not be there is a gulf betwixt us. Our breeding, our faith, alike forbid either to pass over it. Farewell-yet, ere I go, indulge me one request. The bridal-veil hangs over thy face; raise it, and let me see the features of which fame speaks so highly.

They are scarce worthy of being looked upon,' said Rowena; but, expect ing the same from my visitant, I remove the veil.'

"She took it off accordingly, and partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness, she blushed so intensely, that check, brow, neck, and bosom, were suffused with crimson. Rebecca blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and, 1 mastered by higher emotions, past slowly from her features like the crimson cloud, which changes colour when the sun sinks beneath the horizon.

"Lady,' she said, "the countenance you have deigned to shew me will long dwell in my remembrance. There reigns in it gentleness and goodness; and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities may mix with an expression so lovely, how may we chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour of its original? Long, long will I remember your features, and bless God that I leave my noble deliverer united with'

"She stopped short-her eyes filled with tears. She hastily wiped them, and answered to the anxious inquiries of Rowena -I am well, lady-well. But my heart swells when I think of Torquilistone and the lists of Templestowe Farewell. One, the most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged. Accept this casket-startle

not at its contents.'

"Rowena opened the small silver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or necklace, with ear jewels, of diamonds, which were visibly of immense value.

"It is impossible,' she said, tendering back the casket. "I dare not accept a gift of such consequence.'

"Yet keep it, lady,' returned Rebecca You have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish. To you, therefore, the gift is of little value-and to me. what I part with is of much less. Let me not think you deem so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe. Think ye that I prize these sparkling fragments of stone above my liberty? or that my father values them in comparison to the honour of his only child? Accept them, lady-to me they are value less. I will never wear jewels more.'

"You are then unhappy,' said Rowena, struck with the manner in which Rebecca uttered the last words. 'O, remain with us the counsel of holy men will wean you

from your unhappy law, and I will be a sister to you.'

"No, lady,' answered Rebecca, the same calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beautiful features that may not be. I may not change the faith of my fathers like a garment unsuited to the climate in which seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady, I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate my future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will.'

"Have you then convents, to one of which you mean to retire ?' asked Rowena. “No, lady,' said the Jewess; but . among our people, since the time of Abraham downward, have been women who have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry,. and relieving the distressed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say this to thy lord, should he inquire after the fate of her whose life he saved.'

"There was an involuntary tremor in Rebecca's voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She has tened to bid Rowena adieu.

Farewell,' she said. May He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on you his choicest blessing! The bark that wafts us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port.'"

The fair nun of Aberbrothick makes no objection, our readers will see, to Friar Tuck, but she "damns him with faint praise." We must give a little specimen of the mortified and self-denying character of that holy man. We told our readers at the be ginning, that the knight in black ar mour, lost in a forest, abandoned him、... self to the direction of his horse. The result of that confidence in the noble anímal is thus finely described.

"He was justified by the event; for the footpath soon after appeared a little wider and more worn, and the tinkle of a small bell gave the knight to understand that he was in the vicinity of some chapel or hermitage.

66 Accordingly he soon reached an open plat of turf, on the opposite side of which a rock, rising abruptly from a gently sloping plain, offered its grey and weatherbeaten front to the traveller. Ivy mantled its sides in some places, and in others oaks and holly bushes, whose roots found nou rishment in the cliffs of the crag, waved over the precipice below, like the plumage of the warrior over his steel helmet, giving grace to that whose chief expression was terror. At the bottom of the rock, and leaning as it were against it, was construct, ed a rude hut, built chiefly of the trunks

of trees felled in the neighbouring forest, and secured against the weather by having its crevices stuffed with moss mingled with clay. The stem of a young fir-tree, lop ped of its branches, with a piece of wood tied across near the top, was planted up right near the door, as a rude emblem of the holy cross. At a little distance on the right hand, a fountain of the purest water trickled out of the rock, and was received in a hollow stone, which labour had formed into a rustic basin. Escaping from thence, the stream murmured down the descent by a channel which its course had long worn, and so wandered through the little plain to lose itself in the neighbouring wood.

Beside this fountain were the ruins of a very small chapel, of which the roof had partly fallen in. The building, when en. tire, had never been above sixteen feet long by twelve feet in breadth, and the root, low in proportion, rested upon four concentric arches which sprung from the four corners of the building, each supported upon a short and heavy pillar. The ribs of two of these arches remained, though the roof had fallen down betwixt them; over the others it remained entire. The entrance to this ancient place of devotion was under a very low round arch, ornamented by several courses of that zig-zig moulding, resembling shark's teeth, which appears so often in the more ancient Saxon churches. A belfry rose above the porch on four small pillars, within which hung the green and weather-beaten bell, the feeble sounds of which had been sometime since heard by the Black Knight.

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"The whole peaceful and quiet scene lay glimmering in twilight before the eyes of the traveller, giving him good assurance of lodging for the night; since it was a special duty of those hermits who dwelt in the woods to exercise hospitality towards benighted or bewildered passengers.

"Accordingly the knight took no time to consider minutely the particulars which we have detailed, but thanking Saint Julian (the patron of travellers) who had sent him good harbourage, he leaped from his horse, and assailed the door of the hermitage with the butt of his lance, in order to arouse attention and gain admittance. "It was sometime before he obtained any answer, and the reply, when made, was unpropitious.

"Pass on, whosoever thou art,' was the answer given by a deep hoarse voice from within the hut, and disturb not the servant of God and St Dunstan in his evening devotions.'

Worthy father,' answered the knight, here is a poor wanderer bewildered in these woods, who gives thee the opportunity of exercising your charity and hospitali. ty.'

"But how,' replied the knight, is it possible for me to find my way through such a wood as this, when darkness is coming on? I pray you, reverend father, as you are a Christian, to undo your door, and at least point out to me my road.'

“And I pray you, good Christian brother,' replied the anchorite, to disturb me no more. You have already interrupt ed one paler, two aves, and a credo, which I, miserable sinner that I am, should, ac. cording to my vow, have said before moonrise.' " Vol. II. pp. 19–22.

The knight, however, gains admittance.

"Reverend hermit,' said he, after looking long and fixedly at his host, were it not to interrupt your devout meditations, I would pray to know three things of your holiness; first, where I am to put my horse?-secondly, what I can have for supper?-thirdly, where I am to take up my couch for the night ?

.

I will reply to you,' said the hermit, with my finger, it being against my rule to speak by words where signs can answer the purpose.' So saying, he pointed successively to two corners of the hut. Your stable,' said he, is there-your bed there; and,' reaching down a platter with two handfuls of parched pease upon it, from the neighbouring shelf, and placiug it upon the table, he added, your supper is there.'

In like manner, he produces a pitcher of water from the holy well of St Dunstan, as a meet accompaniment to this simple diet. Could the annals of Aberbrothick itself present us with a priest of a more abstinent character? By-and-bye, to be sure we hear something of a venison pasty and a flagen of wine, but these seem to make their appearance by a kind of miraculous interposition. In short, there are few more exemplary characters than the venerable Clerk of Copmanhurst, and we are convinced he is so general a favourite, that we may well take leave of him, and of our author at the same time, in the words of Shakespeare:

Now, afore heaven, this holy reverend friar, All our whole city is much bound to him.

sists of a skipper and his man on board of the boat, and a Jaager or driver ashore. The boat is tracked by one horse, kept generally at a trot; but the most remarkable part of the tackle is the length and sinallness of the tracking line, which is no less than 60 fathoms in length, and a cord of the thickness which you would term a jack-line, consisting of four strands, each of two yarns. The rope seemed to be extremely well made, indeed, and its length of great advantage to the horse, while its lightness in casting off and on is attended with much convenience to the boatmen. By an arrangement which seems to be invariably attended to, the boats going in one direction, have masts of 15 feet in height, to the top of which a swivel ring is made fast, through which the rope passes to an iron hook within reach of the pilot, who can throw it off with great ease upon any emergency; while those coming in the contrary direction are towed in the same manner by a mast or spar of only five feet in height, so that the horse, the line, and the boat with the low mast, pass without the least stop. page under the line of the boat with the higher mast.

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The weather being exceedingly hot, (thermometer 84° in the shade, and 96° when exposed at 2 o'clock p. m.) and as the party was rather numerous for the cabin, and the roof or deck being incommodious as a walk for landsmen, we chiefly occupied the open birth contiguous to the man at the helm; but as our skipper was not only a large and somewhat unwieldy man, but as he smoked perpetually his atmosphere was by this means also considerably enlarged, so that we were not a little annoyed by this circumstance, and the conversation naturally turned upon the universal practice of smoking by people of all ranks in Holland. It was affirmed by some that the climate required this, and perhaps also the use of a little ardent spirits; but the answer to the necessity of the case is very obvious, for we do not find that the female sex use tobacco in any form, and certainly smoke much less in Holland than the women either of England or Ireland. One of the party, addressing himself in the Dutch language to the skipper, by the help of his dictionary, remarked, that such constant smoking must be hurtful to

" Give

his health. His answer was, me a reason? I am a man 78 years of age, and I have been a smoker for 62 years!" This was so very decided a case, that it afforded powerful arguments in favour of the force of habit upon the human constitution-for while some think they can breathe only upon Montpelier, we find others at the most advanced age inhabiting the most secluded lanes of a crowded metropolis.

Upon reaching Delft, we found that we had not only our boat to change, but that the luggage must be dragged on wheel-barrows to the further end of the town by porters, who surrounded us in great numbers, and although the canals always pass through the towns of Holland, yet by some unaccountable mismanagement in the construction of the navigation, which is much narrowed on accouut of the streets, and hampered by the parapetwalls and bridges for the convenience of the inhabitants, they seem to deny themselves the chief advantages which would arise from a thorough navigation. Indeed, such is the confined state of the track-schuit, that, at the end of six or eight miles, a little exercise is far from being unpleasant, and such is the peaceful serenity with which you are every where surrounded on the passage, that the busy spirit of ar. Englishman is perhaps not the worse of being put in motion by the screeching noise of the wheel-barrow, and the discord and jarring strife of the porters. At the further end of the town a boat is always ready to start for the Hague, but preferring to see Delft, and rather to get to the Hague in the evening, the luggage was put into a secondary inn, and while dinner was getting ready, we walked forth to see the place.

Delft contains about 12,000 Delft. inhabitants. It has extensive barracks and arsenals, from being within a few miles of the court at the Hague. The sights here are the churches, the tombs of William Prince of Nassau, the famous Admiral Von Tromp, and Grotius, the great historian and lawyer. All of them are elegant and superb, particularly the former, but it is curious to remark, that, although there is a profusion of marble, and a display of taste in the design, yet the figures are uniformly heavy, and much like the