haunted his mind. In vain he sought for an excuse for his conduct to Miss Gordon on one side; and, on the other, Mary Græme, as he had last seen her-the oaths he had sworn the honour he had plighted-all stood in dreadful array against him. "The curse of God be upon me when I forget you, Mary !" he repeated aloud; they were the words he had used nine years before; and, taking up the simple token of her affection, which she had then given him, as if for a guide and a protection, he dashed off a few hurried lines of apology to Miss Gordon for his abrupt departure; and the next day saw him far upon his route into Perthshire.

It was a still evening in the month of September, when the foot of William Græme once more pressed his native heath. The lowlander, even of this country, can scarcely conceive the intensity of feeling with which his brother of the hills revisits, after a long absence, his highland home; and William's emotions may probably, by some, be viewed with contempt, as unmanly and uncalled for. He stood upon the spot where he had last parted with Mary; he once more looked round with pride upon his native hills, and extended his arms towards them; he pressed the heath that grew beside him to his lips, he bared his burning bosom to the breath of the mountains, and then sat down and wept like a child. As he lay upon the heath with his face buried in his hands, his nine years of absence, with all their business, and their bustle, and their struggles, seemed to pass away like a dark cloud from his memory; he was yet a stripling filled with life, and hope, and happiness, without fear and without sorrow; exposed to no danger, save what the native daring of his spirit laughed to scorn; his mind free as his foot that wandered at will over the mountains. Starting from his trance, he looked round for the well-known form which was wont to be seated beside

him, and then his eyes fell with a bewildered gaze upon his own apparel, seemingly so inconsistent with the wild scene in which he stood. With a smile of recollection he, at length, resumed his composure, and only thought with what delight he should fold, once more, his Mary to his bosom. This was the first happy moment he had passed since he left Edinburgh. It seemed as if his native air had power to medicine to a mind diseased, or as if all the embarrassments and vexations of the low country had been blown off, like cobwebs, by the force of the mountain currents. As he turned, however, from this spot, so hallowed in his recollection, a thought, which I am almost ashamed to record, passed across his mind a foolish and frivolous conceit, for which he had to thank his newly-acquired refinement. "She might have taken some care of the place in my absence," thought the lover; "she might have removed these stones from our favourite seat, or she might have planted a knot of wild flowers on this ridge, to welcome the return of her wanderer, and inform him that she yet loved." Then, laughing at the romantic folly, which was excusable only in this region of poetry, he passed on.

As he drew near Mary's dwelling, he heard sounds of mirth and music within, and he recollected that this was her birth-day, which had always been celebrated by a dance in the evening. With a beating heart he approached the open window, and saw her once more! Mary Græme was now a perfect model for a rural beauty. Her figure was full and rich, her cheeks glowed with health and exercise, and her eyes sparkled with unrestrained delight. She was in the midst of one of the sweetest dances of her country; and if she did not fly through its mazes with all the lightness of that fairy-form which had once bounded by his side over the mountains, or with the graceful ease of the elegant and accomplished Miss Gordon, still she was Mary-the

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companion of his infancy, the hope of his riper years; and his foot was once more on the hills that had given him birth, and that had been witnesses to his love and his vows. When the dance was finished, he desired a child, who had stood gazing at his Saxonised figure, to inform Mary Græme that a person wished to see her without. might have come in without asking," said Mary, as she obeyed the summons; "the stranger, be he of the hill or the valley, is always welcome in Glenoe."-" And am I, then, to be accounted a stranger in Glenoe ?" said William, dashing off his hat, which he had drawn over his forehead'; the voice, without the words, was sufficient for Mary, and they had scarcely passed his lips, when she flew into his

arms.

It was soon rumoured that William Græme had returned from abroad, and that his marriage with Mary was to take place immediately; yet days and weeks passed on without a word of marriage being spoken by himself. By degrees he grew silent and fretful, and, seized every opportunity of escaping from the intrusive civilities of his entertainers, to bury himself among the hills. His dream had passed away! Mary was not the spirit that had haunted his ima gination, but a creature of every-day consistence, her mind bounded by the narrow circle of her little business and pleasures, and without a conception of more refined enjoyment than a dance on the green, or a journey to a distant fair. Equally unfit, from her manners and education, to be introduced into more refined society and to be the companion of a man of intellectual habits in the solitude of the country. The preference she shewed for him, too, he perceived, or imagined he perceived, was more a matter of course than the warm and delicate sentiments he required her to feel; she seemed to love him now, merely because she had loved him when a girl, and because their marriage,

from infancy, had been spoken of as a thing certain to happen-and the very promptitude with which she dismissed her other admirers, the moment he made his reappearance, became a matter of disgust and suspicion, making him imagine that he, too, had probably but a short time before been dismissed as easily from her mind, to made room for another. It must not be imagined, however, that these discoveries were made at once. Every day unwound some new charm from around his heart, in spite of the struggles of that heart to retain it; and, at length, when Mary stood before him in her real form, unfit to be . his wife, and even incapable of returning the passion she had inspired, bitter was the agony with which he bade farewell to the hopes he had cherished so long, to the bright dreams that had hovered around him for so many years, till they had become, as it were, a part of himself. It was then Miss Gordon had her revenge; it was then his heart, released from the fantastic, unreal passion which had clouded his understanding, paid full homage to her beauty and her love. That she loved him he could not doubt, and he execrated the folly which had thrown away his happiness. What a contrast between her and Mary! he could not endure the thought; and, turning fiercely to the latter, he would cry, in the words of Col-" And have I burned my harp for thee!"

It was in the midst of some such thoughts, that one day Mary met him in his solitary walk. Some harsh words passed, which at another time he would have suppressed, but which could not now be recalled. Mary was proud, and perhaps not very deeply in love; and at a dance in the evening signalized her resentment, by refusing to be his partner. Had William's mind been in a healthy state, he would have smiled at this little piece of rural coquetry, but at this moment it seemed to him an explicit declaration of

her indifference, and an absolution for his involuntary infidelity. The next morning he was on his road to Edinburgh. Immediately on arriving, with a faltering step and a trembling heart, he sought Miss Gordon's dwelling: she was denied to him. He called again the next day; still not at home;-the next, he was admitted; she was alone; hardly knowing what he said, he blundered out an apology; humbled himself to the dust; knelt at her feet; proffered his heart and his hand-and was rejected. He again left town, but for what quarter is not known; and the world is equally in the dark, as to whether he ever means to return, and try his fortune again.

All that can be added further, with regard to Mary Græme, is, that she did not throw herself over the lynn, beneath the trysting place, in despair at her lover's perfidy; and farther this history saith not.

LETHE.

It was a fine fiction of the ancients to represent Forgetfulness as the reward purchased by a certain degree of expiatory punishment. It was a fine fiction, for it had its origin in a natural feeling,-one of the very few of which this can be said in their clumsy and profligate mythology. But this is real poetry and, like all real poetry, closely akin to truth. Alas! how many there are among us who would wish to steep" not their "senses," but their soul "in forgetfulness!"-how many there are to whom the waters of Lethe would be indeed a nectareous draught!

I am well aware that there are many also who would throw from them such a gift at once; to whom, indeed, it would be a curse. The days of youth are, like the spring of the