it.  The joyous soul, charioted from pleasure to pleasure by the graceful mechanism of well-formed limbs, will suddenly feel the axle-tree give way, and spring and wheel dissolve in dust.  Not one of you, O! fated crowd, can escape—­not one! not my own ones! not my Idris and her babes!  Horror and misery!  Already the gay dance vanished, the green sward was strewn with corpses, the blue air above became fetid with deathly exhalations.  Shriek, ye clarions! ye loud trumpets, howl!  Pile dirge on dirge; rouse the funereal chords; let the air ring with dire wailing; let wild discord rush on the wings of the wind!  Already I hear it, while guardian angels, attendant on humanity, their task achieved, hasten away, and their departure is announced by melancholy strains; faces all unseemly with weeping, forced open my lids; faster and faster many groups of these woe-begone countenances thronged around, exhibiting every variety of wretchedness—­well known faces mingled with the distorted creations of fancy.  Ashy pale, Raymond and Perdita sat apart, looking on with sad smiles.  Adrian’s countenance flitted across, tainted by death—­Idris, with eyes languidly closed and livid lips, was about to slide into the wide grave.  The confusion grew—­their looks of sorrow changed to mockery; they nodded their heads in time to the music, whose clang became maddening.

I felt that this was insanity—­I sprang forward to throw it off; I rushed into the midst of the crowd.  Idris saw me:  with light step she advanced; as I folded her in my arms, feeling, as I did, that I thus enclosed what was to me a world, yet frail as the waterdrop which the noon-day sun will drink from the water lily’s cup; tears filled my eyes, unwont to be thus moistened.  The joyful welcome of my boys, the soft gratulation of Clara, the pressure of Adrian’s hand, contributed to unman me.  I felt that they were near, that they were safe, yet methought this was all deceit;—­the earth reeled, the firm-enrooted trees moved—­dizziness came over me—­I sank to the ground.

My beloved friends were alarmed—­nay, they expressed their alarm so anxiously, that I dared not pronounce the word plague, that hovered on my lips, lest they should construe my perturbed looks into a symptom, and see infection in my languor.  I had scarcely recovered, and with feigned hilarity had brought back smiles into my little circle, when we saw Ryland approach.

Ryland had something the appearance of a farmer; of a man whose muscles and full grown stature had been developed under the influence of vigorous exercise and exposure to the elements.  This was to a great degree the case:  for, though a large landed proprietor, yet, being a projector, and of an ardent and industrious disposition, he had on his own estate given himself up to agricultural labours.  When he went as ambassador to the Northern States of America, he, for some time, planned his entire migration; and went so far as to make several journies far westward on that immense continent, for the purpose of choosing the site of his new abode.  Ambition turned his thoughts from these designs—­ambition, which labouring through various lets and hindrances, had now led him to the summit of his hopes, in making him Lord Protector of England.