but you did not think so then—­and when you have lost me, it is a sad, but it is a real comfort, to feel that that thought will never occur to you.  Your memory will invest me with a thousand attractions and graces I did not possess, and all that you recall of me will be linked with the freshest and happiest thoughts of that period of life in which you first beheld me.  And this thought, dearest L——­, sweetens death to me—­and sometimes it comforts me for what has been.  Had our lot been otherwise—­had we been united, and had you survived your love for me (and what more probable!) my lot would have been darker even than it has been.  I know not how it is—­perhaps from my approaching death—­but I seem to have grown old, and to have obtained the right to be your monitor and warner.  Forgive me, then, if I implore you to think earnestly and deeply of the great ends of life; think of them as one might think who is anxious to gain a distant home, and who will not be diverted from his way.  Oh! could you know how solemn and thrilling a joy comes over me as I nurse the belief, the certainty, that we shall meet at length, and for ever!  Will not that hope also animate you, and guide you unerring through the danger and the evil of this entangled life?

“May God bless you, and watch over you—­may He comfort and cheer, and elevate your heart to him!  Before you receive this, I shall be no more—­and my love, my care for you will, I trust and feel, have become eternal.—­Farewell: 

‘L.M.’

“The letter,” continued L——­, struggling with his emotions, “was dated from that village through which I had so lately passed; thither I repaired that very night—­Lucy had been buried the day before!  I stood upon a green mound, and a few, few feet below, separated from me by a scanty portion of earth, mouldered that heart which had loved me so faithfully and so well!”

New Monthly Magazine.

* * * * *

A Jew said to the venerable Ali, in argument on the truth of their religion, “You had not even deposited your prophet’s body in the earth, when you quarrelled among yourselves.”  Ali replied, “Our divisions proceeded from the loss of him, not concerning our faith; but your feet were not yet dry from the mud of the Red Sea, when you cried unto Moses, saying, ’Make us gods like unto those of the idolaters, that we may worship them.’” The Jew was confounded.

W.G.C.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  KILCOLMAN CASTLE, THE RESIDENCE OF THE POET SPENCER.]

Few of the original houses of Genius[2] will excite more interest than the above relic of SPENCER.  It is copied from a lithographic drawing in Mr. T. Crofton Croker’s “Researches in the South of Ireland,” where it is so well described, that we can spare but few lines in our abridgement of the passage:—­