have passed through the refining furnace of the world's trials-joy which shone in the happy faces of the grateful people, who bless the fair bride and pale bridegroom as they walked adown the churchyard; joy which found utterance in the heartfelt benisons of the poor people who had been the objects of the happy curate's watchful care; joy which was echoed in all the sounds of nature, clad that day in her most witching smiles and her bravest spring attire, which the thrush and the skylark seemed to chant in liquid music, which the very bells re-echoed as their melody now rose now fell with the wind o'er hill and dale and lea; while their golden tongues seemed to say, "in a sort of Runic rhyme," May they be happy, and their life one blissful dream! Truly do they present a gallant appearance-the bridal company, as they stream down the churchyard to the music of the bells and the hearty cheers of the people. Care and illness may have thinned the good priest's face (for curate he is no longer, the living having fallen to his share), heavy, deepgraven lines there may be in his forehead, that no careful hand of love may smooth out; but his face bears the look of high hope and success which marks the man who sees his path of improvement open before him like a star, good hope shone enshrined upon his pale brow, and in his eyes a deep fond look of affection upon the fair girl who clung to his side, half-proud, half-frightened at her enthusiastic reception. Well worthy was Katie to stand at the side of such a husband; for her memory was blessed and praised by the suffering people too for her great kindliness and self-devotion. Like that dear lady-whose shadow the sick soldier turned to kiss on the wall as she passed, that lady with a lamp, "who shall stand in the memory of the land”—Katie's very name was endeared to the poor people of Luffington, as one who had abjured all that makes life delightful to young girls, had exchanged the brilliant ball-room for the stifling sick chamber, and the witching sounds of music for the agonized groan and bitter sigh of weariness, and now was reaping her reward in the good wishes of the people, who said: "Blessings on your dear face!" And behind the happy couple came our friend Charley Dalton, who had been asked over to the ceremony, for old-acquaintance sake, and had consented for once to mingle among the gay and the festive; though he had been leading rather a hermit life of late among his beeves and acres, devoting the whole of his energies to a model farm, which promised fairly to be something great. The shadow of his life seems to have passed away, and the old smile of happy insouciance beams on his face as he once more listens to the "delight of happy laughter and the delight of low replies" from the prettylooking cousin of the Stewarts at his side; and the Squire is there too, with that jolly old English face, hoar and lusty, with cheeks like the fruit of the winter apple, which the riper they grow the more ruddy are they; and nothing to tell of the advance of the silent old man with the scythe, except hair gradually silvering over. He looks as proud of his son-in-law as he can be, for the match is a most eligible one. Smyly has a very good family connection, and his relation ship to the Bishop made his clerical prospects still more brilliant. The drone who had held the living of Luffington had died in a foreign country, without one good wish from his flock, or one tear consecrated to his memory, at which no one wondered; for he had never been amongst his people, and the sole clerical labours that he had performed were ever and anon to preach a sermon to the English residents at the foreign town where he lived for his health's sake. He belonged to that fast-decaying school of white-handed dilettanti clergymen who had droned through life before the new hard-working, muscular ideas were infused into the church: a class of men was he the representative of, who dropped quietly down into a good living from a college fellowship, who were very good judges of port, having served a long apprenticeship to that same in the common rooms of the Universities, and played an irreproach able hand at whist after dinner. But now it was high time for this school to die away and make room for the hard-working impetuous tide of youthful curates who infused their leaven into the deadened lump, and busied themselves with their schools and parish work-toti in illis. There was great rejoicing when the living fell to the share of the young Curate, and people foresaw a great change about to ensue in the aspect of the country village. Nor were they mistaken; for under the auspices of the new Rector the schools sprang into life and vigour. Cleanliness and content reigned in cottages whose only guests had been hunger, misery, and filth; and now that I am taking leave, for the last time, of all my scenes and characters, I may safely let fall the curtain on Luffington and its worthy Rector, with, as they say to the military on the Queen's birthday, "three hearty cheers." Certain may we feel that Loftus Smily and Kate, his good wife, will go down the vale of years hand-in-hand, a trusty, faithful couple, bearing the ills of life right manfully, and repining not if, in the silent flight of the winged years, a white tomb-stone gleam forth ever and anon to show where some idolised darling has fallen a victim to the "reaper whose name is Death;" for, at the time that I write, a very handsome, curly-headed boy, who calls himself Stewart Smily, comes up to me, and shows me, with high exultation, the prize that he has won at Eton, and the bat with which he made fifty well-got runs against the rival blue at Lord's; and mentions something about a tip before he goes back to school. There are some other characters though, whom, in common justice, I must not neglect, as they have done the first lady and gentleman's parts for some years, and 'twere shame and pity to leave them unnoticed now when the play is coming to an end. Poor Nathalie I have disposed of well enough-all her hopes and fears and struggles As lie buried in that quiet cemetery at Baden, and At the time of the Curate's wedding a very pressing invitation to the Hall had reached the couple at Baden; but the Captain, deterred by that feeling of false shame which keeps people away from the presence of those whom they imagine they have injured, had closed his eyes to the tempting prospect and to the look of wistful eagerness in Ella's eyes which showed how she longed for home again, after the weary, weary exile among the strangers. "Now is done thy long day's work; Thou wilt never raise thine head Meeter resting-place, after the troublous passage through the vale of life, might no sleeper wish for. There grew, in loving twines round the tomb, with its mournful legend, sent; "Bramble-roses faint and pale," shedding a bountiful incense, and dropping sweet tears of sympathy, when, ever and anon, the rain-cloud swept across the chequered graveyard, and "made music sweet in the trees;" and there, too, the "gold-eyed kingcups fine," and the wee modest daisy, peeped forth to greet the strange foot, and, as though to defend the rest of the sleepers, the stately hollyhocks banded themselves together in thick phalanx, and the "frail blue-bells" rang their little muffled peals to keep in unison with the music in the trees. Who shall deny what a thrill of compassionate pity-which was divine in opposition to the glad feeling of relief that an obstacle was out of his path, which was of the earth earthyshot through Grantley's heart as he took leave, for the last time, of the name-being no longer, whose thread of life had been so strangely mingled with his, and who now lay so quietly resting there? But contrition would be of no avail then; he must awake to the realities of the prethe kindly past would have shadows in which to busy the bitter memory of these tal vow, over the tomb of the woman he had things; and Captain Grantley registered a menwronged, that he would be at least true and faithful and kind to the living wife, and strive to atone for the misery and wretchedness of the But as the months rolled on, and children first part of his married life. That vow I have were born to them, they felt a mutual yearning every reason to believe he most religiously did for the pleasant old English courts and the keep, and each day found in him a more faithhomely country scenes and honest village life, ful husband and loving spouse; and in Ella after the glare and noise and turmoil of the Grantley a woman who begins to find what true "Vanity Fair" in which they were living, and as happiness is, and realize in her married life the the old Squire's entreaties grew none the less bliss of her early girlhood. I think, too, that pressing, and as he promised Grantley the re- the sharpness of Charley's feelings became every fusal of a pretty little lodge, in which he and day more blunted. There is nothing to be his family might live in peace and quietness, the found more prejudicial to day-dreaming, and Captain at last consented; and bidding farewell brooding over the ashes of the "dead fire of to Baden, and, having paid one last farewell love," than plenty of energetic business and visit to the little churchyard, in which a tomb-open-air sport. It requires a confirmed indistone bore the legend "Priez pour Elle" and underneath that modest white stone lay, in quiet, dreamless sleep, what was once a beating human heart, and a mind which could contrive and think with he cleverest-quiet enough now, he felt inclined to echo the laureate's words “I'd rather not, Ella, thanks to them all," said her husband, “until I can hold my head up once more, and then I shall be all for bonnie England: as it is I am content to rub on at Baden." "Let them rave!" Let the waves of trouble and sorrow, and carking care and jarring anxiety be stilled by the superior presence of death. Truly might one sing the dirge over Nathalic the unfortunate, gestion, coupled with the utmost constitutional laziness, to make such men as Werter: for men who plunge head-long into the seething waters of politics or speculation there is no time for waste sentimentalism; and when a man's physique is good, his digestion. faultless, and the children of the promise assail not his doors, he can afford to laugh at falsa Neera, and bid her "go hang," or to a nunnery, with her glittering locks and treacherous eyes, that steal the heart out of a man. So I am sorry to say, for the character of my friend Charley, as a hero of romance he played a very indifferent poor figure, and did not end the story by marrying the widowed Ella, as some of the dear ones who puzzle over this history have prophesied, and doubtless are tossing their pretty heads, and curling their lips expressively, and thinking the author but a miserable wight after all, and unacquainted with the way of the world. I cry you mercy, fair dames, and will try and retrieve his character, by saying that he never mentioned Ella's name without a queerish trembling in his voice, and often drives his wife distracted by the way he goes on about Mrs. Grantley. 66 As for Ella, she has recovered her wonted beauty, that lustre of the eyes which fascinated little Ensign Robson (by the way, that little defender of his Queen and country has also gone and committed matrimony, acting true to his faith in leading to the altar a mon'sous fine woman, begad!" something like twice his age, and five-times his weight; and they live together like a pair of turtle-doves)-as I was saying, her eyes had recovered their brilliancy, and the smoothing hand of love and sympathy had rubbed out the wrinkles which sorrow had prematurely implanted there, and there was an airiness in her gait, and a laughing ripple in the music of her voice, and she was once more the happy wife, and the good, honest English woman. Nothing is more charming than the united character of the Oaklands family now every Christmas, and every birthday-and every other day, for the matter of that, on which anything like festivity can be exacted. There is great fun at the Hall, and happiness is with them all, from the Squire-now a hoary man full of years-to the youngest child of the Curate's, who crows his little tribute to the general pleasure. Worth all the trouble and sorrow of the dark years gone-by, thinks everyone, in the calm, delicious sense of present rest. And now it becomes my painful duty to make my own bow, and withdraw the puppets, and put them back. No one but he that creates then can imagine the regretful sorrow with which the author dismisses the characters whom he has been associating with, and whose thoughts, talk, and actions have been, in a manner, his own. All adieux are painful; nor can the tearful eye and the broken voice express half that the heart feels; but still, in making them, Macbeth's advice is good: "If it were done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." A hearty grasp of the hand, into which all the heart goes, one silent "farewell," and then to depart! Like Martial, I send my little book into the world, trembling for its safety among the wolves and the hawks, and "So good-night unto you all: Give me your hands, if we be friends." My earnest wish for the reader is, that it will give him as much pleasure in reading as it has me in writing-then all will be well. DOWN THE AUTUMN VALLEYS. BY AGNES LEONARD. Down the Autumn valleys softly Falls the starlight's golden rain, Where the roses bloomed and faded O'er the grave where she has lain, Very quiet, very lonely All the long years that have flown, Caring not that she is sleeping In her narrow grave alone. Comes there not a thought of sorrow O'er the hushed throbs of her breast; No dim dread of dark to-morrow Breaks the sweetness of her rest. Fold me in your arms, my mother, I will sleep where you are sleeping, I am weary, yes, how weary Of this black, unending woe! Take me then, O glad-browed angel! Where eternal waters flow; Where the lilies, pure and fragrant, O'er the hills forever blow; Take me there, O sainted mother! Where my yearning heart would go. LINES. BY ADA TREVANION. You have taken back the token Which you gave me in past years, Taken back the promise spoken Amid fond and happy tears. And I do not say regret me, For your heart will not regret; You will struggle to forget me, But you never can forget. For an unseen chain has bound you Which is lasting to this day; And a spell has breathed around you Thoughts not doomed to pass away. And that spell will not be broken, Nor those links be rent in twain, By the words which you have spoken, And the sharpness of my pain. No one sees the wallet on his own back, though everyone carries two packs-one before, stuffed with the faults of his neighbours; the other behind, filled with his own! A NIGHT WALK OVER THE FINSTERMÜNTZ-THE TYROL. What a scene! Mountains that in the fading, light look black and forbidding, and whose monstrous masses come striding_forward, like Titans startled from slumber. Beneath-far, far beneath their sheer precipitous side, a valley and green meadows, and tiny hamlets clustering round their little churches, whose spires, sheathed in metal scales, gleam with dragon-like hues of green and gold. That valley's peaceful aspect contrasts strangely with the Alpine wildness above; and still more strangely with the deafening, unceasing, tumultuous roar of a river, whose breadth indeed, and flow of water raise it above the appellation of a mere mountain torrent, but whose boiling and thundering waves dash (as only a mountain torrent's can) through, over, and under the black round boulders and jagged rocks, that fret and madden, though they cannot check, the stream's unwearied might. It is the stream and valley of the Inn! And never did Nature, in her wildest, fiercest mood, more grandly enhance the power of man-the strength of his much counselling mind, the victory of his much-enduring, toilsome hand! For see! up the side of this dark mass of firs and limestone, hanging midway between the roar of the Inn, and the unheard complainings of the summit's lonely pines, tracking the trackless, scaling the inaccessible, winds in graceful curves a road-amighty road! no slender mountain track, precarious and half-defined, nor yet the broader mule-path, safe though rugged; but a road broad and commodious, hard and smooth as the best high-road in Europe, finished and level as is the road of the most conscientious "trust" in England. How victoriously it sweeps upward in those stupendous windings! yet how gradual and inviting the ascent! The fall is so finely graduated that the brave team of the diligence continue their trot unslackened, as they leave the valley and ascend the mountain side; and the tourist, who having left the diligence behind at the last stage is doing the pass on foot, tramps on with a buoyant exultation at so promising an introduction to the great Finstermüntz. By a road like this we ascend mountains without climbing them; precipitous cliffs are turned into mere "rising ground," Nature's wall-like barriers into an inclined plane. On, then, the tourist tramps. It is six o'clock, but his object is to reach the summit of the pass before dark; for thence may be seen the Ortler Spitz, "that giant of the Rhotian Alps"-a peak which they say combines something of the commanding abruptness of the Matterhorn with the snowy radiance of Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau. His time is short; but the inspiration of the scene, the anticipation of the coming view, and, above all, the increasing keenness of the air, seem to fill him with new powers, and he promises himself that he can do the Pass at a "spurt." He winds swiftly, then, up the road's great curves. But already the gathering clouds are closing up the view; the great peak will probably be invisible even should he reach the top of the Pass in time. And, besides, there are sights on the road that arrest his attention, and, in spite of himself, bring him ever and anon to a halt. For now and then the road is so marvellously supported on its terraces of masonry that it is hard not to step for a moment into the casementlike apertures made at intervals in the parapet; and then, hanging as it were in mid-air, to gaze down into the very stream itself, striving to measure with the eye the depth, or watching some mountain bird which darts from a crevice far below. Next the traveller passes through a tunnel or gallery, which resounds hideously with the din of some unseen torrent; but whether from beneath or from above he knows not, for little can be seen in the dim light admitted by the narrow openings which face the valley; he shivers in the dank and darkling vault, which seems to tremble and re-echo with the dash of the hidden waters. From this he emerges, and breathes more freely in the glad daylight; when suddenly he seems to be brought, if not into the actual presence, yet into the haunt and demesne of an awful being that has'ts lair hard by this mountain road--a lurking monster, who sometimes descends from his unseen fastness with appalling roar and desolating rush; for see this great cleft or hollow, which forms a deep track or cutting down the mountain-side, and passes beneath the road, which spans it with a deep arch: it is a track made for the especial accommodation of avalanches, which at certain times of the year descend in this direction, and which, careering down this hollow, pass under the road instead of across it. It grows darker; and soon a wild, graceful figure, seen abruptly on a projecting eminence, looks like the demon of the dark Finstermuntz transformed, in some sudden caprice, into the freest and most lovely of the denizens of his rocks. There it stands, the shy, wanton chamois, ready, as the traveller approaches, to leap away with a reckless bound, and disappear! But no, it stands motionless, still as an image; for an image it is, a carved figure placed there to commemmorate some mountaineering exploit. Darker still! the traveller now conjectures rather than perceives the character of the scenery he is passing through. And now the road takes an abrupt turn to the left; he can just see that it enters a deep narrow gorge, which here opens into the larger valley, and along the bottom of which a torrent thunders down, to pour its waters into the Inn below. So dark and forbidding is this wild gorge, that he pauses for a moment, and casts a lingering gaze up and down the more open valley, which, by contrast with the narrower ravine, seems almost light and inviting. In a moment, however, he pursues his journey, and winds onward, hemmed in by towering rocks, and overhung by shadowy trees. litary dominion; like her, a mighty road-maker. It is an easy transition, from the modern Francis Josephs or Leopolds to the mediæval Fredericks and Othos; from mediæval Othos and Henries to classic Antonines or the Julian line to the days when, whatever track or moun tain path pursued the line of this broad Austrian road, it was not bordered by these frequent shrines, with their rude carvings and paintings, where the solemn struggles with the grotesque, the painful with the fantastic-when, instead of the picturesque yet civilized Tyrol-hunter, the skin-clad Genauni wandered over these rocks. Yes, perhaps down this very pass the fierce Rha tian tribes, wielding that double-headed battleaxe, the origin of which so much puzzled the Roman laureate, poured with a shrill highland yell on the legionaries of young Drusus and his stern brother; like Claverhouse and his wild clansmen, sweeping down the gorge of Kille crankie, and dashing with brandished clay. more upon the levelled pikes of the startled Royalists. It is now full night; louder and louder grows the roar of the torrent, and a white foaming mass of water gleams through the darkness, for the stream here falls in a deep broken cataract, at the head of which the road turns sharply, and apparently crosses the stream. But when on the point of entering this turning the traveller stops short: the road seems to run full into the side of the mountain itself; or what is that which looms in front of him, tall and phantom-like, as if the road abruptly entered some dreadful portal, some "all-hope abandon" prison threshold? He advances, But, as the traveller wends on and upstep by step, and, as it were, feeling his way. Awards, hearing no sounds of human life, huge porch and massive gate, the muzzle of a seeing around no shape or motion but grey, cannon, and suddenly on the left, a deep gut- flitting cloud, and vague masses of shadow, he tural voice utters a loud challenge. The voice passes into a phase of thought further, far furcomes from a sentry-box, which holds a tall, ther removed from present realities than even cloaked figure, with musket and fixed bayonet. those old days of Roman warfare. In vain his Still somewhat perplexed, the traveller asks the eyes strive to pierce the gloom which surrounds way to Nauders. The sentry silently extends him; overhead, indeed, the air, though full of his arm, and the stranger perceives that the cloud and mist, still seems to retain somewhat road, having crossed the stream, makes another of grey, uncertain light; but darkness fills the quick bend to the left, and, passing the face of road and mountain-side. In front, behind, on the fort (for an Austrian fort it is) continues its either hand, is darkness, or, if not darkness, upward course. He tramps on, with a new looming, shapeless shadows, more bewildering train of thought, set in motion by the apparition than sheer darkness itself. The unseen forestof this mountain fortress thus suddenly con- trees groan and rustle above the traveller, the fronting him in the heart of the wild Tyrol torrent roars hoarsely below. highlands in the gloom of the deepening night. The Austrian soldier's deep challenge still rings in his earsome Teuton peasant, perhaps, from the banks of the Main, or some sturdy Zechian from the corn-lands of the Donau. Poor fellow! does he think of a "Dacian mother far away, as he keeps his dark and lonely watch? A mere "clod" perhaps, a rude boor, manufactured into the martial whitecoated grenadier; yet what dignity, what military grandeur invests that simple peasant as he stands on guard at the gates of the lonely fortress! He is part of a vast system, of a power held to be mighty-one simple fellow, but one of half a million-the representative of the Kaiser, of the prince who, from the imperial halls of Schönbrunn rules, with his hundred legions, alike the pastures of Styria, the moors and valleys of Transylvania, the Illyrian bays, and these wild Tyrol-hills and forests. Austria"-yes, at least the "shade of what was great"-remains with her. Thus, on the lonely, dark road, has the cloaked sentry recalled the traveller from the mountain road to the modern Cæsar; from the murky night-gloom to the holy Roman Empire-to the modern successor of that potent shade of the past; like her, a mi And now, one sense being, as it were, nega tived and deposed for the time being from its natural authority and operation, another awakes into a keener activity than its wont. The blind night presents a blank to the eye, but the hear ing seems quickened to a restless, sensitive acuteness. Something more than wind-buffeted trees or rushing water seems to speak in the muffled roar, the fitful sighs and broken mur. murs that fill the air. On still the tourist tramps; but whither is the smooth, gently-rising road leading him? Still onward and upwardcan he have passed Nauders in the darkness, or has he taken some wrong turning? Is he winding up the Stelvio instead of the Finster mintz all this time, or who knows where? Onward still. His footfall sounds firm and even on the smooth, solid road; but that seems now his only hold on the fa miliar world of sense and earthly life. That hard, solid road his feet are pressing, seems his only connection with things mundane. His feet are on the handiwork of men; but shadowy night wraps his head, and in his car are sounds strange and unfamiliar, and voices hard to interpret. Onward still.' Is he, in truth, walking quietly up to Nauders, as duly informed by the |