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Two rocks stand at the sides of this remarkable passage, one twenty, and the other about thirty feet, in perpendicular height. They are about twenty feet asunder, at six or seven yards from the north end, where they open to thirty feet. The part which appears to have been cut through is about one hundred and twenty feet long. A little meadow opens beyond, where is an inn.-Sears' Pictorial United States.

TALE

THE RUFFIAN BOY,

A Tale Founded on Fact.

BY MRS. AMELIA OPIE.

[Continued.]

"You will no longer wonder that the intelligence our friend Meynell brought should have deprived me of sense, when I inform you that the wretched young man, whom he saw after his recent deliverance from prison, aimed that blow at me, which killed another; and deprived at one sad moment my poor friend Mina of existence, and her mother, who was near us, of reason.

me, I believe he would have left the school. But
for my sake he seemed resolved to bear with the
impertinent familiarity of one, and the cold disdain
of another. However, my conscience does not
reproach we with tretaing him with hauteur, but
simply with evident dislike; and that not the result
of pride alone, but of the fear his bright and terrible
eye occasioned me, and the proud assumption of
bis manner.

"I am thus diffuse in order to accouut, as much
as possible, by the probable preparatory state of
his mind and feelings, for the violence which I have

to narrate.

"Our time of leaving dancing-school arrived, and Mina and I were allowed to go to balls and parties. We were then both of us nearly seventeen, and Geraldi nearly fifteen.

waltz was over Geraldi had disappeared, and I looked for him again in vain.

"I have since learnt, that when he left the house he went to a tavern and fortified his nerves with copious draughts of wine. He then went home, poor youth! pulled off his useless finery, resumed his ordinary apparel, armed himself with a sort of dagger, and returned to the porch of the house where the ball was held, there to await the moment of the company's departure.

"At last the ball broke up; and our parents hearing their carriages announced, hurried Mina and me forward. In the hurry, Mina's shawl was wrapt round me, and mine round her. We passed rapidly arm and arm up a long passage, Mina's mother being close behind her daughter. At this moment, while my father went forward to call his servants, an uplifted steel, which glittered in the expiring rays of one solitary lamp that lighted the

"One evening a ball was to be given for the benefit of a public charity, and the young people of both sexes were to wear fancy dresses, I, accom-door-way, flashed across our startled vision; and panied by my parents, and Mina by her mother, in an instant Mina, uttering a pieceing shriek, fell her only surviving parent, went to this ball, which backwards into her mother's arms. My father was splendid in every point of view. Mina and I returned just as Mina fell; and seeing the dagger were dressed exactly alike, which made our usual in Geraldi's hand, wrenched it from him, and seized resemblance to each other more stricking; and the the young assassin; while I, full of horror, hung first person whose earnest gaze attracted our con- over the body of my friend. scious observation, was Geraldi Duval, habited in "Geraldi, whose face till then had expressed the the most becoming manner, and proudly pre-emi-maligant joy of satisfied revenge, now exhibited (I nent in stature and beauty. am told) an expression as terrible of defeated vengeance; and as they bore him to prison, he approached me, and said in my car, with a look and in a tone that I can never forget,' Je te retrouverai un jour.'* I shudder while I repeat the ill-omened words.

"After having undergone and escaped such danger at a moment of unapprchensive security, you will not wonder at the sudden starts and nervousness which you have often observed in ine; nor at the silence which I have till now, except to I was so surrounded by friends, and so conWaldemar, always kept on this most agitatingstantly dancing, that Geraldi, who did not dance, subject. But I will now tell you every thing, that had no opportunity of speaking to me, though he I may ask and profit by your advice."

Here Ethelind paused; and after her auditors had vented their various feelings in exclamations of wonder and of pity, she continued thus:

"Mina and I went to the same dancing-school with Geraldi Duval, the unhappy man in question; who, though he distinguished me by the most marked attention, was always to me an object of dislike not unmixed with alarm. It was perhaps the fierceness of his expression that gave me this feeling, for his face is strikingly handsome; and though only fourteen at the time I now mention, his person was very tall, full, and commanding; he therefore looked quite old enough, certainly, to be my partner: but I, being sixteen myself, thought a boy of fourteen a mere child. Consequently, I never danced with Geraldi when I could help it, and pride, perhaps, had some share in this resolu

tion.

was evidently watching to do so; but towards the
close of the evening, when I had finished waltzing
with a relation of Mina's and was sitting with her "In a few days the wretched boy was tried, and
at on open window, Geraldi came up and asked convicted of the murder; but in consideration of
me to dance the next English country-dance with his excesssive youth his life was spared, and he
him. I refused, on the ground of being too much was condemned to only twenty years' close im-
tired to dance again—and at that moment I felt so. prisonment, with power vested in the judge of
On hearing this, his countenance expressed morti-remitting five years of the punishment, should his
fication, yet not displeasure; but seeing he was conduct deserve it.
disposed to sit by Mina and me, I complained that
we were too much exposed to the air at that window,
and led the way into another apartment. Geraldi
then muttered something between his teeth, and
slowly followed, but suddenly turned off again.

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Bear with my weakness, my dear friends; but indeed I never recall Geraldi that evening without painful commiseration. He had taken pains to vie in dress and appearance with the proudest youth in the room; and his glass must have assured him that he shone in the very perfection of youthful beauty. But the girl in whose eyes he chiefly wished to shine, beheld him with ill-concealed dislike, refused him her hand in the dance, coldly, if not contemptuously; and though, for her sake, he declined to dance with any one else, she was neither grateful for his preference, nor attracted by his appearance.

"Geraldi was an orphan, whose father's origin was unknown; but his mother was a Neapolitan, and the widow of one of those itinerant Italians who go about selling casts and painted heads. His father, however, contrived, no one knows how, to scrape a little money together; and when he died he left a decent fortune behind him. His wife did not long survive him; and was spared, poor thing! the wretchedness of seeing her son's crime, the consequence, probably, of her criminal indulgence. This little fortune, whatever it was, enabled Geraldi to have the education of a gentleman; and a sort of nominal guardian sent him to the dancing-school which I mentioned before. But his penetrating eye soon discovered that in the son of Theresa Geraldi and Guillaume Duval, a French-rage, his lips livid, and holding up his hand at me man of obscure birth, the youth of both sexes in the school did not acknowedge the son of a gentleman; and but for his persevering temper, and the unfortunate partially which he imbibed for

"My father was forced to attend the trial, as his evidence was the most material against him; and thongh Geraldi had attempted the life of his daughter, and still threatened it, my generous father could not help feeling excessive pity for the youthful assassin; especially, as he attributed the murderous blow to jealous love, absurd as it may seem to believe a boy of fourteen capable of that passion. He was therefore rather gratified when the sentence was imprisonment, and not death. But when Geraldi was asked by the judge, after pronouncing sentence, whether he did not repent of the crime which he had committed, he replied with great bitterness, that he did indeed repent that he had killed Mina Steinheim instead of Ethelind Manstein, as his revenge and his hatred remained unsatisfied; but he hoped to satiate both one day. And when my father heard these words, and saw the look which accompanied them, he felt from that moment a fear for my life which scarcely ever knew a Imoment's repose. I, meanwhile, was in a state of nervous debility, the consequence of terror, and of sorrow for my childhood's beloved companion, and poor Madame Steinheim in the state in which you see her.

"But I did still worse; after having refused him, I danced with another I could not resist my favourite waltz; and not seeing Geraldi, joined the waltzers with a man of the highest rank present. O that appalling moment, when, while pausing to take breath, I beheld Geraldi gazing on me with the look of a fiend; his eyes fiery with

in a menacing attitude! But the impression this
formidable apparition made on me was transient;
again the gay circle revolved; again my partner
bore me round the graceful ring; and when the

"Her son, a very worthless man and unnatural child, hastened home from England on hearing of his sister's death and his mother's situation, and gladly acceded to my father's offer of taking his * I shall find thee again, one day.

unconscious mother to live with us--young Steinheim insisting on our being paid for her board, and so on. But he soon after left Brussels, and in a very short time he spent all his mother's property and his own, and she became dependent on us. We, however, considered her not as a burthen; on the contrary, my father felt grateful to the lost Mina, for having, though unconciously, saved the life of his child; and he looked on himself as bound to supply to her poor mother those affectionate attentions of which I had been the innocent means of depriving her. I will also venture to say, that as soon as I could bear to see her, and found she derived pleasure from my presence and my singing my kind parents, so far from feeling her a painful charge on their generosity, experienced a benevolent gratification in witnessing the comfort which I administered; and I received her from them at their death, as a sacred and valuable legacy.

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much overwhelming emotion; nor that her auditors However," thought Ethelind, with the confi-
heard it without observations of various kinds.dence of heartfelt piety," the same Providence
But I thought it better to relate it without any breaks which watched over me before, watches over. me
in order not to interrupt the story.
now; and without the leave of my Creator the
When Ethelind had ended, her hearers had hand of the assassin connot reach me."
some difficulty to answer the questions which she
had put to them. But at length they agreed that
she should write to Waldemar, and inform him of
the liberation of Geraldi; but assure him at the
same time, that the guest whom he had left with
her (with the addition of Mr. Meynell) would
remain to guard her till his return.

In reply to her questions concerning the degree of her danger, they assured her that they thought Geraldi would not find it easy to discover her under the name of Waldemar, or at her present abode ; and that it was to be hoped fifteen years of impris onment, and the discipline of a prison, might have wholly eradicated the bad passions of a spoiled and petted boy, whose overweening conceit had been wounded by her disdain.

Ethelind wished to think as they did, but she could not. She thought that an imprisonment of that duration—that the consciousness the bloom of his youth had passed and faded in the walls of a prison. and that all the hopes of his manhood had frustrated, and all the prospects of his young ambition closed on him for ever-would be enough to deepen the bitterness of resentment against her, as the cause of his degradation, and be likely to return him on the world again while conscious that, like another Cain, he was branded as a murderer, with his thirst for vengeance unsated and increased.

"But we all felt it to be impossible to remain at Brussels, and we even wished to remove to a great distance from it; accordingly we left Brussels and came to Ratisbon. Still my affectionate parents experienced incessant anxiety for my safety, and constant terror lest Geraldi should escape from prison; and I have feared that this anxiety shortened their days. They derived some satisfaction, how-been ever, from the precautions which they took; for, when they could not be with me, they never allowed me to walk out unaccompanied by Carlo (who was excessively attached to me, and whom I had brought up from a puppy,) and my old servant, Maurice, who was well acquainted with the face and person of Geraldi, and had a powerful arm, a determined spirit, and a well-tried courage. But alas! just as we were all, from the influence of time, forgetting the sad catastrophe which had so long afflicted us, my best and dearest protectors died, and I had not quite reached the age of one. and-twenty, when I became an orphan.

"In two years afterwards, however their loss was abundantly supplied to me by my union with the best of husbands, who, previously to our marriage, went to Brussels, and to the prison in which Geraldi was confined, in order to judge for himself what frame of mind that wretched youth was in; and he told me, that on conversing with him, he expressed penitence for his faults; and on his assuring him that I felt the deepest interest in him and pity for his situation, and wished to know if I could send him any books to beguile some of his weary hours-he begged him to thank me for my unexpected kindness; but declared his resolution never to accept a favour from one whose life he had intended to take.

"This account quieted my fears for the future, if it did not wholly annihilate them; and when we heard that five years ef his punishment were likely to be remitted on recount of his apparent penitence, and proper demeanour in prison, I did not deplore this proof of lenity, though I observed that Walde. mar did.

"Well, my dear friends, I have nothing more to add. You know that the events anticipated with so much alarm and suspicion has taken place, and that my husband is absent. Now give me your advice; shall I recall him or not! and what, is your opinion of the degree of peril to which I am exposed ?"

It cannot be supposed that Ethelind told this tale of murder and of danger without interruption and

She wrote to Waldemar, and herdiends also wrote. But her husband vainly wished to return to her as soon as he received her letter; for though he could not make himself believe her quite safe, unless he watched over her with the argus eyes of ever-increasing love, he could not leave his friend. And week after week passed heavily away, both with Ethelind and Waldemar, when he was able to say that he should return on the Monday of the next week, and just in time to bid his friends adieu; who could no longer delay their departure.

Waldemar bad reason for fear which Ethelind knew not of; for though he spoke him fair when he saw him in the prison, he caught the expression of Geraldi's countenance as he turned away, and beheld in it every diabolical passion.

In the meanwhile inquiries concerning Geraldi had been made at Brussels; and it had been clearly ascertained that he had gone to the coast intending to embark with the first fair wind for America; and a Brussels gentleman had absolutely seen him on board ship.

This intelligence set the heart of Ethelind and of her friends entirely at rest; and she earnestly prayed for the safety and welfare of the self-exiled culprit.

The day for Waldemar's return arrived, but he came not; and his friends, who had ordered their carriages to the door, dismissed them after they

waited an hour or two, being resolved not to leave Ethelind (though neither she nor they had any fears remaining,) till Waldemar was actually in the house.

Ethelind believed that a well-regulated prison-had
a prison in which religious and moral truths were
inculcated, and habits of industry enforced, might
have reformed the heart, and ameliorated the tem-
per of the culprit ; and that when taught, that after
having reconciled himself by penitence to his God,
he might reconcile the world to him by a life of
active virtue and benevolence, he might have been
restored to society, penitent and reformed But
now, degraded, consciously degraded, in the eyes
of man, and only too probably a stranger to his
God-without friends, without employment, with
out support in this world, or hope, or dread of
another-she feared that this poor victim of his
passions was let loose upon society once more,
probably with every bad passion strengthened, and
every good feeling utterly annihilated.*

* I must indulge myself with giving an extract here from
Mr. Buxton's admirable book on Prison Discipline. Speak-
ing of the consequences of a culprit's continement in a prison,
such as prisons generally are, he says:

"Seclusion from the world has been only a closer intercourse with its worst miscreants! his mind has lain waste and barren for every weed to take root; he is habituated to idleness, and reconciled to filth, and familiarized with crime.You give him leisure, and for the employment of that le sure you give him tutors in every branch of iniquity. You have taken no pious pains to turn him from the error of his ways, and to save his soul alive: you have not cherished the latent seeds of virtue; you have not profited by the opportunity of awakening remorse for past misconduct. Ilis Saviour's awful name becomes, indeed, familiar to his lips, because he learns to use it to give zest to his conversation, and vigour to his execrations; but all that Saviour's offices, his tenderness and compassion, and mercy to the returning sinner, are topics of which he learns no more than the beasts which perish. In short, by the greatest possible degree of misery, you produce the greatest possible degree of wickedness; you convert, perhaps, an act of indiscretion into a settled taste and propensity

to vice.

Receiving him because he is too bad for society, you return him to the world impaired in health, debased in intellect, and corrupted in principles

The events in this tale are supposed by me to have happened just before the French revolution; and though the prison of Ghent is, at this period, (as Mr. Buxton's statement proves.) a school of reform, and the prison at Brussels may now be the same, I have ventured to assume that it was the contrary at the time of which I have written.

Ethelind, however, knowing the punctuality of her husband, and that he would not have written if he had not been sure of returning some time that evening, did not give up the hope of seeing him ; and with the restless impatience of expecting love, she called Carlo to her, and set off intending to walk down the road along which Waldemar was to come. But she was not out of sight of the house when a rustling in the hedge startled her; and turning to look towards the spot, she thought she saw, nay, she was sure she saw, amidst the bronches of a tree, two eyes fixed upon her, and that those eyes were "bright and terrible."

In one moment the reality and extent of her danger burst upon her mind; but that conviction gave her the fortitude of despair. She screamed not, because on looking around her she saw no one was in sight to protect and to save her; for Carlo, even Carlo, had wandered from her to play with another dog at a distance. She called him, however; but with a voice so changed by appre. hension, that the dog disregarded it entirely ; and while turning round to retrace her steps with the speed of frenzy, an agile limb bounded over the hedge, and Geraldi stood before her!

Ha!" said he, seizing her trembling form with one hand, while the uplifted dagger threatened in the other, "Je te retrouve enfin !"*

At this moment, and while Ethelind was vainly struggling in his grasp, but, by seizing the wrist which held the dagger, had, for one single instant, perhaps, suspended the stroke of the assassin

I have found thee again, at last!

and while she vainly rent the air with her cries, Geraldi felt himself seized by the calf of the leg; and as he turned round to see what assailed him, Carlo for it was he who held him-let go his hold on the leg, to seize him by the throat. Geraldi was therefore forced to relinquish his hold on Ethelind, to defend himself from the enraged animal; while Ethelind was now able to scream for aid. Meynell and the servants, alarmed at the sound, came running immediately from the house; and Ethelind flew into the extended arms of the former, before Geraldi, whose dagger had been forced to some distance from him by the gripe of the dog. could free himself from the grasp of Carlo's teeth. At length, however, seeing himself in imminent danger of being taken, he made a violent effort; and by giving the dog a blow which stunned him, he sprung over the hedge. Then, before any one could pursue him, he mounted a fleet horse which he had left in the neighbouring field; and though traced for some miles by the track of blood from the wound in his leg, that track suddenly ceased; and no vestige remained of Geraldi and his appalling visit, but the deadly faintness of Ethelind, and the enfeebled strength of the yet scarcly rccovered Carlo.

Waldemar did arrive that night to find his adored wife in a sick-bed, and the house which he left a paradise become the scene of terror and of suffering. But the very sight of her husband soothing and cured the affrighted Ethelind; and while she hung in tearful agony round the neck of Waldemar, she said, with all the precious confi. dence of affection," I know, I am sure, my beloved, that thou wilt never leave me again l❞

"Never, never, if I can possibly help it," replied Waldemar, scarcely yet recovered from the shock which he had received. "But we must endeavor to remove the cause of our distress, by once more confining this relentless enemy; and I will spare no pains for his apprension-no, not if it costs me half my fortune."

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ness.

Carlo. And she immediately beheld him, after smelling about the hedge some time, spring over it, and disappear as she thought in a ditch on the other side.

In another instant she saw a man in the dress of a peasant flying, but evidently with difficulty, from the pursuit of Carlo. At this moment, however, a groom, (of whom Carlo was very fond,) returning along the road from the city, called him off from the chase of what appeared to him an old and lame peasant; and he came back quietly with his friend though not without growling frequently, and looking back as if he had a mind to run off again.

As soon as the groom was near enough, Ethelind asked him why he had called off the dog, And he told her it was because the person he was attacking was a poor old peasant, a quiet and inoffensive person.

"Are you sure he was old?"

"O dear, yes! He had grey hair and beard, and stooped very much in his walk; not, indeed, that his eyes looked old, for they were the brightest I ever saw; and he looked as if he could have killed the dog."

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My good Walheim," replied Ethelind-"have you forgotten that such is the description of the eyes of Geraldi Duval? And we have reason to believe he was hidden behind the hedge, and watching us, by the excessive agitation of Carlo, which ended in his springing into the road in search of him."

The groom, struck with the probability of the story, ran to the stable, mounted himself on one of the fleetest horses, and another of the servants did the same, and arming themselves, they went in pursuit of the peasant.

But they returned; having not only found no trace of the fancied peasant on the road, but having vainly sought a person of his description in the cottages on their way. Several cottagers had re. membered to have scen such a one pass in the morning, but no one had noticed his re-appearance.

My sufferings might have been greater, and Still, as Waldemar, as well as Ethelind and may be so still," said Ethelind, with great tender- their guests, was sure the supposed peasant was "I owe Geraldi unpayable obligation; for Geraldi lurking near them unseen, and on the at present it is only my life that he aims at and he watch for an opportunity of perpetrating his bloody might have attacked a life dearer far than mine-design, it was judged proper for them to remove O my best love, beware how you personally provoke immediately to another abode, and as secretly as possible.

him!"

But no fears for himself could deter Waldemar from a just and spirited pursuit of the assassin ; who contrived, however, wholly to defeat every plan for his discovery-a circumstance by no means wonderful or difficult, had they known the

truth.

Ethelind, however, recovered her health and tranquility; and the idea of leaving the house they now occupied, and removing to some distant province, was given up, as fear of the assassin gradually wore away; but it was only too soon resumed.

One evening Ethelind and two other ladies were sitting on a bank in the garden, behind which ran a hedge which divided if from the public road; when Carlo, who was near them, suddenly bounded forward at hearing a rustling in the hedge, and betrayed excessive agitation.

Ethelind instantly took alarm; but seeing her husband and the husbands of her friends in sight, she did not attempt to fly; but ascending the bank, she turned round to see what had so disturbed

Alas! had they needed proof that Geraldi, like a spirit of evil, haunted their path, it was afforded them only too palpably the next day; for Carlo staggered into the room where Ethelind sat, surrounded by her children, and, crawling to the fect of his mistress, laid his head on her gown and died.

I may truly say, that bitter was the grief which this event occasioned the affectionate family of Waldemar.

But Waldemar soon ceased to yield to the enervating influence of even well founded regret; for it was soon known, beyond the power of doubt, that Carlo had been poisoned; and on interroga. ting the groom mentioned before, he said he saw Carlo very busy in the ditch out of which he had seen the supposed peasant come, and that on going up to examine what he was doing, he found him greedily devouring a large piece of meat, from which he could not disengage his hold; and from that moment Carlo had evidently sickened.

It could not be doubted, therefore, that Geraldi had deposited the meat there, in order to deprive Ethelind of her powerful and attached defender; and it was also evident that the assassin, though unseen, was hanging over his innocent and devo. ted prey. Well, then, removal was indeed necessary, and their plans were immediately formed.

But it was not easy to decide whether it would be best for Waldemar and Ethelind to leave their present habitation in the night or in the day— However, as Ethelind declared that she would not go unless her children and Madame Steinheim went at the same time, it was necessary, she thought, for the sake of the former, that they should always set off at daybreak, and stop as soon as it was dark. It was also judged right, that the servants should remain behind, one nursemaid and Maurice alone excepted, till the travellers had fixed on their future residence.

So appalling was the consciousness, that they were hunted from their happy and present beautiful abode, by the demoniac vengeance of one wretched man, that even the firm nerves of Wal-. demar were shaken by it. But it was necessary that both he and Ethelind should avoid gloomy retrospects and gloomy foreboding, in order not to cloud over the innocent gaiety of their children, that season so distinguished by lengthened smiles and transient sorrows, of its proverbial brilliance and exemption from pain-exemption from all tears but "the tear forgot as soon as shed,"

They begun their journey at day-break in a fine September morning, and they directed their course towards Hamburg, meaning to live there while fresh search was making for Geraldi, for the convenience of sailing for England, should fear compel them to leave their country. They travelled in two carriages; the first carriage containing Waldemar, Ethelind, Madame Steinheim, and two of the children; and the latter, Maurice, the nurse-maid, and the other children.

Their first day's journey was as pleasant as a journey, undertaken from such a cause, could be ; and the pensive parents occasionally caught somewhat of the hilarity of their children; but they were usually watching every passenger on the road, and looking eagerly and anxiously into every vehicle they passed. Once a horseman passed them at full-speed, having previously, one of the children said, looked into the carriage; but at this moment, Waldemar and Ethelind were occupied in examining the foot of one of the boys which a thorn had penetrated; and the child who had seen this man look into the carriage, had scarcely said, "Look, mamma!" when the horseman had clap

The children wept over the dead body of Carlo, refusing to be comforted;" and Ethelind, in whose mind Carlo was associated with the image of parents ever loved and ever lamented, and who considered the poor dog not only as a faithful friend, and the preserver of her life, but as a constant memorial of her parents' anxious care, and as a sacred deposit which they had left to her ten-ped spurs to his horse and was out of sight; nor derness, was overwhelmed at the moment with feelings which she could not express; but which, however, in the warm affectionate nature of her husband, met with alleviating sympathy.

could the child give any description of him, which could at all warrant them to suspect that the man who was now so rapidly disappearing before them, was Geraldi.

Having reached a small town just as the dayground, and Ethelind feared that the dagger had
pierced her broken heart-feared that the mother
as well as the daughter had been doomed to save
her life by the loss of her own.

closed in, they resolved to rest there that night;
and as the evening was very fine, and poor Mad.
ame Steinheim had not had her accustomed ex-
ercise during the day, Ethelind led her into the
garden of the inn when she had seen her children
in bed. This garden joined a public garden, which
that night was lighted up for some particular occa-
sion, while jolity and music sounded from booths
and stages erected along the walks.
The pauvre maman gazed with unconscious
fatuity on the lights before her. But Ethelind, as
she opened a little gate which led to the public
garden, contemplated it with some admiration, and
felt impatient for Waldemar, who had promised to
follow her, to come and admire it with her. But
no sooner did her poor charge hear a female voice
sing one of Mina's songs from a booth at a little
distance, than her dull countenance lighted up
with pleasurable emotion ; and exclaiming, “Ecou-
tez! voila Mina qui chante !"* she drew Ethe-
lind forward towards the spot whence the sound
procoeded; and Ethelind though averse to enter
the public garden, could not bear to deny this af-
flicted being the only enjoyment now left her.

Still she felt very reluctant to go on; and at last she contrived to make her restless companion stop before they reaced the illuminated walks. On the side of Ethelind was a thick row of trees, in which shone a few scattered lamps; but they shed no light except on the object or objects immediately under them; therefore Ethelind was conscious that she and her companion might escape observation; and, like her poor friend, she, too, listened with pleased attention to the music, till she even forgot to watch for her husband's appearance.— But her attention was soon directed from the music to a rustling sound behind the trees near her, and even her companion heard it also, and clung close to her.

Ethelind turned towards the sound-her companion did the same; and in dress, in look, and in expression, like what he was in former days, (save that the boy was grown into the man,) Geraldi stood again before her, with his had uplifted to strike her to the heart.

But as she knelt beside her, and examined her clothes, she saw that no wound had been given for they were unstained with blood; and when Waldemar and Maurice approached, they found Ethelind trying to restore that animation, of which terror, she fondly thought, had alone deprived the pale object before her. But Waldemar and Maurice, while they gazed with agitated wonder, suspected that the poor sufferer was really dead; and they were right-the spirit was gone forever; sud. den terror, and anguish at the sight of her child's destroyer, had snapped the thread of life; and Ethelind's anxious endeavours were bestowed vain. "My dearest love," said Waldemar, "let us remove this unconscious being into the house, and there we will take every means to restore her."

66

Ay, ay! do," replied Ethelind, in a tone that filled them with alarm; "ay, ay! he may return and that would destroy us both."

"Who may return ?" said Waldemar, trembling and forced to give Maurice the entire charge of the body.

"Geraldi! He has been here, and she knew him; she spoke to him; she awed and terrified him, and so she saved my life!"

All this was uttered with a voice too loud, a gesture too violent, and an eye too wild, to denote aught but temporary derangement in the usually gentle Ethelind. And as Waldemar led her into the house, he feared that though her life was again saved, her reason might be destroyed for ever.

an otherwise senseless, unconscious and wretched being!" So forcibly did Ethelind evince the truth of that well-known observation-that the strongest attachments spring from a conviction of the services we render rather than that of the services we receive. "But what then, dearest Ethelind! have you not now a much dearer consciousness-that of the poor suffèrer's being entered on a happier stage of existence, and re-united to the child she had lost? Or, if that be not sufficient consolation for your sick heart, do you not believe, that if the pauvre maman could have had one hour of reason restored to her, she would have chosen the very death she met with; since that death saved your life, and repaid the debt she owed you for long, long years of ceaseless and watchful affection? Did ever child dó her duty by a helpless parent, better than you have done by a being whose claims on you scarcely any heart but yours would have acknowledged? and is it not soothing to you to feel that the Almighty, as if in testimony that your pious care of this afflicted innocent has been an acceptable offering to him, graciously permitted the object of your kindness to reward it in the most effectual manner?"

Ethelind, whom the tender persuasions of her husband soothed into calmness even in spite of herself, did not answer, not only lest she should interrupt the soothings dear to her heart, but also be cause she was afraid that, if she owned herself consoled, she should be required to leave the cham. ber of death; and there she was resolved to watch all night.

But Waldemar now thought it time for her to retire to rest, after the double shock which she had undergone; he therefore proposed to her to go to bed in the very next room, while he watched all night by the body; and after some difficulty he succeeded in prevaling on her to oblige him. Nor was it long before his agitated wife fell into a deep sleep, and lost in salutary forgetfulness the sense of present grief, and future danger.

But as soon as the body of her friend was laid on a bed, and means of restoring her were used, Ethelind busied herself so eagerly in superintending the operations, giving her own aid occasionally, that Waldemar's mind was a little relieved; though he was terrified at the probable result, when she should find that the sorely visited parent lived no longer. Nor was it long before the conviction of this fa. Not so salutary was the night of Waldemar; tal truth forced itself on her mind; and bursting his hours of watchfulness were hours of misery alinto an agony of grief, she threw herself on the so; and while he stole with noisless step from the bed beside her, and bathed her unconscious face bed of slumber to the bed of death-while he gazed with her tears. "Thank heaven!" exclaimed on the flushed and glowing cheek of his wife, and Waldemar, as he saw this salutary emotion; and then on the pale and cold cheek of her now happy wishing to increase it, he said, "Poor child of suf-charge-he could not forget that but for the uncon

"Tiens!" burst from his quivering lip; and the stroke of death would have immediately followed had not the helpless being whom he had deprived of a daughter, and of reason, recognised the mur-fering! and thy life, too, has been the victim of derer of that daughter; and throwing herself before the powerless Ethelind, exclaimed, in the shrill tone of frenzied agony, as she had done at Brussels, "Mina! Oh, Mina! ma chere enfant ! ma chere enfant !"

Her wild eye, her wan and sunken cheek, her meagre trembling form, and the consciousness that the sad change was owing to him-for he had heard the story of her miseries-palsied the arm even of this determined ruffian. The dagger dropped from his unnerved hand; and disengaging himself from the cold and clammy grasp of the attenuated fingers which had seized him, he took up the dagger again and hastily disappeared along an unlighted walk; while Ethelind stood confoundcd, motionless, and nearly as wild as her agitated companion. But she was only too painfully recalled to recollection; the innocent victim of a ruffian's violence lay motionless before her on the * Listen! Mina is singing. My dear child-my dear child!

this wretched man; but now he has been merci-
ful; for, having deprived thee of all that made life
valuable, for thee to die was indeed a blessing.
Imbecile and joyless as thou wert, and rayless as
thy mind was, I shall miss thee, dear insensible
being! and so will my poor Ethelind. And oh!
though I rejoice in thy deliverance from suffering,
I grieve to think that I cannot by attentions, how.
ever unconsciously received by thee, show my
sense of the obligation I owe thee for having been
the means of saving my Ethelind's life."

As he uttered these words (which had the de-
sired effect, and caused Ethelind's tears to flow
with redoubled violence,) he lay down by the side
of Ethelind; and as he pressed his check to hers,
she felt that she did not weep alone. But soon af-
ter she exclaimed with almost frightful vehemence,
"And shall I never see her smile on me again!
and hear her exclaim, Mina, chere Mina! Shall
I never again have the dear consciousness that my
presence gave life and animation and happiness to

scious interference of the senseless frame before him, that face of living loveliness would now have been pale and cold as hers. He could not forget that his adored Ethelind was still exposed to a recurrence of that danger; and that the angel of death, hidden, as it were, in the shape of an earthly demon, was, though invisible hovering over her path, and ready, when least expected to seize and destroy her.

But what was to be done? and where at that moment, was Geraldi ?—and while he asked himself these questions, he was painfully impatient for the return of day, because he knew that Maurice and two of the ostlers had been out all night in pursuit of Geraldi, as the ostlers had seen a man answering to the description of Geraldi mount a horse at the door of the public garden, and gallop off at full speed along the road on which our travellers were to have gone in the morning.

But when morning came and Waldemar inquired for Maurice, he found that though they had certain. ly tracked Geraldi all the way they went, (as some

passengers told them they had seen such a man,) the speed of their horses was so inferior to the speed of his, that they were forced to give up the pursuit and return.

This information perplexed Waldemar, as it made him think it imprudent to direct their course to that side of Germany towards which Garaldi had directed his; especially after he had put some questions to the nurse-maid, and received her answers. This woman had stood by the kichen-fire, after the children were in bed, and till their mother had left them to lead the pauvre maman into the garden; and she remembered to have seen a tall dark-looking man, with singularly bright eyes, lounging against the door-stall; while she asked the landlord if the roads to Hamburg were good or bad, as they were going thither, and she disliked the idea of the journey. She also remembered that, as soon as she had said this, the man went out at the front door of the kitchen; and then it was as he passed, that she saw his face and his singularly-bright eyes, and asked the landlord who

he was. He assured her he did not know; that he was not at their inn, but that his horse and he had put up at the house next him, where there was a public garden, and that there were very fine doings there that evening, which he probably had

come to see.

copies of the Bible, to imitate those sold in man-
uscript, undertook the sale of them at Paris, where
the art of printing was then unknown.

As he sold his printed copies for 60 crowns,
while the scribes demanded 500, it created univer-
sal astonishment. And when he produced copies
as fast as they were wanted, and also lowered the
price to 30 crowns, all Paris was agitated. The
uniformity of the copies increased the wonder.-
Informations were given to the magistrates against
him as a magician; his lodgings were searched;
and a great many copies were found and seized.-
The red ink with which they were embellished,

was said to be his blood.

It was thereon seriously adjudged that he was in league with the devil? Though a devil is to this day essential to every complete printing establishment, the printing and circulating of the Bible was an unprofitable enterprize and investment for His Satanic Majesty! On discovering the method by which Faustus produced his Bibles, the Parlia.

ment passed an act to discharge him from all per

secution, in consideration of his useful invention-
a very generous decision, truly !—Academic Reg.

ister.

A RECENT INCIDENT.

manufacturers in England, and his name deservedly ranks in the first class of mechanical geniuses. -Register.

111

MACKEREL CATCHERS.

OUR mackerel catchers, says the Newburyport Herald, we understand, have suffered much this year from the want of good experienced fishermen, and have been obliged to ship quite a large part of their crews of green hands from the country. One of them, which arrived here a few days ago, hailed a schooner in the bay, and inquired-"What schooner is that?" The man on deck answered-" I don't know, but I'll go down and ask the captain!"

This reminds us of the amateur Captain Shorteut, who, perceiving a detention of the vessel he had assumed the command of, asked the reason,

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In the crowded market-place of one of the south-the lad was perpetually amusing himself with a western cities, a northern vender of religious books was exhibiting his stock in trade, and calling on the people to step up and buy. He was a colporteur of the American Tract Society, but seemed to be so abundantly supplied, that he had the book which every man called for, whatever its subject or title. Indeed the variety of his supply was so curious and extensive, that one man offered to bet another, (Mr. B.) that he could not name a book which the vender had not on hand. Mr. B. took him up and cried out

hand-glass, calling his own reflection his little man and inquiring why he could make it do everything. that he did, except shut its eyes. A French lover making a present of a mirror to his mistress, sent with it a poetical quatrain, which may be thus paraphrased :

"This Mirror my object of love will unfold,
Whensoe'er your regard it allures:

Oh! would, when I'm gazing, that I might behold
On its surface the object of yours!"

But the following old epigram, on the same sub-
is in a much finer strain :-

From this account there was no doubt but that this man was Geraldi, and that he had learnt their route from this prating woman. Waldemar consequently determined to go a direct contrary way to what he first intended, and go into Bohemia; for, as Geraldi probably imagined they were going to Hamburg with a view of embarking for some other country, it was more likely, when he found they did not come to Hamburg, that he should suppose them gone to a seaport, than that they had gone further into the heart of the continent; and Ethe. lind, who was quite satisfied if she did not go along the road where Geraldi had been seen, was willingmoir of the Devil ?" to abide by her husband's determination. She was not so willing to leave the body of her friend behind, but was forced to yield to unavoidable necesity. She had, however, the melancholy satis-ty-five cents; will you have it sir?" faction of attending the masses said for her soul, and of following her to her humble grave, with her husband, her children, and her servants. Nor was Waldemar slow to promise that a tombstone should be put up; telling her name, age, and place of abode; and also inform the curious and sentimental traveller, that there a sufferer had found a place

"I say, Mr. Bookseller, have you got the Me.ject,

of rest.

[To be Continued.]

MISCELLANY.

THE ART OF PRINTING. THE art of printing has been for many ages known and practised among the Chinese, and although many in Europe claimed the honor of its discovery, that credit is now ascertained to be the just reward of John Guttenburg of Mayence. He was the first practitioner of the present art of printing with movable metallic types. This art he invented in 1438, A. D.

His early efforts were attended with many difficulties, and it was a long time before they were brought to much perfection.

We are told that John Faustus, a partner of Guttenburg, having printed off a large number of

"The very thing," replied the agent taking out a book, the only authentic memoir of his majesty ever published, called the. Holy Bible, price twen

Mr. B. was obliged to pay his bet aud buy the Bible which he took in the midst of general applause.

SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT.

THE original occupation of Arkwright, was that of a barber. But his passion for mechanics was so intense, that he very often neglected his business, or allowed his wife to serve their customers unaided. His attention was completely absorbed in the vain endeavor to discover perpetual motion. It is said, when his considerate wife, would in her impatience, remonstrate against what she regarded his idleness and folly-he was accustomed to reply: "When I become Sir Richard Arkwright you shall not ride in the same carriage with me." This determination, it is related, he faithfully kept for in his subsequent prosperity, he provided Lady Arkwright, a handsome separate establishment.

In 1767, Arkwright abandoned his original pro. fession, and went to Warrington, where associated with Mr. Kay, he directed his attention to the per. fecting of the "spinning machine," already constructed by that gentleman.

After many years of intense labor, and large expenditure, he became one of the most opulent

:

"When I revolve this evanescent state,
How fleeting is its form, how short its date;
My being and my stay dependant still,
Not on my own, but on another's will;
I ask myself, as I my image view,
Which is the real shadow of the two."

INFLUENCE OF THE WIFE. "My wife has made my fortune," said a gentleman of great possessions, "by her thrift, prudence and cheerfulness, when I was just beginning."

"And mine has lost my fortune," answered his companion bitterly, "by uscless extravagance, and repining when I was doing well.”

What a world does this open of the influnce which a wife possesses over the future prosperity of her family! Let the wife know her influence and try to use it wisely and well.

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