glance of her father; but it soon revived, when she looked timidly into the face of her mother, who gazed tenderly and half pityingly on her, as she pressed her warmly to her bosom, when she came to her end of the table, a place she invariably sought the last; because there she was sure, to gain a small portion of her mother's chair, and fruit; and with her she could chat and laugh, and give vent to all the childish and volatile spirits with which nature had blessed her.

"You should consider, my dear," said the mother in an apologetic tone." that Agnes has not had the advantage that Amelia possesses in living so much with her aunt; and consequently, her spirits are not so much under control; neither has she enjoyed the tuition of D'Egville, to regulate her movements, nor of Crivelli to modulate her voice, nor a number of other privileges which the kindness of Lady Pomeroy has procured for her sister."

These words were accompanied with a glance which almost bespoke an admiration and a love of the little being who was the subject of her apology, greater than that which she felt for her whose superiority her words acknowledged.

But there was an appearance of melancholy, almost allied to pity, in this glance, which would have given an attentive observer the idea that she was looking into futurity, and dreading the effects of that acute sensibility which formed the principal characteristic of the young Agnes. Perhaps, at this moment, her memory glanced back to the time when her own heart leaped and bounded with all the young energies of incipient feeling;-when the tear of pity, or the smile of gladness, was always ready to spring, at the slightest call, to her own lips and eyes. Perhaps, too, her imagination traced, with that power which it has of collecting and remembering the events and condensing results of whole years into the space of a moment, the long series of coldness by which all these young feelings had been checked and deadened, from the period of her sacrificing her first love at the shrine of filial duty and affection, to that in which she was now sitting, herself the mother of a being possessed of all those feelings, by the encouragement and the subsequent blight of which she had been condemned to a life of perpetual probation; and she almost wished that the heart of her darling Agnes was as cold as the world in which it was created to exist.

"It is time, Mrs. Fleming," said her husband, in his formal

and imperturbable manner, "that Agnes should enjoy the advantages you speak of. Nature may do well enough for the canaille, but I would have my daughter well taught, and well bred; and we cannot be too much obliged to my sister Lady Pomeroy, for the infinite pains she has taken with Amelia. Lady Pomeroy, will you send D'Egville to Mrs. Fleming tomorrow?"

Lady Pomeroy, who was quite as much an advocate for artificial education as her brother, gladly undertook the task. Mrs. Fleming, as usual, did not object, though she thought the natural movements of her darling Agnes far more graceful than any that could be given by art; while Agnes herself only saw in the proposition the delight of having a dancingmaster, without anticipating the restraint her hitherto free limbs were condemned to undergo.

The indulgence, however, of any appearance of extravagant pleasure, was repressed by the frowns of her father, and by her aunt's directing her to imitate the quiet and lady-like behaviour of her sister, who divided her fruit, and sipped her wine, as though she had no pleasure in partaking of them; and dipped her taper fingers into the crystal finger-glass with all the airs and graces of a little woman of fashion.

It had been fixed that they should this evening visit the theatre; and notwithstanding all her mother's coaxing and hushing, Agnes could not restrain her impatience at the delay of the carriage; she started at every sound, with an exclamation of "There it is!" and on each disappointment, rather vehemently expressed her fear of being too late.

All this was frowned at by her father, and nodded down by her aunt; while Amelia felt, or at least betrayed, no impatience or any anticipation of pleasure.

At length the carriage was announced. Agnes sprang from her mother's knee; her shawl was thrown hastily round her shoulders, without any regard to appearance or form; and she was in the hall and ready to depart, while her sister's maid was still folding a cashmere gracefully on the neck of Amelia, under the superintendence of Lady Pomeroy.

In spite of the delays occasioned by the ceremony of dressing out her sister, and of her father's methodical movements, which to the imagination of poor Agnes, seemed to proceed in doubly slow time this evening, they arrived at the theatre just as the curtain was rising.

Agnes could scarcely repress her delight as she first caught

a glimpse of the stage from the private-box; for Mr. Fleming's ideas of propriety would not permit the close contact with strangers, which is occasioned by the occupation of a public one; though Agnes could not help fancying that she should see much better in front of the theatre, than from one of the sides, where she was perpetually stretching her neck out of the box to the great discomfiture of her father, and to the horror of her well-bred aunt.

To her the scene was a new one, and every part of it afforded her pleasure; the people-the chandeliers-the house -the scenery-by turns extorted exclamations of childish delight; and she was perpetually directing her mother's attention, who alone heeded her, to one or other of the objects which excited her admiration.

In the mean time, Amelia sat in front of the box, with the folds of her cashmere undisturbed; the pride of her father and aunt, and certainly very beautiful.

As the play proceeded, the raptures of Agnes subsided: she became silent and attentive--wrapt up in the scene she was witnessing, her whole soul seemed absorbed in the horrors of the tragedy before them; when, to the consternation of Lady Pomeroy, at a moment when the whole house was wrapt in silent admiration of the powers of Mrs. Siddons, poor Agnes burst into a convulsive fit of tears, which were beyond her power to restrain or control, and her tender mother was obliged to hush her to tranquillity in a retired part of the box, by repeated representations that the scene was but fictitious.

It was some time, however, before she could imagine that all which she had seen was not real; nor did she quite overcome her feelings of terror and regret at the catastrophe of Isabella, until the humours of the harlequinade which followed, again absorbed her attention.

Here again her laughter at the tricks, of the clown and pantaloon; her surprise at the agility of Harlequin and Columbine; and her childish exclamations of wonder at metamorphoses, which seemed to realize all that she had read in the Fairy Tales that constituted part of her infantine library, once more offended the punctilious bienseance of Lady Po

meroy.

During the whole exhibition, Amelia sat apparently an attentive spectator; but her cold and beautiful blue eye denoted no sympathy with the scene; her countenance betrayed no VOL. I.-2

wonder at the tricks of the pantomime; nor could all the contortions of the clown produce more than a quiet smile upon her well-formed lips. And yet Amelia had not witnessed the tragedy without feeling; nor did she now contemplate the wonders of the pantomime without pleasure; but she had been schooled into a repression of all its appearances. She had been taught that the expressions of wonder or any show of sensibility was unpolite and unlady-like. And the outward ease which she was thus compelled to wear, was gradually indurating the heart beneath it. It was already acting as a frost upon the stream of her youthful disposition, and nipping the generosity of her nature in the bud.

At length the curtain dropped, and shut the magic scene from the still-straining eyes of Agnes. And which of us does not remember the regret with which we in childhood have seen the dark-green curtain descending, and covering the splendours of the temple of pantomime, its tinsel waters, and its glittering canvass pillars? Who does not recollect the melancholy with which we have seen the audience hurry out of the theatre, and the candle-snuffer put out the lights and hang the aprons over the boxes; and with which we turn from the bright imagination of the poet and the painter to the dull realities of our lives? How little do we then imagine that in a few, a very few years, we shall wait impatiently for that which then gave us so much pain; and that we shall have the greatest difficulty in keeping our eyes open to witness objects from which we then derived so much delight, that we imagine we wish them to endure for ever!

Not all the influence of her mother, nor the formal reproofs of her father and aunt could repress the prattle of Agnes as the carriage whirled them home. Question followed question, and wonder succeeded wonder, as she recapitulated all she had seen and Amelia was buried in sleep long before Agnes had finished her relation of all the wonders she had witnessed to her maid.

Mrs. Fleming had contemplated the different characters of her children, as they were exhibited that evening, with equal regret. She mourned over the schooled mannerism of the one, as much as she dreaded the acute sensibilities of the other. She would have warmed, had she possessed the power, the heart and feelings of Amelia with a little of the Promethean fire which burnt too strongly in the spirit of Agnes-a spirit alas, too like her own, and which, as she re

called all the early scenes of her own existence, made her tremble for the happiness of her daughter. She sighed

-to think how soon that brow
In grief might lose its every ray,
And that light heart, so joyous now,
Almost forgot it once was gay.

As these scenes and circumstances recurred to her imagination and remembrance, she mentally exclaimed-“ Ought 1 not rather to school her into the insensibility of her sister, than encourage feelings which may blossom only to be blighted? Is it not better for her to be insensible to the more exquisite pleasures of our nature, than run the hazard of their being turned to bitterness, as mine have been ?"

Yet with all the experience of her own blighted hopes, with all the remembrance of the miseries entailed on her by her own acute sense of feeling, she could not resolve to wish the heart of Agnes to be cold or inanimate.

But the sensibility of her nature was now daily developing to the anxious observation of an affectionate and tremblina mother; who, for the sake of her child, began to dread th g death, which she had long anticipated from her increasing feebleness, but which had no terrors for her in its approach.

She now, however, saw the necessity of a kind directing hand; and too plainly perceived that the severity of ceremony which characterized Mr. Fleming, was not adapted to the education and guidance of such a heart and mind as those of Agnes were, in their germs, and promised to be in their maturity.

She determined, therefore, to struggle with the incipient consumption which had already tinted her cheek with that bright and beautiful spot, which has too often deceived both its victims and their friends. Alas! the very struggle fo. life under such a disease only tends to its speedier exhaustiont But for her young and innocent child she could resolve to live, although life had long lost all its charms for her; to subdue the excess of feeling, which had already begun to display itself, without banishing it entirely; to regulate her sensibilities, without annihilating them; to place a sound judgment, and a pure sense of religion, as sentinels over an exuberant fancy, and a wild imagination, was the plan of education which occupied the mind of this tender mother, as she reclined upon her sleepless pillow; and for which of us has not the pillow of a parent been sleepless through many a long