youth (if such movements of the feelings can be called reason)" my betrothed, be consumed by vile worms, and I not see the loveliness she must have carried to the grave ? She died but yesterday—she must still be beautiful!—Yes! I will see her once again! I will once again press those lips, though they be cold-cold !"

At a late hour he secretly left his father's house for the well-known church-alas! he was to have been married there! A handful of gold gained over the sacristano, who unlocked the door of the temple and retired. Gherardo stood alone, a few paces from Bianca's tomb. A few lamps burned here and there dimly before the effigies of the Virgin Mother and of the more conspicuous saints; the moon shed an uncertain light through the painted glass of the lofty and narrow Gothic windows; but away among the massy columns, and through the long aisles of the church, there fell the obscurity of "the valley of the shadow of death;" and sounds there were none, save the fast-coming sighs of the hapless lover. The hour, the spot, the awful stillness, were all calculated to overpower the mind with indescribable emotion; the age was one of extreme superstition, and our young soldier's philosophy had not taught him to rise superior to the popular credence; the state of his feelings, too—and nothing is more imaginative or creative of ideal horrors than a certain stage of grief-contributed to delude the senses: and as the cressets trembled, and the moonlight, strangely coloured by the stained glass through which it passed, gleamed now brighter, and now fainter-now resting on this object of somewhat grotesque architecture of the church, now on that--he saw, or fancied, the spirits of the departed rising one by one, and mournfully waving their hands, as if warning him against a sacrilegious intrusion on the regions of the dead. Through the postern door by which he had entered, and which the sacristano had lest a-jar, there suddenly blew a gust of the fresh night-breeze, that, moaning among the columns and over the hollow marble pavement

of the church, sounded in his ear like a voice, but not of earth-like the united lamentations of sad, or guilt-burdened spirits. He clung to one of the pillars for support, and was for some moments incapable of motion. His natural courage, and the intenseness of the feeling and purpose that had brought him thither, soon, however, came to his aid, and he strode with hasty steps to the cappella, or lateral recess of the temple, beneath which was the tomb of his bride's family. Here, in this deep recess, the moon could not shed a beam; but he was guided to the door of the sepulchre by a lamp that flickered on the altar of the cappella. Hurried, breathless, he laid his hand upon that door; massy, and bound with heavy iron and with bronze, it required a great effort to open it-he pressed his muscular shoulder against it-it receded; but as it turned on its unwilling hinges, it produced a hoarse rumbling sound that echoed like thunder in the vault beneath, and caused him to start back with trembling limbs and cold sweat on his brow. Again, however, desperation-love-the determination to see the lifeless form of his beloved, conquered his awe and the repugnance for disturbing the peace of the grave; yet he paused, ere he plunged into the horrible, palpable obscurity that lay beyond the door of the tomb, and, crossing himself, murmured a prayer to the blessed Virgin who saw his wo, and might pity or pardon his sacrilegious audacity. He then rushed down a few steps through a short dark passage,-and, himself like a spectre, entered the narrow chamber of death. A lamp beneath a crucifix burned at the head of the avello or sarcophagus of Bianca, and a grated window near the roof of the vault admitted the rays of the moon, that fell almost perpendicularly on that cold white marble. He grasped at once the heavy cover of the coffin-had he hesitated, he might have been effectually deterred from completing his sad, wild enterprise. His nervous arms removed the weight, and then his eyes rested on the shrouded form of his Bianca, whose head was enveloped in a veil of pure white, and her

"decent limbs composed" beneath an ample white robe. His brain reeled at the sight-and the lamp which he had grasped fell from his hand.

When he recovered strength to proceed, the light from the grated window fell full in the open coffin; and, as his trembling hands withdrew the veil, a clear broad ray of the moon illumined the face of his lovely bride. *** And could this be death? Why even thus she looked when life and love coursed through her young veins!—even thus, when after a day of joy she slept a balmy sleep, a night of peace! And were not the long loose tresses crossed on her innocent bosom the same as erst—and the pale smooth brow, and the broad eye-lids, with their long black fringes, and the cherub mouth, with lips slightly apart, as if smiling in some blissful dream! "No, this cannot be death!" cried Gherardo, deliriously; "She sleeps--she only sleeps!-Oh wake! in pity, wake, my Bianca-my love-my wife!" He was silent for a moment, and gazed on her beautiful moon-lit countenance, as if expecting she would really rise at his passionate adjuration. "Bianca!" continued he, "my own Bianca! why dost thou slumber thus !—dost thou await the warm kisses of thy lover to awaken thee? I give them thee!" and throwing himseif across the marble coffin, he pressed his quivering lips to hers. But how did his whole soul rush to his mouth, when he fancied he felt the breath of life on those pale lips! He pressed them again-if it was a delusion, it continued-for the mildest, the most subdued of breathings seemed to pass from her lips to his. He raised her from the sarcophagushe placed his hand on her heart—and language has no power to paint his emotions, when he felt-plainly felt that heart palpitate beneath his hand! Another moment, and her eyes opened, whilst a low murmur escaped her lips. Gherardo clasped her wildly in his embrace, and leaned for support against the sarcophagus, where, as they stood, mute, motionless, and pale, almost like statues, in the moon-light, it would have been difficult to tell which of the two, or

whether both, had not been awakened from the sleep of death.

The CHRONICLER'S TALE is told. The ignorance of the physicians, and the immediate sepulture after death, usual in the south, had consigned Bianca to the grave, from which the passion and impetuosity of her lover saved her so opportunely. The fair Venetian passed almost at once from the marble sarcophagus to the nuptial bed of silk and velvet. The church, where the echoes of her funeral dirge might almost seem yet to linger, pealed with the notes of her hymeneals; and her bridal coronet of white roses was supplied by the tree that had furnished flowers for her funeral.

FIROUZ-ABDEL.

A TALE OF THE UPAS TREE.

BY DAVID LYNDSAY.

URGE me not, oh friend of a little morn, again to look abroad into that world, from which I have had the courage to banish myself for ever. Pity me not, for it is not I who am the exile, but the world which I have shut out from my kingdom. I am a Sovereign Prince triumphant over rebels, and have driven for ever from my presence, the children of your earth-fraud, oppression, and falsehood. Is it not better to live among savages, than to die by the hands of civilized men? Such would have been my destiny, for such was the doom from which I escaped to this prison of the sea, and its wild, but still human inhabitants.

What are the advantages of which you so often speak— talent, rank, birth? Alas! I regarded them once, but it was before the air of the Poison Tree had blown away the film from mine eyes, and taught me the reality of their value; ere I had knocked at the gates of death, and glanced into that world where such dross is trampled under foot. O truth, hardly won; knowledge, dearly purchased, thou hast really become priceless to me; thou art, indeed, the source of true wisdom.

For the history of my family it may suffice to tell thee, that in one of the popular commotions unhappily so frequent in Ispahan, my father, Esref Khan, of the royal house, retired from the fruitful banks of the Zenderhend, never more to revisit them, in order to preserve his beloved wife and infant