Illustrated Article.

DE LINDSAY.

A TALE.

"Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."

RUPERT DE LINDSAY was an orphan of ancient family and extensive possessions. With a person that could advance but a slight pretension to beauty, but with an eager desire to please, and a taste the most delicate and refined, he very early learnt the art to compensate by the graces of manner, for the deficiencies of form; and before he had reached an age when other men are noted only for their horses or their follies, Rupert de Lindsay was distinguished no less for the brilliancy of his ton and the number of his conquests, than for his acquirements in literature, and his honours in the Senate. But while every one favoured him with envy, he was, at heart, a restless and disappointed

ruling passion, to be really, purely, and deeply loved, had never been satisfied. And while this leading and master-desire pined at repeated disappointments, all other gratifications seemed rather to mock than to console him. The exquisite tale of Alcibiades, in Marmontel, was applicable to him. He was loved for his ad ventitious qualities, not for himself. One loved his fashion, a second his fortune; a third, he discovered, had only listened to him out of pique at another; and a fourth accepted him as her lover because she wished to decoy him from her friend. These adventures, and these discoveries brought him disgust; they brought him, also, knowledge of the world; and nothing hardens the heart more than that knowledge of the world which is founded on a knowledge of its vices,-made bitter by disappointinent, and misanthropical by deceit.

I saw him just before he left England, and his mind was then sore and feverish. I saw him on his return, after an absence of five years in the various Courts of Europe, and his mind was callous and even. He had then reduced the art of governing

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his own passions, and influencing the pas sions of others, to a system; and had reached the second stage of experience, when the deceived becomes the deceiver. He added to his former indignation at the vices of human nature, scorn for its weakness. Still many good, though irregular impulses, lingered about his heart. Still the appeal, which to a principle would have been useless, was triumphant when made to an affection. And though selfishness constituted the system of his life, there were yet many hours when the system was forgotten, and he would have sacrificed himself at the voice of a single emotion. Few men of ability, who neither marry nor desire to marry, live much among the frivolities of the world after the age of twenty-eight. And De Lind say, now waxing near to his thirtieth year, avoided the society he had once courted, and lived solely to satisfy his pleasures and indulge his indolence. Women made his only pursuit, and his sole ambition: And now, at length, arrived the time when, in the prosecution of an intrigue, he was to become susceptible of a passion; and the long and un

quenched wish of his heart was matured into completion.

to be In a small village not far from London, there dwelt a family of the name of Warner; the father, piously termed Ebenezer Ephraim, was a merchant, a bigot, and a saint; the brother, simply and laically christened James, was a rake, a boxer, and a good fellow. But she, the daughter, who claimed the chaste and sweet name of Mary, simple and modest, beautiful in feature and in heart, of a temper rather tender than gay, saddened by the gloom which hung for ever upon the home of her childhood, but softened by early habits of charity and benevolence, unacquainted with all sin even in thought, loving all things from the gentleness of her nature, finding pleasure in the green earth, and drinking innocence from the pure air, moved in her grace and holiness amid the rugged kindred, and the stern tribe among whom she had been reared, like Faith sanctified by redeeming love, and passing over the thorns of earth on its pilgrimage to Heaven.

In the adjustment of an ordinary amour with the wife of an officer in the

regiment, then absent în Ireland, but who left his gude-woman to wear the willow in the village of T, Rupert saw, admired, and coveted the fair form I have so faintly described. Chance favoured his hopes. He entered one day the cottage of a poor man, whom, in the inconsistent charity natural to him, he visited and relieved. He found Miss Warner employed in the same office; he neglect. ed not his opportunity; he addressed her; he accompanied her to the door of her home; he tried every art to please a young and unawakened heart, and he succeeded. Unfortunately for Mary, she had no one among her relations calculated to guide her conduct, and to win her confidence. Her father, absorbed either in the occupations of his trade or the visions of his creed, of a manner whose repellant austerity belied the real warmth of his affections, supplied but imperfectly the place of an anxious and tender mother; nor was this loss repaired by the habits still coarser, the mind still less soft, and the soul still less susceptible of the fraternal rake, boxer, and good fellow.

And thus was thrown back upon that gentle and feminine heart all the warmth of its earliest and best affections. Her nature was love; and though in all things she had found wherewithal to call forth the tenderness which she could not restrain, there was a vast treasure as yet undiscovered, and a depth beneath that calm and unruffled bosom, whose slumber had as yet never been broken by a breath. It will not therefore be a matter of surprise that De Lindsay, who availed himself of every opportunity-De Lindsay, fascinating in manner, and consummate in experience, soon possessed a dangerous sway over a heart too innocent for suspi cion, and which, for the first time, felt the luxury of being loved. In every walk, and her walks hitherto had always been alone, Rupert was sure to join her; and there was a supplication in his tone, and a respect in his manner, which she felt but little tempted to chill and reject. She had not much of what is termed dignity; and even though she at first had some confused idea of the impropriety of his company, which the peculiar nature of her education prevented her wholly per ceiving, yet she could think of no method to check an address so humble and diffident, and to resist the voice which only spoke to her in music. It is needless to trace the progress by which affection is seduced. She soon awakened to the full knowledge of the recesses of her own heart, and Rupert, for the first time, felt the certainty of being loved as he desired. "Never,' ‚” said he, “will I betray that

affection; she has trusted in me, and she shall not be deceived; she is innocent and happy, I will never teach her misery and guilt!" Thus her innocence reflected even upon him, and purified his heart while it made the atmosphere of her own. So passed weeks, until Rupert was summoned by urgent business to his estate. He spoke to her of his departure, and he drank deep delight from the quivering lip and the tearful eye with which his words were received. He pressed her to his heart, and her unconsciousness of guilt was her protection from it. Amid all his sins, and there were many, let this one act of forbearance be remembered.

Day after day went on its march to eternity, and every morning came the same gentle tap at the post-office window, and the same low tone of inquiry was heard; and every morning the same light step returned gaily homewards, and the same soft eye sparkled at the lines which the heart so faithfully recorded. I said every morning, but there was one in each week which brought no letter-and on Monday Mary's step was listless, and her spirit dejected-on that day she felt as if there was nothing to live for.

She did not strive to struggle with her love. She read over every word of the few books he had left her, and she walked every day over the same ground which had seemed fairy-land when with him; and she always passed by the house where he had lodged, that she might look up to the window where he was wont to sit. Rupert found that landed property, where farmers are not left to settle their own leases, and stewards to provide for their little families, is not altogether a sinecure. He had lived abroad like a prince, and his estate had not been the better for his absence. He inquired into the exact profits of his property; renewed old leases on new terms discharged his bailiff: shut up the roads in his park, which had seemed to all the neighbourhood a more desirable way than the turnpike conveniences; let off ten poachers, and warned off ten gentlemen; and, as the natural and obvious consequences of these acts of economy and inspection, he became the most unpopular man in the county.

One day, Rupert had been surveying some timber intended for the axe; the weather was truly English, and changed suddenly from heat into rain. A change of clothes was quite out of Rupert's ordináry habits, and a fever of severe nature, which ended in delirium, was the result. For some weeks he was at the verge of the grave. The devil and the doctor do not always agree, for the moral saith that there is no friendship among the

wicked. In this case, the doctor was ultimately victorious, and his patient recovered. "Give me the fresh air," said Rupert, directly he was able to resume his power of commanding, "and bring me whatever letters came during my illness." From the pile of spoilt paper from fashionable friends, country cousins, county magistrates, and tradesmen who take the liberty to remind you of the trifle which has escaped your recollection, from this olio of precious conceits Rupert drew a letter from the Irish officer's lady, who it will be remembered, first allured Rupert to Mary's village, acquainting him that she had been reported by some d- -d good-natured friend to her husband, immediately upon his return from Ireland. Unhappily, the man loved his wife, valued his honour, and was of that unfashionable temperament which never forgives an injury. He had sent his Achates twice during Rupert's illness to De Lindsay Castle, and was so enraged at the idea of his injurer's departing this life by any other means than his bullet, that he was supposed in consequence to be a little touched in the head. He was observed to walk by himself, sometimes bursting into tears, sometimes muttering deep oaths of vengeance; he shunned all society, and sate for hours gazing vacantly on a pistol placed before him. All these agreeable circumstances did the unhappy fair one (who picked up her information second-hand, for she was an alien from the conjugal bed and board) detail to Rupert with very considerable pathos.

"Now then for Mary's letters," said the invalid; "no red-hot Irishman there I trust," and Rupert took up a large heap, which he had selected from the rest as a child picks the plums out of his pudding by way of a regale at the last. At the perusal of the first three or four let ters he smiled with pleasure; presently his lips grew more compressed, and a dark cloud settled on his brow. He took up another he read a few lines-started from his sofa. "What ho, there !-my carriage-and-four directly!-lose not a moment!-Do you hear me?-Too ill, do you say?-never so well in my life! -Not another word, or-- My carriage, I say, instantly!-Put in my swiftest horses! I must be at T-to-night before five o'clock !" and the order was obeyed.

To return to Mary. The letters which had blest her through the livelong days suddenly ceased. What could be the reason?-was he faithless-forgetfulill? Alas! whatever might be the cause, it was almost equally ominous to her.

"Are you sure there are none?" she said, every morning, when she inquired at the office, from which she once used to depart so gaily; and the tone of that voice was so mournful, that the gruff postman paused to look again, before he shut the lattice and extinguished the last hope. Her appetite and colour daily decreased; shut up in her humble and fireless chamber, she passed whole hours in tears, in reading and repeating, again and again, every syllable of the letters she already possessed, or in pouring forth in letters to him all the love and bitterness of her soul. "He must be ill," she said at last; "he never else could have been so cruel!" and she could bear the idea no longer. "I will go to him-I will soothe and attend him-who can love him ?— who can watch over him like me?" and the kindness of her nature overcame its modesty, and she made her small bundle,, and stole early one morning from the house. "If he should despise me," she thought; and she was almost about to return, when the stern voice of her brother came upon her ear. He had for several days watched the alteration in her habits and manners, and endeavoured to guess at the cause. He went into her room, discovered a letter in her desk which she had just written to Rupert, and which spoke of her design. watched, discovered, and saved her.There was no mercy or gentleness in the bosom of Mr. James Warner. He carried her home; reviled her in the coarsest and most taunting language; acquainted her father, and after seeing her debarred from all access to correspondence or escape, after exulting over her unupbraiding and heart-broken shame and despair, and swearing that it was vastly theatrical, Mr James Warner mounted his yellow Stanhope, and went his way to the Fives Court. But these were trifling misfortunes, compared with those which awaited this unfortunate girl.

He

There lived in the village of Tone Zacharias Johnson, a godly man and a rich, moreover a saint of the same chapter as Ebenezer Ephraim Warner; his voice was the most nasal, his holding forth the most unctuous, his aspect the most sinister, and his vestments the most threadbare of the whole of that sacred tribe. To the eyes of this man there was something comely in the person of Mary Warner he liked her beauty, for he was a sensualist; her gentleness, for he was a coward; and her money, for he was a merchant. He proposed both to the father and to the son; the daughter he looked upon as a concluding blessing sure to follow the precious assent of the two

relations. To the father he spoke of godliness and Scrip-of the delightfulness of living in unity, and the receipts of his flourishing country house; to the son he spoke the language of kindness and the world-he knew that young men had expenses he should feel too happy to furnish Mr. James with something for his innocent amusements, if he might hope for his (Mr. James's) influence over his worthy father: the sum was specified, and the consent was sold. Among those domestic phenomena, which the inquirer seldom takes the trouble to solve, is the magical power possessed by a junior branch of the family over the main tree, in spite of the contrary and perverse direction taken by the aforesaid branch. James had acquired and exercised a mcst undue authority over the paternal patriarch, although in the habits and sentiments of each there was not one single trait in common between them. But James possessed a vigorous and unshackled, his father a weak and priest-ridden, mind. In domestic life, it is the mind which is the master. Mr. Zacharias Johnson had once or twice, even before Mary's acquaintance with Rupert, urged his suit to Ebenezer; but as the least hint of such a circumstance to Mary seemed to occasion her a pang which went to the really kind heart of the old man, and as he was fond of her society and had no wish to lose it, and as, above all, Mr. James had not yet held those conferences with Zacharias, which ended in the alliance of their interests, the proposal seemed to Mr. Warner like a lawsuit to the Lord Chancellor, something rather to be talked about than to be decided. Unfortunately, about the very same time in which Mary's proposed escape had drawn upon her the paternal indignation, Zacharias had made a convert of the son; James took advantage of his opportunity, worked upon his father's anger, grief, mercantile love of lucre, and saint-like affection to sect, and obtained from Ebenezer a promise to enforce the marriage— backed up his recoiling scruples, preserved his courage through the scenes with his weeping and wretched daughter, and, in spite of every lingering sentiment of tenderness and pity, saw the very day fixed which was to leave his sister helpless for ever,

It is painful to go through that series of inhuman persecutions, so common in domestic records; that system, which, like all grounded upon injustice, is as foolish as tyrannical, and which always ends in misery, as it begins in oppression. Mary was too gentle to resist; her prayers became stilled; her tears ceased to flow;

she sat alone in her "helpless, hopeless, brokenness of heart," in that deep despair which, like the incubus of an evil dream, weighs upon the bosom, a burden and a torture from which there is no escape nor relief. She managed at last, within three days of that fixed for her union, to write to Rupert, and get her letter conveyed to the post.

"Save me," it said in conclusion,"I ask not by what means, I care not for what end-save me, I implore you, my guardian angel. I shall not trouble you long-I write to you no romantic appea! :-God knows that I have little thought for romance, but I feel that I shall soon die, only let me die unseparated from you,-you, who first taught me to live, be near me, teach me to die, take away from me the bitterness of death. Of all the terrors of the fate to which they compel me, nothing appears so dreadful as the idea that I may then no longer think of you and love you. My hand is so cold that I can scarcely hold my pen, but my head is on fire. I think I could go mad, if I would-but I will not, for then you could no longer love me. I hear my father's step-oh, Rupert !-on Friday next-remember-save me, save me!"

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But the day, the fatal Friday arrived, and Rupert came not. They arrayed her in the bridal garb, and her father came up stairs to summon her to the room, in which the few guests invited were already assembled. He kissed her cheek; it was so deathly pale, that his heart smote him, and he spoke to her in the language of other days. She turned towards him, her lips moved, but she spoke not. My child, my child!" said the old man, "have you not one word for your father!""Is it too late?" she said; "can you not preserve me yet??-there was relenting in the father's eye, but at that moment James stood before them. His keen mind saw the danger; he frowned at his father-the opportunity was past. “God forgive you!" said Mary; and cold, and trembling, and scarcely alive, she descended to the small and dark room, which was nevertheless the state chamber of the house. At a small table of black mahogany, prim and stately, starched and whaleboned within and without, withered and fossilized at heart by the bigotry, and selfishness, and ice of sixty years, sat two maiden saints: they came forward, kissed the unshrinking cheek of the bride, and then, with one word of blessing, returned to their former seats and resumed their former posture. There was so little appearance of life in the persons caressing and caressed, that you