is it not possible in the country of Annesley to find a retreat? Our single endeavours will not save Poland, and it will assist her but little if our blood be added to the number of her victims.'

'Consent to fly, my husband,' exclaimed Pauline, consent to save your wife and child! Can you bear to see him perish on the point of the Russian sabre?' Leopold gazed on them in silence; his heart, torn with conflicting emotions, knew not how to decide; it was madness to stay, yet to desert that cause for which his father had perished was impossible. Honour's voice may be loud and imperative, but nature speaks in tones still more forcible to the heart; her pleadings are not to be resisted; and Leopold, while mutely gazing on his wife and child, was already revolving the possibility of existence in a foreign land, when suddenly a distant tumult aroused them from this stupor of anguish. Leopold seized his sword, and was about to rush from the hut, but was interrupted by the entrance of a file of soldiers.

:

The officer ordered his men to advance, but Pauline clung with frenzied distraction to the arm of her husband, who endeavoured with the other to defend himself and her. The conflict, though short, was desperate; one struggle, and he was disarmed; he seized a carbine which one of the soldiers had dropped, and, presenting it, still threatened destruction to the first that opposed him. Again they closed with redoubled fury, and the dreadful, but unequal, conflict was soon decided one blow, and Pauline was their victim-a Russian sabre pierced her heart, and she fell expiring on the bosom of her husband. Leopold was subdued-the feelings of the soldier and the patriot were lost in those of the father and the husband; his enemies beheld him conquered, but not by their sword. Kneeling beside the murdered form of his wife, he covered his face with his hands in all the agony of silent sorrow; the feelings of all seemed to be suspended, when Christina rushed through the assembled group and threw herself on the body of the breathless Pauline. Wildly and often she VOL. 1. April, 1829.

kissed her pale lips, and tried, though vainly, to stem the crimson torrent; then piteously raising her eyes to the face of her brother she said, softly,' She is gone, Leopold, she will never smile on us more: come, poor innocent, come and kiss your mother!' Leopold could bear it no longer-he started up--' I am your prisoner: drag me to chains-to infamy-to torture, it cannot equal this. They prepared to obey his frantic command. Christina, springing from the lifeless corse, clasped his knees, and entreated him to bless her with one last farewell: he raised her from the earth, he pressed her pale lips to his own, when one of the soldiers rudely forced her from him; weak and exhausted, she staggered and fell to the ground. Leopold paused but a moment to take one last look of his child, and submitted to his conquerors.

Having done the last sad duty to the body of her sister, Christina clasped the young Alexis to her bosom, and set out for Warsaw, whither her brother had been removed. Yet when the poor mourner considered the many leagues she had to travel, the many dangers she had to encounter before she could arrive at her journey's end, and even then, at what might be her fate she shuddered to reflect. Perhaps she might arrive too late even to witness the last moments of the unfortunate Leopold, whose fate she knew was irrevocably fixed; no mercy, she felt assured, would be extended to the son of the brave Alvinski; no regard paid to the pleadings of nature-the prayers of affection. Yet that affection, pre-eminent in her breast, urged her forward; though she dreaded the worst that could befal her, she resolved to go on, and Heaven lent her strength to accomplish the undertaking. When she arrived at Warsaw, she saw none of whom she could inquire what she so much wished, yet dreaded to know; her spirits were fast decaying, and she felt she had arrived in Warsaw but to die. Although in her native city, she found she was among enemies, and to none could she confide the charge of Alexis. No time, however, was left for deliberation; a body of soldiers passed her, and,

loaded with chains and unarmed, walked in the midst of them, the unfortunate Leopold. The recognition was instantaneous; she darted forward, regardless of the efforts of the guards to keep her back. Oh! God, my brother! we will die together!' She could no more; she sank upon the ground, and was raised by Annesley, who had only that moment arrived, the Russians fearing to detain in prison a subject of his Britannic Majesty. Christina, nearly insensible, lay motionless in his arms-she moved not, she scarcely breathed, till the rattling volley convinced her Leopold was no more: she tried to raise her head-her eyes opened once more, met those of Annesley, and closed for ever. The little Alexis had now only one friend in the world, and Annesley proved to him a father.

A. E. H. R.

LINES WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM.
ALBUMS are coffers where light thought

Is treasured and amassed;
Records of moments else forgot,
Embalmments of the past:
Mementos of full many a breast
Whose grief no more can wake;
Of many a hand whose icy rest
But the last trump can break.
The heart, the mind, oh what are they
But Albums? where are set
The marks of many a changeful day-
Long past--remembered yet--
Where characters divinely fair

By joy's light hand are traced,
Though oft, alas! by anxious care.
Marred, blotted, and defaced!
May she to whom this verse is due,
Light trials meet—if any; ́

Her hours of gloom may they be few,
Her sunny moments many.

S.

A SHORT LESSON ON CONTENTMENT.

ONE evening in May I was standing at my window, in a feverish, discontented mood about-I know not what, when one of those despisers of sweet sounds,' a Savoyard, made his appearance, with his musical Pandorean box. His exhibition, besides consisted of two white mice, one of which, I suppose for the sake of variety, had lost half of its nether appendage.

He commenced as lively an air as the damaged lungs of his organ would admit of; for, like himself, poor fellow! it had met with many hard rubs in its time.

I felt in my pocket to find him a sous, for he looked so pitifully, and the expiring note of his organ seemed but an echo of the long drawn sigh that accompanied the silent appeal he made to my charity as he doffed the tattered remains of a hat.

At this moment one of those sudden storms, to which our climate is so peculiarly subject at this season, began in all its fury. How unlike the sunny skies of thine own dear Italy,' thought I, as the little minstrel rested his load of misery on the step of the door. I expected to see the tears gush from his eyes, and to hear him exclaim, in the bitterness of his soul, 'misericordia.'

Scarcely had the surmise arisen ere he began humming an Italian air, and taking one of the little companions of his fortune (I was going to write miseries) in his hand, he sat smiling and caressing the poor creature, seemingly as unconcerned as if he were lolling on a bed of roses; and all this far from his native land-the wide ocean between him and his affections-a stormy sky over his head, and an empty pocket; yet not a

murmur.

There was no resisting this, so I threw him-too little for the lesson he had taught me; for he had convinced me that contentment is not incompatible with a situation apparently the most miserable.

M. L.

THE CHIEF OF GLENDOWRDY.

THE cold, fierce winds of a dark December night whistled, in melancholy cadence, around the castle of Brinkyr; and the chief and his rough retainers, as if eager to retreat from the very sound of the unwelcome blast, had drawn unusually close to the chimney, in which burnt ponderous logs of wood, when the sentinel, who was placed in one of those stone cages which then usually projected from an elevated part of the castle wall, entered to say that the notes of a harp were to be heard from beneath the ramparts.

A feint of the enemy,' said one of the vassals, instinctively snatching his sword, an example which his comrades quickly followed.

Put up your weapons,' said Arthur ap Elidyr, commonly called the chief of Glendowrdy, because his castle was then the strongest hold in this part of Wales, 'for methinks this good ale has made you rather valiant. The enemy you fear, I dare say, is nothing more than a wandering minstrel and God forbid that the Chief of Glendowrdy should eject from his drawbridge a forlorn son of song.' Mordan,' he continued, addressing his son, a tall, handsome youth, of some sixteen years of age, 'I suspect you are the least likely amongst us, at the present moment, to magnify one into a legion, and I would, therefore, have you reconnoitre the foe, and decide whether he is to be admitted within our walls.'

Ap Elidyr speaks wisely,' said his vassals, as the youth departed to execute his father's bidding. In a few minutes he returned, followed by a Cambrian bard, who bore in his arms the elastic form of a girl not more than twelve years old. She hardly breathed; her face was pallid with cold, and her little breast betrayed, in its abrupt heavings, that her heart was afflicted. 'Chieftain of Glendowrdy,' said her guardian, for she appeared to have no other, I bring you, through winter's storm and Cambrian wastes, the last of the house of Rys ap Griffydd. He was your ancient friend, he