coffin was carried out. His order was obeyed, (though with somewhat less of military precision than it was given,) and the coffin was placed in the court-yard under the wide spreading branches of an elm tree. He then returned to the door, and in the tone of military command, desired 'the mourners to advance and look at the corpse, and added a notice to the assembly to come forward immediately after the mourners had retired, it being necessary that all should take their last looks now, as the lid of the coffin was to be screwed down before the procession moved: a burst of grief from the groupe of mourners evinced that these commands, given out as the mere forms of preparation, were to them the dreadful signal of a final separation. Mrs. Allen rose from her chair, but even with Ellen's aid was unable to move forward till Doctor Bristol, advancing from the crowd, gave her the support of his stronger arm. She then approached the coffin, and bent for the last time over the body of her child; her tears, which had been checked till this moment, now flowed freely; and as she raised her head, she perceived they had fallen on Edward's face; she said nothing, but carefully wiped them away. "She is right," whispered Doctor Bristol to Ellen. "Edward has nothing more to do with tears: they are all wiped away." "Oh, my son," exclaimed Mrs. Allen, in a low broken voice, "would to God Emily laid beside you; then would I thankfully lay down my weary body with you." "But,"

she added, after a moment's pause, in which her piety struggled with her nature, "God's will be done."

"Glad am I to hear those words," said Debby, who stood near enough to catch the feeble sounds: "the poor old lady's cup has been brimful of trouble so long, that it would not be strange if she did think herself something crowded on."

"Crowded on-what can the woman mean ?" asked a young man of his companion; but before the inquirer could obtain a reply, he was jostled out of his place by others pressing eagerly forward to gaze for the last time on the face of the deceased. All as they turned away looked on Mrs. Allen, and some perhaps wondered that the leafless scaithed trunk should have been passed by, and the young sapling cut down in its prime and beauty. Mrs. Allen was led back to the house, attended by Ellen and Doctor Bristol; they passed through the apartment where Miss Redwood still maintained her station, and where she continued to gaze upon all that passed before her with the indifference with which she would have regarded the shifting scenes of a wearisome play the Major approached her, and with awkward but well-meant civility, told her she would have a good chance now to look at the corpse, and, being she was a stranger, he would see her through the crowd himself.

"Oh, thank you," she replied, disdainfully, "I have no fancy for looking at dead people, and

certainly I shall not look at one dead that I never saw living." The Major, thus rebuffed, turned away, and meeting Debby, he said in a low tone, "I rather think that young stranger girl has got to find out yet that she is mortal." Why, bless my soul! a body would think her road did not lay grave-ward; but young, and handsome, and topping as she is, she mu come to it at last." "She is a pretty creature though to look at," he added, paying her the tribute of another full stare, "she is almost as handsome as the wax-work Rhode-Island beauty."

"Pooh, pooh," replied Debby, "handsome is that handsome does," and she glanced her eyes towards Ellen Bruce; "that is my rule, it is an old one, but it will never wear out."

Miss Debby is right," whispered a pert girl, with the insolence of youth; "quite right to stick to every thing that is old."

"Yes, yes," replied Debby, who unluckily overheard her, "quite right, till there is more reason to hope that the rising generation will make good the places of those who have gone before them."

A call was now given to form the procession. Mrs. Allen was conducted by her kind attendants. to her own apartment. The rooms were cleared, the procession moved away, and the house was restored to its usual quiet and order.

117

CHAPTER VII.

What folly I commit I dedicate to you."

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

THE week that followed the funeral would have been passed by Miss Redwood in perfect listlessness, had not Miss Bruce excited her curiosity, and her curiosity been stimulated by the difficulty of its gratification. The following petulant production of her pen, a letter achieved to her grandmother after repeated and painful efforts, may afford a fair view of her feelings. It certainly is not a favourable specimen of her talents, for she had originally a strongly marked character, but abandoned from her infancy to the guidance of a doating and silly grandmother, and early initiated into fashionable and frivolous society, with uncommon intellectual capacities, and strong passions, she was permitted to devote herself to every thing that was trifling, and in short, condemned to a perpetual childhood. But no farther remarks shall be intruded on the just inferences which the good sense of our readers will enable them to deduce from the document itself.

"My dear grandmama,—I can fancy your vexation when you receive this letter; for you, and you alone, can form an adequate notion of my disappointments and present misery. As to papa, you know he never feels, nor thinks as you and I do.

"No doubt in your imagination I am figuring in the drawing-rooms of Boston, displaying those beautiful dresses you imported for this ill-starred journey; leading captive my thousands and my tens of thousands; living in an atmosphere of lover's sighs, and on the eve of breaking a hundred hearts by my departure for the springs, where we expected that a second harvest of conquest and glory awaited me. "Now look on that picture, and on this." Here I am at a vulgar farmer's, on the outskirts of a town called Eton; and so changed am I, or rather every thing about me is so changed, that I can scarcely believe that not much more than one little month has elapsed since I was parading Broadway with Captain Fenwick-(by the way, Broadway is a sublime place for a real show-off,)-and he said to me, as admirer after admirer poured into my train, "you see Miss Redwood, that you are the centre of the system, the sun; and we, your satellites, humbly revolve around you." What would he think, what could he say, if he were to see me now; not a creature dazzled by my brightness, though there is not a rival star in the heavens? but a truce to lamentations, I will proceed to facts, and then.