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still, as he honestly thought, not to wound Constance by the exhibition of the slightest trace of his inward agony.

What a minute passed then-a minute fraught to each with future and intolerable anguish. Neither spoke. It was indeed a lover's quarrel, but one to widen, not to repair the breach which their former misunderstanding had created.

Edward at length found words to say "Constance, I will not further restrain you. I wish with all my heart, that this meeting had been avoided, but since you would have it so, I could not refrain. My peace is as nothing to my desire for your happiness. I know all I have heard all—and now, to prove still how I love you, I at once and freely unloose the fetter by which aforetime I thought you bound, and which I had hoped should have linked your virgin heart to mine for ever. Constance, you are once more free-farewell!"

Then in a rapid voice, the tone of which was half lost in emotion, he continued in a low deep whisper, which told his mental suffering.

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Yes, the spell is broken; I believed you loved me onceand I, oh, I did love you, Constance. It was the thought of your love which sustained me when exhausting my very strength and energies by the midnight lamp. When I stole from my couch to watch the ripple of the stream as it seemed to sing in the moonlight, or to listen to the matin song of the chirruping birds, it was to think of you. Constance, may you be blessed; may you be happy."

The stupified girl wept. She would have given the world to have recalled the last half hour. But it had sped with the foot of time, and carried with it what it shall never restore. He was gone!

He had bent over the shivering form of the fair girl, and gazing upon her speechless as she was, he imprinted one long last kiss of truest love upon her brow, and flew to hide his grief, and his weakness from human sound and sight. Yes, he was gone!

Constance felt this, and what mattered it to her now whether he was fleeing from her to some more favored mistress, since to her there was only the one same feeling of desolation-the feeling that he was gone-he whom she had so loved. They had met, and they had parted, it might be for ever.

"Had they never loved so kindly;

Had they never loved so blindly;

Never met or never parted,

They had ne'er been broken-hearted."

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Constance uttered one loud cry and sank upon her native earth. That cry it was one resembling the plaintive scream of the seamew as it floats along the surface of the wave, or rather the despairing wail of the widow as she weeps above the death-bed of her only child. It saved her heart from breaking. Her pride! where was it? It was gone but gone only to return and to bring with it a terrible revulsion of feeling and accession of sorrow. How much better would it have been, had that heart been broken at the shrine of her only sorrow. As she fell senseless on the ground had she died, she had been spared that after bitter waking, which sustains for ages that

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fatal remembrance-the sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes-
To which life nothing darker, nor brighter can bring
For which joy hath no balm-and affection no sting."

When she revived, the glimmering stars were shining in their manifold splendour. Night had waned, and the rays of one solitary lamp gleamed through the casement of her own chamber. She listened-yes-she was alone-and, so silently she passed to her chamber to throw herself upon her couch and weep till exhausted nature relieved herself with slumber.

(To be continued.)

MAIDEN BEAUTY.

THE silent breath of unawaken'd love

That hangs o'er maiden beauty, when her youth
Seems buoyant with the wings she wears above-
Her unbidden incense-offering of truth
To the great faith of love-this is the spell
That guides us to her charms, and the sweet swell
Of panting bosom, or the eye's glad light
Are but the voiceless music of her heart:
Truthful and trusting woman! thou white
Yet willing marble in this earth of ours!

That temptest love, the sculptor, till his art
Rounds, softens, warms the statue, and the sight
Becomes the only sense, making that whole
All eye-delighting-as if fed on flowers-
A monument enshrin'd in the soul.

F. C.

THE POETRY OF FLOWERS.

By H. G. Adams.

THE SNOWDROP-GALANTHUS NIVALIS.

"The winter flower

That, whiter than the snow it blooms among,
Droops its fair head submissive to the power
Of every angry blast that sweeps along
Sparing the lovely trembler, while the strong
Majestic tenants of the leafless wood
It levels low.-MRS. TIGHE.

THIS well known harbinger of early Spring begins to blossom regularly about Candlemas, and is an object of great veneration with many of those who profess the Roman Catholic religion, from its being supposed to typify the purification of the Virgin Mary, to whom it is dedicated, whence the names "Fair Maid of February," and "Our Lady of February," by which it is commonly known in those countries where that form of worship prevails, and also in many of the rural districts of our own land, where old superstitions and manners, and modes of thought and expression, still prevail to a considerable extent.

It is undoubtedly owing to the veneration in which this flower was held by our Catholic ancestors, that we find it so frequently in gardens attached to old monastic buildings. Tickle speaks of it as

"A flower that first on this sweet garden smiled
To virgins sacred and the Snowdrop styled"

And it may generally be considered, when discovered growing wild in orchards, or waste lands, as an indication that there the matin chime once broke the stillness of the grey dawn, and there, amid the shadowy twilight of eve, the summons to vesper prayer went floating afar through the surrounding woodlands, startling the timid deer, and causing the homeward journeying peasant, the weary traveller, and even the bold forest outlaw, to cross themselves, and utter an ave for the good of their sinful souls; while issuing from their solitary cells the cowled monks, or, if it were a nunnery, the pale sisterhood, were

NO. VIII.

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VOL. I.

seen gliding, like spectres, through the dim cloisters, towards the illuminated chapel.

There, with forms all earthward bending,

'Mid the swelling organ's peal,

And the choral strain ascending,

On the cold, bare stones to kneel;
All the daylight's sins confessing,
Asking, for the night, a blessing.

We are told by Mr. Phillips, that the name Galanthus, given to this flower, is composed of two Greek words, signifying milk and flower, from the milky whiteness of its corolla. The Italians call it Pianterella; the Germans Shneegloechern (snow-bell); and the French Perce Neige, because it often pierces through the snow, hence their poet, Benserade, makes it say

"Though hid beneath a silver veil,

Earth nourisheth my form of brightness;

The snow preserves my being frail,

And, with its name, gives me its whiteness."

All these names are undoubtedly very appropriate and characteristic, but we greatly prefer our English one-Snowdropconnected as it is with a thousand delightful associations, which take the mind captive, and bear us far into the regions of poesy, before we are aware of having quitted the beaten track of every day existence we wander on, and on,

"The while by visions splendid
Upon our way attended."

Leaving farther and farther, behind us those paths where cares and troubles abound, to obstruct the progress, and lacerate the feet of the weary, and heavily laden pilgrim, who looks forward to the grave as a resting place, where he may cast off his grievous burthen, and lie down in peaceful forgetfulness of past toils and sorrows. We gaze on the delicate bells, so purely white, as they tremble at the breath of the rude blast, which passes over and harms them not, and confess that they have been well likened to Hope, Gratitude, Purity, and Virgin Innocence; they call up cheering and gladsome thoughts, for they are indeed—

"The merry spring-time's harbingers ;"

We indulge the fancy of Cornelius Webbe, that,

"The Snowdrops, that from Winter's brow,

As he retreated, fell,

Have turned to flowers."

So like are they to "pendent flakes of vegetative snow," and are fain to repeat the beautiful lines of James Graham, author of "a Vision of Fair Spirits :"

"Cradled in sorrow's bosom, ever thou

While-vested Snowdrop, winter's orphan child,
Hast from thy dying mother's pallid brow
Caught the last look that there so coldly smiled,
And with a holy love I mark thee now

Rearing thy virgin forehead undefil'd;

A dove-like herald sent, when all is dark,
To the cold earth from nature's flowery ark."

Who can, or would, resist the influence exercised upon the heart and the imagination by the feelings and emotions awakened, like flowers at the call of spring, by such beautiful fancies and delectable associations as these? not we, fair readers, nor ye, surely! Bear with us then; nay! enter with us fully, and heartsomely into the rich poetry of our subject, while we invoke, in such rude rhythm as we are capable of, and as we conceive the occasion demands, a few of those gifted ones who have paid homage to the Snowdrop, and embalmed it in their golden

numbers:

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Come, ye children of the muses! hearken to my invocation! Come, with your golden lyres-oh, come! and, as ye sweep the sounding strings, repeat unto our raptured ears, the snatches of sweet song, wherewith ye have delighted to embalm the name of that most beauteous flower-your fair and fragile favorite! We hear, we hear, far, far and near, sounds floating on the atmosphere ;-music divine, as though the Nine poured out upon the earth, like wine, invigorating and refreshing, from their Olympian abode, where only tuneful foot hath trod, the waters of that Helliconic spring, with fervent inspiration fraught. They come! they come! the tuneful throng; like birds the summer boughs among; waking soft Echo from her cell, deep hid within the bosky dell, where ever with head declining, for her lost Narcissus pining, she loveth alone to dwell. And now the listening

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