Ah, to see Lady Haughtonville driving round the Park in June! with cavaliers on prancing steeds caracoling round her equipage, eager for her haughty bow Who could tell of an aching heart behind the smilethe face veiled in blonde, the roses shedding their soft hue on her cheek, touched, only touched with rouge I Already she was wellschooled; the rouge concealed the pallor of the cheek; the ready smile the anguish of her soul.

The courteous and popular Lord Haughtonville. the renowned statesman, the idol of society abroad-was the demon of discomfort at home. Vain, pompous, accustomed to rule; the little gracious feeling possessed by him being kept for expenditure at court, the marquis was as disagreeable in private life as he was popular in public.

From the time when Henry Nugent said "Good-bye!" and, after waiting vainly for a word, a look of recall, had departed proudly sorrowful, Maude Greville and he had never met. Theirs had not been a light passion of a few months' endurance; they had played together, grown up together, but the tie which years should have strengthened, had been sundered in a day! .. Maude saw her first lover again—but he

knew her not.

Sitting one morning in her carriage at Howeil and James's, waiting for a fashionable friend, the sound of a familiar voice struck on her ear, and made her start to her feet for a moment. Close by, on the pavement, arm in arm with a gentleman of her acquaintance, stood Mr. Nugent. He was comparatively little altered. There was the same honest expression of face-the pleasant smile—the very hair was parted off the open brow in the old way.

Lady Haughtonville's heart beat. The gentleman with Mr. Nugent turned round once, recognised her, and bowed. Her former lover stopped speaking while his friend paid this courtesy; he even looked at her for an instant, but, full of his subject, he drew the other away, and they both passed up the street together. He had forgotten her! But how was Nugent to recognise his early girlish love veiled in blonde and splendidly attired ?

Midnight in the vast city! The Marquis of Haughtonville has become Duke of Agincourt. He sits alone in his library. It is a strange solitude that, with the thoughts of the living and the dead gathered round one, while Time rings his knell! What matter whether his march be beaten by an iron, a leaden, or a golden bell! How few joyous hours he marks: how many knells he rings !

There sat the Duke of Agincourt, watching the golden dial. The door opened noiselessly; a physician sleek, smooth, and quiet, entered. He hoped that ere long all would be well, and that he should have to congratulate the duke on the birth of an heir to his magnificent title and possessions."

Rising from his luxurious chair, the statesman accompanied the physician up the illuminated staircase of his princely mansion.

Silence in the chamber that had well nigh been that of death! Alas! from the anteroom was heard a father's murmurs! A daughter had been born. A child, indeed, but no heir!

No happy words are whispered in unison by thankful parents. The duke departs from the anteroom, muttering vain repinings; and the duchess stretches out her exhausted arms for her child, and tears of unmitigated anguish rain down upon its unconscious little face.

"A daughter," said the duke moodily to himself, as he strode up and down his library. "No future Duke of Agincourt! First and last of the title-no heir shall follow me and I am already an old man!"

What a picture of gloomy discontent was presented by the great statesman in this dark hour! Oh that a poor man could have looked through the rich draperied windows of that costly library, and learned a golden lesson!

On the gorgeous couch of that magnificent apartment, the Duke of Agincourt was discovered dead one morning, as the light streamed in from the windows opened by a servant !

What now availed the statesman's hopes or disappointments? What mattered it to him that there was no longer a Duke of Agincourt ?-that his political career had been glorious to the end!-when he lay surrounded by hired watchers? What could he care for waving plumes and emblazoned insignia? Of what value to him now was his coronet gleaming on its velvet cushion?-he could have no satisfaction in the list of titles that decorated his coffin lid. There he lay, stretched out "in state," and curious gazers came and wondered at the gorgeous mummery !

One soft summer's evening, when Nature and Nature's children made holiday, when birds murmured their vespers in the hedgerows, and the haymakers came homeward singing, a plain travelling carriage stopped at a turnpike near the village of Limewood, and the postilions, asking their way to the Limes, were directed down a road shaded by the fine trees, whence the property took its name. The carriage contained the Duchess of Agincourt, and her invalid daughter Lady Ellen.

It was a sequestered village, very beautiful, and, from its sheltered aspect, well suited to the drooping plant the poor mother brought here for change of air. The Duchess had been happy here in her youth. She had passed many years of early girlhood at the Rectory with her uncle; it was in the old churchyard she had first met Henry Nugent. In after years she was wont to say there had been something ominous in their presentation to each other in that little world of death and graves; and there under the old yews they had parted. The old rector had long since been gathered among the dead in the church-yard.

Day had not yet faded, and the Duchess sat at the open window of her quiet drawing-room, gazing sadly on the dim outline of the ivied tower of the village church. The little Lady Ellen lay on a couch moaning in her sleep. Slow tears chased each other down the Duchess's cheek she could do nothing to alleviate the pangs of the sufferer. "May I come in ?" said a child's voice at the window.

It was a little girl of eight years old to whom Lady Ellen had taken a fancy in her walks. The nurse only knew she was the Rector's granddaughter. The young invalid started and awoke at the sound of her playmate's voice, and asked for flowers and some toy which she had promised her. Mary, that was the only name Lady Ellen knew her by, held a rich cluster of roses over her-the sick child laughed and sprang up with eager hands to seize the fragrant offering, the outstretched arms fell listlessly down, a sudden spasm convulsed the features-there was a gasp, a feeble cry, and the Duchess, springing forward, caught her child to her bosom. She parted the sunny hair from the tense brow. They brought lights-the sweet eyes were closed in death.

The old Rector came to see the sorrow-stricken Duchess. He grieved, he said, that his daughter was now absent from home; but he looked for her return ere long. The afflicted mother would hear much from his gentle Mary that would comfort her; and then, seeing that his efforts at consolation were scarcely heard, he departed.

The Duchess of Agincourt looked out across the garden and upon the fields beyond. The old chimes in the ivied tower struck nine; Mary's tiny form intercepted the twilight for a minute. The little girl looked earnestly in the lady's eyes. They were swollen with weeping, and fresh tears burst forth at sight of the buoyant child before her. The graceful, wealthy Duchess and the little rustic had been acquainted barely a month, and now a strong tie linked the desolate mother with the child.

Side by side under the old yews with Mary sat the once ambitious Maude. Ah, what had ambition brought her? Wealth! she cared not for it, for she had never known the want of means. Rank! she would have exchanged her coronet for a loving heart-her fine estates for the humblest roof with the sweet influences of domestic peace and love.

As she mourned beside her dead child's grave, she heard in the silence of the summer night, the Rectory gate turn upon its hinges. On what trifles are old memories often hung! The sound brought back some of her earliest associations. How often she had listened for it at that very hour when Henry Nugent, after seeking her in her uncle's study, would come to meet her under the yews.

Footsteps approached her. "Papa," exclaimed Mary, "we are here." The Duchess rose-there was not light enough to see at once the features of the intruder on her solitude, but the voice was Henry Nugent's.

And thus once more they stood face to face in the solemn stillness of the old churchyard. Once more they met among the graves, but not as they had done of old.

Henry Nugent knew his first, his false proud love again now; his paths had lain far apart from hers, and till lately he had known little of her destiny. Indeed, from having been abroad at Madeira for his wife's health when Lord Haughtonville received the honour of a dukedom, he had not recognised under the title of Duchess of Agincourt the once beloved Maude Greville. He knew that the Duchess had been for a short time at the Limes, and had just lost her only child there, and hearing that she was with Mary in the churchyard had hastened to invite her to the Rectory.

His own feelings were under the control of a mind long used to reason against passion. Maude's voice faltered, Mr. Nugent offered her his arm, and led her to the gate; a lady with an infant in her arms stood within the garden. Henry's wife and child, Maude felt sure they were. The aged pastor invited her within; she declined his proffered hospitality so indistinctly that he drew her arm kindly through his, and would have led her to the house. She burst into a passion of tears. "Poor thing, poor thing !" said the old Rector, little dreaming that the Duchess was that same Maude Greville who had brought his son-in-law nearly fourteen years ago to a sickness almost unto death; " sorely afflicted-it is God's will-it would be awful not to be touched by God's hand sometimes! It has fallen heavily on you now. But He can help you."

you are

He walked home with her, promising to bring his daughter, Mrs. Nugent, next day.

But Mary brought a note from her mother, asking permission to visit the Duchess, and then Maude knew that Henry Nugent had spoken of her to his wife.

They met, and then Mr. Nugent came with his father-in-law-all was calm, tearless decorous. Maude schooled her heart to meet her former lover with outward indifference; but she resolved on leaving the Limes, and then she took courage to ask if Mary might go with her.

The request was readily granted. There was certainly a tenderness in Henry Nugent's tone as he bid the Duchess adieu at the door of her travelling equipage. He pitied her from his soul.

As the carriage passed the green lane leading to the Rectory, the old pastor stopped it to give her his blessing. Henry Nugent came up ere farewell was said to all. He took his laughing baby from its mother's arms-it was so merry he felt it would increase the sadness of the bereaved Duchess.

The equipage moved on a turn in the road brought the travellers in sight of the Rectory lawn. Henry Nugent and his wife were standing side by side, the baby laughing in its father's arms.

The lime groves soon shut out the view from the travellers' gaze, the postilion whistled his merry tune, the children shouted with glee at the road side as they stopped at the turnpike, the old chimes rang out their peal, and the Duchess leaning her aching head against the silken lining of the carriage wept those tears of disappointment which only the worldly shed.

Henry Nugent and his wife are occasionally guests of the Duchess of Agincourt. But for them the magnificent Duchess of Agincourt would be alone in the world. She is considered very exclusive-elegantrecherchée-and people who see her in her opera box, or in her exquisite phaeton, with its Arabian ponies and stylish outriders, little think how joyless her heart is.

"Alas!" she would say, as her thoughts would go wandering back, "I have grasped the shadow for the substance. Ah! what are rank and influence and wealth without love or friendship! Ah, these gnawing jealousies, these hollow words, these unmeaning smiles! the associations they bring are as a bad dream. I strive to shake off the evil influence, and there is no help, no sympathy at hand!"

And lo! she would gain relief by turning her thoughts to that little nook of old England where all her hopes lay buried. In after years Henry Nugent became her friend. They met again under the old yews. The Duchess sat between the husband and the wife. She held a hand of each.

The eyes no longer flashed with haughty pride, the brow was unruffled by a frown, and a sweet smile parted the once curled lips as she said-" It is good for me that I have been afflicted."

PIKE FISHING.

If so be the angler catch no fish, yet hath he a wholesome walk to the brookside, and pleasant shade by the sweet silver streams.- ROBERT BURTON.

THE Pike is a common fish in all the temperate, and some of the northern regions of the world; but in no country does he arrive at greater perfection than in the United States. For some unaccountable reason he is generally known in this country as the pickerel; and we would, therefore, intimate to our readers that our present discourse is to be of the legitimate pike. In England, he is known under the several names of pike, jack, pickerel and luce. His body is elongated and nearly of a uniform depth from the head to the tail; the head is also elongated, and resembles that of the duck; his mouth is very large and abundantly supplied with sharp teeth, and his scales are small and particularly adhesive; the colour of his back is a dark brown, sides a mottled green or yellow, and belly a silvery white. The reputation of this fish for amiability is far from being enviable, for he is called not only the shark of the fresh waters, but also the tyrant of the liquid plain. He is a cunning and savage creature, and for these reasons even the most humane of fishermen are seldom troubled with conscientious scruples when they succeed in making him a captive. Pliny and Sir Francis Bacon both considered the pike to be the longest lived of any fresh water fish, and Gesner mentions a pike which he thought to be two hundred years old. Of these ancient fellows, Walton remarks, that they have more in them of state than goodness, the middle-sized individuals being considered the best eating. The prominent peculiarity of this fish is his voraciousness. Edward Jesse relates that five large pike once devoured about eight hundred gudgeons in the course of three weeks. He swallows every animal he can subdue, and is so much of a cannibal that he will devour his own kind full as soon as a common minnow. Young ducks and even kittens have been found in his stomach, and it is said that he often contends with the otter for his prey. Gesner relates the story that a pike once attacked a mule while it was drinking on the margin of a pond, and his teeth having become fastened in the snout of the astonished beast, he was safely landed on the shore. James Wilson once killed a pike weighing seven pounds, in whose stomach was found another pike weighing over a pound, and in the mouth of the youthful fish was yet discovered a respectable perch. Even men, while wading in a pond, have been attacked by this fresh water wolf. He is so much of an exterminator, that when placed in a small lake with other fish, it is not long before he becomes "master of all he surveys," having depopulated his watery world of every species but his own. The following story, illustrating the savage propensity of this fish, is related by J. V. C. Smith. A gentleman was angling for pike, and having captured one, subsequently met a shepherd and his dog, and presented the former with his prize. While engaged in clearing his tackle, the dog seated himself unsuspectingly in the immediate vicinity of the pike, and as fate would have it, his tail was ferociously snapped at by the gasping fish. The dog was, of course,