"Hand me up that bag-that bag full of money," said George Lestocq, a Buccaneer captain, commanding the Brig, "Daredevil," as he, in company with some of his crew, was turning-out and rummaging the cabin of an unfortunate ship which had fallen victim to piracy in his hands. We say nothing of what had become of the crew and passengers, who were not to be seen, nor of the

intended fate of the vessel herself: for the Buccaneers of the West Indies of 1692 were not accustomed to spare either life or limb, or man or woman; nor to remit ships from burning or scuttling or destruction.

The bag was handed-up to Captain George by the obedient seaman who waited on him- -a regular marinewolf with eyes like stars, and covered with hair. The bag was found to contain innumerable Spanish dollars.

And amongst these was a PIECE of MONEY of the size of the dollars themselves, but very different otherwise, for it looked old as the distant Blue Mountains themselves.

After this piracy, and these probable murders on the profaned West Indian blue seas, the captain of this robber-ship steered his Daredevil for Savannah; where he landed alone, with his pockets full of money. He ordered his Brig to lie off, masked for a time, with anchor up. But with a guard of well-armed seamen, he landed under a rock on the beach; which guard he ordered to wait his coming down from the town; he being evidently bound-up to it on some errand of personal indulgence or of violence; none of his men knew which.

It was June, and the heat was a prodigious unbearable heat. At one end of the town, there towered a large Spanish Convent, whose old grey masonry and spiry turrets abounded in peephole windows and slender metal crosses. Music pealed from its interior. And the sweet voices of the female choir, for it was a nunnery, came, with the smoke of incense, as rolling melody out of the windows.

"I am like the devil in the Garden of Eden," said Captain George to himself, as with his bare legs and loose blue-and-white striped coat, and with his bright long knife in his hand, like a bandit, he cowered, (listening to the music,) between two but tresses under a projection of the wall; where a huge crimson cloth was let down and bowed out, supported by gilt props, to form an awning for shelter from the intolerable golden glare of this West Indian sun. On this great church cloth was emblazoned the figure of an opalesque gigantic saint, with unshod. golden feet, and an embroidered crimson and white face boasting blue eyes and a glory to it. "I am like a thief," muttered the pirate, "listening to the footsteps of the indwellers who have said their prayers and are going to bed, before he calls in his band of desperadoes and ransacks the house, Strange that the beauty of this pale-faced young fanatical nun should so have fired me-maddened me. I can think, dream, and

speak, even, of little else! Pirate and Nun! Ha, ha! a goodly, gross alliance. Misfortune fall on that day that I, with gaping cursed curiosity-like an idiot as I was, or a hawk intent on new unproven game! curiosity that would have better become a child or a woman, than the redoubted George-a curse on that mad vesper-time that I slouched in the shadows, and heard the service, and caught sight of that one unrivalled angel face! She is immaculate-she sickens with horror at my sight-she rejects with disdain my heap of gold -she shivers at my jewels. The devil can do nought with her in the way of temptation. Though I have heard that some of these sworn nuns are not all prayers and psalmody after all. But she must be mine. And this very night shall she drink of my drear sea-cup. My barque is within signal-my men await me. And now that the service is concluded, and that the nuns pass the triforium back again to their cloisters (or to their separate cells), I will essay the bold deed. Caution! Doth any one see me; or can the stones prate ?"

No one did, however, see the freebooter. And light and agile he was as a wild cat-for he was slender and small, though strong as a tiger-whelp (this renowned George!) He placed his foot upon one of many rusty torch-irons and lighted-up gaily within the ornamental work or fold, as it might be called, of a double ornamented buttress, catching at the metal spouts, or gargoyles, and clutching his way from crocket to boss, and from crossbar to mullion, until-as he would upon a ladder-he had climbed high the convent-wall, and was in safe at an upper window-like a fierce small eagle seeking a diamond in a hole in the face of a rock in the valley of Sindbad; full of its spires of crag with the white clouds sailing over them in the turquoise blue.

He traced (as if he knew the way) through the windings within the convent. All was still and stiflingly sultry, though dark enough within these upper passages. Twilight reigned in the arched Gothic corridors except at certain apertures with their tracery; which blazed, as it were, as you passed them with that blue light, without, of the tropic day. Numbering several

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of these windows in his passage past them, but hearing footsteps approach, he cowered for a moment behind a sort of stone pedestal that flanked a large Gothic window -at, indeed, a giddy height, for it overhung the sea; and sharp rocks were deep down below. The tower in which he now was creeping sprang to a great altitude, and its cross almost pierced through the flags of cloud.

A nun in her robes was now seen, in the shadows, to approach. The folds of her dress could but ill conceal her marvellous beauty, though she was pale almost as a marble statue. She was stepping like St. Matthew's angel with sedate tread towards her cell when the pirate sprang out of his concealment and placed himself before her. He threw his knife down on the stones as he sought to seize her hands. She shrank back, shrieked and endeavoured to escape him; but he barred the way.

"Isabella! wonder of a woman!" George exclaimed. "You have driven me mad. I am possessed with a delirium of desire since I first saw you. I love you to idolatry. Nay, do not tremble; do not shriek. You may shudder at my name-recalling the tiger I am-a sea-shark that tracks the ghastly wrecks! But to thee I am but the child of gentleness. Forsake these gloomy walls. List no longer to these mumblings and mummings! Fold yourself no longer close in those black meaningless muffles! Come with me to Cytherean islands where the sun never yields but to that brighter day, where the moon, lavishing love, is regent. Čome with me to fairy caves where the sea-blooms shall spread the couch for thy white limbs, and the corals contend which shall shine royallest-blush wildest, richest. Come where the sand is silver, and where the clouds, themselves, are love's heaven. And if you are sworn to psalms and hymns, and to all this cant, and to service and convent-kneeling; why we will have our great sea-churches, and a full choral peal amidst our stormy sails! We will have our billowy intervals of rhapsody, and our sunbright holy passages of intoxicating love. The sea Syrens shall warble the songs of the Holy Jerusalem to thee, and the waters shall bear the deep

musical burthen-waters rolling in purple more imperially Tyrian-in more religious catholicity of dyethan your brightest sacred service-cloths; which are but of perishable warp and woof. This old nunnish den of mortifying stone, with its idle smokes of incense and its pining fasts, was never made for thee! Let crones and the ugly to it! Let the mad and the mumbling to it! -idiots among the men, and ugly crones among the women. Allow to Venus her free air, and the round, swelling, desiring limbs of her daughters-glorious in

their beauty. Cast down thy book of convent canticles; and abandon it to the grating and discordant use of sexless, withered, barren and battered, if innocent, old effigies, lifeless as figures of wood and of leather, which are the males of the monasteries; useless, in the Eastern fashion, even to guard the women, and to keep them for the embraces, truly, of such eager spoliators as I. And as for thy quires and services, and holy formsthey are not for thee, thou wonder of a maid! Venus is thy queen, thou beauteous nymph with a cleft rosebud for a tempting mouth, and thy heaving bosom!