Almighty are never shot at a venture, but always with some great object to serve, and I would not, if I could, have accepted the dangerous privilege of ordering or altering a single event ordained in my life, not even that which wrung my heart with anguish. I reminded myself what a good use many Christians were making of that very hour, now passing away, which I ought not to waste in despondency; and, kneeling down, as had always been my custom in every sorrow, long before I had realized its extent or at all reconciled my heart to the blow, I returned thanks to God that his will was done rather than my own, and prayed that I might at last derive from it the good which was certainly intended me.

CHAPTER XIV.

There's not a dream of starry night
But that lost form again I see ;
There's not an hour of day's pure light,
But whispers to my heart of thee.
Ah, no! though ev'ry hope be gone,

I feel I still must love thee on.

SIR WILLIAM CROFTON having obtained an appointment for his son, to command a seventy-four on the Indian station, Henry said he must visit me once, to take a long, perhaps a last farewell, and we met for an hour, under the sanction of Lady Ashcourt, at the Abbey. I dare not even now recall that period to my recollection. When we parted, life seemed to have done its worst, and death alone to remain for me. Henry's grief was as great as my own, greater it could not be. With all the eloquence of fervent love, he asked me to engage myself to him irrevocably, or even to marry him without any consent but our own. He urged upon me that no justifiable objection had been made. to our union, that he was entitled to judge and act for himself, and with the ardor of a long and devoted attachment he urged me to consent. "You are all the world to me,

and more!" he exclaimed.

'Say but the word, and it is not too late. Tell me, if but an hour before I sail, that you will be mine, Jane, and let us at once exchange the vows that shall bind us to each other forever."

I felt and knew what duty and principle dictated, and it was done. Évén now, I can thank God that it was so. If my heart must break, it were better, as I told him, to suffer the greatest of sorrow, than a feeling of self-reproach, and better even to lose him than to forfeit his esteem. Often had my father inculcated on me his own strong and well-considered objections to a long, indissoluble engagement, which only corrodes love. He truly observed, that if Henry and I both continued constant in our attachment, no promise was requisite to bind us to each other: If either of us changed, then certainly it was best that both should be at liberty; for miserable indeed is the fate of him who feels bound by a sense of honor to fulfill a rash promise, or of her who may too late discover that it has been so. No! I told Henry that while I existed, his image would live alone in my memory and my affections; but I could not, in opposition to the wishes of all those we ought to reverence, become his affianced bride, though should circumstances ever change for the better, my own attachment to him was already, for better or for worse, unchangeable.

In sorrow, yet almost in anger, Henry listened to me, but he at length saw the depth of my feelings, and respected them. The brightness of his smile had become shaded with grief, and his voice was subdued to a tone of the deepest melancholy, when he said, in an accent of mingled reproach and affection, "I could have lived for you, Jane, but for my profession I could die. During three years, then, I shall devote myself to the sea, and if at the close of that long probation I still find you unengaged, then let me once more offer you a heart that never can be another's. Long

absence may plead for me more than my presence has done. Farewell then, if we must part!"

Let us

Indeed we must, Henry, but not in anger. meet again in future years; and to that prospect I commit all my hope of earthly happiness."

We separated, and his last words were, as he clasped my hand in his, and placed a ring on my finger, «Wear thiswhile I live, for love of me-and when I die, in memory of me."

That ring yet retains its place, and shall go with me to the grave, but it is all that remains of him, except the remembrance of his affection, and of happy hours never to return. Who can measure the extent of our capacity to suffer and live on! No one surely can die of grief, when I survived the hour it first became known to me, that Henry was no more he perished in a foreign land. He died in battle on the deck of his ship, and his last words were a message to myself, in which he desired me to be comforted, with the prospect of meeting where sorrow and separation are ended.

If hope deferred makes the heart sick, how much worse is hope destroyed! It was long before I realized the dreadful truth. It is long indeed before a sudden grief makes itself fully known. The agony of that hour none need attempt to describe or to imagine; but if I did not bear the stroke so well as I ought, I did at least bear it as well as I could; stunned as I was, the whole seemed to me a feverish dream which could not be real.

As Job, in his misfortunes, sat seven days and seven nights in silence; and as Milton describes the fallen angels

for nine days in a trance of wonder at their own destruction, so did I feel bewildered, amazed, and almost unconscious. I would not, and did not, repine, however, though the sunshine of my life was over, and there remained for me only years of duty, but none of happiness.

The higher the pinnacle of my former felicity, the greater seemed my fall into adversity, but still there was one bright halo cast over the surrounding darkness. Though he was gone, forever gone, yet Henry had died a Christian. These were words of comfort, and whatever consolation God pleased to send me, I was willing to receive. There is a strange

pleasure in cherishing grief, but I would not indulge it. If happiness had been granted me, I should have endeavored to be grateful; but as it was not, I resolved to be resigned, to see that in actions and feelings, as well as in words, I could say to my Maker, Thy will be done." "Yes!" thought I, with deep and almost heart-broken resignation, "in this world my affections are to have no resting-place, and in depriving me of all others, it may be perhaps that God has marked me for his own. The place now vacant in my heart, must be filled with love to God, and to Him only. Then let life become what it may, I can look peacefully to the end. Afflictions add wings to the soul. they raise my spirit above all that is of this world, and restore it to God. I shall not follow Henry in a long course of hopeless and sinful lamentation, but in active, as well as passive submission to the Divine will.

May

I still had duties; and those I owed to my father were first both in interest and importance. He never knew what his daughter suffered; for the mere sight of his vener