablet the impress of peace. Even then the ground seemed pre-occupied. Every leaf of olive that she cherished was plucked as if by an invisible hand. Often, when she flattered herself that the warbled melody of some sacred lay had reached and won his soul, he would suddenly raise his head from her bosom, and say, 'Sing me the battlesong of Sobieski, when he rushed upon the Turk; it is far finer music.' Sometimes, when she narrated from the blessed volume the lives of the men of peace, of the apostles, who went forth bearing the precious Gospel, and of heaven's hymn, sung by angels to the watching shepherds when the Redeemer of sinners was born, he would exclaim, 'Tell me now of him who slew the Egyptian when he saw him mocking his people, and of the stripling who beheaded the giant, and of that glorious warrior who bade the sun and the moon stand still in their courses, that he might have light, and a long day to destroy his enemies.'

The oppressive government of the Grand-duke Constantine became every day more intolerable. It assumed the worst forms of wanton cruelty. Surrounded by his Russian minions, he took delight in humbling the nobility of Poland, subjecting them to causeless penalties and offensive vassalage. In addition to these brutal abuses of power, a system of espionage was established in Warsaw, so strict that home was no sanctuary. It extended even to the schools. He was not ashamed to employ emissaries and reporters among infants. He desired to crush in the bud every indication of the love of liberty. Even the enthusiasm that lingered around the fallen glory of Poland was

visited as a crime; and trembling history hid her annals from the eye of despotism.

A boy had inscribed on his seat in school the date of some event distinguished in the record of his country. This circumstance was deemed of sufficient importance to be transmitted to Constantine, who sentenced him to be torn from his parents and placed for life in the lowest ranks of the army, yet held incapable of advancement. The unhappy mother sought long and vainly for an audience. Once, when leaving his palace for an excursion of pleasure, she threw herself at his feet, imploring, in the most piercing accents, mitigation of the doom of her miserable child. Provoked at her perseverance, he spurned her with his foot, and deigning no reply, ascended his carriage. It is not surprising that such arbitrary deeds should affect with peculiar sympathy the mother of young Radzivil. She knew the unconquerable boldness of the boy, and her nights were sleepless with dread lest he, too, should be marked as a victim for the tyrant. She communicated her fears to her husband.

'Ulrica,' he replied, gravely, the current of the boy's soul is deep beyond his years. The soaring eaglet may not be restrained by the plaintive murmur of the dove.' But Ulrica daily counselled her son. She strove to press into his soul the precepts of that religion which forbids retaliation. She selected from history the examples of those princes and statesmen whose pacific policy promoted the prosperity of their realm and the happiness of their people. She simplified for him the most exquisite passages of those ancient philosophers, who extol the excellence of patient virtue and serene contemplation. She exerted all of woman's eloquence, and of a mother's love, to make his young soul a listener and a convert.

Mother, when I was at Cracow with my father, I visited in the cathedral the tombs of our ancient heroes. 1 found where Sobieski lies. I stood long at the tomb of Kosciusko. The light faded, and darkness began to settle upon the lofty and solemn arches while I stood there. Methought a voice came forth from these ashes and talked with me of his glory, of his sufferings, and of the Russian prisons where he so long pined. And then it seemed as if he himself stood before me, that brave old man, covered with scars, and with the tears of Poland; and ere I was aware I said, I will love Kosciusko, and hate Russia for ever.'

Ulrica gazed silently upon the boy. She had never seen anything so beautiful as that lofty and pure brow, inspired with emotions defying utterance. His full eye cast forth a flood of living lustre, and his graceful form rose higher as he ceased to speak. Not Hannibal, when, in the presence of Hamilcar, he uttered the vow of eternal hatred to Rome, could have evinced more strongly how the soul may lift up the features of childhood into a commanding and terrible beauty. The mother wondered at the strange awe that stole over her. She almost trembled to enter the sanctuary of that mind, lest she might displace imagery that Heaven had consecrated, or lay her hand unwittingly upon the very ark of God. For a moment she thought, what if this being, so mighty even in his simple elements, should be the decreed deliverer of his oppressed country! It was but a moment that this enthusiasm prevailed. The boy saw the tears glittering in her eye, and hastened to throw himself upon her neck.

Mother, I will no longer sing the songs of Sobieski, nor speak to my companions of Pulaski or Kosciusko, since it gives you pain. But when I see the proud Russian soldiers parading in the squares at Warsaw, and Constantine lording it over our people, can I help my heart from rising up, and the blood from feeling hot in my forehead?'

The features of the Russian dynasty continued to gather harshness and asperity. The grand-duke became daily more odious to the people he ruled. Conscious of unpopularity, and partaking of that distrust which ever haunts tyranny, he retired from the royal palace to one in the vicinity of Warsaw, where he might be under the immediate protection of his own troops. It was no satisfaction to the Radzivil family that the new abode of Constantine was in their own immediate neighbourhood. Still trusting to find

land breathes once more in freedom the air of her own capital. Every spot overflows with rejoicing people. Old hoary-headed men give us their blessing, and children brandish their weapons with the shrill cry of liberty. As for me, I am searching every dungeon, every fastness, every den, where it is possible for despotism to have incarcerated our brave, our beautiful one. I will return no more to my house until I restore him to your arms, or whisper in your ear those words, less appalling than our suspense he is no more.'

All day long, while acclamations rent the air, and the peasantry by thousands were flocking into the city to hail the men who had delivered their country, Ulrica sat still in the house. One deep, measureless, inexpressible emotion absorbed all lesser sympathies. At every footstep, at the echo of every voice, her heart, like the mimosa, shrank, trembled, folded itself. The hours seemed interminable. At length twilight approached, evening darkened. Even her chastened spirit revolted at the prospect of passing another night of unmitigated suspense. Her children slumbered. There was no sound save of their quiet breathing. She looked out upon the solemn stars, and strove to rise above them in communion with their Maker. Suddenly there was a trampling of horses in the court-yard. The power of motion deserted her. The next moment, Radzivil was in her apartment. He laid on the bed some thing wrapped in a cloak, and for a moment restrained her in his arms as she was rushing toward it.

'My son! my son! speak Radzivil. Tell me that he

lives!'

'He lives, Ulrica; but the life of life is fled. It were a lighter thing to have seen him in the sleep of death.'

Perceiving that she would no longer be withheld, he uncovered the face. All the fortitude that she had invoked from above was needful for that moment. Emaciated, haggard, his beautiful hair shorn close to his head, his eye devoid of lustre or intelligence, and every feature apparently transmuted to pourtray the dull, dreaming, hideous contortions of idiocy. Yet he still breathed; and, with that consciousness, hope, the comforter, came into the heart of the mother. The heart of the mother! that only heart whose love falters not under the cloud or through the sea,' till death smites down its idol. Even then it resigns hope only to call forth a memory which, tender as love itself, gathers, like the winged chemist of the air, honeyed essence from thorn-clad and unsightly plants.

Ulrica perceived that to her embraces there was no response, to her words no answer. Food the famished boy received voraciously, and with a wolf-like appetite, yet regarded not the hand that gave it. All the accustomed avenues to the soul seemed irrevocably closed.

'By what excesses of diabolical cruelty,' said the father, 'could they thus have completed the wreck of one of the most noble and beautiful beings ever born of woman? None could tell me aught of his history. The keepers of his dungeon were what they ought to be-corpses. While crowds of liberated and ghastly wretches were thronging forth to the light of heaven, I descended to the vaults they had left. I explored them until I became almost hopeless. At last, in a cold, solitary cell, I discovered this ruin of humanity. Nothing but parental instinct could have guided me to that hidden recess, or convinced me that this was indeed my own son. To my caressess, to the maddened anguish with which I repeated his name, he spoke nothing. He moved not. But when I raised him in my arms he struggled and contended. Then I perceived that his exhaustion was not physical. I still trusted that the disease which had changed him might be healed. But when we brought him forth to the sunbeam, gazing into his eyes, I saw that the mind had fled for ever. A deep vow of implacable vengeance closed the agonised recital.

'Radzivil, beloved, look not so wildly. I pray you, speak not so harshly. Our son may yet recover to bless

us.'

On these holy promptings of love and hope the mother acted. Night and day she nursed the miserable boy. With consummate prudence she administered that nourishment

which his exhausted state rendered both necessary and hazardous. She rocked him in her arms, as in his infancy, holding his head for hours on her bosom, sometimes murmuring softly and tunefully in his ear, as if she would breathe into him her own soul. Occasionally she fancied that there was a quickening of the mind, and then poured forth that inspiring music which harmonised with its native structure, and was wont to heighten the gladness of his childhood to ecstacy. The songs of Sobieski rang as exultingly through his chamber, as if they rose not from a breaking heart. It was in vain. The chords of melody might be touched no more. Still the tender eye that had scanned acutely the elements of his nature, would not be lieve that its deep and strong affections had become extinct. Her fair infant had formerly been his last thought at night, his first in the morning. To lull it himself to sleep, and to elicit its gay shout of mirth at waking, were among the objects of his childish ambition. The mother laid it upon his lap, and it smiled on him; but he extended no arm to receive it: he writhed, as if to free himself from a burden. He evinced neither desire nor dislike, but that fearful inanity, that deadness to all emotion, that grovelling and growing likeness to material things which are among the most appalling indications of lapsed intellect. His little sister, whom from her birth he had loved as himself, was ever by his side. She twined her arms about his neck, but he was uneasy at their pressure. She laid her hand gently upon his head and wept at the absence of those clustering curls that were once her admiration and pride. She gazed long and earnestly in his eyes with tears standing in her own, like big rain-drops in the violet's heart. She spoke long, in her sweetly modulated tones, of their sports, of their walks together, of the wild flowers that they had found in their own secret places, and of the stories he had told her of the daring of Pulaski and Kosciusko. Shall we not pursue each other again, dear brother, through the garden walks? and will you launch your boat on the little stream that runs so swiftly toward the Vistula? and shall the baby clap its little hands when you brandish your mimic sword? and will we say our nightly prayers again with one voice, kneeling down by our mother?'

Every effort of the ardent child ended in disappointment -not a single glance of attention rewarded her. It was evident that the links between thought and speech were broken. Even those faint and casual glimmerings of emotion which, though causeless, had served feebly to unite him to humanity and to hope, gradually disappeared. There had been sometimes an inarticulate murmuring, like sullen discontent, or a distortion of the brow, as if from transient terror. Even these were precious to the parents who hung over his couch, as the dawn, though heavy and ominous with clouds, is hailed by those who

watch for the morning.' But these sad signals faded, and nothing remained but the action of the lungs, the sluggish current in the veins, the aimless motion of the muscles, as if without volition, and the animal appetites of idiocy. The beauty, which he had once possessed in so remarkable a degree as to have been pronounced perfect, vanished with the emanations of mind; even the proportions and chiselling of the clay lost their symmetry.

At length death came, the messenger of mercy. There was a pitiful and unearthly cry from that collapsed heart when the ice entered into it; but no accent, no pressure of the hand, for affection to linger over and embalm. One ray of exceeding brightness kindled in the eye: it was the spirit passing forth in gladness from its deep eclipse. Only for a moment was that lustre seen. Then there were bitter gaspings and strugglings, as of the swimmer when he buffets the fatal wave; so that even love besought in agony the release of what it had worshipped; and that release came.

John Radzivil returned from the obsequies of his firstborn in that state of feeling which shuns alike society and consolation. Solitude and moody silence were his choice. Grief seemed, in his case, to lay aside her features of tenderness, and to nerve and harden the soul for some gloomy

ing for a lost infant light, or soon forgotten. Sorrow for the departed is not always graduated by the value that the community may have affixed to their lives. The heart has other gold than that which men weigh in a balance. He who marks in the cemetery a mound of a span's length, and, carelessly passing on, says, 'It was but a babe!' hath never been a parent.

The fortunes of Poland grew darker every day. Contest after contest was lost. The battle of Praga struck her down from her throne among the nations. Despotism returned with a twofold purpose-to do the deeds which her own nature prompted, and to punish rebellion. She was not slack in either task. Confiscation, imprisonment, banishment, death, were the instruments by which she wrought.

Among the list of exiles to the wilds of Siberia were the Radzivil family. Sole representatives of one of its branches, Ulrica and her young daughter joined that melancholy train. Yet the bereaved and afflicted woman went not forth despairing. She girded herself to bear her appointed lot. Life seemed to her as a short journey to the land of peace. Ever keeping this in view, she had a cheering word for those whose hearts sank as a stone beneath the dark waters. There is sometimes found in woman an uncomplaining fortitude, which shrinks not when the pride of man, her stronger companion, gives way-a power of endurance bestowed by her Creator, to supply the deficiency of mightier energies. But here there was something more -the panoply with which Heaven condescends to invest the heart, which, sacrificing its selfishness and resigning its own will, henceforth becomes a partner in the strength of omnipotence. It obtains no exemption from trial or misfortune, no passport to command away a single thorn that obstructs its pilgrimage. Its power is in the talisman, engraven on its inmost tablet, Thy will be done.'

The fatigues and sufferings of banishment fell most heavily on the young and tender. Ere they entered the gloomy pine-forests of Russia, the sorrowing exiles found their number fearfully diminished:

The cold snows wove their winding sheet,
And many a turf beneath their feet
Was made an infant's sepulchre.'

Little Ulrica faltered, and indicated in every feature that her path led to a returnless bourne. Her mother saw the destination, and strove to prepare her for it. She spoke to her of that clime where blossoms never fade, where there is no war, no severing of hearts that love, of the compassion of Jesus the Mediator,' and of God the judge of all, who hath mercy on the penitent and the trustful. She told her of the unresting harps of angels, who wait, and stretch forth their wings, and call the parting soul to join their company. She rested not night or day, and her pious labour was requited. The young summoned spirit went forth meekly and willingly from its house of clay.

For the lonely mourner there was henceforth no joy on earth, save the echo of the seraphic hymn, which from the pure realm of peace visited her nightly. To the children of her people who had no mothers, she drew near, and wiped their tears, and gathered them into her bosom, and taught them of Jesus; to the hoary-headed she bowed herself down as a daughter, and comforted them, till they gazed upon her as an angel of light; to the brokenhearted she spoke sisterly words, urging them to walk steadfastly toward that country where is no bereavement; and, in listening to her sweet tones, they lost for a season the bitter memories of exile.

Thus she moved in that ministry of benevolence and resignation which he who perfectly attains hath accomplished the discipline of probation, and is ready for a higher grade of being, and for the 'recompense of reward.' The humble and pure spirit which she hid within would have inspired contentment even amid that realm of frost, where vegetation, except in its hardier forms, is extinct, and the solid earth cleaves asunder. It would have devised deeds of kindness for the miserable boor, whose superiority to the wild beasts that surrounded him was chiefly evinced in the skill with which he entrapped

them, or divested them of their skins, for the better clothing of himself and his little barbarians. But the wrath of a Siberian winter swept not over the widowed consort of John Radzivil. Ere it bound the earth in its terrible fetters, she had fled to a clime without tempest or cloud. Such was the annihilation of a family, once noble, honoured, and happy. Yet is its record of suffering scarcely a drop in the dark tide that saturated the soil of Poland. I The dauntless self-devotion of her sons availed nothing against the despotism that overwhelmed her. Those whom she nurtured in her high places now languish in prisons and in mines; they perish in the stern, frozen heart of Siberia, or are homeless wanderers in far, foreign lands. And as among the family of nations there has long been admiration of her high, chivalrous character, so there should be sympathy for her fall, and in the sorrows of her children.

RANDOM JOTTING S.

THE RAINBOW.

There are perhaps none of the heavenly phenomena so beautiful and interesting as the rainbow. There may be more brilliant meteorological appearances at certain parts of the world, such as the mirage and aurora borealis, but there is none more beautiful than this universal and glorious arch of heaven. It is the memorial of primeval piety-the autograph of God, in ratification of a solemn and eternal covenant between him and men. It is the¦ dream-region of poets-the wonder of the simple peasant

the delight of the philosopher-and a mystery to the untutored savage. This prismatic region of beauty has ever been peopled by the poets with aërial creatures, who sport amongst the white clouds and bathe in the sunbeams; and in the Scriptures the allusions to it are as splendid as they are various. It is said that one of the glories which surround the eternal throne is a rainbow; in the Apocalypse it is described as encircling, like a halo, the head of an angel; and Ezekiel compares four cherubims to a cloud arched with this lustrous bow. Milton alludes to the rainbow in the following poetical terms:

The allusions in the exquisite poem which we have noticed are extremely beautiful, and they view that phenomenon in every one of its relations, from the idea that led the world's grey fathers forth to watch its sacred sign, to the reduction of its existence to cold material laws. In

Paradise Lost' the description of its creation and first appearance is truly grand, as if the very beams that wove it in the sky had animated the bard with the inspiration of their beauty and brightness.

In Greenland the rainbows frequently do not reflect the seven prismatic colours, but are of a pale white colour, fringed with a brownish yellow. This arises from the sun's rays being refracted from a frozen cloud. The Icelanders term it the bridge of the gods;' and the Scandinavians, who believed it to connect heaven and earth, say it has a guardian-angel specially awarded to it, called Heindaller. Aristotle calls himself the first who ever saw a lunar rainbow, mentioning only two that he had observed during fifty years. St Ambrose did not seem to be aware of this particular phenomenon, however, as he says that the rainbow could not be what God promised to Noah as a sign placed in the firmament after the deluge that he would no more drown the world, because the rainbow could not appear at night: but the old commentator was wrong, for lunar rainbows have been often seen. Mr

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