aching limbs, and though weak and delicate from constant confinement and the poison of melancholy thoughts, she had acquired an unusual power in her arms, from the habit of lifting her old and suffering father out of and into his bed of pain. Thus passed away her early youth in sorrow: she grew up in tears, a stranger to the amusements of youth, and its more delightful schemes and imaginations. She was not, however, unhappy: she attributed, indeed, no merit to herself for her virtues, but for that reason were they the more her reward. The peace which passeth all understanding, disclosed itself in all her looks and movements. It lay on her countenance, like a steady unshadowed moonlight; and her voice, which was naturally at once sweet and subtle, came from her, like the fine flute-tones of a masterly performer which still floating at some uncertain distance, seem to be created by the player, rather than to proceed from the instrument. If you had listened to it in one of those brief sabbaths of the soul, when the activity and discursiveness of the thoughts are suspended, and the mind quietly eddies round, instead of flowing onward—(as at late evening in the spring I have seen a bat wheel in silent circles round and round a fruit-tree in full blossom, in the midst of which, as within a close tent of the purest white, an unseen nightingale was piping its sweetest notes)-in such a mood you might have half-fancied, half-felt, that her voice had a separate being of its own-that it was a living something, whose mode of existence was for the ear only: so deep was her resignation, so entirely had it become the unconscious habit of her nature, and in all she did or said, so perfectly L were both her movements and her utterance without effort and without the appearance of effort! Her dying father's last words, addressed to the clergyman who attended him, were his grateful testimony, that during his long and sore trial his good Maria had behaved to him like an angel: that the most disagreeable offices and the least suited to her age and sex, had never drawn an unwilling look from her, and that whenever his eye had met her's, he had been sure to see in it either the tear of pity or the sudden smile expressive of her affection and wish to cheer him. God (said he) will reward the good girl for all her long dutifulness to me! He departed during the inward prayer, which followed these his last words. His wish will be fulfilled in eternity; but for this world the prayer of the dying man was not heard. Maria sate and ept by the grave, which now contained her father, her friend, the only bond by which she was linked to life. But while yet the last sound of his death-bell was murmuring away in the air, she was obliged to return with two Revenue Officers, who demanded entrance into the house, in order to take possession of the papers of the deceased, and from them to discover whether he had always given in his income, and paid the yearly income tax according to his oath, and in proportion to his property.* C B. *This tax called the Losung or Ransom, in Nuremburg, was at first a voluntary contribution: every one gave according to his liking or circumstances; but in the beginning of the 15th century the heavy contribution levied for the ser After the few documents had been looked through and collated with the registers, the officers found, or pretended to find, sufficient proofs, that the deceased had not paid his tax proportionably, which imposed on them the duty to put all the effects under lock and seal. They therefore desired the maiden to retire to an empty room, till the Ransom Office had decided on the affair. Bred up in suffering, and habituated to immediate compliance, the affrighted and weeping maiden obeyed. She hastened to the empty garret, while the Revenue Officers placed the lock and seal upon the other doors, and finally took away the papers to the Ransom Office. Not before evening did the poor faint Maria, exhausted with weeping, ronse herself with the intention of going to her bed: ut she found the door of her chamber sealed up and must pass the night on the floor of the garret. The officers had had the humanity to place at the door the small portion of food that happened to be in the house. Thus passed several days, till the officers returned with an order that MARIA ELEONORA SCHONING should leave the house without delay, the commission Court having confiscated the whole property to the City Treasury. The father before he was bed-ridden had never possessed any considerable property; but yet, by his industry, had been able not only to keep himself free from debt, but to lay up a small sum for the evil day. Three years of evil days, three whole years of sickness, had consumed the greatest part of this; yet still enough remained not only to defend his daughter from immediate want, but likewise to maintain her till she could get into some service or employment, and have recovered her spirits sufficiently to bear up against the hardships of life. With this thought the dying father comforted himself, and this hope too proved vain! A timid girl, whose past life had been made up of sorrow and privation, she went indeed to solicit the commissioners in her own behalf; but these were, as is mostly the case on the Continent, advocates—the most hateful class, perhaps, of human society, hardened by the frequent sight of misery, and seldom superior in moral character to English pettifoggers or Old Bailey attorneys. She went to them, indeed, but not a word could she say for herself. Her tears and inarticulate sounds-for these her judges had no ears or eyes. Mute and confounded, like an unfledged dove fallen out from its mother's nest, Maria betook herself to her home, and found the house-door too now shut upon her. Her whole wealth consisted in vice of the empire, forced the magistrates to determine the in which this event took place, 1787, every citizen must yearproportions and make the payment compulsory. At the time ly take what was called his Ransom Oath (Losungseid) that the sum paid by him had been in the strict determinate proportion to his property. On the death of any citizen, the Ransom Office, or commissioners for this income or property tax, possess the right to examine his books and papers, and to compare his yearly payment as found in their registers with the property he appears to have possessed during that time. If any disproportion appeared, if the yearly declarations of the deceased should have been inaccurate in the least degree, his whole effects are confiscated, and though he should have left wife and child the state treasury becomes his heir dered her utterly unable to resist. The monster left her in a trance of stupefaction, and into her right hand, which she had clenched convulsively, he had forced a half-dollar. the clothes she wore. She had no relations to whom ter became the victim to brutal violence, which she could apply, for those of her mother had disclaim-weeping and watching and cold and hunger had ren ed all acquaintance with her, and her father was a Nether Saxon by birth. She had no acquaintance, for all the friends of old Schoning had forsaken him in the first year of his sickness. She had no play-fellow, for who was likely to have been the companion of a nurse in the room of a sick man? Surely, since the creation never was a human being more solitary and forsaken, than this innocent poor creature, that now roamed about friendless in a populous city, to the whole of whose inhabitants her filial tenderness, her patient domestic goodness, and all her soft yet difficult virtues, might well have been the model. "But homeless near a thousand homes she stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food!" The night came, and Maria knew not where to find a shelter. She tottered to the church-yard of the St. James' Church in Nuremburg, where the body of her father rested. Upon the yet grassless grave she threw herself down; and could anguish have prevailed over youth, that night she had been in heaven. The day came, and like a guilty thing, this guiltless, this good being, stole away from the crowd that began to pass through the church-yard, and hastening through the streets to the city gate, she hid herself behind a garden hedge just beyond it, and there wept away the second day of her desolation. The evening closed in the pang of hunger made itself felt amid the dull aching of self-wearied anguish, and drove the sufferer back again into the city. Yet what could she gain there? She had not the courage to beg, and the very thought of stealing never occurred to her innocent mind. Scarce conscious whither she was going, or why she went, she found herself once more by her father's grave, as the last relict of evening faded away in the horizon. I have sate for some minutes with my pen resting: I can scarce summon the courage to tell, what I scarce know, whether I ought to tell. Were I composing a tale of fiction, the reader might justly suspect the purity of my own heart, and most certainly would have abundant right to resent such an incident, as an outrage wantonly offered to his imagination. As I think of the circumstance, it seems more like a distempered dream: but alas! what is guilt so detestable other than a dream of madness, that worst madness, the madness of the heart? I can not but believe, that the dark and restless passions must first have drawn the mind in upon themselves, and as with the confusion of imperfect sleep, have in some strange manner taken away the sense of reality, in order to render it possible for a human being to perpetrate what it is too certain that human beings have perpetrated. The church-yards in most of the German cities and too often, I fear, in those of our own country, are not more injurious to health than to morality. Their former venerable character is no more. The religion of the place has followed its superstitions, and their darkness and loneliness tempt worse spirits to roam in them than those whose nightly wanderings appalled the believing hearts of our brave forefathers! It was close by the new-made grave of her father, that the meek and spotless daugh It was one of the darkest nights of autumn: in the deep and dead silence the only sounds audible were the slow, blunt ticking of the church clock, and now and then the sinking down of bones in the migh char nel house. Maria, when she had in some degree recovered her senses, sate upon the grave near which not her innocence had been sacrificed, but that which, from the frequent admonitions, and almost the dying words of her father, she had been accustomed to consider as such. Guiltless, she felt the pangs of guilt, and still continued to grasp the coin, which the monster had left in her hand, with an anguish as sure as if it had been indeed the wages of voluntary prostitution. Giddy and faint from want of food, her brain became feverish from sleeplessness, and this unexampled concurrence of calamities, this compl cation and entanglement of misery in misery! she imagined that she heard her father's voice bidding her leave his sight. His last blessings had been condi tional, for in his last hours he had told her, that the loss of her innocence would not let him rest quiet in his grave. His last blessings now sounded in her ears like curses, and she fled from the church-yard as if a demon had been chasing her; and hurrying along the streets, through which it is probable her ac cursed violator had walked with quiet and orderly step to his place of rest and security, she was seized by the watchman of the night-a welcome prey, s they receive in Nuremburg half a gulden from the police chest, for every woman that they find in the streets after ten o'clock at night. It was midnight, and she was taken to the next watch-house. The sitting magistrate, before whom she was car *It must surely have been after hearing or of witnessing some similar event or scene of wretchedness, hat the moal eloquent of our Writers (I had almost said of our Posts Jeremy Taylor, wrote the following paragraph, which at least in Longinus's sense of the word, we may place among the most sublime passages in English Literature. "He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he be in love with that world we need not despair but that a witty man might recom cile him with tortures, and make him think charitably of the rack, and be brought to admire the harmony that is made by a herd of evening wolves when they miss their draught of blood in their midnight revels. The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse than all these; and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse than those groans: and va a careless merry sinner is worse than all that. But if we could from one of the battlements of Heaven espy, how many men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for wint of bread, how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war; how many orphans are now weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life they were enabled to est; if we could but hear how many mariners and passengers are at this present time in a storm, and shriek out because ther keel dashes against a rock, or bulges under them; how many people there are that weep with want, and are mad with op pression, or are desperate by a too quick sense of a constan infelicity; in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils. This is a place of sorrow and tears, of great evils and constant calamities: t us remove hence, at least in affections and preparations of mind. Holy Dying, Chap. 1. Sect. 5. ried the next morning, prefaced his question with the weariness and rise up to labor; for whom this world most opprobrious title that ever belonged to the most provides no other comfort but sleep which enables hardened street-walkers, and which man born of them to forget it; no other physician but death, woman should not address even to these, were it but which takes them out of it! She was married to one for his own sake. The frightful name awakened the of the city guards, who, like Maria's father, had been poor orphan from her dream of guilt, it brought back long sick and bed-ridden. Him, herself, and two lit the consciousness of her innocence, but with it the tle children, she had to maintain by washing and sense likewise of her wrongs and of her helplessness. charing;* and sometime after Maria had been domesThe cold hand of death seemed to grasp her, she ticated with them, Harlin told her that she herself fainted dead away at his feet, and was not without had been once driven to a desperate thought by the difficulty recovered. The magistrate was so far soft-cry of her hungry children, during a want of employened, and only so far, as to dismiss her for the pre-ment, and that she had been on the point of killing sent; but with a menace of sending her to the House of Correction if she were brought before him a second time. The idea of her own innocence now became uppermost in her mind; but mingling with the thought of her utter forlornness, and the image of her angry father, and doubtless still in a state of bewilderment, she formed the resolution of drowning herself in the river Pegnitz-in order (for this was the shape which her fancy had taken) to throw herself at her father's feet, and to justify her innocence to him in the World of Spirits. She hoped that her father would speak for her to the Saviour, and that she should be forgiven. But as she was passing through the suburb, she was met by a soldier's wife, who during the life-time of her father had been occasionally employed in the house as a char-woman. This poor woman was startled at the disordered apparel, and more disordered looks of her young mistress, and questioned her with such an anxious and heartfelt tenderness, as at once brought back the poor orphan to her natural feelings and the obligations of religion. As a frightened child throws itself into the arms of its mother, and hiding its head on her breast, half tells amid sobs what has happened to it, so did she throw herself on the neck of the woman who had I uttered the first words of kindness to her since her father's death, and with loud weeping she related what she had endured and what she was about to have done, told her all her affliction and misery, the wormwood and the gall! Her kind-hearted friend mingled tears with tears, pressed the poor forsakenone to her heart; comforted her with sentences out of the hymn-book; and with the most affectionate entreaties conjured her to give up her horrid purpose, for that life was short, and heaven was for ever. Maria had been bred up in the fear of God: she now trembled at the thought of her former purpose, and followed her friend Harlin, for that was the name of her guardian angel, to her home hard by. The moment she entered the door she sank down and lay at her full length, as if only to be motionless in a place of shelter had been the fulness of delight. As when a withered leaf, that has been long whirled about by the gusts of autumn, is blown into a cave or hollow tree, it stops suddenly, and all at once looks the very image of quiet-such might this poor orphan appear to the eye of a meditative imagination. A place of shelter she had attained, and a friend willing to comfort her, all that she could: but the noble-hearted Harlin was herself a daughter of calamity, one who from year to year must lie down in one of the little ones, and then surrendering herself into the hands of justice. In this manner, she had conceived, all would be well provided for; the surviving child would be admitted, as a matter of course, into the Orphan House, and her husband into the Hospital; while she herself would have atoned for her act by a public execution, and together with the child that she had destroyed, would have passed into a state of bliss. All this she related to Maria, and those tragic ideas left but too deep and lasting impression on her mind. Weeks after, she herself renewed the conversation, by expressing to her benefactress her inability to conceive how it was possible for one human being to take away the life of another, especially that of an innocent little child. For that reason, replied Harlin, because it was so innocent and so good, I wished to put it out of this wicked world. Thinkest thou then that I would have my head cut off for the sake of a wicked child? Therefore it was little Nan, that I meant to have taken with me, who, as you see, is always so sweet and patient; little Frank has already his humors and naughty tricks, and suits better for this world. This was the answer. Maria brooded awhile over it in silence, then passionately snatched the children up in her arms, as if she would protect them against their own mother. For one whole year the orphan lived with the soldier's wife, and by their joint labors barely kept off absolute want. As a little boy (almost a child in size, though in his thirteenth year) once told me of himself, as he was guiding me up the Brocken, in the Hartz Forest, they had but “little of that, of which a great deal tells but for little." But now came the second winter, and with it came bad times, a season of trouble for this poor and meritorious household. The wife now fell sick: too constant and too hard labor, too scanty and too innutritious food, had gradually wasted away her strength. Maria redoubled her efforts in order to provide bread and fuel for their washing which they took in; but the task was above her powers. Besides, she was so timid and so agitated at the sight of strangers, that sometimes, with the best good-will, she was left without employment. One by one, every article of the least value which they possessed was sold off, except the bed on which the husband lay. He died just before the approach of spring; but about the same time the wife gave *I am ignorant, whether there be any classical authority for this word; but I know no other word that expresses occasional day labor in the houses of others. with a brutal laugh bade her expect on the morrow the unmanly punishment, which to the disgrace of human nature the laws of Protestant states 'alar. even those of our own country.) inflict on female vagrants, that she came to deliver herself up as an infanticide. She was instantly taken before the mag signs of convalescence. The physician, though almost as poor as his patients, had been kind to them: silver and gold had he none, but he occasionally brought a little wine, and often assured them that nothing was wanting to her perfect recovery, but better nourishment and a little wine every day. This, however, could not be regularly procured, and Har-istrate, through as wild and pitiless a storm as ever lin's spirits sank, and as her bodily pain left her she pelted on a houseless head! through as black and became more melancholy, silent, and self-involved. “tyrannous a night," as ever aided the workings of a And now it was that Maria's mind was incessantly heated brain! Here she confessed that she had been racked by the frightful apprehension, that her friend delivered of an infant by the soldier's wife, Harin, might be again meditating the accomplishment of her that she deprived it of life in the presence of Haria former purpose. She had grown as passionately fond and according to a plan preconcerted with her, and of the two children as if she had borne them under that Harlin had buried it somewhere in the wood, but her own heart; but the jeopardy in which she con- where she knew not. During this strange tale she ceived her friend's salvation to stand-this was her appeared to listen with a mixture of fear and satisfacpredominant thought. For all the hopes and fears, tion, to the howling of the wind; and never sure which under a happier lot would have been asso- could a confession of real guilt have been accomciated with the objects of the senses, were trans-panied by a more dreadfully appropriate music. At ferred, by Maria, to her notions and images of a the moment of her apprehension she had formed the future state. In the beginning of March, one bitter cold evening, Maria started up and suddenly left the house. The last morsel of food had been divided betwixt the two children for their breakfast; and for the last hour or more the little boy had been crying for hunger, while his gentler sister had been hiding her face in Maria's lap, and pressing her little body against her knees, in order by that mechanic pressure to dull the aching from emptiness. The tender-hearted and visionary maiden had watched the mother's eye, and had interpreted several of her sad and steady looks according to her preconceived apprehensions. She had conceived all at once the strange and enthusiastic thought, that she would in some way or other offer her own soul for the salvation of the soul of her friend. The money, which had been left in her hand, flashed upon the eye of her mind, as a single unconnected image: and faint with hunger and shivering with cold, she sallied forth-in search of guilt! Awful are the dispensations of the Supreme, and in his severest judgments the hand of mercy is visible. It was a night so wild with wind and rain, or rather rain and snow mixed together, that a famished wolf would have stayed in his cave, and listened to a howl more fearful than his own. Forlorn Maria! thou wert kneeling in pious simplicity at the grave of thy father, and thou becamest the prey of a monster! Innocent thou wert and without guilt didst thou remain. Now thou goest forth of thy own accord-but God will have pity on thee! Poor bewildered innocent! in thy spotless imagination dwelt no distinct conception of the evil which thou wentest forth to brave! To save the soul of thy friend was the dream of thy feverish brain, and thou wert again apprehended as an outcast of shameless sensuality, at the moment when thy too spiritualized fancy was busied with the glorified forms of thy friend and of her little ones interceding for thee at the throne of the Redeemer! At this moment her perturbed fancy suddenly suggested to her a new mean for the accomplishment of her purpose: and she replied to the night-watch, who scheme of helping her friend out of the world in a state of innocence. When the soldier's widow was confronted with the orphan, and the latter had re peated her confession to her face, Harlin answered in these words, "For God's sake, Maria! how have I deserved this of thee?" Then turning to the magstrate, said, “I know nothing of this." This was the sole answer which she gave, and not another word could they extort from her. The instruments of toture were brought, and Harlin was warned, that ɗ she did not confess of her own accord, the truth would be immediately forced from her. This menace convulsed Maria Schoning with affright: her intertion had been to emancipate herself and her friend from a life of unmixed suffering, without the crime of suicide in either, and with no guilt at all on the part of her friend. The thought of her friend's being put to the torture had not occurred to her. Wildly and eagerly she pressed her friend's hands, already bound in preparation for the torture-she pressed them in agony between her own, and said to her, "Anna! confess it! Anna, dear Anna! it will then be well with all of us! and Frank and little Nan will be put into the Orphan House! Maria's scheme now passed, like a flash of lightning through the widow's mind, she acceded to it at once, kissed Mars repeatedly, and then serenely turning her face to the judge, acknowledged that she had added to the guilt by so obstinate a denial, that all her friend had sad. had been true, save only that she had thrown the dead infant into the river, and not buried it in the wood. They were both committed to prison, and as they both persevered in their common confession, the process was soon made out and the condemnation followed the trial: and the sentence, by which they were both to be beheaded with the sword, was order ed to be put in force on the next day but one. On the morning of the execution, the delinquents were brought together, in order that they might be recol ciled with each other, and join in common prayer fur forgiveness of their common guilt. But now Maria's thoughts took another turn. The them to stop the execution: that the whole story had been invented by herself; that she had never brought forth, much less destroyed an infant; that for her friend's sake she had made this discovery; that for herself she wished to die, and would die gladly, if they would take away her friend, and promise to free her soul from the dreadful agony of having murdered her friend by false witness. The executioner asked Harlin, if there were any truth in what Maria Schoning had said. The Heroine answered with manifest reluctance: "most assuredly she has said the truth: I confessed myself guilty, because I wished to die and thought it best for both of us: and now that my hope is on the moment of its accomplishment, I cannot be supposed to declare myself innocent for the sake of saving my life-but any wretchedness is to be endured rather than that poor creature should be hurried out of the world in a state of despair." idea that her benefactress, that so very good a woman, should be violently put out of life, and this with an infamy on her name which would cling for ever to the little orphans, overpowered her. Her own excessive desire to die scarcely prevented her from discovering the whole plan; and when Harlin was left alone with her, and she saw her friend's calm and affectionate look, her fortitude was dissolved: she burst into a loud and passionate weeping, and throwing herself into her friend's arms, with convulsive sobs she entreated her forgiveness. Harlin pressed the poor agonized girl to her arms; like a tender mother, she kissed and fondled her wet cheeks, and in the most solemn and emphatic tones assured her, that there was nothing to forgive. On the contrary, she was ber greatest benefactress and the instrument of God's goodness to remove her at once from a miserable world and from the temptation of committing a heavy crime. In vain! Her repeated promises that The outcry of the attending populace prevailed to she would answer before God for them both, could suspend the execution: a report was sent to the asnot pacify the tortured conscience of Maria, till at sembled magistrates, and in the mean time one of the length the presence of a clergyman and the prepara- priests reproached the widow in bitter words for her tions for receiving the sacrament occasioned the wi- former false confession. "What," she replied sterndow to address her thus-"See, Maria! this is the ly, but without anger, "what could the truth have Body and Blood of Christ, which takes away all sin! availed? Before I perceived my friend's purpose I Let us partake together of this holy repast with full did deny it: my assurance was pronounced an imputrust in God and joyful hope of our approaching hap-dent lie: I was already bound for the torture, and so piness." These words of comfort, uttered with cheer-bound that the sinews of my hands started, and one ing tones, and accompanied with a look of inexpressi- of their worships in the large white peruke, threatenble tenderness and serenity, brought back peace for ed that he would have me stretched till the sun shone a while to her troubled spirit. They communicated through me! and that then I should cry out, Yes, together, and on parting, the magnanimous woman when it was too late." The priest was hard-hearted once more embraced her young friend: then stretch- or superstitious enough to continue his reproofs, to ing her hand toward Heaven, said, "Be tranquil, Ma- which the noble woman condescended no further anria! by to-morrow morning we are there, and all our swer. The other clergyman, however, was both sorrows stay here behind us." more rational and more humane. He succeeded in I hasten to the scene of execution: for I anticipate silencing his colleague, and the former half of the my reader's feelings in the exhaustion of my own long hour, which the magistrates took in making heart. Serene and with unaltered countenance the speeches on the improbability of the tale instead of lofty-minded Harlin heard the strokes of the death- re-examining the culprits in person, he employed in bell, stood before the scaffold while the staff was bro- gaining from the widow a connected account of all ken over her, and at length ascended the steps, all the circumstances, and in listening occasionally to with a steadiness and tranquillity of manner which Maria's passionate descriptions of all her friend's was not more distant from fear than from defiance goodness and magnanimity. For she had gained an and bravado. Altogether different was the state of influx of life and spirit from the assurance in her poor Maria: with shattered nerves and an agonizing mind, both that she had now rescued Harlin from conscience that incessantly accused her as the mur- death and was about to expiate the guilt of her pur deress of her friend, she did not walk but staggered pose by her own execution. For the latter half of towards the scaffold, and stumbled up the steps. the time the clergyman remained in silence, lost in While Harlin, who went first, at every step turned thought, and momently expecting the return of the her head round and still whispered to her, raising her messenger. All which during the deep silence of eyes to heaven," but a few minutes, Maria! and this interval could be heard, was one exclamation of we are there!" On the scaffold she again bade her Harlin to her unhappy friend—” Oh, Maria! Maria! farewell, again repeating, "Dear Maria! but one couldst thou have kept up thy courage but for anominute now, and we are together with God." But ther minute, we should have been now in heaven! when she knelt down and her neck was bared for The messenger came back with an order from the the stroke, the unhappy girl lost all self-command, and magistrates to proceed with the execution! With with a loud and piercing shriek she bade them hold re-animated countenance Harlin placed her neck on and not murder the innocent. "She is innocent! I the block, and her head was severed from her body have borne false witness! I alone am the murderess!" amid a general shriek from the crowd. The execuShe rolled herself now at the feet of the executioner, tioner fainted after the blow, and the under-hangman and now at those of the clergyman, and conjured, was ordered to take his place. He was not wanted. |