paniments of an English dress, and tamed by the meek offices of our country's excellent morality. Her eye was still drunk with light as when morning comes upon the streams, but it waited and took commands from the looks of her mild hostess. The footstep of the reclaimed wanderer might still be light and airy, but now she went about the house softly, under an excellent ministry. In health she became Mrs Mather's delight, and still more so when the infirmities of the good old lady required delicate attentions. Like the glorious Una of Spenser's Fairy Queen, the kind eyes of this beautiful Italian, even amidst affliction, " made a light in a shady place."

Frederick Hume forgot not his promise to wait upon Signora Romelli, and inform her, that his minstrel-patient was quite well on the morning after the day when he was ill in her house. At the same time, he presented a card from Mrs Mather, requesting a mutual acquaintanceship. A friendly intercourse grew up accordingly, and, ere the fall of the season, Signor Romelli and his daughter were at least once every week at Greenwells Cottage, to the huge dismay of Miss Pearce, but the delight of our young surgeon, who began most deeply to love the beautiful Julia Romelli. She was taller and fairer than the maid Cardo: her locks were nut-brown: her eye was a rich compromise betwixt the raven and the blue dove, a deep violet,

"like Pandora's eye,

When first it darken'd with immortal life."

She was quick, capricious, and proud; bold in her pouting displeasure, which was like a glancing day of sunshine and stormy showers: but then she was ardent in her friendships, and very benevolent; ready, withal, nay in haste, to confess her faults, in which case her amende honorable, and her prayer for pardon, were perfectly irresistible. A heart of her ambition, and so difficult to be won, insensibly exalted her in the eyes of the dashing and manly Frederick; who, without any ostensible calculation of selfish vanity, loved her the more deeply, that she was a conquest worthy of boldest youth. Notwithstanding her superior qualifica tions, and the ardour of his suit, we infer that the fair Julia kept shy and aloof, and at the same time that her lover was only the more deeply determined to make her his, from the circumstance that, in a few months, he had condescended to calculate how he stood in her father's affections, and was studious to accommodate himself to the manner of the Signor, who was grave in his deportment, and almost saturnine, seldom moved to smiles, and never to

laughter; and who, though he could talk fluently, and with eloquence, seemed, in general, to wear some severe constraint upon his spirit.

CHAPTER II.

THINGS were in this state when the winter session came round, which called Frederick to Edinburgh, to prosecute still farther his medical studies. The summer following he continued in town studying botany; and after making a tour through the Highlands of Scotland, it was about the middle of autumn ere he returned to Greenwells Cottage.

He found Charlotte Cardo improved in beauty and accomplishments, and advanced in favour with every one who knew her; even Miss Pearce herself condescended to patronize her publicly and privately. But what pleased him most of all, was to find that Julia Romelli was still a frequent visiter at the Cottage. The season of harvest too, had given a vacation to Mr Bailie's scholars, and Antonio Cardo was now at home beside his sister; and the harp and the song of the Italian twins were not forgotten when the sweet gloaming came on. Deeply occupied in spirit as Hume was with thoughts of his fair and shy Signora, he was yet constrained to attend to the abrupt and strange manifestation of Antonio's character, which broke forth, from time to time, mocking the grave tenor of his ordinary behaviour. According to his reverend tutor's statement, he had been a very diligent scholar; and he testified it thus far, that he talked English with great force and propriety. With the boys of his own age he had consorted little, and seemed to take no delight in conversing with any one, though now and then he would talk a few minutes to the old men of the village, and sometimes to the children. He was now equally taciturn at Mr Mather's; but occasionally he broke forth, expressing himself in rapid and earnest eloquence, and showing a wonderful power of illustrating any point. From his manner altogether towards Miss Romelli, his devoted attentions at one time, and at another his proud shyness; and from his dignified refusal, often, to play on the harp when Hume wished to dance with that lady, Frederick could not but guess that he was a rival candidate for Julia's love. But the most striking and unaccountable demonstration of the boy's character, was the visible paleness which came over his face, the current-the restless flow-of his small features, and the impatience of his attitudes, now shrinking, now swelling into bold and almost threatening pantomime, whenever Signor Romelli came near him. Visibly, too, he was often seen to start when he heard his countryman's deep voice: He spoke to Romelli always with an eloquent

empressement in his tone, as if his thoughts were crowding with his crowding blood: He looked him eagerly in the face: He often went round about him, like an anxious dog.

One night Romelli, more open and talkative than usual, had told two or three stories of the sea, when Antonio, who had listened, with a sharp face, and his whole spirit peering from his eyes, came forward, and sitting down on the carpet before his countryman, looked up in his face, and said, "I will now tell you a legend of the sea, Captain Romelli."

Cardo's Legend,

A RUDE Captain in the South Seas had murdered his mate, an excellent youth, for pretended disobedience of orders; and for this crime God sent the black-winged overtaking tempest, which beat his ship to pieces, and he was cast alone upon a desert island. It was night when he recovered from his drenched dream, and sat down on a green bank above the sea-marge, to reflect on his situation. The storm-racks had fled away: the moon came peering round above the world of seas, and up through the cold, clear wilderness of heaven: the dark tree-tops of the forest, which grew down to the very sands, waved in the silver night. But neither this beauty after the tempest, which should have touched his heart with grateful hope, nor the sense of his deliverance, nor yet the subduing influence of hunger, could soften that mariner's soul; but he sat till morning, unrepentant of his murder, fortifying himself in injustice, hardening his heart, kicking against the pricks. About sunrise he climbed up into a high tree, to look around him. The island, so far as he could see on all sides, seemed one wild and fenceless forest; but there was a high hill, swathed in golden sunlight, perhaps three or four miles inland, which, if he could reach and climb it, would give him a wide prospect, and perhaps show him some inhabited district. To make for this hill, he descended from the tree, and struck into the woods, studious to pursue the straight line of route which he laid down for himself, in order to reach the mountain.

The forest was full of enormous trees, of old prodigious growth, bursting into wild gums, and rough all over with parasitical plants and fungi of every colour, like monstrous livers; whilst up and down the trunks ran strange painted birds, pecking into the bark with their hard bills, and dotting the still air with their multitudinous little blows. Deeper from the engulfed navel of the wood came the solitary cries of more sequestered birds. Onward went the wicked Captain, slowly, and with little caution, because he never doubted that he should easily find the mountain; but rough and

impervious thickets turned him so oft, and so far aside, that gradually he forgot his proposed track, and became quite bewildered. In this perplexity, he again climbed a high tree, to discover the bearing of the hill; but it was no longer to be seen. Nothing was before him and around him, but a boundless expanse of tree-tops, which, under a sky now darkened to a twilight, began to moan and surge like a sea. Descending in haste, he tried to retrace his steps; but this it was out of his power distinctly to do; and he only went deeper into the wood, which began to slope downwards perceptibly. Darkness, in the meantime, thickened among the trees, which were seen standing far ben, as in a dream, crooked in their trunks, like the bodies of old men, and altogether unlike the trees of an upper world. Every thing was ominously still, till all at once the millions of leaves were shaken, as if with small eddying bubbles of wind. Forthwith came the tempest. The jagged lightning lanced the forest-gulfs with its swift and perilous beauty; whilst overhead the thunder was crushed and jammed through the broken heavens, making the living beams of the forest to quiver like reeds. Whether real or imaginary, the wicked Captain thought that he heard, at the same time, the roar of wild beasts, and saw the darkness spotted with their fiery eyes; and to save himself from them, he climbed up into a tree, and sat in its mossy clefts. As the storm above and beneath ranged away, and again drew nearer and nearer, with awful alternations, the heart of the wicked Captain began to whirl within him, tugged at by immediate horrors, and the sense of ultimate consequences, from his helpless situation. In his agony, he twisted himself from branch to branch, like a monkey, braiding his legs, and making rings with his arms; at the same time crying out about his crime, and babbling a sort of delirious repentance. In a moment the tempest was over-blown, and every thing hushed, as if the heavens wished to listen to his contrition. But it was no contrition: nothing but an intoxicated incontinence, a jumble of fear and blasphemy: such a babbling as a man might make if he were drunk with the devil's tears, gathered, as they came glittering like mineral drops down the murky rocks of damnation, in bottles made of the tough hearts of old vindictive queens.-Holy Mother! Do you hear me, Signor Romelli? By the Holy Mother of Grace! you and I, Signor, think he ought to have repented sincerely, do we not?-Well, what next? God does not despise any working of the sinner's heart, when allied, even most remotely, to repentance: and because the wicked Captain had felt the first tearings of remorseful fear, God sent to him, from the white land of sinless children, the young little Cherub of Pity. And when the wicked Captain lifted up his

eyes and looked into the forest, he saw far off, as at the end of a long vista, the radiant child coming on in naked light; and, drawing near, the young Being whispered to him, that he would lead him from the forest, and bring a ship for him, if he would go home, and on his knees confess his crime to the aged parents of the youth whom he had murdered, and be to them as a son, for the only son whom they had lost. The wicked Captain readily vowed to perform these conditions, and so the Babe of Pity led him from the forest, and, taking him to a high promontory above the sea shore, bade him look to the sea :-and the promised ship was seen hanging like a patch of sunshine on the far blue rim of the waters. As she came on and came near, the heart of the wicked Captain was again hardened within him, and he determined not to perform his vow.

"Your heart has again waxed obdurate," said the Figure, who still lived before him like a little white dial in the sun; " and I shall now turn the ship away, for I have her helm in my hand. Look now, and tell me what thou seest in the sea." The wicked Captain looked for the ship, but she had melted away from off the waters; and when he turned, in his blind fury, to lay hold on the White Babe, it was vanished too.

"Come back to me, thou imp," cried the hungry blasphemer, whilst his face waxed grim with wild passions, "or I will hurl this dagger at the face of the Almighty." So saying, he drew a sharp clear dagger from his side, and pointing it upwards, threw it with all his might against the sky. It was now the calm and breathless noontide, and when this impious dagger was thrown up, not a breeze was stirring in the forest skirts or on beaked promontory; but ere it fell, a whirling spiral blast of wind came down from the mid-sky, and, catching the dagger, took it away glittering up into the blue bosom of heaven. Struck with a new horror, despite of his hardened heart, the wicked Captain stood looking up to heaven after his dagger, when there fell upon his face five great drops of blood, as if from the five wounds of Christ. And in the same minute, as he was trying to wipe away this Baptism of Wrath, he reeled and fell from the lofty promontory where he stood into the sea, into the arms of the youth whom he had murdered and thrown overboard, and whose corpse had been brought hither by the tides and the wandering winds. So the wicked Captain sunk for ever in the waters.

"Now, Signor Romelli," said the boy Antonio, after a brief pause," what do you think of my Legend?"

Ere an answer could be returned, a broad sheet of lightning