MRS. HEMANS.

While Sir William Brandon was pursuing his ambitious schemes, and,
notwithstanding Lucy's firm and steady refusal of Lord Mauleverer, was
still determined on that ill-assorted marriage; while Mauleverer himself
day after day attended at the judge's house, and, though he spoke not of
love, looked it with all his might,--it became obvious to every one but
the lover and the guardian, that Lucy herself was rapidly declining in
appearance and health. Ever since the day she had last seen Clifford,
her spirits, before greatly shattered, had refused to regain even a
likeness to their naturally cheerful and happy tone. She became silent
and abstracted; even her gentleness of temper altered at times into a
moody and fretful humour. Neither to books nor music, nor any art by
which time is beguiled, she recurred for a momentary alleviation of the
bitter feelings at her heart, or for a transient forgetfulness of
their sting. The whole world of her mind had been shaken. Her pride was
wounded, her love galled; her faith in Clifford gave way at length to
gloomy and dark suspicion. Nothing, she now felt, but a name as well
as fortunes utterly abandoned, could have justified him for the
stubbornness of heart in which he had fled and deserted her. Her own
self-acquittal no longer consoled her in affliction. She condemned
herself for her weakness, from the birth of her ill-starred affection
to the crisis it had now acquired. "Why did I not wrestle with it at
first?" she said bitterly. "Why did I allow myself so easily to love
one unknown to me, and equivocal in station, despite the cautions of my
uncle and the whispers of the world?" Alas! Lucy did not remember that
at the time she was guilty of this weakness, she had not learned
to reason as she since reasoned. Her faculties were but imperfectly
awakened; her experience of the world was utter ignorance. She scarcely
knew that she loved, and she knew not at all that the delicious and
excited sentiment which filled her being could ever become as productive
of evil and peril as it had done now; and even had her reason been more
developed, and her resolutions more strong, does the exertion of reason
and resolution always avail against the master passion? Love, it is
true, is not unconquerable; but how few have ever, mind and soul,
coveted the conquest! Disappointment makes a vow, but the heart records
it not. Or in the noble image of one who has so tenderly and so truly
portr