his future existence being shared and hallowed by some lovely being, whose image he sketched from painting, and from song. It was a favourite occupation on the long days of summer to take his fishing-rod, as an excuse for idleness, and throwing himself on the margin of a silvery stream, which ran through one of the most picturesque parts of Ireland, he would fix his eyes on the blue-capped hills in the distance, and think that futurity, now hid from his sight, might conceal scenes as fair and brilliant as those he gazed on, lighted up by the rays of a Western sun:

At summer's eve, when Heaven's aërial bow
Spans, with bright arch, the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those hills of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain with its azure hue.

Thus, with delight, we linger to survey
The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim discovered scene

More pleasing seems than all the past has been;
And every form that fancy can repair

From dark oblivion, glows divinely there."

Thus, in the beautiful words of "The Pleasures of Hope," would he indulge in many a fairy scene for the future, and draw from thence some of hope's own brightest colours with which to imbue the present.

The reality of life was, indeed, found a strange reverse from the ideal he had loved to indulge in. At times, the natural buoyancy of youth seemed to struggle under the leaden chains which bound it, and the light of poetry and song once again brightened in his eye in this land of the Muses.

But it would not be the fire was transientthe burden and the weight unceasing. For several years, their home was alternately at

Rome, Naples, and Paris. Mrs. Fitzgerald preferred a splendid séjour in these gay cities, to the seeking out the beauties of the picturesque and romantic scenery through which they passed, and amongst which her now delicate health would have prevented her scrambling enjoyment, even if nature had gifted her with any taste for such pursuits.

Her first child, now the Lady Mary Desmond, had been born at Naples; and several future disappointments of an heir had materially injured her strength, though in the luxurious ease which her ever attentive and considerate husband was careful to procure for her, she could enter into the pleasures of a Parisian winter with great zest, and from which they were called to the reverse of a secluded Irish home, by the dangerous illness of Mr. Fitzgerald's mother, who entreated her son to hasten to receive her last blessing.

He was preparing everything for their imme

diate departure, when Lady Lancaster, who, finding the convenience of Mrs. Fitzgerald's carriages, opera-box, &c., had followed them to Paris, was unwilling to lose all these advantages, and earnestly requested Mr. Fitzgerald to leave his young and still much admired wife under her motherly protection, and not expose to her delicate health to the danger of a hurried journey in winter.

Mr. Fitzgerald, always anxious to consult his wife's comfort to the utmost of his power, was perhaps not sorry to be spared her uninteresting companionship, and to find she really preferred remaining among the amusements which surrounded her to sharing his melancholy journey, he made all the necessary arrangements for his immediate departure, leaving her undisputed sway over their splendid establishment and hotel in Paris, with Lady Lancaster and her daughters, nothing loath, established with her, as protection and companions.

There was no presentiment of a final adieu, when Mrs. Fitzgerald calmly kissed her husband on his departure, and ordered the nurse to bring their little girl to wish her papa good-bye. For a moment, his heart heaved as he pressed his darling child to his heart, and he bitterly thought that, under a happier destiny, the wife he would have chosen would not have let him depart alone and sad to seek the death-bed of his mother.

But he had no right to complain. He had never sought to wake any latent sympathies in the bosom of the being forced upon him as it were for his companion in life. He had rather endeavoured to foster the cold apathy of her nature, and teaching her to expect nothing beyond the polite observances of a kind attention, had chilled any warmth of love, had the sparks ever existed in her bosom.

She now watched him step into his travellingcarriage, and, as it rattled out of the court-yard,