who know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her senses are lost for ever.

As the postillion spoke this, Maria made a cadence so melancholy, so tender and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her, and found myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed from my enthusiasm.

Maria looked wishfully for sometime at me, and then at her goat-and then at me--and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately

-Well, Maria, said I softly-What resemblance do you find?

I do intreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the humblest conviction of what a beast man is,-that I asked the question; and that I would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever Rabelais scattered.

Adieu, Maria!-adieu, poor hapless damsel!

some time, but not now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips- -but I was deceived; for that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walked softly to my chaise.

SECOND PART.

WHEN We had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplarshe was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her

head leaning on one side within her hand-a small brook ran at the foot of the tree.

I bade the postillion go on with the chaise to Moulines-and La Fleur to bespeak my supperand that I would walk after him.

She was dressed in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net. She had, superadded likewise to her jacket, a pale green ribband which fell across her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe. Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she had kept tied by a string to her girdle; as I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string "Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio,' said she. I looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover or her little goat; for as she uttered them the tears trickled down her cheeks.

I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief. I then steeped it in my own-and then in hers-and then in mine-and then I wiped hers again—and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion.

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me of the contrary.

When Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt her and her goat about two years before? She said, she was unsettled

much at that time, but remembered it upon two accounts-that ill as she was the person pitied her; and next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beat him for the theft-she had washed it, she said, in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to restore it to him in case she should ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised her. As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to let me see it; she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine leaves, tied round with a tendril-on opening it, I saw an S marked in one of the corners.

She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, and walked round St. Peter's once-and returned back-that she found her way alone across the Apennines had travelled over all Lombardy without money-and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes--how she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could not tell-but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I; and wast thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it and shelter thee; thou shouldst eat of my own bread, and drink of my own cup-I would be kind to thy Sylvio-in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I would seek after thee and bring thee back-when the sun went down I would say my prayers, and when I had done, thou shouldst play thy evening song upon thy pipe, nor would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering Heaven along with that of a broken heart.

Nature melted within me, as I uttered this; and

Maria observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream.-And where will you dry it, Maria? said I-I will dry it in my bosom, said she—it will do me good.

And is your heart still so warm, Maria? said I.

I touched upon the string on which hung all her sorrows-she looked with whistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying any thing, took her pipe, and played her service to the Virgin-The string I had touched ceased to vibrate--in a moment or two Maria returned to herself-let her pipe fall-and rose up.

And where are you going, Maria? said I.—She said, to Moulines.-Let us go, said I, together.Maria put her arm within mine, and lengthening the string, to let the dog follow-in that order we entered Moulines.

Though I hate salutations and greetings in the market-place, yet when we got into the middle of this, I stopped to take my last look and last farewell of Maria.

Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of fine forms- -affliction had touched her looks with something that was scarce earthlystill she was feminine—and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman, that could the traces be ever worn out of her brain, and those of Eliza's out of mine, she should not only eat of my bread and drink of my own cup, but Maria should lie in my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter.

Adieu, poor luckless maiden!-imbibe the oil and wine which the compassion of a stranger, as he

journeyeth on his way, now pours into thy woundsthe Being who has twice bruised thee can only bind them up for ever.

Sterne.

STORY OF LA ROCHE.

MORE than forty years ago, an English philosopher, whose works have since been read and admired by all Europe, resided at a little town in France. Some disappointments in his native country had first driven him abroad, and he was afterwards induced to remain there, from having found, in this retreat, where the connections even of nation and language were avoided, a perfect seclusion and retirement, highly favourable to the developement of abstract subjects, in which he excelled all the writers of his time.

One morning, while he sat busied in those speculations, which afterward astonished the world, an old female domestic, who served him for a housekeeper, brought him word, that an elderly gentleman and his daughter had arrived in the village the preceding evening, on their way to some distant country, and that the father had been suddenly seized in the night with a dangerous disorder, which the people of the inn where they lodged feared would prove mortal: that she had been sent for, as having some knowledge in medicine, the village surgeon being then absent; and that it was truly piteous to see the good old man, who seemed not so much afflicted by his own distress, as by that which it caused to his daughter. Her master laid aside the volume in his hand, and