Immortal Thalia! so oft invoked by the despairing author, we too will humbly call upon thee now-not that thou mayest turn thy heavenly complexion here, but rather that thou shouldest conceal it in a fold of thy flowing mantle ! The verses which Cécile read, if verses they may be called, were to the following effect:

"My wager's lost! Who now will dare contend
With thee upon the secrets of the skies,
Or what the lowering Heavens may portend?
They have no mysteries for thy bright eyes-
Thou see'st the causes of this mortal state,
Whence all creation's wondrous works have grown ;
Thou can'st foretell the unconscious millions' fate,
To thee th' Almighty's dread decrees are shown,
Ages have toiled in vain to learn what thou hast known!

"O rest not there, thou who cans't thus reveal
All that my soul so long did thirst to know,
But preach once more; thou may'st not aught conceal,
Since ignorance is perdition here below!

To hear thy voice, angels will hush their strain

Of deathless praise before th' eternal throne:

If thou wilt teach, I ne'er will doubt again;

The sceptic heart shall bow to thee alone,
Thy faith, thy hope, thy creed shall ever be mine own!"

Such was the effusion: now what did Cécile think of it? What she should have thought, or rather what she should have done, we will fearlessly state, viz., have remitted it, by return of post, to its author, after having shown it to Lady Helen; but this, we lament to say, the frail Saint neither did nor thought of doing. Twice she read both stanzas through, once, with such a radiant smile of unearthly rapture as seldom brightens a mortal countenance; and once again, with a graver mien, as, pearl after pearl, the happy tears fell by the words, which they were far too discreet to obliterate. Then, she convulsively pressed the senseless paper to her lips; and then, murmuring the half-uttered words, "Saved!" "Redeemed!" she cast herself upon her knees at her usual place of worship.

What she there so frantically exclaimed and whispered turn in turn, we will not pretend to report. Cécile's prayers were generally in Latin; and though we have suffered much formerly, in various manners, for the right acquisition of that venerated language, we have reason to fear, from recent experience, that we are no longer by any means so proficient as we

were wont to be deemed by our over-indulgent instructors. We had humbly conceived, for instance, that the word, "persequor," as its French derivative, " poursuivre," should be translated in the honest vernacular by the kindred expressions, "pursue," or "follow up.' Having been informed, however, upon very popular authority, that the original term could involve no other construction than that of the direst persecution by fire and sword, we have thought it advisable to remove at once from our brow the few and fast-fading laurels of our academic contests, and to think of them as if they had never been. We, therefore, as we have already stated, will not attempt even to surmise what may have been the purport of Cécile's invocation. Nor, indeed, should we feel quite justified in mentioning at whose shrine it was poured forth-for the idolatrous Saint Cecilia's orisons were very frequently addressed to-in short, the less we say about them, the better.

When these prayers, if so they may be termed, were at length concluded, Cécile sat down by her toilette table, read the verses once more, once more pressed the last line to her

lips, and then, her eyes having strayed in the direction of her looking-glass, she could not but smile at the strange appearance which she presented. Her hair-we have already stated, we believe, that the Redburn Saint's hair was altogether unrivalled throughout the Eastern Counties for length, lustre, and luxuriance: this peerless hair had, in the agitation of the previous hour, fallen from its well-regulated folds into dark clusters, which now enshrouded her whole person, like the veil of the Tragic Muse whom we shall have presently to summon. Cécile, we aver, could not but smile somewhat complacently at the magic beauty of this, Nature's choicest gift, as it then showed in its enchanting disarray; and yet, the smile endured but for a fleeting second. One moment more, and she was on her knees again before the image of the Virgin Mother; one moment again, and her long, sharp, ruthless toilette scissors were in her hand. Now, Melpomene, we may invoke thee in truth. We have had much to mourn for in these later years. We have seen our brightest and purest hopes, and not ours only, but the hopes, the pride, the glory of a nation in the dust.

We have beheld the greatest, the most loved, the most exalted in rank, in intellect, in more than saintly virtue, cast, without so much as a shelter, upon the strange, wide world. Then we have thought of the days, when the overburdened heart could find its own relief in an agony of tears, and when the buoyant spirit would emerge from each paroxysm of its childish grief as lightsome and as free as if care and sorrow were but the dream of the sterner moralist;-we have thought of those days, but all in vain. And yet, though we could no longer weep, where we have most grieved, we question whether we should have witnessed, without a tear, each silken tress of Saint Cecilia's hair falling under the merciless steel. Why, gracious heavens! the shortest among them was longer than our own overlengthy arm, and yet none, no, not one, found grace in her sight, saving one little curl on either side of her forehead, each so short, so meagre, and so spare, that the sight of it would have staggered a lady of the most modest pretensions on her recovery from her fifteenth confinement. When the smiling Saint had so completely achieved this execution, that the back