It was at length the same to me
Fettered or fetterless to be,

I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage—and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home;
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill-yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends

To make us what we are :

even I

Regained my freedom with a sigh!”

EPPIE.

EPPIE.

The next picture represents the interior of a small stone cottage, situated among the nutty hedgerows of a pretty English village. It is New Year's Eve. Through the windows we can see that the ground is covered with freshly fallen snow, but the stars which are struggling through the clouds show that the storm has ceased. The door of the cottage is wide open, and the bright fire burning upon the hearth lights up every corner of the room the bed, the loom, the three chairs and the table. It is evidently a weaver's cottage, and inhabited by a solitary man, for there are no marks of a woman's presence in the arrangement of the meagre furniture.

There is something bright shining on an old coat which has been spread out before the warm fire to dry; and as we look more closely, we see that this spot of brightness is made by the golden curls of a little girl, who is lying asleep in front of the blazing logs. She must have walked in through the open door, for an old gray shawl is wrapped around her small body, and a queer little bonnet is dangling at