over the side of the vessel till her hair fell forward and became radiant in the sun-light, when the enthusiastic youth would lift up his arms, and run forward to meet them, uttering a cry of joy, which was quickly to be succeeded by a gush of tears as the fond coinage of his brain assumed some different configuration, or melted into air. In vain did he ask the waves

"And question every gust of rugged winds, That blows from off each beaked promontory; They knew not of his story

And the baffled inquirer, unable to gather any tidings from external nature, turned inwards and sought refuge in his own affectionate bosom, where he conjured up a delicious landscape of some fair island of the East, beneath the shade of whose palms and plantains, and in front of the rude bower they had constructed for their abode, he beheld the objects of his love, gazing the blue and boundless sea, as they pasupon sionately exclaimed-" When, oh! when, will our own, our darling Reuben bend his bark over the waters that imprison us, and restore

us to liberty, to the world, but above all-to himself."

In spite of the elucidations by which his uncle had obscured the route in his written instructions, Reuben found his way to Goldingham Place in due time, and was warmly welcomed by its proprietor. At this period his form and features had thrown off much of their boyish expression, and already indicated that his approaching manhood would be one of great comeliness and symmetry, although there was a pensive, not to say a melancholy character about his mouth, and his large dark eyes, which was scarely consistent with his age, and seemed to betray that he nourished some secret, patiently endured grief. When his feelings, however, were roused, his sparkling looks became animated with a fine enthusiasm, which occasionally contrasting with, and relieving his habitual sedate expression, invested his countenance with a moral beauty, a thousand times more interesting and winning than any that could have been derived from the most faultless combination of handsome features. Goldingham was really

delighted to see him; his self-gratulating "hems!" and the frequent applications to his sugar-pocket, as he conducted him over the house and grounds, attested his pleasure at the arrival of a companion, who, if he could not altogether dissipate the ennui, would at least break the solitude of his rustication; while Reuben was not less pleased with his emancipation from a college life which had been rendered peculiarly irksome to him by his total want of congeniality with the dissipated habits to which the great majority of his brother collegians devoted their time and talents. As his uncle's active mind sought to exercise itself upon whatever trifles were presented to it, rather than remain unoccupied, he made an amazing clutter about Reuben's arrival, arranging his bed-room and his sitting-room, and fiixing up his book-shelves with his own hand, and settling all the future plans by which they were to bid defiance to the country, and stave off the assaults of time, tædium, and Popish plotters, both in summer and winter.

A fervent admirer of the beauties of nature,

Reuben seized the first opportunity of escaping from these domestic details, in which he felt little interested, that he might explore the neighbourhood in search of picturesque scenery; and the thought of his lost parents, which was ever the predominant one in his mind, especially in his lonely wanderings, conducted him, almost unconsciously, to the sea-shore. With an emotion that sent a thrill through his whole frame, he stood for the first time in his life beside that mightly element, which, even as an ordinary spectator, he could scarcely have contemplated without feeling oppressed by a sense of its awful and stupendous grandeur; but which, after his soul had been exalted by the sublimity of this spectacle, melted his heart with tenderness and grief, when he gazed upon it as the same mass of waters that had floated his family from the shores of England-the same earth-enclasping ocean of which the very waves that now broke before him had, perhaps, foamed at the feet of his lost parents on the opposite extremity of the globe, and delighted their eyes, as they now did his, with their sparkling gambols, and

Iulled their ears, as they now did his, with the murmur of their music.

For some time he stood gazing upon the waters, lost in a variety of fond reveries, until his thoughts reverting to the possibility that the remorseless deep which he was contemplating, might have boomed over the heads of his lost relatives, became too painful for endurance; the tears dimmed his eyes, and he hurried from the spot. Striking rapidly inland, to escape from a scene fraught with such distressing associations, he wandered he knew not whither, until his attention was at length aroused by the singular character of the scenery before him. The road along which he was passing, wound down with a rapid descent between rocky banks of considerable height, whence a young larch, or birch-tree, shot here and there in fantastic directions; the projecting ledge of earth where it grew, seeming quite inadequate to its support, though the naked roots appearing underneath, and clinging to every minute aperture and cleft, as they crept downwards, explained the real nature of the tenure by which it was up