"The same and success to the poem !"

Cooper was huddled up before the fire. He would be here likely enough on Christmas Eve. Here! whilst outside and all around him, green and holly would be carried about, and mistletoe hung up, and not unwilling maidens be kissed beneath its proprietydispelling favour. Here! whilst merry fires would blaze out, yielding only in brightness to the happy human faces. Here! whilst children would be singing carols of the Saxon days, and praying God-spede at the jovial Christmas-tide. Here! perhaps the only inhabitant, that eve, of this spot, which the most persistent lawyer had abandoned; hearing no chimes, listening to no carols, receiving no peace on earth," brooding over his own

utter, irremediable wretchedness, eating into his own heart, sleepless, companionless!

VOL. I.

L

Edgar took his hand, and begged him to leave London.

"You see I am calm," he answered; 66 perhaps I cannot be said to suffer. I am numb, I barely feel. I sit here, not even thinking, but merely sitting here: it is enough. If you took me away, and made my pulse hasten on again, and showed me what others are doing, grief would return-bitter, active, resistless grief, violent as you once saw it-grief I cannot bear."

Edgar was at sea. He had exhausted his inventive generosity; he could do, could suggest, nothing more. He must bow his head to that God who had, if so fearfully, yet so justly smitten Cooper for his sins; and trust and pray that the lost one might yet be found, love renewed, and vengeance satisfied!

CHAPTER VIII.

"One

Whom to gaze on was to love."

Locksley Hall.

"These are good rhymes."

MR. POPE to his Son.

FAIRFORT PARK was full of visitors when Edgar arrived, in accordance with his promise, to spend there his Christmas. Frank had done his best to prepare for him a reputation—a doubtful sort of kindness, after all; since it only raises expectations which are generally too great not to be disappointed. He had brought with him the first copy of

his poem, which he presented to Miss Fairfort. The general curiosity about its merits prevented the possibility of her at present perusing it; and it was finally demanded with a unanimous voice, that Edgar should read it in full conclave. If there was one thing he usually avoided more sedulously than another, it was reading aloud his own compositions; but refusal was out of the question, and evasion equally impossible. So he gave way with as good a grace as he could well As a matter of course, he received little but the most undiscriminating praise, which he was wise enough not to value over highly; and all the flattery here bestowed was, I fear, completely wasted, with the exception of one little tear which, at the close of a canto, he saw, or fancied he saw, glisten from the drooping eyelid of Miss Fairfort. Yet he would, I think, have made some con

assume.

siderable sacrifice not to have seen that innocent tear which, be it confessed, was not alone in that company, where she was not the sole sensitive listener. For that tear only strengthened the more a feeling he was bent on combating. No sooner had he again come across this young lady than, to his intense annoyance, he felt very much as he had felt that autumn afternoon, two months ago, when he had walked home with her in the blaze of sunset. The house was, as I have said, full of guests; so there had not passed between them one single word but had been spoken in the presence and hearing of at least a dozen witnesses. Yet, the being in the same neighbourhood as this beautiful and high-born girl somehow stirred up sensations, which he would not allow to be those of incipient fondness, but which he was obliged to confess, were they not such, he was