making; for shaking out, or lapping, or raking, might become anybody, and she used to look so well at it, too, with her clear red cheeks and shining hair: but now she's yellow and thin in the cheek, and sorrowful-looking. Maybe it's grieving after the quality she is." "Usk a-chree! but ye're simple:there's more than that at the bottom of it; an' if Letty Hamill doesn't sup sorrow for all her consait, my name's not Kitty."

“ I'm thinking Phelim Mackeever is making a long voyage this time," said another: "troth he'll be in no hurry back, ye'll see.”

"Well," said a middle-aged pale woman, "if that's the way that's of it. God help her, I say, for she has the hard arrand to the world! and in my time I've seen some misled that was neither bould nor unmodest, and never did I know the foolish action done that was not rued in sorrow."

“And shouldn't they rue it ?" said Kitty, "as they well deserve!"

“Och, it is but right they should; and it is His will they should. But it's Letty that was kindly and goodnatured, and many a poor body's prayer she has about her; for, either here or in the world to come, the goodwill for a good action will bring a blessing. But I'll tell ye, girls, it wouldn't answer for Phelim to take her home. He's waiting till he has a place of his own for her. She'd have the uneasy life of it with yon ould storifag of a mother of his; and I'll tell ye a joke about her. The time I went to Belfast-an' myself didn't know the streets very well-the evening before I left it I had some little business to do, and I was glad to fall in with Biddy McKeever. Well, it's herself knows every turn in it; but just as we were jogging along, my woman pulls her bades out of her pocket, and falls to saying her prayers. Troth, maybe I look'd surprised; for, says she, Is it laughing at me ye are, Molly?""

"Hoot, no," says I; "God forbid I'd laugh at any creature for the like," says I; "but I'm thinking it's the quare place ye take to pray in. Sure you'd be better in some quiet corner." Well," says she, "I'll tell you how it is. I'm lodged with one Douglas in the town here and you know we used to say at home that the Protestants were

Smisid nan doul; but Jemmy Douglas is not a Protestant itself! he's one of them Presbytarians, bad luck to them; and myself would'nt santify his house wid my prayers!" Troth, 'twas with enough to do I kept in the laugh, to think of the holy woman she was. The ould tory! much good the prayers of the like of her will do any place; and she talking to me that knew the kind she was! But, God help poor Letty any way; it's little good-will the mother-in-law would bear to her. But if she'd get Phelim away from his own, for they're bad advisers, he might be wise an' welldoin' yet?"

Few of them were charitable enough to join in Molly O'Boyle's good wishes: but Letty neither heard nor heeded their gossip. Dread of coming sorrow kept her too fully occupied nerving her spirit to meet the worst that might happen.

At last a letter reached her from Phelim. She had been hopeless of him, and he was coming; she had doubted him, and he was true. "They were off Cushindall either there or on the other side of Nappan, he would come ashore: he would be with her that night; would see his Letty; would marry her in the sight of the world;

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Yet

and would take her where she need not fear to love him." Thus ran the long'd for letter, when tears of joy allowed poor Letty to see the precious words. She had knelt to offer her thanksgiving for God's mercy, and a thousand times had she unfolded the paper, kissed it, and wept in grateful joy over the precious words, when her step-brother came in. Some unusual gloom weighed on his naturally sulky brow; some firm resolve hardened his muscular lips; he was pale and silent. Letty was so happy in her hopes, and busied in doing as he directed, she did not observe his manner nor his look, and she prepared for his leaving home without a feeling of curiosity or a question as to the object of his journey. No matter to her, Phelim was coming; and coming with as true a heart as he had when he left her; and coming with power and will to claim her. Hour after hour she watched and listened; and as it grew later, every dog that barked, every horse's tread as it passed up the glen, brought hope,

and doubt, and disappointment. Night darkened down, gloomy, storiny, dismal looking; for it was now winter; and Letty, sick at heart, turned to sit at the window of her little room, where many an anxious vigil she had kept before. Sometimes she thought she heard his voice down the glen, sometimes she thought she saw him coming, or heard his step: and again she fancied 'twas his voice, when the audible beating of her own heart, and the rushing of the little stream past the house, and the rustling of the wind through the leaves and branches, were the only sounds upon her ear. The morning twilight came; and she watched in vain for Phelim. Day passed, and did not bring him; and evening had softened into the grey of coming night, when Charley Hamill returned. The day preceding he had received information that the Peggy was off the coast; and, under circumstances of peculiar treachery, the malicious boor had given information to the water-guard. In consequence the cargo had been seized and the crew taken prisoners. Phelim had been wounded in the struggle, and Charlie fully hoped would now be sent out of the country; "and Miss Letty must then give up her nonsense about him. And then, instead of having her dependent upon him, and maybe a parcel of beggary papist brats with her, while their vagabond father would be roving the world, neither caring nor thinking for them, he would get her married to some well-doing, snug man, and he'd have his hand clear of the bother of her : but Phelim she never should set eyes on, that he had said, and that he would abide by."

Little did he think that nothing but death would break the ties that already bound them; nor death itself leave her with free affections to bestow on another. But as little did he care for those affections, and still less was he capable of understanding them.

Letty was spinning when he came in and, after she had given him the usual kindly welcome, for which he sullenly thanked her, he said, "You look as pale as if you had heard the news I have for you.

Our smug gling friends were taken last night off Nappan. Your precious sweetheart is off with the rest of the crew to

Carrick. To be sure, we'll have ill wanting of him here, but he'll get a longer sail than he has had yet, or I'm mistaken."

She had stopped her wheel as he began, and had grown deadly pale, and rising now she staggered to the hallan wall, at the door, where the fresh air gave her strength to say, "Oh Charlie, you're trying me; surely you have not the heart to tell me that for truth. Yet, my God! what makes you look so? It is true, it is true! O Phelim, my dear, dear, husband," she would have said, but she fell; and a long fit of insensibility was succeeded by fearful convulsions; and poor Letty awoke to bodily pain which almost overcame her mental agony. But even in her worst of suffering, she entreated them to tell Charlie she was married; that she was the wife of Phelim M'Keever; that she had been married when her brother was in Scotland; that her baby, whether she lived to see it or not, was a lawful child; the child of an honest woman. She entreated them to believe her, as she believed she would soon be in the presence of God to answer for her sins. It was only fear, it was not deceit nor wickedness tempted her to conceal her situation : amid such protestations her baby was given to her arms.

There is not, in all the happiest workings of the human heart, a joy like the young mother's. So Letty thought, as she gazed upon her little boy, her precious and cheaply purchased prize: for what sickness, what pain, and sorrow, what misery would she not endure to have him, the little dark-eyed jewel? and, oh, if the poor father could but see him.-Scarcely could she take the necessary rest for looking on her darling; and her recovery seemed most extraordinary for she had no kind mother to nurse her, no thoughtful sister near, no anxious friend to sooth and strengthen with their words of comfort; none, except an old aunt, a goodnatured but coarse-minded woman, who had come to try to make peace and keep matters quiet; but both she and the neighbour women were equally incredulous, as to the marriage; and when Letty found it impossible to make them believe her, she consoled herself by saying, "all will be well

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when Phelim comes; he will not leave me long in this way, I am sure: they cannot have much against him; if he did try to smuggle, that was no deadly sin: he will soon be out, and then they'll see."

One morning, Letty sat with her baby on her knee, her pale, meek, melancholy face bent over the little treasure; tracing his father's looks, his father's features, and stroking, over her own white slender finger, the glossy silken hair of darkest brown; kissing its fresh pure mouth, and tiny hands, and feeling that the world, nor all that was precious in it, could not buy him. Sometimes she thought she loved him better than his father, dear as he was, and dearer now than ever, when she pictured him in prison, his hopes disappointed-his savings that he had hoped to share with her, and on which to become upright and legally honest, snatched from his hands and gone wondering why his own Letty did not come or write to him, and sighing to think what would become of his already half-orphaned little one, till she almost forgot her baby in her sorrow. The tears fell cold and fast on the placid face of the little boy, and awoke him. She soothed him to sleep again, and prayed as mothers pray, that all spiritual good, all temporal blessings might be deserved by him, and might await him that God might make him his own: that her faults and his father's might be expiated by their own suffering, and by God's mercy; but that he might escape unscathed, unblighted; and then her thoughts wandered into the blissful land of a hoping mother's futurity. She was startled from her pure dreams by seeing Charlie at the door. 'Twas the first time they had met since he had known the worst; and the crimson blood that rose to her temples flowed back to her heart with a pang of sickness so heavy, that the light left her eyes, and the rushing ringing sound in her ears prevented her at first from hearing what he said. When she did hear, God pity her; 'twas the grossest, the cruellest, the bitterest abuse. "He would not be lieve she was married; no, no, the blackguard was too sure of her; but no such slut should sit at his fire-side to shame him; no, nor she should not go to the vagabond neither; he had written

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to Belfast: her passage was taken for New York: here she should not be; nor at liberty, she should not be to bring disgrace on him. She might hide her shame in America, where no one but her sister would know of it; but she should not take her brat among strangers with her; no, by his soul, a sister of his never should sit another day under the roof with one of such a breed. She might take the child to the granny of it; yes, she was the fittest one to rear such a chap; she'd bring it up in the way it should go." He was in the door-way: Letty could not pass; and she stood opposite to him, more dead than alive, with the infant in her arms. Just then her aunt came in, and endeavoured to pacify her nephew; but all she said only made him worse. He swore he'd have the baby, and throw it down to the blackguard, or he'd make her trudge. "Let me go, then, Charlie; let me go, and I'll forgive ye," said Letty.

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Forgive me? what have you to forgive? you -; but, no matter. Out of my house the young brat goes this minute; but you must not; no, you shall not stir."

Letty," whispered their aunt, "Letty dear, he's drunk, and we must not cross him; we must give in till him now."

The brother evening; and

"No, I'll never part with my child, Aunt Nelly; but with my life I'll make him let me go. O, God help me, I am weak; I"` and she staggered and fell, fainting, while her brother snatched the child from her arms, and ran out. Her aunt lifted her into bed, and so long and so deep was the faint, that for some minutes they thought she was gone. did not come home that some of their neighbours came into the room where Letty lay. In vain the aunt cautioned them; in vain she entreated them to be silent. One of them said she had just left Biddy McKeever nursing the baby, and singing to it. She thanked God that she had it; and she'd take it to the priest that very evening, and have it christened. She hoped to save him like a brand from the burning; and she'd like to see who'd take him from her again! "troth he was her son Phelim's child: 'twas easy to see he was; and tell the creature of

the conversation or biography of the assassin-his epigrams, his intrigues, his previous murders, his self-possession, have all been described with dramatic point, and attention to effect; finally, Louis Philippe has availed himself of this occupation of the French people, to crush, by restrictive laws, the liberty of printing and publishing at him and his government, which hitherto the journals have indulged in. The character of this horrible business from beginning to end-its alleged causes the unutterable atrocity of the event itself, and of the wretch who fired the machine-the consequences which have followed-all are SO thoroughly French, that they deserve to be considered as illustrative of la grande nation, and of the progress which a clever people, with every means of improvement in their hands, will make towards good, after they have practically laid aside religion, as the governing rule of life-the last great respect to which all things must be referred, even by those who frequently forget it in their ordinary conduct.

Of course it is not meant to be asserted that France has a monopoly of atrocities. Ireland and its Popish peasantry, practised in bloodshed, and praised by O'Connell, must claim their share; and in England there are sundry cuttings of throats, and rifling of pockets with bloody fingers, that deserve remark. In Scotland too they contrive to murder now and then chiefly pedlers, I believe, of late years; but princes suffered of old, or they who stood in the place of princes. All kingdoms present their share of villainies, but there is a peculiar character belonging to those of France, a blending of the most outrageous crimes with the familiar courtesies of society; a desperate and abominable guiltiness, without the least apparent consciousness of it, which distinguishes, and makes peculiarly detestable, the criminals of that country. In England, Ireland, and Scotland, we hear of murderers who after their seizure are sullen, or sad, or savage; or it may be they are penitent; or it may be again that they endeavour to pass off the thing with a front of hardened assurance; but in all these appearances there is some evidence of consciousness of their situation. They are not just

as if nothing of the kind had happened. But here is this Corsican Frenchmanthis Fieschi, who after having murdered thirteen people with one shot, and maimed many more; after committing the most monstrous treason, and the most foul murder, talking away to those who visit him, with a mixture of sang froid and conversational sentiment, such as one might expect from a man who had been engaged in an affair of meritorious danger. To one gentleman he mentions that he had served in the 12th regiment, and had it happened that that regiment was stationed at the place against which his battery was directed, he does not think he could have fired; such was his consideration for his old companions in arms! Precious villain! to talk of feeling for his companions in arms! Another he begs to do him the honour to come and see him die, and to have the complaisance to observe how unmoved Fieschi (for he adopts the affectation of speaking of himself in the third person) will view the instrument of death. Now this fellow, who so politely requests his heroism to be observed, has been all his life a mean, wretched, sensual, hired stabber; the alternate occupations of lust and larceny appear to have been the least wicked of his disgusting career, and yet he talks fine, after the fashion just described.

France has arrived at that point of depraved civilization which destroys the safety of society. As they say themselves, in their neat epigrammatic way, les extremes se touchent, and without the revivifying, reinvigorating influence of religion, the refinements and luxuries of society do but lead us on to that personal insecurity, to escape from which society first emerges from barbarism. The impulses of undisciplined appetite, or the recklessness of adroit depravity, lead to nearly the same results.

Notwithstanding the vanity which reigns in France, to such a degree as for the most part to make the people insensible of the lowness of sound morals, and virtuous sentiment, to which they have sank, yet I perceive that of late, and particularly in connexion with political disquisition, some attention has been paid to these mat

ters.

Even before the late atrocity, the shocking state of the morals of the