.... repeating her additions; being eager to prove her claim to the confidence of her new mistress. "But are you sure that she is really gone from the door?"" To be sure, Miss."-" Still, I wish you could go and see; because we have not seen her pass the window, though we heard the door shut."" Dear me, Miss, how should you? for I looked out after her, and I saw her go down the street under the windows, and turn.. yes,-I am sure that I saw her turn into a shop. However, I will go and look, if you desire it." She did so; and certainly saw nothing of the dreaded guest. Therefore, her young ladies finished their preparations, devoid of fear. But the truth was, that the girl, little aware of the importance of this unwelcome lady, and concluding she could not be a friend, but merely some troublesome nobody, showed her contempt and her anger at being detained so long, by throwing to the street door with such violence, that it did not really close; and the old lady, who had ordered her carriage to come for her at a certain hour, and was determined, on second thoughts, to sit down and wait for it, was able, unheard, to push open the door, and to enter the library unperceived;-for the girl lied to those who bade her lie, when she said that she saw her walk away. In that room Mrs Atheling found a sofa; and though she wondered at seeing a large skreen opened before it, she seated herself on it, and, being fatigued with her walk, soon fell asleep. But her slumber was broken very unpleasantly; for she heard, as she awoke, the following dialogue, on the entrance of Cecilia and her lover, accompanied by Fanny. "Well-I am so glad we got rid of Mrs Atheling so easily!" cried Cecilia. "That new girl seems apt. Some servants deny one so as to show one is at home."-"I should like them the better for it," said Fanny. "I hate to see any one ready at telling a falsehood."-" Poor little conscientious dear!" said the lover, mimicking her, "one would think the dressed-up saint had made you as methodistical as herself." "What, suppose, Miss Fanny, you would have had us let the old quiz in."—"To be sure I would; and I wonder you could be denied to so kind a friend. Poor dear Mrs Atheling! how hurt she would be, if she knew you were at home!"-" Poor dear, indeed! Do not be so affected, Fanny. How should you care for Mrs Atherling, when you know that she dislikes you!"-" Dislikes me! Oh yes; I fear she does!"" I am sure she does," replied Cecelia ; " for you are downright rude to her. Did you not say, only the day before yesterday, when she said, There, Miss Barnwell, I hope I have at last gotten a cap which you like,-No; I am sorry to say you have not?"-" To be sure I did; -I could not tell a falsehood, even to please Mrs Atheling, though she was my own dear mother's dearest friend.""Your mother's friend, Fanny! I never heard that before;" said the lover. "Did you not know that, Alfred!" said Cecilia; eagerly adding, "but Mrs Atheling does not know it;" giving him a meaning look, as if to say, "and do not you tell her."-" Would she did know it!" said Fanny mournfully, "for though I dare not tell her so, lest she should abuse my poor mother, as you say she would, Cecilia, because she was so angry at her marriage with my misguided father, still I think she would look kindly on her once dear friend's orphan child, and like me, in spite of my honesty." "-" No, no, silly girl; honesty is usually its own reward. Alfred, what do you think? Our old friend, who is not very penetrating, said one day to her, I suppose you think my caps too young for me; and that true young person replied, Yes, Madam, I do."- "And would do so again, Cecilia ;-and it was far more friendly and kind to say so than flatter her on her dress, as you do, and then laugh at her when her back is turned. I hate to hear any one mimicked and laughed at; and more especially my mamma's old friend."-" There, there, child! your sentimentality makes me sick. But come; let us begin."-"Yes," cried Alfred, "let us rehearse a little, before the rest of the party come. I should like to hear Mrs Atheling's exclamations, if she knew what we were doing. She would say thus:". . . . Here he gave a most accurate representation of the poor old lady's voice and manner, and her fancied abuse of private theatricals, while Cecilia cried, " bravo! bravo!" and Fanny "shame! shame!" till the other Livingstones, and the rest of the company, who now entered, drowned her cry in their loud applauses and louder laughter. had The old lady, whom surprise, anger, and wounded sensibility, hitherto kept silent and still in her involuntary hiding-place, now rose up, and, mounting on the sofa, looked over the top of the skreen, full of reproachful meaning, on the conscious offenders! What a moment, to them, of overwhelming surprise and consternation! The cheeks, flushed with malicious triumph and satirical pleasure, became covered with the deeper blush of detected treachery, or pale with fear of its consequences;-and the eyes, so lately beaming with ungenerous injurious satisfaction, were now cast with painful shame upon the ground, unable to meet the justly indignant glance of her, whose kindness they had repaid with such palpable and base ingratitude! "An admirable likeness indeed, Lawrie," said their undeceived dupe, breaking her perturbed silence, and coming down from her elevation; "but it will cost you more than you are at present aware of.-But who art thou?" she added, addressing Fanny (who though it might have been a moment of triumph to her, felt and looked as if she had been a sharer in the guilt,) "Who art thou, my honourable, kind girl? And who was your mother?"—" Your tears. Fanny Beaumont," replied the quick-feeling orphan, bursting into "Fanny Beaumont's child! and it was concealed from me!" said she, folding the weeping girl to her heart. "But it was all of a piece; all treachery and insincerity, from the beginning to the end. However, I am undeceived before it is too late." She then disclosed to the detected family her generous motive for the unexpected visit; and declared her thankfulness for what had taken place, as far as she was herself concerned; though she could not but deplore, as a christian, the discovered turpitude of those whom she had fondly loved. .... "I have now," she continued, "to make amends to one whom I have hitherto not treated kindly; but I have at length been enabled to discover an undeserved friend, amidst undeserved foes. . . . My dear child," added she, parting Fanny's dark ringlets, and gazing tearfully in her face, "I must have been blind, as well as blinded, not to see your likeness to your dear mother. Will you live with me, Fanny, and be unto me as a DAUGHTER ?"—"Oh, most gladly!" was the eager and agitated reply." You artful creature!" exclaimed Cecilia, pale with rage and mortification, "you knew very well she was behind the skreen." "I know that she could not know it," replied the old lady; " and you, Miss Livingstone, assert what you do not yourself believe. But come, Fanny, let us go and meet my carriage; for, no doubt, your presence here is now as unwelcome as mine." But Fanny lingered, as if reluctant to depart. She could not bear to leave the Livingstones in anger. They had been kind to her; and she would fain have parted with them affectionately; but they all preserved a sullen, indignant silence, and scornfully repelled her advances.-" You see that you must not tarry here, my good girl," observed the old lady, smiling; "so let us depart." They did so; leaving the Livingstones and the lover, not deploring their fault, but lamenting their detec-. tion;-lamenting also the hour when they added the lies of CONVE NIENCE to their other deceptions, and had thereby enabled their unsuspecting dupe to detect those falsehoods, the result of their avaricious fears, which may be justly entitled the LIEs of interest. MRS OPIE. IV. K TIME has but touched, not sealed in gloom The same deep stream which tossed of yore By marble halls and holy groves. Yet on its mount, the pillared shrine Rich with the spoils which war translates, The plunder of a thousand states, The scene where Junius Brutus shook And smiled on liberty restored And here the Rostrum, at whose foot As Pity dropt, or Passion flung On marble pedestals abide, With gods that make the skies their home, Heaves into heaven. With shout and song, As rushing cars urge cars along, And still commanding, though their hour Looks back on Rome, and grandly dies. Romulus and Remus.--See Plutarch. WIFFEN. ENSIGN O'DONOGHUE'S "FIRST LOVE." WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. ENORMOUS READER! were you ever in Clare castle! 'Tis as vile a hole in the shape of a barrack-as odious a combination of stone, mortar, and rough-cast, as ever the King-God bless him!-put a regiment of the line into. There is most delightful fishing out of the windows charming shooting at the sparrows that build in the caves of the houses, and most elegant hunting. If you have a ter rier, you may bag twenty brace of rats in a forenoon. If a person is fond of drawing, he has water scenery above the bridge, and water scenery below the bridge, with turf-boats and wild ducks, and two or three schooners with coals, and mud in abundance when the tide is out, and beautiful banks sloping to the water, with charming brown potato gardens and evergreen furze bushes. When tired of this combination of natural beauties, you may turn to the city of Clare, luxuriant in dung and pigs, and take a view of the Protestant schoolhouse without a roof, and the parish clergyman's handsome newly white-washed kennel-by the same token, his was the best pack of hounds I ever saw-and the priest's neat cottage at the back of the public-house, where the best potteen in the country was to be had. Then in the distance is not to be seen the neighbouring abbey of Quin, which presents splendid remains of Gothic architecture; but I can only say from what I have heard, as the hill of Dundrennan happens to intervene between our citadel and the abbey. Ennis, too, in the distance, I am told, would be a fine maritime town, if it had good houses and was nearer the sea, and had trade and some respectable people in it, and a good neighbourhood. Mr O'Connell thinks a canal from it to Clare would improve it—and I think the "tribute money" might be advantageously laid out in shares in the said canal. This is only a surmise of my own, judging of what I saw from my barrack-window in Clare castle-for, during the six blessed weeks I spent there, from five o'clock on Ash Wednesday evening, till six o'clock on Good Friday morning, my nose, which is none of the longest, never projected its own length beyond the barrack-gate. The reason of my not visiting the chief city of Clareshire was also sufficient to prevent me exploring the remains at Quin: and was simply this Colonel Gauntlet had given positive orders to Captain Vernon, who commanded the company, not to permit Ensign O'Donoghue, on any pretence, to leave the castle. I was a lad of about seventeen then, and had but a short time be fore got a commission in the Royal Irish, by raising recruits-which |