nion drew him still closer towards her; her nature rose grander and grander in the opinions of his dark soul, from the very fiendishness of its attributes.

"I am sure of its work," she continued. "Unlimited wealth, unquestioned freedom is in our grasp, so you but play up to my intentions. My brothers think they are ruling me as they would a wayward girl: how terrible will be my retribution!"

"I have much to tell you, Marie, of my own plans," said Gaudin ; "but it cannot be here. If those whom you have alluded to fall, others must go with them. We cannot pause in our career."

"There is one that I have marked as the earliest," returned the Marchioness. "I know not how it will affect your own feelings: in this instance I care not."

Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she spoke, and her rapidity of utterance became mingled with her hurried but irregular respiration. An expression passed across her face of mingled triumph and satisfaction, whilst the fingers of her hand were quickly working one over the other.

"And who is that, Marie?" asked Gaudin, his curiosity aroused by the manner of the Marchioness.

"The pale-faced girl, whose acquaintance with yourself I became so unluckily acquainted with in the grotto of Thetis—your Languedocian leman-Louise Gauthier."

"She must not be injured!" exclaimed Sainte-Croix hurriedly.

"She must die!" replied the Marchioness, with cold but determined meaning. "She loves you, and you may still care for her. You must be mine, and mine alone, Gaudin; your affections may not be participated in by another."

"All has finished between us, Marie! You are wrong-utterly wrong in your suspicions. You surely will not harm a poor girl like Louise ?"

"Gaudin!" exclaimed his companion, fixing her glance on him with that intense expression, against the influence of which SainteCroix's determination could not prevail, "when we have fallen,— step by step, hour by hour,-and each time irrevocably, to all appearance, until a fresh abyss, yawning beneath our presence, disclosed a still lower hell open to receive us,-when the sympathies of the world have turned away from us to cling to fresh objects, in their parasitical attachment to the freshest and most plausible support; and our hopes and fears are merged into one blank feeling of careless determination by utter despair,-when all is given up, here and hereafter,-in such positions it is not likely that we should pause in the career marked out to be pursued by any sentiment of justice or consideration. I am determined."

There was the silence of some minutes after she had spoken, broken only by the laboured breathing of either party, or the drip of water, as, stealing through the walls from the river, it fell upon the noisome floor. Each was waiting for the other to speak. SainteCroix was the first to break the pause. He knew that further allusion to Louise Gauthier would induce fresh recrimination,—that Marie would believe no protestation on his part that the attachment was over,—and that by boldly bearding her, in her present access of jealousy, the utter destruction of the poor girl would be hastened. He therefore endeavoured to turn the subject of their conversation into another channel.

"Where is your brother?" he asked. "You can act as you please towards the other person, as you appear to be beyond conviction from anything I can urge. François is at present the most important object for our vigilance. Is he in Paris?"

"He is not," replied the Marchioness. "Both my brothers are at Offemont, arranging the distribution of the effects about the estate. They will remain there for some days, and then depart to Villequoy. Fortunately François has discharged one of his servants, and is compelled to look after many of his affairs himself, the superintendence of which would otherwise fall to his valet."

"Is he anxious to supply the place of the domestic ?" inquired Gaudin eagerly.

"He is now looking out for some one. But why are you thus curious?"

"Because I have a creature in my employ-one who dares scarcely call his life his own, unless by my permission, who might fill the post with advantage."

"I do not see what we could gain by that," observed the Marchioness.

"He might wait upon his master at table," said Gaudin, "and pour out his drink."

He regarded his companion with fixed intensity as he threw out the dark hint contained in his last words.

"But would there be no suspicion?" asked Marie. "None," replied her lover. the secret close as the grave. bashed presence, that would ought to know it."

66

"For his own sake, he would keep He has a ready wit, too, and an unacarry him through any dilemma. I

Hist!" cried Marie; "there is a noise in the passage. overheard."

We are

"It is nothing," said Sainte-Croix. "The night-wind rushing along the passages has blown-to some of the doors."

The Marchioness had gone to the entrance of the salle, and looked along the vaulted way that led to it. A door at the upper end was distinctly heard to close.

"I heard retreating footsteps!" she exclaimed rapidly, as she returned. "There have been some eavesdroppers, I tell you."

"Pshaw !" replied Gaudin; "who would come down here? It might be Philippe Glazer, who brought me into the hospital, and is anxious to know how much longer our interview is to last."

"He does not know me?" inquired the Marchioness, in a tone that led up to the answer she desired.

"He knows nothing, beyond that I have some idle affair with a religieuse. Pardieu ! if every similar gallantry was taken notice of in Paris, the newsmongers would have enough to do."

"However," said Marie, "it is time that we departed. I must go back to my dreary home."

And she uttered the last words in a tone of well-acted despondency, as she prepared to depart.

Stay, Marie!" cried Gaudin.

"You have said that your brothers are at Offemont; who else have you to mind? There is a réunion of all the best that Paris contains of life and revelry in the Rue des Mathurins this evening. You will go with me?"

"It would be madness, Gaudin. The city would ring with the scandal to-morrow morning."

"You can mask," returned Sainte-Croix, "and so will I. I shall be known to all I care about, and those I can rely on. Marie! you

will come?"

He drew a visor from his cloak as he spoke, and held it towards the Marchioness. The necessity for sudden concealment in the affairs of gallantry of the time, made such an article part of the appointments of both sexes.

Marie appeared to waver for an instant; but Gaudin seized her hands, and whispered a few low, but intense and impassioned words closely in her ear, as though he now mistrusted the very air that, damp and thickened, clung around them. She pulled the white hood over her face, and, taking his arm, they quitted the dismal chamber in which this strange interview had taken place.

No notice was taken of them as they left the hospital. The porter was half asleep in his huge covered settle, still holding the cord of the door in his hand, and he pulled it open mechanically as they passed. On reaching the open space of the Parvis Notre Dame, Sainte-Croix hailed a voiture de remise – a clumsy, ill-fashioned thing, but still answering the purpose of those who patronized it, more especially as there was but a small window on either side, and that of such inferior glass, that the parties within were doubly private.

They crossed the river by the Petit Pont, and proceeded first to the Rue des Bernardins, where Sainte-Croix's apartments were situated. Here the Marchioness left the dress of the sisterhood, in which she had visited the hospital, and appeared in her own rich garments; the other having been merely a species of domino with which she had veiled her usual attire. The coach then went on by the Rue des Noyers towards the hôtel indicated by Gaudin.

"This is a wild mad action, Gaudin," said the Marchioness. "If it should be discovered, I shall be indeed lost."

"There is no chance of recognition," replied Sainte-Croix, as he assisted his companion to fasten on her mask. ed us."

"No one has track

"I am not so certain of that," said Marie. My eyes have deceived me, or else I have seen, each time we passed a lamp, a figure following the coach, and crouching against the walls and houses. See! there it is again!"

As she spoke, she wiped away the condensed breath upon the windows with her mantle, and called Gaudin's attention to the

street.

"who is keeping

"There!" she cried: "I still see the same figure-tall and dark -moving after us. I cannot discern the features." "It is but some late passenger," said Gaudin, near our carriage for the safety of an escort. are in the centre of the cut-purse students."

You must recollect we

The coach turned round the corner of the Rue des Mathurins as he spoke, crossing the Rue St. Jacques, and halfway along the street stopped at a porte cochère, which was lighted up with unusual brightness. The door was opened, and, as Gaudin assisted the Marchioness to alight, both cast a searching glance along the narrow street in either direction; but, excepting a lacquey attached to the Hôtel de Clugny, where they now got down, not a person was visible.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

A LITERARY RETROSPECT BY A MIDDLE-AGED MAN.

As I recall to mind the eminent men whom I have known, a form arises at my beckoning, stands beside me, leans on my chair. He is not old: the shrunken limbs, the hose a world too wide, the feeble voice, the wreck of a face, the wreck of a mind, denote not age. It is not age;-can it be care? Yes; age has come before its time. Beneath that brown wig, assumed in compliance with a bygone custom, happily discarded (for grey hair and bald heads are now recognized), small, regular, handsome features-eyes that want nothing but light-a somewhat formal cast of physiognomy, are turned towards me. The last traces of fascination still linger on that countenance at times; but there are hours when all is confusion, all is darkness there. Peace, and oblivion to the memory of his failings!-honour to the shade of him who has bequeathed to us - not the remembrance of errors, of which none ought to estimate the extent until they have known the temptation, but the ennobling stanzas of "Hohenlinden," "The Soldier's Dream," "The Mariners of England," the "Gertrude of Wyoming," "The Pleasures of Hope."

--

Thomas Campbell, whose image memory thus calls to my mind's eye, was the son of a Scotch clergyman somewhere in the north of Caledonia, and where his future biographer will doubtless inform us. Of his early fortunes I have heard much from one who knew him well, when both the poet and my informant were climbing up the ascent to fame, with very small refreshment by the way. But the stern selfdenial of the Scot knows no obstacles; and he can, like the camel, subsist upon food at longer intervals than other creatures. Campbell went first to college at Glasgow; but at the time that his old friend knew him he was transcribing, for a consideration, in a writer's office in Edinburgh. There, also, he studied medicine; or rather he attended the medical classes, and supported himself by his transcribing, whilst he was pursuing the path to science. Resembling, in this respect, another great man, Sir James Mackintosh, he had, in choosing medicine, mistaken his vocation. Sir James Mackintosh also began life as a student of medicine, and obtained the title of Doctor. It is reported of him, by a brother debater of the "Speculative," in Edinburgh, that on one occasion he made so eloquent an harangue on one of the subjects which were assigned to him, that the assembled listeners were entranced with wonder. "Mr. Mackintosh," observed one of the judges who was present to him, you have mistaken your profession: it should have been the law." The student took the hint, and the result is known to have justified the comment. Mackintosh, nevertheless, retained, all his life, a love of medicine as a pursuit; he not unfrequently spoke of it to practitioners in terms of scientific accuracy; and he was fond of conversing upon the subject,

And what, may and will be asked by English readers, was the Speculative Society? It was a debating society, established in 1764, composed of selected students of the University of Edinburgh, and an admission into its choice number was deemed an honour, and has al

VOL. XVIII.

C

ways since established a man's pretensions to a degree of attainment and of reputation in his day. The list of members in the annals of the Speculative comprises the great names of Dugald Stewart, of Robertson, of Sir Walter Scott, of Jeffrey, Brougham, Francis Horner, Lord Dudley, Lord Lansdowne, and countless others. In its meetings ambition was excited, talent developed, and character strengthened by commerce of mind with mind. Many an orator, who has since delighted and edified mankind, was trained in the Speculative.

Campbell was poor; but poverty in Edinburgh, at that period, did not entail the solitude of the shabby lodging, or the exclusion from all that was cheerful and intellectual. In its suppers, now declining even in Edinburgh, the Scotch of the metropolis had retained a custom, perhaps originally borrowed from the French, whose language and whose cookery are still to be traced among a people, as different to their Gallic neighbours as the stately head of Benvenue is to the Champs Elysées, After a day of writing, varied by attendance at the medical classes, Campbell was in the habit of visiting at the house of a lady, then a milliner in Edinburgh. Smile not, reader ;—this milliner was indeed a lady of an ancient Scottish lineage, and of undoubted respectability. It was, in former days, by no means uncommon for English families of respectability to place their portionless daughters in business; for education was not the profitable avocation which it has since become. In Scotland it was still more frequently the case. The pride of even noble Scottish families, strange to say, was not compromised by having relations in business. Even I can remember wedding-dresses being made for a female relation of mine by the Misses D, who were connected, and that closely, with the noble houses which glory in their ancient name; and these excellent and respected ladies were visited by their proud kinsfolk, and regarded with a consideration that did credit to both the great and the humble. A word more about milliners. "Among all these," observed a noted lady" in business," addressing one of my sisters, who had chanced to pass the door of her workroom, and was looking at a group of poor girls, busily plying the needle, "I should say there are not two who ought to be here. Some," she added, as she passed on, "are the daughters of English clergymen, others of officers; four of them, and the best, and most patient, are the daughters of high proud Scotch families."

To prove my point still further,—a lady, whose name stands high in the literature of our country, was obliged, by adverse circumstances, to place her young daughter in one of these establishments of business. It was in those times thought the best thing that could be done; and some sacrifice of means, and abundance of fortitude on both sides, was necessary to accomplish it. For some time everything went on well ; but the ordeal was too hard-bad food, late hours, loss of air, of happiness, of home, broke the young spirit. The mother-whose name I will not tell, for those live whom the narrative may pain-came to London, in time only to see her child expire. Within my own sad experience, smile not, my sister, who may read this retrospect,-but my own experience could paint a picture scarcely less touching. Remember you, my laughing nieces, the fair Scotch girl who came, blooming as yourselves, and recommended to your notice, should she "set up for herself," to a certain fashionable modiste-I forbear to name her-in this metropolis? The girl was innocent, and humbly gay; and there were some who, knowing her family, and pitying the