to cart it; the shepherd, when he had sheared his sheep, would let the wool lie to be scattered by the winds, deeming it useless to provide clothing for another winter.  At times however the spirit of life was awakened by these employments; the sun, the refreshing breeze, the sweet smell of the hay, the rustling leaves and prattling rivulets brought repose to the agitated bosom, and bestowed a feeling akin to happiness on the apprehensive.  Nor, strange to say, was the time without its pleasures.  Young couples, who had loved long and hopelessly, suddenly found every impediment removed, and wealth pour in from the death of relatives.  The very danger drew them closer.  The immediate peril urged them to seize the immediate opportunity; wildly and passionately they sought to know what delights existence afforded, before they yielded to death, and

  Snatching their pleasures with rough strife
  Thorough the iron gates of life,[4]

they defied the conquering pestilence to destroy what had been, or to erase even from their death-bed thoughts the sentiment of happiness which had been theirs.

One instance of this kind came immediately under our notice, where a high-born girl had in early youth given her heart to one of meaner extraction.  He was a schoolfellow and friend of her brother’s, and usually spent a part of the holidays at the mansion of the duke her father.  They had played together as children, been the confidants of each other’s little secrets, mutual aids and consolers in difficulty and sorrow.  Love had crept in, noiseless, terrorless at first, till each felt their life bound up in the other, and at the same time knew that they must part.  Their extreme youth, and the purity of their attachment, made them yield with less resistance to the tyranny of circumstances.  The father of the fair Juliet separated them; but not until the young lover had promised to remain absent only till he had rendered himself worthy of her, and she had vowed to preserve her virgin heart, his treasure, till he returned to claim and possess it.

Plague came, threatening to destroy at once the aim of the ambitious and the hopes of love.  Long the Duke of L——­derided the idea that there could be danger while he pursued his plans of cautious seclusion; and he so far succeeded, that it was not till this second summer, that the destroyer, at one fell stroke, overthrew his precautions, his security, and his life.  Poor Juliet saw one by one, father, mother, brothers, and sisters, sicken and die.  Most of the servants fled on the first appearance of disease, those who remained were infected mortally; no neighbour or rustic ventured within the verge of contagion.  By a strange fatality Juliet alone escaped, and she to the last waited on her relatives, and smoothed the pillow of death.  The moment at length came, when the last blow was given to the last of the house:  the youthful survivor of her race sat alone among the dead.  There was no living