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tance, like the wailing notes of suffering fiends. Then, rolling his large eyes round in terror and despair, he sunk from the sight of the horror-stricken Achille.

She is lost, lost, lost!' he exclaimed, mentally imprecating his situation, which rendered it impossible for him to assist her.

Vast cakes of ice, between the elevation upon which he stood and the place where they had disappeared, constantly rolled by, tossed and whirled, like egg shells, tumultuously upon the fierce torrent. Conscious of his total inability to afford the least aid, he stood gazing like a riveted statue upon the dark sepulchre which had entombed the only being he loved.

Merciful Providence, I thank thee!' he exclaimed, dropping impulsively upon one knee, with clasped and uplifted hands, as he saw appear above the water, far below the spot where Léon sunk, one after another, the heads of his cousin and brother. She was lifeless in his arms, her luxuriant tresses floating upon the waves, her beautiful head pillowed upon his shoulder!

With a cry of joy he sprang forward to the point toward which he was swimming among the floating ice with his lovely burden. Henri was a bold and experienced swimmer. In boyhood it was the only amusement in which he delighted or fearlessly engaged. Achille stood upon the utmost verge of the ice, and cast his riding cloak out upon the water, retaining the tassel that he might draw them, now almost exhausted, to the shore.

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No, brother,' said Henri faintly, yet firmly. And a triumphant smile lighted his pale cheek as he declined the proffered aid. In a moment afterward he laid the fair girl upon the bank the preserver of her life!

Achille cursed in his heart the fortune that had blessed his brother. When as he swam with her, he saw her marble cheek reposing against his, his arm encircling her waist.

'Would to God,' he muttered, in the dark chambers of his bosom, 'that she had made the cold waters her tomb, rather than be saved thus! But no, no, too blessed a death for that proud boy to die. His death shall be less sacred.'

His lip curled bitterly as he spoke, and his blood fired with the dark thoughts his new-born hatred and revenge called up. The passions which had slumbered for years were once more roused within him, hydra-headed and terrible.

Like a superior being, his brother gently laid the breathless form of his cousin upon the bank. Achille gazed upon them both for an instant in silence, and while he gazed, felt his bosom torn with conflicting emotions of love and hatred.

As he bent over the lifeless girl, chafing her slender fingers and snowy arm, he half breathed the wish that she might not return to consciousness to be told that Henri was her preserver. He looked upon his brother as he assisted him in restoring her to animation, and felt that hatred, malice, and revenge burned in the concentrated expression of his glowing dark eyes; but as he encountered the proud glance of his brother, and witnessed the calm dignity of his demeanor, he withdrew his gaze from his face, but hated him the more.

But a few minutes elapsed after she had been laid upon the bank,

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when, accompanied by the old gardener and one or two of the servants, their father advanced rapidly toward them, having been alarmed by the appearance of Achille's horse flying riderless to the stables.

The breathless old man, instinctively comprehending the whole scene, kneeled by the side of his beloved niece, and by their united efforts she was soon resuscitated. Then, for the first time, he looked up, and observing the dripping garments of Henri, he smiled upon him with that comprehensive and affectionate smile he wore when he looked upon those he loved. But as he turned upon Achille, there was no glance of affection, no smile of approval - his eye was cold, severe, and passionless.

Gertrude at length unclosed her eyes, gazed intelligently upon those around her, and then resting them for an instant upon the saturated dress of her cousin, slowly dropped the lids again to shade them from the light, while her lips gently parted, and almost inaudibly pronounced,

'Henri !'

Achille sprung as though a serpent had stung him, and a fearful imprecation thrilled upon his tongue. His father frowned menacingly, while a smile, just such a one as passed over his face when he rejected the proffered cloak, and which, from its proud and happy, if not exulting expression, entered his bosom like a poisoned barb, re-opening the wound years had not healed, lighted up his brother's features, and the glance accompanying the smile was a glance of conscious victory.

ROME: FROM THE CAPITOLINE MOUNT.

'LET you come upon that hill in what mood you may, the scene will lay hold upon you as with the hand of a giant. Iscarcely know how to describe the impression - but it seemed to me, as if something strong and stately, like the slow and majestic march of a mighty whirlwind, swept around those eternal towers; the storms of time that had prostrated the proudest monuments of the world, seemed to have left their vibrations in the still and solemn air; ages of history passed before me; the mighty procession of nations- kings, consuls, emperors, empires, and generations, had passed over that sublime theatre. The fire, the storm, the earthquake had gone by; but there was yet left the still small voice-like that, at which the prophet' wrapped his face in his mantle.' DEWEY.

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'AND this is Rome!' - this mighty, leaning wreck

This columned desolation, wide and lone,

Is Rome, which bowed the nations 'till the neck

Of crouching earth beneath her foot lay prone.

Stern Fate hath spared the giant skeleton

Where once the veins of empire all converged

But silence sits upon the Cæsar's throne.

Man's wrath and Heaven's the queenly one have scourged,

And Time her broken pomp in yon pale ruin merged.

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III.

'War, flood, and fire,' the earthquake's yawning mine, Have batter'd, swept, and whelmed thy gorgeous halls; Could all the blood within thee shed, combine,

'T would heave, a crimson deluge, o'er thy walls;
Now echo mocks my footstep as it falls,
Lonely, in Grandeur's desolate abodes;

My voice from covert dark the bat appals,
And oxen graze where the dank herbage nods
O'er earth's unsceptred kings, and dust of demi-gods!

IV.

Beneath my feet the weed-grown Forum lies,
Where fell Virginia by a father's blow,

Whence swept the thundering plaudits to the skies
Answering the wingéd words of Cicero ;

There stood his dwelling, where the sunset's glow
With parting kiss salutes the Esquiline;

But who a fragment of its walls shall know?
There Virgil lived, and penned th' immortal line,
And gazed, as now I gaze, on yon dark Appenine.

V.

O'er marble streets, where roll'd the triumph-cars,
With hostages of empires in their train,

Round the vast Circos and the Camp of Mars,

Through whose wide bounds the chariots swept amain, O'er broad Campagna's now deserted plain,

Shadows are gathering; and uncertain loom

In the dim air, tower, cenotaph, and fane:

Star after star goes up into the gloom,

'Till all Heaven's watch be set, o'er Rome's colossal tomb.

VI.

The moon is up behind the Appenines,

Her lambent light just silvering their brow;
Now her wan disc yon Titan peak defines,

Her crescent car hangs o'er its summit now;

She lights the sea where once great Cæsar's prow

Tow'rd Actium led his turreted triremes.

No more yon wave the swan-like galleys plough,
But the lone fisher's snowy canvass gleams,

Where from old Ostia's port the dwindled Tiber streams.

VII.

Magnificently! - half in shadow sleeps

The enormous Coliseum's rifted shell;

How brightly through a hundred arches leaps
The saffron moonlight down its circling well;

There once, as prone the gladiator fell,

The peopled walls with vocal thunder rang 'Till heaven sent back its replicated swell;

There with strong faith subduing torture's pang,

The Christian martyr smiled beneath the lion's fang.

VIII.

Prodigious ruin! Goth and Saracen

Have thundered through thy vast arena's ring;

Thy fabric-even to its lowest den

Has heaved and quivered 'neath the earthquake's swing;

Yet still thy walls their stern defiance fling

Back to the challenge of the baffled storm.
Bards yet unborn shall in thy shadow sing:

What generations have beheld thy form,

That others yet shall see, when this is with the worm!

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VALETUDINARIAN.

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JANUARY 8. 'Give me terra firma !' said I, as I awoke this morning, after a troubled night's rest, and surveyed my comfortable apartments at the Exchange Coffee-House, in Norfolk, Ol' Vi'ginny,' and save me from the romance of the sea, its poetry, and so forth!' In truth, dear -, could I describe to you our voyage down the Chesapeake, I am sure you would share my watery aversion. We experienced a severe gale nearly the whole distance. Oh, such lurches of the steamer -such piteous screeches, and affecting prayers, from the ladies such groans from the men, and worse noises from the actively sea sick! The waves ran mountain-high the children bawled — the tables and chairs became locomotive, and were no longer standing members' of the cabin - and, to crown all, the engine gave way, and we were compelled to make a precarious harbor in the night. In the morning, as the storm had somewhat abated, we again set forth, only to encounter new disasters, together with the inconvenience of 'short allowance.' Right glad was I, when, after having been so long exceedingly tossed of the tempest,' we passed the Rip-Raps, into comparatively smooth water.

JANUARY 23. Through favor,' I am at last in Charleston the first important stage in my journey—having escaped numerous perils, for which I desire to be thankful. Before leaving Norfolk, the passengers passed a vote of thanks to the captain of the steam-boat inwhich we had such trying times on the Chesapeake, wherein, first and foremost, we praised his 'sumptuous table!' and closed with the able, prudent, and seaman-like manner in which he had conducted us through many dangers.'

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We left Norfolk at six o'clock on the following morning, crossing its

fine harbor, to Portsmouth. Here we took the Roanoke rail-road, twenty-four miles across the Dismal Swamp-a section of country whose title does not belie its character. Here I first saw the cypress tree; (I have seen enough since, to satisfy me for a life-time.) We left the cars in the midst of a cypress swamp, and took stage, eight miles, to Blackwater River, which, after uniting with several others, forms the Chowan, and disembogues into Albemarle Sound, at Edenton, North Carolina. On arriving at the banks of the Blackwater, we were not a little gratified to find, moored to the trees, the little snug, convenient steam-boat Fox, which used formerly to run from NewYork to Flushing, and was a favorite of Grant Thorburn's, who has presented it with a print of A Fox on the Lookout.' A trio of us had the whole boat to ourselves, there being no other passengers. Indeed, this was the case for hundreds of miles in succession. At Edenton, after transferring our baggage to a miserable, dirty steamer, called 'The Bravo,' we made an exploring excursion into the town, which contains two thousand five hundred inhabitants, ships five thousand bales of cotton annually, and has a charter for a rail-road to Norfolk; but with a suicidal perverseness the citizens will not build it, for the very politic reason, that though it could not but benefit Edenton much, it would also help Norfolk!

At four o'clock next morning, we started for a place called Jamestown, on the Roanoke River a town, by the way, which exists entirely in the imagination of its namers for it consists solely of one old hovel, and that without a sign of inhabitant. After being tossed about like an egg-shell, in a severe gale, on the Albemarle Sound, we finally entered the mouth of the Roanoke River. We landed at (so called) Jamestown, where we took stage, and passing through a barren country, with scarcely a habitation, and covered with pitch pines, from which turpentine, the only production of this region, is extracted, we came to Washington, where we supped, and left for Newbern, which we reached at one, and left at eight, in the morning, (with an addition to our party of two India-rubber yankees from Boston,) for Wilmington, distant an hundred miles, where we arrived the next day at noon, having travelled all night through a miserable country, covered with cypress swamps and pine barrens, occasionally diversified with a tolerable corn and cotton plantation. It was on this route, that I first saw a cotton field. Most of the cotton had been picked; but there were still scattering bolls, to reward my curiosity.

I should be behind the intelligence' or practice of the age, did I not pause here to record a few of my first impressions' of the country through which I have passed, on my way to Charleston. The bridges in this section are of a peculiar construction; they are of various lengths, from one to fifty rods, and are very numerous. The flooring is composed of sand, laid under water at various depths, from one to six feet. They are the work of dame Nature, and have this striking advantage, that though you may be submerged in crossing them, there is no danger of falling through! Public houses are very rare; and we were compelled to pick up our meals at the houses of the scattering planters on the road, where corn-cake and 'big hominy' is the universal provender. The houses, whether built of logs or boards, resemble our northern corn-cribs; and in them are built huge fires of light-'ud,' or pitch-pine

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