that there is no lighting upon the actual perpetrator. They only wait for a description of his person from you to trace him out, and have him brought to punishment."

"I can give no description!"

"A very large reward has been offered for his apprehension, but hitherto without success; and as most of the men out of employ are emigrating, it is possible he may find his way out of the country before suspicion fairly alights upon him."

"God grant it!"

In a clean, though scantily-furnished apartment of a one-story house, on the outside of the town, sat an elderly woman alone, A table was beside her, with a large old Bible upon it, and a pair of spectacles laid in the fold of the leaves. A lamp hung by a wire from a hook in the ceiling above it, and a small fire was glowing in the chimney. It was past midnight.

She sat in a musing posture, her head leaning on her hand, and her eyes fixed upon the fire. The fender, part of the ring of an old carriage-wheel, supported a couple of small feet, which, from their elegance of shape, along with the little hand, now marked with prominent blue veins, that rested on her knees, could have belonged only to Fairy Leah. It was she.

As she sat, she uttered, apparently without being conscious of it, her thoughts aloud.

"Alas! will he never reform ?-will he never become what he was? Not a night that he comes home to me but he is mad with liquor! No change-no amendment-no hope! Woe is my heart-my child is become worse to me than ever my mother was! How shall I soothe him, and get him peaceably to bed?"

Here she heard the door opened-a foot hurried stealthily along the passage, and she rose to her feet to be on her guard as her son entered

the room.

He was a tall, besotted-looking young man, with a heavy fur-cap drawn down over his eyes. He stood for a moment, and then slipped down on a chest close to the wall, his features wearing a look of extreme excitement, which, to her eyes, was palpably more than that of drunkenness. She stood looking at him, uncertain what to think or do, overpowered with anxiety and apprehension.

"Mother!" said he, in a low, hoarse voice, while he trembled exceedingly, "I have killed a man!"

The agitation of the poor woman was extreme. She attempted to speak, but could not, while she clutched the back of the chair she had risen from, to prevent her from falling to the ground.

"They made me do it," he continued. "The card turned up' John Meriel,' and we had all sworn. Oh, my God! how different it looks now when it is done, from what it did before! Mother, I am in mortal fear!" and he gave way to a flood of weeping, while she stood gazing at him, struck to the very heart.

"What is it you have done, John ?" at length she uttered.

"That man who set up the machines at the mills, that have made us beggars:-the man from some place in -shire, -Basil is his

name."

"Mercy!" she screamed, putting one hand suddenly to her head. "I have done for him!"

She fell to the floor as if she had been shot.

He sat still for a few minutes, looking at her with a stupid stare. Then, rising, he lifted her up and laid her on the bed in a corner of the place, and resumed his seat on the chest.

The second day after the commission of this crime, a quiet, poor, genteel-looking woman presented herself at the hotel where Basil lay. She inquired if he were yet living. The porter replied that he was still alive and sensible.

"Tell him that a woman is here who very much desires to see him. Her name is Leah Meriel, of

shire."

The man went directly, not to him, but to the surgeon. On hearing the name mentioned, a strange chain of recollections and surmises arose in his mind, which, combined with what he had gathered from the murmurings of his patient, produced a mass of most unpleasant suspicions, fears, and doubts. He immediately gave instructions to admit her. And yet he repented of this shortly.

"Such an interview is certain, if all be as I think, to hurry his dissolution. But again, there is no hope, and how am I to know whether this matter is not something it may ease his dying moments to have settled ?"

He accordingly introduced her, having first mentioned to him the fact of her presence.

She found him laid on his bed, the whole of his face covered with dressings and bandages, his mouth only being free to allow of his breathing.

"Is it you, Leah ?" said he, much moved.

"It is John," she replied, and sank upon a chair by the bedside, taking hold of his hand with both of hers.

The surgeon withdrew,-the hired nurse at the time happened to be absent.

66

Leah," said he, “I thought you had been long ago laid in your grave. Have you not forgot me-now? I am sure there was little of good in me to be loved so much."

66

Forgot you, John! Heaven knows I never loved any human being save you and my miserable son!"

"And after thirty years separation, now when you find me an aged, mangled, dying wretch, do you talk to me in this way?"

"Yes, John, if an eternity were to pass away, could I do aught but still love you-and your child, though he has been to me as any thing but yours. Alas! from first to last, what a life I have led ?" "Comfort yourself, Leah. You have lived sinlessly, and endured your trials with meekness. There is rest for you in futurity-though not for one so fearfully stained as I am."

He paused he was very weak.

"Is it not an awful thing, Leah, to be dying with such thoughts as these?"

She gave way to a gush of weeping.

What a fearful account I have to render!" he continued. "Did I not, when I had the rearing of your young mind, teach you evil and not good?"

"Alas! John, you taught me to love you-the rest was all my

own."

"And that crime the most heinous erring man can commit! Did I not slaughter him-send him to judgment unwarned-and he the father that begot me? Has not the great Father dreadfully punished the deed. Did not his finger write on my boy's brow the command 'Avenge—and see how he has fulfilled it. Yes, Leah, ere his hand did this to me, I could see, in the moonlight, [the curse graven on his forehead !"

There was a long pause.

At length he said, in a calmer tone

"Leah, there is something yet to be done."

At that moment the surgeon entered the room. take leave for the time, and stated he would evening.

"Doctor," said the patient," is Mr.

He was about to

look in again, in the

still in the house? I

have changed my mind, and have something to bequeath."

"I will send for him immediately ;" and after looking to the dressings, he withdrew.

The lawyer arrived shortly after, and with his aid, he settled upon Leah a certain annuity, the rest of his larger property going to a distant relation, a manufacturer of Manchester.

When this was done, he was much exhausted. After some minutes, when the gentleman was gone, he desired the waiting-woman to leave the room till she was rung for, and, once more, these two strange beings were left alone together.

Leah, who had now had time to recover from the feelings that at first overpowered her, endeavoured to fill his mind with thoughts and hopes, suitable for one in his situation. May we trust she was successful!

"You were, what the world calls, the ruin of my youth," said she; "but if I, a frail, erring creature of clay, have forgiven and loved you so sincerely, how greatly more will He pardon, who is himself Mercy and Love?"

In this strain did her quiet, sweet voice pour balm into the wounds of his spirit. Grant it, Heaven! May my deathbed have such a comforter!

All this while he was rapidly sinking. At length he said, in a voice so low and weak, as scarcely to be heard even by her wakeful ears,

"Yes, I begin to think there may be yet mercy for me, and that He has sent you, an angel of goodness and love, to tell me of it, and to throw a halo of hope around my deathbed. I am dying. Do not call any one. I should wish to die as I desired to live, in your presence only, Leah. But don't be alarmed. It is so easy! I feel just as if I was awakening from a dream, only the process of change is slower."

"God grant you may awaken from the short fevered dream of this world to a bright everlasting reality!"

"Amen, Leah!-but it is a hard thing to part from you again when I had found you after so long a separation."

This was uttered slowly, and almost by syllables.

bed.

In a paroxysm of unsuppressible emotion, she threw herself on the When the fit was over, and allowed her to observe, she saw he breathed no longer. He was dead. And such was the deathbed of a PARRICIDE!

His body was conveyed to Whitestream, and laid in a little gothic tomb, he had himself caused to be constructed, in the churchyard of the parish.

Leah, by the help of the annuity he had left her, followed to that place. She did not long linger behind him. Within a year, she too had sunk. It was her latest request that she should be buried in the same grave with him; but this, from the prejudices of his friends, could not be complied with. The country people, however, made her grave close on the outside of the wall of the tomb; and there she lies, without stone or inscription, or even a flower to record her existence. Whether these things are of consequence to her now, however, I leave, reader, to your quiet thoughts.

Three persons were
Two, to whom the

As for her son, his fate is unknown to me. taken for the crime-but he was not one of them. connexion with the conspiracy could be partly brought home, were imprisoned for six months each-the third was set free. It is to be believed, either that some accident befel him, or that he escaped from the country with the emigrants.

LOVE.

Он! Love is like the belted bee
Bright hovering in spring:
Be wise, and touch him warily,
Or ye may feel his sting!

The honey'd prize will boom away,
Lost o'er the roaring river;
But in the heart the sting will stay,
And, venom'd, work for ever.

Oh! never hung a bonnier bee
On sweeter opening flow'r
Than waked the honey-love in me,'
Chance passing at the hour-

But never boy, with wilder spring,
Released his prey in terror,
Than I to feel the hidden sting,

And know my fatal error,

MARC LOGON.

THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY.

A PURE love of the country is as rare as a pure love of country, without the article. What love of the country is not will help us to the discovery of what it properly is. All who go to the country, or fly to the country, or even who prefer the country to the town, are not lovers of it, or in Horace's frame of mind, when he ejaculated,

"O rus quando te aspiciam,"

and sighed for the Sabine villa.

Hun

Is it scan

Many thousands repair to their country-houses, or those of their relatives and friends, solely because a certain time of the year has come, when by the canon-law of fashion it is absolutely forbidden to abide any longer in houses with numbers, and streets with names. How often is the law cursed while it is obeyed! How many "a longing, lingering look" is cast from the woods and fields during the weary months of August and September, back upon Piccadilly and the Strand! dreds would pass the livelong summer in the very heart's core of London-if they dared! With such the love of the country is simply the want of courage to live in town. But why give way to this false shame and make themselves martyrs to an affected taste? dalous to summer in a city? Where is the disgrace of being seen lounging in Pall-mall or Bond-street, when the sun is in Leo? If you prefer the Haymarket to the meadows whence the hay comes, why not avow it like an honest man, and boldly stick to the metropolis? It is no crime (though in the opinion of some it may be a blunder) to relish Spring-gardens or the Temple-gardens, or even Hatton-garden, better than all the gardens of all the country-seats in England. Much is to be said, too, with a little ingenuity, in behalf of your civic predilections. The roses of Hatton-garden have no thorns; there lurk no ambushed snakes under the grass of St. James's Park; no shipwrecks agonize your feelings as you pace the Strand; no bull rushes out to gore and toss you, if you saunter among the bowers of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Then the city has many, very many, of the objects which are so much admired and sought for in the country, and which the country is erroneously supposed to possess exclusively. Books have been written on the Natural History of London. You may botanize in every part of the town, and if you are an ornithologist, you have only to ascend any church-steeple, or climb your own chimneys, which is still permitted you by law. Do you want rookeries?-repair to St. Giles's, or stroll into Old Jewry. If rookeries of brick are not so rural as those of trees, Irishmen are surely more romantic than crows, and Jews more picturesque than jackdaws. If the country should boast its crisped brooks and flowery streams, it may fairly be answered that the Thames is, by confession, the noblest stream in England, and that this glorious river is broader in London than any where else. Besides the country has no sewers! This is a point in which the town carries it hollow.

Some people are fond of hills; well, are there no hills in London ?