which their own exertions might deliver them,— the wounded, and the dying, screaming for help, as they lay crushed beneath their fallen dwellings, or groaning in agonies from which they hoped for no relief, saving in the death whose tardy coming they would fain hasten,— and over all, and through all, Rapine striding with eager steps, rejoicing in her unmolested harvest. Then it was that Beatriz, could she have observed me, had been satisfied of my unwavering affection. For, as I hastened onward, turning an anxious eye to right and left, in hopes that the object of my solicitude, warned to seek for safety in the open street, was now looking for him who should support her in an hour so try. ing, a female, calling me by name, cast herself at my feet, and, clasping my knees, besought me, in the most piteous accents, to save her. It was Senora Sirena. O, how powerful was the appealing beauty of her eyes! So had Agata looked, the night when she besought my protection. But I was not moved. Putting one hand before my face, that I might not meet the gaze I could not answer as I would, I unclasped, with the other, the arms of the suppliant beauty, and exclaiming, earnestly, "The square! the square!" sprang from her side, and continued my way,— pitiless — but from necessity.

Onward I pressed, no obstacle impeding long my course. At times, the ground trembled beneath my feet like the turf in a meadow; and thrice, as successive feebler shocks threw down some wall which the great convulsion had left standing, was my life in imminent danger; yet, without a thought of myself, I passed rapidly from street to street, borne up by the giant strength of an excitement, that was neither hope nor fear, but a mixture of both in the most intense degree. Soon I reached the quarter of my own residence; I stood nigh the very spot where my own dwelling should be. Where was that dwelling now? and where were the houses that had stood beside it — on the right — and left? that had faced it? All level with the

SIXTY YEARS OF THE LIFE

JEREMY LEVIS.

BOOK SEVENTH.

CHAPTER I.

Vixi puellis miper idoneus,
Et militavi non sine gloria;
Nunc arma defunctumque bello
Barbiton hie paries habebit.

Hoe.—Camt;

That thou art my son, I have

partly thy mother.s word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me.

1st Pt. Hen. IV:

Could I ever love again? It is a question to be answered only by conjecture. I had not yet completed my nine-and-twentieth year, and, by a wise provision of our nature, sorrow for the dead is not of very long continuance; nevertheless, after the loss of Beatriz, 1 never regarded woman with any steady affection, other than that of a mere indolent, bastard sort of friendship. I preserved indeed all my admiration for beauty,—as, I trust, I shall preserve it, till my eyes fail me, or my brain ceases to welcome the impressions transmitted through them; but that was all,— possibly, because, warned by previous suffering, I would not indulge the transient sen

Vol. II. 29

sation, and cut, as it were, the very fuel to consume me, as, in my more romantic youth, had been perhaps too much the case. Besides there was I confess very little to tempt my heart in Cumana, where I passed the ten remaining years,* that might yet threaten danger from the enemy—" mater sseva Cupidinum;" for the only woman that could have roused, to any purpose, my dormant susceptibility—(dormant, because worn to exhaustion by over excitement,—) she, a true woman, irritated by my apparent indifference on the day of the earthquake, would never afterwards acknowledge my acquaintance. I need not tell her name.

Premising, then, more from duty than as german to the matter, this piece of information,—that our model of pious chastity, my awful mother-in-law, fell, as became her greatness, amid the convulsions of nature, being knocked down by an image of the Virgin, which she herself had, at her own expense, erected in the church,—I bid thee, dear Reader, take thy leave forthwith of love-scenes; and thy leave too forthwith of women — at least as actresses in such scenes; while, for myself, as it is the wont of historians and biographers, by way of finish to their pictures, to sum up the chief points of excellency and defect in the characters they have portrayed, I cannot turn my back upon the whole churchyard of " painted sepulchres," wherein my best and worst hours all lie buried, till I have carved, by way of inscription, over the great gate at which I make my exit, (viz. this 7th book,) the following lines of Edward Clayton's :—

When most repelling best alluring —
When careless seeming most securing —
No law confessing but thy pleasure—*

What joys, what torments hang about thee!

Artful at six, at sixteen snaring,

Most false when smoothest feature wearing,

False as the falsest wind that blows,
But in that falseness more beguiling
Than were there candour in thy smiling,
(Mix.d hopes and fears on passion throwing,
Like sun and rain, to keep it growing, — )

"Tis hard to rest with tuee, God knows!
a But harder still to rest without thee.f

But to our task; already is the goal in sight :—

11 Sed jam age, carpe viam, et susceptum perfice munus,
"Acceleremus."

It may be remembered that, in the commencement of Book iv., I made mention of the birth of a son by my first wife, Mary Arne, and that, on the death of his mother, I had intrusted the child to the care of that mother's relations, and afterwards, from causes it would shame me to repeat, had totally neglected him for a short period. I owe the reader little thanks for close attention to these pages, if, because I have made no subsequent mention of the boy, he suppose that I could leave the latter dependent on the charity of more distant relatives, while his own father had an arm to support him. After the timely wreck of my fortune, and necessary change of life in a foreign land, I regularly remitted to England, to my uncle Timothy, a third of my annual income, wherewith he should disburse the expenses of my son's education, clothing, &c. — first deducting from the amount one small portion for the widow of Captain Berther4 — When, in