feet of the ever-journeying stars, the deep above and deep below mingling in one immeasurable gulf of darkness.

Breakers were dashing along the shore in eager strife with the edict, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther; and here shall thy proud waves be staid;' while the eternal din of their passion went up strong and clear as that which evermore swells from out the human soul. The towering rocks of the coast lay like an army of giants in the pale star-light, on whose heads the soft hands of Night were pressed in silent benediction.

A stream leaping from point to point, had apparently, at some prior period when its bed was broader and deeper than now, hollowed the ravine wherein the conventicle was holden. The eminence he occupied overlooked the assembly, and after his gaze had received all distant features of the view, it tarried upon the figures below, surrounded in their retreat by a complete wall of limestone. Several hardy trees found sustenance among clefts of the precipices and scattered fragments of rock, around whose bases the young stems shot upward in wayward troops, as they will do when beyond reach of the husbandman's restricting hand.

Upon stone benches, that Nature had arranged according to her own taste, sat the proscribed people under the flickering gleams of pine torches, fastened in interstices of the wall, and throwing over some of the brethren and sisters an illumination quite as powerful as that they professed to receive from the inward light; deepening the shadows in other spots, till the eye was unable to discover whether any of this spiritual family were there deposited. A grave decorum pervaded the congregation, seeming to the gazer no less motionless than inanimate things beside them; no gay costume awoke associations of other days or other circles; their gray garb accorded well with time and place, and Sir Henry could hardly persuade himself that it was not all the phantasm of a dream.

While he contemplated the novel scene, a youth climbed the ascent to convoy him down its path, and by a silent gesture assigned his place among the worshippers.

A woman of stately presence was holding forth on topics of vast grandeur and abstruse philosophy. Her sonorous voice was tuned with the waters, filling their chapel with music while discoursing of a divine principle within, of a ray from the fountain of light sufficient to guide man away from paths of evil, and lure him toward that goodness which alone can beautify his life on earth.

Her thoughts were all gilded by a fervid fancy; and when at length she spoke of immediate revelations vouchsafed to humankind from shining ranks of intelligences that link the poor creatures of a day with an Infinite PowER, Sir Henry looked to see if on the wings of night there rode not spirits glittering with celestial lustre.

The imagination of her hearers was wrought to its highest pitch, and through the outward placidity they strove to maintain, their

inward emotion was betrayed by glistening eyes and deep-drawn breath.

The eloquence of the speaker was a galvanic battery, whose wires, grasped by the assembly, caused a magnetic thrill to pervade every heart, binding together as 'friends' those who had shared the exaltation of the hour.

In her dignified demeanor she seemed hardly to have stepped aside from the true province of woman; any attention she attracted was not to herself, but to the high subjects in which she was shrouded as with a veil. She recalled to Sir Henry, Sappho in a moment of inspiration, or Corinna at the Capitol, improvising before a spell-bound people.

Like others of her auditory, he yielded to her magic persuasion, till hardly knowing whether he were in the body or out of it, he demanded sympathy from his equals. The same need pervaded the place, for involuntarily those who occupied the little benches drew near together, scanning each other's glowing faces, as upon the Mount of Transfiguration the fishermen might have gazed at the new beauty given them that radiant day.

Seated next Sir Henry was a damsel, whom at a glance he recognized as the daughter of the orator, so exactly her brilliant face and flashing eyes were copied. The color came and went on the cheeks of this young girl like the swift changes of an Aurora in the evening sky; her frame was more tremulous than the leaves of an alder-bush just above her, and fear for her reason at once brought her companion down from the clouds, on whose rosecolored tips the whole company were flying.

He took her hand very quietly, searching meanwhile the medicine-chest of his cranium for some mental opiate. But before he found the required label, his fair neighbor warbled forth such a rich melody that the very torch-flames swayed hither and thither in delight. Sir Henry hearkened enraptured to the sweet sounds that moved his soul more deeply than had the mother's eloquence. Shielding his face in the small hand retained by his own, he permitted a delirium of bliss to penetrate his spirit with that flood of song.

So she dispensed the burden of her romantic enthusiasm; and after the echo of her tones had died away, silent as dews of heaven was that isolated band hour by hour, till an elder, blessing the fraternity, bade each return to his home.

The morning was just opening her eyes as Sir Henry entered his apartment, and sought repose amid longings for the ensuing conventicle of Quakers. He might be pardoned, for the most unspeculative mathematician could hardly have resisted the softening influences of beauty and song, beneath the summer stars of England.

Time passed on: again and again did the young heir re-seek those cliffs, giving ear to bewildering inspirations from rosy lips, and (always that small hand resting in his) hearkening to the

ocean's organ-notes, to the piping of running waters, to the silent but not unfelt music of the spheres.

Whenever an inward light' would have warned him from so dangerous excitement, he placed the extinguisher of a head-strong will upon the divine ray,' and followed the ignis-fatuus of selfindulgence.

6

At length came nights of moon-light; and then the chapel needed no longer red torch-fires to quiver against its rocks, for the queen of the silver bow had shot an arrow of brightness toward the spot; it lay on the gushing cascade in chrystal sheen, and strewed the hollow with diamonds, and filled the soft-eyed moss with gladness.

You may smile if you will, but few are wholly sane when the moon shines bright. We may each have our peculiar lunacy, as we have each a besetting sin. With some it may end in mere inability to sleep; with others-HEAVEN grant them a healing cup, for Earth offers only bitter dregs of sorrow it may amount to a frantic rage, in whose midst the most idolized friend may be harmed. Think of sweet, true-hearted Mary Lamb, whom we all welcome so readily to our hearth-stones, how her days were enwrapped with blackness, and she so gentle !

The young, say the wiselings, are most subject to the lunacy of love. Whether they are right in their oft-repeated verdict, let us not presume to decide; but there can be no doubt of Sir Henry's frenzy on the last evening we shall enter the conventicle.

There had been great exaltation that night, and now a stillness had come, in whose profundity one might almost hear the beat of Luna's unseen feet which only the angels hear.”

Still retaining that small hand, Sir Henry whispered to the rustic out-law: Sweet Dorcas, of a surety, thy lips will never say me nay when I ask thee to be my own fair bride ?'

She lifted her eyes to his face as she answered: 'I will not say thee nay.'

'Wilt thou speak forth before the congregation ??

'Yea, in presence of them all.'

He raised her from their stone bench, and advancing to the chapel's centre, they repeated the simple words that bound them in Quaker marriage. There was no token of surprise exhibited ; no question of prudence raised; but quietly the pair returned to their places, and the mother of the bride, forgetting petty interests of time, soared into an upper stratum of glory.

Group by group the brethren departed, and when the morning star was bright in the east, only Sir Henry and Dorcas remained, her head resting wearily on his arm, and the flashing light in her eyes growing soft as she responded to his earnest look.

Bending toward her, he said: 'Dorcas, thou art my wife.'

He had for answer the deepening flush of her cheeks, so he stooped more low, till on her ruby lips rested his own, while before them both rose a fairy-land of hopes and visions, radiant and indefinite.

Higher climbed the dawn, and still in his bosom leaned her head, and still bending fondly toward her, they roved through that fairyland, hopelessly entangled among its dewy shades and clustering blossoms.

Alas! that actual life must forever with iron shears clip into fragments the fabrics fancy has woven! Alas! that so swiftly through the glass of Hope descends its golden dust, while heavily fall the sharp pebbles of reality!

'Dorcas, thou must go with me across the seas! Here can I possess no home for thee and me.'

‘And the sun looks upon fairer fields than those of England,' she replied.

So thou wilt not refuse to journey with me far away? In the new world we may find us a home which thy voice shall fill with music.'

And forthwith to their mental vision uprose a bower, all woven of myrtle and roses, beneath skies unsullied by storms.

But for that day they must part. At night he would conduct her to the great city, whence they should embark for the country of their dreams: thus he said, gently leading her down the cliffs to her cottage-gate, and leaving her there, he passed on his way.

Never again had she beheld his face! He came not that night, nor the next, nor yet the next, till she tired of counting the days; and finally, news was brought of his departure for America!

Quakeress though she was, anger over-flowed her young spirit. He seemed to have made her a bride for the express purpose of deserting her; and she secretly rejoiced that she had kept back a part of her heart a sort of reserved fund for other uses and pleasures of life: she only trusted he might not think she was pining for his dear sake!"

Nevertheless, there was no malice aforethought in Sir Henry's procedure. When he bade Dorcas a light good-by at the wicketgate, he truly intended returning at night to claim her for his own.

But after the commission of a rash act, however often imagination may have dallied with its previous image, its consequences flash on the mind with new force; and thus came the results of his mesalliance to Sir Henry, surveying that morning the domain that should be his inheritance.

Slowly pacing the broad avenues of his park, a mist evolved from his brain; the delirium of fore-gone weeks dispelled itself; and somewhat inopportunely to be sure- acres on acres of upland and low-land, books of heraldry, rolls of parchment, long galleries of ancestors in undeviating descent from the body-guard of William the Conqueror, up-rose between him and the dark-eyed Quakeress he had made his wife!

He actually began to cherish resentment toward her, as if she had won him by some enchantment. So very singular a chattel is

the male heart!

Well, in forlorn condition, he gazed up to the castle: its turrets; its stained windows; its heavily-ornamented buttresses; its porches,

and all its nondescript appendages. He beheld its imposing front, then the splendors of its eastern aspect met his eyes; next he journeyed where its backward visage might charm him- for it was a cherub to him, having a face on every side; lastly he scanned its westward wing: no more could he do, except he mounted aloft, and surveyed its queerly-shaped roofs, some of whose points pierced through whole ages, and remembered themselves as verdant oaks in the time of the first Ludlow.

He stealthily entered the gallery of family portraits, where, a little child, he had been led to learn through whose veins had once run the red fluid dancing merrily along his own. He knew par cœur, the lives of all those stately ladies and stiff lords: he used to laugh at their unearthly dress; but now he could have kissed the pointed shoes turning upward to the knee, like canoes wherein his progenitors paddled over the estate; could have done reverence to the deep, deep frills that reached aloft to entomb alive his estimable grand-mothers. Under some circumstances taste thus rapidly develops itself.

From the gallery he entered a hall, that he might contemplate a chef d'oeuvre of art, the armorial bearings of his house. From time to time had been quartered beside the original arms of the Ludlows sundry devices, which were the pride of those pale ladies, till a simple republican might not decipher the odd hieroglyph.

Here he stood in sober musing. Was it right, or even possible to leave all this descended shower of glory, for the bright smiles of an out-law, a Quaker, who would never wear such ruffs, or countenance such shoes, or care for this noble emblazonry?

There was not much poetry in Sir Henry's composition; that subtle and ethereal essence had never penetrated his nature: only eloquence, beauty, music, and night, combining their forces for the combat, would ever have prevailed against his reason.

Suddenly while he meditated, the illegality of his marriage flitted through his mind. He was bound but by ties of honor to the prophetess' daughter; and if he chose to sunder those unsubstantial chains, why, then he might again stand on the same lofty eminence where, in awful array, shone forth the saints of the gallery.

He did not quite like this brilliant idea; but it was his only point of escape, and on reconsideration it looked less deformed. The Quakers, already hated and persecuted, would hardly dare divulge his secret: he might go over to the colonies for a few years: it was really, after all, no marriage; and he could never bring a cottager into presence of the pictured gentry on his walls.

Thus he thought, and thus acted. He called it a common-sense view of the subject. Of the wounded sensibility of his young wife, of the possibility that her nature could ill-endure so rude a shock, of her belief in the sacredness of the relation established between them, and her long widowhood, he took no note. It was an acceptable oblation to his vanity, when stepping on board an out