ending in all its romantic attraction. It is
not the vicissitudes of an erring life that inspire our pen in this
brief sketch, but the merciful designs of Providence in following and
wresting from perdition a noble soul, endeared to heaven by the
prayers of a repentant mother, by the sighs of a saintly religious,
and by its own love for the immaculate Queen of Heaven.

Alvira opens her soul to the impulses of grace, but in dangerous and
guilty procrastination she passes through some startling vicissitudes
before the Almighty, impatient as it were for her love, draws her to
him by one of the most touching miracles recorded in the wonders of
hagiology. We will hurry on to those events, which will warm our
hearts with love towards God, and make us look up with a deep feeling
of awe towards that "mercy which is above all his works."

Three years of strange vicissitude rolled over the career of our
heroines. Some thousands of pounds gilded the path they passed over.
With all the recklessness of youth, they squandered their ill-gotten
money. Many a poor ruined family eked out a miserable existence,
whilst their gold, entrusted to the wretched banker who had gone to
his account, was flung recklessly on the tables of chance by the
children he had nursed in the school of iniquity. Like sand passing
through the fingers, like corn through perforated sack, their thousands
dwindled away, giving place to the bitter hour of retaliation, of
punishment, which will yet come for those hapless children of folly.

It did not please Almighty God to hurry them to a dreadful judgement
by sudden or awful death. He has other and even keener pangs than
those of death, but they come rather from the hand of mercy than of
justice. They are the pangs of remorse, which tear the heart of their
victims with agonizing stings that are known only in the deep secrets
of the soul. A dark and secret hour of retribution is at hand for
Charles; the heavy but merciful hand of God will touch her, although
she will still follow the mad career of her hypocrisy and the wild
dreams of her ambition.

Alvira, still in her disguise of Charles, endeavored to forget the
crimes she committed in the dissipation in which she indulged. Whilst
wealth and friends were around she feigned a gay heart and flattered
herself she was not so bad. She involuntarily blushed at rude remarks
made by gentlemen amongst whom she passed as a companion, and in the
unsullied innoc