ing their retirement, and lighting their descent to the tomb, they were still aware it was under a higher direction; and that, if such were the Supreme will, all their expectations might be rendered abortive in a moment, and what appeared to them the staff of solacing affection, converted into the rod of chastening love. In either event, they were ready to say with the patriarch of old, in his exemplary resignation under bereavements, perhaps without a parallel; • The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord!'

At a moderate distance from the glen, and towards the southern extremity of the Canton, resided the representative of a powerful Baronial family. His ancestry was ancient. Many of those, whose blood. flowed in his veins, had signalized themselves on various occasions at home and abroad, and were honourably recorded in the annals of the Helvetic Confederacy; and in point of rank, fortune, and character, he himself was considered at the present

moment, as one of the most respectable of the Alpine chiefs. His possessions extended far and wide: his flocks were numerous; and, if we may be allowed to apply in a lower sense the beautiful language of Inspiration, many a beast of the forest was his, and his the cattle on a thousand hills.'

Of retired habits, and inoffensive demeanour, and mixing little in the political innovations of the day, he was among the few who had been permitted to retain the inheritance of their fathers.*-In him, perhaps, as one from whom no danger was to be apprehended, the unprincipled invaders, though actuated only by the sordid motives of personal aggrandizement, were desirous of making an ostentatious display of magnanimity; and thus, by an instance which they were well aware would not be unnoticed, to throw an air of generosity over their treatment of 'the vanquished. Here, in an insulated building, encircled by a deep moat, and uniting, as was usual in the residence of warlike princes,

See note p.

though rather more modern in its structure, as having been erected when the feudal system was beginning to fall into disuse, the character of a palace and of a castle, leading back the imagination to troublous times, de Mertenburg enjoyed comparative tranquillity. Occupying himself with such sports, as the interminable solitudes which surrounded him could afford, and had furnished to the generations that had preceded him :-the chase of the chamois-the hunt of the wolf, which here occasionally descends from its deserts, and alarms the unsuspecting villagers and the attack of the more ponderous and unwieldy bear: these, with the less hazardous amusements of fishing, for which his proximity to the lake afforded him as frequent opportunity as he might incline to embrace, and the pursuit of the feathered tribes, were the employments employments, but too little suited to a being, who has so brief a span wherein to secure the interests of eter nity-in which he principally passed his

VOL. I.

See note q.

I

leisure, and amidst which he had consumed the greater portion of the years allotted

to man.

De Mertenburg had an only son. Marrying in early life, he had promised himself, in the sweets of wedded love, all that he could wish, or this world had to bestow. But alas! hope was fallacious; and he was soon left to mourn its unreturning flight.' The woman of his choice was lovely, young, and amiable but it was not in the power of youth, or loveliness, to arrest the fatal shaft.

The arrow was already prepared upon the string; and it was destined to quiver in the vitals of his Matilda. Thus is it, that our fondest anticipations, and dearest joys, frequently forsake us, when we have only begun to taste the delightful reality, if aught of happiness be real upon earth: thus is it, that the mournful assertion, man is born to trouble,' is brought home to our own breasts, and that we are taught by woeful experience the mutable nature of all terrestrial prospects; and thus it is, that

"The fairest flowret often soonest dies."

In a few minutes after bringing into the world her first-born son, the wife of de Mertenburg expired in the arms of her weeping, and disconsolate, husband. Faithful in his attachment to this object of his tender affection, he beheld her breathe her last with sensations of the bitterest anguish ; nor could he ever after be prevailed upon to replace her in his widowed heart. The child, she had borne him, he committed to the care of tutors, whom she had herself recommended for him, in the sad presentiment that she would be the dying mother of a living son. Though, perhaps, unable accurately to discriminate between those, whose instructions might be more or less calculated to promote the best interests of her son, which under other circumstances she would have valued above all earthly advantages; it was yet so ordered by the secret, but over-ruling, guidance of the Power that presided in mercy over his ways, that those, to whom his education was entrusted, were men, not more distinguished for their talents and learning, than exem