our mother, or a lady who was visiting her; and I heard just so much as made me keenly anxious to hear more; but the only time when I could undisturbedly penetrate into the Mysteries of Udolpho was at night, when every one was in bed. This did not deter me. I was sent to my own crib at nine o'clock, but I lay there awake till after eleven; then rose, stole down stairs, read Mrs. Radcliffe for a couple of hours, and crept back to my bed.

It was the third night, I think, on which I had followed this device. I had got into the very depth of the Mysteries. My state of suspense was almost miserable. The night came. I only half undressed, and crept into bed. Two hours passed tediously away, but even then the party below did not break up, for the book was to be finished that night. The snow lay deep round the house; the snow laden wind moaned round the angle where my room was. At last came the sound for which my ear was

strained: the last

good-night was heard; the last door closed; the

last footstep died away; and all save the moaning wind was at rest.

Then up rose the little watcher, without stocking or shoe, clad only in a little petticoat, her frock having been taken off, and without any additional covering about her; holding a small piece of candle far above her head to light her through the long, wide, rambling passages, and down the immense old-fashioned staircase, with the windows now heaped in snow, at which she was often told the Banshee cried when the head of the house was to die-she steals along, her mind rivetted only on the book that lies in the deserted sitting-room at the other extremity of that great old house.

Still does the vision pass before me, almost ghost-like, of a form that I cannot believe once was mine. A little half-dressed shivering thing, with bare neck, arms, and feet, peering into the darkness before it, as the cold frosty air dimmed the feeble light she held as high as she could above her head.

The great hall at the foot of the staircase is like a partially seen vault, its quaint old portraits seeming half alive in the glimmering light. And slowly, doubtfully, staringly, the little figure

moves on, passes through the wide and lofty hall, lofty almost as the house itself, passes through the large silent rooms, and enters the farthest off-the winter sitting-room.

The fire is out, and the lights are gone; but the books are on the table. Mrs. Radcliffe is there, and everything else is unthought of. The child sets her short candle on the table, places the volume before her, and resting an elbow at each side of the book, crosses her hands, puts her forehead on them, and thus screens her eyes from the light beneath them.

ter,

It was a frightful and well-remembered chap

in which the unfortunate, strangely mystified heroine, finds her way into some prohibited chamber, and certainly suffers for her curiosity. There is a pall-covered bed, and the pall rises and falls before her horror-stricken view; and,-just as my own blood curdled, and the face was looking up at me also from beneath the ominous pall -the sharp stroke of One tolled out clear and solemn through the silent house, and at the same instant down popped my bit of candle in the wide. socket, and without even looking up again, went

quite out, leaving me in utter darkness before the horrific scene of the Mysteries of Udolpho.

Let a child punish itself if you can-no punishment will ever be so well remembered. O! the intense horror of that moment! I never told any one of my night's adventure, but I have ever since felt that self-punishments are the best remembered, the most effectual. That moment interpreted to me as a maternal command, what before had been interpreted merely as an observation which only whetted the appetite for what it was intended to deny. But never was a disobedient child more appropriately and keenly punished. Mrs. Radcliffe pursued me back, as groping my way, trembling, stopping, shivering at the sound of my own bare feet, starting at the rustle of my own scanty clothing, listening with strained ears to the hollow moan of the wind that penetrated into the long and said-tobe haunted passages, I at last made out my perilous way, and crept back to my cold bed, scarcely daring to draw its coverings round me, and began to lay to heart the memory of that

strange text that says disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft.

I made that night two resolutions, and I kept them. One was never to tell my twin brother of what I had done. The other was never to read a book again, that my mother disapproved of my reading.

I have often wondered why I made the first of these resolves, seeing we never had secrets one from another. But I believe it must have arisen from two causes- -one that I knew Basil would think I had done wrong; and the other that I had some indistinct perception of an often forgotten fact, namely, that we generally injure others by telling them of our wrong doings. The injunction Confess your faults one to another,' has undoubtedly a more restricted sense than some persons like to put upon it.