which then raged here. I was spared, but neither judgments nor mercy moved my hardened heart. I was among a detachment ordered to attend Lord Exmouth in his expedition against Algiers. My race is now nearly run, and but for this stranger friend'-and he turned, as he spoke, an expressive look towards Alfred-'misery more dreadful than I have suffered during my life, must have been my lot eternally; but I shall now die the repentant Egbert Harlow.' 'Egbert Harlow!' exclaimed the agitated Alfred-yes, it was indeed, the wretched Egbert-'I am Alfred, your brother,' -added he. His hair fell aside, as he leaned over his astonished brother, and discovered the seamy scar upon his forehead, to the astonished Egbert. O my brother! exclaimed the dying man, as with a convulsive effort, he threw his arms around his brother's neck, and expired.-And when they lifted up the wasted Alfred, it was discovered that his spirit had joined his brother's in a better world."

THE SEPARATION.

"Oh! what is death? "Tis life's last store,
Where vanities are vain no more;

Where all pursuits their good obtain;
Where life is all retouch'd again;

Where, in their bright results shall rise,

Thoughts, virtues, friendships, loves, and joys."
GAMBOLD.

"OH! what a change will not a few hours effect!" sighed out an almost broken-hearted female, as she paced, with hurried steps and agitated feelings, little short of maniacal, her lonely chamber. "This last wrench has climaxed my sufferings, and given the final stab to my already shattered peace." She pressed one hand to her throbbing forehead, and, with the other, drew forth her handkerchief, and wiped away the tears of agony, which rolled down her pale cheek, and then, sinking into a chair, unable longer to restrain the almost choaking grief under which she laboured, exclaimed, in sorrow's deepest tone, "O, my own, my dear, dear Eustace, are we indeed, torn from each other for ever?" Nature sunk beneath its own violent emo

tions, and the delicate frame of the devoted Laura fainted under it. Laura was the youngest daughter of a gentleman of family in the north of Scotland, whose residence was at the foot of a lofty ridge of mountains, called the Fentland Hills, which rise about four miles west of Edinburgh, and extend a considerable distance towards the western boundary of Mid-Lothian. Here the

gentle Laura resided with her widowed father; and, by her assiduities and sprightly intelligence, formed the principal source of the enjoyment which he knew. The house which they occupied stood in a retired situation. A small green-plat, with two or three waving poplars, filled the front premises, which were the extreme prospect, except a very limited view of distant scenery on the right, and a still less extent of a public road leading into the town, on the left. Yet, more than this, Laura wished not. She had, at a period when most females possess the greatest measure of hilarity of spirits, sunk into a degree of pensiveness, except on some extraordinary and brief occasions, which produced a species of distaste to society. She had experienced no ordinary shock at the loss of her mother;-and such a mother as few, comparatively, have known: she was such a one, as few, possessing almost an infinitely less degree of sensibility than Laura did-who, in fact, was all sensibility-could have lost, without deeply deploring her. The wound which her mind, from. this circumstance, had received, was yet unhealed,

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when another, laceratingly painful, was inflicted on it; and inflicted, too, by the hand of a dastard, who ought to have shielded her from another pang, even at the hazard of his own existence. But he had not soul enough to know her worth,-or the craven spirit which he displayed would have been exchanged for the noble and unbending conduct of a man of truth and honour. Such conduct, because of its frequency and consequences, deserves all the reprehension which the strongest language can express. Miscreants of such a character, are pests to society, and should be scouted from it. Freezing pity, and burning execration are sooner or later their wretched but righteous experience.

From these repeated attacks, acting powerfully on a delicate constitution, and a class of feelings so finely strung, that, like the Eolian harp, which sends forth plaintive music at the softest breeze, they trembled at every touch: she writhed beneath mental throes of the most violent character; and hence too it was, that a melancholy tinge-foreign to her natural temperament-had infected the core of her existence; making the quiet seclusion of the family dwelling to possess more charms for her, than all the gay scenes of London, Venice, or Paris could have afforded.

Here, day after day, and week after week, the mourning Laura brooded over her sorrows and her ⚫ wrongs. Her wrongs! Yes, her wrongs!-but she conceived not so of them: her kind and noble

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nature thought of them by another, by a milder name,-for, she was used to say, I cannot disesteem that which I once loved." The chief and almost only pleasures she now enjoyed, arose from the interest which she took in affording instruction to some few children of the poor around her, and occasionally visiting the chamber of sickness, or the abodes of want and wretchedness.

That gracious Being, however, whose "tender mercies are over all his works," and who delights not in the unhappiness of any of his creatures, marked with compassion her "life-sapping" sorrow; and, at the moment when the bereavement and disappointment which she had met with, were pressing upon the very vitals of her existence, and threatening speedy death, He, in the order of his providence, brought her acquainted with one whose union of spirit with her own, and similarity of circumstances in some of their darkest shades through which she had passed, not only tended to rouse her languid powers, but threw around her path, once more, some of the fascinations of life, bringing gradually and by degrees, into full play, those vivid sensibilities of her nature, which she had hastily imagined were destroyed for ever.

A variety of circumstances, perfectly natural, and yet equally unforeseen and unexpected, brought them frequently together. A nameless something, in the habits and spirit of Eustace, led the sympathizing Laura to conceive that some blighting affliction had produced a reservation, bordering on