early progress, but gradually becoming slower and more encumbered, as it flows onward to that wide expanded ocean, in whose bosom it is at length lost for ever. And Charles Melville, as he led his beautiful and happy bride to the altar, hoped (and with every reason to do so), that his life had now passed over the rocks and precipices of youth, and that its future course would be directed calmly over the plain, till it too should sink into the sea of eternity!

On the same day Louisa Stanhope gave her hand to lord Burton, who could now cast his eyes on every side, with unalloyed pleasure, turning from present delight only to look forward to hope in future, while the past offered no remorse to memory. Affection smiling on him at home, and fortune giving him the means of making others happy, domestic pleasure, and external peace, all contributed to form for him a state which few enjoy.

Those who have followed lord Burton through

through this history (and it is not a character of imagination), cannot suppose that his happiness would be complete, while any of those he loved were in sorrow and misfortune. Lady Jane Malcolm slowly but entirely recovered from the accident she had suffered. Her father, lord Ainsfield, in the great danger in which he found her at Northallerton, forgot every thing that had passed, but his affection. for her, and granted to her and her husband his entire pardon; and indeed, during her illness, he had so much opportunity of seeing captain Malcolm's devotion to his wife, and many other amiable traits in his character, that by the time lady Jane had recovered, he had taken quite a different view of their marriage, and was very ready to receive them in form, taking care, at the same time, to make such an addition to their fortune, as would enable his daughter to move in that station of life to which she had been always accustomed.

Sir Charles Melville had become so completely fascinated with doctor Malden, that when applied to for his consent to the young clergyman's marriage with his daughter Caroline, he seemed to have forgotten that there was such a thing as family pride in the world, and did not appear even to search for an objection.

Mr. Travers followed Charles Melville's idea of attempting to recover his property, with an ardour that proved any thing but chimerical. His cause took a completely new complexion; his title was established beyond a doubt; and though he never recovered the back rents he had formerly paid, he was once more placed in possession of the property from which he had been ejected. He himself, in looking over the train of misfortunes which its loss had caused him, seemed rather inclined to repine-" Had it not been for this," said he, one day, "Louisa's sorrows would all have been spared."

Louisa placed her hand in that of Fre

deric, and

gave Mr. Travers a half-smiling,

half-reproachful look.

66

True, true," answered he, " if it had not been for that, you would never have known him. How wonderful are the ordinations of Providence! he often appoints our warmest enjoyments to chastise us most deeply, and our misfortunes often to bring about our greatest blessings !"

Happiness is of that calm, absorbing nature, that it scarcely admits of expression, far less of dilated description. It is a state, which, like the broad sunshine of a summer's day, seems to involve all objects in one universal peace-one brilliant repose. I have often thought, when looking at some of the brighter pictures of Claude, where all nature appears sleeping in a robe of light, that they must have been drawn in the happiest moments of a happy existence. Fears and sorrows will furnish forth many a volume, but enjoyment refuses to waste itself in words. Lord Burton's happiness was as complete

as

as the happiness of mortal can be; and if it could have received an addition, it would have been from the letter which he received from the baroness de S. It was bright in itself, and reflected the sunshine of his own heart.

To Lord Burton.

"It was you, then, most excellent of men, that stepped in and saved me from ruin it was you who awakened me from a torpor I shudder to think of it is you to whom I owe the power of meeting a husband that I love, without shame and without agony. Surely some strange foresight must have inspired that sentence of your letter to me, where you ask- Does your mind never entertain the idea, that some circumstances unknown to you may have made your husband act as he has done, without losing the affection he bore to you in early years?' "Oh,