ter, who took my hand silently, and led me up the staircase; the rest followed behind. I smote the door with my clenched fist, and shouted her name, unanswered: I smote again, and no sound came from within; I dashed myself against it with the impulse of despair, and, the bolt giving way, we were admitted. Not a single tittle of the contents of that room but I can conjure up now, as vividly as at that awful moment. Aura Merion was sitting near the fire, clad only in a dressing-gown, her elbow resting on a table, on which burnt a candle. Her back was toward us, and in her left hand, which was on the table, was a miniature; in her right a china cup. An open desk was near, on which were strewed a few old letters and a song-the latter I recognised as mine. Stockings, slippers, and other articles of dress, were around the room; and a faint odour, as of some drug, oppressed the air. I passed round, so as to see her face: she seemed steadfastly looking on vacancy, and her eye was unusually full and brilliant; her countenance was melancholy, and of a grey paleness. I knew and felt it-she was dead! Mr. Jones, who had scarcely half a mile to follow me, now entered the room breathless; he took from the table a black tin case and an empty vial, which he seemed even to touch with fear. "Save-save her!-and me!" was my exclamation. "Come away, man-come away!" he said; "this is no place for you." "That vial!-what has it contained?" I muttered. He replied in a low whisper, "Prussic acid." I looked all round the room for some face to tell me he lied, but there was none; so I fell senseless on the floor! Almost a sunny gleam O! was it borne on Future's wings, Where Hope its gladsome sonnet sings- Or was it of that joyous Past, When boyhood's laughing hours It cannot of the Present be, Which antedates the tomb! Releas'd from folly's chain! An angel, from that bright abode, Sent thee that fleeting thought— By patient suff'ring bought! To light the maniac's brooding dreams- Thus fell Aura Merion, whose fate it was, after shamefully trifling with the affections of those who had loved her, to be bereft of the man whom she held most dear by that very trifling. That she really loved Pentegru, inconsistent though it may seem, I am fully convinced; she never looked up after his angry parting, and his picture was in her hand when she died. That one of high intellectual endowment should thus bestow her affections on a man of excellent heart but uncultivated mind, is not, probably, incongruous, nor inconsistent with the usual anomalies of the female character. A gloom fell on all the neighbourhood where this tragedy took place; none who bore a heart | A WELSH BARD AND THE PROPHET could refuse sympathy to the unbounded grief of her bereaved parents; and I, whom the spectacle, with a thousand old associations, would have killed, left the place then and for ever. My grief was not left behind me. This narration has been abrupt, destitute of art, and ill-written-it would disgrace the pen of a modern novelist. But over his fictions it has the sad and melancholy superiority of truth, which will give it interest BROTHERS. SOME ten or a dozen years ago, death robbed Wales of a worthy known there by the title of Jolo Morganwg, bardd with frait, a defod Beirdd yrys Pridain; "Bard according to the rights and institutes of the bards of the island of Britain ;" whose lot, although cast unfortunate and in a humble sphere, prevented not a poetical existence from hearing traits of interest, or from echoing to our social agitations in the profound retreats of be forgotten. Indeed, there is a letter of Mr. thought and fancy, as may the depths of Southey's published, in which he says, that ocean to the storms along its surface. in memorial of respect he had shadowed the old bard under the name of Jolo, in his Roderick. It has also been said that at the literary meetings of Saturday nights at Longman's, the bard had attended and astonished them all, particularly Mr. Ellis, Mr. Canning's friend, who was pleased to invite our "journeyman mason" to his house. In his "garrulous old age" he used to take credit for having once posed God win with a long-winded argument at a Mr. Clive's; where they used to dine weekly, with Gilbert Wakefield, Harris, Priestly, Aikin, Barbauld, Dr. Abraham Rees, and some others. This late successor to the harp of "wilde Cambria" had come of a father who was a mason, and who brought up his sons to the same craft; but of a mother of whom it was ever a pride to him to relate how she descended from a superior though decayed family, and that of her he had learned to read English, in a book of verses called the Vocal Miscellany. She also sang; and the hymns she warbled to his infancy thrilled in his memory through life. By all but her he had been looked upon in his youth as stupid and unintelligent; for he was then silent and moody; without language for what he felt; a frequenter of woods and solitudes, meditating on nature as on a volume full of matter but in an unknown tongue. Such he continued until about twenty-five years old, when, his mother dying, he fled his home, and travelled as a journeyman mason into England. And now it was that he first betook himself seriously to books, as to the study of the great outward type of other men's thoughts;-in vain seeking a medium for the deeper vibrations of his own being,-in vain any key to the shadows which encompassed him, or some glimpse into mysteries that beset and appalled him like enigmas of the Sphinx. And while thus straggling down the "broad way" of society, he continued to the end fiery and indignant in resisting the modern Procrustes, and preserving his nature from the trivial standard, a warfare of manifold sufferings Notwithstanding which, and the neglect and penury that were its ultimate consequences, perhaps the part of his destiny which more peculiarly oppressed him, lay in certain hard thoughts and misconstructions, and in the perplexity in which even himself lived and died, about his own principles; for his emotions, his sensibilities, his sentiment, his reason, were all in perpetual conflict, and impelling him in ever-varying directions! And so he pilgrimed it on through life, latterly in his native vale of Glamorgan, with a walking-stick higher than his head, and a wallet of books and papers across his shoulder. Often he might be seen, like Ben Jonson, with a book in one hand and his trowel in the other. When he had learned to fabricate his thoughts and fancies into Welsh phrase and metre, he entered the Bardic order after the rites transmitted from the Druids, and was then everywhere welcomed by the Cymry, for the sake of the song, the Englyn, or the tale of old times. He also wooed the muse, not unsuccessfully, in English; and having attracted attention by some electioneering verses, he was presently encouraged to give to the public two volumes of English poems by subscription. While in London, under the cares of publication, upon this and other similar occasions, several who moved in the higher walks of literature distinguished him with their notice; and by some of them, haply, he may not yet He had even asked Dr. Johnson, at a bookseller's shop, which of two English grammars was the best; and receiv. ed for answer, that "either was good enough for him." But beyond all was the adventure which our title indicates, to hold his admiring countrymen agape. For the fame of the prophet RICHARD BROTHERS had extended into Wales, and lingers even yet amongst her mountains. It is not forgotten there with what high pretension he came forward as Nephew of God and King of the Hebrews, to lead his people into the plains of Jordan, there to establish the New Jerusalem. Nor was his mission to those only who at present belonged to the synagogue; but, adopting the doctrine of Metempsychosis, he would recognise by a peculiar light in the left eye all whose souls had ever animated a circumcised body; and he even made honourable distinction of those who had been of the tribe of Judah in any former stage of existence. It was as such that he challenged Mr. Pitt, and some of the royal family, for his especial assistants. His plans, too, for the projected city amazed even persons skilled in architecture, by the magnificence and beauty of his "celestial order." Neither were his implicit followers few or despicable. The gifted Haltred, whose story was so tinged with the colours of romance, and whose accomplished mind-errant seemed to escape from one Magic-Castle of Thought, only to fall spellbound into another, had now come forward with his conviction that this was the predicted lion of the tribe of Judah. " Our bard, happening to be in London in those days, was easily led by curiosity; and that David Williams to whom poor authors are indebted for the Literary Fund, to pay a personal visit to Brothers, under guise of purchasing his Book of Prophecies, which, after a custom formerly not uncommon, he sold at his own house. Here they met Brothers himself, who invited them into a parlour, where they took seats, and were courteously entertained by him. Nor was it long before they felt themselves strangely affected by his converse. For as he described to them the manner in which the revelations had been communicated to him by angels, often heard in the very room where they then sat, and often visibly crossing him in his solitary walks,-the lustre of counten- | presently cast about, and taking pen in hand, ance with which his heaven-ward soul indicted an epistle to Mr Pitt, setting forth rayed forth on them, made our Welshmen's his opinion of the manner in which Brothers hearts burn within them while he spoke, and ceased not for a long time after to haunt their imaginations. had been practised upon, and how the origin of the matter appeared likely to be French. In reply came a note from the minister, reAt that time Brothers was everywhere questing an interview at the Treasury, at a the topic of conversation; and our bard time appointed. When the bard repaired, omitted not, upon occasion, to entertain his│thither, he was shown, as he used with some companions with the narrative of his own complacency to relate, into a room of great visit to the prophet. But one day, at a length, from one end to the other of which exdinner-party, he had come, after sundry tended a table, surrounded with chairs, each ambages, to a somewhat high-flown des-opposite a portable writing-desk. Presently cription of the angelic sounds in which the the "heaven-born minister" entered, and asrevelations had been communicated to tonished him with the presence of a civil, Brothers, when he was suddenly dumb. ordinary, snub-nosed, gentleman. When founded by a fiery navy captain, with only the merits, as above, had been canvassed, one arm and one eye, who offered to wager Pitt intimated an intention to sift the him a thousand pounds that it was all the matter, and promised further communicadoings of a certain little French ventrilo- tion; but afterwards again the object of quist, by whom the said captain amongst the government proved to be sufficiently anrest, had been frightened out of "Will's" swered by having the influence of this spiritonly a night or two before. The Welsh ual monarch limited to Bedlam. stone-cutter, altogether gravelled by the offer of such a bet, was fain to retreat from his position by promising to pay a second visit to Brothers, to try and detect the practices of this Frenchman; who was described, by the way, as a person of low stature, affecting a naval dress, and addicted to the display of a pair of legs, the calves of which cut in at a right angle. To our bard, however, the "divine madness of the prophet was never any proof that he had not been the dupe of others; and he would often contend before his admiring Cymry, that such an hypothesis had no small corroboration in the fact that not only among the prophet's followers were Bryan and Wright, who declared that such a deliverer of the Jews had been shadowed in the But, when, in much simplicity, he set revelations at Avignon; but also in that Bryan about to redeem his promise, the object of (who was not unlike to Brothers in radithis second visit had well-nigh been defeat-ancy of countenance, and a calm but most ed even at the threshold; for Brothers infectious enthusiasm) had been himself in now recognised the mark of his elect in the the first place spirited to Avignon by a twinkling grey eye of his visitant, and with voice heard in the night, while he resided a bright and beaming countenance was at Bristol. To that cabal at Avignon, about to welcome him into the new faith. The bard, however, recovered himself enough to bring about the projected questions. Nor at first, indeed, did Brothers show any reluctance in his replies. He said that the angels, three or four in number, always met him in his walks veiled, and never appeared in his house, although often heard there; and that the revelations, although clothed in varied aërial sounds, did seem to come from only one voice. He even acknowledged, with some hesitation, that beneath their veils the angels appeared dressed in no celestial fashion. "But why," said he, "should they not assume the garb of the time and place of their appearance ? And who, now, could bear the splendour of immortal countenances ?" However he soon became unable to restrain his agitation; and upon the inquiry as to whether he had observed anything peculiar in the legs of therefore, it appeared to him not unreasonable to attribute the origin of these projects of Brothers, as well, perhaps, as of others, that have now and then startled us with their explosion beneath the feet of Time. Our bard also learned of his friend Mr. Southey, (whose attention and interest had been caught by the same matter,) that a commission once issued from the Inquisition at Rome to ferret out the constitution, aims, and practices of the Avignon Society; but that the report which the commissioners published so quickly disappeared, that Mr. Southey never could procure a copy, even although he sought for it through persons of no inconsiderable influence in Italy. one of them, he besought the object of such A PILGRIMAGE FROM FONTAINBLEAU interrogation, with an emotion that to our bard was altogether convincing. Yet, wishing to proceed circumspectly in so grave a matter, he postponed the explanation to a future day. But to poor Brothers that day never arrived; for of a sudden, government threw him into prison, and thus disconcerted all the bard's plans for a discovery. Yet he TO SCOTLAND.* BY MISS RARRIOTT PIGOTT. THE Scheme of a few days' tour, to give me a transitory glimpse of some of the highland and lake scenery, had been arranged previous to my arrival. The Peeress ceded * Continued from p. 306. me her Benedict, with his naval brother as allies) are generally well versed in the localmy escort, and on the ensuing Sabbath day ities of their own districts, and in the general she conducted us to Edinburgh, where, in history of their nation, and are imbued with the Episcopal Church of St. Paul's, I pre-a patriotic feeling of laudable pride in the cursed my little projected pilgrimage by beauteous sites and institutions of their invoking the influential sanctity of religion. country. Many of them are likewise so It was the first Sunday in the month, there- happy as to possess that rare but attentive fore Sacrament Sunday in all English complaisance, resulting from natural kindChurches. The swelling tones of the organliness of disposition, that renders them seemed to ascend towards heaven's hemisphere. The holy cross, that symbol of hope from heaven, shone in resplendent red tints encircled by fair-weather clouds, on the Gothic window that diffused the light of heaven over the high altar, and over the silver vessels consecrated to the spiritual banquet. The communicants, advancing with that humble mien and gentle measured step, as were they fearful to disturb the air they breathed, ultimately prostrating themselves in outward as in inward humiliation before the three earthly sacred delegates of God's behest; all around manifesting a love to honour, where honour is due, and also serving as a contrasting feature to the scenes of the preceding Sabbath day, like the opposing colours, the lights and shadows in a fine picture. prompt and unwearied in imparting their information to strangers. A comely, finelooking merchant of middle age, with his beautiful and blooming Scotch wife, whose finely turned head and shoulders, whose graceful mien and gentle accents might even have contributed to the embellishment of Almack's circles, and animated the dull routine of quadrilles and waltzes, with a Scotch reel and a Highland fling; and mayhap surpassed in grace and genuine dignity the noble lady patronesses, and their selection of the gems of female beauty, and cavalier exquisites. So frequently do we see native grace placed in shade, while mannerism flourishes, and the finishing of potent prima donna governesses, whose unique aim is confined to the exterior appearance of their eléves, while their minds are left in weedy negligence-the precious mind, which is the nursery of real grace, and imparts a celestial auriole over all. This handsome couple were busied, in the first moments of their coming on board, in arranging in safety and comfort their precious group of cherry-cheeked bairns. The husband had made an ample fortune in the famed carpet manufactory at Bannockburn's thriving village, and was now a proprietor of a part of the renowned battle-ground, the morass of Bannockburn. His frank, open countenance and benevolent smile, contrasting with the shrewd, sharp expressive traits and physiognomy of an old humourist in radiant bearing, and in that comfortable self-consequence, that staid port, which riches, when acquired by self-exertion, unaided by patronage, rarely fail to give to man's looks in the trading classes. While my naval cavalier was commanding, at the British hotel, turtle soup, grouse, and other gastronomic delicacies, calculated to fortify mind and health against the abstemious Highland fare and Highland cooking, we strolled on the famed Calton Hill, where the monument of Nelson, that hero of British naval valour, dominates over the ocean, fathomless and broad, which displays in its calm and in its tempestuousness, when foaming billows rise, threatening warnings to mankind, and much of the omnipotence and majesty of God. The following mid-day sun gleamed radiant over our lunch in a steamer, cruising up the great estuary, the Firth of Forth, thirty miles onward to Stirling Castle. The exhilarating air, and lightsome day, fitted me to enjoy the genial feast to the mind in a succession of views of the country on its margins, which art, and time, and wars have embellished with castles and feudal fortresses, some in ruins, with sites of olden date, but restored by modern science to their original architectural nobleness, relieved by pleasant mansions in lighter modern architecture. Consistently with my avowed purpose, as a pilgrim in search of novelties, never to disdain to mingle with my fellow voyagers of the day, of every class in life, in the desire My younger Benedict cavalier, happy in to convert to profit their stock of informa- his light hymeneal chains, too recently rivettion, more particularly of mercantile men, ed to have grown rusty and heavy to endure, and even the untutored boor,-recollecting sat apart in solitary exclusive dignity, the precept of my friend, the late illustrious, frowning somewhat fiercely and disdain. accomplished, and facetious recluse of Llangollen Vale, who in her playful moods would say, "that some instruction might be obtained even from a dirty Jack," alias, the footboy of her mediocre country neighbours -therefore, in the true spirit of egotism, or self-curiosity, I examined my freight of voyagers. Scotchmen, (unlike our French This old Independent was in widower's bands and widower's full mourning garb, which, however, does not always indicate inward mourning. There was a comfortable look about the old gentleman's iron visage, that implied the sole possession of a home dwelling, recently freed from domestic petticoat thraldom, and a severe domestic code of laws. fully, at the same time holding more firmly his harmless dumb "guide to the scenery of Scotland;" while my naval fox-hunting friend walked the quarter-deck independent in spirit, dreaming of old naval glories, and yet more of the glorious achievements of his pack of fox-hounds and the approaching cub season, while my moments were too swiftly passing away in local gleanings from | or to the back parlour and souchong tea at the intellectual brains of my mercantile co- Deptford; for in this enlightened age, we terie. The humourist at intervals venting have distinctive coteries of exclusives of vials of irony on English craftsmen and every shade, grade, and pretension. We English husbandry, drawing too partial have moral exclusives, saintly exclusives, comparisons, and making criticisms that and blue stocking coterie exclusives-all were in many instances palpably erroneous, equally enrapt in amour propre and aband which clearly betrayed no small quota surdity, and delicate sensitiveness to undue of vanity and old national prejudices against contact with their fellow beings. border foes. He cast a peculiarly shrewd glance as we glided past the patrimonial residence of the famous John Law, proprie. tor of the Mississippi scheme; with a chuckle that shook his fleshy frame, at the same time thrusting his hands into the spacious pockets of his mourning habit; and evidently renewing an old made convention with himself, never to risk his worldly gains in adventurous speculations, and their delusive ten per cent. promises. In our miscellaneous assemblage was an exquisite minor group, a fantastic caricature of exclusiveness-represented by a trio of English growth-who sat apart, in the closest contact with each other, but on the same bench that my exclusive occupied.The trio neither regarded the loveliness of nature nor their fellow voyagers, nor were they furnished with a guide book, had they condescended or possessed the good taste to cast a look on the edifices, the towns, and villages they were passing. They spake not to person, and rarely to each other; when they moved, to strut with consequential air the deck, they moved together like the Siamese youths, but the expression of their physiognomy was far less intelligent-pseumodic beings without souls. One of the two cavaliers was below the standard of what is styled "diminutive;" his great coat, of prodigious amplitude, might have contained four such insignificant bodies; his head was protected from the elements with a blue cloth cap, of the model of a French clown's bonnet de nuit, terminating in a curtain tassel, which took a circuitous route over his right shoulder, ultimately descending low down on the little man's small arm. The little woman, who leaned in friendly dalliance on the other side, wore an unoffending cottage bonnet. They personated the song once in active currency for on the other side of the diminutive female was a lath and plaster looking figure, tall and gaunt, yet effeminate; his helpless arms, as helpless as his head, hung listlessly by his side. Why this precious nondescript trio had quitted their own home, (if they had one) unless it was to breathe a purer air, or to what class of exclusives they appertained, was not to be divined, whether to Little Bri. tain, in the purlieus of the city, (so humorously described by Irvine) or to Cranbourn Alley, in close vicinity to Leicester Square; Having passed Inchcolm Island, with its ruined monastery, that was, in the century 1123, in religious splendour, dedicated to the pure primitive champion of Christianity, St. Columba, and the perishing remains of Barnbougle Castle, once proud in its warlike strength, succeeding Queensferry is to be remarked Hopetoun House, yielding to no English mansion in beauty of situation and extensive range of buildings, spread over a magnificent verdant terrace, commanding a view of the great estuary of the Forth. But to indicate each beautiful edifice and domestic residence, each haven, or each gentle stream that flows into the Forth, or that issues from it, would only be attempting another guide book, of less utility than the one my cavalier so tenaciously continued to hold in his hand. But from many of them may be derived an instructive, moral, and political precept, of fearful import in the tragedy of human existence. Some, too, there were that appeared in view, more particularly creative of interest to my heart, by the memory of loyal devotion to the Stuart dynasty, others by late collision in the great world with their existing possessors, and their fallacious worldly alliances, that have returned as vividly fresh to my mind as ever. A modern built mansion, in Gothic architecture, advantageously situated on beautifully undulating ground, invites admiration from the tourists who pass progressively over the limpid waters; and may excite the sigh of sympathy in the coldest bosom of a worldly being who recollects the once shipwrecked domestic hopes within its walls.Only a few brief years have run their course since its splendid drawing rooms and luxurious boudoirs were graced by a Lady Chatelaine, of peerless traits and tints; the lily and the rose were blended and so exquisitely united in her lovely face, that they seemed to flower on their native parterre.Oh! how the lady glided like a sylph, in those few years of her virtuous bliss, o'er the grassy surface of her lawn; in those green groves, under the mountain ash laden with its coral berries, followed by the laughing loves, her artless offspring, All, then, appeared verdant and fruitful, lovely and enduring, around her; so light her tread, that scarcely did the herbage recede beneath her feet. She was fair, indeed, to the eye; her dulcet voice lulled to reposing security and connubial confidence the affectionate partner to whom she had plighted her faith, to whom she was united "for better or for worse" by those divine laws which cross the passions, and establish the immortal interests of fair womankind. |