Have you done so?"

"No; I have waited to consult you."

The house Mrs. Archer occupied was of the common construction of the best houses of that day, being double, the two front apartments separated by a wide hall, a drawing-room in the rear, and a narrow cross-passage opening into a carriage-way to the yard. A few moments before Isabella arrived, a person had knocked at the door and asked to see Mrs. Archer; and being told that she was particularly engaged, he asked to be shown to a room where he might await her convenience, as he had business of importance with her. He was accordingly shown into an apartment opposite to that occupied at the moment by Mrs. Archer and Bessie.

There he found the blind children, Ned and Lizzy, so absorbed in a game of chess, that although he went near them, and overlooked them, they seemed just conscious of his presence, but not in the least disturbed by it. They went on playing and managing their game with almost as much facility as if they had their eyesight, till after a closely-fought battle Lizzy declared a checkmate. Ned was nettled by his unexpected defeat, and gave vent to his vexation by saying, "Anyhow, Miss Lizzy, you would not have beaten if I had not thought it was my knight, instead of yours, on number four."

66

Captain Lee!" exclaimed Ned, whose memory was true to a voice once heard, and who never, in any circumstances, could have forgotten the sound of Eliot's voice.

“Hush, my dear little fellow, for Heaven's sake, hush!" cried Eliot, aware of the imprudence he had committed; but it was too late.

Ned's feelings were as susceptible as his hearing. He impetuously sprang forward, and opening the door into the entry, where Mrs. Archer had just uttered the last sentence we reported of her conversation with Isabella, he cried out, "Oh, mamma, Captain Lee is here!"

Eliot involuntarily doffed his fox-skin cap. and advanced to them. Both ladies most cordially gave him their hands at the same moment, while their brows clouded with the thought of the sad tidings they had to communicate. Conscious of the precarious position he occupied, he naturally interpreted the concern so evident on their faces as the expression of a benevolent interest in his safety. Do not be alarmed, ladies," he said; “I have nothing to fear if my little friends here be quiet; and that I am certain they will be, when they know my life depends on my remaining unknown."

"Oh, what have I done?" exclaimed Ned,

Eliot's assurances that no harm as yet was done.

Mrs. Archer withdrew the children, while Miss Linwood communicated to Eliot, as briefly as possible, the arrival and condition of his sister; and he, rather relieved than distressed by the information, told her that his deepest interest in coming to the city was the hope of obtaining some tidings of the poor wanderer. They then consulted how and when they had best present themselves before her; and it was decided that Miss Linwood should first go into the apartment, and prepare her to see Eliot.

Eliot retreated, and stood still and breathless to catch the first sound of Bessie's voice; but he heard nothing but the exclamation, "She is not here!" Eliot sprang forward. The door of the apartment which led into the side passage and the outer door were both open, and Eliot, forgetful of every thing but his sister, was rushing into the street, when Bessie entered the street door with Jasper Meredith. Impelled by her ruling purpose to see Meredith, she had, on her first discovery of the side passage, escaped into the street, where the first person she encountered was he whose image had so long been present to her, that seeing him with her bodily organ seemed to make no new impression, nor even to increase the vividness of the image stamped on her memory. She had thrown on her cloak, but had nothing on her head; and her hair fell in its natural fair curls over her face and neck. Singular as it was for the delicate, timid Bessie to appear in this guise in the public street, or to appear there at all, and much as he was startled by her faded, stricken form, the truth did not at once occur to Meredith. The wildness of her eye was subdued in the dim twilight; she spoke in her accustomed quiet manner; and after answering to his first inquiry that she was perfectly well now, she begged him to go into Mrs. Archer's with her, as she had something there to restore to him. He endeavoured to put her off with a commonplace evasion-"he was engaged now, would come some other time," &c., but she was not to be deluded; and seeing some acquaintances approaching, whose observation he did not care to encounter, he ascended Mrs. Archer's steps, and found himself in the presence of those whom he would have wished most to avoid; but there

was no retreat.

THE INTERVIEW.

Bessie now acted with an irresistible energy. "This way," said she, leading Meredith into the room she had quitted-" come all of you in here," glancing her eye from Meredith to Isabella and Eliot, but without manifesting the slightest surprise or emotion of any sort at seeing them, but simply saying, with a smile of satisfaction, as she shut the door and threw off her cloak, "I expected this-I knew it would be so. In visions by day, and dreams by night, I always saw you together."

It was a minute before Eliot could command his voice for utterance. He flded his arms around Bessie, and murmured, "My sister!-my dear sister!"

She drew back, and placing her hands on his

shoulders and smiling, said, "Tears, Eliot, tears! Oh, shame, when this is the proudest, happiest moment of your sister's life!"

"Is she mad?" asked Meredith of Isabella. Bessie's ear caught his last word. "Mad!" she repeated-"I think all the world is mad; but I alone am not! I have heard that whom the gods would destroy they first make mad; men and angels have been employed to save me from destruction."

"It is idle to stay here to listen to these ravings," said Meredith, in a low voice, to Miss Linwood; and he was about to make his escape, when Isabella interposed: "Stay for a moment, I entreat you," she said; "she has been very eager to see you, and it is sometimes of use to gratify these humours."

In the mean time Eliot, his heart burning within him at his sister's being gazed at as a spectacle by that man of all the world from whose eye he would have sheltered her, was persuading her, as he would a wayward child, to leave the apartment. She resisted his importunities with a sort of gentle pity for his blindness, and a perfect assurance that she was guided by light from Heaven. "Dear Eliot," she said, "you know not what you ask of

me.

For this hour my life has been prolonged, my strength miraculously sustained. You have all been assembled here-you, Eliot, because a brother should sustain his sister, share her honour, and partake her happiness; Jasper Meredith to receive back those charms and spells by which my too willing spirit was bound; and you, Isabella Linwood, to see how, in my better mind, I yield him to you."

She took from her bosom a small ivory box, and opening it, she said, advancing to Meredith, and showing him a withered rose-bud, "Do you remember this? You plucked it from a little bush that almost dipped its leaves in that cold spring on the hill-side-do you remember? It was a hot summer's afternoon, and you had been reading poetry to me; you said there was a delicate praise in the sweet breath of flowers that suited me, and some silly thing you said, Jasper, that you should not, of wishing yourself a flower that you might breathe the incense that you were not at liberty to speak; and then you taught me the Persian language of flowers. I kept this little bud: it faded, but was still sweet. Alas!-alas! I cherished it for its Persian meaning." Her reminiscence seemed too vivid, her voice faltered, and her eye fell from its fixed gaze on Meredith; but suddenly her countenance brightened, and she turned to Isabella, who stood by the mantelpiece resting her throbbing head on her hand, and added, "Take it, Isabella, it is a true symbol to you."

Eliot for the first time turned his eye from his sister, and even at that moment of anguish a thrill of joy shot through every vein when he saw Isabella take the bud, pull apart its shrivelled leaves, and throw them from her. Meredith stood leaning against the wall, his arms folded, and his lips curled into a smile that was intended to express scornful unconcern. He might have expressed it,

he might possibly have felt it towards Bessie Lee; but when he saw Isabella throw away the bud, when he met the indignant glance of her eye flashing through the tears that suffused it, a livid paleness spread around his mouth, and that feature, the most expressive and truest organ of the soul, betrayed his inward conflict. He snatched his hat to leave the room; Bessie laid her hand on his arm: " Oh, do not go; I shall be cast back into my former wretchedness if you go now."

Stay, sir," said Eliot; "my sister shall not be crossed."

"With all my heart; I have not the slightest objection to playing out my dumb show between vapouring and craziness."

"Villain!" exclaimed Eliot-the young men exchanged glances of fire. Bessie placed herself between them, and stretching out her arms, laid a hand on the breast of each, as if to keep them apart. Now this is unkind-unkind in both of you. I have come such a long and wearisome journey to make peace for all of us; and if you will but let me finish my task, I shall lay me down and sleep-for ever, I think."

Eliot pressed her burning hand to his lips. My poor, dear sister," he said, "I will not speak another word, if I die in the effort to keep silence.”

"Thanks, dear Eliot," she replied; and putting both her arms around his neck, she added, in a whisper, "do not be angry if he again call me crazy; there be many that have called me so-they mistake inspiration for madness, you know." Never was Eliot's self-command so tested; and retiring to the farthest part of the room, he stood with knit brows and compressed lips, looking and feeling like a man stretched on the rock, while Bessie pursued her fancied mission. "Do you remember this chain?" she asked, as she opened a bit of paper, and let fall a gold chain over Meredith's arm. He startled as if he were stung. "It cannot harm you," she said, faintly smiling, as she noticed his recoiling. "This was the charm." She smoothed the paper envelope. "As often as I looked at it, the feeling with which I first read it shot through my heart-strange, for there does not seem much in it." She murmured the words pencilled by Meredith on the envelope,

"Can she who weaves electric chains to bind the heart, Refuse the golden links that boast no mystic art? "Oh, well do I remember," she cast up her eyes as one does who is retracing the past, "the night you gave me this; Eliot was in Boston; mother was-I don't remember where, and we had been all the evening sitting on the porch. The honeysuckles and white roses were in bloom, and the moon shone in through their leaves. It was then you first spoke of your mother in England, and you said much of the happy destiny of those who were not shackled by pride and avarice; and when you went away, you pressed my hand to your heart, and put this little packet in it. Yet" (turning to Isabella) "he never said he loved me. It was only my over-credulous fancy. Take it, Isabella; it belongs to you, who really weave the chain that binds the heart."

Meredith seized the chain as she stretched out her hand, and crushed it under his foot. Bessie looked from him to Isabella, and seemed for a moment puzzled; then said, acquiescingly, “Ah, it's all well; symbols do not make our change realities. This little brooch," she continued, steadily pursuing her purpose, and taking from the box an old-fashioned brooch, in the shape of a forget-menot, "I think was powerless. What need had I of a forget-me-not, when memory devoured every faculty of my being? No, there was no charm in the forget-me-not; but oh, this little pencil," she took from the box the end of a lead pencil, "with which we copied and scribbled poetry together. How many thoughts has this little instrument unlocked-what feelings has it touched-what affections have hovered over its point, and gone thrilling back through the heart! You must certainly take this, Isabella, for there is yet a wonderful power in this magical little pencil-it can make such revelations."

Not yet-not quite yet-be patient-patience is a great help; I have found it so. Do you remember this?" She held up before Meredith a tress of her own fair hair, tied with a raven lock of his in a true-love knot. 66 Ah, Isabella, I know very well it was not maidenly of me to tie this; I knew it then, and I begged it of him with many tears, did I not, Jasper? but I kept it-that was wrong too. Now, Mr. Meredith, you will help me to untie it!"

“Isabella Linwood! you have loved him." She threw one arm around Isabella's neck, and looked with a piercing gaze in her face. Isabella would at this moment have given worlds to have answered with truth-"No, never!" She would have given her life to have repressed the treacherous blood, that, rushing to her neck, cheeks, and temples, answered unequivocally Bessie's ill-timed question.

Meredith's eye was riveted to her face, and the transition from the humiliation, the utter abasement of the moment before, to the undeniable and

manifested certainty that he had been loved by the all-exacting, the unattainable Isabella Linwood, was more than he could bear, without expressing his exultation. "I thank you, Bessie Lee," he cried; "this triumph is worth all I have endured from your raving and silly drivelling. Your silent confession, Miss Linwood, is satisfactory, full, and plain enough; but it has come a thought too late. Good-evening to you-a fair good-night to you, sir. I advise you to take care that your sister sleep more and dream less."

There is undoubtedly a pleasure, transient it may be, but real it is, in the gratification of the baser passions. Meredith was a self-idolater; and at the very moment when his divinity was prostrate, it had been revived by the sweetest, the most unexpected incense. No wonder he was intoxicated. How long his delirium lasted, and what were its effects, are still to be seen. His parting taunt was lost on those he left behind.

Bessie believed that her mission was fulfilled and ended. The artificial strength which, while she received it as the direct gift of Heaven, her highly-wrought imagination had supplied, was exhausted. As Meredith closed the door, she turned to Eliot, and locking her arms around him, gazed at him with an expression of natural tenderness, that can only be imagined by those who have been so fortunate as to see Fanny Kemble's exquisite personation of Ophelia; and who remember (who could forget it?) her action at the end of the flowerscene, when reason and nature seeming to overpower her wild fancies, she throws her arms around Laertes's neck, and with one flash of her all-speaking eyes, makes every chord of the heart vibrate.

The light soon faded from Bessic's face, and she lay as helpless as an infant in her brother's arms. Isabella hastened to Mrs. Archer; and Eliot, left alone and quite unmanned, poured out his heart over this victim of vanity and heartlessness.

Mrs. Archer was prompt and efficient in her kindness. Bessie was conveyed to bed, and Eliot assured that every thing should be done for her that human tenderness and vigilance could do. After obtaining a promise from Mrs. Archer that she would write a letter to his mother, and forward it with some despatches which he knew were to be sent to Boston on the following day; and after having arranged matters for secret visits to his sister, he left her, fervently thanking God for the kind care that watched over her flickering lamp of life.

THREE YEARS AFTER.

Bessie Lee, restored to her excellent mother, and to her peaceful and now most happy home at Westbrook, was enjoying her renovated health and "rectified spirit." She lived for others, and chiefly to minister to the sick and sorrowful. She no longer suffered herself; but the chord of suffering had been so strained that it was weakened, and vibrated at the least touch of the miseries of others. Her pilgrimage was not a long one; and when it ended, the transition was gentle from the heaven she made on earth to that which awaited her in the bosom of the Father.

FRANCIS WAYLAND was born in the city of New York on the eleventh of March, 1796, and in the seventeenth year of his age was graduated at Union College in Schenectady. After spending three years in the study of medicine, at Troy, a change of his views in regard to a profession led him in 1817 to enter the Theological Seminary at Andover, which he left at the end of a year, to become a tutor in Union College. In 1821 he accepted a call to the pastoral care of the First Baptist Church in Boston, which situation he held for five years. In 1826 he returned to Schenectady as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, and before the close of the year removed to Providence, having been elected to the presidency of Brown University, into which office he was inducted in February, 1827.

The first publication of President Wayland was a Sermon on the Moral Dignity of the Missionary Enterprise, delivered in Boston, in 1823. To this succeeded in 1825 Two Discourses on the Duties of an American Citizen; in 1830 a Discourse before the American Institute of Instruction; in 1831 a Discourse on the Philosophy of Analogy, and a Sermon at the Installation of William Hague; in 1833 Occasional Discourses, and a Sermon at the Ordination of William R. Williams; in 1834 The Moral Conditions of Success in the Promulgation of the Gospel; in 1835 a Discourse at the Dedication of Manning Hall, Brown University, and The Elements of Moral Science (of which an abridgment, for the use of schools, was issued in the following year;) in 1837 Discourses on the Moral Law of Accumulation, and The Elements of Political Economy, (of which an abridgment appeared in 1840;) in 1838 a Discourse at the Opening of the Providence Athenæum, and The Limitations of Human Responsibility; in 1841 an Address before the Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry, and a Discourse on the Life and Character of the Honourable Nicholas Brown; in 1842 Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System in the United States, a Sermon on the Affairs

❘ of Rhode Island, and a Thanksgiving Discourse; in 1843 The Claims of Whalemen on Christian Benevolence; in 1845 Domestic Slavery considered as a Scriptural Institution, in a Correspondence with the Reverend Richard Fuller, D. D. of South Carolina; and in 1846 a Discourse on the Life and Services of William C. Goddard. Besides these works, and perhaps some others, (for I have given the titles of such only as I chance to have in my possession,) President Wayland has written largely in the journals and quarterly reviews. Several of his discourses have passed through many editions both at home and abroad, and of his Political Economy twelve thousand, and of his Moral Science nearly thirty thousand copies have been sold.

The characteristic of Dr. Wayland's philo sophical system consists in the harmonizing of the intellectual with the moral: it is logic applied to the theory of duty. That subject which by some writers is treated as a mysterious impulse of the sentiments, and by others as a transcendent law, to be obeyed but not understood, becomes in his pages a great scheme of reason. Sympathy is disciplined and enlightened, and understanding is warmed into superior sensibility, till the two are made one in the completeness of rational virtue. In this reduction into unity of processes before always distinct and sometimes conflicting, the popular morality undergoes some important rectifications. I think Dr. Wayland entitled to the name of a creator in moral science: not that he has suggested new principles or disclosed new motives, but that he has defined the limits and positions of subjects in which indistinctness is practically equivalent to uncertainty. By making the standard convenient he has made the obligation cogent, and in showing that we need not go beyond the line of practicability, has left no excuse for not coming up to it. When the philosophy of social relations shall reassume that importance in the public attention, which in the prevailing anarchy of opinions it cannot assert, I think that his Treatise on Human Responsibility

will be looked upon as one of the great guiding monuments of human thought in the department to which it refers.

The same combination of analytical with moral perception explains the peculiarity of his genius and determines the estimate of his literary character. His productions exhibit as much brilliancy as vigour; but it is not the brilliancy of fancy, or sentiment, or rhetorical art. He inherits none of that efflorescent imagination which clustered around the understanding of Bacon with gorgeous beauty; his argumentation is almost as severe and single as Locke's. It seems to me that the intellectual processes of his mind are saved from hardness and aridity by the interfused energy of moral susceptibility; that they glow with a living and sympathetic interest because they are charged with the ardours of conscience, and are instinct with a spiritual life. That richness of lustre which in a critical point of view invests his productions, arises from two parallel rays of intelligence being refracted into one, and thrown in their blended splendour over the subject.

Few works which have so little ornament

are as attractive and agreeable as those of this able thinker. They have the natural charm which belongs to the display of active, various and ready strength. Every thing that proceeds from his pen has a character of originality; not because he deals in novelty or is inclined to paradox, for there never was a more loyal servant of the truth; but because all that he produces shows the mould and stamp of his own peculiar and capacious mind. The reference of familiar conceptions to exalted principles, and the disclosure of intimate connections in matters not suspected to have any mutual dependency, give to truth the interest of discovery. We meet with no dim, obscure, or vague conceptions, no half-conceived notions or half-developed suggestions: every thing is clear, precise, emphatic. The force, decision and energy with which each thought is propounded, produces a freshness of manner, and keeps the consciousness of the author always vividly before the reader. It is of invaluable omen for the cause of order, that a writer of such independent temper and fearless sense is found upon the side of settled principles and established truth.

THE OBJECT OF MISSIONS.

FROM THE MORAL DIGNITY OF THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE.

OUR object will not have been accomplished till the tomahawk shall be buried for ever, and the tree of peace spread its broad branches from the Atlantic to the Pacific; until a thousand smiling villages shall be reflected from the waves of the Missouri, and the distant valleys of the West echo with the song of the reaper; till the wilderness and the solitary place shall have been glad for us, and the desert has rejoiced, and blossomed as the rose.

Our labours are not to cease, until the last slaveship shall have visited the coast of Africa, and, the nations of Europe and America having long since redressed her aggravated wrongs, Ethiopia, from the Mediterranean to the Cape, shall have stretched forth her hand unto God.

How changed will then be the face of Asia! Bramins, and sooders, and castes, and shasters, will have passed away, like the mist which rolls up the mountain's side before the rising glories of a summer's morning, while the land on which it rested, shining forth in all its loveliness, shall, from its numberless habitations, send forth the high praises of God and the Lamb. The Hindoo mother will gaze upon her infant with the same tenderness which throbs in the breast of any one of you who now hears me, and the Hindoo son will pour into the wounded bosom of his widowed parent the oil of peace and consolation.

In a word, point us to the loveliest village that smiles upon a Scottish or New England landscape, and compare it with the filthiness and brutality of a Caffrarian kraal, and we tell you, that our object is to render that Caffrarian kraal as happy and as gladsome as that Scottish or New England village. Point us to the spot on the face of the earth, where liberty is best understood and most perfectly enjoyed, where intellect shoots forth in its richest luxuriance, and where all the kindlier feelings of the heart are constantly seen in their most graceful exercise; point us to the loveliest, and happiest neighbourhood in the world on which we dwell, and we tell you, that our object is to render this whole earth, with all its nations, and kindreds, and tongues, and people, as happy, nay, happier than that neighbourhood.

We do believe, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Our object is to convey to those who are perishing the news of this salvation. It is to furnish every family upon the face of the whole earth with the word of God written in its own language, and to send to every neighbourhood a preacher of the cross of Christ. Our object will not be accomplished until every idol temple shall have been utterly abolished, and a temple of Jehovah erected in its room; until this earth, instead of being a theatre, on which immortal beings are preparing by crime for eternal condemna