which a woman may indeed sometimes attain in after-life, but which are commonly acquired, like her mother tongue, insensibly-as men must always have acquired when they possess

them.

The temperament of Blanche Mortimer was romantic and poetical; that is, she was born with an acute sense and perception of the morally and the physically beautiful, and with an imagination which, if it did not go the unsound length of picturing it by an hopeless inversion where it obviously is not, still fancies it wherever uncertainty leaves the possibility of its being. Without being ever ecstatic over the common-place, she could not have looked upon a vapour clothed valley without painting to herself some scene of beauty or of splendour hidden by the mist; and just so did she view the human heart and mind, with its clouded motives and inspirations; too prone to dream and imagine all that would have, charmed her own.

Just as Blanche was growing into womanhood, her uncle lost, with his declining health

his relish for society; consoled, for selfishly withholding her from it, by the reflection that, at least, it would not wean her affection from him. For he had grown very jealous of this affection, which he had reared so artificially like a hot-house seed; not, as he knew, in the natural warmth of corresponding feeling. The penetration which would have modified, on closer acquaintance with life, the notions formed in the poesy of a girl's imagination, was thus never called into activity in this retirement, which was first broken by the visits, and then by the intimacy of Mattheus. When her uncle admitted this exception, he failed to take into account the risk to the exclusive attachment which he had fostered; though if he had, he would scarcely have foregone the gratification he derived from his growing relish for the stranger's society.

Now it happened, just as in the nursery tales, where tyrannic fathers and jealous bashaws keep beautiful princesses carefully locked up, and undeviatingly veiled, that when this precaution is for one instant neglected, they are

VOL. I.

D

sure to love at the first glimpse and to be loved by, the hero of the tale; so this one exception to their solitude proved fatal to the wish of the uncle, and a source of sweet disquietude to the heart of the niece.

Blanche, with her warm and tender disposition, was exactly at the age when woman is most inclined to love. The fondness lavished on her doll, or on her greyhound, had long since given way to her attachment for her uncle, and this, which would at best scarcely have sufficed to fill her bosom even in the absence of any more natural affection, was rendered, by the utter want of sympathy between them, less than she would have felt towards any other being. Her ardent and expansive feeling recoiled instinctively before his cold and selfish cynicism. She who was in spirit so often with her ancestral Mortimers, bearding the Stuarts in their wanton prosperity, or charging beneath the desperate banner of the Cavaliers; arrayed against the tyranny of James, or gathering to the Pretender's pibroch-ruined by graceful profusion, or dying in some lady's

quarrel-men always reckless of their lives and fortunes;-she was hourly shocked by the mean and petty egotism of Ralph, so perceptible, however well concealed, because pervading the minutest actions of his life. She could not help reflecting how wide the difference between Ralph and all these illustrations of their house-Ralph, who, not content with differing from, was wont to pull them rudely from their pedestals in her imagination, by proving too provokingly the knavery and folly of which, notwithstanding his unanswerable proofs, she would have considered the conviction little short of impiety.

At this juncture, when yearning for sympathy, the eagerness to love pent up to overflowing in her enthusiastic bosom, like the overcharged electricity in a thunder-cloud, ready to flash into life, she found at once in Mattheus, enthusiasm and sympathy, and an object to love. She loved him. Seen, even without the prism of her youthful illusions, she might have done so; but viewed through it, he became the impersonator of all the heroes of her romantic dreams. He had the golden hair,

and the blue eye, and the athletic figure of the north. He was still young, though far enough beyond his boyhood to have derived from the stirring scenes and ardent passions of life, the meditative seriousness imprinted on his brow and clouding its natural serenitythe proud, yet sorrowful aspect, the gentle gravity of his demeanour, inspiring interest whilst imparting a dignity in advantageous contrast to the vivacious frivolity of the southern

men.

Mattheus was loud in his admiration, keen in his appreciation, of all that Blanche appreciated and admired. Versed in her favourite poets, he could follow her through them, and point out their beauties, where Ralph's invidious sagacity could only find out faults and flaws. Not only was the poesy, but alike the music of every nation, familiar to him; he felt and understood it; and added to this feeling and knowledge another natural gift, a deep harmonious voice. He could translate and sing to their wild accompaniments, the ballads gathered amongst the Highland palicares of Greece, or amongst the