repeated in his delirium, connected with such passion-{ "Her life is ever twined With other lives, and by no stormy wind Gerald clasped the picture in its case, after gazing fondly on it, and resumed his seat. When he spoke again, his voice was startling, in its deep and hollow tones. "I have said," continued he, “that I loved that bright being on whose resemblance you have just looked. Loved-oh! God! how worshippingly, how exclusively, who can know, who can conceive? In the entire and uninterrupted happiness, which for years marked this affection, a thought of change never intruded, and it was long before the threatened and lowering tempest, which had gathered so slowly, yet so darkly over the fair face of my dream-like existence, burst forth in irrepressible violence, devastating and desolating every sacred tie-blasting every oasis in life's pilgrimage. There was ofttimes a wildness in the eye of Emily, before which I quailed—a fierceness even in the demonstrations of her love, at which I trembled, but I ascribed it to the workings of that noble intellect, that glorious mind, which were as worthy of adoration as the beautiful temple which enshrined the rare gifts. "Well do I remember the feeling of agony with which I reft myself from her for the first time, when I bade adieu to the scenes of my boyhood for the more tumultuous career of my collegiate course. I was an orphan, but the sacredness of every feeling seemed concentrated in my love for her. "Years passed, and my only enjoyment was poring over the burning professions of her unwaning affection, traced in her own fair and delicate characters. It was now drawing towards the close of my last year at college. Emily had not written to me at all of late, and though I had continued scrupulously punctual in my letters to her, days, weeks, months rolled by, and I hailed not one in return. This was inexplicable, and when, at length, I was emancipated from the frowning walls of my university, I hurried homewards, oppressed by a thousand indefinable apprehensions, whose shadows I strove in vain to cast from me. It was evening when I reached Park. The weather was stormy and tempestuous, and as I drove with a rapid pace through the long avenues which led to the house, the old trees bent with a melancholy, dirge-like moaning, to the angry blast which swept onwards. 'Is Emily well?' asked I hastily, as I bounded up the noble staircase, and was met on the landing place by one of the domestics. I had arrived unexpectedly, and found no one waiting in the hall to receive me, I had therefore ascended, unbidden and unwelcomed. 'Is Emily well?' repeated I, as the old and faithful servant turned from me, to conceal the tears which gathered in her dim eyes, and to hide the expression of agony which crossed her time-worn features. I seized her by the arm with a “And her name?” asked Ida, in a voice of irrepressi- grasp which seemed to startle her by its fierceness. She ble anxiety. "Was Emily,” replied he; and her heart turned towards me; 'old woman,' muttered I, in an seemed to stand still, as he slowly and tenderly pro-intensity of apprehension, which almost deprived me nounced the name. Gerald apparently observed not of breath, 'old woman, tell me the worst-is Emily her agitation, for which she was grateful. Woman, dead?' and my voice sank into a whisper, a coldness even in her first romance of passion, with inherent benumbed my heart, a sickly dread came over me, as delicacy, veils from the eye of the beloved one, the my worst fears found utterance. deep bright fount of love, which is ever bubbling up in her heart's depths-conceals how inseparably "Not dead! not dead!' replied she, but a living tomb is more fearful than the sepulchre of the dead!' ing scene, and for many weeks I exposed not myself to the view of its entire misery. "Yet I saw her again; and as the door of her prisonchamber was thrown open to me, I observed a grate had been added, which prevented farther entrance. Emily glanced towards me; a demoniac scream parted her lips; fire flashed in her eyes. With extended arms, she sprang towards the grate. What was it struck on my ear? I could not mistake the dull, clanking sound-she was chained! and around that light, fairy form, which had oft felt the twinings of my embrace, was fastened the cold, heavy iron! It confined her to her dreary abode, and being attached to the wall, hindered her from reaching me. She sank prostrate on the floor, about midway between her couch and the door." Gerald paused; the big tears stood on his manly cheek; his breast heaved beneath the avalanche of anguish which choked his utterance; while Ida, leaning her cheek on his shoulder, wept unrestrainedly. I released not my grasp—' Explain,' said I, 'why is it I do not see your young mistress?' She burst into tears, and between the sobs which seemed to come from her soul's depths, I learned,-lean down to me, Ida,that Emily was a maniac, a raving, furious maniac! Oh! Heavens! the agony of that moment--I can not tell how I survived it: there came a few scalding drops, wrung from my heart's anguish--but I could not weep the fountain of tears was quenched-the fire of heaven seemed to have scathed my bosom. I laid my burning brow on the cold floor, where I had prostrated myself; and even in that moment, the events of the past, the images of vanished hours, flitted before my mental vision, and seemed to taunt me as they passed. I arose; the fearful, appalling calm of sorrow was on me. 'Lead me to her-quick'added I, as the old woman seemed to hesitate-instantly.' There was that in my tone, which intimidated her into obedience. I followed her through the long, dim passages of that old mansion, with a firm step. She led towards a portion of the building which "It was not long before my Emily was released from had not been tenanted since my remembrance; and her sufferings," resumed. Gerald; "death came, and its crumbling dilapidation told that time's footstep had without one ray of returning reason gilding her depart. crushed it in his passage. We ascended a narrow and ing hours, she was wrapped in the cold embrace of the winding stairway she paused:-'If I dare remon- tomb. For months I lived in that lonely and deserted strate,' urged she, hesitatingly—I waved my hand | house, knowing no greater happiness than in the stillwith an impatience I could not control,-'Continue-I ness of night to prostrate myself in the luxury of grief, see her, if my life is the forfeit.' We proceeded, and beneath the shadows of the willows, whose long and before a door on which the damps of years had rest- graceful branches drooped in the silvery moonlight so ed, she stopped. She applied a key to it, and as it sadly over the grave of her I had loved so well. But, slowly grated on its hinges, I involuntarily and eagerly Ida, you know not all. Listen! That young, bright pressed forward. In the cold, darkly lighted room, creature, was my sister! The sister of the purest affecwhose misery and desolation a few expiring embers in tion that ever sprung into life. I had known no mothe rusty grate only served to disclose, was my once ther's tenderness; no father's care. She was all the beautiful, still loved Emily. She raised her mild, blue world to me: she guided my erring steps in boyhood; eyes as the noise of my entrance arrested her attention, she watched beside my couch of pain, when burning and there passed over her countenance a strange, un- fever scorched me; she shared every feeling of sadness natural fire, which made me shudder. I rushed towards or joyousness which agitated my bosom; and for me, the couch from which she had started. The grasp of for my improvement, for my advancement, she abdicated the aged servant, who would have restrained me, was all those glittering pleasures to which her youth, beauty, as nothing before the strength of that despair which wealth and rank entitled her. You may imagine with nerved my frame. I clasped in my arms the fragile what idolatry I loved her; how the very poetry of form which months of suffering had rendered almost affection lived in our intercourse. After that fatal malashadowy. I pressed my cold lips on that brow, where dy had descended on her-after she was laid in the intellect, in all its proud regality, had once been en- bosom of earth-I learned my mother's buoyancy of throned-Emily, my own, dear Emily'--whispered I, spirit and brightness of beauty had thus faded from life! 'I am here your Gerald.' I ceased-mind had fled; that madness was my birthright, my inheritance !— why should I thus speak to one, whom hopeless insanity Wonder you now that I tremble, as I view the young, had made its victim. I held her from me-I gazed upon fair pledge of our loves? that even in the enjoyment of her-her eyes met mine. 'Gerald !' murmured she, the happiness I now possess, I oft shudder as I think as she looked long and earnestly into my face-a rich how dark, how stormy a night may succeed to its brightglow passing over that cheek which had been before as ness-but," added Gerald, in a hoarse, broken voice, of marble. I did not speak-I could not-but the tide of "promise me, Ida, when the pall of insanity shall have life seemed to have ceased, as I yielded to the intensity descended to cover the light of intellect, when the fire of hope that single word inspired—yet it was momen- of madness shall have scorched the sources of life, protary-another instant, and a wild, hollow, sepulchral mise me, you will not leave, will not forsake me !" laugh burst from the lips of Emily. The old vaulted building seemed to seize it, and fling it back on my heart, with a weight which threatened to crush vitality. One moment more, and the long, sharp nails of the slender fingers were buried in my throat with a fierceness, a fury of which I had not conceived. The blood followed, and overcome with all I had endured, I sank in utter helplessness on the floor. I became unconscious. When I recovered, I was removed from that heart-rend- so blighting! "Never! never!" ejaculated the weeping wife, as she flung herself into his arms, pressing her cold cheek to the colder one of her husband; how her heart smote her for having so wronged him, by nurturing one suspicion of that noble nature. That heart clung to him with renewed idolatry, and who can know the passionate fervor of the prayer which arose from its inmost depths, that God would avert from her hearth a curse so bitter, * * * * she enjoyed serenity and composure. Yet the memories of her youth-the sacred remembrance of Gerald, the husband of her deathless love-were never dimmed; and her chastenings drew her more closely, more tenderly to that Father, who hath said unto his redeemed will be with thee;-and through the rivers, they shall H. C. M. It was but four years from the events recorded above, | over her cheek. "Hush, Ida! mine own one!" whisperand a group, in which the very spirit of grief seemed ed he. "Glory is opening upon me-the Redeemerdwelling, were assembled in a chamber of that mansion precious-peace-" The tones, grew indistinct-Ida which had seen so forcibly portrayed the perishable- heard no more. Slowly, very slowly, the arms which ness of life's gifts. It was night, and the howling of the were twined around her neck fell from their resting tempest without, the heavy, monotonous pattering of the place. His spirit had passed, even while words of rain, the melancholy sighing of the wind, seemed un-peace lingered on his colorless lips. Gently the strickheard by the sorrowful occupants of that apartment, en wife arose, lest she might disturb the beautiful repose in which perfect stillness reigned. A solitary taper of the dead-tremblingly she passed her hand over flang its sickly and flickering rays athwart a couch on those lids which drooped over the glazed eyeballswhich rested the form of a man apparently but in the carefully she put aside the long, dark hair, which shaded noontide of life. In the restless and unquiet rolling of the serene face of the marble-like corpse. Then kneelthe large dark eyes, there beamed no mind, yet there ing beside the couch of death, her child nestling with was beauty, strange beauty, in the finely chiselled lips, sobs beside her, Ida gazed her last on the one who had in the high, pure brow, which seemed imbedded in the been dearer to her than aught else earth held. heavy masses of black hair clustering around the countenance of deadly paleness. A small, fair hand, was Ida lived many years after the golden link in life's twined in those sable locks, and over the bed of insanity chain had been shattered. She was not unmindful of leaned the form of a female, painfully attenuated. her remaining blessings, and in the education of her In the depths of her languid eye, there lay a history-daughter, in teaching her to tread the paths of holiness, a tale of love, tenderness, suffering, and blighted happi- in administering to the comforts of her aged father, ness, but the meek and unmurmuring spirit of the christian reposed there also—that spirit, which yielded not to the blast as it swept over the treasure-house of the affections, but which even in the bitterness of desolation, could exclaim, "the cup which my father hath given me, shall I not drink of it!" Who in that prema-children-" When thou passest through the waters I ture wreck of all that was most beautiful, could recognize the once brilliant Ida V——, the creature of sunshine ?-The stream of life, once mirroring nought but happiness, had been imbittered and troubled. Though she felt that the billows of anguish were breaking over her soul, as she watched beside her maniac husband, her sorrow was voiceless, and even the sigh, which oft struggled to escape its prison-house, was hushed; the eye was uplifted to heaven with renewed fervency, the lips moved in prayer with unabated frequency, as she sometimes almost yielded to the passionate impulses of her grief. At the foot of the couch, over which his daughter bent, stood Mr. V, with folded arms, a rooted and stern sorrow depicted on his venerable countenance; and kneeling beside him, her dimpled arms embracing his knees, her young, bright head bowed on her bosom, was a fair child, whose few years seemed to preclude the possibility of her ap-On Memory's scroll some old, familiar place; preciating the peculiar and moving scene on which Where parents, brethren, sisters, gathered round, she had been looking. Yet her childhood had been Indulgent read the oracles profound, nurtured in affliction, and on her young and graceful Which, from your school-room tripods, by the mail brow, thought had descended prematurely. She knew Were sent to illuminate your native valeher father was dying-that father she had been taught Or where, when on life's broader seas afloat, to love passionately-and when she gazed on his sunken And of past toils and triumphs won you wrote, and emaciated face, she wept convulsively. Ida wiped Warmed many a heart, which ne'er to you was cold, away the chill damps of death, which had already be- As all exultingly your tale they told-gun to collect on the brow of the sufferer. Suddenly Or, where in gay luxuriance scattered round the storm without ceased, the dying man moved The leaves of many a wild-flower strewed the ground, “Heaven,” ejaculated he, as with supernatural strength You kissed the blushes from a fair one's cheek, he started from his pillow, and a smile of ineffable In witness of the love you could not speak-sweetness passed over his pale countenance-"Hea- 'Tis not enough that on these pleasing themes, ven is gained! In Zion is no suffering, no tears! Ida, As on the pageantry of vanished dreams, my own beloved!" and the next moment she is wreath- Reflection dwells, while no reproachful voice ed in his embrace. Reason had returned-though in By conscience waked, forbids you to rejoice. his departing moments. She had prayed that he might not die in fearful insanity. That prayer was heard— answered-and she was happy, even while the fitful breathings of her husband passed fainter and fainter AFFECTION'S TRIUMPHS. PART III. Oh ye! who dare review the past, to find 'Tis not enough, that by your peaceful hearth Your hearts grow lighter while you list the mirth Isaiah, chapter 43, verse 2d. VOL. IV.-51 Of children, who your flattered wisdom task See from their sheltered and secluded nooks, Born of the rains of Heaven, a thousand brooks, Impelled by unseen forces, onward go, Just murmuring music as they gently flow; Wind lest they overwhelm each feeble shoot, Or bare some sturdy oak's fantastic root; Dispense rich verdure through the unshaded mead, And lend the strength which lifts the flowret's head; Then join, and still acceding streams receive, Till 'neath alluvial banks Ohio heave; Which, as it glides, its kindred floods expand, And Mississippi hastens through the land, To add its depth to that unfathomed deep Whose restless waves the isles and continents sweep. Thus must Affection's votaries join; thus lend Itself has built; where all that gladdens earth- On that bold flood the nations of mankind, Vainly the dwindling band, who ne'er have known If, when the eagle aims his circling way To bear him till he reach his wished for goal; Which ever through translucent ether blaze, To deprecate man's frailties, not despise Propitious Heaven the immortal soul bestows, Can follow to its cause each known effect; The busy ants, their streets the earth below, Build, as they built a thousand years ago; And now as then, on fluttering pinions gay, Myriads of insects sport their lives away: With the same twigs, the fowls their nests contrive; On the same moss, the hardy reindeer thrive: The insects learn not from the prudent ants To guard 'gainst coming cold or hunger's wants; The reindeer learn not from the soaring fowls The way to lands where winter never howls; Nor seek the ants to know, why o'er their heads The arching roof they make in safety spreads; Nor ask the wandering fowls, why constant move The waves beneath them, and the clouds above. Man marks the magnet tremble to the pole, And in the darkness sails where oceans roll: The heated water sees in vapor rise; A giant force its subject aid supplies: For one rule known, he theorises ten; Finds some are true, and builds on them again; And thus his pile of science grows a pace, The structure firm though narrowest at the base. Can he who thus progressively improves His knowledge of the world which round him moves, Be throned secure, to play the tyrant's part? When Passion bids, or bow her abject slave? In the dark ages, now forever passed, The curious arts were spent in conjuring tricks, Affection then, fore'er the friend of man, But now, when round his board his nestlings drew, She sought his rugged nature to subdue; And bids them arm them for the dread affray, But soon low distant murmurings are heard, As of a forest by the night-winds stirred; And meteor flashes from the holy fire Which smouldered long, but could not all expire— The fire of Truth-appal the red conclave Who long claimed learning for their proper slave: While, like the thunderpeals that rend the skies, The cry of multitudes their power defies; And bursts the second dawning of the day Whose all-pervading beams nor kings, nor popes, can stay. Then might the ear of Faith have heard again Which once before through Heaven's high arches rang They shouted "Peace on earth-good will toward man!" Then came the deadly struggle-then the foes In human immolation's horrid rites- They would be torn, and their young blood be poured, And here, where sundered is her brittle chain, To aggrandise a mercenary lord. Then with a flushing brow, and fiery eye, Affection hailed the deed; but man, enchained As when the earthquake, in his caverned halls Convulsive elements around him calls, Where jealous laws the lowliest's rights maintain, That, for their profit, he may rule the state. My countrymen! well may your hearts rejoice Your lot is in the land should be your choice: And, not unwisely, while the historic page You ponder, may exultingly presage Our country's loftier fame, when hastening years Have perfected the work which so endears The names we have from earliest childhood knownTheir names and his-his friends and Washington. But oh! forget not we have much to do, If to their memory we would be true. |