distress, which alarmed her father the more because he could not possibly understand it.

Alas! though her parent, he was not made to deal with so delicate a being as Constance. He endeavoured to sooth her, but knew not the real topics of consolation. He felt he had been in fault, yet knew not exactly how; and at any rate thought it beneath him to own it. It was therefore with difficulty, and certainly not to her relief, that Constance collected that the world coupled her name with her cousin's; but for her intimacy with whom, her father thought the fortunes of the Duke of Bellamont, or Lord Cleveland, would not have fared so ill.

This was quite enough to subdue Constance, without the addition of the displeasure Lord Mowbray expressed at such liberties being taken with the heiress of his house, or the threat of his eternal anger against Mortimer, if from his or her conduct their names should be mentioned together, and such reports continue. The heiress of the Mowbrays felt indeed no affront to her name by a report which coupled it with that of De Vere; but the dignity and purity of the Lady Constance felt alarmed that she had been observed by the eye of curiosity, and suspected of favourable but unsanctioned feelings towards a man who had never addressed her. This interview, therefore, with her father was the most painful of her life.

To the feelings and fortunes of De Vere the consequence was still more disastrous. His intercourse with his uncle had long been on the wane; but though he had from principle endeavoured to wean himself from the intimacy with his uncle's daughter which had been till then the charm of his existence, yet the persuasion that he possessed her regard was the soothing support of his soul. What then did he feel, when, instead of the pleasure which usually lighted up her features at his approach, he found her reserved, constrained, and, as he thought, distant? It was the first real shock her personal demeanour had ever given him.

About the same time he also received an account from Mellilot, whom he had made one of his agents for the borough, that his sister had been forbidden by her lady from ever meddling with that subject again; "which, to be sure, said Mellilot, argufies a change in my lord that some on us mayn't like."

The change in my lord neither surprised nor alarmed De Vere; the change in my lady did both.

Embarrassed, distressed, disappointed, mortified, his cousin now became the object of his study more anxiously than ever. Her distance was as evident as his own misery upon feeling it; and, utterly unable to account for the alteration, he was tempted to exclaim, "Frailty, thy name is woman!"

But something whispered him that though it might be the name of woman, it was not the name of Constance. He had, however, no opportunity in London of clearing up that point; and it was amid all these uncertainties of his heart that his other great interests were excited by the tragic end of Beaufort, the consequent illness and danger of Wentworth, and his undertaking to accompany him in his convalescence upon that tour of diversion prescribed by Dr. Wilmot. Thus he had little opportunity to penetrate the thickening cloud that obscured the fondest hope of his mind, far less to dissipate its darkness and let in the day.

Thus disgusted with every thing that had awaited him in his own country, he began to meditate a longer sojourn abroad than his attendance upon Wentworth required, or than at first he had been disposed to contemplate. His heart always beat high in resistance to oppression, whether towards himself or others; and he pleased himself with the thought of offering his sword to the confederates in Poland, who, though arrayed nominally against their enslaved king, were then interesting every generous mind by their exertions (unfortu nately vain) against a foreign yoke. The notion was rather floating in fancy than imbodied in fixed determination; and Wentworth dissuaded him from it, as useless to those whom he wanted to serve, as well as detrimental to himself if he should be wanted at home. Nevertheless, it continued to possess him, and hints of it got abroad.

There was one person, however, to whom it was necessary to tell it in form, from whom he expected comfort, or at least sympathy, and whom, even without this design, duty as well as love impelled him to see. His attachment to his mother had always been so tender, and the confidence between them so sincere, that his best feelings were soothed by the thought of beholding her again. He longed also to visit the home he loved,

after what he began to think had been a toilsome and anxious pilgrimage in a new world-for such the events of the last eight or nine months had made every thing appear. He therefore begged a week of Wentworth, to visit Lady Eleanor and Talbois, before he departed from England; a request which was without difficulty granted by one who, however an invalid in body, and a prey to grief in mind, felt that mind still lingering among the scenes of his greatness, and yielding with regret to the necessity there was, for a time, to abandon them.

CHAPTER V.

CHANGE OF SCENE.

And whither go they? up to the eastern tower,

Whose height commands as subject all the vale.-SHAKSPEARE.

DE VERE was soon among the haunts of his earlier youth, and seemed to breathe a freer air on the banks of the Dove. The grotesque mounds of Tutbury Castle, with its ivy-mingled walls, once more greeted his eye; and he stopped his horses to indulge himself in a thousand recollections. For we may remember how dear the solitary grandeur of this remnant of ancient independence had been to his childhood, how often he had climbed among its ruins; and he did not now fail to recall the wild pleasure with which he had sometimes, for an hour together surveyed, from the top of one of its towers the devious course of his favourite stream. He at the same time remembered what peculiar notions he had formed of the interior of that world which he then beheld afar off. They were indeed somewhat different from those he had now brought back with him.

Other recollections of a more recent date, and, from what had lately passed, not quite so happy, also mingled themselves in his mind.

The horse he rode (which had been sent over to meet him at Burton) was a mare called Beauty, who deserved her name so well, and whom he had taught so gently

to canter, that she had been the favourite palfrey of Constance all the summer long. It added to his pleasure in seeing her again: he frequently patted her neck, and even talked to her of her mistress, who had rode her once on

visit to this very spot. The docile animal seemed, as he thought, to understand him, by the sensible manner in which she received his caresses; "but she will, I fear, ride you no more, Beauty," said De Vere, and the thought added not to his spirits,

Having now crossed the Dove, and advanced midway into the village of Tutbury, the zigzag Saxon arches, and gothic old segments of the church, half-way up the hill, arrested and pleased his eyes, as they had often done before; and the castellated towers above seemed to beckon his return to them so much in the character of an old friend that he could not continue his route, but delivering Beauty to his groom, “I will give one more hour," said he, "to a place which used to make so many happy."

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Accordingly, he bounded up the steep, and as he traced out (as he easily could, though ruined) the rude outlines of this great baronial residence, he fell into more precise thoughts upon such a scene than had employed his mind in earlier days. For he had not then seen mod ern courtiers, or jealous politicians; he knew not then the meaning of "intrigue nor the silent and baneful machinations of a parvenu.

His better information now drew a comparison, prompted by the place, between the modern grandee and the ancient noble; and he thought with vivid interest of the changes which time had so strongly wrought in the pride, power, and consequence of the feudal chief. I will not say that he lamented it, or preferred the lot of the lordly savage; though had he by chance been born the owner of such a castle as Tutbury three or four centuries sooner, he perhaps would not have complained. It is certain he fell into a train of meditation upon the high-minded bearing of the old English gentleman, compared with his diminished consequence in modern days, not very much to the advantage of the latter.

We believe it is Smith who makes a comparison between the personal consequence of an old baron and a courtier of the present day; the latter of whom, in order to shine in a drawing-room, spends that on a diamond buckle which enabled his ancestors to maintain a

thousand retainers. De Vere had not then read Smith. His feelings, however, made him jump to the same conclusion; when, contemplating the almost inaccessible fastness where he found himself, he exclaimed with the stout Earl of Norfolk

"Were I in my castle of Bungay,

Hard by the river Waveney,

I'd ne care for the King of Cockney."

In fact the scenes he had left in London sank almost into contempt when he thought of that enviable independence, as he called it, which used to be asserted by the great English thane; and it need not be wondered, that, in the present moody state of his mind, he did not advert to the questionable nature of the independence itself. For the safety even of such a chief could not be named with the immense improvement in the lot of all, which the greater security of balanced rights and a government by law have since established.

He did not then think himself wrong; but looking only at the dark side of one picture, and the bright side of the other, he almost apostrophized the castle, as with folded arms he walked the area of its keep.

"Yes!" said he (thinking, perhaps, of the ancient earls of his own name), "there was a charm in the feudal times, with all their faults! If they were insecure and ignorant, they were favourable to the manly virtues. Mansions like these, massive and impenetrable, though rude and rough, were the emblems of their lords,-little refined, but hospitable, bold, and commanding. I question if they have done well to exchange their power of protecting themselves and others (while they lived doing deeds of kindness among a devoted tenantry) for the favour of court smiles, or the ambiguous expectations kindled by a Lord Oldcastle."

We by no means give these reflections as just. Nay, De Vere soon after himself corrected them. But they exemplified how easily, when the mind is under any commanding impression, the judgment will take its tinge from the colouring of the mind.

With these reflections, De Vere strode across the keep, now a green sheep-walk, where once the minstralx of the midland counties sang in weeds of peace, but where no sound was now heard, save that of the sheep-bell.