attained, who had deliberately executed that which no man in the country had resolution to attempt, though the whole nation wished it, and calmly given up her life for the public

weal.

I

Charlotte's examination before the revolutionary tribunal is remarkable for the dignified simplicity of her answers. shall only mention one, which deserves to be handed down to posterity.

Accused," said the President, "how happened it that thou couldst reach the heart at the very first blow? Hadst thou been practising beforehand ?"

Charlotte cast an indescribable look at the questioner.

Indignation had roused my heart," she replied, " and it showed me the way to his.'

When sentence of death was passed on her, and all her property declared forfeited to the state, she turned to her counsel, M. Chauveau Lagarde :

"I cannot, sir, sufficiently thank you," she said, " for the noble and delicate manner in which you have defended me; and I will at once give you a proof of my gratitude. I have now nothing in the world, and I bequeath to you the few debts I have contracted in my prison. Pray discharge them for me."

When the executioner came to make preparations for her execution, she entreated him not to cut off her hair.

"It shall not be in your way," she said; and taking her stay-lace she tied her thick and beautiful hair on the top of her head, so as not to impede the stroke of the axe.

In her last moments, she refused the assistance of a priest; aud upon this is founded a charge of her being an infidel. But there is nothing to justify so foul a blot upon her memory. Charlotte Corday had opened her mind, erroneously perhaps, to freedom of thought in religion as well as in politics. Deeply read in the philosophic writings of the day, she had formed her own notions of faith. She certainly rejected the communion of the Roman Church; and it may be asked whether the conduct of the hierarchy of France before the revolution was calculated to convince her that she was in error? But because she refused the aid of man as a mediator between her and God, is it just to infer that she rejected her Creator? Certainly not. A mind like hers was incapable

of existing without religion; and the very action she com mitted may justify the inference that she anticipated the contemplation, from other than earthly realms, of the happiness of her rescued country.

As the cart in which she was seated proceeded towards the place of execution, a crowd of wretches in the street, ever ready to insult the unfortunate, and glut their eyes with the sight of blood, called out :

"To the guillotine with her!"

"I am on my way thither," she mildly replied, turning towards them.

She was a striking figure as she sat in the cart. The extraordinary beauty of her features, and the mildness of her look, strangely contrasted with the murderer's red garment which she wore. She smiled at the spectators, whenever she perceived marks of sympathy rather than of curiosity, and this smile gave a truly Raphaelic expression to her countenance. Adam Lux, a deputy of Mayence, having met the cart, shortly after it left the conciergerie, gazed with wonder at this beautiful apparition-for he had never before seen Charlotte and a passion, as singular as it was deep, immediately took possession of his mind.

"Oh!" cried he, "this woman is surely greater than Brutus!"

Anxious once more to behold her, he ran at full speed towards the Palais Royal, which he reached before the cart arrived in front of it. Another look which he cast upon Charlotte Corday completely unsettled his reason. The world to him had suddenly become a void, and he resolved to quit it. Rushing like a madman to his own house, he wrote a letter to the revolutionary tribunal, in which he repeated the words he had already uttered at the sight of Charlotte Corday, and concluded by asking to be condemned to death, in order that he might join her in a better world. His request was granted, and he was executed soon after. Before he died, he begged the executioner to bind him with the very cords that had before encircled the delicate limbs of Charlotte upon the same scaffold, and his head fell as he was pronouncing her

name.

Charlotte Corday, wholly absorbed by the solemnity of her

last moments, had not perceived the effect she had produced upon Adam Lux, and died in ignorance of it. Having reached the foot of the guillotine, she ascended the platform with a firm step, but with the greatest modesty of demeanour. "Her countenance," says an eye-witnesses," evinced only the calmness of a soul at peace with itself."

The executioner having removed the handkerchief which covered her shoulders and bosom, her face and neck became suffused with a deep blush. Death had no terrors for her, but her innate feelings of modesty were deeply wounded at being thus exposed to public gaze. Her being fastened to the fatal plank seemed a relief to her, and she eagerly rushed to death as a refuge against this violation of female delicacy.

When her head fell, the executioner took it up and bestowed a buffet upon one of the cheeks. The eyes which were already closed, again opened and cast a look of indignation upon the brute, as if consciousness had survived the separation of the head from the body. This fact, extraordinary as it may seem, has been averred by thousands of eye-witnesses; it has been accounted for in various ways, and no one has ever questioned its truth.

t

Before Charlotte Corday was taken to execution, she wrote a letter to her father, entreating his pardon for having, without his permission, disposed of the life she owed him. Here the lofty-minded heroine again became the meek and submissive daughter, as, upon the scaffold, the energetic and daring woman was nothing but a modest and gentle girl.

The Mountain party, furious at the loss of their leader, attempted to vituperate the memory of Charlotte Corday, by attributing to her motives much less pure and praiseworthy than those which really led to the commission of the deed for which she suffered. They asserted that she was actuated by revenge for the death of a man named Belzunce, who was her lover, and had been executed at Caen upon the denunciation of Marat. But Charlotte Corday was totally unacquainted with Belzunce; she had never even seen him. More than that, she was never known to have an attachment of the heart. Her thoughts and feelings were wholly engrossed by the state of her country, and her mind had no leisure for

the contemplation of connubial happiness. Her life was therefore offered up in the purest spirit of patriotism, unmixed with any worldly passion.

M. Prud'homme relates, that, on the very day of Marat's death, M. Piot, a teacher of the Italian language, called upon him. This gentleman had just left Marat, with whom he had been conversing on the state of the country. The representative, in reply to some observation made by M. Piot, had uttered these remarkable words:

66

They who govern are a pack of fools. France must have a chief; but to reach this point, blood must be shed, not drop by drop, but in torrents.'

Marat," added M. Piot to M. Prud'homme, "was in his bath and very ill. This man cannot live a month longer." When M. Piot was informed that Marat had been murdered, an hour after he had made this communication to M. Prud'homme, he was stricken with a sort of palsy, and would probably have died of fright, had not M. Prud'homme promised not to divulge this singular coincidence.

To the eternal disgrace of the French nation, no monument has been raised to the memory of Charlotte Corday, nor is it even known where her remains were deposited; and yet, in the noble motive of her conduct, and the immense and generous sacrifice she made of herself, when in the enjoy ment of every thing that could make life valuable, she has an eternal claim upon the gratitude of her country.Madame Junot.

FIRST AND LAST LOVE.

First love is a pretty romance,

Though not quite so lasting as reckon'd;
For when one awakes from its trance,

There's a great stock of bliss in the second.

And e'en should the second subside,
A lover can never despair;

For the world is uncommonly wide,

And the women-uncommonly fair.
Then poets their rapture may tell,

Who never were put to the test,—

A first love is all very well,

But, believe me, the last love's the best.

THE FIRST VIOLET.

Our thoughts thread strange labyrinths, windings intricate, and mazes unknown even to the will. They are indeed the only free denizens that roam unchecked down the dark slopings which lead to the untrodden avenues of the past. They alone dare to climb the cloud-clothed battlements that look over the dim distance of the future; they see the mist, the dense gathering, the faint gold-bursting that announces sunshine, or the blackness that heralds the thunder-storm. Restless when the body sleeps, they wing away through the pale star-light of memory; they traverse dreary shores, wildernesses, desolate and wild places, peopled with the distorted shadows of wilder realities. When awake, like restive steeds, they start aside at objects that rear up on every hand, and bound away over immeasurable plains, sweeping earth, air, and sky, and even daring to heed the vapoury track over which time has hurried.

We find monitors in every thing around us. The slowpacing silvery cloud, as it glides, spirit-like, over the blue fields of heaven, brings before our eyes the white-robed idol of our youth, and we sigh to see it vanish like the object we adored. The murmuring river, sweeping along in liquid music between its willow-waving bank, rolls away like our cherished hopes, and is lost amid the forgetfulness of the ocean. Even music is heard with a sigh; though it awakens the echo of the eternal hills, it dies heavily upon the heart, like the sweet voices that have for ever faded away from our hearth. The dancing leaf falls on our foot-path, and its green beauty is soon worn away, like the happiness of childhood. Flowers wither, and friends grow cold. The hope of spring too soon bursts into the reality of summer; then comes the staid autumn, solemnly demure, and her heavy eyes are fixed upon the darkness of winter. Still there are patches of sunlight in our path-tiny glades, which no gloomy umbrage overhangs spots in the unfathomable dreariness of the forest, where we may sit down for a moment and smile ere we resume our journey through the deep solitudes.

I was born at the foot of the green hills. The silence of woods and the overhanging of antique boughs were but a little distance from my home. The song of the cuckoo often