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In cloudless gold the morning shone
On Widdecombe's* dark belt of hills,
And gilt her tower the winter sun,

And sparkled in her frozen rills;
The holy peal of Sabbath bells

Proclaim'd the solemn hour of prayer,
And, echoing o'er the moorland dells,
Aroused the straggling hamlets there.
And with the rest those children join'd ↑
The sacred work of praise and prayer,
Nor dream'd how few brief days might find
Their limbs beneath that cold turf there.-
As home they turn'd, at evening fall,

The heaven, erewhile so fair, grew brown,
And, glimmering through a misty pall,

The moon in sickly white shone down.
That night some sheep forsook the fold,
O'er the broad heath at large to roam;
And they must search the weary wold

At morn, to bring the wanderers home:
Their tatter'd garb they round them flung,
Their stinted meal in haste they took,
And o'er that gloomy threshold sprung,
Nor cast behind one parting look.

Even then some dense and drizzling flakes
Fell sullen from the swarthy sky,
And strange dead silence lull'd the brakes,
Prophetic of the snow-fall nigh:

Yet forth they fared-for well they knew

The wretch who bade them search the wold-
Though dun with plumes the throng'd air grew,
And numb'd their limbs and hearts with cold.

Vain was their search-yet on they past,

Though heavier still the storm closed round,
And, though the dizzy air shower'd fast,

The white fleece piled the wildering ground.-
Too late they seek the homeward way-
They blindly roam the waste forlorn!
Still side by side the pale boys stray,

With terror mute, with suffering worn.

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• Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, a few miles distant from the town of Ashburton. The day before their last they attended divine service at Ashburton.

Spitchweek Park, a beautiful property of the Ashburton family, on the banks

of the Dart.

One of the Torrs in this district of the Moor.

Alas, for them he shone in vain-
Too late the clouds less fiercely pour-
Long had they sunk upon the plain,

To sleep, and wake to grief no more!
Where the lone Moor o'erlook'd a dell,
And shew'd the full Dart foaming by,
They wept to every hope farewell,

And laid them down alone to die :-
There did they sleep away their breath,
On that bleak death-bed, waste and wild-
There, stiffening on the wintry heath,

The snow-fall wrapp'd each friendless child.
And deep their sleep,-though no fond eye
Was near to soothe the parting hour-
No mother's arm of love was nigh,

No father watch'd his fading flower.
Closed is their span of earthly years,
Their path of mortal care is trod;
Life was to them a vale of tears,

And they have pass'd from it to God.-
Oh, glorious was the mournful hour,
When sunset lit their grave of snows,
And, o'er the heaths of bleak Dartmoor,
The Torrs in blood-red splendour rose!
As, o'er consuming Beauty's hand

Of ivory pale, the dark veins flow-
So, through the white and glittering land,
The livid river swung below.

-But henceforth on each poor boy's ear
In vain the wintry stream may rave,
And all in vain, through green brakes near,
May murmur deep the summer wave.
Nought fear they now of want or scorn,
Of blows or wrongs, their only hire-
No more to hail the dear May morn,

Or crowd around the Christmas fire!
Sad was the sight, when, from their home,
Was slowly borne each coffin'd boy,
(To rest in distant Widdecombe)†
With many a pitying helper nigh;
Strange was the scene, as, o'er the waste
Of dazzling snow, the dark train wound,
Until each little corpse was placed
With pious toil on holy ground.
Ne'er with a tone so stern and dead
The burial bell its warning rung,
As o'er the snows, with sunset red,

It then its awful burthen swung;

Few will need to be informed that the mountainous masses which rise along this extensive platform of moorland, are denominated Torrs.

† Widdecombe, i. e. wide valley. The boys were really buried at Ashburton; but, as the author was desirous to confine his tale to the limits of the Moor, he has represented the interment as having taken place at Widdecombe.

A party of twelve men carried the coffins over the snow, relieving each other by turns. At Hazle Torr they were met by another party from Ashburton, who bore the poor children to their last earthly home.

The winds, that howl'd o'er many a heap
Of sleet-drift, drown'd the funeral prayer-
But, oh, they slept so calm and deep,

The blighted flowers reposing there!-
Ye, who have heard these children's fall,
Should any such your board maintain,
Think, think how little is their all,
Nor wring their hearts for guilty gain:
Unfit their tender years to stem

The tide of grief and hardship too;

Then, oh, in pity smile on them

And Heaven in mercy smile on you!

J.

MADAME DE KRUDNER.

BENEVOLENCE loses much, not only of its charm, but of its intrinsic merit, when it comes forth with ostentatious publicity; the character of true charity, more especially when exercised by women, ought ever to be qualified by humility. In vain do they tell us how much they regret obscurity, what sacrifices they are making for the welfare of mankind, in thus consenting to stand forth in the face of the world. All these phrases, worn and hacknied as they are by the female professors of philanthropy of the present day, convince us not a whit the more for their frequent repetition. The world cannot be duped for any length of time; for, however a plausible show or loud profession may gain its point for a season, truth, and truth only, is ultimately persuasive; truth alone can aspire to that noblest and most precious of all recompense-public approbation. In proportion as we blame those females who borrow the language of humility as a cloak for their vanity, are we ready to render the homage of justice and of admiration to those, who, contenting themselves with the exercise of domestic virtue, labour to promote the happiness of all around them, and who do not neglect their first duties-those of wife and mother-under the extravagant pretence of reforming society. Error concealed beneath the mask of religion, becomes doubly dangerous, making numerous proselytes, and spreading rapidly; while those who would endeavour to arrest its progress, are exclaimed against for their impiety. Its supporters appeal to their divine missions, to their inspirations, and even to passages from the holy scriptures, which they have either purposely distorted, or ill understood; religion, in short, is no more than a mask to cover the designs of ambitious dissemblers or converted sinners, to whom the excitement of intrigue and agitation is still necessary, and who think an ostentatious confession a full atonement for their former sins. Madame de Krudner is in the latter class. After having passed through the vicissitudes of a wild and irregular youth, a fancy to become inspired took possession of her; and she resolved to offer up, in sacrifice and expiation for her own faults, the reason of credulous multitudes, whom she would soon have driven as mad as herself, had she continued her pretended mission. Madame de Krudner having been much spoken of, although in reality little known, the following is a sketch of her life.

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Juliana de Wittinghoff was born in the year 1766 at Riga, in Courland. She was daughter of the Baron de Wittinghoff, one of the wealthiest nobles of that country. At nine years old her father brought her to Paris, where his house was a rendezvous for all the celebrated men of that capital, so that the young Baroness found herself thus early thrown into the society of Diderot, Helvetius, D'Alembert, Grimm, &c. At nine years of age, with a very lively imagination left to its own guidance, without a single given principle whereby to direct its impulses, delivered up, in short, entirely to itself, it could only take its bias from what it saw and heard, destitute of all means of discriminating between good and evil. The philosophers of the eighteenth century were not precisely the most unexceptionable guides and instructors of youth of either sex, and ill indeed were they adapted to fulfil that office for a female. The cynicism of some, the immorality of most, were so much the more to be feared, as these men expressed their opinions with much eloquence, and directed their ridicule with so much address against all that opposed their opinions in society, that to combat them with success required very deeply rooted religious principles and much strength of mind. At the period of which we speak, such was the universal corruption of morals, and disorder had risen to such a height, that a strong crisis was become necessary; it was then already foreseen that an explosion was inevitable, and the Revolution of 1793 was the appointed catastrophe, and, as it were, the detonation of the accumulated vices of many preceding years. Assuredly Mademoiselle de Wittinghoff had never heard marriage spoken of otherwise than as a convenient ceremony, by means of which a female procures full liberty, with the privilege of entertaining her lovers, becoming thereby no longer amenable to any tie or duty. At fourteen she married the Baron de Krudner, of Liefland, then thirty-six years of age, a man of good fortune, and well informed. Madame de Krudner from her infancy had discovered a disposition to melancholy and meditation, which temperament, had she been early well directed, would undoubtedly have been gradually developed and regulated, and that ardent and restless imagination might have applied itself to the working of some essential good; but, plunged into the vortex of the world, surrounded by seductions, she had no refuge from her passions, but became their unresisting slave. Nothing, perhaps, can be more dangerous than the irregularities of people of genius; for the intellectual faculties double the strength and energy of man; and when they are not employed to restrain and moderate, they never fail to stimulate and impel; the physical passions are reinforced by the passions of the imagination, if we may be permitted the expression, and from thenceforth excess alone can satisfy; and a corruption often takes possession, no less of the intellectual than of the moral being.

Mons. de Krudner, having in vain endeavoured to restore his wife to virtue, demanded and obtained a divorce in 1791. After this event Madame de Krudner resided at Riga, where her style of living was brilliant, and where she enjoyed the homage of no inconsiderable number of adorers: nevertheless, becoming weary of a society so limited, she sought in Paris, whither she returned in 1798, a wider scope of gratification. Being captivated by a young Frenchman, she afterwards

retired with him to Leipsic, from whence she departed for Riga, and in the same year returned again to Paris. At this period it was that she wrote Valeria, the plan of which had been some years previously conceived. An idea has gone forth that this romance is a fragment of the history of Madame de Krudner's life. We are not inclined to give credence to this opinion. The hero of this romance, tormented by an unhappy passion for a married woman, falls the victim of remorse for his guilty attachment, his sufferings being still farther augmented by regret that it was not returned. Now, from our acquaintance with the character of Madame de Krudner, it seems to us hardly probable she would permit the death of a lover, whom the grant of a few favours might have preserved. Valeria is one of the best written of the French romances. If the story does not seem to us applicable to the life of Madame de Krudner, the sentiments undoubtedly depict her character; it contains such a mixture of vice and virtue, such force of conscience, together with such disorder of imagination, all too truly and powerfully expressed, to be the result of mere fiction; in short, this romance explains Madame de Krudner better than we could hope to do by the most laboured and ingenious description. Her hero, Gustave, has the same defects as are conspicuous in those of Madame de Staël, Leonce and Oswald: he is utterly deficient in manly dignity; he is nerveless and effeminate; weeps like a woman; and, so far from combating his weakness, delivers himself up to its intoxication without a struggle. May we not be warranted in tracing this literary relation between these two celebrated women to a very similar feeling? They beheld men always as lovers; in which character, therefore, they always painted them, confining their thoughts, words, and actions within the focus of a single subject-illegitimate love. But guilty love forms no heroes; its best productions are nothing but gilded vices, and inconsistent, contradictory characters; since man cannot with impunity quit the path of virtue, or prevent his conscience from acting as an incessant and irksome opponent to his actions. Nevertheless, Delphine, Corinne, and Valérie, have had great success; but, unhappily, we of the present generation can only be satisfied in the developement of the most extraordinary sentiments. Adultery, for instance, employed as a means of effect in our romances, is become so common and familiar, that it now awakens but feeble interest; in short, it is nearly out of fashion; something more exciting yet is requisite: thus we have had brothers enamoured of their sisters; next we shall probably be presented with sons languishing for their mothers; and who knows but even grandmothers may take their turn, in compliment to the corrupt and exaggerated taste of the age?

It is impossible, however we may blame the plan of the romance, to read Valérie untouched: its descriptions are very fine, and its sentiments are expressed with irresistible effect; yet, in spite of the premature end of Gustave, the work is no less immoral. Certain authors compound with their consciences, believing, it should seem, that by putting their heroes and heroines to death, they redeem all the sallies of their irregular imaginations. Now, would it not be better to let these people live out their days honestly and rationally, than thus to dispose of them? These terrible expiatory catastrophes are of no use whatever

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