she would meet him yet once more; and she went not without a low whispered promise to return.

She came again, according to her pledge, and many were the long hours spent in sweet communings within that cavern ; and many a Vow of constancy was given and received; and, as his eye regained its fire, and his step its buoyancy, her brow began to grow thoughtful, and her soft cheek waxed pale. At last, one evening, at the trysting place, he informed her of the arrival of that hour which she had so much dreaded. A boat was even then in readiness to take him, in the disguise of a fisherman, past the cruisers of the rebels, to St. Mary's. He pressed her to fly with him, and to become his bride. The struggle between love and duty in her heart was a sore one, her bosom swelled almost to bursting, and her brain burned, but if, for a second, she wavered, it was but for a second only. She steadily refused to fly. She was trusted, loved, idolized, by her father. He was alone in his old age. His life was centred in her. It broke her heart to part from her lover, but she knew that it would break her parent's heart to part from her, and her choice was made. She bade her lover Godspeed, and charged him to remember her, and to expect happier times. It was now her turn to soothe and to support him. The tender girl became the comforter of the high-born and high-spirited man. He felt the justice of her pleading, and acquiesced in her decision, though man's innate selfishness could not but chafe against it. Finally, they parted, after a long embrace. He went, to suffer for his faith, in exile; and she remained, to return, day after day, to the scene of her vanished happiness, and to pray for him who was afar

off, and who, by being faithful to his God, and to his King, gave an earnest of his fidelity to her.

Years passed by, long weary years, for them both. At intervals, few and far between, they had communicated with each other, but they had no hope of meeting, until the shadow of the Protectorate fleeted away, amid derision and contempt, and Charles the Second was restored. Then, indeed, a change came over their fortunes. Honoured and trusted by the Monarch, William Edgcumb returned in his train to England. He had no difficulty in protecting Colonel Fleetwood, who was permitted to retire to his estate in Buckinghamshire, and there end his days in peace and tranquillity. His old antagonist, and present benefactor, became his son-in-law, and he lived to see around his hearth children sprung from that mixture of loyal and republican blood. He ceased even to wonder at the change in his own sentiments, when he felt more inclined to smile than to shake his head at the romantic adventure of Piper's-hole. And his eye actually lightened with pleasure, when he heard that, among the beauties of the Court, one of the fairest, the merriest, and the most virtuous, was the daughter of the old Puritan officer, Mildred Edgcumb.

CHAPTER XII.

www.

TRESCO. No. 3.

HE dim sepulchral cave looks positively brighter for the scene shadowed forth in it by fancy. You turn away from it with regret, and advance to the edge of that rocky barrier, against which the sea plays and whispers, coying it in each tiny cove, and around each fantastic outwork of Nature's planting, making low sweet music everywhere, and pausing awhile timidly, ere it retires, and sinks back again into repose.

you.

Facing you are Menavawr and Round Island, from the top of which latter a Druidical barrow looks down upon Before you rolls the same ocean, which bore hither the barks of old, when the prophet wrote of those that came from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah,-that is, in the vernacular, Byrsa, or Carthage, a Phoenician colony. On the height, to your left, is the solitary ruin of King Charles. It should be touched with a gentle hand, for Scilly was the last place in the realm of England that upheld his cause. What volumes could be compiled out of the history of those devoted men, who, from all quarters, gathered together here, for a last stubborn stand! They were, truly, the children

Lady

of the captivity, enduring loyally unto the end. Fanshawe's account of the place, at that period, with her half sorrowful, half whimsical, privations and sacrifices, is highly interesting. All this rambling and disjointed musing floats through your brain, as for a moment you stand and look around. It is difficult to check the imagination, when thus let free into the shadowy regions of the past. There is the Phoenician, loosely draped in his graceful robe, with its carved fibula; there is the Dane, looking from his tomb, among the eyries yonder; and the Briton with his torques and the mystic medal upon his breast; and the fair-haired Saxon, gazing upon some inspired Prophetess; and the awful Roman; and the gay Cavalier, faithful to death, and singing to his mistress,

"Yet this inconstancy is such

As thou, too, shalt adore;

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not honour more."

and the sullen Puritan, half hypocrite and half fanatic-and then the dim procession disappears, and there is nothing left but the measured diapason of the deep, and the scream of the wild bird, as it flits by, and, everywhere around, Nature in all her majesty!

By following the coast, you arrive at Dolphin Town again, and pass Permellin carn, and Merchants' rock, and get a fine view of St. Helen's, and of Tean. On reaching the north-eastern side of the island, you gain Pentle bay, beyond which are some very picturesque masses of rocks, and an imperfect circle or barrow. The northern promontory of Pentle bay is called Lizard point. From all these carns there is a striking panorama of St. Mary's pool, and Hugh

Town, and St. Agnes, which to-day is shrouded in mist, and appears larger and more distant than it really is.

We have now made the circuit of Tresco, and are about to return to our boat. The Abbey lies before us, with its romantic grounds, through which we are kindly permitted to pass. I had made up my mind to say nothing about the Abbey gardens. Englishmen have, in general, a distaste for any one who goes about "taking notes," even if he does not "print them." I sent the first chapter on Tresco to the press, and kept silence, but it was indeed pain and grief to me, and I could refrain no longer. I should wrong the sense of beauty, which is a part of man's divine inheritance, were I, by my apparent indifference, to seem insensible to the combination of sweet and lovely things, effected, in that spot, by the magic of art, of Nature carefully developed, and of the most exquisite taste. Still any mere description would be unmeaning and vain. Tea and coffee plants, the pepper and the arundo donax of the West Indies, the phormium tenax of New Zealand, the brugmansia of Chili, oranges, aloes, lilies from Japan, geranium-hedges from twelve to fifteen feet high, the graceful clianthus, like a waste parasite, crassulaceæ in vast masses, a hundred varieties of mesembrianthema in one group, growing in the open air, without protection, throughout the year.-What do these words offer to the mind? They cannot give

"The charm that speaks, the music of the eye;"

nor can they convey the remotest idea of that glorious and glowing reality, the like of which I never saw before, and which I can never hope to behold again.

On our way through these marvellous temptations, we