resistance to remain behind undisturbed, and not to let Selma, who was just commencing another dance, know any thing about my withdrawal.

"On coming into my room I found it perfectly changed: the habiliments before hanging about had disappeared, and order, taste, and benevolent care, had stamped their impress on every arrangement in the spacious and beautiful apartment.

"The Fräulein herself has been up stairs, and superintended every arrangement," said Karin, who supplied the towering flame in the stove with fresh fuel.

"Thanks, my young sister!" said I in my heart. I was fatigued and soon fell asleep; but I was disturbed by restless dreams. All the persons on whom, during the course of the evening, I had directed my attention, I fancied I now saw before me in a quadrille, casting at each other threatening looks, and awaiting only the moment of attack. I was in the midst of it,

and on the point of holding a tournament with my stepmother, when suddenly a sylph-like being with shining wings, smiling lips, enchanting and floating with zephyrlight movements, came dancing along between us, and embraced us closely with invisible but gentle hands; and this sylphide, this second Taglioni, was Selma. At her appearance the constraint slackened, the feeling of acrimony ceased, the foes made "chaine," and I sank into a sweet refreshing sleep, which made me forget ali the world, till the early morn awaked me.

"And while all in the house is yet still and appear to rest after the dance, I will take a somewhat nearer view of my past and present relative position.

"With my stepmother I have spent two very unequal periods-the first I call the period

OF MY IDOLATROUS WORSHIP.

At the age of eleven years I saw my stepmother for the first time, and felt myself captivated by her to adoration. This state of feeling continued till my fifteenth year, when I was separated from her. Bitter, however, were my days during this period of my idolatrous worship for never perhaps has a golden idol been more deaf and dumb to the prayers of its worshippers than my stepmother was to my affection. Besides I was a child of a very warm temperament; and my general character was the opposite to the Beautiful and Charming, such as my stepmother so highly estimated and perpetually adverted to in quotations from the romances of Madame de Genlis. With the enchantresses therein mentioned I was compared and brought into disparaging contrast. In a word, my stepmother could not endure me, nor could I Madame de Genlis and her Graces, who occasioned me such bitter mortification. Ah, the wild sun-burnt damsel, who had grown up in the waste regions of Finland, who passed her life in the wood and on the heath, among hills, and amidst dreams as wild and marvellous as that nature with which she was familiar-she was in truth no creature for the saloon, or companion for French graces. Transplanted from the inartificial life in which her childhood had been passed, into the splendid residence where large mirrors reflected on all sides every movement, and seemed sneeringly to check every natural expression that did not bear the stamp of grace; she became timid, afraid both of herself and of others; but especially of the goddess of the palace. The governess and domestics called me the "Gipsy-girl," and the "Gipsy-boy."

My stepmother was never harsh in word or action,

but she annihilated me by her depreciating compassionate manner and cold disregard, so that I was soon unable to approach her without glowing cheeks, and a heart so full, so swelling with sighs of anguish (if I may so express myself), that my tongue sought for words in vain. As to any fault in my stepmother, that was what I never once suspected; but ah! I was at a loss to know how to act in order to be otherwise, and to gain her favour. I knew that at that time I more than once implored heaven on my knees to deny me a lover rather than the love of my mother; but I was obliged to learn to forego it. She felt herself relieved when I was separated from her, and I was removed into another sphere of life, which was also full of sorrows, but of another kind.

Five years later I returned home, and stayed there some time. This epoch, with regard to my former ideal, may be called

THE OPPOSITE.

For it was indeed the opposite to the former. By dint of hard struggles with myself and with life, I cultivated and formed myself into a character, rigid and truthloving, that would have the kernel of reality in every shell, and despised every thing that had but the semblance of gilding as valueless. French, worldly prudence, education, and grace, were an abomination to me, and I now regarded them with the same contempt as my stepmother had formerly shown for my artless deportment. The glittering veil through which I had hitherto seen her was now removed, and I not only discovered faults in her, but saw them through a magnifying glass. I still continued to like her, but I loved her no more.

I had become an admirer of Thorild's spirit, and his love of truth and candour, but I imbibed, also, something of his frequently unpleasant way of expressing it. And now Madame de Genlis and Thorild were brought by my stepmother and me into contrast in any thing but an agreeable manner; for every quotation from Madame de Genlis, I had one in readiness from Thorild, perpetually in warlike opposition to the former, and my stepmother replied in the same spirit. Notwithstanding, the French Marchioness was gradually obliged to yield to the Swedish philosopher, i. e. she quitted the field on which such a rough brandisher cut about him. It is a strange half melancholy recollection that my stepmother, about that period, really became timid in my presence, and avoided me, evidently daunted by my relentless severity. Yet she made several attempts to recover her dominion over me, and to resume the sceptre, but in vain-it lay broken in her hand, and, sensible of that, she retreated in silence and dejection. When I remember the feelings which sometimes possessed me as I observed this change in our mutual position, I cannot suppress a secret shudder, and would remind all parents who are too severe, of the admonitory words of the apostle: "Parents, provoke not your children to wrath!"

"The fault at that time was, for the most part, on my side; but I was embittered by the recollection of what I had suffered; and, moreover, in spite of Thorild, I had but obscure views of life, and was very unhappy. This might be an excuse for me. My stepmother, a cheerful, agreeable, and much courted woman of the world, was accustomed only to the sunny side of life,

and would see no other: I was more used to look to the dark side, and thus we became more and more alienated.

Yet there was still one bond of union between us at that time, in little Selma ;—a weakly, but charming child, who I knew not by what-inconceivable sympathy seemed attached to me, while I, according to my Thorild's sentiments, did not at all agree in the idolatry paid to her in the family. But still I could not refrain from inclining towards her. She was her father's darling and principal care. He was a friend and pupil of the great Ehrensvärd, a man possessed of rigid nerves and a pure sense of beauty, and he wished to make his daughter as perfect and as beautiful as the ideal in his own mind; not one of eleven thousand heroines of modern drama and romance, but the antique Antigone-beautiful as woman, because noble as man -this was the prototype to which from her infancy he directed his daughter's eyes and heart. Thus he created in her a modern Antigone, and enjoyed through her a life which, owing to his very feeble health, would otherwise have been without enjoyment.

My stepmother was at that period particularly captivated with her daughter Virginia, whose beauty and character might well indeed flatter the pride of a mother. Admiration for her and tenderness for Selma sometimes brought us together.

We were again separated, and meeting again as we now do after a separation of ten years, I am not without anxiety on account of this fresh attempt to live together. Will it bring about a closer union or a greater separation? One of the two is certain; for my stepmother will have no more remained stationary than myself during this Decenium. We have both passed through