СНАР. І.

My mother was a De Trevor. I think, if her pure and gentle soul could have entertained such a passion as pride, it would have centred solely in the fact of having in her veins blood represented by the genealogical tree as having flowed uncontaminated in a direct stream from the Conqueror, in a family, which, though no longer either wealthy or ennobled, yet cherished with a keen regard this inheritance of ancient descent.

Perhaps of all species of pride, that which glories in pedigree, has the most direct claim on the sympathies of mankind. The poor loathe pride of purse: the rich should despise it: but both equally defer to birth unblemished through the course of rolling centuries, even if its generations have been undistinguished by fame or noble deeds.

In works of fiction belonging to that old time before everybody wrote, I remember to have observed that, although the reader might be permitted to commence with the personal history of the heroine, yet he had frequently to leave that off, in order to wade through very long and tedious memoirs of several of her relations and particular friends, likewise those of many of her enemies; and by the time he had extricated himself from the difficulties of plot in which he was sure to become involved, he was apt to find, somewhere about the fourth volume, that his brain had become so bewildered by these ramifications of biographical matter, that he no longer knew" who was who;" and so to enable himself thoroughly to comprehend every circumstance, (people in those days read books to understand them, and knew nothing of the Johnsonian method of " skimming,") was com. pelled to read the whole work over again from its first chapter.

I trust I may not puzzle my readers in the like manner. If my mother's antecedents were not absolutely necessary to the explanation of my own life, he should not be troubled with them. As it is, for the sake of the integrity and clearness of my own history, I must briefly glance at them.

My maternal grandfather, Francis De Trevor, was a gentleman of good estate and large

fortune, residing not far from Teignmouth Devonshire. For the first four years of Mr. and Mrs. De Trevor's married life, my mother remained their only child. Exceedingly disappointed at having no son to perpetuate the family name, my grandfather and grandmother endeavoured to console themselves, oddly enough, by spoiling their infant daughter's temper. Her imperious babyhood swayed indeed the entire household, and she was in the fairest way of growing up proud, selfish, and thoroughly disagreeable.

In her fifth year, the arrival of the son so long wished for, changed her position. The servants, over whom she had in her infant arrogance ruled so despotically, did not fail to inform the child of this untoward circumstance. With precocious sagacity, she quickly found out that the new stranger was of the highest importance, that his wants and wishes had become paramount over her own, and that, greatly to her surprise, neither pouts, cries, nor sulks, appeared now to have any weight with her former obsequious attendants.

After all, it was a hard lesson for a spoiled child to learn, especially at so tender an age. To her mother's room, admission had been forbidden since the advent of the baby. The maids in the nursery were by no means overdelicate in the remarks they uttered in the child's presence. They indulged in vulgar jeers, telling her that her nose had been put out of joint," with other similes more comprehensive than elegant.

On the little girl's ill restrained and passionate mind, this treatment had its full effect. She understood well enough that her authority and importance had departed. Ellen, her principal attendant, especially irritated the wayward child.

This girl, who had been the chief recipient of the kicks and scratches which the presumed heiress had occasionally in her paroxysms of rage, liberally dispensed among her personal suite, gladly availed herself of an opportunity for retaliation.

One morning-such a morning as, in England at least, you rarely behold, save in Devonshire, a soft sunshiny balmy morning, perfumed with the scent of the summer's latest lingering flowers,

B

Ellen was ironing some of the delicate laces, too fragile to be trusted to the ordinary laundress, which were destined for the baby, who was peacefully slumbering in his cradle, happily unmindful of his three weeks' existence, or the adulation that awaited his waking hours.

The newly-born child was, I say, smiling in his cradle while sleeping. When my mother came into the nursery, Ellen was declaiming loudly to the other women in the room about the grand christening there was sure to be. "Much grander, miss, than yours was," she said, turning to the child, who angrily demanded to see her mamma.

"Your mamma indeed! She don't love you now; I can tell you that. See the child-a passionate little monkey, stamping and grinning. You're a plague, miss; we all know that. Look there at your good little brother. He never falls into such wicked tempers: he's a beauty, he is; not like his wicked, wicked sister, who"-Her tone changed rapidly-" My God! my God! see, quick-some of you"-Too late too late

Enraged at the nursemaid's tauntings, the child had snatched up the iron, which standing on the table was still warm. Before the other servants could understand Ellen's shriek of horror-before Ellen herself, paralyzed with fear, could interpose, Frances had hurled the sharp-pointed yet heavy missile at the infant in the cradle-hurled it with all her might, a might strengthened fatally by childish passion. Too terrible the vigour of that tiny arm! The frightened women, who expected to hear screams from the babe, were appalled at its silence. They rushed to the side of the cradle: a little blood, a wound on the tender browthese were the only signs. In that fearful moment, the infant's spirit had fled back to the heaven which had lent him to earth for so brief a time.

My power is limited in giving any adequate description of the scene that followed this catastrophe-most persons can picture it vividly to themselves. There was the infant murderess, wonder-stricken; who, having no idea of death, could not be made to understand her crime. There were the horror-fraught domestics, scarce daring to reveal the deed; the agonized father; the surgeon called in to render his useless assistance: all these regarded the poor passionate cause of this tragedy with the deepest loathing. It was the doctor who at last succeeded in conveying to my mother's mind some idea of the nature of her frantic crime. He told her that the baby would never cry again, that he

He might have been a good man, this doctor; but stern, cold, and rigidly moral, he found no excuse for the over-indulged child; neither did he sift out the real culprit, the tantalizing nursemaid. He regarded the wretched little child just as we should contemplate a Courvoisier or a Greenacre. And painting her crime thus, in the black colours in which it appeared to himself, when the poor little girl at last understood what she had really done, and was told that men and women were hanged by the neck on a gibbet till they were dead, for lesser crimes than the one she had just committed, she fell into a fit, and neither spoke nor moved for fortyeight hours.

During that time there was strong reason to hope she too, was dead. Death for her would have been a boon. But there is a law of retribution in this world, however we may obtain salvation in the next-a law as attendant on guilt, even on error, as death is on life, or sorrow on humanity! My mother's doom was to live and suffer.

My grandmother, from whom it was impossible to keep the knowledge of her bereavement, from the indiscretion of a domestic became acquainted likewise with its unhappy cause; a terrible agitation ensued, which, in her delicate condition, proved fatal to Mrs. De Trevor in the short space of a few days. Thus did her husband, who affectionately loved her, find himself bereft of wife and son, through one who had hitherto been his darling, his spoiled and petted child.

When Frances De Trevor unhappily revived to life and consciousness, she was an outcast from love, from tenderness or affection. The child never was seen to smile again; rarely indeed, when she grew up, did the girl or the woman. Unable to bear the sight of his daughter, Mr. De Trevor sent her to a retired village, many miles from her desolated home.

The curate of this village of Penrocket, and his wife, were glad to increase a very small income by educating (Mr. De Trevor said reforming) the poor little girl. Her involuntary crime had, indeed, as far as temper was concernedthe child's one great fault-worked a reformation. From the fatal moment that made her an unwitting fratricide, she became meek, mild, merciful, and gentle. She learned with avidity, for study only, could soften the agonies of her regret, or distance that shadow which henceforth darkened the whole of her life. This clergyman of Penrocket, and his partner, were kind, judicious persons; and, as she grew up, my mother's deep remorse, softened into a tender melancholy which never wholly forsook her. Education, and the intelligence that comes with years, gave her at least the consolation of knowing that her maturity was not answerable for the unpremeditated sin of her infancy.

When Miss De Trevor was twenty-one years old, she received a visit from her father's man

of business. Mr. De Trevor had neither seen nor communicated with his daughter during that long period, in which she had known none of the happiness belonging to childhood, none of the joyous buoyancy and fresh vigorous hopes of youth. Perhaps he could scarcely be blamed. He held strictly to his first resolution. The destroyer of his peace, he said, must ever be a stranger to him.

Now, his man of business came to communicate to the outcast daughter, in a severe, dry, formal manner (for he too looked on her as a criminal who had somehow undeservedly escaped punishment) the fact that her hand would be bestowed in marriage on Mr. Castlebrook, the only son of a neighbour of Mr. De Trevor, who had lately lost his father and succeeded to a small estate. This young gentleman's land joined the De Trevor estate, and I believe the match was especially desirable for the purpose of uniting the territories which would thus be rendered doubly profitable. For this reason it seemed that young Mr. Castlebrook, in compliance with a wish expressed by his deceased father, had voluntarily proposed for Miss De Trevor, fully comprehending her family position, and, on that account, terms were made so restrictive and onesided that any other family would have certainly resented such proffered alliance only as insult. But it did not appear that my grandfather viewed the proposal in any other light than as a profitable offer for an unsaleable piece of goods. His daughter was expected to consent without expostulation. She did so. She would, indeed, have implicitly agreed to any wish or command of her father. Obedience, she said, was her only expiation. Bitter, indeed, proved to be that obedience which she had to render to one who treated her, all her life-time, only as an unwelcome incumbrance to the property he was to gain by this marriage. Years after her death I learned that even in her grief and remorse she had faintly begun to indulge a dream of being beloved; but she crushed at once, with an iron hand of self-immolation, all such dear hopes, and accepted her cross, as part of that atone ment which she believed to be her sole business on earth. Her heart, and one other, alone knew the magnitude of her trial in wedding with an unknown and uncared-for individual.

On his own part, Mr. Castlebrook had disappointed such affections as he possessed, by giving up a young girl, the daughter of a tradesman who resided in the University town where this young gentleman had matriculated, and where he had also greatly distinguished himself, I fear, as a graceless spendthrift, who had already impoverished his small inheritance, and gained the reputation of being an idle and dissolute student.

I shall often in this narrative require the reader's consideration, for sometimes I may appear to forget I am writing of a father. He, alas! set me the example by often forgetting

that he was one.

Had not this marriage been arranged, I believe it had been Mr. De Trevor's intention

to have alienated the estate (unentailed) from my mother; as it was, my father consented to take the name of De Trevor before his own of Castlebrook.

The sacrifice, in due time, was achieved. My mother was married. She left kind and wellwishing friends, associations of youth and girlhood, to enter the cheerless home of one who loved her not, and abhorred the necessity of the promise which had forced him to take her for a wife. Somewhere about the same time, a marriage, not unsimilar, was contracted in a Royal House, the result being to both wives alike-oppression, insult, and injury!

CHAP. II.

When I was ten years old, being her only child, her solace, and her companion, my dear mother related to me this her sad history. I, too, had given proofs that I possessed a quick and irritable temper, which required the most judicious restraint to prevent it from marring for life my happiness. With no words, save those of love, did she ever correct me. From those dear lips I never heard a harsh sentence. This gentleness was a great mercy to me; for, from my father, whenever he was compelled to address me, I received nothing but roughness and severity.

I am well assured that my mother endured the agony of this confession to an only and adoring child simply as a penance. She might have even anticipated that the daughter, who was the sole tie binding her to earth, would testify towards her a hatred excited by this account of her infant fratricide; but I loved her too dearly, and besides, I could in no manner connect my dear grown-up, gentle parent, with the picture of the passionate little creature whom she pourtrayed. Young as I was, the strongest impression which remained on my mind was that Ellen, the nursemaid, should herself have been hanged for teazing my mamma into a passion. I remember asking my mother what became of this girl; but she answered that she only knew that she had been discharged from my grandfather's service after the sad event, which had chiefly been brought about by her own mischievous and aggravating disposition.

Many things come crowding on my memory as I write; pictures of my own childish lifetrifles perhaps, but which serve as landmarks to recall those days when, if I had a stern, disdainful father, I had that precious treasure, a tender, loving mother to weep with me, to soothe and console me in every little trial and sorrow. I know, too, now, that all love is feeble compared with the affection of a parent towards a child. I can think of myself, at one time, as a little creature in a black frock-worn, I believe, for my grandfather; and the notion I retain of myself in this costume is strengthened by the recollection of a little picture in water colours, done by my mother herself, wherein I

am represented as coming from an ascent down towards the picture-frame, with my short black frock caught up in my hands, and filled with roses, displaying rather a robust pair of legs, clothed in white socks and sandalled shoes. I think, too, now, what an emblem of my future this picture was-such a heap of black, and but few flowers, those few doomed early to wither, leaving behind only their thorns.

Ever since my birth my parents had resided in London. Mr. Castlebrook had pleasures and society apart from his wife. I can still recall our walks in the Green Park, near which our house was situated. I remember being taken by my nurse to some fair or merry-making held in the park, when the woman, to please me, put me on the back of an apparently quiet cow, who, belying her placid appearance, set off with me at a trot. I feel my fright again, just as I felt it when this dreadful monster eloped with me, as I believed, to certain and instant destruc

tion.

Again I am a lonely child, playing in a large empty garret at the top of our house, having all my toys there, and falling in whirlwinds of passion at little obstacles in my play. I can see myself (uproarious in my mirth) frozen by an unexpected Presence, one which always frowned upon me, angrily bidding those about, to take

me away.

I hear again my mother's low sobs, as I mingle my tears with hers, at some harshness, some dreadful rebuke, and I behold myself in total darkness, seated in her chamber, which looked on the street, gazing out of win dow through my tears at the lamps, and wondering if the rays round them resembled the glory which I had seen in certain holy pictures. I recall, I say, all these things, and, shuddering, wonder if I feel most terror or grief for those days, now dimly looming in the far-off distance of the irrevocable past.

Once more I am a fair-haired, blue-eyed child, standing by my mother's knee, patiently surmounting the difficulties of my alphabet, and coaxing her afterwards to read some child's book, while I reposed luxuriously on a sofa, she by my side. In this manner I was brought through many of my childish disorders. I can recall, too, with exquisite delight, my joy, when my mother, who received a very inadequate allowance quarterly, took me out with her, shopping. Again, in idea, I visit the delicious bazaars, all smelling so delightfully of wax-dolls, scent, new toys, and gift-books. Again I go home, laden with the choicest treasures. I see once more the pictures in my new story-books, and listen to my mother's expounding of them. "Industry and Idleness" was one-a book with a very large folding lithograph, representing the heroines in two compartments-Idleness lolling about, all rags, at an untidy cottage-door; Industry, well attired, going virtuously to market. I remember the deep interest I took in the fortunes of these children, as well as in a relation of how Industry invested savings, the produce of making pincushions with pieces of silk, mu

nificently bestowed by some lady patroness-a means of acquiring riches which fired my imagination, and which I should have immediately put into practice but for two impediments; one being want of materials, the other want of purchasers, supposing I had created a supply of goods for the pincushion market. To this day I have occasional twinges of remorse at not having devoted more time to pincushionmaking. Then I had, too, the "Arabian Nights," and, when I could read them for myself, fairy-tales; and crowning glory, on one happy birthday, the "Vicar of Wakefield "himself, bound as I have never seen him bound since, and probably never shall again-in red calf-skin, a kind of maroon red, soft and glossy to the touch, and soothing to the eye, with beautiful woodcuts over each chapter, representing interesting phases of the sorrows and trials of dear Doctor Primrose-sorrows impressed then on my heart, and never, no, never, to be effaced.

After these books followed "Philip Quarl," "Robinson Crusoe," and stories by Maria Edgeworth, who, I read the other day in a review, is entirely forgotten now as a writer, and deservedly so. I wonder if that sapient critic ever derived the pleasure from "Harrington and Ormond," from those many delightful stories by her pen, that lent a charm to my young days! Hardly, or common gratitude must have interfered, and suppressed so cruel a judgment, one which will be contradicted by each rising generation till fiction is no more a means of teaching or being taught. Such, then, were the books which formed my friends and companions, my sole playfellows. Luckily these remain, and mothers and fathers can procure them for the children still; but a new race has sprung up, pushing the child's good literature aside-a race more fraught with brain than heart. Fairy tales are regarded with contempt and ill-concealed mistrust: the 'ologies lie concealed in the ambush of some clumsy story, and spring on the little reader unawares, like those black figures which in my youth were made to spring up out of French snuff-boxes, when the unwary took a pinch of rappee. Science has usurped the throne occupied by Sindbad the Sailor, and the burden of carrying the Old Man of the Sea was nothing, compared to the millstones of knowledge we hang about the tender necks of our children, By-and-by, there will be no children's books; neither will there be any children—a state we are fast sinking into! We shall all be born, Minerva-like, with the helmet and shield of knowledge ready developed.

Advancing in age, sometimes I crept into my father's library during his absence, and, unseen, devoured some of the romantic lore I found there. The Great Magician had not then arrived, and some sad trash of the newlyestablished Minerva-school was there; but there were many excellent books, and silently I fed upon this miscellaneous food; and my mind was neither starved nor corrupted, although I

sometimes pored as often over Beaumont and Fletcher's pages, or Boccaccio's " Decameron," as over the One-handed Monk," and stuff of that kind—less deleterious, be it observed, than kindred books of these days, which if more talented, are also even more vicious and enervating.

I review all these phases of my child-life silently, and see myself out of the black frocks, arrayed in one of scarlet cloth quilted broadly at the hem, with satin quilting.

Time at these

Then intervened periods spent at the sea-side Margate I believe, or Ramsgate. places passed but unpleasantly, for my father went with us, and instead of our large London house, we had narrow confined lodgings; so that my mother and I felt under great restraint, and experienced much difficulty in demeaning ourselves entirely to Mr. Castlebrook's satisfaction. We seemed always too noisy or too silent, too bold or too fearful to please my father. These things, mingled with reminiscences of terror at being bathed by a very corpulent female-a personage to this day inseparable, in my mind, from a watering place-who, I was persuaded, had a secret design to drown me, with visions of immense prawns, which we ate at breakfast every morning, combined with star-fish gatherings, and shells and sea-weed, seem to close in my childhood's scenes. After these things an interval of darkness succeeds in memory, and then my mind seems suddenly to have expanded, and I find myself reflecting with much satisfaction that in four more years I shall be fifteen, and therefore quite a woman.

It was not long after I had arrived at this conclusion, that I suffered the first misfortune of my life I lost my own dear mother. Even now I can scarce bear to dwell on the details of her death. I saw not-for I was too young and inexperienced-and no one else cared to see, that she was daily fading away. Doubtless the tortures of her sensitive spirit, ever ill at ease with itself, had sown in the body the seeds of that decay, which caused her early and premature death.

I stood by her, one day, my arms round her neck, whispering little prophecies that she would soon be quite well, and able to go for our usual walks. She made no answer, but kissed me long and tenderly, solemnly blessing me as her consolation here, and charged me to look forward to a happy meeting hereafter. That blessing still lingers in my ears, as plainly as when it trembled on her pale lips, and she dropped her head on my neck. How heavy that dear head felt! Thinking my mother had fainted I screamed for assistance. They tried to take me away from her, but I resisted and clung still closer. Then roughly and without any soothing preparation, they told me the truth. I heard no more, long after that: I was insensible for many hours. The tender guardian who watched my least indisposition was taken from me. No one else cared if I lived or died. A doctor was sent for, and I was left with a

hired nurse, to be well or ill, sustained or sinking, as I and nature thought proper.

When next I saw my mother, there was only a waxen form folded in white raiment, whose icy lips repelled even the awed kiss of a child's love. Death to me was a sight so strange and terrible, that, when I met him for the first time face to face, the dread mysterious visitor seemed with his ghastly inexorable presence to long and weary time. When I recovered all turn my brain. I became ill again-ill for a

was over. A vault in St. George's Church hid from my sight for ever, all traces of one so sorrowful and so deeply loved. They told me she had died of heart complaint, and remembering her sufferings, I can easily believe it.

CHAP. III.

The actual commencement of life I date from the period of my mother's death: I mean the struggle we must all go through in this probationary state. Behold me launched without the pilot Affection to guide my frail bark; no helm, no rudder, no land-mark, save the good principles I had gathered as I stood by my mother's knee.

Yet, many trees, carefully trained, fenced round, guarded from malevolent winds, disappoint those who, with skill and patience, have undertaken to rear them, in the belief that so watched, so sheltered from ill, and from contaminating touch, the young plants must grow straight, and tall, and strong; and then, behold !-no one knows how or why-they become suddenly gnarled, knotted, warped, dwarfish, and barren; while others, left to the free winds of heaven, exposed to the storm, scorched by the sun, prostrated by the shower, arrive at maturity erect, sturdy, strong; apt perhaps to bend before a blast too searching, but never breaking; bearing in due season leaves, buds, flowers, and fruit. Who shall say how these things are guided? Who shall say what is education or what is not? When the great truth, that it is the heart and not the head which needs careful cultivation, is believed and acted upon, we shall perhaps know. The hotbed of intellect, in producing flowers ere the tender plant has put forth a leaf, withers it, dries up its sap and vigour, causes it to perish even at the very roots.

Save my father, I had the singularity of possessing no relatives. My mother's decease rendered her family totally extinct; her own father and mother having been only children. My father, too, had been the sole child of his parents; I had therefore no near connexions to make up so far as such a loss could be made up, for my bereavement. Thus circumstanced, on entering my twelfth year, I found myself literally alone, deprived of kindness and sympathy. I wonder now that my heart did not harden. That I escaped this worst of fates, was owing only to the fact that my dear mother had