a better means of living. You would help me to carry my cross, but I must not have the sorrow of seeing you perish at my side.'

If you must die, reverend father, under the hand of the executioner, it will be a consolation for me to share your fate; but I have no such dreadful thoughts. I will save you, dear father; at least I will make the attempt. I have a file to break your chains, and, if all goes well, you must escape in my clothes during the night, while I take your place.' As the young girl spoke, her eye shone and her cheek glowed, as if at that moment were united in her the courage of a man with the sacrificing faith and constancy of a noble maiden. The priest smiled with a sad expression, as he said

In that case, Veronica, you would be obliged to exchange my place in this dungeon for the scaffold.'

'I would be pardoned on account of my youth,' replied the girl.'

Do not hope so,' answered the priest.

'No matter, then,' continued the heroic girl. To you I owe my preservation; if I give you back my life, I only repay a debt.'

girl,

What!' exclaimed the venerable priest, affected by the expression of such elevated sentiments. You have scarcely entered upon life, and already you would sacrifice yourself for me, whose last hour cannot in any case be far distant. Look at my feeble body, already sinking; look at my thin trembling hands, my sunken cheeks. No, Veronica, your resolution I cannot call a right one.' But your soul is strong,' answered the intrepid 'and you may yet do much service to the world. may console the dying, and succour the miserable.' 'Yes, the soul does the good, my child; but not without the aid of the body, and mine is weighed down by years. I can no longer be what I was in my youth. I long for another life, while you may be useful on earth, for you have a constant and strong will, therefore do not wish for me to live.' Veronica wept.

You

'At least,' she said, after a pause, suffer me to remain here, to be near you, that I may help you to such things as your bodily wants require.'

'Be it so,' answered the priest; but go now, lest your absence be suspected.'

CHAP. II.

In order to afford the reader an insight into the relation of Veronica with her benefactor, we must glance at an event which took place at an earlier period of our story. It was on the evening of the 6th of October, 1777, when in the Rue Baroche at Tours, a young and handsome man stood at the door of one of the best houses in the town. His countenance was melancholy, and wore the traces of worn-out expectation. Hastily he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, bent his ear to the door as if to listen, then as hastily resumed his upright position, and paced backwards and forwards, apparently in great anxiety of mind. After the lapse of half an hour, a young woman came out, and hastily closed the door after her. She looked very pale. The man glanced at her anxiously, but did not venture to speak until they were both at some distance from the house. I see very well,' he then said, that she refuses to receive us again.' 'Alas, yes!' was the sad answer. The cruel one,' muttered the man. 'Did you not tell her that we would not have remained long with her?' I told everything,' replied the woman, with a sigh. She said we might do as we liked, just as we had done before, that is, marrying without her consent.'

'Did you not speak of our child ?' asked the man, in increased agitation.

'Certainly,' answered the young wife; but my aunt said she cared nothing about it.'

'Yes, she has a hard heart,' exclaimed the man, in the greatest indignation. She shall repent it. She shall

'Stop, Julius,' said his wife, interrupting him, as her tears fell fast. It is a sin to wish evil. Let us beg

'Beg!' repeated the unhappy young man, standing

still, and gazing on the face of his wife in profound sorrow. Beg, Laura? Yes, we must beg. But how are we to begin? We must, in the first place, leave Tours,' he continued. 'I have friends in Paris; we must go there.'

And our child?' said Laura, looking at her infant, which she held beneath her mantle, and then at her husband, with a half-terrified expression of countenance. We must leave it here,' answered the young man, speaking with an effort.

Leave my child!' impetuously exclaimed the unhappy mother, becoming pale and red by turns. Do not speak to me, Julius, of what is impossible,' and poor Laura burst into an agony of weeping.

'Laura,' said her companion, in a voice broken and agitated, do you think I suffer less than you in proposing such a step? Were it not an imperative necessity, could I, think you, contemplate such a proceeding? But it must be. We cannot take our poor little daughter with us to Paris, when we may be obliged to perform the journey on foot. Besides, dear Laura, we shall leave it only for a short time; we shall return and claim it.'.

Laura looked up, and asked what he meant seriously to do with the child.

That which other unfortunate ones often do, place it in the Foundling Hospital.'

These words were uttered as if wrung from the heart of the unhappy young father.

'No, Julius,' cried his wife, with yet greater vehemence; 'rather than consent to this, I would see my child perish in my arms. What! see our daughter in the midst of the children of crime and shame! You know that the children are often given over to this one or that one, frequently to needy women as daily beggars. What kindness could be expected from such women?'

Your own aunt showed no greater kindness,' replied Julius, with bitternesss, than any of those women may be expected to show to a child. Perhaps you had better retrace your steps, and ask her aid once more.'

Do not be unjust, Julius. My aunt was kind to me, and cared for me as any mother would have done; for my education, for all I ever received, I have to thank her. And she was kind to you too, Julius, until stopped, afraid of hurting her husband's feelings, by alluding to their marriage.

She

Go on,' observed the latter, with impatience. Much depends on her appearing to me in a more favourable light.'

Had you been in her place,' whispered Laura, taking the hand of her husband, perhaps you would have acted as she has done. Here is a church,' she continued, in a low, sad voice, let us go in and pray that God may direct our steps.' And she drew her husband with her into the cathedral of the town to which they were close.

A thought occurs to me,' said her husband, as they entered. Let us lay down our child before the altar, and among the pious who come to evening prayers, some one may take pity on the infant.'

The thought seemed to please the unhappy mother, as she pressed the child tenderly to her heart. Yet she felt uncertain. The separation was sorrowful. It was so hard for a mother to part with her infant. Observing her hesitation, Julius said, 'You must take our daughter yourself, dear Laura, to the altar, lay her down, and watch at a little distance who approaches. I will remain near the door, and observe who goes in or comes out. It is so dark, I shall not be perceived. Tie this small medal round her neck,' pointing to one Laura always wore, and by this token we shall again find our child.'

Poor Laura prepared to follow the advice of her husband, and slowly approached the altar with her unconscious child-unconscious alike of its mothers's tears or its father's wretchedness.

Laura stept softly, fearful of drawing observation on herself by any of those who were kneeling near her. The church was dimly lighted, only the lamps in the choir were burning, and a few others at one or more of the side chapels. She reached one of the latter, where she had

been accustomed to pray in her girlhood. With a throbbing heart and a heavy sigh, she gently laid down her little daughter before the altar of the Blessed Virgin, commending her to the mercy of God. She then arose, and went to a short distance, in order to observe if any one took up the child. By degrees the cathedral became almost empty; the worshippers, one by one, had disappeared, until there only remained the officiating priest. The priest was our friend of Tours, who years after was imprisoned, as we have narrated, in the dungeon of Nantes. When he saw that there remained no one, as he thought, in the church, he prepared also to depart; but, before leaving, he approached the side chapel, where lay the infant of Laura. He knelt down for a few moments, he heard a low moan, he listened, and heard another; and then to his astonishment perceived a child at the foot of the altar. The then helpless infant became the Veronica who wished to give her life for that of the good priest, who had, at that critical moment of her destiny, taken compassion on her. He lifted up the child, resolving to take charge of it; the more especially, as he thought, by the medal suspended round its neck, that its mother must have been an unfortunate Christian parent, who was desirous that her child should be religiously educated.

In going away, he almost touched Laura, who was anxiously watching his movements. Her joy was so great when she saw the priest take up her child, that she was on the point of speaking to him, but shame and fear kept her silent. Heaven be praised,' murmured the father, as he saw the priest pass out, and knew he had his child. Tears of emotion stood in his eyes, as he and Laura went on their sorrowful journey.

The priest gave the child the name of Veronica, and sent it to be taken care of by a respectable widow, who lived a short way from Tours. When ten years of age, the young girl came daily to her benefactor to receive instruction; and the worthy priest became much attached to the little foundling, who early gave proofs of no ordi nary intelligence.

The revolution broke out. The aged sister of the priest, who had lived with him, died, and he went to reside with Veronica and the widow. Search had often been made for him, as he refused to take the civil oath; but Veronica contrived to conceal him so well, that at length the search seemed to be abandoned. However, he again drew observation upon himself, by persisting in dispensing the sacraments; and he assuredly must have been taken before the fearful tribunals had he not withdrawn himself from Tours.

ON DIT.

When the late Mr Whitbread was alive, the capacious mansion attached to the brewery in Chiswell Street was frequently the scene of a political dinner. Many curious anecdotes float about traditional of these gatherings. Amongst other tales, there hangs one to a celebrated horse in the stud of that time. It was generally the case when dinner was over, and the guests were exuberant with something stronger than XX, that a party would be formed to go over the brewery. Flambeaux in hand, all parts were duly visited, from the vaults under-ground to the granaries next the sky. On one occasion, a versatile and vivacious guest, a celebrity in that day, and now a noble lord, displayed his characteristic temerity in venturing to mount a horse that had an insurmountable antipathy to anything of the kind. It was the largest and heaviest horse in the country—indeed the Whitbreads have almost established a prerogative to the first horse-and very mettlesome. 'I'll mount it, however,' exclaimed the future Lord Chancellor, in reply to the observation, that the animal would suffer no one to get on his back. He did mount, and, to the infinite amusement of the bystanders, was sprawling the next moment on the ground. Whether the disaster produced a good moral impression, it is not easy to say. Certain it is that the lesson did not save him from having a good many falls afterwards, but, as on that occasion, he has always shown dexterity and agility in getting on his legs again.

GLANCES AT EUROPE.

BY HORACE GREELEY.

EASTERN ITALY-THE PO.

I NEVER saw, and cannot hope to see hereafter, a region more blessed by nature, than the great plain of Upper Italy, whereof the Po is the life-blood. It is very fertile and beautiful where I first traversed it near its head, from the foot of Mount Cenis by Turin to Alessandria and Novi, on my way down to Genoa; yet it is richer and lovelier still, where I have just recrossed it, from the foot of the Apennines by Bologna, Ferrara, Rovigo, and Padua on my way from Florence to Venice. Irrigation, which ¦might easily be almost universal in Piedmont, seems there but an occasional expedient, while here it is the breath of life. From Bologna to Rovigo (and I presume on to Padua, though there night and drowsiness prevented my observing clearly), the whole country seems completely intersected by canals, constructed in the palmier days of Italy, on purpose to distribute the fertilising waters of the Po and the Adige over the entire face of the country, and dispense them to every field and meadow. The great highway generally runs along the bank of one of these canals, which are filled from the rivers when they have just been raised by rains, and are thus surcharged with fertilising matter, and drawn off from day to day thereafter to refresh and enrich the remarkably level plain they traverse. Thus, not only the plain and the glades lying nearer the sources of the rivers, but the sterile, rugged crests of the Alps and Apennines, which enclose this great basin, are made to contribute evermore to the fruitfulness of its soil, so that despotism, ignorance, stolidity, indolence, and unthrift of all kinds, vainly strive to render it other than the garden of Europe. The banks of the canals and the sides of the highways are generally lined with trees, rows of which also traverse many, if not most, of the fields, so that from certain points the whole country seems one vast, low forest, or timbered opening' of poplar, willow, mulberry, locust, &c. There are a few oaks, more elms, and some species I did not recognise, and the vine through all this region is trained on dwarfed or shortened trees, sometimes along the roadside, but oftener in rows through one-fourth of the fields, while, in a few instances, it is allowed thus to obtain an altitude of thirty or forty feet. Of fruit, I have seen only the apricot and the cherry in abundance, but there are some pears, while the orange and lemon are very plentiful in the towns, though I think they are generally brought from Naples and the Mediterranean coast. But finer crops of wheat, grass, hemp, &c., can grow nowhere than throughout this country; while the Indian corn, which is abundantly planted, would yield as amply, if the people knew how to cultivate it. Ohio has no better soil nor climate for this grain. Of potatoes or other edible roots, I have seen very little. Hemp is extensively cultivated, and grows most luxuriantly. Man is the only product of this prolific land which seems stunted and shrivelled. Were Italy once more a nation, under one wise and liberal government, with a single tariff, coinage, mail-post, &c., a thorough system of common school education, a small navy, but no passports, and a public policy, which looked to the fostering and diversifying of her industry, she might easily sustain and enrich a population of sixty millions. As it is, one-half of her twenty-five millions are in rags, and are pinched by hunger, while inhabiting the best wheat country in Europe, from which food is constantly and largely exported. There are at least one hundred millions of dollars locked up in useless decorations of churches, and not one common school-house from Savoy to Sicily.. A little education, after a fashion, is fitfully dispensed by certain religious and charitable foundations, so that the child lucky enough to be an orphan or illegitimate has a chance to be taught to read and write; but any such thing as a practical recognition of the right to education, or as a public and general provision for imparting it, is utterly unkown here. Grand and beautiful structures are crowded in every city, and are crumbling

to dust on every side; a single township dotted at proper intervals with eight or ten school-houses would be worth them all. With infinite water-power, cheaper labour, and cheaper food, than almost any other country in the civilised world, and millions of children at once naked and idle, because no one will employ them at even sixpence a-day, she has not one cotton or woollen factory that I have yet seen, and can hardly have one at all, though her mountains afford vast and excellent sheep-walks, and Naples can grow cotton, if she will. England and Germany manufacture nearly all the few fabrics of cotton or wool worn here, because those who should lead, instruct, and employ this people, are blind to their duty or recreant to its obligations. Italy, once the light of the world, is dying of aristocratic torpor and popular ignorance, whence come indolence, superstition, and wide-spread demoralisation and misery.

SWITZERLAND.

Here every little patch of level ground, save the rocky bed of the impetuous mountain torrent, is laboriously, carefully cultivated. Such mere scraps of earth do not admit of efficient husbandry, but are made to produce liberally, by dint of patient effort. I should judge that a peck of corn is about the average product of a day's work through all this region. There is some pasturage, mainly on the less abrupt declivities far up the mountains, but not one acre in fifty of the canton yields aught but it may be a little fuel for the sustenance of man. Nature is here a rugged mother, exacting incessant toil of her children as the price of the most frugal subsistence; but, under such skies, in the presence of so much magnificence, and in a land of equality and freedom, mere life is worth working for, and the condition is accepted with a hearty alacrity. Men and women work together, and almost equally, in the fields; and here, where the necessity is so palpably of nature's creation, not man's, the spectacle is far less revolting, than on the fertile plains of Piedmont or Lombardy. The little patch of wheat is so carefully reaped, that scarcely a grain is left, and children bear the sheaves on their backs to the allotted shelter, while mothers and maidens are digging up the soil with the spade, and often pulling up the stubble with their hands, preparatory to another crop. Switzerland could not afford to be a kingdom, the expense of a court and royal family would famish half her people. Yet everywhere are the signs of frugal thrift and homely content. I met only two beggars in that long day's ride through sterile Switzerland, while, in a similar ride through the fertile plains of Italy, I should have encountered hundreds, though there each day's labour produces as much as three days do here. If the Swiss only could live at home, by the utmost industry and economy, I think they would very seldom be found elsewhere; but, in truth, the land has long been peopled to the extent of its capacity for subsisting, and the steady increase which their pure morals and simple habits insure, must drive off thousands in search of the bread of honest toil. Hence their presence elsewhere, in spite of their passion ate attachment to their free native hills.

I am leaving Switzerland, after four days only of observation therein; but during those days I have traversed the country from its southern to its north-eastern extremity, passing through six of the cantons, and along the skirts of another, resting respectively at Airolo, Lucerne, and Basle, and meeting many hundreds of the people on the way, beside seeing thousands in the towns and at work in their fields. This is naturally a very poor country, with for the most part a sterile soil-or rather naked, precipitous rocks, irreclaimably devoid of soil-where, if anywhere, the poor peasantry would be justified in asking charity of the strangers who come to gaze at and enjoy their stupendous but most inhospitable mountains-and yet I have not seen one beggar to a hundred hearty workers, while, in fertile, bounteous, sunny Italy, the preponderance was clearly the other way. And, though very palpably a stranger, and especially exposed by my ignorance of the languages spoken here to imposition, no one has attempted to cheat me from the moment of my entering the republic till this, while in

Italy every day, and almost every hour, was marked by its peculiar extortions. Everywhere I have found kindness and truth written on the faces and evinced in the acts of this people, while in Italy rapacity and knavery are the order of the day.

Switzerland, shut out from equal competition with other nations by her inland, elevated, scarcely accessible position, has naturalised manufactures on her soil, and they are steadily extending. She sends millions' worth of watches, silks, &c., annually even to distant America; while Italy, with nearly all her population within a day's ride of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean, with the rich, barbaric East at her doors for a market, does not fabricate even the rags which partially cover her beggars, but depends on England and France for most of the little clothing she has. Italy is naturally a land of abundance and luxury, with a soil and climate scarcely equalled on earth; yet a large share of her population actually lack the necessaries, not to speak of the comforts, of life, and those who sow and reap her bountiful harvests are often without bread. Switzerland has, for the most part, an arctic climate, and scarcely any soil at all; and yet her people are all decently clad, and adequately though frugally fed, and I have not seen one person who seemed to have been demoralised by want or to suffer from hunger since I crossed her border.

HOME FINDINGS. FINDING VII.

LAURA, my dear girl, could you not wait until I am gone out? I shall not be very long; and you know how important it is that I should finish this article. Walker asked me the other morning if it were not yet ready.' The young wife pouted, and sat down to her work-table. The jaded author, pressing his hand upon his brow, worked away as if his very life were at stake. And so it was, for out of that fevered brain was coined the hard-earned money upon which he and his newly-wedded Laura, a pretty, tolerably amiable, but thoughtless and injudicious young creature, depended for their daily bread.

After a few minutes, Laura began to bustle about again in a hushed kind of way, walking on tiptoe, and creating an under-current of confusion that totally disarranged her husband's train of thought.

'Laura, I do beg that you will be quiet a short time longer. Very much depends upon the success of this article. Take up a book, anything, so that you do but let me finish in peace.'

Again Laura obeyed, but with a muttered protest. She wanted to finish, because she was going out; it was such a fine day, she had no notion of being confined to the house all day. Besides, it was such untidy work leaving things; she liked to do what she had to do in the morning.

Her husband took no notice, but went on writing. In a little time she stole out of the room, and soon a great fuss was heard in the passage. Laura was noisily dusting the hall-chairs and hat-stand. The irritated author, put quite past his patience, started up with a furious exclamation, which had the effect of driving Laura out of the passage, and up the little flight of stairs into their bedroom, where she burst into a flood of tears, and lamented the day she had ever married an author.

If I had had poor Jones, now, of the bank-poor fellow, I wonder what has become of him-or Charles Thompson, who is always away to his office by nine o'clock in the morning, I should have been able to do like other wives; finish all my work early in the day, and then sit down, neatly dressed, to my sewing, or walk out and enjoy myself. But with literary men like my husband, one must always be accommodating one's-self to their whims, and really the house is untidy beyond everything. I did think, when I was married, that I should be mistress in my own house. It is so tiresome to have to suit one's-self perpetually to other people's nonsense!'

Oh! Laura, pretty Laura, why did you marry at all? Don't you know that it is the duty of every wife to adapt