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still thought no great time would pass without his seeing her; in its turn that hope died also. Still, day by day, she looked for him, for her heart was sick with waiting.

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She was friendless, too-an outcast; the deserted paramour was nought but an object of contempt; none were found like the one Great Master to take her kindly by the haud, and with encouragement to do well, say, Go and sin no more." No; she was down in the world, and the world trod on her harshly. Her parents, also, dealt hardly with her. She was a cause of mortification to them, and they seemed to hate her. The villagers whispered that Lord Roland's gold might have bought back their favour; perhaps it might; gold can buy almost anything!

At last a year had passed; a year, which had faded the bloom on Kate's cheeks, and dimmed the light of her laughing eyes.

Upon a wild and angry night, the Scotch packet boat, crossing from Liverpool, became the plaything of the stormy waters. Driven on the rocky coast of the Isle of Man, she struck; and then the mad waves seemed to vent their fury on this fated vessel. All hope of rescue to the unhappy passengers was over, for no boat could put out to their aid. Slowly the wounded vessel drifted down the Ramsey coast, struggling to save the precious human burden within her-struggling uselessly, for she was filling fast. With a look of despair-a heart of despair-the captain ordered all hands to take to the boats. His order was obeyed, and through that fearful sea, the wearied crew, piloted their shrinking burden towards the friendly shore. But that shore was at a distance, and ere it could be reached, the boats (with one exception) had been swamped by those hungry waves. That one remaining freight of human life struggled on still; it neared the bay, almost grated on the shore, when a white crested billow, with a sullen roar, came on, bearing to it the fate of its companions.

The night, with its dark horrors, rolled away, and the morning sun shone on the shores of Ramsey. How could it smile so brightly over the terror of the previous night ?-over the terror of the coming day? over the ghastly object which lay in poor Kate's way as she slowly walked along that beach.

There, before her, firmly clasped in the embrace of death, lay two beings of human mould. A feeling of what she could not define-tempted her to look on their ghastly faces; she stooped, and raised that which she feared the most to gaze at. It was him, himself-her dearly loved Roland, whom she had so longed for and expected. And closely clinging to him lay a gentle creature; his arm round her, and her golden ringlets coiling themselves about his head and neck.

Kate tried to drag her from him with the fierce impulse of a jealousy which even that sight could not disarm.

"What right had she to rest in those arms, which

in life had clasped Kate! How could she dare to die in his embrace, who had sought and won poor Kate ?" and again she tried to separate the inanimate forms. But Death was stronger than even Kate's frantic jealousy ; and Death had said to those two of his victims, "Ye ne'er shall sunder more." Wildly Kate called on the grim monarch to aid ber; wildly she implored him now to free her in her misery; and then she argued with him-

"Could you not have cast him on these shores," she cried, "while yet the dim spark of floating life lingered ? and mated me to him as you have blessed her. She might have valued life without him, for she had no lingering thought to make that life a torture; she could have lived without him, for that golden circle on her dainty finger proves that she had no lingering thought of him in her mind, which made her hold herself in loathing when not blinded by his presence."

She knelt down, and took the cold hand of the young creature, whom very justly she felt to be Lord Roland's bride. She drew the wedding ring from it, and placed it on her own hand; and as it met her eye, she knelt down and kissed the pale brow of him whom she had loved so intensely.

"Roland, I sinned for thee," she whispered, as though he could have heard her. "Would to death. Happier thus than living on this sad earth heaven it had been my fate to be linked to thee in without thee," and she placed her arm under his cold head; but her hand touched the forehead of the pure young wife. Kate started as if a viper had stung her, and again a fierce look of anger crossed her face.

"Will you come between him and me now," she cried, "will you stand nearer to him even in the grave than I shall ?" and her wild face looked wilder still with despair.

"Did you love him as I did? What did ye forsake for him? Name, or friends, or the respect of your own proud heart? I gave up all. Would you have taken him without bis title or his gold? I trow not; but I would have linked my fate to his, had I been obliged to toil for the very bread he ate." And again she kissed the dead, cold face-again and again.

But news of the wreck had flown to the town; people came to the shore to see the vestiges of it, and Kate herself led them to the place, where lay Lord Ronald and his young bride.

"Ye must take them away," she said, “and give them that burial which the heavens refuse!” And she parted the hair on Lord Roland's brow, and arranged it as he had worn it in life.

They recognised him at once, and whispered his name and bent their looks to the ground, for they knew what Kate's grief must be. Then they took them away to their burial; they placed them in their last narrow home, and Kate stood by and saw the earth fill up the pit. She watched all with a tearless eye, an unquivering lip; and then, when all was finished, she walked away again to the

place where she had first found them. remained all day, so cold and motionless.

THE PHYNNODDEREE.

That day came to a close; and she remained there still. None came to seek her-none felt for her; she was an outcast by her own act, and pity, charity seemed not to exist for her. Night threw its sable mantle over the earth-then Kate rose and ascended the cliffs which border the bay.

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There she and especially of the latter, are all benevolent; and the phynnodderee seems to be a very good sort of a spirit; mysteriously threshing corn, collecting strayed sheep, and performing similar good natured offices. Formerly it was a custom with all pious Manx people-we say pious, because it was regarded in that light-to place bread and water every night before going to bed for the fairies. The cottage doors were left open to facilitate their entrance, and all means of winning their good graces were adopted. But, unfortunately, others besides the fairies entered the open doors, and availed themselves not only of the bread provided for the goblins, but of other things besides; so the Manx people have been obliged to discontinue their midnight fairy feasts, and resort to the very wise but unpoetical precaution of bolts and locks on their windows and doors, and of fastening them too.

"Here I spent the last night with him," she said, "here! And the moon shone then as it shines now. Oh, ny sad heart must surely break with its great woe, to have lived through so many months-clinging to the belief that he would return and clasp me to his heart, and look into my eyes, and call me his, his own! And then to find him as I have found him—aye, faithless, faithless to me! sworn to another, but dead-to me!" And she threw herself down on the very spot where once before, on that last night of their interview, he had sat by her.

Then a low, plaintive cry came o'er the murmuring waters-once, twice, and it ceased. Kate heard it well, and for the first time since Roland left she smiled-smiled peacefully, happily.

"I hear thee again, thou unseen spirit," she said, "I listen once more to thy now welcome warning, welcome because this time thy knell tolls for me -thy plaintive cry is but my death dirge. I am ready to come at thy bidding, I have lived past all of life worth living for. Farewell! Earth, you hold nothing that can enchain me now!"

The following morning she had not returned to her home. She was sought in vain, no tidings of her were ever heard. Some fishermen, it seems, had on that evening fancied they saw a dark object floating out to sea; they had pulled after it, but had missed it. Her fate then became, and continues a mystery. The villagers ascribed her disappearance to the same cause as her birth, and conjectured that she had returned to her elfiu companions and progenitors..

Whatever her fate, no more was heard of her. In a few months, the house she lived in became deserted; the old people who had passed for her parents left, and went to Douglas; but no one would live in the house. It was said to be haunted, and maidens who walked there at night, listening to the vows which were breathed into their willing ears by those who sought to win them, told of a ghastly face which they had seen, of a pale hand through which the moonlight streamed, and on which a wedding ring glistened, raised in an attitude of warning. Years passed, and the house fel! into decay, and the name of Kate Christian became nothing but a sad memory.

That superstition which we have noted, of ascribing to a particular fairy, the prototype of the Irish banshee, and the Scottish "brownie," called by the Manx the "phynnodderee," the power of forewarning death, is a very favourite theme with them. The attributes of the banshee or "brownie,"

We

The neighbourhood of Ramsey abounds with beautiful walks. We remember an adventure which once happened to us in one of these walks, which will scarcely be believed by enlightened English people. We mention it in illustration of the singularly unambitious and inert temperament of some of the peasantry of the mountains. had strayed from the high road, and followed the course of the mountain stream, which carried us through a valley to the foot of one of the hills leading to Snafield. It was a beautiful spot, so quiet and lonely, nothing but the rippling stream at our feet, and the great mountains towering above, and making us feel very insignificant. The beauty of the scenery, its poetry, and its stillness tempted us to go on, so we walked in the same direction for perhaps another half mile.

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Now we were completely within the mountains they shut us up on every side, and although we could not be more than four miles from Ramsey, still we seemed to be as completely separated from it as if it had never existed. We sat down on the trunk of an old tree and began to feel for the first time that we had been walking a very long way; then we remembered that we had just as far to walk back again; and wished we could meet with some friendly peasant tongue to put us in the way of getting back by some quicker, easier route. A cottage seemed a forlorn hope; we looked on each side of us, but could discover nothing like a human habitation, and we were just going to give up the search and return by the way we came, when a welcome stream of blue smoke curling up from among the trees met our eyes. We made for it at once, and saw that it proceeded from what appeared to be a sort of mud hut; or rather a construction of mud and moss; for the walls were of the former material, the roof of the latter.

We advanced cautiously, and were met by a pig, a dog, a cow, and a woman; we chronicle them in the order of their advance. The woman being the only one of these animals whom we supposed to be endowed with speech, we addressed

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her, and asked her if she could tell us a nearer | husband, she told us, was a labourer. This was

way to Ramsey than that by which we had come. At first she did not seem to hear, but when our question was repeated, she told us that she knew nothing about Ramsey; that she had been there many (we believe she said sixteen) years before, but she never went there now, "there was no good in it and it was a long way."

"But would you not like to see its streets, and shops, and people ?" we asked. "No;" she had plenty to see at home, she had her horses, and her cows, and her sheep.

"And how do you get your livelihood ?" we asked.

"I make butter!" she replied; "and my husband sells it to the ships for England, and we sell our sheep, and sometimes our eggs, when we can find them."

"When you can find them! what do you

mean ?"

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Why the hens lay about the hills, and sometimes we can't find them."

Now this was a Manx family who certainly might be considered tolerably well off; yet the manner in which they lived, from sheer idleness, from the absence of even necessary ambition, was miserable to a degree. The woman herself was almost in a state of nudity, her hair cut short, and standing out from her head-her soiled and tanned skin looking anything but womanly. Two or three children were lying on the ground beside her. Her

an extreme case.

The Manx peasantry are said to be a frugal, industrious race. We cannot entirely coincide in the opinion. A great deal of poverty exists among them, which they seem too idle to resist. However, with all their poverty, they are a proud people in their way-thinking a great deal of genealogical descent. We remember that the woman of whom we bought our butter had a genealogical tree, framed and glazed, and hanging up in her little parlour. She looked on it with extreme veneration, and evidently considered it a monument of truth.

"Christian" is a great name in the island, and this market woman of ours was a "Christian." In fact, you met "Christians" everywhere in Man -high and low "Christians," rich and poor "Christians," deemster "Christians" and peasant "Christians." We have an historical tale of one member of this house which does not redound very much to his credit. In the time (so it is reported) when the Countess of Derby held Castle Rushen against the Parliamentary troops of England, General Christian was the commander of the Manx forces. It seems that his loyalty was not proof against some temptation offered to him-for the odium of betrayal, of surrendering the keys of the garrison to the invaders, has been thrown on him. An attempt has been made to vindicate him from this charge, but-the charge still stands against him.

OLD BOOKS.

In his brain, which is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage, he hath strange places crammed with observation, the which he vents in mangled forms.-As You Like It.

A dull man grown whimsical.-- Townshend,

WHEN I came to this London lodging-house I | brought with me but a few books of my dearly beloved old library. For, with the majority of those sweet companions of the solitude of "lang syne," I have, alas, parted for ever. Misfortunes

come not," said Shakespeare, "as spies, but in whole battalions." I, in common with many heavy hearts, have proved, in all its bitterness, the bitter truth of that dictum-for the misfortune that brought me here, and darkened my early life so sadly, has not only deprived me of a home, but also of my books, which, from my childhood, were that home's delight. Aye, well-I have lost books and home together, but, thank God, I have retained pleasant memories of both. Time and trouble can kill my memory of neither; my heart may indeed grow dull and heavy; and my hair, as years wear on, may be sprinkled with the dust with which Father Time powders our poor heads so unsparingly; but memory will not die, though

home and much of hope have passed away, and can only be remembered now as things which ar not, nor can be again. Whither are ye gone, ye poor old books of mine? In some dusty cellar of some Cockney bibliopole do ye fatten the moth? -or on some petty bookstall do ye in strange company greet the sight of the book-loving passerby, who perhaps will take ye up carelessly, and lay ye down coldly, as he gazes on my name scrawled on your title-pages, without one thought of the circumstances attending your separation from your quondam owner, or one sympathetic sigh for the luckless student who has lost ye and the home of his boyhood for ever?

Vain are such inquiries-vainer still the regrets that they embody, I know well. But I have today seen, by the merest chance, at a bookstall, an odd volume of Shakespeare, which volume once belonged to me; and that same book has called to my mind an infinity of stray recollections which I

SPENSER AND THOMSON.

shall find far more easy to entertain than to express. Nevertheless, such expression will have the twofold effect of passing away a dull hour of mine, and-may I hope ?-of awakening in your mind tender recollections of the books dear to you long ago, though their very names may have been, ere now, forgotten in this busy world of ours, which Wordsworth truly says is "too much with us" men of to-day.

In these rambling reminiscences of the desultory reading of a young life, you must pardon much incoherence, an entire lack of chronological arrangement, and mere sketchy dissertations on neglected beauties. I merely propose to myself to call to my own mind a few associations, pleasing, if vague, connected with my lost books -and to perform a like kind office for you, who, I trust, have at your elbows, or in your snug libraries at home, the books to which I here refer, and of which I am now deprived. With these few words then of preface or apology, I will for the nonce imagine myself in my long-lost library chair, with yourself, good reader, by my sidea glass of old wine before us both, and a cigar in each of our sapient mouths to pass away time pleasantly, as well as profitably withal.

Gentle reader, look tenderly on these lucubrations of a bookworm. I am a devourer of other men's ideas-somewhat thin diet, you will say smilingly-and as Charles Lamb in those inimitable Essays of Elia affirms-"I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. Books think for me." Thus I have read books of all kinds (with the exception of publications of the Dr. Dryasdust school, which I carefully eschew) ever since I donned a jacket. I wish to be understood here as confining my recollections almost entirely to English literature (the classics being out of the sphere of random recollections like these), for I know little of French, less of Italian, and least of German. I have indeed perused (but discontentedly) divers translations of divers well-meaning translators, those unthanked purveyors of another's ideas, in a dry, sapless form. For what translator can give even a part of thy mighty mind, oh Goethe? What literal varlet can unravel the knotted skein of thy tangled thonghts? What translator can delight us with the racy humour of Cervantes? Who can show unto us Sancho, as he is-" honest Saucho" whose very fooleries are piquant? and what translator, (look not so sternly, thou ghost of jovial Smollett,) can robe in English apparel the meagre form of that mad personification of Chivalry, Don Quixote ? How commonplace, cold, and vapid, oh Don, seem (when filtered through our language till their rich extravagance is weakened,) thy sweet love-songs to her of famed Toboso, the delicate Dulcinea-of whom let not the coarse tongue of Saucho speak!

As to books-I can admire a few, love many, but by no possibility, (even though I should be unhappily located at a country railway station's

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| waiting room during a shower) can I read some books which my evil genius generally throws in my way. To instance a few "books that are no books." I cannot deliberately sit down to a stedfast perusal of "bloody battles" and "glorious victories." Mars of a surety did not shine on my humble birth-I am no Fortinbras nor Tybaltperhaps I am of the number of those depraved persons who prefer the dolce far niente to an armless sleeve and three orders; like that inglorious individual in Ben Jonson's play, The Silent Woman," I may think-"fortitude doth consist magis patiendo quam faciendo, magis ferendo quam feriendo." Nor can I read The Racing Calendar, a Parliamentary blue book, or a fashionable novel; though books that are usually esteemed as "dry" by fast gentlemen generally-books such as Sir Thomas Brown's "Vulgar Errors," Sir Philip Sydney's "Arcadia," more particularly his "Defence of Poesie," and Burton's "Anatomie of Melancholy"--are to me sufficiently nourishing and easy of mental digestion.

Let this paper blush, as my deputy, when I confess that the allegorical Spenser has few charms for me. What is Una but an unreal shadowy creation? what are Spenser's heroes? Attributes of mankind, it may be—but not men. We cannot bend our minds to the idea of Una's existence; she is a bright phantom-but, after all, a cold myth. Not so the men and women of Ovid's creation. Have we not in schoolhood participated in the terrors of Daphne in her flight? Can we not give up our minds to wander with Io? can we not even weep for her at some period of our school hood? I could do all this, when a boy of twelve-my heart may have grown harder since then. In fine, Spenser may please the imagination, but his creations are of too thin and cold a nature to warm the heart. "Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ascalon," if I confess that Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," as a whole, fails to arrest my continued attention. The description of the scenery around that "castle hight of Indolence" is admirably adapted to make any reader comfortably lazy. The verse marches lazily, so that I own I have fallen asleep while the book was before me-"a great proof of Thomson's power of pleasing!" exclaims a sarcastic reader.

And yet, in truth, by going to sleep I paid the highest compliment in my power to the writer of that fine poem. I own that I take little interest in allegories such as Spenser's and his imitators. I shall here be reminded that He "who spake as never man spake," inculcated the sublimest moral truths in the form of allegories. But the parables of Jesus appeal to us as men-for they speak of man. The man "who went down to Jericho, and fell among thieves," is to us a real man of flesh and blood-not an attribute made flesh and called man. Jesus spoke of an event which doubtless was of frequent occurence; and so his parable touched his hearers' hearts the more from the fact of its vraisemblance.

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Again, is not that rich man in the parablethat selfish voluptuary, who "fared sumptuously every day," a much more lively example of the evil influence of riches and selfishness than any cold personification of riches or selfishness-such as we should find in Spenser? Could poverty, personified, and called a man of woes, affect the mind in the same manner as doth the lowly Lazarus at the rich man's gate? We see many like Lazarus—many wretches, like him, sit at the gates of the rich of our land; and too often they are regarded with the indifference of the rich Hebrew of old; and, because we know these things so to be, that parable of the rich man and Lazarus comes home more forcibly to our hearts. Lazarus is not a myth; and, to conclude my remarks touching allegory, is it not much better to show us a poor man than a personification of poverty, which must of necessity be but a lifeless fancy?

Milton's gigantic, sublime genius repels meat a distance I acknowledge his powers. There is, methinks, a "procul adeste profani" in the very words, "Paradise Lost." I admire-believe -but like the devils, I tremble. I cannot read "Paradise Lost" in a garden, on a bright summer's morning. The birds, the butterflies, all conspire together to render me light of mind. A thunderstorm is the orchestra to whose grand music I would see the fiends flitting to and fro in Pandemonium. The other parts I would read alone in my chamber when all was still. Not so with "Comus," that sweetest bud of that mighty poet's mind. Read "Comus" in a wood, as I have read it, and if your imagination be strong, you will discourse with the "Elder Brother" touching "divine philosophy," or you will see, through the gloomy vista of pines, Comus and his band at their revelry, or that sweet maid arguing with the insidious tempter, till that baffled disputant flees from her. "L'Allegro" I would read in a hay-field, where the joyous rustic's laughter would attune my heart to the gleesome musical lines. "Il Penseroso" I would read in a rocky cavern by the sea shore, where I could hear the sullen murmur of eternal ocean.

advent of some river-loving rustic hoping to fill his creel ere sunset? Doth not the soothing sound of water, gurgling over the smooth stones of the brook supply a music (quite apart from the intrinsic beauty of the song) to those sweet lines of Marlow, "Come live with me, and be my love?" If any should doubt this, let them imagine Walton's Milkmaid singing that sweet song in the reeking room of the inn, whither Piscator and his friends betook themselves to sup. Which is the fitter place for the song, or the reading of it?

On the other hand, no one would think of perusing Burton's "Anatomie of Melancholy" in the fields on a summer's day. This is a book to be read in an ancient library by the light of the lamp-a book to be read by the student, and, perchance, by the idle connoisseur of quaintness, during the dull hours between breakfast and luncheon. The latter reader will, of course, read by snatches for amusement-the student will read steadily for profit. Among the mud of Burton's collected lore you will find many grains of gold, which will well repay you for the trifling trouble of sifting. The lover of quaint quotations may profitably glean, in the wake of Democritus Junior-indeed, several of my friends, would-be wits, etc., are in the habit of reading Burton, for the purpose of filching from his lucubrations the wherewithal to adorn a debating society's display of ancient lore. I cannot help wondering why a book, that has extorted praise from Johnson, Coleridge, Byron, and many other "eminent hands," (as old Tonson's phrase was) now should be so undeservedly neglected as it is easy to perceive to be the case. To pass on; Shakespeare's "As You Like It," may be read anywhere, save in the street, or in Hyde Park, within earshot of the carriage-wheels. In both these cases, your perception of charater must be poor. Who can hold converse with the melancholy Jacques" in Rotten Row? But, of all Shakespeare's plays, "Hamlet" to my taste, is the best suited for perusal; the beautiful soliloquies seem out of place now-a-days near the footlights; the "Ghost of Hamlet's father" may terrify the groundling, but, methinks, the ghost, whatever amount of chalk may be wasted upon his visage, can never produce in me

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same fearful pleasure as I can take in the simple perusal of Hamlet in the privacy of my chamber. Alas! there are in my mind too many ideas of too material porter-a beverage in which the "Ghost of Hamlet's father" (the stage ghost I mean,) hath ever delighted; even while that illpaid spectre is flitting across the stage, my mental eye glances on sundry pots of porter, wherewithal he will quench his thirst on his exit; and thus, by a too truthful imagination, I am doomed to lose much in the way of wholesome horror.

In those dear, delightful "Essays of Elia," Lamb says, "I am not much a friend to out-of-the doors reading-I cannot settle my mind to it." In certain cases we may, without presumption, dissent from such opinion. Reader, where is Isaac Walton ("that quaint old, cruel coxcomb," as Byron illiberally calls him in "Don Juan,") to be read with edification ? In a hot, dull, dirty London library in the dog days ?—or in a crimsonpapered dining-room, after dinner, by the light of best spermaceti? Doth not the mental palate of my reader eschew such profanations? Is not old Isaac more grateful to thy mind, thou gentle denizen of our metropolis, when his pleasant quaintness is "inwardly digested" by the side of some meandering, gently rippling stream; when thy solitude is unbroken, save by the unexpected

On the other hand, the works of Etherege, Rochester, and Wycherley may be read, and appreciated as much as they deserve, in the Mall of St. James's Park. An imaginative reader can fill that place with courtiers like Rochester, and fops like

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