oved, as well on account of her parents' grief,
as because it may be looked upon as a truthful exponent both of the
destitution of the country, and of the virtues and sympathies of our
people.

Stretched upon a clean bed in the only room that was off the kitchen,
lay the fair but lifeless form of poor Peggy Murtagh. The bed was, as is
usual, hung with white, which was simply festooned about the posts and
canopy, and the coverlid was also of the same spotless color, as
were the death clothes in which she was laid out. To those who
are beautiful--and poor Peggy had possessed that frequently fatal
gift--death in its first stage, bestows an expression of mournful
tenderness that softens while it solemnizes the heart. In her case there
was depicted all the innocence and artlessness that characterized her
brief and otherwise spotless life. Over this melancholy sweetness lay a
shadow that manifested her early suffering and sorrow, made still
more touching by the presence of an expression which was felt by the
spectator to have been that of repentance. Her rich auburn hair
was simply divided on her pale forehead, and it was impossible to
contemplate the sorrow and serenity which blended into each other upon
her young brow, without feeling that death should disarm us of our
resentments, and teach us a lesson of pity and forgiveness to our poor
fellow-creatures, who, whatever may have been their errors, will never
more offend either God or man. Her extreme youthfulness was touching in
the highest degree, and to the simplicity of her beauty was added that
unbroken stillness which gives to the lifeless face of youth the only
charm that death has to bestow, while it fills the heart I to its utmost
depths with the awful conviction that that is the slumber which no human
care nor anxious passion shall ever break, The babe, thin and pallid,
from the affliction of its young and unfortunate mother, could hardly
be looked, upon, in consequence of its position, without tears. They
had placed it by her side, but within her arm, so that by this touching
arrangement all the brooding tenderness of the mother's love seemed to
survive and overcome the power of death itself. There they lay, victims
of sin, but emblems of innocence, and where is the heart that shall,
in the inhumanity of its justice, dare to follow them out of life,
and disturb the peace they now enjoy by the heartless sentence of
unforgiveness?

It was, indeed, a melancholy sce