I returned and saw that place, but the tale must rest unfinished for ever and

ever.

There were two sisters in the ancient town
That reigns upon a hundred sea-girt isles;
The one, with locks of sunny auburn-brown
And lips for ever budding into smiles,
And rosy cheeks, and skin as ivory white.
She was perfection-save that she was blind.
In her blue eye there dwelt no sunny light,
But a vague look, all cold and undefined.
Her sister was her senior-taller she
And darker-colder, but no less admired;
For she had eyes, though proud, yet fair to see
As ever eyes that hopeless love inspired.
The people, when they named them, used to
say,

"The mild Bianca"-" Isabel the Proud;"
And they were counted fairest (by the gay
Nobles of Vonice) of the floating crowd
Of gondola-borne beauties, that all day
Flowed down the watery pathways with the
tide

In that old city of extended sway, "Queen of the Isles" and the old Ocean's bride."

For long after I read this I sat musing and guessing how the tale would finish-how to fill up the landscape, of which life lighted up a portion, while death darkened the remainder.

Would those two sisters have loved the same young noble? and would the proud Isabel have spoken false words to her sister, and would she have believed them, and left him to wed Isabel, or would she have still loved on; and would it have ended like the ballad that our dear mother used to sing over our little bed-the song, with its sad, strange burden of "Binnorie, oh! Binnorie!" Or would some villain of

the " gay nobles of Venice" have tried to deceive the trusting Bianca; and would Isabel's sisterly love have burst forth in one angry blow, that laid the deceiver at her feet; or would the Prince of some rich land have wooed Isabel, and would she, in her love for her poor, helpless sister, have refused him; and then would he have promised to take Bianca, too, to dwell with her sister-and then would he have fallen in love with Bianca, and would they have fled from Isabel-and would she have pursued them-and then the gleam of a dagger—a staband a sister's blood on the blade; but Bianca might have refused to leave Venice, or, if she had, she might not have listened to the wicked Prince—and yet he might not have been a wicked Prince -and there might have been no Prince at all. It is in vain to think of it, for one supposition brings another, and we wander away from the beginning; and the fruitful brain that could have imagined and executed it, has long since turned to dust within its mouldering casket.

It is long since I have written any poetry, but the sight of these old papers has awakened my old failing; and I will try Alas! the last time I wrote, she was sitting by me, and our eyes were filled with tears. It was the epitaph of our dear little. one, who was, indeed, "a link to draw us to Heaven." She has already gone thither, and I, too, shall soon follow her. And then we shall meet to part

no more.

"To part no more"-they have met now to part no more.

Yesterday morning my dear, kind uncle (we always used to call him so -that is, my brothers; but he has been a father to my husband and me), was found seated in his arm-chair, apparently asleep At his feet lay Luath, his head resting in my uncle's left hand -the poor dog, though blind, scemed to know that he was dead.

They say it is terrible to look on death, but not upon such death as this; and I tried to check the foolish, selfish tears, that gathered in my eyes.

when I remembered that death was to him a happiness beyond what words can tell. He was smiling calmly, as I have often seen him while he slept in the very same chair; and, when he awoke, he used to say that his life was happiest in his dreams. But he is not dreaming now.

A few verses were on the table before him. He had just written his name at the bottom of the paper, and before the date, when he fell asleep - fell asleep? no; when he awoke from the dreams of Earth to share the reality of Heaven with her he loved so well.

* RACHEL GRAY.'

THERE is no allegory in Miss Kavanagh's book; it is not a poem ; but we cannot help feeling that, had it been written two or three centuries ago, "Rachel Gray" would have been an allegorical poem in twelve books, built up of heavy Spenserian stanzas. But here it is before us, a story in sweet and simple prose, so true to reality, that we half start back from it as from a picture presented too closely to our gaze. Had it been published amongst the "Fairy Queens" and "Purple Islands" of other days, it would probably have borne some such title as "The Three Pilgrims;" for in good truth it relates the history of three pilgrims, although none of the characters pass from beneath the shadow of a few quiet London streets, and they hear no ocean murmur save that of the tide of busy life around them. Rachel Gray, and her father, and an humble acquaintance, a Mr. Jones-a shy and sallow young dress-maker, a sullen old man, and a poor, weak, restless, hanger-on of the Great World, which is perpetually casting him off-are the three pilgrims whose pilgrimage our authoress conducts amidst such varied light and shade of incident, that the reader may fairly be excused for forgetting all the grand purposes of the book in the pleasure of its perusal. As so frequently happens in works of fiction, the character which is the author's favourite, and on whom she has bestowed the most pains, and even affection, is not the one which excites most earnestly the reader's interest; we

frequently lose all consciousness of Rachel Gray as we stand beside her on the pavement of the humid, stifling streets, and gaze upon that strange and lonely man, her father. "I want to be alone," he cries, and he is alone, without hope, without passion, even without despair; he has too much cold hatred for the world to take to drinking, or to fall into any positive vice; he shrinks from the grasp of the booncompanion's hand; when his daughter's love kneels at his feet in an agonised prayer for some answering affection, he exhibits no surprise, indeed we believe that he has a thorough intellectual conception of every movement of her heart, but he continues his work, and forgets her as soon as she is out of sight. There are few readers who will be able to forget, hastily, the character of Rachel Gray's father. Poor Rachel ! We tremble for you as you pass within the bright light of the ginpalace and the chemist's shop, for there are all too many sorrows, and humiliations, and bitter cares, yet to fall upon your broken and bleeding heart; and such as you, so pure and meek in spirit, and so longsuffering, were once many of those gin-deformed fiends lingering at the corner of the streetmany of those mean and spectral forms who, in far greater numbers than the world supposes, day by day, quench their souls with the bitter opiate. though so different in many respects, there is a strong family likeness between the father and daughter-the very points of dissimilarity between them arise from the same source. If the

Al

father's heart rejects all affection, whilst the daughter's cries for it aloud, even up to heaven, the active principle in each character is a fine dissatisfaction with the base, the vile, and the mean, with which they are surrounded. Yet this father and this daughter are far above any of the world's weaknessesthey sigh for no better houses or raiment, they demand none of the luxuries of civilisation; but the life of each is a solemn protest against the circumstances of life which left in each grand faculties of heart and soul unnurtured, undeveloped. They cannot endure their cold, hard bondage, and each makes a desperate effort for freedom. The man deserts his child and her no. table scolding stepmother, and fails to find, amidst distant scenes, the freedom and poetry of life which gradually come to Rachel, whilst in the very shadow of all that may crush an energetic heart or cloud a clear spirit.

No idea of the patent sweetness with which our authoress has worked out the character of her heroine, can be given by mere extracts, but the following passages will serve to give a general view of Rachel Gray's outward life. After a long separation, she determines to have an interview with her father: :

"She stops at the second-hand ironmonger's, and looks at the portraits and the books, and feels faint and hopeless, and almost wishes that her father may not be within. Thomas Gray was at his work, and there was a book by him, at which he glanced now and then-Tom Paine's' Rights of Man,' There was an empty pewter pot, too, and a daily public-house paper, from which we do not mean to have it inferred that Thomas Gray was given to intoxication.

He was

essentially a sober, steady man, vehement in nothing, not even politics, though he was a thorough republican. Thomas Gray was planing sturdily, enjoying the sunshine which fell full on his meagre figure; it was hot; but as he grew old he grew chilly, when suddenly a dark shadow came between him and the light. He looked up, and saw a vision standing in the threshold of his shop. She was young, and simply clad, tall and slender, but handsome, and very timid-looking.

"Walk in, ma'am,' he said, civilly enough.

"The stranger entered. He looked at her and she looked at him.

"Want anything?' he asked at length. "She took courage and spoke— "My name is Rachel,' she said.

6

"Well, I never said you was not,' he said, rather drily. Come, you need not shake so. There's a chair there; take it and sit down.'

"Rachel obeyed; but she was so agitated that she could not utter one word. Her father looked at her for awhile, and then resumed his work. Rachel did not speak; she literally could not-words would have choked her.

"And, in the meanwhile (the visit had been a failure), the little world around her, unconscious of her sufferings and her trials, went on its ways. Mrs. Gray grumbled, Jane was grim, Lizzy was peevish, and Mrs. Brown occasionally dropped in 'to keep them going,' as she said herself. Hard, indeed, were the days that followed for Rachel Gray. The old quarrel was begun anew. Why was she not like everyone? Above all, why did she mope, and want to be in the little back room. It was strange; and Mrs. Gray was not sure that it was not wicked. If so, it was a wickedness of which she effectively deprived Rachel, by keeping the back room locked, and the key in her pocket. But, hard as this was, it was not all. Amongst Rachel's few treasures were little pamphlets, tracts, old sermons, scraps of all sorts, a little hoard collected for years, but to the owner priceless. She did not read them daily; she had not time. But when she was alone she took them out, now and then, to look at and think over. On the day that followed the affair of Madame Rose, Mrs. Grey discovered Rachel's hoard. 'More of Rachel's rubbish,' she thought, and she took the papers to the kitchen and lit the fire with them forthwith.

66 6

'Oh, mother, what have you done!" cried Rachel, when she discovered her loss. "Well, what about it?' tartly asked Mrs. Gray.

"A few silent, unheeded tears Rachel shed, but no more was said. But her very heart ached; and, perhaps, because it did ache, her longing to go and see her father returned all the stronger. The whole day the thought kept her in a dream.

"I never saw you so mopish,' angrily exclaimed Mrs. Gray; 'never!'

"Rach el looked up in her mother's face, and smile so pleasantly, that Mrs. Gray was a little oftened. She herself knew not why, but t smile was so very sweet."

But it must not be supposed that this last and best of Miss Kavanagh's works is a sorrowful story. Its life is too vi id for any morbid feeling; and

if its characters are so real that you sometimes fancy you can see the very gleam of their tears, they are also so real, that their hopes become your own. And, although it is a great thing to say, we can remember no parallel to "Rachel Gray," in respect to purity of colouring and artlessness of style, save in the " Vicar of Wakefield."

LILLIESLEAF.'

THIS novel is as a fair landscape; we would fain behold its beauties in the society of a friend, for its refined graces are so delicate, that they almost demand, for their full appreciation, some more manifest expression than their own. It is full of a twilight silence; only one of the characters speaks aloud, and she often pauses to lean over her wild German romance, and think of the days when she was a solitary child, alone with her quick fancies, without friends, without hope. Sweet, passionate Rhoda!

Those

arms of yours cling as closely around our sympathy as they ever did about the neck of Margaret Maitland. We are half sorry, and half glad, that you should love that cold and selfish private tutor, for his is just the kind of metallic spirit which will extort from you most frequently and most vividly, and, alas! most painfully, the electric spark of your character; but you are not the beroine of the story, Rhoda, although you weep most, and laugh most, and although even we love you most, of all its characters. There is a tranquil woman, mistress of a noble countryhouse, the mother of fair children, the wife of a noble-minded, affectionate man, who teaches us day by day, by the tenderness of her own life, how to bestow upon her all our tenderest care. Where shall we find an epithet for the beauty of Mary Elphinstone? It is not rustic, it is not queenlike, nor fawnlike; but a kind of beauty which seems to be reflected from we know not where. As the story moves on, we behold this pure and almost perfect woman relinquishing the seclusion of her quiet home for all that is gay and superficial on the surface of the world; her life becomes an argu

ment whose logic is resistless; her hand hastens to give a wound which must be given, that it may also hasten to heal it. We watch the somnambulist as she crosses the dangerous plank with no more breathless interest than that with which we watch Mary Elphinstone in her dressing-room, when the jeweller and the court-milliner have conspired, with the tumult of her heart, to give a lustre to her beauty it has never hitherto known. We will not do our readers the disfavour of hinting to them, in our own words, a story which the authoress has developed with a patience and pathos all her own. We believe that it will give to some hearts a pang of pain which they never thought to feel; but to all who receive the influence of its pages, a thrill of pleasure such as is seldom to be gained from fiction. The subordinate characters are sketched with

a liberal hand – -a group of children in the half-lighted nursery, as pretty and frolicsome as fairies, display most charming and most artless exaggerations of the ladies and gentlemen in the drawing-room. Then, of quite a different species, there is the unfortunate bairn, who carries the utmost of desolation and uproar into the quietest of households. Nor must we forget the sullen men, and patient, long-suffering women, of Cruive End, in the time of its desertion by the careless but true-hearted Allan Elphinstone. With respect to Margaret Maitland herself, she is a little feebler, perhaps a little more garrulous, than when we last met her; but, as the sun broadens towards its setting, her spirit becomes larger as it draws nearer to the period of its freedom; the provincialisms and the conventionalisms which had never been able to hide, but which had somewhat obscured its lustre, begin rapidly to pass away; and the generous heart moulds its natural idioms into an universal language.

THE LIFE OF JEANNE D'ALBRET, QUEEN OF NAVARRE.†

THE Teutonic spirit of individualisation, which gave to the early English

chronicles an enduring life and spirit which renders them at this day a most valuable portion of our current literature, has revived with singular strength and vigour in the historical literature of the last twenty years. Checked as this spirit was by the development of the ideas which regulate the balance of power, it resigned, for some time, the historical field to vague declamations on patriots and the spirit of nations; but a more exact, and, we may even say, a more humble investigation into the causes of events, has arisen in the present age; and the tears of a princess or the fopperies of a king hold equal place on the pages of our modern historians with terrible battles and cold, formal treaties. It is a peculiar feature of this age of thronging multitudes and over-population, that individual life and character is now cared for more tenderly and anxiously than in any former period; and that it recovers with solicitude the peculiar features of lives which have long since been buried beneath the formal columns of chronology. Of such lives, that which forms the subject of the volumes before us, is one of the most momentous, and will henceforth be considered one of the most interesting. Queen of the only country which possessed a genuinely free constitution, when all Europe was heaving with the throes of a freedom which was not to be brought forth without great anguish, and a cry of tribulation which yet rings in our ears; object of persecution by the Inquisition, when that fatal tribunal was irritated into its fellest vigour by the spirit of opposition which it began to encounter; and mother of a monarch who was the first of kings to behold clearly the true policy of religious toleration; the character of Jeanne d'Albret, however commonplace, must have been an object of great solicitude to the bold and subtle men who, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, swayed the destinies of Europe, and, therefore, worthy of attention; but when we consider that her's was a character full of an energy whieh paralysed the most intricate designs of her most bitter enemies, full of womanly graces which conciliated the good - will of turbulent peoples, and beaming with a maternal love which softens down the enterprise and statecraft of the Queen

into a matronly solicitude for her children's welfare, we cannot but rejoice that it has become the subject of so genial a pen as that of Miss Freer.

The first act in the life-drama of Jeanne D'Albret is one of the most brilliant and picturesque illustrations possible of the pliancy of fortune to force of character; and there are a fine grace and richness of colouring in every scene, which reminds us of the depth and beauty of antient painted glass; the resemblance being much increased by a certain ludicrous quaintness in some of the details. Whilst she was yet within the womb, Jeanne had been devoted by her mother to entire submission to the will of her uncle, the vain, brilliant, and imperious Francis I. "I cannot believe that my child will presume to be born without your command," writes Margaret D'Angouleme to the brother for whom she felt so much love and reverence; but the child presumed to act, not only in the case of its birth without the command, but, on many subsequent occasions, even against the command of the great potentate. The energetic spirit of the young princess was soon apparent, and in nothing more so than in the vehemence of her love for the uncle with whom she was so soon and so bitterly to quarrel. At five years of age, a passionate burst of tears generally testified her resentment, when her arms were with difficulty unclasped from around his neck, and she was carried from the presence; she was the darling and plaything of her royal father and of her uncle, and was distinguished at court by the name of la mignonne des rois. But the young girl was soon to find that to be the plaything of kings is a dangerous honour; her uncle's jealous dread of a Spanish alliance separated her at an early age from her parents, and consigned her to a kind of state imprisonment in the royal castle of Plessis-les-Tours. vernesses and ladies of honour, chaplains and a poet, were carefully grouped about the jewel which was to be of so much account in so many political schemes :

Go

"Until the year 1537, all went on prosperously with Jeanne in her lonely state at Plessis. She made rapid improvement in learning, and the fearless truthfulness of