fondly cherished.  The ecclesiastical tyranny, which had exiled so many of the non-conformists from their friends and country, was, at last, extended to the elder Mr. Stanhope.  His estates were confiscated, and a warrant was issued for his imprisonment; but, with extreme difficulty, he succeeded in effecting an escape to the sea-coast.  He was there joined by his wife; and, through the kind assistance of friends, they collected the remains of a once ample fortune, and only waited the arrival of their son, to quit their country forever, and embark for New-England.

There was yet another blow, for which Arthur was wholly unprepared.  Mad.  Rossville, whose health rapidly failed on the approach of cooler weather, had died a short time previous to his return, leaving her orphan niece under the protection of her only sister, who hastened to England on hearing of her danger, and arrived but a few hours before her decease.  Her late cheerful abode was deserted; and Arthur could obtain no information respecting Lucie, except that she had gone back to France with her relative, immediately after the melancholy event.

“Gone, without one kind farewell, one word of remembrance!” was the first bitter reflection of Arthur, on receiving this intelligence.  “She, who might have been all the world to him, whose sunny smiles could have cheered the darkest hour of affliction,—­she was gone! and, amidst the attractions of wealth, and the charms of society and friends, how soon might he fade from her remembrance!”

But that was not a time to indulge the regrets of a romantic passion; the situation of his parents required the support and consolations of filial tenderness; and no selfish indulgence could, for a moment, detain him from them.  He hastily abandoned the home of his childhood—­the scenes of maturer happiness; and, re-passing the barrier of his native hills, in a few days rejoined his parents at the sea-port, where they waited his arrival.  They had made arrangements to take passage in the first vessel which sailed for Boston, and Arthur did not hesitate a moment to attend them in their arduous undertaking.  For a time, indeed, his active spirit bent beneath the pressure of disappointment, and all places were alike indifferent to him.  But the excitement of new scenes and pursuits at length roused his interest, and incited him to mental exertion.  With the return of spring also, hopes, which he believed forever crushed, began to regain their influence in his mind.  He was about to revisit England, on some affairs of consequence; and he resolved to improve the opportunity to satisfy his anxiety respecting Lucie, and learn, if possible, what he had still left to hope or fear.  But an alarming illness, which attacked his mother, and left her long in a dangerous state, obliged him to defer his design; and another winter passed away, and various circumstances still rendered the voyage impracticable.  Time gradually softened, but it could not destroy, the impression of his ill-fated attachment; and, though the image of Lucie was still cherished in his remembrance, he began to regard the days of their happy intercourse as a pleasant dream which had passed away,—­a delightful vision of the fancy, which he loved to contemplate, but could never hope to realise.