your hand, dear George." He clasped it violently. "It is on my thigh now, rising over my body, my breast, my neck, my

Here a strong convulsion passed over his features, wrenching them into an expression of unendurable agony, presenting a most striking resemblance to the face of his father's corpse on that frightful day in the Anatomical Theatre.

The next instant the grasp on my hand was relaxed, and he was gone to his account. The last experiment was made, but he could never return to tell its result.

I closed his eyes, and composed his features as well as I could, and then went downstairs to the landlady's parlour, where I sat till morning. I was sitting musing by the fire, when the bell rang from the death-chamber. I started, though it was broad daylight, and as I ascended the stair, almost expected to find him sitting up and speaking-so different was he in every respect from ordinary men. On entering, I perceived Miss Johns standing by the bed. She looked at me with the same stony gaze as I stood with the handle of the door in my hand.

"He is changed," said she.

"He is dead, Miss Johns."

"Then God be merciful to him!"

"Amen."

"Leave me Mr.

leave me." I hastily withdrew, as the poor bereaved girl seated herself beside her brother's body, with the look of one on whose brow the thunderbolt had descended, to whom fate had done its worst, who had no more to fear or wish for now.

I went home to my own rooms.

Next day I received a note stating her wish that I should attend her brother's funeral on a particular day. I flew to the house, but the worthy landlady informed me she had shut herself up along with the body and could see no one. I retired.

Oh

The funeral, which was the most humble and private one I was almost ever concerned in, was hardly over when I sought her once more. how I loved that poor distracted girl!-how I longed to take her to my heart, and hide all her disgraces and afflictions in my bosom-her, the fair and spotless child of the robber and murderer-the gem taken from the hilt of a dagger!

That interview shall never pass from my memory. I was deeply affected; she preserved the same cold soulless manner she had shown from the first. Alas my heart! How different from the light feminine grace, the gentle simplicity, and innocent warmth and cheerfulness, with which she shed light and love around her, as she moved, a happy and most bewitching woman, among the flowers and singing-birds of her father's garden, herself a blind to divert suspicion, a hundred times more effectual than his active cunning could have ever expected even them to be. Her beauty still remained, but it was become like that of a marble Niobe, cold, heartless, and blasted!

We talked together for a considerable time. At length, in a frenzy of passion, I fell before her as she sat, and confessed to her the absorbing love that had shut out from my mind every other affection. I would do or suffer anything-go with her anywhere-labour for her bread, if I were but made happy in the heaven of her presence. What was it

to me that her father was a felon? what did that detract from her

bright mental and bodily beauty. I would have taken her from the foot of the gibbet, and made her the wife of my bosom in the eyes of all men.

She answered me with the same stoical tone and expression, "It can never be, Mr. ; your wife can never be Severn's daughter. I believe all you say is truth, for I feel it myself. Yes, if it be any satisfaction to you to know it, I have loved you fervently and truly, and never mortal, out of my own family, but yourself; and that with a love, growing from the first day I saw you led into my presence, blushing and distant, by my noble brother, who is in his grave. He loved you much, but never as I did—as I do, George, even now, while I sit here a seared and brokenhearted being. It is not womanlike to tell you so; but I have been tried as never woman was, and everything about me is changed now, nothing of old is left but my love for you."

As she talked, she sat, calm, and devoid of all apparent emotion. A mother giving advice to a young boy, is the only thing, that, to my mind, comes near to her manner. She gave me a long tress of her fair hair, and another of Elias's-then severed a lock from my temple, and, stooping forward, kissed my lips. I actually recoiled as she did this, so unmoved and statue-like she seemed. She rose and slowly withdrew. I never saw her face in life again.

On going to the house next day I found she had left it; not even the landlady was aware of her silent departure, but could hardly be convinced she was really gone. Everything of Mr. Johns's effects she had left untouched, and of these his creditors forthwith took possession.

I made every inquiry regarding the life of Severn that I could, without unduly attracting notice. I found that the robbery for which he was taken, was the very one by which he had supplied his son with the money necessary to complete his Galvanic apparatus. It had been committed upon a naval officer, a very active, determined man, who, trusting to his speed of foot, for which he was celebrated, had, after delivering up his money and valuables, suddenly drawn his sword, and hamstrung the gray horse, to the strength and speed of which, and its facility of disguise, its owner had so often owed escape from pursuit and from detection. After this he had managed to keep always about fifty yards distance between him and the robber, as he was a very slight person, and a very child, compared to his powerful adversary,-following when he went on, stopping when he stopped, and running when he chased. In this way he never lost sight of him till he had him secured in the streets of London, next morning, twenty miles distant from the spot where the crime was committed.

In the mean time I made a vow of bachelorhood; but when we make vows in early life, we little know what it is we are doing. I kept it, however, for twenty years, when I married my present lady, your old mistress, Charles ;-but, alas! it is not years, nor an eternity, that shall efface the bitter love which a former period of my life had burnt into my heart."

THE UNIVERSITY FEUD.

BY THE EDITOR.

A plague of both your Houses.-MERCUTIO.

THE Contest for the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, ought hardly to be passed over in silence by a Literary Periodical. Indeed it was our original intention to have gone into the subject, whilst it might have been treated as a cause pertaining solely to the Belles Lettres, and equally unconnected with the great bells that ring in Protestant steeples, or the little bells that tinkle before papistical altars. There was a classical seat to be filled; and it would never have occurred to us to examine into the opinions of either candidate on abstruse questions of divinity, any more than at the new-bottoming of an old chair, we should have inquired whether the rushes were to be supplied by the Lincolnshire Fens, or the Pontine Marshes. That any but poetical qualifications were to be considered would never have entered into our mind-we should as soon have dreamt of the Judge at a Cattle Show awarding the Premium, not to the fattest and best fed beast, but to an ox of a favourite colour. No-in our simplicity we should have summoned the rival Poets before us, in black and white, and made them give alternate specimens of their ability in the tuneful art, like Daphnis and Strephon in the Pastoral

Then sing by turns, by turns the Muses sing;

and to the best of our humble judgment we should have awarded the Prize Chair, squabs, castors and all, to the melodious victor. As to demanding of either of the competitors what he thought of the Viaticum, or Extreme Unction, it would have seemed to us a far less pertinent question than to ask the would-be Chairman of a Temperance Society whether he preferred gin or rum. We should have considered the candidates, in fact, as Architects professing to "build the lofty rhyme," without supposing its possible connexion with the building of churches or chapels. In that character only should we have reviewed the parties before us; and their several merits would have been discussed in an appropriate manner. Thus we might perhaps have pointed out that Mr. Garbett possessed the finer ear, but Mr. Williams the keener eye for the picturesque; that the Fellow of Brazen Nose had the greater command of language, but the Trinity man displayed a better assortment of images: and we might have particularized by quotations where the first reminded us of a Glover or a Butler, and the last of a Prior or a Pope. We might also have deemed it our duty to examine into the acquaintance of the parties with the works of the Fathers, not of theology but of poetry; and it might have happened for us to inquire how certain probationary verses stood upon their feet-but certainly not the when, where, or wherefore, the author went down upon his knees. We should as soon have thought of examining a professed cook in circumnavigation, or a theatrical star in astronomy; or of proposing to an Irish chairman, of sedantary habits, to fill the disputed seat.

The truth is, that unlike a certain class of persons who would go to the pole for polemics, and seek an altercation at the altar, we have

neither a turn nor a taste for religious disputation, and therefore never expected nor wished to find a theological controversy in a question of prosyversy. We never conceived the suspicion that the Père La Chaise of Poetry might become a Confessor as well as a Professor, and initiate his classes in the mysteries of Rome, any more than we should have feared his converting them to the Polytheism of the heathen Ovid, or that very blind Pagan old Homer. On the contrary, our first inkling of a division at Oxford concerning the Muses suggested to us simply that it must be the old literary quarrel of the Classicists and the Romanticists, or a dispute perhaps on the claims of Blank Verses to get prizes. At any rate we should never have committed such an anachronism as to associate Poetry, which is older by some ages than Christianity, with either Protestantism or Popery. It would have been like jumbling up Noah of Ark with Joan of Arc, as man and wife!

Our first intentions, however, have been frustrated; for even while preparing for the task, as if by one of those magical transformations peculiar to the season, the Chair has turned into a Pulpit, and the rival collegians are transfigured-pantomime fashion-into Martin Luther and the Pope of Rome! Such a metamorphosis places the performance beyond our critical pale; but we will venture in a few sentences to deprecate religious dissension, and to forewarn such as call themselves friends of the church against the probable interference of those hot-headed and warmtempered individuals who seem, as the Irish gentleman said, to have been vaccinated from mad bulls. Such persons may, doubtless, mean well; but the best-intentioned people have sometimes far more zeal than discretion, even as the medalsome Mathewite, who thinks that he must drink water usque ad nauseam in lieu of usque ad baugh; or like that over-humane lady, who feels so strongly against Capital Punishments and the gallows, that she would like to "hang Jack Ketch with her own hands." Let the breach then be stopped in time. The fate of a house divided against itself has been foretold; and surely there cannot be a more dangerous and destructive practice than where a crack presents itself to insert a wedge. It is by a parallel process that many a magnificent Sea-Palace has been broken up at Deptford-timber after timber, plank after plank, till nothing was left entire, perhaps, but the Figure-Head, staring, as only a figure-head can stare, at the conversion of a noble Ship, by continual split, split, splitting, into firewood, chips, and matches.

Seriously, then, we cannot discuss the University Feud in these pages: but our rules do not preclude us from giving some account of a Little Go that seems to have been modelled on the great one, and which aptly serves to exemplify the evil influence of bad example in high places.

With now and then a party-cry,

Such as used in times gone by,

To scare the British Border;

When foes from North and South of Tweed-
Neighbours-and of Christian creed-
Met in hate to fight and bleed,
Upsetting Social Order.

Surprised, I turn'd me to the crowd,
Attracted by that tumult loud,
And ask'd a gazer, beetle-brow'd,
The cause of such disquiet.

When lo! the solemn-looking man,

First shook his head on Burleigh's plan,

And then, with fluent tongue, began

His version of the riot:

A row!-why yes,—a pretty row, you might hear from this to Garmany,
And what is worse, it's all got up among the Sons of Harmony,
The more's the shame for them as used to be in time and tune,

And all unite in chorus like the singing-birds in June!

Ah! many a pleasant chant I've heard in passing here along,
When Swiveller was President, a-knocking down a song;

But Dick's resign'd the post, you see, and all them shouts and hollers
Is 'cause two other candidates, some sort of larned scholars,
Are squabbling to be Chairman of the Glorious Apollers!

Lord knows their names, I'm sure I don't, no more than any yokel,
But I never heard of either as connected with the vocal;
Nay, some do say, although of course the public rumour varies,
They've no more warble in 'em than a pair of hen canaries ;
Though that might pass if they were dabs at t'other sort of thing,
For a man may make a song, you know, although he cannot sing;
But lork! it's many folks belief they're only good at prosing,
For Catnach swears he never saw a verse of their composing;
And when a piece of poetry has stood its public trials,

If pop'lar, it gets printed off at once in Seven Dials,
And then about all sorts of streets, by ev'ry little monkey,

It's chanted like the "Dogs' Meat Man,” or “ If I had a Donkey."
Whereas as Mr. Catnach says, and not a bad judge neither,
No Ballad worth a ha'penny has ever come from either,

And him as writ " Jim Crow," he says, and got such lots of dollars,
Would make a better Chairman for the Glorious Apollers.
Howsomever that's the meaning of the squabble that arouses
This neighbourhood, and quite disturbs all decent Heads of Houses,
Who want to have their dinners and their parties, as is reason,
In Christian peace and charity according to the season.
But from Number Thirty-Nine-since this electioneering job,
Ay, as far as Number Ninety, there's an everlasting mob;
Till the thing is quite a nuisance, for no creature passes by,
But he gets a card, a pamphlet, or a summut in his eye;
And a pretty noise there is!-what with canvassers and spouters,
For in course each side is furnish'd with its backers and its touters;
And surely among the Clergy to such pitches it is carried,
You can hardly find a Parson to get buried or get married;

Or supposing any accident that suddenly alarms,

If you're dying for a Surgeon, you must fetch him from the "Arms;"
While the Schoolmasters and Tooters are neglecting of their scholars,
To write about a Chairman for the Glorious Apollers.

Well, that, sir, is the racket; and the more the sin and shame
Of them that help to stir it up, and propagate the same;