forced upon my beggarly system; coterie,

the more children of Art, I languished for those of nature; and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick, went to bed; ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning, to set out for Italy.

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MARIA.

MOULINES.

I NEVER felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now, to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France, in the hey-day of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lighted up; a journey through each step of which music beats time to Labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters to pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me and every one of them was pregnant with adventures.

Just Heaven!

it would fill up twenty volumes; and alas! I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into, and half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria my friend Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines.

The story he had told of that disordered maid affected me not a little in the reading; but when I had got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it re

turned so strongly into my mind that I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, to enquire after her.

'Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance in quest of melancholy adventures; - I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.

The old mother came to the door; her looks told me the story before she opened her mouth. She had lost her husband: he had died, she said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria's sense, about a month before. She had feared, at first, she added, that it would have plundered her poor girl of what little understanding was left; but, on the contrary, it had brought her Her more to herself; poor daughter, she said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road.

still she could not rest.

Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seemed only to be tuned to joy, to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it? I beckoned to the postillion to turn back into the road.

poplar.

When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road, leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar. She was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand: ran at the foot of the tree.

a small brook

I bid the postillion go on with the chaise to Mou

lines; and La Fleur to bespeak my supper; and

that I would walk after him.

She was dressed in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted with a silken net. She had superadded likewise, to her jacket, a pale green riband, which fell across her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe. Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she kept tied by a string to her girdle. As I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string. "Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio,” said she. I looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover, or her little goat; for, as she uttered them, the tears trickled down her cheeks.

I

I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief. then steeped it in my own, and then in her's, and then in mine, and then I wiped her's again; and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions within me as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion.

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary.

MARIA.

WHEN Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt her and her goat about two years before? .... She said, she was unsettled much at

that time, but remembered it upon two accounts: that, ill as she was, she saw the person pitied her; and next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beat him for the theft; she had washed

it, she said, in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket, to restore it to him, in case she should ever see him again; which, she added, he had half promised her. As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket, to let me see it; she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine-leaves, tied round with a tendril. On opening it, I saw an S. marked in one

and

of the corners. She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, and walked round St. Peter's once, returned: that she found her way alone across the Appenines, had travelled over all Lombardy without money, and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes: how she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could not tell; but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

... Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I: and wast thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter thee; thou shouldst eat of my own bread, and drink of my own cup; I would be kind to thy Sylvio; in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I would seek after thee, and bring thee back; when the sun went down I would say my prayers; and when I had done thou shouldst play thy evening-song upon thy pipe: nor would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering Heaven along with that of a broken heart!

Nature melted within me as I uttered this; and

Maria observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream. And where will you dry it, Maria? said I. .... I'll dry it in my bosom, 'twill do me good.

said she;

....

said I.

sorrows;

And is your heart still SO warm, Maria?

I touched upon the string on which hung all her she looked with wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying any thing, took her pipe, and played her service to the Virgin.The string I had touched ceased to vibrate; in a moment or two Maria returned to herself, let her pipe

fall, and rose up.

....

And where are you going, Maria? said I. .... She said, to Moulines. Let us go, said I, together.

Maria put her arm within mine, and, lengthening the string to let the dog follow, in that order we

entered Moulines.

MARIA.

MOULINES.

THOUGH I hate salutations and greetings in the market-place, yet, when we got into the middle of this, I stopped to take my last look and last farewell of Maria.

Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of fine forms: affliction had touched her looks with something that was scarce earthly; still she was feminine; and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for, in woman, that,