WASHING BY THE BROOK. "Where the alders girt a grassy, "Bright the wavelets glanced beside her ; Brighter was the look That she gave to him who spied her Sweet the songs of birds around her, Songs from Nature's book,Sweeter hers to him who found her Washing by the brook. Heaven bless her! Heaven watch her! But for graces may not match her THE CHILDREN'S POEM. We give our usual conclusion, - a poem for the children, but which all will love to read :LITTLE BELL. "He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast."-Coleridge. Piped the blackbird on the beechwood spray, "Pretty maid, slow wandering this way, What's your name?" quoth he. "What's your name? Oh, stop and straight unfold, Pretty maid, with showery curls of gold!" "Little Bell," said she. Little Bell sat down beneath the rocks, Tossing aside her gleaming, golden locks. "Bonny bird," quoth she, "Sing me your best song before I go." "Here's the very finest one I know, Little Bell," said he. And the blackbird piped. You never heard Half so gay a song from any bird, Full of quips and wiles; Down the dell she tripped, and through the glade Peeped the squirrel from the hazel shade, And from out the tree, Swung and leaped and frolicked, void of fear, While bold blackbird piped that all might hear,"Little Bell!" piped he. Little Bell sat down amid the fern,- Now away the frisky squirrel hies, Great ripe nuts, kissed brown by July sun, Hark! How blackbird pipes to see the fun! "Happy Bell!" quoth he. Little Bell looked up and down the glade, — "Squirrel, squirrel, from the nut-tree shade, Bonny blackbird, if you're not afraid, Come and share with me!" And the while the frolic playmates twain Piped and frisked from bough to bough again, 'Neath the morning skies, In the little childish heart below, All of sweetness seemed to grow and grow, From her blue, bright eyes. By her snow-white cot at close of day, Rose the praying voice to where, unseen Paused awhile to hear. "What good child is this?" the angel said, "That, with happy heart, beside her bed, Prays so lovingly?" Now so round and rich, now so soft and slow, Low and soft-Oh, very low and soft! THE LADIES' REPOSITORY. THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER. By - LVAREZ DE RAMEIRO was the son of a Portuguese marquis by an English lady of great beauty and considerable fortune. The match was particularly obnoxious to the family of the nobleman; and Alvarez, at the death of his mother, found himself heir to her English estates and to the cordial dislike of his Portuguese relations; but he was of a light heart and free spirit, and found an antidote to their coldness and neglect in his contempt for their opinion. It naturally followed, however, that he was often, as much upon compulsion" as from choice, left to the society of his own reflections, which, as he possessed a tolerably well-stored mind and a clear conacience, were very endurable company. In one of the solitary rambles in which it was his wont to indulge, he found himself in the vicinity of the pleasuregrounds attached to a villa within a league of Lisbon, the country residence of a British merchant. As he approached the garden, which was separated from the road by a deep moat, he perceived, walking on a slight elevation or terrace, a young lady whose form and countenance were so entirely to his taste that his eyes followed her with an earnestness which, had she observed it, might not have im VOL. XXXIII.-NO. V.-NOV., 1864. pressed her with a very favorable notion of his good manners. Whether he was desirous of quenching the incipient flame in his bosom by rushing into the opposite element, or of arriving at his object by the shortest possible cut (overlooking in his haste the parenthesis of the ditch), it is neither possible nor essential for me to state; but certain it is that the lady was roused from her meditations by the noise of a sudden plunge in the water; and on turning round she saw a portion of a manthe floating on the moat, and, immediately afterward, the hapless owner floundering about, either ignorant of the art of swimming, or incapacitated for efficient exertion by his cloak and appended finery. The lady did not shriek out, for she knew that the gardener was deaf, and that her cries would not reach the mansion; she did not tear her hair, for, unless she could have made a rope of it, there had been little wisdom in that; but she did better she seized a rake, and approaching as near to the moat as she could, literally hooked him into shallow water, whence he was enabled to gain the terrace, where he stood before her dripping like a river-god, and sputtering thanks and duck-weed in great profusion. Never did human being present a more equivocal appearance than did Alvarez on this occasion, covered, as he was, with mud and weeds. The dam sel, at the sight of him, scrambling up the bank, was almost induced to exclaim, with Trinculo, "What have we here, a man or a fish?" And indeed, until "the creature found a tongue," it would have been no easy task for Linnæus himself to determine the class of animals to which he belonged. No meeting between fair lady and gallant knight could, by possibility, be more unromantic; nay, 'twas the most commonplace thing conceivable. Whatever may have been the cavalier's sensations, she did not fall in love with him; for her first impulse, on seeing him safely landed, was to laugh most incontinently; and love, as my friend the corporal hath it, is "the most serious thing in life." "I pray you, senora," said Alvarez, as soon as he recovered himself, "to accept my humblest apologies for intruding upon you so extraordinary an apparition." "Apparition! nay, senor, you are encumbered, somewhat too pertinaciously, methinks, with the impurities of earth to be mistaken for anything of the kind, unless you lay claim to the spiritual character on the score of your intangibility, which I have not the slightest inclination to dispute; and as for your apologies, you had better render them to those unoffending fishes whose peaceful retreat you have so unceremoniously invaded; for you have raised a tempest where, to my certain knowledge, there has not been a ripple for these twelve months." "Indeed, fair lady, I owe them no apologies, since, but for you, I had been their food. Yon moat, although not wide enough to swim in, possesses marvellous facilities for drowning." At this instant, the merchant himself entered the grounds, and approached the scene of the interview. His daughter immediately introduced her unbidden guest. "Allow me, my dear papa, to present to you a gentleman who brings with him the latest intelligence from the bottom of the moat. Behold him dripping with his credentials, and the bearer of a specimen of the soil and a few aquatic plants peculiar to the region he has explored, and of which, having landed on your territories, he politely requests you to relieve him." "You are a saucy jade," said the merchant, "and but that I know your freaks everstop short of actual mischief, I could almost suspect you of having pushed him in.” "Nay, papa, that could not be; we were on opposite sides of the moat." "You forget, lady," rejoined the cavalier, who began to recover his spirits, "that attraction is often as powerful an agent as repulsion, and that therefore your father's conjecture as to the cause of my misfortune may not be altogether groundless." "I beseech you, senor," said the daughter, "to reserve your compliments for your next visit to the naiads of the moat, to whom they are more justly due, and cannot fail to be acceptable from a gentleman of your amphibious propensities. I hope our domestics will be careful in divesting you of that plaster of mud; I should like the cast amazingly." During this colloquy, the party were approaching the mansion, where Alvarez was accommodated with a temporary change of attire; and it is certain that, if the damsel was not captivated by his first appearance, her heart was still less in danger when she beheld him encased in her father's habiliments, — “a world too wide" for him, the merchant being somewhat of the stoutest, while the fair proportions of his guest were not encumbered with any exuberance of flesh. Thus originated the acquaintance of Mr. Wentworth and his fair daughter with the most gallant of all Portuguese cavaliers, Alvarez de Rameiro, - an acquaintance which, as their amiable qualities mutually developed themselves, ripened into friendship. Alvarez exhibited a frankness of manner which never bordered upon rudeness, and was equally remote from assurance; while the liberality of his opinions indicated an elevation of mind that the bigotry amid which he had been educated had not been able to overthrow. These qualities well accorded with the straightforward disposition of the Englishman, who probably found them scarce in Lisbon, and rendered the society of the young foreigner more than ordinarily agreeable to him. It happened, one afternoon in the summer, that the merchant and Alvarez were enjoying their glass of wine and cigar, while Mary Wentworth was attending to some plants in a grass-plot before the window. Mr. Wentworth had told his last story, which was rather of the longest; but as his notions of hospitality, in furnishing his table, included conversation as well as refection, he made a point of keeping it up; and with this general object rather than any particular one, -for he had great simplicity of heart, he filled his glass, and passing the decanter to his guest, resumed the conversation. "It has occurred to me, Alvarez, that your attentions to my Mary have been somewhat pointed of late. Fill your glass, man, and don't keep your hand on the bottle; it heats the wine." "Then, sir, my conduct has not belied my feelings; for I certainly do experience much gratification in Miss Wentworth's society, and her father is the last person from whom I should desire to conceal it." "Then have the kindness to push the cigar-dish a little nearer, for mine is out." "I hope, sir, that my attentions to your daughter have not been offensive to her." "I am sure I don't know, for I never asked her." "Nor to yourself, I trust." "No, or you would not have had so many opportunities of paying them." "They have occasioned you no anxiety or uneasiness, then, sir?” "Nay, your own honor is my warrant against that; and I have the collateral security of her prudence." "May I, then, without offence, inquire whither your observations tend, and why you have introduced the subject?" "In the first instance, simply for want of something else to talk about; but now we are upon the subject, it may be as well to know your views in paying the attentions to which I have referred." "When I tell you honestly that I love your daughter, you will not, with the confidence you are pleased to place in my honor, have any difficulty in guessing them." "Guessing is not my forte, and therefore I ever hated riddles; they puzzle Why, sir, with your sanction, to make her my wife." 64 Then you will do a very foolish thing; that is, always supposing that my daughter has no objection to your scheme; and we, both of us, appear to have left her pretty much out of the argument. Pray, is she aware at all of the preference with which you are pleased to honor her?" "I have never told her, because. I know not how she would receive the declaration; and I prize your daughter's good opinion too dearly to desire to look like a simpleton before her." 66 Well, there's some sense in that. By the way, Alvarez, without any particular reference to the subject we are discussing, let me exhort you, whenever you make a declaration of your love to a woman, never do it upon your knees.” "Why not, sir?" "Because it is the most inconvenient position possible for marching off the field; and in the event of a repulse, the sooner a man quits it the better." But, sir, I maintain, and I speak it under favor and with all deference to the sex, that the man who exposes himself to the humiliation of a refusal richly merits it." "As how?" "Because he must be blind, if he cannot, within a reasonable period, find out whether his suit be acceptable or not, and a fool if he declares himself before." "You think so; do you? Then be 80 good as to push over that plate of olives; and as I said before, in reference to your matrimonial project, I think it a very foolish one." "In what respect, sir, may I ask?” "In the first place, it is the custom in England for a man and his wife to go to church together; and you were born a Catholic." "I do, indeed, sir." "Then let me tell you that your religion is the most unfashionable in all Lisbon, and somewhat dangerous withal." "Have you found it so?" But alas! "the course of true love never did run smooth;" and scarcely had the preliminary arrangements been completed when the merchant was seized with an inflammatory fever which terminated in his death, leaving his daughter, who loved him to a degree of enthusiasm which such a parent might well inspire, overwhelmed by sorrow, a stranger in a foreign land, and without a friend in the world but Al "Nay; I am of a country which is given to resent, as a nation, an injury done to an individual member of it; and as a British fleet in the Bay of Lisbon would not be the most agreeable sight to the good folk of this Catholic city, I pre-varez, whose ability to protect her fell sume I may profess what religion I please, infinitely short of his zeal and devotion without incurring any personal risk; but to her service. Still, however, he could you have no such safeguard; and although comfort and advise with her; and she my daughter might have no great objection looked up to him with all that confiding to your goodly person as it is, she might not affection which the noble qualities of his relish it served up as a grill, according to heart and the honorable tenor of his conthe approved method, in this most ortho- duct could not fail to create. But even dox country, of freeing the spirit from its he, her only stay, was shortly taken from earthly impurities." her. The holy office, having gained information of their intention of quitting Lisbon with the property of the deceased merchant, availed itself of the pretext afforded by the religious profession of Alvarez to apprehend and confine him, as the most effectual means of delaying the embarkation, relying on ulterior measures for obtaining possession of the wealth of their victims. "You talk very coolly, my dear sir, upon a rather warm subject; but I assure you I am under no apprehensions on that score." "Well, admitting that you are justified in considering yourself safe, do you think that an alliance with the daughter of a merchant and a foreigner, would be otherwise than obnoxious to your family?" "Why, as to that, my affectionate brothers-in-law, not reckoning upon the pleasure of my society in the next world, have not been at much pains to cultivate it in this; and therefore I apprehend I am not bound to consult their wishes in the matter." The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Miss Wentworth; and the subject was of course changed. The explanation which had taken place between the merchant and Alvarez was followed by an equally good understand ing between the latter and the young lady; and it was finally arranged among them that Mr. Wentworth, who had been eminently successful in his commercial pursuits in Lisbon, should only remain to close his accounts and convert his large property into bills and specie, for the purpose of remitting it to London, when the whole party, Alvarez himself having no ties to bind him to his own country, should embark for England, where the union of the young people was to take place. Mary Wentworth's was not a mind to sink supinely under misfortune, for she had much energy of character; but this last blow was enough to paralyze it all. She had no difficulty to guess at the object of the holy office; and she knew that if any measure could avail her in this emergency, it must be speedily adopted. But the power of the Inquisition was a fearful one to contend with. There was but one man in Lisbon who could aid her, and to him she was a stranger; yet to him she determined to appeal. The name of Sebastian Joseph de Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal, will be familiar, to those who are conversant with the history of Portugal, as that of the prime minister of King Joseph, to which elevation he appears to have risen from circumstances of extreme indigence and the humble rank of a corporal. He is represented to have been a man of enlarged mind, uncommon personal courage, and great decision of character. On the other hand, he is said to have exhibited a |
