heartbroken. On the third day I had a letter from my brother, desiring to see me at a spot he mentioned in the city. There I found him; and his wild, haggard appearance, shocked me. He informed me in brief terms, that it was impossible for him longer to reside at Brompton, in consequence of his many occupations, and the time that was lost in going to and fro. He earnestly exhorted me to watch over Mary, and to devote myself entirely to her comfort,-perhaps she would miss him. He also told me that he would remit money periodically. I thought there was much bitterness in his manner of saying this; his former self appeared to be annihilated, and I knew not how to address him. He took advantage of my confusion to hurry over our interview, and having given me a sealed packet to deliver into the hands of Mary, he abruptly quitted me. It was from the contents of that packet, disclosed to me by Mary some time afterwards, and from her own revelations, that I was at length enabled to solve this mystery. I learned, to my astonishment and sorrow, that Mary was the daughter of a deceased sister of my father, a child of sin, thrown upon the world without kindred, and without a name, and that my mother had adopted and brought her up as her own. It was in compliance with my mother's dying request, that my father had never divulged the secret of her birth to any of us. James, however, discovered it; and before his death my father acknowledged to him the fact, requesting that he would continue to act as a brother towards one so innocent and so helpless. To James, who even then idolized her, this was a needless admonition; and as time passed on, and he found, that without her, life would be a blank to him, he became conscious of the nature of his feelings, and knew that he loved her with more than the love of a brother. Still he felt incapable of making a disclosure, that must in the first instance occasion her deep sorrow; and he was happy in the innocent affection he dreaded to lose. It was with the hope of one day offering her a home worthy of her, that he had toiled so incessantly; but the acquaintances we had formed at Brompton, broke the spell. Added to the evident admiration of the merchant's son, was the fact that Mary found pleasure in his society. This was bitter to him that knew no joy, save in her presence; and James felt that the time was come for making the disclosure, and, fearful chance! offering his own heart for her acceptance, or rejection. Mary had been too long accustomed to look upon him as a brother, to enter into the feeling by which he was himself animated; the disclosure seemed to make her heart desolate,-they never met again.

"Three months after that eventful day, Mary was married to

the merchant's son; but if she had ever loved him, which I all along doubted, it was not love that prompted her so soon to give him her hand. The idea of still being a burden upon him whose life she had blighted; of owing her subsistence to his hard, and, now, unrewarded toil, was more than she could bear. If evidences of a desolate and a broken heart were ever legibly traced on human countenance, they were on hers, the day that made her a bride. Cold and pale as marble, and passive as death, she stood at the altar, and the very firmness of her responses bore testimony that the words were uttered with the resolution of despair.

"Tell him to forget me!" she said to me in a hurried whisper before parting from me, on that day, and the agony of her look has never passed from me. Of my brother's agony I never knew anything beyond its effects. He continued for some time, to attend his duties at the Bank, but he resigned every other occupation. Finally he resigned his situation, after having procured one for myself in the office of a merchant who had known my father. Some time after this I entirely lost sight of him; I could gain no tidings of him for some years. My distress was extreme; and on Mary's account, too, I was doomed to suffer. The man who had married her was, indeed, in every way unworthy. The consent of his father had been forced, and his sisters domineered over her, as one whom they had helped to raise from obscurity. From indifference her husband proceeded to ill-usage; he regretted his hasty match, and she became the victim of this regret, in a man brutalized by self-indulgence and by ignorance. From herself I learned nothing of this; but I heard enough from those who freely canvassed the matter; who condemned him as a brute, and pitied her as a patient slave. Poor Mary! she that had been the light of our eyes, the idol, the tenderly watched and cared for! how could she bear a life like this! I had been to see her on two or three occasions, but the coarse insolence of her husband compelled me to desist, and it had afforded me no pleasure to mark her wan, griefstricken looks, and fading figure. She had been married nearly three years, when I received a letter from my brother; how it electrified me! It only contained a few lines saying he wished to see me, and stating where. I hurried to the place, a small public house in Southwark, and was horrified at the sight he presented to me. He looked twenty years older; his clothes were soiled and worn; he was emaciated-almost a skeleton; and he coughed incessantly.

"He told me he had come to die, and I knew it. For the two months I watched over him, he never entered into any explanation about where he had been or what doing, and I troubled

him with no useless questions. He studiously avoided mentioning her name; but he once spoke of him as a villain. He had heard all about the sufferings of the being he had loved so well. I never left him until he died, and his death was a happy, that is, a resigned and hopeful, one; he had learned to look to another world for the peace he had lost here. In compliance with his own request, I interred him in a small burial-ground in the King's-road, Chelsea, and placed over him-also by his own desire—a stone bearing simply his initials, J. B.,' and the date, 1815,' with this text from Scripture: There the wicked cease from troubling; there the weary be at rest.” ”

At this point of his story the old man suddenly ceased, and I was scarcely aware of the interruption, until he stood before me with the same can filled with spring water, which he had brought me on a former occasion.

"You are ill," he said; "I am wearying you with my long story."

"Indeed," I answered, "I am not weary; I am more interested than you can believe. Pray go on." And the old man continued. About a month after my brother's death, as I was one evening sitting alone in my lodgings, I was startled by the announcement that a lady in a coach wished to speak with me. I went down, and found Mary. In a hurried manner she desired me to take her up to my apartment. Surprised and pained, I led the way, and the moment the door was closed, she seized my arm, frantically.

"Henry,' she exclaimed, 'your brother is dead,-my brother -and you have thought me unworthy of learning even this!' "Not unworthy, dear Mary,' I said, soothingly; 'if I did not tell you, it was because I would not add to your sorrow.'

"Henry,' she continued, speaking with wild excitement; 'I have read my own heart aright, too late, since that last fatal interview with James. I have long known that I never loved any one, never could have loved any one upon earth as I did and could have loved him! Should he not have given me more time to search into my own heart and thoughts, before casting me off, and tearing himself away from me for ever? Was it possible to put off one feeling, and put on another at a moment's warning? We ought to have been happy together, and we have both been lost through precipitation. O that I had known earlier what it destroyed me to know so late! Henry, I must see his grave!'

"It was in vain that I remonstrated against this. She would take no denial; and thinking that to comply with her request would be the best means of soothing her, I entered the hired carriage with her, and directed the coachman to drive to the

spot. It was still early, on a summer's evening, when we alighted. I had not considered that the gate might be locked, as I found to be the case, and I knew not how to obtain the key. The stone, however, was so placed that the inscription was plain enough from the spot where we stood, and I directed her attention to it. She remained for a long time contemplating it, and I did not disturb her. At length I took her arm with the intention of leading her away, when she turned, and fixed upon me a stony, mindless gaze that horrified me. The next instant she burst into a succession of wild shrieks, and struggled to get away with a strength that mastered me. A crowd soon collected around us; she was secured, and taken to her home, and thence to a mad house, where, in a few years, she died. I was myself thankful, a short time afterwards, that my employer had occasion to send me abroad. The health of my mind as well as body had been undermined by all I had passed through; and a change of scene gave me some promise of relief. I returned to England after an absence of twenty-five years, and a feeling stronger than curiosity induced me to visit the only child of Mary, a son, whom I found to be the counterpart of his father, and left in disgust. Finally, I came here. I have means to supply more than the common wants of life, but these suffice for me, and of the world I have had sufficient experience."

This was the old man's tale. I never told him how early in life I had seen that grave, or how long and how frequently it had haunted me: it looked too like a romance. A few months ago I heard that he was dead, and since then I have written these pages. He that played so conspicuous a part in this brief tragedy,-brief now that (save for this frail record) it has passed into oblivion, he also has found refuge where "the wicked cease from troubling," where "the weary be at rest."

THE WEDDING DRESSES.

A SIMPLE FACT.

BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS.

CHAPTER I.

"Marriage should be considered as the most solemn league of perpetual friendship; a state from which artifice and concealment are to be banished for ever; and in which every act of dissimulation is a breach of faith.

Johnson.

"WELL! Isabelle, now that this tedious and most harassing affair is brought, in vulgar parlance, to a happy conclusion; and Sir Arthur Fortescue, at last condescends to make you his wife; after such horrible and insulting hesitation, I have not the remotest idea, where I can procure the money necessary to purchase dresses for you, suitable to such an occasion.

You know how difficult it is for me to meet even our ordinary expences, with my wretchedly confined income, and with a son to support like a gentleman at college, too, without having any such terrible addition as the present."

"Dear mamma, why make the attempt, if you cannot afford it? Sir Arthur is fully aware that you are not rich, and will not, therefore, expect a splendid trousseau with me."

"What nonsense you talk about affording it! if people only did that which they could afford, you would soon see a very different state of things amongst our acquaintance. I tell you what, Isabelle, it is absolutely and imperatively essential to keep up a certain appearance, in this ostentation-loving world, at the cost of any personal sacrifice, or inconvenience.

Why, if I had only lived, or, rather existed, as I could afford, since your father's death, it would have been in such obscurity, that you would never have had the shadow of a chance of becoming a Lady Fortescue."

"I might have been equally happy, perhaps, mamma, in an union with a worthy man.'