n. I cherished the passion of my heart too much, when I ought to
have checked and restrained it--and now, what is the consequence? Why,
that I go down in the very flower of my youth to an early grave."

Agnes caught the dear girl's hands when she had concluded, and looking
with a breaking heart into her face, said--

"And oh, my sister, my sister, are you leaving us--are you leaving
us for ever, my sister? Life will be nothing to me, my Jane, without
you--how, how will your Agnes live?"

"I doubt we are only disturbing--our cherished one," said her father.
"Let our child's last moments be calm--and her soul--oh let it not be
drawn back from its hopes, to this earth and its affections."

"Papa, pray for me, and they will join with you--pray for your poor Jane
while it is yet time--the prayer of the righteous availeth much."

Earnest, indeed, and melancholy, was that last prayer offered up on
behalf of the departing girl. When it was concluded there was a short
silence, as if they wished not to break in upon what they considered the
aspirations of the dying sufferer. At length the mother thought she
felt her child's cheek press against her own with a passive weight that
alarmed her.

"Jane, my love," said she, "do you not feel your soul refreshed by your
father's prayer?"

No answer was returned to this, and on looking more closely at her
countenance of sorrow, they found that her gentle spirit had risen on
the incense of her father's prayer to heaven. The mother clasped her
hands, whilst the head of her departed daughter still lay upon her
bosom.

"Oh God! oh God!" said she, "our idol is gone--is gone!"

"Gone!" exclaimed the old man; "now, oh Lord, surely--surely the
father's grief may be allowed," and he burst, as he spoke, into a
paroxysm of uncontrollable sorrow.

"And what am I to do--who am--oh woe--woe--who was her mother?"

To the scene that ensued, what pen could do justice--we cannot,
and consequently leave it to the imagination of our readers, whose
indulgence we crave for our many failures and errors in the conduct of
this melancholy story.

Thus passed the latter days of the unhappy Jane Sinclair, of whose
life nothing more appropriate need be said, than that which she herself
uttered immediately before her death:

"Let my fate be a warning to young creatures like myself, never to
suffer their affection for any object to overmaster their sense and
their reason. I cherished the passion of my h