agonies, a hankering for blood and life. They bound him. He struggled once with desperation; then he uttered no cry, moved not a muscle, but was motionless as a lump of clay. Two of the knaves slung him on their shoulders, ani jambing him along the narrow entrance, threw him down by a collection of combustible materials, left there seemingly for the very purpose to which they were now to be appropriated. The sufferer exhibited no signs of life, and, when the flames began to lick the sides of the pile, and the smoke rose above him into the heavy atmosphere, he seemed insensible to all pain. Meantime returning consciousness roused the swooned Julie, who, catching the faint glimmerings of the past, started upon her feet, looked around with a terrified glare, and crying "Where! Where!" rushed out of the gloomy dungeon. As she saw the volumes of smoke rolling up into the air, she flew to the spot where her husband lay, with shrieks of chilling horror. One of the ruffians brutishly hurled her back, and answered to her mild entreaties for mercy, and her cries of helplessness, with a bitter sarcastic tone, and a sneering grin, that showed the flintiness of the recreants heart. A divine and melting tenderness clings about the female heart, or rather makes a part of her nature, and shines out in every word and action-a tenderness that subdues the coarse and hard hearts of grovelling wretches, that lights up within the one, with whom it comes in contact, a flame partaking of its own purity and loveliness. Her natural timidity is a barrier, that restrains her from those hardning scenes, where wickedness and wrangling undermine the sympathetic part of humanity. Though she is timid, yet there are times when she is an angel of strength and fortitude to the brave, a being of unearthly seeming, apparently a visible soul, that is appalled by no danger, and is insensible to all else save the thought that wastes the moment. In such a scene-and such a scene was acting on that sorrowful night--the heart that can preserve all its stoniness, the soul that can mock the tearful earnestness, the heavenly sublimity of nature's tender pleader, must have passed the ordinary bounds of wickedness, and willed to itself a cold desolate and hopeless existence. Yet such were the ruffian Turks. As they saw the unearthly being before them, her countenance of horror, her disordered hair as it fell tremblingly over her shoulders, and felt the strong agitations that thrilled through her remotest limbs, and heard the mild, short and broken exclamations of her agonizing spirit, they steeled their hearts with the ferocious determination that she should die. "Ha! ha!" shouted one in a voice that seemed to be answered by a thousand laughing demons, "what wouldst thou, fool! By Heaven! he dies!" She fell suddenly, and seemingly as dead as if an arrow had pierced her heart, and the brutes laughed in tones of hollow discord at the effects of their brutality. As she awoke from her dream-like stupidity in which she had seen a thousand visions of wo and terror, realities that sickened her soul, and made her long for the quick remedies of death, flashed upon her wo-worn mind.She experienced a sensation of chill, for the heavy dews had drenched her thin covering. Noisome odors were afloat in the night air, and the sickening stench sent home to her mind the awful conviction that the villains had executed their threat upon her defenceless husband. She threw around her eyes in the recklessness of despair, and a few fitful flashes of smouldering embers fell upon them. She arose and searched for some token that these dying brands were the remains of the funeral pile of her husband. She poked from the coals a few bones, and collected them together for burial. She then piled up a few sticks of dry crackling wood to assist her in the pious orgies. Alone, unassisted, and unheeded, she pursued her melancholy task, without a solitary sound, to notify her of other existences, save the frequent click as of a hammer upon the distat ship. She deposited in the little grave the few bones she had found, and, as she piled up the heap of displaced earth, she sung a requiem to the departed spirit. Calm and clear was the tone that broke the awful stillness, which hung like a pall upon the sorrowing, desolate Island. There are dark spots scattered upon the carpet of life by the windings of fate, when every enjoyment, and every friend is wrested from the entwinings of an ardent affection, when the last hope that throws a beam of pleasure upon the thorny path of life is torn from a bleeding heart. We are doomed by the same fate to fret away our time in ineffectual attempts to pierce the awful uncertainty of the future, to catch even an obscure hint of the course which destiny has marked out for us, of the joys and sorrows, which are mingled with the tide of coming events. The acute anguish of our suspense is heightened by the strong, unaccountable presentiment--tangling our present joys--that ours is a fate of sorrow, and the end of us a wearing out by misery and this is deep despair. This is a dark and lonesome period and a freedom from its trials, is the fittest petition that man can put up to an overruling providence. For be assured we shall wrap ourselves up in a lonely tmpenetrability, believing that no joys are reserved for us, and not wishing to burden more buoyant spirits by the forebodings of our own disordered minds-believing that we stand alone, in desolate isolatedness without a friend to hint to us that we are in the land of glad spirits and hurried on by despair to curse the God of our being: or, as is the fact, but seldom, we shall depend solely upon the deity, and close our hearts upon all worldliness. The latter was the hapPy lot of Julie. Although there was that in her voice that betokened her bereavement and wo, yet it was strong and sonorous that seemed to tell that God was within her, supported her, and comforted her. She arose from the little mound over which she had kneeled, and walked away slowly and untremblingly to her miserable abode, tranquillized by thoughts that threw a kind of heavenly joy around her widowed heart. She groped along in the darkness to the spot where her sister once lay, but she was not there. She lit her lamp, and stood for a time gazing with a placid and sorrowful countenance upon the darkened features of the unsuffering dead, then turned to bid farewell, to the place, that had witnessed the end of her joys, and the birth of her sorrows. "Farewell, home, my only home-'tis hard to part with thee, though the joys thou hast brought me are few, and the miseries many. Yet thou art my home, and it is hard to say, Adieu." "Yes, I must leave it. "Tis well. I must leave the bones of my Jordano-but all is well so long as I can call the Lord, my God. All the world may not be as these Turks are, and all the Turks may not be as these, my Jordano's murderers. If I must increase the number of their victims, I may fall into tender hands, and, though I shall live and die a wo-worn captive, I may not meet the frowns that others meet. If I shall live in after happiness I will be thankful. But if I must die-to night-I am ready. Farewell, home, Jordano,-all. " She issued for the last time, from the entrance, and passed on elimbing over the heaps of rubbish, chilled to the heart by the groans and cries, that assailed her ear from every quarter. ance. It was a little before morn, when a darker hue is thrown upon the eastern sky, and the stars assume a more cold and dying appearShe threaded the perilous avenues, speeding her way from the sickning scene of butchery and conflagration. Many a wan wretch passed her with a hurried step, and a startling glance. Escaped from the most alarming perils she sat down upon a stone to snatch a few moments of rest, and as she thought of the dismal future, she gave forth frequent sighs that seemed to choke away her life. One while she contemplated the affectionate tenderness of her own heart, and thought of the pains that she had oft endured in view of others miseries; and, exalting others to the standard of her own purity, she fondly believed that if she should fall into the hands of her enemies, she should claim and receive mercy from them.-Fond, and happy delusion! The levellers, enraged at all innova. tion, were pursuing a furious, sweeping system of cut-throatism.-At other times she felt an invigorating something within her, a hope that she might escape the thirsty cannibals, and she started from her seat, and ran a little way, stung into action by the thought. Inconsiderate folly! The unsatiable demons were holding their carnival on almost every acre of the Island. Still she hurried on as if to fly the thoughts of crime and wretchedness, which continued to haunt her. She often looked back, weary with life, and hoping that some ferocious barbarian was following her footsteps; and as often looked back from a very different impulse, as the fear of violence, and the imagined picture of her hacked limbs wrought upon her bewildered brain. The sun was high in the heavens, and yet she wandered on without aim, heedless whether she found a safe asylum, or met a sudden death. She found herself before the door of an humble cottage, sequestered in a lonely wood, and not far distant from a recent track of the murderers. She pushed open the door and entered. There she found a single female, on whose countenance was imaged the deepest agony. At a glance they knew as effectually as tongue could tell the bereavement and anguish of each other's heart. A silent and tearful embrace was their only salutation, and a spark of joy kindled in their eyes, as they gazed once more upon the living, albeit worn out with watching, and sorrow. They covered their faces, still locked in each other's arms as if to give natural strength and protection They watched the declining sun, and saw his last feeble rays tremble on the ruby clouds.Despite the fears that almost overpowered them, they sunk into a fitful repose upon some straw, that was lying in one corner of the hut. In the night as dreams of terror poured round them, they would start from their sleep, and shriek aloud, as if their visions were realities, and would find themselves locked firmly in each other's arms. They would drop to sleep, only to shriek again, and on waking be drawn closer together. It was nearly morn, and a straggling party of Turks might be seen in the moonlight, making their way through a narrow strip of underbrush, in which the cottage was situated. They were sated with blood, and their passions slumbered in the intoxication of gratified lawlessness and brutality. They made no noise, save that of the dry sticks in their path.— They deigned to glance at the decaying hut, but seeing the utter poverty and loneliness of the place, passed on, and the two insensible females might have escaped the horrid fate, had not one, actuated by a more levelling spirit than his comrades, threw a torch upon some dry materials, in the entrance. The smoke white at first, began to roll slowly up the sides, then burst forth into a wide, vivid body of flame. A long, high, and terrible shriek—and the frail roof tumbled upon the forsaken victims; and thus they perished. W*. H*. O, The Attack of Malta, A VALETTE.- Grand Master of the Hospitallers. SCENE.-A Private Room. La Valette. And thus our order falls-crumbles to dust. Or knightly tale of some poor minstrel. And For this vain bubble of a name we've bar'd Our brands in battle-turn'd back th' avenging Moslems steel from his weak energy-stood Proud Europe's bulwark and have seen weak Kings, Their thrones and gilded sceptres from the Turkish power-for this we've spurn'd th' luxuries Of woman-that dream of our young days, When bright eyes flashed upon us, and light forms Had bloom'd once more-rich with the blood of foes. |