his ear. He stood wrapped in his ample cloak, leaning over the side of the

*

vessel. No sound but the soothing murmur of the sea assailed him, or the occasional step of the solitary watch. This was the season of deep thought, of uninterrupted reflection- the time when conscience ever awakens, and with her stern terrors takes possession of the soul. Scenes long since past, flitted phantom-like before him; years spent in vice and folly arose in dark array; and pangs of remorse, which long had slept, now awoke with tenfold poignancy. Virtue veiled her face, and turned from him. Insulted genius cried aloud, "I formed thee more God than man," how art thou fallen! Where are thy polluted talents?-noble were the purposes for which thou wert thus endowed. Where is the catalogue of thy

days?—the summing up of those hours wasted in riot, or in the perversion of the mightiest powers?-Thou hadst a heart framed for friendship and for all the social virtues-where are thy friends? -where the fellow-creatures whom thou hast made happy by thy exertions? -honour and integrity encouraged by thy example-misery sought out in her silent cell-injured innocence rescued by thee from destruction. Where are they?-call them forth, that they may be weighed in the sight of coming ages against thy faults and thy follies. Thou hast made to thyself a name that shall be written on the memories of men as on marble; thou hast linked it with error, with unprofitable actions, and with crime. Ay, with crime! How will they speak of thee amidst the worthies of thy race? As one who was at once

their light and their darkness — their morning-star, quenched in the exhalations of earth's foulest pollutions.

Monthermer shuddered at the fearful retrospect of departed time, at the prophetic vision of futurity. The stern voice of reason, which thus imperiously called on him, spoke in thunders to his soul. "Would to heaven," he cried,

C

“I could recall the days that are gone! but to what purpose?-it would only be to add to the load of my guilt—Oh ! that I could strike out from the records of irreversible truth that summing-up of all my transgressions, that crowning iniquity. Crime-what is crime? 'tis virtue in one language, vice in another

-'tis a frightful incubus raised by the distorted phantasies of men, from the chaos whence all evil originates. The icyness of age or of hearts that would condemn those burning thoughts,

those transports of delight they can neither participate in nor comprehend.

"But there is crime!

reason and truth have written that there is crime in characters of fire, and I am tainted even to the very core. Oh! thou only being amidst the many who walk this populous earth, whose words, whose thoughts, whose looks, whose very errors bear strange and fatal similitude to mine-thou to whom I dedicate all the idolatry of my soul, whose guilt has been my own-the guilt of intense unutterable love; say, wilt thou not rise up against me? What have I been to thee? thy curse-the bane of thy bright and beautiful existence. I have identified thee with myself thou hast imbibed all my weakness, but nature or custom has denied thee my all-enduring strength. I who ought to have shielded thee from every blight and misery→

I, who would rear thee a throne above that of the angels-what have I made of thee? a scorn and a bye-word-but no-'tis false-the voice of the groveling multitude, with whom thou holdest not one kindred feeling the breath of the world's malice shall never reach thee. If, indeed, 'twas crime to love as we loved, we sinned in secret-we belong but to each other to whom then are we accountable? There exists no witness of our mutual madness-if our hearts break, their secret shall perish eternally. If distraction seizes on thee, oh! thou who art by nature more feeble and sensitive than the partner of thy love; thy guilt-breathe it not to the winds or to the waves, but let it burst only from thy bosom with the last gasp of life. Eugenia, oh Eugenia! let despair seize on me alone; if thou but escape him, I will brave all his terrors."