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endeavoured to obtain from the neighbors a description of the person of Mary Burton; but few of them had ever seen her, and the account of her given by those few did not in his opinon coincide with the appearance of the stranger. Unable to get a sight of the object of his search by day, he again resumed his evening rambles, in hopes of meeting her at night. He went regularly every evening to the old place of appointment; but in vain. At last, when his impatience and curiosity had become stimulated to the utmost, a note was one day thrown into his window, containing these few words: "I am near Wolver Hollow, at a friend's house. Come to me, and all the mystery shall be explained.-Amy Roosevelt." This was doubtless sent by the unknown. Delancey did not hesitate. The idea, that this was Mary Burton, he had for some time treated with contempt, and at all events no danger could result from his visiting the stranger, whoever she might be, at a farm-house, at a distance from the city. Early the next morning he set off for Wolver Hollow without mentioning to Ury any part of his intentions. He was unwilling to encounter the reproaches of his friend, the more, perhaps, because he knew that he deserved them. On entering the tavern at the Hollow, he found a letter there, directed to himself, which contained an accurate description of the road which led to the farm-house of which he was in search. It was situated about six miles from Wolver Hollow in a lonely and sequestered valley, on the northern side of the hills that run from the western towards the eastern extremity of Long Island. Amy received him with a witching smile that banished the last remains of his suspicion. To leave no room, however, for deception, he determined to ask her frankly, if her name was not Mary Burton, and to watch her countenance as she replied. She answered his enquiry with such perfect self-possession that Delancey no longer entertamed the slightest doubt. If he had, her exquisite beauty and her charming sprightliness would assuredly have lulled more reasonable suspicions. To tell the truth, Delancey was so completely mastered by his senses, so thoroughly blinded by his pernicious passion, that he ceased even to feel any desire to learn the truth. It was enough for him that her face and her form were more beautiful than he had ever beheld before; that her eye and her lip, her voice and her step were so many sources of resistless fascination he cared little for her name or her history. Why need I dwell on the effects of the witcheries of youth and artful beauty upon a young man of Delancey's temperament and uncalculating disposition?-Three

weeks and more (during which Amy, on some pretext had left him for two days) were now elapsed, and Charles had not once thought of his friend.

It was

Keturn, my

The road from the farm-house to the nearest village was very seldom travelled, and the severity of the weather (for winter had set in) had completed the entire seclusion of their retreat. He was sitting one day by the side of the beautiful Amy, when a countryman stopped at the door and inquired for Charles Delancey. Startled at this inquiry, he went out, and received from the hands of the man a letter, which he immediately perceived to be from Ury. He opened it, in the presence of Amy, with a trembling presentiment of some disaster. dated a fortnight back, and contained but this. friend, instantly. My life, my honor is in danger. The conspiracy, as I ought to have foreseen, has been detected; the blind fury of the citizens is directed against the Catholics, and I am charged with being a chief instigator of the plot. God and you alone know my innocence. Haste then, Charles, for your testimony and the packet are enough to save your friend from perhaps the scaffold or the stake!" Struck with horror at this disclosure, Charles stood an instant motionless, and then searched convulsively in his bosom for the packet. It was not there! The fearful truth flashed upon his mind. This was Mary Burton, and she must have destroyed it. With the violence of desperation he seized her by the arm, and threatened her with instant death if she did not tell what she had done with it. The girl laughed impudently in his face. "Kill me, poor dupe, if you are so disposed, for be assured, I have not left the packet where it will be found after I am dead. But now, thank God, it is too late, Ury is hanged and I am reveng ed." So saying, she laughed again with an expression of fiendish malignity; while Delancey shuddering at the thoughts of the reality of her declaration, seized his hat and rushed out of the house into the road. As no horse could be procured nearer than Wolver Hollow, there was no other alternative than for him to run there with all possible speed. At Wolver Hollow he learned that that was the very day fixed for Ury's death; that all the horses in the place had been already secured by those who had gone the day before to New-York to witness the execution; and the landlord was beginning to relate to De lancey with great sangfroid the particulars of the trial-how the rascally priest begged a week's respite, in order, as he said, to send for a witness, his dear friend, whose evidence he said would save his life--when Delancey, unable to repress any longer his impatience, which now amounted to perfect agony, set off on foot, although the snow was many inches deep.

No

language can express the dreadful complication of miseries which he endured. The torments of remorse gave way, for a time, to feelings of bitter vengeance against the wretch who had deceived him; and both were swallowed up in one absorbing sense of fearful apprehension for the fate of his unhappy friend. He could not drive from his imagination the picture of the priest entreating a week's respite to wait for the arrival of a witness who was not to arrive until too late. He cursed his folly in having omitted to leave behind him some clue by which he might be found without delay. He cursed his mad and wicked infatuation in yielding to the artifices of a vile abandoned woman, and deplored the fatal indiscretion of having kept from Ury a knowledge of his weakness, or rather (as he now regarded it) his unpardonable profligacy.

The delay which the deep snow occasioned, working on his agitated feeling, threw him into a state of feverish excitement; and when he reached Flushing, he was so exhausted with the weight of physical and moral suffering, that he flung himself upon a bench in the bar-room to repose a few moments, while a horse was preparing for him. With breathless agitation and suspense he listened to the conversation of the idlers who had gathered round the door. "At two o'clock," said one of them,

the old rogue will be strung up." Delancey shuddered. He did not know the hour. He would have given the world to know, but he could not-durst not ask. He felt that deadly sickness which accompanies suspense, when deep and desperate interests are at stake. The tavern clock was clicking by his side, but he trembled at the thoughts of looking up at it. He listened to the conversation of the countrymen again, hoping to overhear the information that he had not the courage to inquire for. One of the men looked up at the clock. Delancey watched his eyes and lips with indescribable anxiety. "One hour more," cried the man," and the old fellow swings!" Delancey groaned and sunk upon the floor.-At that moment the horse was brought, and Charles felt at the intelligence his hopes revive within him. He rose with sudden vigor, sprang upon the saddle and galloped off, pushing his horse at once to his utmost speed. The jaded animal gave out and fell, when still two miles from Brooklyn. Exhausted as he was, Delancey ran the rest of the way with the swiftness of despair. He reached Brooklyn only to endure another cruel disappointment. The river was nearly stopped with broken ice, over which it was impossible to drag a boat. He cried aloud in his desperation, and offered immense sums to some people who stood near him, if they would contrive to put him across the ferry. "Oh you need

not be in any hurry," said a tall stout boatman, with a loud and brutal laugh, "you can't get there in time to see him kick, for that will be in less than twenty minutes!" "Oh God! Oh God!" replied Delancey, "do not speak to me that way! I'm his friend, and I can save him, if I can only get across the river!" They stared at him, but offered no assistance. Delancey rushed down upon the ice, and reached the middle of the river at the repeated hazard of his life. There was an interval of twenty or thirty yards of water. Without shrinking from the danger, he plunged in, swam, and reached the opposite brink of the floating ice. The masses were small and sunk beneath his weight. The water was excessively cold, and after struggling some time he began at last to feel its numbing influence. He shouted loud and long for help, but his voice at length grew hoarse, and then faint, and then failed altogether. Again, he made a desperate attempt to climb upon the ice; but the faithless fragments slipped from his grasp or sunk beneath his knee. With horrible distinctness, there was stamped upon his brain, the picture of his friend and benefactor-dying-dying an ignominious death-dying because he had left him to indulge a lawless passion. He made another violent struggle to get footing on the ice, but exhausted with the effort he fell senseless back into the water. The suffocating element passed over him, and he was drowned.-His innocent friend was strangled at the stake.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Number XCII. September.When this Magazine first made its appearance, the current of caprice set so strongly in its favor, that we were for some time swept along by the crowd of its admirers. It was so delightful to find ourselves among a multitude of happy readers, all asking is n't it fine?' and all answering 'Oh it's very fine.' In a little while, however, we began to grow exceedingly fatigued with this unmeaning interchange of approbation, and at last it even occurred to us, that it was not so very fine after all. We think we should have come to this conclusion sooner than we did, if the contributors themselves had not, to a man, declared that it was an admira

ble Magazine, and had, moreover, a most prodigious circulation; that the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews would soon be totally eclipsed by its splendors, and that every other star in the firmament of letters would be quenched at the rising of this luminary, and just twinkle in the intervals of its return. We awaited, with implicit faith, the foretold extinction of these outdazzled constellations, and more than consoled ourselves with the reflection that all the lights and lamps of science would be put out only to be united in one blaze of irresistible effulgence. But we gradually began to believe that we had been cheated by an enormous humbug. For in spite of all its prophets, the great Sun made its month

ly revolutions without extinguishing a single star. To be sure Christo pher North, Timothy Tickler and Morgan O'Doherty, bawled out to us in the coarsest of Gaelic to see how nothing else was to be seen, but the fact was too palpable-there was the Edinburgh and the Quarterly and innumerable others, shining obstinately forth with undiminished heads.'

To speak seriously, we do think that the quantity of real talent exhibited in the pages of this blustering Magazine, makes a most ridiculous Tom Thumb figure when standing by the side of its gigantic and measureless pretensions. But this is not the worst. If the absence of powerful writing and original speculations were supplied by pretty trifling and ingenious wit, we might even pardon its folly and its flippancy for the sake of its amusing buffoonery. But the fact is that, in the latter numbers more especially, there is not, from the first page to the last, one redeeming beauty to save them from the imputation of utter heartlessness and profligacy. We appeal directly to those whose duties have compelled them to wade through these volumes, whether they rise from their perusal, improved by the acquisition of one serious feeling, one virtuous sentiment, one solitary generous emotion. That man's heart must indeed be cold that is not chilled at the eternal repetition of unfeeling sneers and ungenerous sarcasms, directed against every thing that calls for the sympathies of the philanthropist. There is a tone of coldblooded persiflage pervading the last volumes of this work, which we do not think has ever, until now, dared the scorn of the generous and the good. The sufferings of the Greeks, the wrongs of the Catholics, and the miseries of the poor, are made, with unprincipled effrontery, the objects of their ridicule. The follies and the vices of mankind no longer act upon the languid patate of their patrons. The obsequious caterers are obliged to stimulate satiety by Vol. II. No. VIII.

furnishing forth a feast in which in sulted worth and suffering freedom are the delicacies that are offered to the admirers of this journal.

That it may not be said, however, our remarks are mere assertions without proofs, we will briefly glance over the contents of the last numThe first article is a foulber. mouthed and bigoted attack upon the Catholic religion, which is intended to alarm the British government into rigorous persistence in its present system of intolerance. The assertion that the toleration of Catholicism is incompatible with liberty, is a false and impudent slander, and the writer knows it; for he dares not even allude to the example of America, where the greatest political and religious freedom exist, united in perfect harmony and goodwill.-The next article is as sound in literature as the first is in religion. Botta's American War is pronounced "cold and meagre, alike destitute of interest and information." That it should not be very interesting to an Ultra-tory, we easily comprehend, but how it should be destitute of information is more than we can believe; for it at least informs this stickler for legitmacy how an insulted people may shake off their chains and spurn their tyrants from their shores. We are, moreover, gravely told that Botta's adoption of an affected and long obsolete phraseology, is a proof of the historian's-guess, gentle reader-true grandeur of mind and What would this loftiness of soul! wise noodle then have said, if Robertson or Hume had written in the almost unintelligible language of Holinshed or Hall. The emasculated and worn-out tongue of the Italians of this day!' Bah! It is possible that a writer so egregiously ignorant as to swallow the silly prejudices of the vulgar for so much gospel, should undertake to tell his readers that the language of Filangieri, Gioia, Bec caria, Veri, Romagnosi Alfieri, Fos colo, Parini, Racchetti, Paolini, and a host of others, is a worn-out and emasculated language? After ha

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