ture, the most distant from the principal entrance gate, and it was separated from the main building by a paved court, where the deceased sisters of the house slept their last sleep. The chapel itself was a plain substantial building, devoid of all ornament excepting at the high altar, which was richly decorated; below the chapel there was a crypt, where certain of the sisterhood who had attained the dignity of abbess, or who were especially eminent for zeal, were interred; here also, it was whispered, certain dread tribunals had been sometimes held on offending sisters; but what transpired on these occasions no one knew but the culprit and her judges. The culprit was discreetly silent, if restored to her sisters-if, for it was hinted an offender rarely again appeared in the choir; and that on one occasion, the most piteous cries for help were heard for more than three nights after one of these tribunals had been held, and that the convent bell was tolled as for a passing soul.

All this was not calculated to reconcile Elizabeth to her convent home. It was sister Ursula who told her most of these things-a broad-faced nun, who seemed to thrive on scanty fare, and to grow all the stouter for long vigils and black fasts. It was sister Ursula who had chiefly looked after Elizabeth since her arrival; showing her about the place and teaching her her several duties; her studies, as heretofore, were conducted under the eye of

Agatha, but there was much to learn, which only one acquainted with the habits of the conventual life could teach, and this duty devolved, for the most part, on Ursula. She was the portress and kept the keys, and looked over the premises at nightfall with a little oil lamp; and if you had seen her in one of the dark passages of the convent, holding her little lamp before her so that' its light fell full upon her broad face,

it would have reminded you of one of Rembrandt's pictures. Ursula was deafdeaf as a stone, and she only knew when the convent bell rang by seeing it move; if she did not happen to look towards the bell it might have gone on ringing from matins to

vespers.

But she was mighty fond of talking, was this sister Ursula. She had been a beauty in her day, or said she had, and painters had fee'd her well to allow her hand or arm to be introduced into a picture; she had been servant at a thriving tavern, and had seen a good deal of life, which she had not forgotten in her cloister home.

"I am old now and withered," she used to say, "but I was a fine wench once-saints, forgive me the vanity!"

Elizabeth, as a child, would follow her about when allowed to do so, and listen to all she told her.

"I lived in Rotterdam once, child; a mighty fine city, I can tell you, and many is the walk I have had along the Boomptjes by the river. Ah, child! you never saw such a place, and it ain't likely you ever will."

"But I lived there," said Lizzie. "Yes, of course, you are always going to live here, and be a nice, good, saintly nun.' "Not if I have my choice," said Lizzie. "Yes, of course that would be your choice," Ursula answered; "and the best choice too."

Lizzie soon found out that she could not

hope to converse with the old nun, that all she could do was to listen, as Ursula always mis

understood her meaning; but it was something to go about with her, and hear her tell anything, everything, she knew or thought she knew, about the convent and the people it it. There were thirty nuns, an abbess, five lay sisters, four candidates for the black veil, and Lizzie. Each of the nuns and lay sisters had a room or cell to herself. A small apartment with stone walls and a grated window, a mattress, a rug, a table, an iron lamp, and a praying-chair-that is, a chair in which one could not only sit, but kneel conveniently, the top of the high oaken back being used as a desk for the prayer-book. The candidates were placed in small rooms, more comfortably furnished than those of the nuns, but adjoining to them. Lizzie had a little room to herself, adjoining that of the portress, and opposite to that which had been appropriated to Agatha. These rooms were all on the first story of the building, and turned off on either side of a long arched passage. On the ground-floor was the work-room, in which the nuns employed themselves in various kinds of needlework and in teaching Lizzie; adjoining was the refectory or dining-room, and beyond this, the apartments of the abbess. Above the sleepingchambers were several unused rooms, and at the eastern extremity, overlooking the graveyard and the chapel, and the country beyond,-a library, stored with many old volumes-chiefly manuscripts, for printing was then a new invention in the world, and printed books had not become common in the "outlandish parts" of the Low Countries. If we state that adjoining the chapel there was a small building, that looked like an excrescence which had grown out of the larger structure, we shall have mentioned every part of the building. This supplementary edifice was entirely empty, with the exception of four trestles; it was the place where they laid the bodies of deceased sisters previous to burial, and it was sometimes used as a penitentiary for offending nuns.

The life poor Lizzie was condemned to lead was dreary and heavily monotonous. The only change she knew was when the chapel was hung with black for the Lenten season, or decked with flowers for Easter time and Christmas. Then, as a reward for good conduct, she would be permitted to finish the work of decoration, twining coronals for the saints' heads, hanging green boughs and spring flowers around the altar and the abbess's chair of state. The flowers were brought by the dairy woman, who brought milk twice or thrice in the week, and who sometimes brought with her, what was a thousand times more welcome to Lizzie than milk or flowers, a little girl of about Lizzie's own age, but so different in colour!-a red and yellow face, yellow as the corn, red as the poppies, and such a quaint, good-humoured smile on her face, that she always put Lizzie in mind of her old friend Martha.

Up early in the morning in the grey dawn, awakened by the ringing of a great bell,-out into the corridor, to file with the grey-clad sisterhood into the chapel-prayers-back into the work-room, for work or lessons; then to the refectory-prayers-a very plain meal-back to the work-room again, for long, weary hours of toil; filing to chapel again with the grey

clad sisterhood-prayers; then into the enclosed grounds for a little while, or to the lodge, and a talk with Ursula, that is to say, hearing Ursula talk; then to the refectory-a very humble meal; then back to the workroom; then filing out again with the grey-clad sisterhood to chapel prayers; then leisure for a little ramble in the grounds, another talk with Ursula, or a quiet hour in the old library, looking out of the window that overlooked the graveyard and the chapel and the country beyond, and wishing that she could get away to the fields and the cattle; then a little slice of black bread in the refectory, and then to vespers in the chapel, and then to bed-to be wakened in the middle of the night by the iron tongue of the bell, and rise shivering, to join the grey-clad sisterhood, filed, by the light of Ursula's lamp, in the gloomy passage, and marched off to chapel to prayers.

This was the sort of life that Lizzie was compelled to lead, and with no apparent hope of ever escaping from it.

How she panted to be free when she saw the dairy-woman's child, so buxom and rosy and full of play. Have you noticed how a recently captured bird will struggle to regain its liberty? will flutter its poor wings and beat against the bars of its cage as it hears the voices of its mates, and sees the green leaves and the golden light; and how, by-and-by, it will become reconciled; and will quietly eat of the food of your providing, and tune its poor voice to sing ? So it was with Lizzie. As time passed on-long, long dreary years-she came to be less anxious for a change, and to speculate calmly how long it would be before her name was on one of the flags in the grave court. She saw the child of the dairywoman grow into a woman, as she herself grew into one, and though she often spoke to her, she felt less drawn towards her than of old. They belonged to two different worlds. But the old library increased in attraction, and there she spent nearly the whole of her leisure time; read and re-read all the books it contained; for she was well instructed, and read Latin, in which most of the volumes were composed, with great facility.

One evening when she was about eighteen years old, she was searching the shelves of the old library for a volume that might possess something like novelty in not having been read for a year or more. In her search she suddenly and quite unexpectedly lighted on a volume she had never seen before. She uttered a cry of joy and ran with it to the window, opened it, saw that it was Latin, saw also in a moment that some portions of it had been cut out, examined it with great attention, and soon discovered that it was indeed a book she had never read-a book that she only knew by fragments. It was a Bible-a Bible complete, with the exception of such portions as had been rudely cut or torn out.

She sat down to read by the waning light, and as she read, forgot everything else; the story was in some degree familiar to her, for it told of thirteen poor men sitting at a frugal supper, and how one, the chief, divided bread and wine among them, and told them of his coming death, his broken body, his

shed blood; how that One went out into a garden and prayed, and how, while he prayed, there came a multitude to seize him, led by one of his own chosen friends, who betrayed him with a kiss. She knew much of this; but to her it had never appeared so life-like; it seemed as though the figures of the saints on the chapel window had suddenly been endowed with life and motion, and had come down from the oriel to breathe words of consolation to her -the same old form, but how different-how life-like the tears wetted her cheeks as she read, and strained to decipher more and more as the waning light failed her.

Suddenly the iron tongue summoned to prayers. Lizzie started as though aroused from a dream, carefully replaced the book where she had found it, and crept down the winding stairs to join the grey-clad sisters in the corridor.

And henceforth she seemed to live with a new object, every spare hour was spent in the eager perusal of the sacred book. It seemed as if a sunbeam gilded its page, always bright, always beautiful, always glorious, musical with the melody of heaven! There were the stories of the ancient world; of patriarchal life, and flocks and herds, that made these Oriental fathers princes; stories of an enslaved people bursting their fetters, and marching forth, an exceeding great host, from the land of their captivity; stories of battle, and triumph, and defeat, and of a kingdom established and filling the whole earth with its glory, and falling into ruin and filling the whole earth with its shame. There were awful predictions, and songs full of passionate earnestness, and proverbs full of sagest counsel; more than all, there was the story of the Great One's life, three times told; and the story, on which Lizzie dwelt with singular interest, of the early Christians, and the persecutions to which they were subjected. She read and re-read of the "bonds and imprisonments," the "cruel mockings and scourgings;" of James slain with the sword; of Stephen stoned to death, while his face shone like the face of an angel. And as she read of these things she thought of the persecution which was then, in all probability going on; she remembered the dreadful story of the martyred woman and the orphan boy; she recollected her dream and the bright star, and wondered!

And so time passed on, and all her childish desire to escape into the world came back with all its intensity. The book seemed to tell her of another life than that which she could lead in the solitude of the cloister; it spoke to her young heart in a way that made that heart respond. How terrified, therefore, was she when one morning she was informed by Agatha and the abbess that it was her father's wish that she should assume the black veil and enter their holy sisterhood for life. She entreated for time to consider, for permission first of all to see her father. Time she was allowed, but her father, they told her, was too fully occupied in trampling out the sparks of irreligion and sedition, to spare time to see his child. Plainly, Lizzie learned that her father was taking an active part in the persecution of the Anabaptists, and that he had sent

his blessing along with his command, and a sum of money to the sisterhood. "You are to become as one of us," said Agatha.

Lizzie stood before her meekly, and made no

answer.

When left to herself she stole away to the old library and sought out the book which could alone afford her consolation. No, she felt she could not willingly give up the hope of escape. She was drawn irresistibly towards the outer world. She looked from the window and saw Gertrude, that was the dairy-girl, coming over the meadow with a milk-pail on her head.

Why she knew not, but she went down to the porterage, and when Gertrude presented herself kissed her warmly.

They walked together into the chapel-yard; there was no one there, and Lizzie, abstractedly poking the dust with the toe of her boot from the engraved name of a dead sister, said

"Gertrude, I am going to be a nun." "I'm going to be married," was Gertrude's answer.

"Would you not rather be a nun?"
No," said Gertrude.
"Would you?”

"No," said Lizzie.

"Why do you consent ?"

"What can I do?"

"It will never succeed," said Lizzie.
"But it must succeed."
"But the risk!",

"Risk!" And Gertrude fairly laughed. "There is no risk at all-except," she added, 'you fall in love with the man of my heart, and get married to him before I can come." "No fear of that," said Lizzie.

And Gertrude laughed and kissed her.

*

* * About three miles from the convent there was a village, and on a summer's day there was a rustic fete held there, and a dance on the green before the inn. I believe the right name is Kermesse for such a festival. The festival was kept up with great good will, not at all in the style of pattern villagers dancing round a tastefully decorated May-pole-not in the least degree resembling shepherds and shepherdesses of the Dresden china stamp; rough, awkward, ignorant boors, elephantine in their gambols—not much higher in intellect than the dumb cattle that watched them that day out of their lazy eyes. But, in their way, these boors and their gentle helpmates were jolly-ay, and good-hearted, too. They were dancing, some of them-dancing wildly, growing red and warm, and panting for breath, as the fiddler, who seemed as if he never

could grow tired, dashed briskly into the rugged old tunes which he had played full twenty times already. Fiddling, shouting, bawling; a vulgar throng, you say, and so it was, no doubt of it,-we cannot help that.

One of the dancers, brave in ribbons and monstrous in his exhibition of athletic power, is vastly rallied by the rest as being out of sorts. To hear him laugh, to see him caper, to feel, supposing you for the moment to be his buxom partner,-to feel, I say, the manner in which he can swing you round, and doesyou would not imagine him to be exceedingly anxious. But he is. He is Gertrude's betrothed, and is waiting her coming; he has a present for her in his pocket, and is, as they

say, out of sorts till he can present it, and often he leaves the ring and looks wistfully up the road. Of course, on these occasions, one or other of the damsels will steal after him atiptoe, and, in a voice full of commiseration, say, "Poor dear Frosch, and has she not come yet?"

Presently he sees her kirtle,-he knows it at the distance, he would know it at twice the distance. Scrape, fiddler, scrape in vain, Frosch is out of the dance, and left his panting partner in the very middle of a delicious double-shuffle. Away up the road. "Gertrude, my own!" He clasps her in his arms, atters a cry of horror-the face is strange to him-it is that of the Lady Elizabeth!

LADS, on the ladder, up go we,
Slowly but surely the ladder ascending:
Not what we are, what we shall be,
Gilding the summit to which we are tending.
The work is hard, the progress slow,

But we'll neither falter, nor loiter, nor stop; Higher and higher still we go,

Up go we till we reach the top.

Some there are born on the top of the ladder, They have no struggle, no aim in life; Perhaps they are happier, perhaps they are sadder,

We would not change with them-give up the strife!

We look right up and firmly tread,
Steady of foot and firm of hand;
Cheerfully eating hard-earned bread:
Lads on the ladder-a noble band!

Some there are eyeing us down below,
Lounging lazily in the sun;
Wishing they might to the summit go,
And end the work they have never begun.
They would like to be, but not to do,

To shun the labour, but take the prize.
Not so the wish of the hero, who

Has made up his mind in the world to rise.

Come, sunshine bright! come, cloudy night!
Come, winter weather, and frost, and snow,
Come! we are ready to work and fight
Anything, anyway-up we go!
The work is hard, the progress slow,

But we neither loiter, nor falter, nor stop; Higher and higher. For well we know, Lads on the Ladder must reach the top.

THE

A CUNNING DOG.

ABOUT

HE following story was related to Mr. Jesse by a friend on whose veracity he could rely. Some gentlemen were travelling from Geneva to Basle, when they discerned a fine-looking dog following them. The coachman disclaimed all knowledge of the animal, which continued with the carriage through the whole of the day's journey.

"When we stopped for the night, by close attendance on us as we alighted he installed himself into our good graces, and claimed to be enrolled a regular member of the cortége. Give that poor dog a good supper, for he has followed us all day," was the direction to the people of the inn; and I took care to see it obeyed. This affair of the dog furnished conversation after our dinner. We were unanimous in the conviction that we had done nothing to entice the animal, and washed our hands of any intention to steal him. concluded that he had lost his master, and, as all well-educated and discriminating dogs will do in such a dilemma, that he had adopted other protectors, and had shown his good sense and taste in the selection. It was clear, therefore, that we were bound to take care of him.

We

"He was a stout dog, with a cross of the mastiff in him; an able-bodied trudger, well formed for scuffling in a market-place. He was a dog, also, of much self-possession. In our transits through the villages he paid but little attention to the curs which now and then attacked him. He followed us to Basle; we assigned to him the name of Carlo, which he had already learned to answer readily; we became quite attached to him, and the affection appeared to be mutual. At Basle we told the innkeeper the story, and added, that we had now nothing to do but to take the dog to England with us, as we could not shake him off. The landlord smiled. Why,' said I, is it your dog?' No,' said he. Does he belong to any one you know?' No,' replied the host.

DOGS.

Why do you smile, then?' 'Vous verrez.' 'Well, but explain.' 'Well, then,' said the landlord, this dog, which belongs to no one, is in the habit of attaching himself to travellers passing between this place and Geneva. He has often been at my house before. I know the dog well. Be assured he will not go farther with you.' We smiled in our turn: the dog's affection was so very marked.

"The next morning the dog was about as usual. He came to us, and received a double portion of caresses for past services, also some food in consideration of the long trot before him. The horses were to-we sprang into the carriage, and off we started. Hie, Carlo! Carlo-hie, Carlo! Not a leg did he wag, but only his tail. 'Carlo-Carlo-Carlo !'-The deuce a bit did he stir. He stood watching us with his eyes for a few seconds, as we rolled along, and then, turning round, walked leisurely up the inn-yard! Whilst the confounded landlord stood at his door, laughing!"

A FOUR-FOOTED SHEPHERD.

the following of a dog which he purchased for James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, relates a guinea, and called "Sirrah:"

little of herding that he had never turned "He was scarcely a year old, and knew so a sheep in his life; but as soon as he discovered that it was his duty to do so, and that it obliged me, I can never forget with what eagerness and anxiety he learned his evolutions. He would try every way deliberately, till he found out what I wanted him to do; and when I once made him to understand a

direction, he never forgot or mistook it again. Well as I knew him he often astonished me, for when pressed hard in accomplishing the tasks that he was put to, he had expedients of the moment that bespoke a great share of reasoning faculty.

"On one occasion, about seven hundred lambs, which were under his care at feedingtime, broke up at midnight, and scampered off in three divisions, across the neighbouring