doing-wonderful force of habit! His penknife was ever in his hand; and, whenever he and a pen encountered each other, the latter was sure to be the better for the meeting; so that Miss Tibby often said, "I wish the auld fule could mend his manners as weel as he mends a' the pens about him."

There was too much of the master in Grunter's eye and tone for Annie to refuse. Mr. Lindsay kindly said, "Here, Annie, I'll come and help you to get it by heart; I remember being flogged for the same verb. But we musn't disobey Mr. Grunter, you know." And for an hour the kind old man remained closeted with Annie, drumming a Latin verb into her Scotch head as one schoolboy might assist another; and so great was his idea of the importance of obeying Grunter in such cases, and so great the pupil's wish to rejoin the party, that, at the end of that time, the panting and tearful Annie conjugated the verb "amo" without a fault.

In the meanwhile, the young people in the drawing-room had been amusing themselves with music and waltzing.

Augusta had made Julian jealous by waltzing an unusually long time with De Villeneuve, and as Ellen refused to gratify his wish to retort by a protracted waltz with him, he exclaimed, "After all, I hate waltzing; I hate to see women waltz at least, I should hate to see a woman I cared for waltz."

"And yet how you have been urging me to waltz!" said Ellen, in the accent of gentle reproach.

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Ah, forgive me, Ellen, but you are like a sister to me; I look upon you as my sister quite. You are not angry?"

"Angry! oh, no;" but a tear struggled with her smile. De Villeneuve remarked it, and his brow clouded, and his eyes flashed, as he murmured to himself, "Elle l'aime !"

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Come, Julian," said Augusta," as you look upon us as sisters, I may ask you to waltz with me. Do, dear Julian!" and she joined him where Ellen had left him on the sofa.

"I never said I looked upon you as a sister," replied Julian, pale with jealousy; “but I shall not subject myself to a comparison, as a waltzer, with De Villeneuve."

"And you will not waltz with me?" said Augusta, fixing her dark eyes resentfully upon him.

"I hate waltzing; and, above all, Ellen, I hate the waltz you are playing now-there is something in it that drives me mad."

"It is mournful," said Ellen. "It is Weber's last waltz."

"Then, Ellen, darling," said Mr. Lindsay, "after my fatigues, as Annie's usher, read me the lines you wrote on that very waltz."

"Wrote !" exclaimed De Villeneuve. "Does Miss Ellen write ?"

"Do read them, Ellen dear," said Julian, anxious to make Augusta jealous. "Whatever the lines, your voice is worth all the waltzes that ever were played or danced."

"I will not disoblige my uncle," said Ellen, "else these lines are, I fear, little worth the attention of a poet like M. De Villeneuve. They were written on hearing Weber's last waltz (which, with Julian, I think very mournful), in a gay ball-room, and

remembering that it was composed on Weber's deathbed."

WEBER'S LAST WALTZ.

"Hush! hush! it is a wild, unearthly strain ;
Let it not fall unheeded on the ear;
Follow it not with glancing feet, ye vain!
In its low murmur is there nought to fear?

"To me it seems to tell of one who died;

And dying, swan-like, breathed that heavenly strain : I trace the spirit struggling in its pride,

With th'enthralling sense of earthly pain.

"Oh God! how thrilling is that last farewell!
The dying and the deathless seem to part;
The soul of harmony withdraws its spell-

The gifted ear grows dull, and stiff the hand of art.

"Ah! who can tell what fearful forms might crowd
The bed where Life and Death contested still!
What future scenes prophetic Death enshroud!
What hopeless tears the closing eyelids fill!

"Oh, at that hour when all a life's desires

Seemed aimless nothings-ghosts with flowers bedight,
And earth-born genius dwindled like the fires
Whose flames are quenched before the God of light!

"Ah! who can tell what taught his soul to twine
The self-sung knell with earth's most earthy strain—
It might be, revellers at Pleasure's shrine!

To blend the thought of death with sports so vain!

"Millions unborn might flit before his eye; He, steering fast to the eternal shore, Marks the ephemeral insects with a sigh,

And weaves a strain that warns to sport no more,

"He sees the yet unborn adorer press

The fairy waist of one, like him, unborn-
He sees him bound by woman's loveliness—
He sees and wakes each warning note to scorn.

"He sees the giddy sporting on a brink,

While gulfs of liquid fire are spread below.
His strain grows stern, for now he bids them think;
And now flows sad, as mourners' tear-drops flow.

"He knows the moments which the vain ones waste, Are coins with which eternity is bought

He knows, if stamped by virtue, they shall taste
Joys which surpass your crippled powers of thought.

"And knowing this, he sees you idlers all—
And vicious idlers many as you glide,
His strain becomes a funeral-dirge—a ball,
A living Golgotha to sons of pride."

"Thank you, my own darling," said Mr. Lindsay. "Few such pretty heads ever turned a waltz in a ball-room to such good account."

"Ellen dear, will you copy those lines for me?" exclaimed Julian. "No waltz could ever be to me the source of so much pleasure