"Which, however, you do not quite approve--was that it? "I never said that, Ellen; nay, I have a very great regard for Archy, and think him a most eligible man, if you will have the correct word."

She did not say "eligible," as applied to her cousin, or, indeed, any one in particular; and yet Ellen was thoroughly satisfied, nor was she so suspicious on this point as-who shall we say?-haply, some from amid whose MSS. we are now compiling a romance. "Still you have not answered my main question."

'Well, Ellen, I cannot deny that there may have been some little secrets untold on my part, but nothing worth the remembrance, nor of the least consequence whatever."

"That remains for me to decide on.
"No, no, there is nothing to be told."
"Confess."

Confess."

Mrs. Westwood looked up instinctively at the mention of this word, then, in an instant, her eyes were on the book again. "I tell you there is nothing."

"But it must be told. Well, I will guess. I am sure it is a love question, for such as we are would be secret on no other matter among ourselves. Who is the happy man? Is it Lord Dimville, who, by his addresses to you, so offended the fiery Miss Curlingtons ?"

"Lord Dimville I never have thought of, but as a silly companion at a dinner table."

"Or Captain Polleker?"

"Captain Polleker I never liked, though I pitied his consummate

vanity."

"I will tell you then-Mr. Tacit?" "The clergyman, or his brother?" "The clergyman ?"

"I never spoke to him."

"But eyes-eyes will do, Julia, and you know this, at least, you ought to have found it out. However, we will pass him over for the brother."

"He was a married man, on our first introduction, and is not now a widower, that I am aware of."

"Then I will tell you: Major Brim, Sir George Stump, Captain Funnel-oh yes, that officer of engineers-I am sure of it, Captain Funnell."

"My dear girl, you are very much mistaken."

"Let me see; I wish, however, you would tell me—but stop, I have it the unknown-the stranger in the odd dress-oh, Julia!" And Ellen burst into a loud laugh, at the bare idea of such an absurdity: for, as will already have been seen, she had high opinion of her cousin in her worldly position. Yet, strange to say, Julia was more uncomfortable at the mention of this admirer, than

at any name previously brought forward by her inquisitiveness; this latter had no time to observe the effect produced, for the door opened. Mrs. Westwood put her book on the mantel-piece, and Stubbs, entering, announced that luncheon was on the table.

The meal was progressing much as usual, that is, none of the party did justice to the dishes set before them, and each was sparing of her conversational powers. Mrs. Westwood was musing on the maxims of the imaginary Jesuits; and her daughter and niece had been last engaged on a theme which afforded them ample scope for reflection and reverie. Suddenly a knock shook violently the street door, and almost immediately succeeding, voices and footsteps were heard in the hall.

"Good heavens !" exclaimed Mrs. Westwood, rising from her seat, and turning deadly pale; "that voice-it is my husband'sand all is not well, I am convinced."

"So it is, I am sure; I will go and meet him. Dear papa, how delighted I shall be to embrace him;" and Ellen, jumping up, had already placed her hand on the handle of the door.

"Stop, child, stop," quickly cried her mother; "Do you not hear that they have gone into the library, and that something strange has happened. Your father is not alone, his two brothers are with him; they will not delay to come to us; at all events, we will await them here. Julia, my dear, fetch me my book from the drawing-room."

Cold and calculating was Mrs. Harvey Westwood; and her conclusions on worldly matters, whenever she chose to form any, were usually correct. Many months had now passed since she had seen her husband, it is true; still it was better, more politic and more prudent, under the circumstances, to wait his coming with patience. And why should she not return to a work which pleased her, instead of frittering away her mental energies in useless conjecture and anxiety? There was a pause, during which poor Ellen suffered considerably, for she loved her father deeply; and, independently of her wish to see his face again, she was anxious to impart much of intelligence in the world of her own heart, to his ever ready and attentive ear. In a few moments more, voices and footsteps were again heard without, and Harvey Westwood was fondly embracing his wife and daughter, while the colonel and his brother, the barrister, stood by, looking impatiently, if not indifferently, on.

An observer might easily have perceived that some event of importance had occurred in the fortunes of the family.

RELICS.

BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS.

Ir, after we have shuffled off this mortal coil, to sleep the sleep that knows no waking, we could be permitted to revisit the glimpses of the moon, perhaps nothing would strike us as more cruel, more disrespectful and indelicate, or wound the feelings more, than to witness the careless manner in which those things are treated which we treasured up with a sanctified secresy, and holiness amounting to idolatry.

Relics of the past, the loved, the regretted, and the dead; tokens of affection, bestowed when the heart was young, warm, and fresh, ere it was warped by ambition, or withered by avarice, when it did cost something to make a present, involving a sacrifice of something almost as dear, to gratify the yearning of love or friendship; letters containing the last earthly wishes of the dear departed beings who fondly legacied to us their final thoughts, and revealed, as it were, the mysterious workings of the spirit, doubtfully hovering on the brink of that eternity it longed, yet dreaded, to meet; locks of hair, severed in unutterable agony from the lovely heads long since laid low in the hallowed grave; and even faded flowers plucked with trembling anguish in some annual pilgrimage to those very tombs.

To see the self-same hand that tenderly smoothed our pillow, dried our tearful eyes, and administered the healing draught, remorselessly employed in consigning to the devouring flames all that our memory held as the most precious, all that our heart valued the most, would appear monstrous in the extreme, the direst outrage to affection, the basest proof of neglect and forgetfulness of the lingering remembrance we fondly hoped would be cherished of us when we were no more. Such, however, is not the case. Neither unkindness nor contumely are intended by such conduct; but the natural desire of ridding ourselves of the really inconsidered trifles, whose preservation would perplex and embarass us, and which were only dear to their former possessors from the charm of association, that magic of the mind, but which, to others, being of no intrinsic value, are considered, as they undoubtedly are, mere incumbrances.

December, 1847.-VOL. L.-NO. CC.

K K

This I know from experience, having been the melancholy recipient of several enormous packages of letters and trinkets, left me by a lamented and revered old friend. At first, I piously resolved to keep every article inviolate; but when my grief and regret had a little subsided, I thought I would look them over, and select the best. I took the trouble of reading several of the letters, and could not but marvel, as I proceeded, how a woman of a tolerably good understanding, as my late friend was, and so far advanced in years, should have allowed them to survive her.

They were chiefly written in the formal cramped hand on which our grandmothers so much prided themselves, the sweet Roman hand of Shakespeare, as they imagined it. The style inflated, verbose, and affected; filled with unmeaning protestations of neverdying love, such as one young lady invariably writes to another, ere she knows what love really is; the outpourings of a weak, romantic mind, strongly imbued with a perusal of the earlier minor poets, who made every youth a Corydon, and every maiden a Phyllis. Some few, however, written after the colder realities of life had schooled the heart, were more natural, and consequently more pleasing. One, in particular, which touched me exceedingly, from its painful truthfulness, I transcribe, for the edification of my fair readers.

"MY SWEET LAURA.-Here I am once more at the dear old Grange. Every thing appears actually in the same state as when I quitted it ten years ago, to fulfil, as I devotedly believed, those bright anticipations whose fatal overthrow for a time deprived me of reason, and for ever rendered me a blighted and hopeless creature; and, were it not for the absence of many a dear, familiar face, whose graves have grown verdant beneath the suns of fastsucceeding summers, I should think, indeed, that I had only retired to rest on the past happy eve, and risen to the happier day, that, in fact, it was but yesterday since I last beheld all that now surrounds me.

"Oh! why does nature appear to stand still in every thing but mortal youth and beauty? Why must the very flowers and trees we gaze upon bloom in renewed loveliness, only to mock us with our own decay? And, alas! why is it so innate in the female heart to prize those charms which are so fleeting, so evanescent ? Never shall I forget my horror at discovering the first grey hair mingling with my raven tresses: it looked like a thing of spite and malignity, to mortify and distress me; but now that they are as thick as the withered leaves of autumn, I am more reconciled to their inevitable appearance, and feel actually ashamed of my former sorrow, and can only excuse it from the recollection of the praises those tresses once won from lips that then hallowed all they extolled.

"As soon as I had rested after my long and fatiguing journey,

I ran with the eagerness of girlhood to our bower, at the end of the yew avenue. There, seated alone, I reviewed the past,-your life, and mine,-how chequered since! But, at the moment, lost in retrospection, I could see ourselves as we then were, both young, both lovely, both beloved. I could hear the vows of passion poured into our too confiding ears, broken by treachery and falsehood afterwards; your light laugh of derision seemed to die on the passing zephyr, as you affected to discredit, for the love of tormenting, what for worlds you would not have had otherwise; and the perfume of the flowers which overshadowed me tended still to strengthen the illusion; tears stole down my cheeks, tears of indefinable, inebriating rapture, and I blushed involuntarily, as in fancy I felt the warm lips of Arthur Stanley kissing them away, those serpent lips, which tempted me to love only to betray me to despair, when his fickle heart found a newer object for its transient adoration.

"O, Laura! truly suffering is the badge of all our tribe; real, or imaginary, every day of woman's life is a day of martyrdom; yet, for her, there is no redress, not even commiseration, deceived, victimised as she is, by ungenerous man, for who regards with an eye of common compassion, the forlorn old maid, who is doomed, from early disappointment, to drag on the cheerless measure of her destined span, until death, her only friend, comes to her assistance, in unsocial, unsympathetic incommunity? Even the few vernal off-shoots of affection, the scathings of anguish have spared, are not allowed to shed their kindly fragrance around the contracted circle of her home. If, with true anxiety, she would, from her own bitter experience, warn the young and unsuspecting of similar impending sorrows, her caution is received with thankless ingratitude; she is taxed with envy and jealousy; her advice is disregarded, and she is treated as a morose, unamiable being, who, because no longer young herself, cannot endure that others should be so either.

"How does the expanding heart shut up, like the sensitive plant, at the icy touch of that chilling scorn, which perverts its best intentions, and stigmatizes its holiest impulses! Some would ridicule the idea of my considering myself as one of that contemned and persecuted race; but I reckon time, not by years, but emotions, and, feeling aged in mind and heart, I cannot but fancy I am equally old in every other respect; although, I certainly do see women, who have counted, at least, my seasons, still comparatively youthful; but they are wives and mothers, and the genial sunshine of domestic happiness keeps the heart and countenance green and blooming to a late period: while I, abandoned to my own chagrin, consume away like a flower, left by chance, in some dark shade.

"Write to me often, and often, dear Laura. Oh! were it not