On opening her papers it was discovered that in losing his benefactress he had lost his mother!  That she had been privately married to a widower of considerable fortune, who had one son by his first wife, and that on his demise the estate would devolve on William, provided his half brother had no children.  A few days afterwards the death of Henry ——­, Esq. of ——­ Hall, Worcestershire, was formally announced in the daily Journals, and the unexpected claims of William being acknowledged, he succeeded to a very fine property and estate, and died as much respected in a good old age as he was beloved in his buoyant childhood, when the gossips and the maidens of Poole agreed that the orphan boy promised to be a “nice young man.”—­“And not word of a lie in it,” said Dick Hart, as he finished his story, his pipe, and his grog.

We were now steering across Studland Bay.  Banks of dark clouds were gathering majestically on the eastern horizon, and the sun was rapidly sinking in a flood of golden light.  Behind us was the Isle of Brownsea, with its dark fir plantations and lofty, cold-looking, awkward castle.  On the left was the line of low sand hills, stretching away towards Christchurch, and seeming to join the Needles’ Rocks, situated at the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, the high chalk cliffs of which reflected the sun’s last rays, giving a rich and placid feeling to the cold and distant grey.  On the right, and closer to us, was the brown and purple heath-land of Studland Bay.  Here barren, there patches of verdure, and the thin smoke threading its way from a cluster of trees, denoted where the village hamlet lay embosomed from the storms of the southwest gales, close at the foot and under the shelter of a lofty chalk range which abuts abruptly on the sea, and before which stands a high, detached pyramidical rock, rising out of the waters like a sheeted spectre, and known to mariners under the suspicious name of Old Harry.

This coast was once notorious for smuggling, but those days of nautical chivalry have ceased, if Dick Hart is to be credited, who shook his head very mournfully as he alluded to “the Block-head service.”

JAMES SILVESTER.

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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SCENE FROM A FRENCH DRAMA.

No.  XVII. of the Foreign Quarterly Review, contains a paper of much interest to the playgoer as well as to the lover of dramatic literature—­on two French dramas of great celebrity—­La Marechale d’Ancre, by de Vigny; and Marion Delorme, by Victor Hugo.  We quote a scene from the former.  Concini, the principal character, is a favourite of Louis XIII.; the Marechale, his wife, has a first love, Borgia, a Corsican, who, disappointed in his early suit by the stratagems of Concini, has married the beautiful but uncultivated Isabella Monti.