CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED READINGS

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN,-It is usual, I believe, to open a Penny Reading with a few prefatory remarks. I must ask you to allow me to avail myself of the privilege to explain to you the intention of this selection. It is intended, not only as a hand-book for public readings, but as a fireside companion on occasions when the weather or ill-health may forbid attendance at the Institute or the Lecture Hall. It will be offered to you weekly, so that in the absence of a Public Reading, some member of your family may give you a Home Reading a practice I would especially recommend. It will, moreover, as far as I am able to make it, add to your libraries a collection of the gems to be found in the English literature of all ages. For the permission which enables me to add selections from the popular works of our own times, I am glad to take this public opportunity of thanking those Authors and Publishers who have so readily granted the use of their copyrights.

There are two specialities in this series of Readings to which I would, in conclusion, draw your attention-their Illustration and their Cheapness.

The drawings will, by the direct appeal they make to the eye, assist materially in impressing on your memories the recollection of the passages placed before you. The low price at which the series is issued will enable all to overcome the one drawback to public readings-that generally, through the mere straining of the attention in order not to miss anything, we fail to appreciate fully the very finest passages when read aloud to us for the first time. With these few words I make my bow, opening to you the riches of the finest literature in the world.

THE EDITOR.

THE BROKEN HEART.

[WASHINGTON IRVING, an American writer, long resident in England. Born 1783. Died 1859.]

As the dove will clasp its wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals, so it is the nature of woman to hide from the world the pangs of wounded affection. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Even 1-VOL. I.

when fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise, she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and brood among the ruins of her peace.

I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self-neglect, and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had been exhaled to heaven; and have repeatedly fancied that I could trace their deaths through the various declensions of consumption, cold, debility, languor, melancholy, until I reached the first symptom of disappointed love. But an instance of the kind was lately told to me. The circumstances are well known in the country where they happened, and I

shall but give them in the manner in which they But it was all in vain. were related.

Every one must recollect the tragical story of young E―, the Irish patriot: it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During the troubles in Ireland, he was tried, condemned, and executed on a charge of treason. His fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He was so young, so intelligent, so generous, so brave, so everything that we are apt to like in a young man. His conduct under trial, too, was so lofty and intrepid. The noble indignation with which he repelled the charge of treason against his country; the eloquent vindication of his name; and the pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of condemnation; all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, and even his enemies lamented the stern policy that dictated his execution.

But there was one heart whose anguish it would be impossible to describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes he had won the affections of a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a late celebrated Irish barrister. She loved him with the disinterested fervour of a woman's first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even of his foes, what must have been the agony of her whose whole soul was occupied by his image! Let those tell who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth; who have sat at its threshold as one shut out in a cold and lonely world, from whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.

But then the horror of such a grave! so frightful, so disgraceful! so dishonoured! There was nothing for memory to dwell on that could soothe the pang of separation-none of those tender, those melancholy circumstances, that endear the parting scene; nothing to melt sorrow into those blessed tears, sent, like the dews of heaven, to revive the heart in the parching hour of anguish.

To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her father's displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile from the paternal roof. But could the sympathy and kind offices of friends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are a people of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the tragical story of her lover.

There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul-that penetrate to the vital seat of happiness-and blast it, never again to put forth the bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude. She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments of friendship, and "heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so wisely."

The person who told me her story had seen her at a masquerade. There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless where all around is gay; to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woebegone as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant air that showed her insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She had an exquisite voice; but on this occasion it was so simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that she drew a crowd mute and silent around her, and melted every one into

tears.

The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interest in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so true to the dead could not but prove affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by the memory of her former lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and dependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance that her heart was unalterably another's.

He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a broken soul.

[Miss ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT, married Robert Browning the poet, and spent the chief part of her life in Italy. Died in 1861, and was buried at Florence.]

I.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years ?

They are leaning their young heads against their
mothers,-

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,

The young flowers are blowing toward the west;
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!-

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

II.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?

The old man may weep for his to-morrow,

Which is lost in Long Ago;

The old tree is leafless in the forest,

The old year is ending in the frost,

The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest,

The old hope is hardest to be lost:

But the young, young children, O my brothers!
Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows; In our happy fatherland ?

III.

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,

For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy :

"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;
Our young feet," they say, are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary-
Our grave-rest is very far to seek :

From

your pleasures fair and fine!

VI.

"For oh," say the children, we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap;

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow:

Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children, For, all day, we drag our burden tiring
For the outside earth is cold,

Through the coal-dark, underground

And we young ones stand without, in our be- Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron wildering,

And the graves are for the old!

IV.

"True," say the children, " it may happen

That we die before our time.

Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen
Like a snowball in the rime.

We looked into the pit prepared to take her—

Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,

In the factories, round and round.

VII.

"For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning; Their wind comes in our faces,

Till our hearts turn, our head, with pulses burning,

And the walls turn in their places

Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling

Turns the long light that drops adown the wall

By kind permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall.