heart; and the cordial reception I received from my whole family collected together to receive me, was calculated to add to my satisfaction. The only drawback to my content was my mother's state; she was wasted to a shadow. They all talked and laughed around her, but it was evident to me that she had not long to live. There was no room for me in the small furnished house in which they were all crowded, so I remained at the hotel. Early in the morning before I was up, my father visited me. He begged me to intercede with my husband; that on the strength of his support he had embarked in a speculation which required a large capital; that many families would be ruined, and himself dishonoured, if a few hundreds were not advanced. I promised to do what I could, resolving to ask my mother's advice, and make her my guide. My father kissed me with an effusion of gratitude, and left me. I cannot enter into the whole of these sad details; all my half brothers and sisters had married, and trusted to their success in life to Lord Reginald's assistance. Each evidently thought that they asked little in not demanding an equal share of my luxuries and fortunes; but they were all in difficulty-all needed large assistance-all depended on me. Lastly, my own sister Susan appealed to me- -but hers was the most moderate request of all-she only wished for twenty pounds. I gave it her at once from my own purse. As soon as I saw my mother I explained to her my difficulties. She told me that she expected this, and that it broke her heart: I must summon courage and resist these demands. That my father's imprudence had ruined him, and that he must encounter the evil he had brought on himself; that my numerous relatives were absolutely mad with the notion of what I ought to do for them. I listened with grief-I saw the torments in store for me I felt my own weakness, and knew that I could not meet the rapacity of those about me with any courage or firmness. That same night my mother fell into convulsions; her life was saved with difficulty. From Susan I learned the cause of her attack. She had had a violent altercation with my father: she insisted that I should not be appealed to; while he reproached her for rendering me undutiful, and bringing ruin and disgrace on his gray hairs. When I saw my pale mother trembling, fainting, dying-when I was again and again assured that she must be my father's victim unless I yielded, what wonder that, in the agony of my distress, I wrote to my husband to implore his assistance. O! what thick clouds now obscured my destiny! how do I remember, with a sort of thrilling horror, the boundless sea, white cliffs, and wide sands of Margate. The summer day that had welcomed my arrival changed to bleak wintry weather during this intervalwhile I waited with anguish for my husband's answer. Well do I remember the evening on which it came : the waves of the sea showed their white crests, no vessel ventured to meet the gale with any canvass except a topsail, the sky was bared clear by the wind, the sun was going down fiery red. I looked upon the troubled waters-I longed to be borne away upon them, away from care and misery. At this moment a servant followed me to the sands with my husband's answer, it contained a refusal. I dared not communicate it. The menaces of bankruptcy; the knowledge that he had instilled false hopes into so many; the fears of disgrace, rendered my father, always rough, absolutely ferocious. Life flickered in my dear mother's frame, it seemed on the point of expiring when she heard my father's step; if he came in with a smooth brow, her pale lips wreathed into her own sweet smile, and a delicate pink tinged her fallen cheeks; if he scowled, and his voice was high, every limb shivered, she turned her face to her pillow, while convulsive tears shook her frame, and threatened instant dissolution. My father sought me alone one day, as I was walking in melancholy guise, upon the sands, he swore that he would not survive his disgrace; "And do you think, Fanny," he added, "that your mother will survive the knowledge of my miserable end?" I saw the resolution of despair in his face as he spoke. I asked the sum needed, the time when it must be given. A thousand pounds in two days was all that was asked. I set off to London to implore my husband to give this sum. No! no! I cannot step by step record my wretchedness-the money was given-I extorted it from Lord Reginald, though I saw his very heart closed on me as he wrote the cheque. Worse had happened since I had left him. Susan had used the twenty pounds I gave her to reach town, to throw herself at my husband's feet, and implore his compassion. Rendered absolutely insane by the idea of having a lord for a brother-inlaw, Cooper had launched into a system of extravagance, incredible as it was wicked. He was many thousand pounds in debt, and when at last Lord Reginald wrote to refuse all further supply, the miserable man committed forgery. Two hundred pounds prevented exposure, and preserved him from an ignominious end. Five hundred more were advanced to send him and his wife to America, to settle there, out of the way of temptation. I parted from my dear sister, I loved her fondly; she had no part in her husband's guilt, yet she was still attached to him, and her child bound them together; they went into solitary, miserable exile. "Ah! had we remained in virtuous poverty," cried my brokenhearted sister, "I had not been forced to leave my dying mother." The thousand pounds given to my father was but a drop of water in the ocean. Again I was appealed to; again I felt the slender thread of my mother's life depended on my getting a supply. Again, trembling and miserable, I implored the charity of my husband. "I am content," he said, "to do what you ask, to do more than you ask ;-but remember the price you payeither give up your parents and your family, whose rapacity and crimes deserve no mercy, or we part for ever. You shall have a proper allowance; you can maintain all your family on it if you please; but their names must never be mentioned to me again. Choose between us, Fanny-you never see them more, or we part for ever." Did I do right-I cannot tell-misery is the result misery frightful, endless, unredeemed. My mother was dearer to me than all the world-my heart revolted from my husband's selfishness. I did not reply-I rushed to my room, and that night in a sort of delirium of grief and horror, at my being asked never again to see my mother, I set out for Margate-such was my reply to my husband. Three years have passed since then; for these three I preserved my mother, and during at this time I was grateful to heaven for being permitted to do my duty by her, and though I wept over the alienation of my cruel husband, I did not repent. But she, my angelic support, is no more. My father survived my mother but two months; remorse for all he had done and made me suffer, cut short his life. His family by his first wife are gathered round me, they importune, they rob, they destroy me. Last week I wrote to Lord Reginald. I communicated the death of my parents; I represented that my position was altered; that my duties did not now clash; and that if he still cared for his unhappy wife all might be well. Yesterday his answer came. It was too late, he said;-I had myself torn asunder the ties that united us, they never could be knit together again. By the same post came a letter from Susan. She is happy. Cooper, profiting by the frightful lesson he incurred, awakened to a manly sense of the duties of life, is thoroughly reformed. He is industrious, prosperous, and respectable. Susan asks me to join her. I am resolved to go. O! my native village, and recollections of my youth, to which I sacrificed so much, where are ye now? tainted by pestilence, envenomed by serpents' stings, I long to close my eyes on every scene I have ever viewed. Let me seek a strange land, a land where a grave will soon be opened for me. I feel that I cannot live longI desire to die. I am told that Lord Reginald loves another, a highborn girl; that he openly curses our union as the obstacle to his happiness. The memory of this will poison the oblivion I go to seek in a distant land. He will be free. Soon will the hand he once so fondly took in his and made his own, which, now flung away, trembles with misery as it traces these lines, moulder in its last decay. HUNTING versus YACHTING. BY F. P. DELME RADCLIFFE, ESQ. SOME love to ride on the ocean tide, There are charms in "the dark blue sea ;" But nerve at need, a gallant stead, And the life of a hunter for me. We plough the deep, or climb the steep, As those who steer their bold career There is that in the sound of horn and hound Which leaves all care behind, And the huntsman's cheer delights the ear, Borne merrily on the wind. Oh! give me a place in the stirring chace, |