One day, to the surprise of our two mendicants, Paco Rosales was commanded to the palace, where he was to be admitted to a private audience with the King, after high-mass; nevertheless he did not return till late in the evening.

"The King spoke to me!" cried he, boisterously bursting into the room where his companion sat patiently awaiting for him.

"Tell me all about it, then," answered Tovalito, quietly; "thou art now as proud as any grandee.' First, I had to wait seven hours," replied Paco, hastening to take off his doublet of fine black cloth, his stiff ruff, and his shoes with rosettes ; "the gentleman who conducted me left me in a large saloon where there were as many paintings as at Notre Dame de Guadaloupe. But all those fine pictures do not represent the Acts of the Apostles, nor the lives of the Saints. But nevertheless, they were not to be despised, and I could not help admiring one or two of them. I was not alone, however, so I was ashamed to look too much at all the splendour that surrounded me. Besides, I confess I forgot myself, and actually held out my hat to some fine cavaliers who were walking up and down waiting their turn, I suppose, to be admitted. Fortunately for me they mistook my meaning, and politely returned my salute."

"The force of habit," returned Tovalito.

"At last the gentleman returned," resumed Paco, "and he led me through a long suite of rooms, till we reached the King's cabinet. There I saw a pale, slight man, dressed in black, who did not appear to notice me. He had no ornaments on him, and his doublet was as plain as my own. Who could have guessed that it was the King himself? I should not have known it if the gentleman had not said, 'Sire, here is the man your Majesty wished to see.' Then I threw myself flat on my face before the King; but I found that I had made a mistake, for the gentleman giving me a gentle kick whispered me to rise and go on my knees. I soon scrambled up again and kneeling down, as ill luck would have it, held out my hat, which the gentleman perceiving, he kindly took it from me, and put it where I could not reach it. As you may suppose, I felt rather uncomfortable, and wished myself back on the steps of Notre Dame de Guadaloupe."

"It is easy to see, Paco, that thou wert not born to greatness," said Tovalito drily; on."

go

"but "Well, then, the King, instead of questioning me about those papers, as I expected, asked me if I had ever known Donna Theresa anywhere else but at Madrid. Thou mayst imagine how em. barrassed I was when I felt that I should either tell a lie to the King, my master, or betray the whole truth of what I knew."

“Miserable creature; thou hast revealed all."

"No, on the contrary; I said that I saw her for the first time a few days since, when she bestowed charity upon me. My reply did not appear to give him much satisfaction, for he threw himself back in his arm-chair, and with a sigh, and a wave of his royal hand, he condescendingly said to me, That will do, begone.'

Thou art a foot taller, since then," said To. valito, "but thou shouldst have thanked his Majesty for all his favours."

He did not give me time. I suppose he thought I had been standing too long already. But what thinkest thou now of our fortunes, friend Tovalito? We have an income of six thousand reals. Shall we ever be able to spend so much money? It would be impossible." "Why so? why should not we live as comfortably and as idly as many others."

"Hold thy peace," interrupted Paco, "if we are overheard, no one will give us anything."

"I see we shall pass our lives at the door of Notre Dame, after all," said Tovalito, "take it all-in-all, it is as good a place as any other; in the winter we can warm ourselves in the sun, and in summer we can cool ourselves under the porch, provided there is any air. Is not this all that we want?

And with our money we can found a perpetual mass for the repose of our souls," said Tovalito sarcastically.

"Yes," said Paco, with simplicity, "it is certainly better not to enjoy it till after our deaths."

At these words he finished divesting himself of his court dress, which, much to his internal satisfaction, he replaced by his old rags.

"I am ready," said he, we may now go out and see what we can pick up on the Prado."

The two friends then sauntered on through the suburb of Alocha, till they reached a long, narrow, dirty lane, at the end of which rose the State prison, a heavy, gloomy old edifice, where the condemned prisoners of the inquisition were confined. In one of the darkest and deepest of its underground cells was Don Alonzo imprisoned.

Whilst the two mendicants stood looking at its gloomy and melancholy walls, the door opened, and a procession of monks with their arms crossed and their heads bent upon their breasts, entered one after another, in regular file. When the last of them had disappeared, and the door was again closed, Paco observed to his companion that the reverend Capucian fathers had gone to shrive the poor condemned prisoners for the last time before their execution.

The same idea struck me," said Tovalito, "when I saw them telling their beads so devoutly."

I suppose it is fixed for to-morrow." "Yes," interrupted a voice near them, "tomorrow, at day-break, Don Alonzo is to mount the scaffold, and die the death of a traitor."

The mendicants started, turned round, and beheld Theresa. She was dressed entirely in black, and a crape veil covered her head and

THAT same night Theresa, followed by Paco Rosales and Tovalito, entered the State prison. A dead silence reigned around this horrible place where so many unfortunate beings dragged out their miserable lives, shut in from the rest of the world by the strong barriers of human invention. The air within the vaults was chill and damp, and as Theresa followed the intricate windings of the turnkey, who went before her with the lantern in his hand, the cold struck to her heart, and she shivered as in the depth of winter. After passing five or six doors, and traversing a dark, humid court, she arrived at the entrance of the chapel, where the condemned criminal passed the eve of his execution in prayer with his confessor.

The wax tapers on the altar threw a wan, and glimmering light over this melancholy scene. A few Capucian friars, standing up in the choir, chanted the funeral service for the dead; Don Alonzo, kneeling before a prie-dieu, with a black velvet pall thrown over him, repeated the responses in a low but unshaken voice. Seated in a stall a few paces from this group, was an old man with his face buried in his hands; but the sudden, nerYous starts, and convulsive motion of his body, bespoke the cruel agonies of his mind. This man was the father of the condemned, the Duke de Medina Sidonia, arrived the day before; he had obtained permission to take his last leave of his unfortunate son.

Theresa, advancing hastily to where Don Alonzo was kneeling, suddenly threw back her veil, and stood confronting her perjured lover.

"Don Alonzo," cried she, in a deep tone, "do you recognise me ?”

At the sound of this voice he started to his feet, the pall dropped from his shoulders, and he stood like one resuscitated from the tomb; a mortal paleness overspread his face, his handsome features worked with mental agony, and his wan lips moved in unuttered and broken words as he gazed at the apparition before him.

"Yes, it is I, Theresa," resumed she; "I see you have not forgotten me, nor have I forgotten you, as my presence here bears witness. But do you also remember that night when you tore me

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from my home? Do you forget the Dominican church where we stood together plighted by the most sacred and solemn vows, before the altar of our God? We were then about to be united in the presence of the dead, but the hour struck that was to separate us in this world, and rend the earthly ties that bound my heart to thine. Once more we stand together in the presence of the dead; but not now, as then, when it was I who stood dishonoured and disgraced before men; con. demned, cast off, disowned by my family, with no other resource than to lie down and die, or live to endure worse torments than death. But I have lived through all my miseries. I have struggled to retain my vital powers, I have braved the auger of my God-the contempt of men; I have hardened my heart against all appeals of softness, or of pity, and braced my nerves for an hour dearer to me than life-the hour of revenge. It is come."

The expression of her ghastly countenance as she pronounced these horrible and impious words was terrible. The monks, appalled and terrorstricken, had drawn nearer to the scene, and stood listening in painful curiosity whilst she spoke. The old duke, who had also recognised Theresa, hastily arose and in a loud and angry voice commanded her to quit the chapel.

Signor Duke," said she with hauteur, we have met before this. I threw myself on my knees at your feet and implored you for more than my life-my honour. You repulsed me with cold disdain; you then thought to destroy with impunity the peace and reputation of a poor, weak, unprotected girl. You were harsh, unpitying, unmerciful; you insulted and trampled upon me, and then left me alone to the scorn and jest of the world. But the bruised worm has turned, Sir Duke, and stung thee to the heart. I am revenged. It is I who have delivered thy son Alonzo de Guzman up to justice. It is I who send him to the scaffold."

"His blood then be upon thy head," cried the Duke, as overcome by the violence of contending feelings, he sunk back in his seat insensible to all else around him.

There was a momentary silence, which was at length broken by Don Alonzo, who appeared to be reanimated by some painful emotion. "Theresa," said he, raising his mournful eyes to her face, "all human passions give way before death; there is neither love nor hate in the heart, and all memory of the past, except repentance for its sins, lies buried in the awful future. You whom I have betrayed, forgive me, as I forgive you in these my last moments."

recoils upon myself; and God has only heard my prayer as a punishment for my guilt. All the sufferings of my life never equalled these of this terrible night. Oh! Alonzo, pardon me, pardon me."

But he appeared no longer to hear her; engaged in prayer with the monks, his face was turned towards the altar, and he seemed to forget her very existence. The two mendicants crouched in a distant corner of the chapel, and looked with pity and horror on the scene before them.

Alonzo," she cried again frantically; but he turned not, and she fell on the flags, where she remained for some time silent and motionless. At this moment there was a slight commotion in the church, and two monks going up to the duke, who although quite stupified and more like a corpse than a living man, was still sitting upright in his stall-led him unresistingly between them through a small door which opened into the vestry. The other monks immediately surrounded Don Alonzo, and conducted him from the chapel through an opposite door into a long, narrow, dark passage, leading into one of the prison chambers.

At this sight Theresa started up, and with a wild cry rushed into the passage. Paco Rosales and Tovalito followed her, but she was already beyond their reach, and had gained the cell, where a deed of horror met her awe struck gaze.

The lifeless body of Don Alonzo lay stretched upon the flags. The king in his clemency had spared him the shame of a public execution. He was strangled in his cell.

Theresa looked upon her work-her deed of fiendish vengeance-not in the spirit of vindictive

hate and gratified revenge, but deep and terrible remorse. The veil had fallen from her eyes, and she beheld her crime in all its natural deformity; and her guilty soul trembled in the presence of her lifeless victim. She called upon God to end her sufferings-to strike her dead upon the spot; but it was His merciful will that she should still live to atone for her sins by a life of prayer and contrition.

She was borne from the cell by the two mendicants back to the chapel, where the monks had again assembled, and were praying for the dead.

The following morning, as Paco Rosales, and his friend Tovalito, were going towards the Prado to see what had become of Theresa, whom they had left the night before in the prison, they were surprised to see her coming towards them.

to?" said Paco. "Merciful heaven, lady! where are you going

"To where God calls me," replied she. "Farewell, Paco, for ever. Say a prayer for me at Notre Dame de los Desemparados.'

The mendicants, grateful for her charity to themselves, and fearing that she meditated some act of violence upon herself, followed her. For four-and-twenty hours she traversed the road from Madrid to Aranjuez, without eating a morsel of food till she arrived at the convent of L'Etroit eObservance. The door being open for morning prayers, she entered. When it again closed, the two friends were far on their way to Madrid.

Two months after this, the convent bell tolled for the departed soul of one of the sisters of the order of Saint Francois. Sister Frances found dead in her cell.

was

"Sir, we had talk."-Dr. Johnson.

"THE FIRST MILD DAY OF MARCH."

ONE of the flattering unctions that I lay to my soul when it strikes me that I am becoming morally seedy is, that I find I have not lost the child's capacity of wonder. Thank Heaven for that! As years pass by, our little lives become crowded with trifles, our spiritual hearing is deafened with all manner of world-buzzings, and perhaps some day, to our horror, we catch ourselves doing what a little while ago we should have discarded a friend for doing,-cutting jokes about our most sacred personal concerns; flouting some embalmed treasure which we had erewhile wrapped round with saintly-white thoughts, and laid away in a cave of memory, to be stolen to at choice times. But I think it is generally in the winter that we

do this sort of thing; when we creep round fires, and jostle each other, amid all manner of conventionalities, till we grow worldly-minded. When Spring comes we improve, weget back our old selves; we are shocked at the profanities of our winterly bivouac, and, springing up, begin (that is, try to begin, or fancy we begin, or try to fancy we begin) a new march in the "Way to the blessed Life."

I suppose it is that in the Spring we feel some of our limitations less. There seems more room for what transcendental people call "communion with the Infinite" out of doors than within doors, and especially in fine weather. One feels independent of shelter, of the roofs and walls that so often "do a prison make," and all the trumpery little amenities and commodities that help on the

But the wonder of the change which the true opening of the year brings to us all, more or less, is ever new to a tolerably healthy mind. I have felt it so keenly this year that I cannot help writing about it, though the sensation of returning Spring is not by any means favourable to writing in a general way. If one could sing like the birds now-with as little intrusion of ulterior viewsor bud like the trees-that would be something to the purpose. It is small satisfaction to be merely able to record the bare fact that, Spring being here, you feel Spring-like; that all true and beautiful things seem suddenly to have become truer to you, that the choicest passages of your life are being lived over again by you in a sort of waking dream, that when you compose yourself to sleep at night, you think how beautifully the sunshine will greet you to morrow morning when you come down to breakfast, how it will brighten the book and the manuscript, and how cheerful you will feel on sitting down to work. All this, however, is true. Not less true, perhaps, is it, that you felt rather too cheerful for work, the next morning, and were irresistibly drawn into the fields to watch the wind chafing the great pond, and the boys teasing the stray goat, and the impounded donkey looking at the horizon with the unaccountable desolation peculiar to the donkey physiognomy-and, in fact, that you wasted" one of "the first mild days of March."

"FRAMES AND FEELINGS."

THIS expression will be familiar enough to a large number of my readers. If, among certain classes of Dissenters, I had spoken of an alteration in my ecclesiastical environment producing any change in my sensations, such as the Spring produces in the sensations of every one, I should probably have been cautioned against "resting in frames and feelings," i. e., against a sentimental piety. A man who takes care of his mind and his morals, whether he be Christian or Turk, or neither, need not be above taking a leaf out of this book. It is well not to rest in " frames and feelings;" not to let your moral status be at the mercy of the barometer, like Launcelot Smith's, in his "pantheistic" stage. It is good, in general, to hold the reins of your moods, and the lesson, however trite, deserves frequent repetition in these days of morbid introversion. I have not the least doubt that you or I would have been all the better off for the enjoyment of "the first mild day of March" abroad, if we had had some objective pursuit for between-whiles. I have often noticed that the

a hortus siccus, is, (other things being equal, and supposing him not a machine) likely to see more of what the mere contemplatist wants to see than he is who has nothing to do but to look out for suggestive aspects of natural beauty, and catechise at his leisure the universal life around him.

There is one very important matter, however, which your avowed anti-sentimentalist is too apt to ignore. It is, that the simple question, towards any given "frame or feeling," whether about nature, or what is above or within nature, must be-Is the mood or sensation a normal one-one which, upon the balance of a mass of human experiences, and the considerations drawn from the nature of the case, appears quite natural? If so, there is an end; the "frame or feeling" must be right, and must be allowed fair swing. And it is absurd to demand tokens of its value in its imme. diate influence upon conduct. It may be safely asserted that our best moments, whether of thought or feeling, are those of which the fructification is slow.

It were a nice question to determine between the laxity of sentimentalism, and the tyranny of utilita rian hard-headedness, in this matter of "frames and feelings"—to determine, I mean, which is the more mischievous. The mere suggestion of the question brings to my mind certain incidents in certain remote country circles where "frames and feelings" were a perpetual topic, and where the literature commonly called "sentimental" has always had a hard fight for it. Do you know Graveley? No, I will be bound you do not. Graveley, under which name I include both Great Graveley and Little Graveley, was a rural district where there were two very small communities of very worthy dissenters, and one church. with a very wicked parson. You have not the least idea, till I tell you,

"HOW LETTERS FLOURISHED IN GRAVELEY." BUT flourish they did-in their own unsentimental way. Though sentimentalism got a footing at last, as you will see. A great deal goes on in small, out-of-the-way places. Every cir cle is a world of its own, where the Grand Drama is acted in little, with less promptitude in the scene-shifting, fewer properties and decorations, and to a smaller auditory, but with much the same incident and dialogue as on the boards of the "Theatre Royal," before which the historian, the novelist, and the moralist sit in their perpetual private boxes, taking notes and printing them.

I have often been struck with the vividness attending the representations at Graveley, which is, of course, only a sample of such quaint, country places. The truth is, the supernumeraries are so few, and the chorus makes so little noise in these minor houses, these barns where "the play" is not only "the thing," but all "the thing," that the leading characters, the types,

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stand out, and you hear all they say, and see all they do. There is no mistaking the villain of the piece, or the desolate father, or the forlorn one singing "Willow, willow, willow, ah, poor me!" In other words, in a small circle, the interest of life is both concentrated and patent. Everybody knows everybody, and there is not a bustling crowd in which the greatest body is nobody till you look for him.

I would rather not venture to guess the population of Graveley. The clown when asked how large the stone flung at him was, said it was a round stone, a sizeable sort of stone-if he must be exact, it was about as big as a lump of chalk or a potato. In the same spirit, I would observe of the population of Graveley, major and minor, that it was about as numerous as the quarterly meeting for the dispatch of business at the literary institution of your own highly favoured suburb, which you are particularly requested to attend. Yet, besides knowing of more romances transacted in Graveley, and in connection with Graveley, than I have picked up in the streets of London during a much longer residence, I have been much struck, not only with the vividness there of certain phases of societarian development, the regularity with which they seemed to follow their leaders, and cluster round a punctum saliens of personal character, but also with the number of illustrative instances which any particular phase of developement afforded-just as in that wide, wide world, which is round like an orange, slightly flattened at the poles.

I am thinking at the moment of the literature of Graveley, native and imported-the home produce and the foreign article. I cannot say much for its art or its science; but its poetry, its philosophy, its belles-lettres in general, I can vouch for. I could name its Plato and its Aspasia, and say something of its Academus. The Muses flourished in Graveley on over-fed pork and heavy dumplings, and every third breast, male or female, was a gushing fount of nectareous verse. We all know of Mr. Hiram Adolphus Hawkins, in "Kavanagh," who spoke blank verse in the bosom of his family;" at Graveley, verse was limited to correspondence and to occasional effusions of pleasantry or passion-only correspondence was incessant, and the occasional effusions were almost hourly. And it is a remarkable instance of instinctive good taste in this generation of sweet singers that, unlike the reckless Hawkins, they usually abstained from blank verse, on the ground of its extreme difficulty. Whenever they attempted it, the "piece" (the Graveleyian name for a poem-every poem was a "piece") was solemnly headed with the words, "Wrote in blank verse," strongly underlined, to call attention to the audacity of the flight. If the composition was esteemed successful, the poet was forthwith a marked man (or woman), and was appealed to the next time any question arose between relatives and antecedents, or concerning the earth's distance from the sun. But the felicitous

individual had to succumb to the grand laws of compensation, just like inferior mortals; for what he gained in literary dignity he invariably lost in practical prestige, and was considered almost on the road to ruin in an agrarian point of view. Everything he did on his farm was dubious, and he could not look grave in company without hearing titters among the girls (girls did titter in Graveley), and whispers of "moon raking” and “star-gazing” among the practical people. If the blank versifier and culprit was a lady, her cheeses were subjected to the most trenchant criticism allowed by the code of Graveleyian etiquette, and the heels of her own and her childrens' stockings were inspected with unsleeping vigilance by perennial juries of matrons. I account for the superlative estimation in which blank verse was held at Graveley by supposing that the Graveleyians had made the discovery which others, both more and less cultivated, have often made besides—namely, that though to a neophyte the trick of rhyming appears something very profound and mysterious indeed, the jingle of his bells really stimulates Pegasus to new paces—that the sound so frequently helps the sense as to compensate you for the trouble you may now and then have in finding an amiably disposed mate for a word like parallelopipedon; that, consequently, there is presumably more of the pure afflatus where there is no rhyme, supposing the work to be creditably turned out.

So.

The three leading Graveleyian classics were Dr. Dodd's "Prison Thoughts," Bloomfield, and Susannah Harrison, and I am unable to say which was most prized, most imitated, or most quoted from. Any quotation you might hear in Graveley society which did not come from one of these was sure to be from Milton-at least you were told A very well-sounding passage, wanting a parent, was sure to be fathered on Blind John. I think I have just heard of a Graveleyian who once quoted Shakespere, or professed to do sobut I regard the anecdote as apocryphal, more especially as I know the popular horror of anything dramatic was so excessive, that the fact of Milton having written "Samson Agonistes" and "Comus," was often mentioned to his discredit, and only the immense prestige of his name and of his great topic, secured him his place in Graveleyian affections.

I have by me a bundle of faded manuscript miscellanies, among which are contributions from almost every pen in Graveley-good, bad, and indifferent, and almost all of them in verse, chiefly pastoral and serious. I say almost, because there is a considerable sprinkling of recipes for dropsy, asthma, and rheumatism; and there are a few ladies' letters, in which the leading topics are invariably births, deaths, and marriages, and final perseverance. Among the lyrics of the minor poets of Graveley, I find one, the production of a young mother, whose strong minded infant had testified objections to his parent attending public worship twice a day. The poem displays all the