conspirators did, on the other hand, in equal uncertainty respecting the nature and consequences of the king's wounds. It is a fact, that the Duke d'Aveiro and the Marquis of Tavora had repaired almost daily to the king's apartment, to make their enquiries in person after his health; expressing the utmost abhorrence of the treason. They were even admitted to his presence; but, in a chamber intentionally kept so dark, as to render it impossible for them to ascertain the probability of his recovery. Meanwhile the vigilance of the Marquis de Pombal, aided, as is said, by some imprudent expressions of the Duke d'Aveiro, enabled the ministers to trace, and to ascertain, the guilt of the conspirators. They were then arrested, and brought to trial. The Duke d'Aveiro, the Marquis of Tavora, and his two sons, were broken on the wheel; while the old marchioness, who, in consideration of her sex, was sentenced to be beheaded, ascended the scaffold with a firm step, betrayed neither fear nor contrition, and lay down her head on the block, as she would have done on a pillow.

Haughty and imperious in her character, she was restrained by no consideration of pity or of humanity, when her vengeance, her ambition, or her interest, impelled her. The meetings of the conspirators were frequently held in a summer-house, situated in the garden of the Marquis of Tavora's palace at Lisbon, with which it was connected by a long wooden gallery. It happened that a young Portuguese lady, of noble extraction, but of reduced circumstances, who lived in the marchioness's family, as her companion, surprised at observing lights one evening in this summer-house, and altogether without suspicion of the cause, was attracted by curiosity to approach the place. As she advanced along the gallery that led to it, she heard voices in earnest conversation; and on coming nearer, soon distinguished that of the marchioness, who seemed to be animated by some cause to a pitch of uncommon violence. She listened for a few seconds, and then, apprehensive of being discovered in such a situation, she was about to return from whence she came, when the door suddenly opening the marchioness herself appeared. Their surprise was mutual, and the latter demanded, with much agitation, what cause had brought her to that place? She answered, that her astonishment at ob

serving lights in the summer-house, had led her to ascertain the reason. "You have then, no doubt," said the marchioness, "overheard our conversation?" The young lady protested that she was perfectly ignorant of any part of it; and that as soon as she distinguished the marchioness's voice, her respect led her to return to the palace, which she was about to do at the moment when the door opened. But the marchioness, who had too much at stake to be so easily satisfied or deceived, assuming a tranquil air, and affecting to repose a confidence in her, "The marquis and I," rejoined she, "have had a serious and a violent quarrel, during the course of which, he had the rudeness to contradict me in the most insulting manner, and he even carried his audacity to such a point as to give me the lie. I burst out of the room, unable to restrain my indignation, and no longer mistress of my emotions. Did you not hear him give me the lie at the time I opened the door?" "I did, madam," imprudently replied the unfortunate lady. Aware from that instant, that the nature of their meeting, and of the subjects agitated at it, was now in some measure discovered, she instantly determined to prevent the possibility of its being further divulged. Next morning,, the body of the unhappy listener was found in one of the streets of Lisbon, wrapped in a sheet, scarcely cold, and the blood still oozing from various wounds inflicted on her with a dagger. It was not doubted at the time, that she had been put to death by secret directions, issued from the palace of Tavora: but the power of that great family, and the frequency of similar spectacles in the Portuguese capital, silenced all judicial inquiry into the causes of her tragical end. The marchioness expiated her crime on the scaffold.

FIRST LOVE.

WHAT a lovely summer's evening that was when I wandered into Lea wood, with Shakspeare's Tempest for a companion. I had never read it before. Oh, how I envy the youth who has such an old wood to walk in, and the Tempest to read for the first time, and the soul of a poet to enjoy its beauties; for then will the branches of hoary trees twist themselves into the rigging of ships, and

every whispering leaf will sound like the ocean, and every rustling footstep in the grass hiss like a breaker upon the beach. The birds will become mariners, the sky be darkened with foliage, the sinking sun dart like lightning through the gloom, and away he will bound to the lonely island, inhabited by Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban. Oh! it was summer then she had come again, waving her green garlandry over hill and valley, and bending the long grass with her breezy footsteps. She had spread her gorgeous mantle of crimson heath-bells over the wide forest wastes and brown moors, and left a deeper twilight in the dense woods. That evening I heard her voice talking among the long leaves, and babbling through the green corn, and I caught her fragrant breath as I passed through the hayfield. I saw her skyey eyes mirrored in the rivers, and the skirts of her golden drapery trailing over a thousand flowers. She touched the leaves with her sunny fingers, and they bounded upon their branches in rustling music; the willow nodded before her, and the poppy waved the rich velvet of its banner as she passed. I heard Ariel sing, "Under the blossoms that hung on the boughs." I saw him crouching "where the bee sucked in the bell of a cowslip." But I was a youth then, scarce sixteen; how very old has ten years made me; it will be long again before every maiden looks like Miranda; but I can never forget the Tempest, never grasp it again as "a beauty and a mystery." Hark! how it thunders; could it be my own fancy kindled by Shakspeare -crack! crack! no, it was no dream. The goodliest tree of the forest fell with that crash-what a night was that-how the scythe-winged lightning flashed through the wood. I heard the sound of mariners in distress, and a voice came upon my ears, singing,

"Full fathom five thy father lies,

Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes, Nothing of him that doth fade." No, it was no voice, but my heated fancy; and I closed Shakspeare, for the rain fell in torrents, and the thunder roared like a thousand lions among the echoes of the forest, and the lightning flashed frightfully at intervals, lighting up for a moment the dusky dells; then again leaving all in darkness. On I wandered, in the blind mazes of the wood, now extricating myself from some

He

bramble; then again dashing through a river of long grass, or rustling through the rain-drenched fern, until at length, at the meeting of two avenues, I came in contact with an elderly man. wore a long frock, and grasped in his hand a stick. I looked at him, and thought of Prospero, with his magic garment and wand. He opened his lips, but instead of talking about "cloudcapped towers, and gorgeous palaces, and solemn temples," he invited me to his cave until the storm abated. He was a kind magician; by the side of his cottage were piled logs of wood; but I saw not Ferdinand. Caliban barked as we entered. Oh! what a lovely vision burst upon me as I entered that cave, (for Shakspeare was still with me,) it was indeed a beauteous being, lovely as his own Miranda. What music hung on her tongue, as she inquired "if her father was wet ;" and then she reached me a chair, and threw more logs upon the fire," which when they burned, did weep for having wearied her." Never had so much beauty met mine eye"So perfect and so peerless, as if created Of every creature's best."

Like Ferdinand, I soon became a "patient lay-man" for her sake, and piled up the fire to dry my clothes, happy that the tempest had driven me to such a lovely place. Then I thought of Shakspeare and the caves of Juan and Haidée, of Calypso and her lovely nymphs weaving in the wondrous cavern, her heart aching at the crash of every tree, which, like the clicking pendulum, told of Ulysses' departure, of Rosalind and Orlando in the wood, and the fair lady in Comus, and then I gazed upon my Miranda.

Never had a poet, in his happiest mood of mind, conjured up a fairer form; never did a lovelier being pass before the imagination of the bard, when he lay dreaming of Viola, by the murmuring waters of Avon. Her eyes were bright as Desdemona's, when they were lighted with love and wonder, listening to Othello telling

"Of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach."

Her father had read Shakspeare, and she was also familiar with the immortal poet, and merrily rung their laughter as

she compared me to Ferdinand, and their own sweet cottage to the cave, and the wet frock coat to Prospero's magic garment, and the stick to his wand, and the huge shepherd dog to Caliban, and the old wood to the lonely island, and their own blackbird to "dainty Ariel." And Margaret blushed when I compared her to Miranda, and parted her long tresses from her lovely forehead, and looked down upon the floor, and swung her fairy foot to and fro, and the firelight fell upon her fair neck, and it shone like a column of ivory in the sunset. And I thought how delightful it would be to wander with her "to the best springs, to pluck her berries, to gather her wood enough, to bring her to where the crabs grew, to show her a jay's nest, and instruct her how to snare the nimble marmozet, to show her where the clustering filberts hung, and get her young sea-gulls from the rocks." Nay, to do more than ever Caliban promised Stephano, and had not her father been by, I dare have said, "Wilt thou go with me?"********

JEREMIAH NIGHTSHADE was born in a dull back street in London, just at daybreak before the fires were lighted, one thick, foggy, raw, chilly, damp, drizzly, utterly comfortless November morning. The dismal appearance of the world when he first saw it made such an impression upon him, that he never got the better of it, and as he grew up, he still continued to look at everything in a very bad light.

All matters, great and small, presented themselves to his vision through a hazy and discoloured atmosphere. This earth he regarded as a huge storehouse of sorrows, troubles, trials, and tribulations; and his ideas concerning the next were not by any means of a comfortable character.

Jeremiah Nightshade was never known to smile. He used to look in the dictionary for the meaning of "cheerfulness," and words of similar import; and as for laughter, he regarded it as a singular and most extraordinary natural phenomenon-a strange affection -a

spasmodic contraction of the facial muscles-a distressing and dangerous convulsion; and he was wont to say, that if people generally were only aware of the number of their species that had gone off in laughing hysterics, they would be a little more cautious how they gave way to such a senseless and utterly unaccountable propensity.

Jeremiah's face was very long and of a most funereal aspect. He undoubtedly belonged to the very extensive family of the " Croakers," yet he was a good deal unlike the vulgar body of that disagreeable brotherhood. He was not morose, or splenetic, or illnatured; but simply lugubrious, sad, mournful, melancholy, and most unduly impressed with the calamities of existence. He was no raven

he desired not to croak evil tidings in order to render others unhappy, but naturally and unconsciously infected them with unhappiness, if his humour could be so styled. His horror of anything like merriment or jocularity was much of the same morbid character as that of the old gentleman in Ben Jonson's "Silent Woman," whose dislike of noise is so excessive, that all his servants have to answer him by signs, and creep about the house in felt shoes. Having nothing on earth to think about or trouble him in reality, he was, therefore, troubled at all things. Property in the funds to the amount of five thousand pounds, besides ten shares in that capital speculation, the "London Cemetery Company," relieved him from the necessity of struggling against physical wants and difficulties; and the consequence was, that he had full time and leisure to indulge his mental malady, which had latterly increased to such an extent, that all in the neighbourhood troubled with an exuberance of spirits, were invariably recommended by their friends to go and take a dose of Nightshade.

Human Frame," &c., &c., made up the staple of his light literature; and never was he more pleasantly or tranquilly unhappy than when seated over one of those enlivening volumes on a dull, dreary evening, with the rain pattering monotonously on the almost deserted street, the silence of which remained unbroken except by the hollow knocking at, and opening and closing of an occasional door, as some shivering citizen sought shelter for the night in his humble domicile. This suited him exactly, and was what he termed sober and rational enjoyment.

Mr. Nightshade lodged in a house rented by a worthy clock and watchmaker, of the name of Phillips. This man was just the antipodes of Nightshade. He was not unlike a bottle of ginger pop; his body being of the shape of that particular kind of bottle, and his spirits full as light, brisk, and airy as the pleasant beverage contained therein. He arose early and worked late, in order to provide for seven matrimonial tokens, which his wife, an industrious woman,. (as it would appear,) had presented him with; and he sang and whistled all the time he worked. The shadow of care never fell upon him, except, indeed, when he came in contact and entered into conversation with Mr. Nightshade. This did him good in some shape. It had a sedative effect, allaying the effervescence of his spirits. It regulated him; for his great fault was that he did everything in a hurry, and his watches, like himself, went rather too fast.

It might be expected Jeremiah and he regarded one another as prodigies. They could not at all account for each other. "What can make Mr. Nightshade so unhappy?" benevolently conjectured Phillips, whenever the dolorous visage of Jeremiah darkened his door-way. "What does that man get to laugh at?" soliloquised Jeremiah a dozen times a day, as the hearty laugh of the man of watches ever and anon startled him in the midst of some dismal speculation"it is awfully thoughtless of him, considering that he has a wife and seven children, and provisions on the rise, too!" But Phillips was not a man of thought he was a man of action. He did his best for the day, and took no heed for to-morrow; his faith in being provided for was immense. With Jeremiah, on the contrary, "coming events" in

variably "cast their shadows before;" and most sombre and gloomy shadows they were. He was ever "perplexed with fear of change;"❝doubts and scruples shook him strongly." We are told from high authority that we are all made of clay; yet really it was rather puzzling to think how two such very different kinds of animals could have been constructed out of anything like the same materials.

A favourite morning employment of Jeremiah's was to gain admission into the different churchyards of the metropolis, and edify himself by reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. He had been twice apprehended on suspicion of being a resurrectionist on the look out, yet he could not resist the temptation of visiting these congenial spots; and this it was that principally induced him to become such an extensive purchaser of shares in the "London Cemetery Company," in order that he might follow the bent of his humour undisturbed. After impregnating himself with grave aphorisms and sepulchral reflections, he used to come home to dinner, when, as he had to pass through the shop of the whistling, singing, care-defying watchmaker-the tenor of his thoughts would be interrupted by some such strain as— "Come, lads, life's a whirligig—

Round we whisk,
With a joyous frisk,

And till death stops the turn of our
twirligig

Merry go down 's the life for me!" "Eh! Mr. Nightshade. Live and laugh-that's my motto."

"And a very foolish motto it is, allow me to impress upon you, Mr. Phillips; more especially for a man of your years. You cannot in the course of nature expect to live long! Really you astonish me. I would think that the awful reflections which your employment must naturally generate, would

"Awful reflections !"

"Yes-awful reflections! Does not every tick of the watch in your hands remind you that you are hastening to the worms? I should think every stroke of the clocks around you would be a warning! Why, sir, you are five minutes nearer your grave since I entered this very shop!"

Jeremiah having just been five minutes in the said shop, the truth of this assertion was undeniable.

"La! Mr. Nightshade," cried Mrs. Phillips from the inner shop-"how you talk! You should get a wife, and a parcel of young, merry faces round you, and then you would have no time for such dismal fancies."

This was too bad of Mrs. Phillips. The mere idea of Jeremiah being the progenitor of " 'merry faces," was most preposterous.

"A wife!" groaned Jeremiah, as he seated himself in his solitary apartment -"a wife! What to do? To have a light, gadding, giggling, flirting, fantastical woman disturbing and perplexing my solemn thoughts day and night! To find myself chained to a shrew, a vixen, perchance worse! Children! noisy incumbrances, that might grow up monsters of iniquity and end their days upon a scaffold Children! that might have a legal, and not a natural claim upon me! Oh! the contingencies of marriage are fearful! No, no-no wife, no wife !

How short-sighted are mortals! how irresistible is the passion of love! Six weeks after this anti-matrimonial soliloquy, Mr. Nightshade found himself a married man.

The thing came about in this way. A widow lady of the name of Starling, took lodgings next door to Mr. Phillips. Mrs. Phillips and she were not long in patching up a sort of womankind friendship or acquaintanceship, the visible manifestation of which was, that they now and then went and drunk tea out of each other's cups. It so fell out, that at one of those hyson or souchong meetings at the house of Mrs. P., Mr. Nightshade was induced to be present. The widow was decked in the habiliments of sorrow appropriate to her bereaved state, with a countenance to correspond, and Jeremiah thought he had never before seen a woman of such a grave and comely aspect. Moreover, on that eventful evening the widow happened to be afflicted with a severe twinge of the toothache, which imparted to her face a woebegone expression that rendered it per

fectly irresistible in the eyes of Mr. Nightshade, and in the course of the evening she sighed and groaned almost as much as he did himself.

That night Jeremiah went to bed very considerably in love. "Ah!" cried he, as he pulled on his nightcap, "if I had only such a being to partake my sorrows with me!"

Now, Mrs. Starling was one of those singular women that have no objection to a second husband; and being apprised by Mrs. Phillips of Jeremiah's five thousand pounds in the funds, and ten shares in the Cemetery Company, she consulted the state of her heart, and found she had no earthly objection whatever to becoming Mrs. Nightshade. Having made up her mind, she next set to work to study the peculiarities of her intended victim; and being a shrewd madam, she was not long in finding out his weak side. She saw that the slightest manifestation of cheerfulness disconcerted him amazingly; that a smile made him shuffle on his seat, and that he was as much startled and alarmed at a laugh, as a shy, nervous horse at a vigorous performance on the bagpipes. Accordingly, in his company she was sorrowful exceedingly, and her remarks on matters in general (weather inclusive) were almost as dolorous as his own. Jeremiah felt that he had found a congenial spirit. "Ah!" said he to himself, "how happy (he meant unhappy) we might be together!"

Things were not long in coming to a climax. One evening she succeeded in inveigling him into a tête-à-tête, the result of which was, that he groaned forth a declaration of his passion, and she sobbed and sighed an unreluctant consent.

They were married, and a change speedily ensued. The lady's gravity vanished into thin air; and language is inadequate to paint the grief, horror, and amazement of the deceived Jeremiah, when he awoke, as from a delusive dream, and found himself irrevocably fastened to a decidedly cheerful woman! a brisk, bustling, vivacious little body, with an illimitable range of tongue! a woman that preferred Liston and the last new farce to "Blair's Grave," and actually laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks at a Punchinello exhibition! A woman, too, fond of company, and blessed with an infinite quantity of rela