tSt LIONEL LACKLAND. 



rock or dell, as she sat musing in the sunny twilight of evening, 

 her bosom rose, and her lips grew closer, cushioning their soft 

 pillows on each other as though she would imprison her glowing 

 dreams. Ellen was the creature of visionary joys ; still was she 

 sometimes playful as the young fawn. As her elegant form 

 flitted by in momentary joyousness, her clustering hair flying from 

 her high spiritual brow, streaming and waving in the wind, she 

 would turn with sudden thought, and glancing her long delicate 

 fingers through the straggling curls, she would murmur with her 

 dulcimer voice some little fairy legend or romaunt, wild and 

 wandering as her own dreams. Like her mother, Ellen was the 

 child of love, intense, exclusive love. Such was VA\en West- 

 berry, full of the hopes of warm affections and fairy vision. To 

 be the bride of Stratton — so exquisite a mind, so sensitive a heart 

 to be the wedded companion of the brutal and unsympathising 

 Stratton — who knew neither the cadences of love, nor the expres- 

 sions of its fondness ! In one accomplishment Stratton excelled ; 

 we could forgive the coarseness of his language and the rudeness 

 of his voice, when we listened to the narratives of his voyages 

 and travels, which he could paint with a powerful hand, impart- 

 ing to trifling events the most intense interest. How often have 

 I and Ellen listened with fearful admiration, looking with timid 

 glance towards the bold bravado, as he made the old room ring 

 again with his noisy vociferation and mirth, whilst we shuddered at 

 the mention of acts which to him were remembrances of jest. 

 As he thus detailed his strange and fearful adventures, Ellen 

 would listen with flattering attention, looking through the lustrous 

 hues of her imagination, upon the scenes he pictured to her mind ; 

 and thus necessarily became interested in him, who conjured up, 

 as by a charm, the illusions of romance. But no admiration 

 could long conceal, from a mind so discerning as Ellen's, his low 

 and brutal character. With feminine instinct, she soon dis- 

 trusted and feared him. There was never yet a villain who 

 could deceive a woman, however simple and unsuspicious, who 

 had not first learnt the art, from the same susceptibility of love; 

 who had not once been like her, the creature of the same affections. 

 Stratton had never known the tremblings of first love, had never 

 toned his voice to its whispers, faint and low. Of coarse and 

 boisterous health, with as little inflection in the movements of his 

 sturdy and muscular body, as irregularity in the pulsations of his 

 heart, he had grown up alike insensible to love or fear. The roar 

 of the ocean had been his only music; cooped up within the 

 Barrow compass of a few yards, his ideas had advanced but 

 little beyond himself. Such was the man who declared a 

 passion for the passionate Ellen. Clement Westberry, never 

 supposed, poor man, never suspected, that we had lived, not 

 as children, but in the deep absorbedness of a first love. 

 Yes, first love; the only love that is worth remembrance, 

 the on'y passion of our natures which is the pure, free-will 



