youngest daughter, who was threatened by a pulmonary affection, to try the effects of a winter at the back of the island, and I was agreeably surprised to find them inhabitants of a beautiful villa, "a cottage of humility," about three miles from my own cabin at the Undercliff. They were agreeable and accomplished women; and a few hours spent in their company formed a pleasing and not unfrequent variety in my solitary life; and in the dearth of society incident to their insulated retreat, my fair friends condescended to tolerate, and even to welcome the eccentric old bachelor with their most gracious smiles. One November evening my ramble had terminated at their abode, and I had just drawn my chair into the cheerful circle round the tea-table, when a powdered footman entered, and spoke a few words in a mysterious half whisper to the elder lady, who smiled and replied, "Oh, tell her to come in; there is no one here of whom she need be apprehensive." The communication of which assurance quickly ushered into the room my new acquaintance Margaret Campbell. An old rusty black bonnet was drawn lower than usual over her face, and her dingy red cloak (under which she carried some bulky parcel) was wrapped closely round a figure that seemed endeavouring to shrink itself into the least possible compass. At the sight of me she half started, and dropt her eyes with a fearful curtsey. Ah, Margaret!" I exclaimed, too well divining the object of her darkling embassy. But the lady of the house en

couraged her to advance, haghingly syn

mind Mr~~~, he will not him

runs in t he shakes his head so awel. e

the tea?"" And the lace, and the silk scars

in the younger ladies, with eager cumusty starting a eyes, as they almost dragged the impar

their

BES with their own fair hands, from benent de par woncRT &

cloak. Have you brought us our scarfs at least' vic a time we have been expecting them!"-"Yes, müzet,” echoed lady Mary," and, depending on your promise of procuring me some, I have been quite distressed for tea-there is really no dependence on your word, Mrs. Campbell; and yet I have been at some pains to impress you with a just sense of your chiristian duties, amongst which you have often heard me remark, (and I am sure the tracts I have given you inculcate the same lesson), that a strict attention to truth is one of the most essential-Well! where's the tea?"-" Oh! my lady," answered the poor woman, with a humbly deprecating tone and look, “if you did but know what risks we run to get these things, and how uncertain our trade is, you would not wonder that we cannot always oblige our customers as punctually as we would wish. I have brought the silks and scarfs for the young ladies, but the tea"What! no tea yet? Really it is too bad, Mus. Campbell; I must try if other peopic but book to doped on."~"Indeed, my indy, we dare most wait, la get it fur your ladyship; butun but a boy - Low,

and the Ranger has been laying off the island for this week past, our people haven't been able to get nothing ashore, and yet I am sure my husband and son have been upon the watch along the beach, and in the boat, these three nights in all this dreadful weather; and tonight, though it blows a gale, they 're out again ;" and the poor woman cast a tearful shuddering glance towards the window, against which the wind beat dismally accompanied with thick driving sleet, that half obscured the glimpses of a sickly moon.

The lady was pacified by these assurances, that the foreign luxury should be procured for her that night, if human exertions, made at the peril of human life, could succeed in landing it. The silks, &c. were examined and approved of by the young ladies, and finally taken and paid for, after some haggling about" the price of blood," as the purchase-money might too justly have been denominated. Mrs. Campbell received it with a deep sigh, and, humbly curtseying, withdrew from the presence, not without (involuntarily, as it were) stealing an abashed glance towards my countenance as she passed me. She was no sooner out of the room than her fair customers began to expatiate, with rapturous volubility on the beauty, and cheapness of their purchases an inconsistency of remark that puzzled me exceedingly, as, not five minutes before, while bargaining with the seller, they had averred her goods to be of very inferior manufacture, and exorbitantly dear.

Ay, but," ob

served the prudent mother, " you were in such a hurry, or you might have made better bargains; but it's always the way—and yet I winked and winked at you both. I should have got those things half as cheap again."

Indulgently tender as I am inclined to be to the little whims and foibles of the sex, I could not, on the present occasion, refrain from hinting to my fair friends a part of what was passing in my mind. At first they laughed at my quizzical scruples, and replied to them with the common-place remark, that the few things they occasionally purchased could make no difference; for that the people would smuggle all the same, and find encouragement from others, if not from them." And when I pressed the question a little further, suggesting to their consciences whether all who encouraged the trade were not, in a great measure, answerable for the guilt incurred, and the lives lost in the prosecution of it, they bade me not talk of such horrid things, and huddled away their recent purchases in a sort of disconcerted silence, that spoke any thing rather than remorse of conscience and purposed reformation. My "sermonizing," as it was termed, seemed to have thrown a spell over the frank sociability that usually enlivened our evening coteries. Conversation languished-the piano was out of tune—and the young ladies not in a singing mood. Their mamma broke her netting-thread every three minutes, and, from a dissertation on the degenerate rottenness of modern cotton, digressed insensibly into a train of serious observations

on the dangers impending over church and state from the machinations of evangelical reformers-ever and anon, when the storm waxed louder and louder, interspersing her remarks with pathetic complaints of the perverseness with which the very elements seemed to conspire with government against the safe landing of the precious bales.

The storm did rage fearfully, and its increasing violence warned me to retrace my homeward way before the disappearance of a yet glimmering moon should leave me to pursue it in total darkness. Flapping my hat over my eyes, and wrapping myself snugly round in the thick folds of a huge boat cloak, I issued forth from the cheerful brightness of the cottage parlour into the darkness visible of the wild scene without. Wildly magnificent it was! My path lay along the shore, against which mountainous waves came rolling in long ridges, with a sound like thunder. Sleet, falling at intervals, mingled with the sea surf, and both were driven into my face by the south-east blast, with a violence which obliged me frequently to pause and gasp for breath. Large masses of clouds were hurried in sublime disorder across the dim struggling moon, whose pale light gleamed at intervals with ghastly indistinctness along the white sands, and on the frothy summits of the advancing billows. As I pursued my way, buffeting the conflicting elements, other sounds, methought, appeared to me to mingle in their uproar. The deep and shrill intonation of human voices seemed blended with the wailing and sobbing