But will they sleep? Ah, never! Yet be mine,
To check that spirit that would still repine-
Like some sad mother, when her infant's cry
Demands the needful but unhoped supply,
Lulls it to sleep, and though no aid be near,
Wipes from her cheek the unavailing tear,
And fancies when the plaint of want is o'er,
That famine gnaws its little heart no more.

"Oh, mem'ry, cease! and let me live alone,
Alike to sorrows and to joys unknown;
Nor hope with lying dreams to lead me on,
Nor thou, to point to objects loved and gone;
Oh! let me sink into that lowly bed,
Where dim forgetfulness shall hide my head;
Where death on life my weary eyes shall close,
And sleep eternal steep me in repose.
Eternal! can it be? Without a thought-
A calm, by passions and by cares unfraught:
This soul that human chains could ne'er repress,
Plunged in the airy void of nothingness—
Lost-gone for ever-all its feelings past,

And death, the first of peace, of pangs the last?
Oh no! How false the thought-how vain the sigh!
The spirit here was never made to die;
But soaring o'er the sorrows of its state,
The heir of heaven, to know a brighter fate;
And glad of freedom, proud of its release,
To sport with happiness, and dwell with peace,
Without a wish, without regret or pain-
Without Lorenzo! Then it were in vain-
That joy were none Lorenzo did not share;
Heaven were not heaven without his form was there.

Ah

Ah no! how false the thought! how vain the sigh!
No guilty passion sojourns in the sky.
Cut off from hope above, or joy below,
A weary prisoner in this world of wo,
Then let me seek for consolation here,
Nor fruitless call the ever-flowing tear;
Of love and thee, Lorenzo, ever dream,
And be thy constancy the cheering theme-
The only light that through this world of gloom
Shall lead me onward to the friendly tomb,
Where thou with me shall hail the calm release,
And our cold ashes mix at last in peace."

"This letter conveyed to Lorenzo the certainty of Maria's consenting to fly with him: the means were soon concerted, and they fled. She renounced the Catholic faith, and they were married by the priest of his regiment. Misery is sure to follow such an error. In a skirmish with the troops of France, Lorenzo was killed, and his bride became a prisoner. In the confusion of a night march, she again made her escape, and in crossing the little stream by whose side her lover had fallen, fatigue and despair overcame her, and she

sunk

sunk into the waters, that kindly bore her last remains to the spot where Lorenzo had died. In the morning they were found by the peasants, and they now lay side by side in the same grave; where some kind soul, forgetting their errors, and pitying their sorrows, has placed over them a wooden cross, with these words:

'From hope, fear, joy, and pain, here rest at last!
The dream that blest ye for an hour is flown :

Life, love, and youth, with all their sweets, are past,
But with their sweets their sorrows too are gone."

CHAP.

CHAPTER X.

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say it lightens. Romeo and Juliet.

The Rencontre.

Ir is as dull a road as ever was travelled, from Lisle to St. Quentin-all flat and uninteresting; it offers scarcely one object to call the mind of the stranger away from the preoccupying subject of his thoughts, which he may indulge to the full without any chance of interruption, except from some of the accidents that will at times occur in every journey; and indeed there are times when some casual difficulty or slight mishap would prove a relief to the tedium of the hours: but nothing of any kind whatever happened to

dispel the monotony of Mr. Melville's onward course. Mr. Wilmot was in one of his most silent moods, and remained buried in thought the whole way, while Charles a thousand times wished that a strap would come undone, or wheel come off, or any thing, in short, to break the one sensation of shaking onwards, which the paved, flat roads of Flanders inflict upon the traveller. But no such thing happened; all was disagreeably right, and dully regular, till their arrival at St. Quentin, where Mr. Wilmot roused himself to put Charles in mind of the battle gained there by the duke of Savoy and count Egmont, adding some curious particulars respecting the conduct of Philip.

After dining here they were soon again en route, proposing to pass the night at Cambray, and Charles calculated upon falling asleep for the rest of the way, if the country proved so uninteresting, and his companion continued so grave. But, however, they had not gone far, when he perceived