With what astonishment did I behold, as the feeble rays of a small lamp fell in silence upon the broad gloomy pannels of my apartment, that I was once more in the hall of my ancestors. I could but dimly perceive the objects that surrounded me, in the misty light which might be rather said to hide than to display them; but still their very shadows were familiar to me. The bed on which I was reposing, the old carved elbow-chair by its side, the antique wardrobe, and the high narrow-framed glass, were my earliest acquaintances; and here they stood, as I had known them, and had left them, in the days of my childhood. I was, indeed, once more in the chamber of my birth. "Heavens 1" said I, "what can this mystery mean?" By what enchantment have I been transported hither?" I attempted to rise, but felt I was too languid to do so - my pulse, too, was high and feverish, my lips parched, and my breathing thick and irregular. I was at a loss to account for the strangeness of my situation - I had no recollection but that I was in a distant land, but every thing around me convinced me that I was in the very chamber in which I first drew my existence.

There was something perplexingly marvellous in the affair, and I continued to muse upon it, till, overcome by increasing langour, I fell into a gentle sleep, from which I was at length awoke by the soft pressure of lips to mine. As my eyes opened, oh. Heaven, what did they behold? The angel features or my young and beautiful Ada, the beloved "daughter of my house and heart." - She whose infant image, in my wanderings, had been the one sole star that shed light and life across the cheerless vacuity of my boson - a star that I doubly loved, for its resemblance to the glories of a Son, that, to me, was set for ever. It was, indeed, my sweet, sweet Ada, - she, of whom, when the wide ocean separated us, my spirit, between joy and hopelessness, had sung -

"I see thee not - I hear thee not, but none Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend To whom the shadows of far years extend; Albeit, my brow thou never shouldst behold,

My voice shall with thy future visions blend, And reach into thy heart, when mine is sold,-A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould."

I had left her in the innocence and loveliness of infancy-the tender glance of her young bine eyes, and the eager kiss I gave her at our parting, were the sacred interchanges of our affection; and now she seemed to have come in ripened beauty, to ratify that holy contract. But yet there was a wildness in her look - it was that frenzied gaze of tenderness, which tells the heart's secrets, when the fixed tongue refuses utterance -her hot tears fell fast upon my brow, but still she spoke not.

Oh, it was a fearful shriek! - its reverberation shook the inmost recesses of my soul. I endeavoured to move, but, to my astonishment, my limbs refused their office, - they were as cold and solid as marble. I attempted to look around me, but my eyes were closed and motionless - the pulses" of my heart had ceased, a chilliness was creeping through its veins. Though lost to every other sensation, I distinctly heard the loud sobbings of persons near me - it seemed some heavy calamity must have befallen them. I heard, too, the half-stifled tones of one that called upon her father, and, oh, there was a voice, mingling with hers, that once to me was music. In after years, there was, indeed, some jarring in its minstrelsy, but it came upon me now in all its early sweetness, and it said, "My poor Harold, and art thou gone for ever?' Ye eternal destinies! how did these words break upon my ear - the terrible truth burst at once upon my soul - I was a corpse.

A few moments pasted, and all was still around me. I had now become a new being, or rather a new existence, for nothing of a tangible quality seemed to belong to me. I felt, however, a kind of stillness, or, if I may so say, flexidity, from which I conjectured, that my spirit was not yet freed from the barriers of that body which had been its tenement It may be supposed, that in such a situation, my thoughts would have partaken of the horrible - that I should have had some longings' after the past, or laboured under some dread of the future; but the past had been a past of bitterness - it was the source of joy to me that I had fled from it, and I loved the future for its very mysteries. It was a delightful reflection, that the external world and I had closed accounts for ever - the select few and the mingled million were, as if by a lightning-stroke, alike swept from my contemplation. Twas well:-

"I had not loved the world, nor the world me,-

I had not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee.

Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud, In worship of an echo - in the crowd

They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them - in a shroud

Of thoughts, which were not their thoughts -."

And wherefore should the world be loved? What is it but a vast assemblage of treacheries? What are its brightest things? Even man, forsooth, a flower, the ocean, and the sky. But man has smiles that like the serpent's scales, shine brightest when the sting is deadliest; and the ocean has its smooth, dishonest face, to lure when its big heart is ripe for desolation; each rose has got its thorn; the sky its lightning.

True it is, that I had worshipped one, a seeming lovely one, and bowed my heart to her as fervidly as does the heathen to his idol; but the time had come when my soul was liberated from its gross affections. Deprived of those faculties which enable man to hold connexion with the breathing clods around him, my spirit seemed to have passed the barriers which kept it from mingling in that eternity of which it was a portion. It was now left to its own communing; that delicious solitude. for which it had ever pined.

"For I could see Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be A link reluctant in a fleshy chain. Classed among creatures."