"Ha! Something struck the mind of her now trembling interrogator, which allowed but this interjection, and instantly plunged him into dumb deepest reverie. His heart began to palpitate most violently, a dizzy whirling of a moment seized his brain, his very knees knocked together: some fatal past, known only to himself, was presented, like a phantasma which some evil worker, or that human ruin herself, as a demoniac sorceress, conjured up to stand like his own black death-scaffold before his mind's eye. Conscience took the alarm, and all was dismal as death and the judgment itself shadowing his soul could make it, in that pause. Suddenly he

burst forth Elizabeth Foulke! Your name's Foulke? Betsy Foulke. I thank God!' But she was muttering in her stupidity of exhaustion after such a rage, long unawakened, though never dead, and noticed not his words.

"Yet who could not be cruel? She, my only help, came home crying, blushing, hiding her head, poor creature! and instead of helping me, must have help-I was old, old then! If that had been all! But she came to shame me-to bear a bastard to call me Granny, to be dragged up through years of our poor helpless selves only, and never a father to 't. For never would the poor ruined creature tell me who was its father, and she never told! 'Twas enough to make me cruel, make me mad, wasn't it? The soft creature that did never know will but mine before, to refuse to tell, when it was what would have taken the charge off me, and got the little torment a man's protection? But she was always shamefaced, dear child! and it's my belief it was some married man was the dog-all the plagues of hell follow him! But she said it were no good to tell, for he would never be seen moreshe should never see him more! and then she fell into 'sterics. Curse him!' said I, who brought this upon two lone women!' and I'd have her said Amen! but I won't, mother, if I die!' she said. 'Out with ye, then, into the snow, with that harlot shape, and lye-in there,' God pardon me! I've said, and she'd sit crying outside our threshold-Will ye tell, to come in? Will ye curse him, to come in, out of the sleet and snow?' I can't, mother! and the sooner it freezes me to the heart the better!-only for my poor unborn thing's sake, let me in, mother!' So we went on! So we went on!'

"Wretch ! did you leave her to perish in the snow?'

"Wretch in your own teeth!' retorted the wretched woman, her dormant nature now roused-' did I say such a thing? I lay on our earth floor that she might lie on the one bedstick I had, and all I could get her I got; but I had planned what to do with the brat ere it came. For many a time did your poor wife (if you be the man) come to consult me, the cunning woman' as they called me, about her misfortune, as she called it-in not having family like other wives, and asking about 'charms' and the like lies and vanities, to make an alteration, and she was for ever fancying herself in the way to be happy, and she'd cry and say she knew her husband would soon cease loving her unlessMargery Foulke is your certain name, isn't it?' asked Paull again, inattentive to her words.

666

"Aye, aye, poor old Madge Foulke's my name. So she'd cry, and when the man was off, how she did take on, because he'd come and find no hope of a little one! -Now when my poor child was in that way, to her sorrow and mine-I bethought me what it was to be rich, and what a pity it wasn't that foolish wife that was pregnant, in place of my one poor lamb of my bosom. And it was / did put the thing in her head, and I did scheme every thing, and I'll say so to the man her husband if he were ever to come back at last. I'm afeard of nothing alive and nothing dead! And did somebody say he did come back? Did I dream you are the very man, I see so dim through a fog there of my old eyes, blind of smoke, and tears too in their time? To be sure who else was I talking to ?'

"Where died she, this unhappy Elizabeth Foulke ?' Paull now asked, who had not ceased to tremble during this burst of her long-pent burthens of memory.

"Betsy OLIVER! that was her nameBetsy the BEAUTY! God help our prides, poor idiots! proud I was once of that name -proud of her that was to be my shame. I've had two husbands, man, but never a babe of my body but her, and some villain unknown made me curse myself that I had not been barren, as that woman.'

"No more!' Paull cried out in a voice of desperation, I won't hear any more! -Ruth is my daughter! Heaven! Heaven! why have you avenged the wrong of the mother, through such an instrument? Why none but my own child?'

Wild involution of crime with misery! But we must hurry on to the catastrophe. Ruth falls into the

hands of William Paull's associates, the chief of whom, one Shakerly, a desperate villain, had purposed to carry her off for himself, and had a boat with a crew ready to row him with his prey out to sea. Marmaduke, not far from the place where this diabolical rape was to be committed, had flung himself down, after his visit to the hovel, in a hollow of the "Marsh of the Monks," and close by a small rushy pool was lying asleep-but in convulsions when he was disturbed by the footsteps of William Paull. Starting to his feet, not from being awakened, but in some frightful dream, for his words were part of one, though his eyelids were uplifted, and his eyes stared wildly, he exclaimed, "How long have you been watching me asleep? Dreams are nature's, not ours. How dare you, sir, pry into my brain and heart, when exhausted nature what have I been saying? Where's she? Have patience, boy!" His nephew having soothed him as well as he could, Ruth became the subject of their speech. Paul had resolved to drop in eternal oblivion his last discovery, and let the fact stand simply, that he was the real father, without the fruitless avowal, to William at least, of the fate of the mother. So he implored his nephew without delay to make Ruth his wife; but William, though altogether ignorant of Ruth's fatal passion, had for some time been convinced that her heart was not his, and must have been given to another, though to whom he could not conjecture, and with proper pride, and a feeling better than pride, resigned all claim to her, and had only to pray that she might be happy. He had repented of his plan to seize her person, and believed she was safe under the protection of Mr Llewellyn, and had no suspicion of Shakerly's projected outrage. At that moment Ruth comes flying with torn garments, pursued by Shakerly and his gang, and Marmaduke in his blindness assisting William in the rescue, the ravishers are overpowered; and the Three Friends take their way to the parsonage.

There Marmaduke," with a sort of sunkenness of spirit and heart as well as voice," in making his strange disclosure to the clergyman, confined himself to briefly assuring him that after all Ruth was his own undoubted

daughter that the contrary opinion had proved to be a mistake and he left it to his paternal kindness to impress that certain fact on the mind of his long mistaken child-and to reconcile her to a speedy marriage with her cousin for "what protector has she else?"-" My dear neighbour, has she not you, her father?" He but shrugged his shoulders, and smiled dismally, and was silent.”

Ruth needed an hour or two's sleep; and as she was retiring to a chamber in the lowly parsonage, Paull called her back, kissed her, and gave her his blessing, in a solemn, new, and mysterious manner, but with such soothing tenderness, that she suspected no evil-and lovingly entreated him to go to rest.

During the supposed sleep of Ruth, Paull had a long and affecting conversation with the Pastor; he saw William too, and to him, as her husband, and to that benignant man, as second father, he committed Ruth, during his absence, for he was about, he told them, to take a journey.

"It was already twilight when a shepherd of the promontory came running in, without stopping to knock, and sought the vicar through private rooms, in his eagerness to tell that he had seen Paull the blind man stealing under the high rocks of Llandudno, there rising like a wall to the

height of the highest cathedral, the sea

ward butresses of the dreadful Orme's Head, although it was a spring tide, the sea running in, and the passage obliterated at high tide, and always without an exit, extept into those deep watery caves, worn by the action of the sea.

"No time was to be lost-strange doubts of his design whitened the cheek of the religious man, who had become deeply interested in the fates of the father and daughter-but he imposed silence on his household, to avoid terrifying the poor we ried and still sleeping girl: but except Kitty, who stayed in doors, all were quickly at the near end or aperture of the ave

nue.

No storm threatened, but a great swell of the sea, and its advance with all the force of a spring-tide, aided by some wind blowing on shore, had in itself all the terrors if not the uproar of a storm, and the deadliness of a hundred storms, on such a shore. Woe to whatever, ex

isting by breath, should be caught in that lessening prison, walled beyond the cunning of any architect or tyrant that ever contrived a dungeon or a tower! The vicar would not be restrained from advan

cing a long way into that impassable gorge of cliff and ocean, now flinging its long breadth of froth, nearer and nearer, high in air, like a mighty beast, secure in his mightiness,-advancing in measured pace tossing his wrath's foam. The rest, William, the shepherd, and one other person, followed him to the furthest extent possible with safety; all then joined in one long shout to the unseen adventurous man, but the sea was too loud, with its fresh breeze, and its furiously running tide, to allow hope of their being heard. Nothing answered but rock birds, cormorants, and puffins, that came flying out overhead with their shrill clangour of many notes; yet did that long, hopeless shout of the human-and that following wild discord of the sea-birds' voices, seem less dismal than the succeeding and last-the superhuman, solitary, immense voice of the deep, when considered as the trump of its invading march-the dead march of the towering waves closing in on a single human being, certainly somewhere in the jaws of that destruction! The silence, and that solemn sound dreadful as the silence, and the lengthened desolate perspective, dwindling to what seemed a mere ledge already, of the rock-strewn beach, lost in the tossing and leaping white of surf, this dire perspective, that low thunder of sound, that death-silence of the pause, all struck funereal horror on every sense of every one of the party now stopping baffled, thus unanswered except by wild creatures and wild waves compelled to turn, and hurry for their own lives, yet certain that a devoted life must there be left behind.

William had recovered enough to rejoin those who had reached the top ridges of headland overlooking the beach; that dreadful prison in which Marmaduke had immured himself to meet death, with a steady eye and stern welcome, on its frightful slowness of advance, bringing his watery shroud to the living man, in the near and nearer surf-foam, and his only dirge in the measured thunder-peal of every falling wave.

The lone extent of his death-vault was however so great, that it was merely at random they could fix on any spot of the long range of precipice, over the brink of which the bolder might halloo down, or the bolder still, such as the samphire-gatherer (turned shepherd) might make an experimental descent from, perhaps so far down as to reach the determined suicide with the voice. Yet this could do little, as it would be too late for him to regain the entrance of his dire watery cloister, and impossible to scale perpendicular crags.

Thus, in this quiet little green nook of country (under a moon now come forth refulgent, so calm, so safe-looking !) some were hunting for the corpse of its most lovely native-born, with many tears; others were trying to drive a heavy boat down the rough beach stones, with noisy but zealous dint of strength; and others perilously peering over craggy edges of cliff, that lifted them to a level, in their eye, with the tremendous Penmanmaur, seen dusky in moonlight shade, just across the bay; and two already fixing ropes (used in taking puffin's eggs) in two or three parts, to suspend themselves, even over that brink, and down those terrible and sharp-jutting walls, worse than smooth perpendicular-all was distress, dismay, and a tragedy in act or expectation, where all had been peace and a fine sunset and happy cottages, so lately.

He

"A cloudless moon, and brilliant evening sky, burnished, as it seemed, by the fresh sweeping of the breeze across its deep blue and all its stars, now gave to the eye of the man daringly descending by the rope, the whole bird's-eye view of the now very narrow beach below. saw it already washed over by every dash of the broad sea-sweep, the light snowy foam-shower (a treacherous beauty, glittering in the moonshine, lovely yet so deadly), quite shutting the black conspicuous stones below from his eye, as if overarching whatever was below of life, though this as yet was but an illusion of the sight, for some little of even the lower sandy smooth part of the strand was yet visible on each retirement of the sea.

"A general cry rose now among those behind, on the top-the man suspended having shouted up to the man minding the rope, and he to Mr Llewellyn, who was on his knees scrambling to look over, and to the rest that he could see Marmaduke distinctly.

"Cry to him!' was the general voice. 'Can you let down another rope? What's he doing?'

"Not another rope, nor ten on end would reach him! He waves his hand to us slowly, and he walks quite calm, just stepping back and back a little from the surf: the horridest part of the cliff too, he's under! It's a sheer wall, I know it well, forty fathoms high over his head; that's all he has to step back to! Only a cavern there is, and that's shallow; not ten minutes' life will that give him!I've cried to him, again, but I hear no voice answer.'

"I've caught birds many a fathom deep, myself,' William exclaimed. • Let me try that other rope, and get down to you!' he hallowed down.

"Her? how!-is it a woman?'

"God in Heaven knows what it is! a woman from the grave, I believe-the moon shines full upon her-ha! now he cries to us he cried out dreadfully then -a melancholy long cry it was. 'Twas not to us he cried-it was to her to that person; now he's like a madman! now he's throwing his arms all about, and to the sky and to the sea! Hark! he cried out again! now he has rushed to meet her, she's come up to him. They're embracing! Mercy upon us, and keep us, sure it's a ghost! If ever I saw graveclothes in my life, that's a shroud it wears! Look! look you, man! look down all of ye, isn't it walking in a shroud? is a shroud-but it is a living woman!' "But who? Is it not Ruth?' "Who can see that?' "Do you see them now?'

Yes, it

"No, he's gone, after throwing his arms round her, gone up the shore like mad, carrying her, I think-yes, he flies with her!'

"He might as well try to lift her up to us, or the moon, with his arms, as carry her to where she came in-that's sure to be some deep fathom by this time, you know, for all this here part is very hollow, quite a cove, here, he'll meet deep sea directly.'

"Ah! you're right, Shepherd, here he comes back with her. Hark! Did ye hear? "Death? "Death?" God! God!" My child!" I heard him then! Another sea! It's just over'em!'

"William had again fainted, and remained in stupor on the heathy ground,

dumb and helpless. The two men continued their colloquy, the group above sharing in the horror, and holding their breaths to listen. The depth precluded all possibility of help, and the closeness of the whole sea would now not allow time for a single manoeuvre, had any been practicable.

"I heard a dreadful groan just now; hark! Now he's quieter, and she has sure persuaded him to kneel they are both kneeling fronting the high wave, and as far back as they can get, up to the rocksThere was a sea! God have mercy! They're gone No!-but it must have struck them-I couldn't see them for the monstrous leap of the surf! I thought it would have reached up to me a most

I see 'em again, now) -It's for her he groaned, and for her he ran so wildly, for he was calm as a ghost, and stood like an effigy before-Ha! that was a very thunder!-Halloo! Shepherd! do you see 'em now? d'ye see 'em still?'

"Stop a moment there's such a fog of the foam- -There's nothing but sea! nothing but deep sea! The Lord have mercy upon their souls!'

"Amen! Mr Llewellyn responded, and throwing himself along, hid his face in the withered broom of the height. But the next minute he rose - and begging silence -drew forth his pocket prayer-book, and said- None knows certainly what was the intent of these poor souls in coming hither. I at least will not judge them -but as others may, I take this time- Man that is born of a woman,' &c., and faltering, he went through the form of Christian Burial of the Dead."

"The body of Marmaduke Paul and that of his ill-fated child, still in that ghastly dress which she had resolutely assumed to meet death with decency, deliberately following him she had so often led, were found in close embrace in a hollow of a little reef of rock, dry at low water, in whose wave-worn cleft, no broader than a chest, they lay as in a single coffin formed for two bodies. So ended THE TRAGICAL PASSION OF MARMADUKE PAULL."

Ir was our fate on the opening of last year to sound the note of unwelcome warning. In the then hey-day of a prosperity, whose splendours, like the sun of the tropics, seemed unobscured by the slightest cloud, there appeared in the horizon the faint speck betokening the coming tornado, which at times is found to elude even the keen look-out of the practised mariner -which ever escapes the superficial glance of the fresh-water sailor. The vessel of state was crowding all sail topgallants were unfurled to catch the current of a higher atmosphere-every rag of canvass was pressed into the service of the cheering gale-fore and aft streamers gaily floated in the breeze-all was song and merry-making on board-the steersman drunk and reckless as the crew. We alonewhy should we disown it-felt the threatening swell of the waters beneath, saw the dark spot above expand into turbid and fearful clouds, heard the hoarse whispers of the coming storm, and piped all hands to take in sail and run the good ship under bare poles for a season. We were little heeded for a time-the grog was going its round. The officers, self elate, were floundering under the intoxicating breath of unchanging tradewinds and seaway unvaryingly smooth. The equipage reflected the jovial carelessness or unconscious stupidity of their commanders. It may be well here to rehearse the terms of the first

VOL. XLI. NO. CCLVI.

admonition addressed, but in vain, to all whom it concerned, on the first day of the last new year. Thus it was spoken in Maga. "The rage of speculation, too, has invaded Lanca shire to a dangerous extent; to say nothing of railroads and other schemes, Manchester alone has manufactured joint-stock banks for half the kingdom. In that town itself, banks are almost as common as factories, and Lancashire and Yorkshire notes, payable at home, but not in London, overflow the land, and have almost superseded national bank notes and sovereigns, where, a few years since only, any other medium of exchange could find no currency. Much of the paid-up capital of these banks may-there are grounds for fear-be not disposable when most wanted-so much dead stock, consisting of advances upon their own shares, according to conditions expressed or implied, by which shareholders were allured." *** "The system is even now on the stretch, and may snap in twain with little warning. God grant a crash may not come like the crush of matter and the wreck of worlds."" In the month following, our voice was again heard; in March, as signs and tokens thickened round us, our prophetic anticipations were thus once more expressed :-" The multiplication of joint-stock banks in Lancashire has been a business of too much haste to be of good speed; we question the prudence of applying steam-power to

K