what happiness!" no one could have deemed that Lilia was a supposed incorrigibly naughty girl who, at seventeen, was as wilful and as childish as she had been at seven, and whose last onslaught on all the authorities at home had been a determination to go with her brothers and their tutor to fish in Norway!

After a long pause, Lilia had just exclaimed, "Oh, beautiful nature! made by God alone-" when her attention was attracted by the discussion on the garden bench, respecting the two best modes of reaching the Mediterranean: and Lilia, as she listened, at one time wished she might glide on the now placid and far-famed lake before her, to the city of Geneva, thence by diligence to Lyons, and down the Rhone to Avignon-Petrarch's Avignon, to Marseilles: then preferred, and be came quite excited, to cross the Simplon, to identify the sublime scenes of the Alps, hitherto known only by books and prints ;-to descend to the lovely Lago Maggiore; to be in Italy! Oh, what delight! and then, as she lamented that they had brought with them no map or book of local reference, a youth, who also had been leaning on the low wall and imperceptibly lessening the distance between them, now approached with an elder friend, and addressing himself to the two religious ladies, requested their acceptance for the use of their young charge, of a little work, exactly such as she seemed to require. The young stranger's address was in English, but, modestly hesitating, he recapitulated it in the most perfect accent of his native French; and on the nuns expressing their regret that he should deprive himself of the little book at the very time when it would be so

useful to him, he replied, with the easy grace of his nation, that if, each time he was reminded of his trifling loss, he could hope that some passing utility or pleasure had been given to Mademoiselle, he should be more than rewarded.

The conversation continued. The youth discovered that the final destination of the English party was Rome, and announced himself to be a student in the Collegio Nobile in the Eternal City, and expecting to return thither about November, after making a tour of visits to old friends in the South of France. "So that I may hope," said he, "to see you, my reverend mothers, with your interesting charge again, at least at a distance, in Saint Peter's, or elsewhere." The two young Frenchmen then withdrew; and immediately after one of the attendants at the inn took the priest aside to inform him that a well-known and respectable vetturino, named Antonio di Brescia, being about to return from Vevey to Genoa, would take the party on reasonable terms. Lilia, full of renewed excitement, begged the senior religious, who held the newly-presented guide-book, to find the page in which that route was described; and then turned to the reverend arbitrator in breathless suspense. The religious opened the volume, but did not immediately seek the part requested. Her eye had rested on a crest and coat of arms long since familiar to her: a coronet surmounted them, and beneath was printed in italic characters the name Comte Arthur de Gréy." The nun, then closing the book, passed it to her religious sister, desired her to find for Lilia the pass of the Simplon, and remained absorbed in thought. The graceful boy who had just left

them was then the young Count de Gréy, the representative of the French branch of that family; and his existence, which had been doubted, and was a point of some importance, was now placed beyond a doubt,

The mysterious course of Divine Providence was a subject of meditation not new to the religious: but it is a theme inexhaustible, and on which she now continued to ponder, dwelling on details in the present case which were known to herself alone. She continued to admire the mysterious plan, that, having been forced from her religious seclusion to undertake a journey to Rome, hoping, among other secrets of her mission, to be rid of the responsibility of an inheritance which, in the present state of the Church in England, she had been compelled by her religious superiors to retain, she should, in spite of her own wishes, which led her to the quieter inn, have been overruled to pass the evening and night in the chief hotel of the place, and to sit in the garden instead of her room, which had hitherto been her custom on the journey. She had thus seen the last of the Counts de Gréy, of Languedoc. She had further learned that he was a student in the college of nobles in Rome, and should be enabled, through the testimony of the Jesuit fathers who governed that establishment, to ascertain whether the young Arthur were worthy to be recognised and made the possessor of an estate which the English branch of his family had held since the Norman Conquest.

The younger religious had now found the desired route in the guide-book, and Lilia read aloud that their journey would be by the head of the lake and celebrated prison of Chillon, through the valley of the Rhone to Mar

tigni, over the Simplon to Duomo d'Ossolo, and by the Lago Maggiore to Arona, Novara and Alessandria to Genoa. They were to start every morning at five o'clock, repose two hours in the heat of the day, and put up for the night at an hour, more or less, after sunset. To this they willingly agreed; and, after receiving in their quiet bower the priest's blessing, the four female travellers retired to their private devotions, and repose in their rooms.

The following morning beheld them on their destined way at the early hour appointed; looking forward to the renewal of Catholic privileges, above all to hearing mass, and receiving holy Communion, before each day's journey, blessings from which they had been debarred through the Protestant part of Switzerland that lay on their route from Basle to Vevey. They now said the Litany of our Lady aloud, and then their rosaries in silence: the young Lilia addressing her effusions of happiness to whichever of the party seemed the most at leisure to attend to her; but if no one were disposed to listen, the happy girl was equally contented with her own thoughts, having been accustomed from her infancy to be independent of the notice of others. She was one of a large family amongst whom she had been nearly overlooked. Her beauty, so striking and rare to strangers, was nearly that of all her brothers and sisters; and if, to the flaxen or light auburn hair of all the nine children, Lilia alone presented the contrast of long, dark lashes to a deep blue eye, with pencilled brows of the same dark brown, this advantage was counterbalanced in the family estimation by her paleness, which cast her in the shade, when surrounded by the bright colouring of the rest, particularly of her eldest

twin sisters, who were called "the Rosebuds of the Valley."

These pretty Rosebuds were also very happy creatures. They were the eldest children of their fond parents, the Reverend Edmund Sinclair and his loving wife-occupants of the vicarage of Woodbridge, a hamlet situated in a beautiful valley near the town of Elverton in

shire. And not only did Susan and Emma retain the first fresh affections of their parents, and the admiration of their younger brothers and sisters, but they were also the pets of a neighbourhood remarkable for its sociability: and no juvenile party was ever deemed complete unless the Rosebuds were there, dressed scrupulously alike, and undistinguishable, except by the blue or pink bow attached to the left shoulder of each since her cradle. After the Rosebuds followed two fine boys, who, their old family friend, Mr. Everard, used to say, might fitly represent those Saxon youths of whom Saint Gregory said, "Non Angli sed Angeli." Two years after these brothers, who had but a year's difference in their ages, came our Lilia. Two years after her followed another boy and then, after a pause of six years, there appeared three more girls, whom Mrs. Sinclair, in all the consciousness of still sufficient youth and beauty, called her grandchildren; and who absorbed all the tender solici tude she could spare from the important event of introducing Susan and Emma officially to the neighbourhood on their eighteenth birth-day.

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It cannot be a subject of surprise, that, in the midst of these contrasted, but equally absorbing cares, Mrs. Sinclair should consent with satisfaction to the offer made