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and likewise a tomb of most curious workmanship, which encloses the dust of Lord Henry Fitzroy. Here may the soul banquet which enjoys to lose itself in the fascinations of reflection; here will it find incontrovertible evidence of the truth of our divine bard's assertion, when he exclaimed, that

"The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve:
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wreck behind."

THE

UNKNOWN.

CHAP. I.

"Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful"

"I hold the world but as the world,

A stage, where every man must play his part,
And mine a sad one!"

SHAKESPEARE.

"HARK! hark! do I not hear the trampling of horses' feet, mixed with the hoarse murmurs of the roaring gust? is it so? do they come to bear him from me?" frantically exclaimed the Lady Benigna Latimer, pressing, as she spoke, the hand of that husband whom she was in momentary dread of having torn from her...

VOL. I.

B

"No,

'

No, my dear mother, no; I hear no sounds but those occasioned by the wind," replied the gentle Eleonora.

After a few moments of silence, the Lady Benigna, with a lengthened sigh, again drew her respiration, which had been suspended by alarm, and said, "I believe I was mistaken-but of what comfort is my error? the evil I dread is but for a short, a very short period deferred-they will come, and where is then our hope?"

"In Heaven," replied the pious man, for whose fate the apprehensions of his suffering family were excited.

The night was in truth a fearful one, in the beginning of the month of March; the wind whistled loudly and mournfully through the leafless trees in

many a

hollow

murmur, which was capable of being construed into any sound; the sleet and snow, driven along in curling circles by the gust, were falling in sheets to the earth; the bird of night, unsuccessful in its search after prey, sent forth the most disinal shrieks; the casements jarred responsive to the blast that shook them in their frames, and the

doors

doors closed with sudden claps, which communicated stars of terror to the heart.

Roused by a sound of this nature, the Lady Benigna broke the silence which had for some minutes been preserved by the little circle which was seated with herself around the pale embers of a wood fire, in a spacious and gloomy chamber in the ancient castle of Worcester, the present residence of the reverend and revered bishop of the diocese, Hugh Latimer.

At one extremity of the chamber stood a bed, in which lay the Lady Magdalene, the venerable mother of the worthy prelate, (now eighty-nine years of age) whose worn-out frame had received a shock, from a calamity impending over the head of her beloved and only son, which appeared to threaten the speedy dissolution of her earthly existence. By the side of her pillow sat an ancient female domestic of the family, who, with the solicitude of a friend, administered to her such scanty portions of medicine, calculated to stay the flight of her departing spirit, as her resolute indifference about her own fate, which was forB 2 gotten

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