got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it returned so strong 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; but 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 senses 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 more to herself;-still she could not rest-her poor daughter, she said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road.

-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 postilion to turn back into the road.

When we had got within half a league of Moulines,

THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY

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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—a small brook ran at the foot of the tree.

I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulines; 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 silk net. She had superadded likewise, to her jacket, a pale green ribband, 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 had 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 sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief. — I then steeped it in my own,-and then in hers

and then in mine,-and then I wiped hers 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.