tary reverence with their looks, which his repaid with fatherly affection, while the arguish of a suffering heart hung on his pensive smile, sustained by the firmness of that indignant pride which lowered on his ample brow!

What a picture!

As soon as the first flush of interest, curiosity, and amazement had subsided, my attention was carried towards the altar: and then I thought, as I watched the -and impressive avocation of Father John, that had I been the Prince, I would have been the Caiaphas too.

What a religion is this! How finely does it harmonize with the weakness of our nature! how seducingly it speaks to the senses! how forcibly it works on the passions! how strongly it seizes on the imagination! how interesting its forms! how graceful its ceremonies! how awful its rites!-What a captivating, what a picturesque faith! Who would not become its proselyte, were it not for the stern opposition of reasonthe cold suggestions of philosophy!

The last strain of the vesper hymn died in the air as the sun's last beam faded on the casements of the chapel; and the Prince and his daughter, to avoid the intrusion of the crowd, withdrew through a private door, which communicated by a ruinous arcade with the castle.

I was the first to leave the chapel, and followed them at a distance, as they moved slowly along.Their fine figures, sometimes concealed behind a pillar, and again emerging from the transient shade, flushed with the deep suffusion of the crimsoned fir

mament.

Once they paused, as if to admire the beautiful effect of the retreating light, as it faded on the ocean's swelling bosom; and once the Princess raised her hand, and pointed to the evening star, which rose brilliantly on the deep cerulean blue of a cloudless atmosphere, and shed its fairy beam on the mossy summit of a mouldering turret.

Such, were the sublime objects which seemed to engage their attention, and added their sensible inspi- ~

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ration to the fervour of those more abstracted devo. tions in which they were so recently engaged. At last they reached the portals of the castle, and I lost sight of them. Yet still, spell-bound, I stood transAxed to the spot from whence I had caught a last view of their receding figures.

While I felt like the victim of superstitious terror when the spectre of its distempered fancy vanishes from its strained and eager gaze, all I had lately seen revolved in my mind like some pictured story of ro mantic fiction. I cast round my eyes; all still seemed the vision of awakened imagination-Surrounded by a scenery, grand, even to the boldest majesty of nature, and wild, even to desolation-the day's dying splendours awfully involving in the gloomy haze of deepening twilight-the grey mists of stealing night gathering on the still faintly illumined surface of the ocean, which, awfully spreading to infinitude, seemed to the limited gaze of human vision to incorporate with the heaven, whose last glow it reflected the rocks, which on every side rose to Alpine elevation, exhibiting, amidst the soft obscurity, forms savagely bold, or grotesquely wild! and those finely interest ing ruins, which spread grandly desolate in the rear, and added a moral interest to the emotions excited by this view of nature in her most awful, most touching aspect.

Thus suddenly withdrawn from the world's busiest haunts, its hackneyed modes, its vicious pursuits, and unimportant avocations--dropt as it were amidst scenes of mysterious sublimity-alone-on the wildest shores of the greatest ocean of the universe; immersed amidst the decaying monuments of past ages; still viewing in recollection such forms, such manners, such habits (as I had lately beheld,) which to the worldly mind may be well supposed to belong to a race long passed beyond the barriers of existence, with "the years beyond the flood," I felt like the being of some other sphere newly alighted on a distant orb.While the novel train of thought which stole on my mind, seemed to seize its tone from the awful tran

quallity by which I was sorrounded, and I remained leaning on the fragment of a rock, as the waves dashed idly against its base, until their dark heads were silvered by the rising moon, and while my eyes dwelt on her silent progress, the castle clock struck nine. Thus warned, I arose to depart, yet not without reluctance. My soul, for the first time, had here held commune with herself; the "lying vanities” of life no longer intoxicating, my senses appeared to me for the first time, in their genuine aspect, and my heart still fondly loitered over those scenes of solemn interest, where some of its best feelings had been called into existence.

land

Slowly departing, I raised my eyes to the Castle of Inismore, and sighed, and almost wished I had been born the lord of these beautiful ruins, the Prince of this isolated little territory, the adored chieftain of these disola affectionate and natural people. At that moment a strain of music stole by me, as if the breeze of midnight stillness had expired in a manner on the Eolian lyre: Emotion, undefinable emotion, thrilled on every nerve. I listened. I trembled. A breathless silence -gave me every note. Was it the illusion of, my now all awakened fancy, or the professional exertions of the bard of Inismore? Oh, no! for the voice it symphonized; the low wild tremulous voice, which sweetly sighed its soul of melody, o'er the harp's responsive chords, was the voice of a woman!

Directed by the witching strain, I approached an angle of the building from whence it seemed to proceed; and perceiving a light which streamed through an open casement, I climbed, with some difficulty, the ruins of a parapet wall, which encircled this wing of the castle, and which rose so immediately under the casement, as to give me, when I stood on it, a perfect view of the interior of that apartment to which it belonged.

Two tapers, which burned on a marble slab, at the remotest extremity of this vast and gloomy chamber, shed their dim blue light on the saintly countenance of Father John; who, with a large folio open before

him, seemed wholly wrnpt in studious meditation ; while the Prince, reclined on an immense Gothic couch, with his robe thrown over the arm that supported his head, betrayed, by the expression of his countenance, those emotions which agitated his soul, while he listened to those strains which spoke at once to the heart of the father, the patriot, and the manbreathed from the chords of his country's emblembreathed in the pathos of his country's music-breathed from the lips of his apparently inspired daughter! The "white rising of her hands upon the harp;" the half-drawn veil that imperfectly discovered the countenance of a seraph; the moon-light that played round her fine form, and partially touched her drapery with its silver beam-her attitude! her air!But how cold-how inanimate-how imperfect this description! Oh! could I but seize the touching features could I but realize the vivid tints of this enchanting picture, as they then glowed on my fancy! By heavens! you would think the mimic copy fabulous; the "celestial visitant" of an over-heated imagination. Yet as if the independent witchery of the lovely minstrel was not in itself all, all sufficient, at the back of her chair stood the grotesque figure of her antiquated nurse. O! the precious contrast! And yet it heightened, it finished the picture..

While thus entranced in breathless observation, endeavouring to support my precarious tenement, and to prolong this rich feast of the senses and the soul, the loose stones on which I tottered gave way under my feet, and, impulsively clinging to the woodwork of the casement, it mouldered in my grasp. I fell-but before I reached the earth, I was bereft of sense. With its return I found myself in a large apartment, stretched on a bed, and supported in the arms of the Prince of Inismore! his hand was pres◄ sed to my bleeding temple; while the priest applied a styptic to the wound it had received; and the nurse was engaged in binding up my arm, which had been dreadfully bruised and fractured a little above the wrist. Some domestics, with an air of mingled con

cern and curiosity, surrounded my couch; and at her father's side stood the Lady Glorvina, her looks pale and disordered-her trembling hands busily employed in preparing bandages, for which my skilful doctress impatiently called.

While my mind almost doubted the evidence of my senses, and a physical conviction alone painfully proved to me the reality of all I beheld, my wandering, wondering eyes met those of the Prince of Inismore. A volume of pity and benevolence was registered in their glance; nor were mine, I suppose, in expressive of my feelings, for he thus replied to them :

"Be of good cheer, young stsanger; you are in no danger; be composed; be confident; conceive yourself in the midst of friends; for you are surrounded by those who would wish to be considered as such."

I attempted to speak, but my voice faltered; my tongue was nerveless; my mouth dry and parched. A trembling hand presented a cordial to my lips. I quaffed the philtre, and fixed my eyes on the face of my ministering angel. The angel was Glorvina !I closed them, and sunk on the bosom of her father. Oh, he faints again!" cried a sweet and plaintive voice.

"On the contrary," replied the priest, "the weariness of acute pain, something subdivided, is lulling him into a soft repose; for see the colour reanimates his cheek, and his pulse quickens."

"It indeed beats most wildly," returned the sweet physician-for the pulse which responded to her finger's thrilling pressure, moved with no languid throb.

"Let us retire," added the priest, "all danger is now, thank heaven, over; and repose and quiet the most salutary requisites for our patient.

At these words he arose from my bed-side; and the Prince gently withdrawing his supporting arms, laid my head upon the pillow. In a moment all was death like stilness, and stealing a glance from under my halfclosed eyes, I found myself alone with my skilful doctress, the nurse, who, shading the taper's light from