The extinguished candles were speedily relighted; the hall was searched. But the patent had effectually disappeared.

The bold young man, when his cloak, skilfully thrown, fell upon the lights and extinguished them, snatched the case containing the Charter, and darting through an opening in the groups which his eye had previously inarked out, he gained the open window and sprang lightly to the ground. With the speed of the deer, he fled along the street, till he came opposite the Governor's residence, when he paused as if with indecision. The next moment he resumed his flight in the direction of Colonel Wyllys' mansion. He continued on the main street a third of a mile, and then turning short to his left, entered a dark lane, thickly bordered with trees. Traversing this with undiminished speed, he reached the gate before the house, and without waiting to open it, bounded over and threaded the gravelled walk towards the dwelling.

"Henry, is it you?" said Kate, meeting him on the piazza, “I have been looking for you. Why, what is the matter?" she inquired, as Henry stood before her panting.

In a few words he related the scenes in the council chamber. "Aid me with your woman's wit," he said, as he concluded the relation.

Catharine placed her forefinger upon her lip; reflected for the space of half a minute, and then turned to him with a glad countenance. "Do you remember the old oak, Henry?"

"Hush! this is no time to play the lover. In the oak is a deep cavity. It will remain there for ages without discovery. Go, Henry! be quick! I will remain here to see that none of the servants see you."

From the terrace, the ground sloped to the lane, where it terminated in a low, precipitous bank. Near the verge of this bank, grew an oak, which flung its broad arms half across the lane. Henry soon reached the tree, and hurriedly but carefully passed his hand over its huge trunk, and at length at the very root, found a cavity with an upward direction into the heart of the oak. He thrust a broken limb nearly three feet into it. Then enlarging the orifice by breaking away the decayed wood, he inserted the end of the case into the opening, and forced it a foot beyond the mouth.

"Thank God!" he said devoutly, as he drew forth his arm, “it will rest safely there, until we get an honest king again."

He then carefully replaced the fragments, covered the orifice with a sod, which he cut with his knife some yards from the spot, and neatly swept the grass at the foot of the tree. "Now, if it is discovered," he said, rising to his feet, "it must be the devil himself who gives the information."

VI.

We pass over the anger and mortification of Sir Edmund Andross, and the quiet exultation of the members of the council, who having fulfilled their obedience to the King's commands by surrendering the Charter, were not held accountable for any of its subsequent gyrations. Notwithstanding this untoward event, Sir Edmund Andross assumed the government of Connecticut, which he annexed to Massachusetts, making Boston the seat of general jurisdiction. He formed a council composed of forty gentlemen; and otherwise appointed officers according to his own pleasure. Fitz Winthrop and Governor Treat were members of this council. At first, he ruled with mildness and moderation; and his addresses were filled with professions for the happiness of the colonists; and for a time he administered justice according to the laws of the government under the Charter. His first open infringement of the liberties of the people, was by restraining the freedom of the press. This was followed by one upon marriage, which," says the historian, "was far more grievous." He forbade the performance of this rite, unless the parties gave bonds, with sureties to himself, to be forfeited, if it should appear, subsequently, that there existed any lawful impediment to the marriage. Clergymen were forbidden to officiate, and, to the great scandal of the colony, the right of performing the ceremony was given up altogether to civil magistrates, thus taking from the clergy the perquisites with which they were wont to eke out their narrow salaries.

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Not satisfied with, this persecution, he suspended the laws which provided for their maintenance, and prohibited all persons from paying any thing to their minister. He fortified this bold position by a menace to the people, if they dared to resist his pleasure, threatening to destroy their houses of worship, or "conventicles; " he also forbade any one to pay the sum of two pence to a nonconformist minister, on pain of punishment by fines and stocks.

But the mode in which the English governor managed the affairs of his government are familiar to all readers of history. Under the pretence that the Charter of Connecticut had been vacated, he declared all titles under it of no value, and in a speech in council, said, that Indian deeds were no better than "the scratch of a bear's paw." No pleas, however legally and sacredly based, were of avail with him and his corrupt favorites. Not only Connecticut, but all New England groaned under his oppression. The colonists were not men to submit for a length of time to a system of tyranny like this. Eighteen months after his usurpation of the government of Connecticut, the citizens of Boston, where he held his court, and its vicinity, in alliance with Treat, Fitz Winthrop, and other distinguished Hartfordians, stung with these injuries, rose in arms, took

the castle by storm, seized the person of Sir Edmund Andross, made prisoners of his council, and reinstated the former colonial governor and council in the government. The landing of the Protestant Prince, William of Orange, at Torbay, and the promises he held out, doubtless encouraged the colonists to take this bold and decisive step.

On the ninth of May, 1689, eighteen months and ten days after the farce of the surrender of their patent, Governor Treat, and the other officers under the Charter, resumed the government of Connecticut. On the twenty-sixth day of the same month, the news that William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of England, arrived, and spread universal joy throughout the land.

In 1704, the liberties of Connecticut were again endangered by Lord Cornbury, Governor of New York, and Governor Dudley, of Massachusetts, who combined to despoil it of its Charter, and annex it to their government. They were, however, unsuccessful; and to secure the Colony against any further conspiracies of this nature, their magistrates confirmed to it its Charter in perpetuity, and so the machinations of the enemies of the Colony were effectually defeated. After a concealment of more than fifteen years, the Charter was, therefore, reproduced from its hiding place in the oak, and placed in the archives of the State.

We will now bring our tale to a conclusion. Sir Edmund Andross, believing that Helen had intentionally given him the false parchment, withdrew his suit. Helen, out of womanly revenge, changed her political creed, and became as stout a friend to the Charter, as heretofore she had been an enemy to it.

Harry Wadsworth and Kate Wyllys were ultimately made one flesh; but not until after the usurper was displaced, and Governor Treat again ruled over Connecticut. It was Henry's wish to be married a year earlier than he was, but Catharine stoutly refused.

"I will die an old maid," she said, "before I will be married by one of Andross's slaves. If I am not married by our good old orthodox minister, Mr. Woodbridge, no Justice of the Peace shall make Catharine Wyllys, Catharine Wadsworth." We have good authority in stating here, that Henry Wadsworth was one of the most active among those who deposed the tyrant.

Trevor, soon after the accession of Andross, returned to England, and at the age of thirty-five, fell honorably in the Spanish wars, with the rank of Colonel. He never married.

The other prominent characters of our romance are the property of history. We have already, for a romancer, sufficiently encroached on this, in our, we trust praiseworthy, aim, to which the novelist ought always have an eye, to combine healthy instruction with that entertainment, which all are bound to expect in a work of fiction.

SONNET.

[THE FALLS OF THE CAUTERSKILL, NEAR THE PINE ORCHARD, CATSKILL MOUNTAINS, NEW YORK.]

Oh wondrous nook of earth! where Nature's hand
Clusters in one, the high, the wild, the steep,
Rock, mountain, cataract, and forest deep!
As Nature's worshipper I come, and stand,
And in rapt silence see, and hear, and feel :-

The glitt'ring stream, the spray with rainbow crowned,
The dizzy height, the roar, the gulf profound,
Dazzle with splendor and with fear congeal!
Treading such holy ground, within me dies

Each earth-born thought; my spirit fain would soar,
Beyond the cloud-capt peaks that round me rise,

To Heaven's eternal throne; and there would pour,
Mid angel choirs, the tribute of her praise

To Him, the Almighty One, whom Nature's self obeys.
B. F. B.

SNOW-FLAKES.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"TWICE-TOLD TALES."

THERE is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning!—and through the partially frosted window-panes, I love to watch the gradual beginning of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere. These are not the big flakes, heavy with moisture, which melt as they touch the ground, and are portentous of a soaking rain. It is to be, in good earnest, a wintry storm. The two or three people visible on the side-walks, have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a comfortless and blustering day. By nightfall, or at least before the sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us, the street and our little garden will be heaped with mountain snow-drifts. The soil, already frozen for weeks past,

is prepared to sustain whatever burthen may be laid upon it; and, to a northern eye, the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own, when mother earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her winter's wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar frost over the brown surface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still discernible; and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look gray, instead of black. All the snow that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually, by silent and stealthy influences, are great changes wrought. These little snow-particles, which the storm-spirit flings by handfulls through the air, will bury the great earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold her sister sky again for dreary months. We, likewise, shall lose sight of our mother's familiar visage, and must content ourselves with looking heavenward the oftener.

Now, leaving the storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down, pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an influence productive of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative thought, in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a southern clime may woo the muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage, reclining on banks of turf, while the sound of singing birds and warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our brief summer, I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a dream. My hour of inspiration-if that hour ever comes-is when the green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement rattles in the gust, and the snowflakes or the sleety rain-drops pelt hard against the window-panes, then I spread out my sheet of paper, with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it, like stars at twilight, or like violets in May-perhaps to fade as soon. However transitory their glow, they at least shine amid the darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through the room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-born son, be NewEngland's winter, which makes us, one and all, the nurslings of the storm, and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look we forth again, and see how much of of his task the storm-spirit has done.

Slow and sure! He has the day, perchance the week, before him, and may take his own time to accomplish Nature's burial in A smooth mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless

snow.