“But what does she here?”

“Her eldest son is now established in a small business, and respected by all who know him.  Her second boy, and a father, whom her misfortunes reduced to a deplorable state of wretchedness, are dead.  Her daughter, a village belle and beauty, is married to my father’s handsome new parish-clerk; and Mrs. Huntley having seen her children provided for, and by her virtues and industry made respectable in the Old World, is now on her voyage to the New, to see, if I may be permitted to use her own simple language, ’whether she can contribute to render the last days of her husband as happy as the first they passed together.’  It is only justice to the criminal to say, that I believe him truly and perfectly reformed.”

“And on this chance she leaves her children and her country?”

“She does.  She argues, that as the will of Providence prevented her from discharging her duties together, she must endeavour to perform them separately.  He was sentenced to die; but, by my father’s exertions, his sentence was commuted to one of transportation for life; and I know she has quitted England without the hope of again beholding its white cliffs.”

[Miss Landon has contributed a few poetical pieces of great merit; and the Editor, the “simple story” of an Emigrant in verse, full of truth and nature.  The Author of the Corn Law Rhymes has two pieces.

The Illustrations are nearly unexceptionable.  Seven of them are from pictures by Lawrence; Newton’s Gentle Student has supplied the Frontispiece; and Wilkie’s Theft of the Cap, one of the most pleasing of the well arranged selection.]

* * * * *

THE FRIENDSHIP’S OFFERING.

[Edited by a poet of no mean merit, has a golden flood of minor pieces in verse, many of them of great beauty and touching sweetness, and nearly all above the usual calibre of such contributions to Annual literature.  The prose tales are by Miss Mitford, Mr. J.B.  Fraser, Derwent Conway, and by Leitch Ritchie:  that by the latter is perhaps the best in the volume; it has a serio-ludicrous interest which is very amusing.

The pieces number upwards of sixty; and as the prose are too lengthy for our columns, we take a slight sprinkling of the poetical flowers:—­]

THE ARMADA,

A FRAGMENT,—­BY T.B.  MACAULAY.

  Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England’s praise,
  I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days,
  When that great fleet invincible against her bore in vain
  The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoutest hearts of Spain. 
  It was about the lovely close of a warm summer’s day,
  There came a gallant merchant ship full sail to Plymouth bay;
  Her crew hath seen Castille’s black fleet, beyond Aurigny’s isle,