revolve in the everlasting gyrations which they made around them. Quicker and quicker whirled the pale, white-garbed dancers; quicker and quicker still whirled the bewildered youth and his veiled partner. "Fast and furious" grew the movements; the ample, flowing garments of the females expanded like the sails of a ship in a stiff breeze; the veils rose upwards from their faces; their long hair floated abroad in the wild, night-wind. Every moment the sensations of the youth became less vivid; every instant his perceptions grew more and more indistinct: the unceasing rotation confounded him; he could see or hear nothing save the unceasing sound of the supernatural music to which his death-like companions danced, and their faint transparent forms, as they flitted between him and the bright orb of the declining moon. He fell ex

hausted to the earth as the convent-bell tolled out the hour of one. As he fell, he was conscious of a rush in his ears like to the noise of a swarm of bees, and a flicker before the eyes like that of the lightning on a sultry summer's night. He remained long senseless; yet he thought to retain a recollection of some after-scene; for his lost Ida, whom he affirmed to be the spirit that had danced with him, he said, stooped over him, taking his powerless hand in hers, and, imprinting a fond kiss upon his burning forehead, disappeared after the others.

Next morning he was found extended on the earth by the garden-servant of the nunnery; and he was quickly conveyed into the hospital of the establishment. The gentle sisterhood attended on him with all the assiduity of their natures, and all the benevolence of woman; but care and attention could do naught for him; he was too far advanced on his path to eternity to be recalled back to this life. He told what had befallen him in the intervals of his returning senses; and then lingered on until the evening fell upon the earth. That night he died.

NIEDER LAHNSTEIN; CHURCH OF ST. JOHN.

On the right bank of the Lahn, just at its mouth, is situated the ancient church of St. John, now in ruins. The destructive influence of French democracy, as evinced by its armies in

the first revolution, extended itself even to this noble structure, during one of their earliest visits to the shores of the Rhine. It was ruined by them without any apparent cause.

It is of the cemetery of this structure, or rather of the point of marshy land lying at the confluence of the Lahn with the Rhine, which served, in days of yore, as the sole burialplace of sinners and individuals excommunicate of the church, that the following legend treats. Grave-yard, as well as ground unconsecrated, has long since shared in the common ruin of the church and its appurtenant foundations.

THE ONE LONE GRAVE.

Come, listen, gentles, while a tale I tell,

'Twill touch your tender hearts, I wist full well.
On yon bleak spot, washed by the Rhine's wild wave,
Apart from all, of yore, stood one lone grave;

One solitary tomb of rude stones piled,

Reared its dark form and frowned upon the wild;
And in its loneliness, sublimely grand,

Looked like the guardian spirit of that strand.
In vain the searcher seeks it now-'tis gone;
Ages ago its every trace hath flown:
There stands not of that antique pile a stone,
Too well the work of ruin hath been done.
'Tis of that tomb, and of these ancient times,
That I would tell ye in these tuneless rhymes;
And we will sit beside it, while they last,
And hold communion with the buried past.

Oh! who within that cold and cheerless cell,
Whereon the curse of man for aye doth dwell,—
Oh! who beneath that dark and dreary heap,
Whereon the blessed night-dew ne'er doth weep,
In gloomy grandeur all so sound doth sleep?
Some ancient hero, drunk with human gore?
Some tyrant whom no subject sighs deplore?
Some stalwart knight? some scion of high race?
Hath either found him here a resting-place?

Alas! alas! no hero slumbers here,

Tyrants and chieftains have a haughtier bier :
But two (alas! I blush to breathe the name
With which their kind have stigmatised their fame)
Incestuous lovers! even in death, forth sent
By man-pure, spotless man!-to banishment.

Twin-born, from birth they had been separate;
And they but met to share one bitter fate.
Stolen in her infancy from friends and home,
The maiden had been doomed through youth to roam,
Until adoption by a childless bride

Had put a period to her wanderings wide,

And left her store of wealth and land beside.
She had been nurtured 'neath that burning sky
Where thoughts and things assume a deeper dye;
And her dark, sun-rip'd cheeks with passion glowed;
And her bright eye, her heaving bosom, shewed
Her love for him; her what?-alas! alas!
That such a blight o'er the young
heart should pass,
And kill it in its bud, before one flower
Had sprung to blossom, in life's little hour-
Her brother!

Why conceal the fearful crime?

Is not their sad tale on the page of time?
Hath it not left there such a deep-sunk trace,
That nothing the black record may efface?

He wooed and won her, from th' adoring crowd
That low before in daily worship bowed:
A sympathy, which neither sought to hide,

Drew each to each, and -she became his bride.

-

Bright summer saw them joined, as but one heart
Between them beat- never to bide apart;
And then abandoned they those sunlit skies
Where nature's radiance, night or day, ne'er dies,
And for the ruder climates of the north,
In bounding barque upon the seas put forth.

Soon o'er the deep up sprung a favouring gale--
And as love-breathed-filled their bellying sail.
From her tall bow that fleet ship flings the foam,
And, like a loosed bird, seeks her distant home;-
That happy home, from which the hope of gain-
Vowed Conrad naught should tempt his steps again;
And, when he 'd gained the broad Rhine's verdant shore,
No power should wile him thence for ever, evermore.

And now, some weeks of pleasing voyage past,
They reach the long-wished land they seek at last.
The joyous seamen fleetly furl the sails,
Each honest heart its happy fellow hails,
And warmly greets. Lo! on the nearing strand
Parents and wives await, a thronging band;
And blushing maidens too, with tearful eyes,
As tow'rds the shore the fleet barque swiftly flies.
Beside that group, pre-eminent, apart,
Her straining vision picturing forth her heart,
Conrad's fond mother-oh, how eager!-stood,
Watching that brave ship bounding o'er the flood.
Anxiety sat heavily on her brow,

Displacing hope-until upon the prow

Her loved son leaped, and shouted loud her name.
Then through her throbbing heart and thrilling frame
A thousand thoughts and feelings quickly move;
And as they each to gain the mastery strove,
Her spirit's strength, which bore her up till now,
Failed in the fight; and, like a sapless bough
Flung by the wild winds on the leafy soil,
When in the forest winter makes his moil,
Prone to the earth she fell.

Quick Conrad bore

The aged matron from the crowded shore;
And soon, within their peaceful mansion's shade,
All that he loved around him he surveyed.
His infant haunts, his manhood's fond retreats,
The stream he sighed for, and the shadowy seats,

Where erst he mused, in solitude, upon

That power

that passion, love—then all unknown.
When night would find him in his dreaming mood,
Unscared by storms, unchanged in attitude.
Happy now was he, as a child at play,

For was not all around him bright and gay?
Alas that ruthless fate, with stroke so fell,
Should crush for ever souls that loved so well!

And now, and now, alas! alas! my tale
Drags heavily; my heart doth sink and fail:
To tell it well would need a spirit's wail.
Like matrons all, his mother sought to know
The history of her new-found daughter. Oh!
The bitter grief that such inquiries bring
Too often, and the gloom that they may fling
Upon a joyous prospect, fair and bright!

Why should they have the power to cloud such light?

It was a tale eventful, vague and dim

As forms at eve, or faint, funereal hymn,

When darkness broods upon the earth all round,
And the thick air but seems t' obstruct the sound.
A tale of mystery. The maiden's youth
Was unremembered, save for a faint truth,
Which lingered in her mind's recesses-and
Which flashed more fully on her in this land
Where things familiar compassed her-or seemed
So much to do so, that she almost deemed

The dream dispelled which haunted her till then,-—
The veil uplift, or torn.

"Where, and when

Where wert thou born,-where? say," the matron cried.

"In sooth, I know not," thus the blooming bride;

"But I have still imaginings of home,

From very childhood wont to me to come,

Even as spirits of air, or ocean deep,

And when they come I cannot choose but weep.
One is of a mother-mine, mayhap. Oh! one
More like to thee than aught I've looked upon;-