With this particularly plain and unvarnished, declaration, made with all the vehemence of excited feelings, he advanced slowly towards her. Really alarmed by his unnatural manner, Miss Fitscammon stepped aside. Darting on her a look of desperate aversion, although trembling in every limb, Mr. Graham made precipitately for the door; the bolt flew back, and he disappeared. Descending to the parlour, he there rang three violent and spasmodic peals upon the bell. "Tell my nieces," said he to the servant who appeared, "that I must see them instantly." As his message was being fulfilled, he muttered, "this is one consequence of my readiness to sympathize with every one in distress; if I had sat mute and motionless at dinner, as I might have done, this would not have happened. Well, it is a just punishment for forgetting, even for a moment, my habitual prudence." When Fanny and Lucy, all curiosity and astonishment, entered the room, they found their uncle busily engaged in packing up his clothes. There was some deep scheme in his head, as the puckered brow and firmly set mouth would have testified, even if unaccompanied by a questioning glance to every object about him. "Why, uncle, what is the matter? where are you going?" they both exclaimed in a breath. "Oh, away anywhere—but here I shall go mad, if I remain." "Explain yourself, I entreat you!" Lucy said, a glimmering of the truth flashing on her mind. "That hateful-but no, I won't degrade myself,” and in his anxiety to give the least ridiculous account of the affair that it was capable of bearing, he stopped short. After a few moments, he faithfully related all that passed in the forced interview between himself and Miss Fitscammon, and concluded with a second announcement, that he would leave the hateful place, never to set foot in it again. “I have given her no encouragement," he If I added, "none whatever, not the least in the world. It is a very hard case-harder than anything I was ever exposed to before. am to be persecuted in this way, I would rather be dead!" Mr. Graham delivered this last speech in a very energetic voice and manner, accompanied by a sudden gesture, indicative of an intention to commit some self-injury, and then sank down in his seat quite breathless and exhausted with the mental excitement of the last hour. It may easily be guessed what intensity of delight all this afforded Fanny Graham, whose only feeling upon the subject, was one of merriment; she laughed till she was quite faint, shaking her head all the time, till her long ringlets were out of curl. "You cannot be serious, dear uncle," said Lucy, "in what you have just said; it is only a mere whim occasioned by your being out of humour and irritated; it cannot be your serious intention." "I am serious!" And here he solemnized the determination with a smart blow of his hand upon the table; "and I advise you not to interfere in the proceeding that I choose to take; I am sure you know me better than to do so. Now, if you please, I will make my arrangements for departure." Finding their uncle inflexible, they settled that, in order to avoid explanation, as they had engaged rooms for five weeks, they themselves would remain, and no one be made aware of his intention except Mrs. Sayre. And now with that steadiness of purpose, to which extreme circumstances so often give birth, Mr. Graham started at dawn of day from the restless couch, which no sleep had visited the previous night, in a private conveyance to the city of D, twenty miles distant from Harleytown. On and on he rode, and so delighted was he with the speed of the horses, as to ask of the drivers their separate names. Never were milestones so eagerly watched for, or so gladly lost sight of. In blissful unconsciousness that her victim was hastening at the utmost speed away from Harleytown, and that every passing moment increased the distance between them, Miss Fitscammon entered the breakfast-room next morning. She was somewhat at a loss to account for the absence of Mr. Graham. She thought once of asking his nieces, but that would not exactly do. As the boarders successively made their appearance, they inquired for Mr. Graham; the first inquiries passed without answer or apparent notice, but as breakfast proceeded, and they repeated their inquiries more seriously, Fanny, unable longer to contain herself, burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. This appeared to awake torturing pangs in the bosom of Miss Fitscammon, for she turned extremely pale, and seemed greatly agitated. The boarders stared from one to the other; but as no one seemed disposed to answer their looks of inquiry, they turned them on each other. Presently Fanny rose from the table, Mrs. Pufton following her into the parlour, where the sportive girl proceeded without further preface, to inform her that their uncle had actually fled the house, in order to escape the persecution of Miss Fitscammon's love. She of course thought the joke too good to be true; but on becoming satisfied of her error, her enjoyment of it was scarcely inferior to that of her own. Fanny and meditation, to one of an opposite sex, whose heart was made for herself, and whose mind developing itself in many juvenile ideas, was set mainly on one, -the discovery, to all eligible objects, of her extreme worthiness to be bound in those holy bonds which would have relieved her from the necessity and thankless drudgery of teaching. In respect to Mr. Graham, she continued, with a lamentable perversion of reason, to consider that she imbued him during his stay in Harleytown with tender feelings, which, had his natural diffidence not prevented him from expressing, would have had a happier issue. It is needless to add that her dress soon relapsed into its former style; and it was remarked that she never appeared in the orangecoloured dress again, owing perhaps to the painful reminiscences it excited. The household soon resumed their several places in the domestic system as far as she was concerned, as if no disturbance had ever occurred to interrupt the general harmony. was detailing the scene with great pathos, | eccentric only in that he was given to silence when Miss Fitscammon entered unperceived. She listened with more shame and mortification than she might be supposed capable of, to the narration of her follies. But this feeling speedily changed as Fanny proceeded, and she gathered from her remarks that her uncle had left the house. This piece of information crushed her sinking spirits, and she fell into a paroxysm of spiteful tears, declaring that she was a wretched, neglected, unhappy outcast, and the innocent victim of a base conspiracy. Then with a sudden relapse into the sternness of dignified wrath, she declared that if she was the unfortunate cause of his leaving, she had the satisfaction of knowing that she was not to blame; that for her part she held true happiness to consist in a single life, which she would not exchange for any worldly consideration; that with Mr. Graham she had done; that there was a providence in everything; that she had been tried, but upon the whole she didn't regret it. In this pious spirit she ceased sobbing, and sat with a calmness unusual to one suffering under a great wrong; yet only for a time, for she wound up by uttering a protest against being supposed to entertain the smallest regard for Mr. Graham, asserting that she was never more glad in all her life that she had strength of mind to resist matrimonial offers, no matter how advantageous; and she made this last remark with her arms folded, and with a very dignified demeanour, and in this attitude, swept from the parlour. In a state of the last exhaustion, she reached her own room, and turning the key, paced up and down in solitary wretchedness. Such were the consequences, fortuitous and disastrous, brought about by a few words and one act of sympathy on the part of a bachelor, The water subsides as perfectly over the track of a vast ship as over one of inferior dimensions; the greatest disappointments are forgotten in their effects as well as the trifles of the moment, the only difference being the time they require,-and Miss Fitscammon soon began to enjoy a settled feeling of tranquillity, to which she had long been a stranger. She still pursues her lonely way, spotless in reputation, immaculate in her dress, a model of morality, a pattern of propriety, quizzed by the curious and officious, but still perfectly self-possessed, and revelling in the consciousness of immortal youth. This last weakness she has not cast off, nor is it likely that she ever will in any other place than in the grave. SONNETS. BY FREDERICK WEST. I. WE do not see the beam is in our eyes- Let thy dear, gentle breast some pity show. II. It must be faith in man woman must cherish, He on the border of a Maelstrom swims, Like reckless youth, thinking that he may flee If each escape, their danger was no less; SUMMER RECREATION. BY MRS. C. M. KIRKLAND. (Continued from p. 266.) ENTERING London from the south, just at faces, cheeks out of which future good cheer evening, it would not be remarkable if one may perhaps take the wrinkles, but which at who saw it for the first time should fancy it present have whole volumes of sordid anxiety just reposing from an extensive conflagration, written upon them. You will see here, illwhich was still smouldering and likely to be so dressed men and women who stand fixedly gazfor months. The cloud of smoke seems more ing at the fine and good things behind those huge than can be accounted for by chimneys. St. plate-glasses, making a Barmecide feast, which, Paul's is barely distinguishable, in outline even, however unsatisfying, they seem reluctant to although the sun's parting rays still redden leave, thinking, perhaps, that a feast of one the dim pinnacles of Westminster. The lamps sense is better than none at all. If your carseem all to have ground glass shades over riage draw up to the sidewalk, two or three of them, and the steeples to have undergone these people are ready to open the door, or to some great mowing process, while the dull shut it, or to say or do anything you can possiheavy roar of the great city, proceeding from bly desire, with the hope of receiving one this mysterious mass of cloud flecked here and penny in return. If you cannot find one, your there with dim lights, has an effect of unusual servitor says, "Thank you!" all the same, and solemnity, solemn though it be in the brightest lights up somewhere in his poor heart a hope sunshine. Whatever be the reason, the roar that you will remember the debt another time of London, though it is in truth the voice of -at least so says his look of sad resignation, commerce and of wealth, never seems to bea look which not unfrequently extracts a bit of speak those or kindred causes; we never think silver from the purse deficient in copper.— of the pride and the splendour borne on those million wheels; but of the narrow streets and crowded dens, the cries of misery and the secret agonies of those who die, unknown and unaided, among all this world-embracing prosperity. It is an awful voice, that voice of London; the great Day of Account will tell what it is that it "crieth continually." Rattling over granite blocks, through the swarming streets, no one can say to his neighbour what he thinks of all this haste and anxiety, but he reads the meaning of the dazzling windows, in which the wares of all the earth are displayed under the glare of gas,turned studiously inward by huge reflectors, lest a ray should be thrown away,-and in the anxious countenances of the passers-by. "To buy and sell and get gain," is the written thought on every face there, and on the tempting array of every shop and stall. Where is the rubicund, portly Englishman of our ideal? Not amidst this struggling crowd, certainly. You must seek him among the successful bankers and traders, who are snugly dining at their suburban villas just now. There, you will find men that walk carefully, not seeing the ground very well; men whose cheeks are full of little gorged veins, through which shine old Port, not to say Cognac and Stout. But here, in this commercial blaze, are narrow This "Thank you!" or rather "Thenk you!" of the humbler classes of English, becomes very amusing from its frequency. "Any orders, sir?" "No." "Oh! thenk you!" "Please, sir, will you have a cab?" "No." "Thenk you!" "Please shall I do your room now, ma'am?" "Not at present." "Thenk you!" and so on, equally under refusal and acceptance. Our countrymen are quite prone enough to fall into habits of unmeaning expression, but the English are far beyond us. They laugh at us, and justly enough, for prefacing perhaps four sentences out of five with "Well!" but their interlarding of every sentence, on every possible occasion, with “you know," is even worse, at least in point of quantity of transgression. In general, however, their manner of expressing themselves is better than ours; they use more carefully chosen words, and better turned sentences; they do not avoid homely expressions with so much fastidiousness, and they convey their thoughts more poetically and piquantly by the aid of these, sanctioned as they are by the standard writers of the language. An Englishman does not speak of his "vest," but his waistcoat. He calls his cravat a neck-cloth, and his pantaloons trousers; and his wife calls her gown a gown, and not after our affected fashion, a "dress," which means anything and |