ness. I have seen something like it on the delicate Chinese paintings of the secluded ladies of that very secluded empire, and should imagine it just such a permanent tint as the Roman Empress strove to procure by bathing every day in milk. Colour she had none, and thrilling must have been the emotion that could call it into her placid and pensive cheeks. Her features were not chiselled, and had any sculptor striven to imitate them on the purest marble, he would have discovered that chiselling would not do. They were at once formed and informed by the Deity. It is of no use talking about her luxurious and night-emulating hair, her lips, and those eyes, that seemed to contain, in their small compass, a whole sea of melancholy, in which love was struggling to support a half-drowned joy. As I turned to converse with her she looked up to me confidingly. She seemed, as it were, incessantly to draw me to her with her large black eyes: they seemed to say to me, "Come nearer to me, that I may understand thee. Art thou not something distinct from the beings that I see around me--something that can teach me what I am, and will also give me something to venerate, to idolize, and to love?" As I continued to speak to her, her attention grew into a quiet rapture, yet still a sublime melancholy seemed to hold her feelings in a solemn thraldom. My name, my rank, and my situation were soon disclosed to the father and daughter; and the former seeing how entranced we were with each other's company, like a prudent parent, left us to ourselves. My French was much purer and more grammatical than hers, hers much more fluent than mine. Yet, notwithstanding this deficiency on both sides, we understood each other perfectly, and we had not been two hours together alone, before I told her that I loved her for her very ignorance, and she had confessed to me that she loved me, because--because-the reader will never guess why-because I was so like the good spirit that walked gently through the forest, and gathered up the fever mists before they reached the dwellings of man. I very naturally asked her if she had seen this being; she said, no, but knew him as well as if she had; for old Jumbila, a negress, had so often talked to her about him, that her idea of him was as familiar to her as the presence of her father. "You have much to unlearn, my sweet one," thought I, “and I shall be but too happy in being your preceptor." At sunset, Monsieur Manuel returned, led us into another apartment, where a not inelegant dinner was served up to us. Knowing the habits of my countrymen, we sate over some very superior claret, after Josephine had retired. I took this opportunity to reproach him, in the gentlest terms that I could use, with the dreadful ignorance in which he had suffered a creature so lovely and so superior to remain. His reply was a grimace, a hoisting of his shoulders above his head, an opening of his hands and fingers to their utmost extent, and a most pathetic "Que voulez-vous ?" "I will tell you, friend Manuel," I answered," for his wine had warmed me much, his daughter more; "I would have had her taught, at least, to read and write, that she had an immortal soul, a soul as precious to its Maker as it was to herself. I would have had her taught to despise all such superstitious nonsense as obeaism, mistspirits, and all the pernicious jargon of spells and fetishes. I would, my dear Manuel, have made her a fit companion for myself; for with such beauty and such soul, I am convinced that she would realize female perfection, as nearly as poor humanity is permitted to do." "Que voulez-vous," again met my ears; but it was attended with some attempt at justification of his very culpable remissness. He assured me, that according to the laws, social as well as judicial, a person of her class, were she possessed of all the attributes of an angel, could never be received into white society nor wed with any but a person of colour. The light of education, he asserted, would only the more show her own degradation: he said he felt for her, deeply felt for her, and that he shuddered at the idea of his own death, for in that event he felt assured that she would be sold with the rest of the negroes on the estate, and be treated in all respects as a slave-and she had been so delicately nurtured. She had indeed: -her long white fingers and velvetty hand bore sufficient testimony to this. "But, can you not manumit her?" said I. "Impossible. When the island was more settled and better governed than now, the legal obstructions thrown in the way of the act were almost insuperable: at present it is impossible. I have no doubt that our blood-thirsty enemies, the Spaniards, who are our nearest neighbours, immediately you English leave the town, as you have dismantled our forts, and carried away almost all the male population captive, will come and take possession of this place-not that I care a sous for the brigands whom you have just routed out. I shall have to submit to the Spanish authority, and their slave laws are still more imperative than ours, though they invariably treat their slaves better than any other nation. No, there is no hope for poor Josephine." "Could you not send her to France ?" "Sacre Dieu! They guillotined all my relations, all my friends— all, all-and, my friend, I never made gold by taking a share in those long low schooners that you have kindly taken under your care. I have some boxes of doubloons stowed away, it is true. But, after all, I am attached to this place; I could not sell the estate for want of a purchaser; and I am surrounded by such an infernal set of rascals, that I never could embark myself with my hard cash without being murdered. No, we must do at Rome as the Romans do." "A sweet specimen of a Roman you are," thought I, and I fell into a short reverie; but it was broken up most agreeably by seeing Josephine trip before the open jalousies with a basket of flowers in her hand. She paused for a moment before us, and looked kindly at her father and smilingly at me. It was the first joyous, really joyous smile that I had seen in her expressive countenance. It went right to my heart, and brought with it a train of the most rapturous feelings. "God bless her heart; I do love her dearly!" said the old man. "I'll give you a convincing proof of it, my young friend, Percy. Ah! hah-but you English have spoiled all-you have taken him with you." "Who?" "Why, Captain Durand. That large low black schooner was his. Yes, he would have treated her well, (said Monsieur le Père, musing,) and he offered to sign an agreement never to put her to field work or to have her flogged." "Put whom to field work?-flog whom?" said I, all amazement. Josephine, to be sure: had you not taken him prisoner, I was going, next month, to sell her to him for two hundred doubloons." "Now, may God confound you for an unholy, unnatural villain!" said I, springing up, and overturning the table and wine into the fatherly lap of Monsieur Manuel. "If you did not stand there, my host, I would, with my hand on your throat, force you on your knees to swear that-that-that you'll never sell poor, poor Josephine for a slave. Flog her!" said I, shuddering and the tears starting into my eyes"I should as soon have thought of flogging an empress's eldest daughter." "Be pacified, my son," said the old slave dealer, deliberately clearing himself of the debris of the dessert-" be pacified, my son." The words, "my son," went with a strange and cheering sound into my very heart's core. The associations that they brought with it were blissful-I listened to him with calmness. "Be pacified, my son," he continued, "and I will prove to you that I am doing every thing for the best. The old colonel, our late governor, would have given three times the money for her. I could not do better than make her over to a kind-hearted man, who would use her well, and who, I think, is fond of her. Not to part with her for a heavy sum would be fixing a stigma upon her ;" and wretched as all this reasoning appeared to be, I was convinced that the man had really meant to have acted kindly by selling his own daughter. What a pernicious, d- -ble, atrocious social system that must have been where such a state of things existed! Reader, this same feature of slavery still exists,—and in free and enlightened America. (To be continued.) AN ITALIAN EPIGRAM, IN CONSEQUENCE OF LINES WRITTEN ON THE PLAGUE. CHI potrà con più sapienza, HOW TO WRITE A ROMANCE. [Mr. Arthur Ansard, standing at his table, selecting a steel pen from a card on which a dozen are ranged up, like soldiers on parade.] I MUST find a regular graver to write this chapter of horrors. No goose quill could afford me any assistance. Now then. Let me see(Reads, and during his reading Barnstable comes in at the door behind him, unperceived.) "At this most monstrously appalling sight, the hair of Piftlianteriscki raised slowly the velvet cap from off his head, as if it had been perched upon the rustling quills of some exasperated porcupine-(I think that's new)—his nostrils dilated to that extent that you might, with ease, have thrust a musket bullet into each-his mouth was opened so wide, so unnaturally wide, that the corners were rent asunder, and the blood slowly trickled down each side of his bristly chin-while each tooth loosened from its socket with individual fear. Not a word could he utter, for his tongue, in its fright, clung with terror to his upper jaw, as tight as do the bellies of the fresh and slimy soles, paired together by some fishwoman; but if his tongue was paralysed, his heart was not-it throbbed against his ribs with a violence which threatened their dislocation from the sternum, and with a sound which reverberated through the dark, damp subterrene." I think that will do. There's force there. B. There is, with a vengeance. Why, what is all this? A. My dear Barnstable, you here? I'm writing a romance for B. It is to be supposed to be a translation. B. The Germans will be infinitely obliged to you; but, my dear fellow, you appear to have fallen into the old school-that's no longer in vogue. A. My orders are for the old school. Or was most particular on that point. He says that there is a re-action-a great reaction. B. What, on literature? Well, he knows as well as any man. I only wish to God there was in every thing else, and we could see the good old times again. A. To confess the truth, I did intend to have finished this without saying a word to you. I wished to have surprised you. B. So you have, my dear fellow, with the few lines I have heard. How the devil are you to get your fellow out of that state of asphyxia? A. By degrees-slowly-very slowly-as they pretend that we lawyers go to heaven. But I'll tell you what I have done, just to give you an idea of my work. In the first place, I have a castle perched so high up in the air, that the eagles, even in their highest soar, appear but as wrens below. B. That's all right. A. And then it has subterraneous passages, to which the sewers of London are a mere song, and they all lead to a small cave at high Dec. 1835.-VOL. XIV.-NO. LVI. FF water mark on the sea beach, covered with brambles and bushes, and just large enough at its entrance to admit of a man squeezing himself in. B. That's all right. You cannot be too much underground; in fact, the two first, and the best part of the third, volume, should be wholly in the bowels of the earth, and your hero and heroine should never come to light until the last chapter. A Then they would never have been born till then, and how could I marry them? But still I have adhered pretty much to your idea; and, Barnstable, I have such a heroine-such a lover-she has never seen her sweetheart, yet she is most devotedly attached, and has suffered more for his sake than any mortal could endure. B. Most heroines generally do. A. I have had her into various dungeons for three or four years, on black bread and a broken pitcher of water-she has been starved to death-lain for months and months upon wet straw-had two brain fevers-five times has she risked violation, and always has picked up, or found in the belt of her infamous ravishers, a stiletto, which she has plunged into their hearts, and they have expired with or without a groan. B. Excellent and of course comes out each time as fresh, as sweet, as lovely, as pure, as charming, and as constant as ever. A. Exactly; nothing can equal her infinite variety of adventure, and her imperishable beauty and unadhesive cleanliness of person; and, as for lives, she has more than a thousand cats. After nine months' confinement in a dungeon, four feet square, when it is opened for her release, the air is perfumed with the ambrosia which exhales from her sweet person. B. Of course it does. The only question is, what ambrosia smells like. But let me know something about your hero. A. He is a prince and a robber. B. The two professions are not at all incompatible. Go on. A. He is the chief of a band of robbers, and is here, there, and everywhere. He fills all Europe with terror, admiration, and love. B. Very good. A. His reasons for joining the robbers are, of course, a secret; (and upon my word they are equally a secret to myself;) but it is wonderful the implicit obedience of his men, and the many acts of generosity of which he is guilty. I make him give away a great deal more money than his whole band ever take, which is so far awkward, that the query may arise in what way he keeps them together, and supplies them with food and necessaries. B. Of course with I O U's upon his princely domains. A. I have some very grand scenes, amazingly effective; for instance, what do you think, at the moment after the holy mass has been performed in St. Peter's at Rome, just as the pope is about to put the sacred wafer into his mouth, and bless the whole world, I make him snatch the wafer out of the pope's hand, and get clear off with it. B. What for, may I ask? A. That is a secret which I do not reveal. The whole arrange |