e more
absorbed and rapt. Full streamed its holy rays upon the now snowy locks
and upward countenance of Lester, making his venerable person more
striking from the contrast it afforded to the dark and sunburnt
cheek--the energetic features, and chivalric and earnest head of the
young man beside him. Just in the shadow, the raven locks of Ellinor
were bowed over her clasped hands,--nothing of her face visible;
the graceful neck and heaving breast alone distinguished from the
shadow;--and, hushed in a death-like and solemn repose, the parted lips
moving inaudibly; the eye fixed on vacancy; the wan transparent hands,
crossed upon her bosom; the light shone with a more softened and tender
ray upon the faded but all-angelic form and countenance of her, for
whom Heaven was already preparing its eternal recompense for the ills of
Earth!

CHAPTER V.

THE TRIAL.

"Equal to either fortune."--Speech of Eugene Aram.

A thought comes over us, sometimes, in our career of pleasure, or the
troublous exultation of our ambitious pursuits; a thought come over us,
like a cloud, that around us and about us Death--Shame--Crime--Despair,
are busy at their work. I have read somewhere of an enchanted land,
where the inmates walked along voluptuous gardens, and built palaces,
and heard music, and made merry; while around, and within, the land,
were deep caverns, where the gnomes and the fiends dwelt: and ever and
anon their groans and laughter, and the sounds of their unutterable
toils, or ghastly revels, travelled to the upper air, mixing in an awful
strangeness with the summer festivity and buoyant occupation of those
above. And this is the picture of human life! These reflections of the
maddening disparities of the world are dark, but salutary:--

"They wrap our thoughts at banquets in the shroud;" [Young.]

but we are seldom sadder without being also wiser men!

The third of August 1759 rose bright, calm, and clear: it was the
morning of the trial; and when Ellinor stole into her sister's room,
she found Madeline sitting before the glass, and braiding her rich locks
with an evident attention and care.

"I wish," said she, "that you had pleased me by dressing as for a
holiday. See, I am going to wear the dress I was to have been married
in."

Ellinor shuddered; for what is more appalling than to find the signs of
gaiety accompanying the reality of anguish!

"Yes," continued Madeline, with a smile of inexpressibl