devoted with such an exclusiveness to ambitious Ultimately, he professes to leave us in doubt as objects, that he may well be supposed to have to the position of the parties

own superiority to the rest of mankind], and then and that they should continue to live separately, you leave me miserable. Now, all I beg is, that' and in the same guarded manner as formerly. you will for once counterfeit (since you cannot To these hard terms Stella subscribed; they reotherwise) that kind indulgent friend you once lieved her own mind, at least, from all scruples were, till I get the better of these difficulties." on the impropriety of their connexion; and they A little after is the following more impassioned soothed her jealousy, by rendering it impossible epistle :-"You bid me be easy, and you'd see that Swift should ever give his hand to her rival. me as often as you could; you had better have They were married in the garden of the deanery, said as often as you could get the better of your by the Bishop of Clogher, in the year 1716.". inclinations so much, or as often as you remembered there was such a person in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. 'Tis impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last; I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more, but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world. I must give way to it, ¦ and beg you'd see me, and speak kindly to me, for I am sure you would not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it you, should I see you; for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful, that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may but have so much regard for me left, that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you. Forgive me, and believe I cannot help telling you this, and live."

From this time there was no change in the manner of life of either, and the secret of the marriage was carefully kept. Not long after, Vanessa retired from Dublin to her house near Celbridge, to nurse her hopeless passion in seclusion from the world. To pursue the narrative of Scott, which is at once minute and candid, "Swift seems to have foreseen and warned her against the consequences of this step. His letters uniformly exhort her to seek general society, to take exercise, and to divert, as much as possible, the current of her thoughts from the unfortunate subject which was preying upon her spirits. He even exhorts her to leave Ireland. But these admonitions are mingled with expressions of tenderness, greatly too warm not to come from the heart, and too strong to be designed merely to soothe the unfortunate recluse. Until the year 1720, he does not appear to have visited her at Celbridge; they only met when she was occasionally in Dublin. But in that year, and down to the time of her death, Swift came repeatedly to Celbridge; and, from the_information of a most obliging correspondent, I am enabled to give account of some minute particulars attending them.

Meanwhile, every little act of attention which he bestowed upon Vanessa was a wound to the Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss jealous soul of Stella, who having already wait- Vanliomrigh resided, is built much in the form of ed eleven years in vain, saw her prospect of a a real cloister, especially in its external appearunion with the dean apparently more remote ance. An aged man (upwards of ninety by his than ever. Long she suffered in silence: in- own account) showed the grounds to my cordeed the resolution he made of never seeing respondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhom her alone, almost precluded her making her suf- righ's gardener, and used to work with his fathferings known to him. Seeing her spirits at er in the garden when a boy. He remembered length completely prostrated, and her health the unfortunate Vanessa well, and his account of giving way, he commissioned his friend Bishop her corresponded with the usual description of Ashe to inquire into the cause; " and he received her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He the answer," says Scott,* "which his conscience said she seldom went abroad, and saw little commust have anticipated-it was her sensibility to pany: her constant amusement was reading, or his recent indifference, and to the discredit which walking in the garden. Yet, according to this her own character sustained from the long sub- authority, her society was courted by several sistence of the dubious and mysterious connex-families in the neighborhood, who visited her, ion between them. To convince her of the con- notwithstanding her seldom returning that atstancy of his affection, and to remove her beyond tention; and he added that her manners interthe reach of calumny, there was but one reme-ested every one who knew her. But she avoiddy. To this communication Swift replied, that ed company, and was always melancholy save he had formed two resolutions concerning mat- when Dean Swift was there, and then she rimony one, that he would not marry till pos- seemed happy. The garden was to an uncomsessed of a competent fortune; the other, that mon degree crowded with laurels. The old the event should take place at a time of life man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected which gave him a reasonable prospect to see his the dean, she always planted, with her own children settled in the world. The indepen-hand, a laurel or two against his arrival. He dence proposed, he said, he had not yet achiev- showed her favorite seat, still called Vanessa's ed, being still embarrassed by debt; and on the Bower. Three or four trees, and some laurels other hand, he was past that term of life, after which he had determined never to marry. Yet he was ready to go through the ceremony for the ease of Mrs. Johnson's mind, providing it should remain a strict secret from the public,

*Life of Swift, prefixed to edition of his works.

indicate the spot. They had formerly, according to the old man's information, been trained into a close arbor. There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey, which had a romantic effect; and there was a small cascade that murmured at some distance. In

this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them.

of the man to whom she was so infatuatedly attached-a man, we must recollect, who numbered fifty-six years at the time of her death. Some resentment may be presumed to have not unnaturally mingled with the last despairs of poor Vanessa, under which feeling it probably was that she changed the destination of her fortune from Swift to her two executors, one of whom was the celebrated Bishop Berkeley, and directed the poem of Cadenus and Vanessa, and her correspondence with Swift, to be published, only the first part of which injunction was com plied with.

Mortified by the death of Vanessa and the flight of Stella, or rather, perhaps, by the public talk to which the two events gave rise, Swift absented himself from home for two months, during which no one knew where he was. By the return, and resume her ordinary mode of life: he hailed her with a poem full of sarcastic allusion to the fine style in which she had been living at Wood Park, in contrast with that to which she had returned

Vanessa, besides musing over her unhappy attachment, had, during her residence in this solitude, the care of nursing the declining health of her younger sister, who at length died about 1720. This event, as it left her alone in the world, seems to have increased the energy of her fatal passion for Swift; while he, on the contrary, saw room for still greater reserve, when her situation became that of a solitary female, without the society or the countenance of a female relation. But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections, to the hope of which she had clung amid | intervention of a friend, Stella was induced to every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her had doubtless long excited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in "Small beer, a herring, and the Dean." their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him, then in Ireland, 'If you She must have been more than woman if she are so very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell could have complacently heard the name of me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine.' Vanessa. It is said that, about this time, a gen Her silence and patience under this state of un- tleman, ignorant of her situation in life, began to certainty, for no less than eight years, must have speak of the poem of Cadenus and Vanessa, then been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and just published, and observed, that surely the hepartly perhaps to the weak state of her rival's roine must have been an admirable creature to health, which, from year to year, seemed to an- have inspired the dean to write so finely. "That nounce speedy dissolution. At length, however, does not follow," answered she with bitterness; Vanessa's impatience prevailed; and she ven-it is well-known that the dean could write finetured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the dean; and, full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as The dubious position in which Stella was still Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent forced to live, continued to prey upon her spirits, to him her rival's letter of interrogation, and and it could not be expected beforehand that a without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired woman so situated could live long. She sunk to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Swift, under her sorrows, four years after Vanessa, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he when only forty-four years of age. An affectwas liable, both from temper and disease, rode ing anecdote of one of her last days has been instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the preserved: "When Stella was in her last weak apartment, the sternness of his countenance, state, and one day had come in a chair to the which was peculiarly formed to express the deanery, she was with difficulty brought into the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa parlor. The dean had prepared some mulled with such terror, that she could scarce ask wine, and kept it by the fire for her refreshment. whether he would not sit down. He answered After tasting it, she became very faint; but havby flinging a letter on the table; and instantly ing recovered a little by degrees, when her leaving the house, mounted his horse, and re-breath (for she was asthmatic) was allowed her, turned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the she desired to lie down. She was carried up packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. stairs, and laid on a bed; the dean sitting by her, It was her death warrant. She sunk at once held her hand, and addressed her in the most under the disappointment of the delayed yet affectionate manner. She drooped, however, cherished hopes which had so long sickened her very much. Mrs. Whiteway was the only third heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of person present. After a short time, her politehim for whose sake she had indulged them. ness induced her to withdraw to the adjoining How long she survived this last interview is un-room, but it was necessary, on account of air, certain, but the time does not seem to have ex-that the door should not be closed--it was half ceeded a few weeks."

One circumstance of some importance is here omitted, namely, that Vanessa, during her residence in Ireland, had two excellent offers of marriage, both of which she rejected on account

ly on a broomstick!" "Ah!" says a female writer, "how must jealousy, and long habits of intimacy with Swift, have poisoned the mind and temper of this unhappy woman, before she could have uttered this cruel sarcasm!"*

shut. The rooms were close adjoining. Mrs. Whiteway had too much honor to listen, but could not avoid observing that the dean and

Mrs. Jameson-Loves of the Poets.

fatuated an attachment for an object apparently so unworthy of it! Here all is dark, or if there be a spark of light, it is that alone derived from there being two cases of the infatuation, showing that there really was some fascination in Swift, which was calculated to hold sway over women of their stamp, notwithstanding unsuitable age, coldness of nature, harshness of manners, and every other disadvantage. If we are to believe this fascination to have been of an intellectual kind, the whole tale certainly forms as remarkable a proof of the superiority of spirit over all material concerns, as is presented in the range of biographical history.

Mrs. Johnson conversed together in a low tone; the latter, indeed, was too weak to raise her voice. Mrs. Whiteway paid no attention, having no idle curiosity; but at length she heard the dean say, in an audible voice, 'Well, my dear, if you wish it, it shall be owned,' to which Stella answered with a sigh, 'It is too late." " Swift survived this event eighteen years, the last three of which were spent in decided mania. and the last of all in utter silence. The most charitable construction that can be put upon his treatment of these two women, is also, we think, the only one that will account for all the circumstances-namely, that his mind was partially unsound-at least to the extent of a depravation of the affections and some of the moral feelingsduring fully the latter half of his life. There was at all times a marked eccentricity in his behavior, but it increased much after the period of youth. In his desertion of his original party for not rewarding him so highly as he desired, in the savage revilings in which he indulged at party op- now going on to the south of Sun-street, Bishopsponents, in his furious pride and unmitigable re- gate, a large quantity of horns of bullocks and rams sentments, and in the towering contempt and has been dug up, together with other bones of varihatred for both men and women which he was ous animals. In Peter-street, part of a peat bed so prone to express in his later writings, we see was discovered, near which was a well, and in it a strong traces of a disordered or corrupted na- pump formed from the trunk of a tree. A red earture. We thus may account in some measure then jug was in the well, in perfect preservation. for the heartlessness of his general conduct to- Several red earthen pipes, said to be of Roman conwards Stella and Vanessa. Another wonder struction, and some coins, were scattered about. It must, however, remain-how two women so is supposed that the whole space between Bishopmuch his juniors, so elegant, amiable, and ac-gate-street and the Finsbury Pavement, and north complished, should have contracted each so in

* The talents of Vanessa are evinced in the following Ode to Spring, in which she alludes to her unhappy attachment

Hail, blushing goddess, beauteous spring!
Who in thy jocund train dost bring
Loves and graces-smiling hours-
Baliny breezes-fragrant flowers;
Come with tints of roseate line,
Nature's faded charms renew!

Yet why should I thy presence hail?

To me no more the breathing gale

Comes fraught with sweets; no more the rose
With such transcendent beauty blows,

As when Cadenus blest the scene,
And shared with me those joys serene,
When, unperceived, the lambent fire
Of friendship kindled new desire;
Still listening to his tuneful tongue,
The truths which angels might have sung,
Divine impressed their gentle sway,
And sweetly stole my soul away:
My guide, instructor, lover, friend,
Dear names, in one idea blend ;

Oh! still conjoined, your incense rise,
And waft sweet odors to the skies!

Those of Stella may be traced in the following
lively lines, forming a part of a poem sent to Swift
on his birthday, 1721, and which he declared had
undergone no correction :-

When men began to call me fair,
You interposed your timely care;
You early taught me to despise
The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes;

Showed where my judgment was misplaced,
Refined my fancy aud my taste,

Behold that beauty just decayed,
Invoking art to nature's aid;

MOORFIELDS.-In the course of the excavations

of the old Roman wall, contains similar remains. This space is said to have been a moor or marshy that much of the rubbish from the neighborhood ground, whence the name Moorfields. It was here was thrown together after the great fire, and accordingly broken bricks, tiles, &c., are mixed up with the earth, many of which are blackened as if by the action of fire.-Athenæum.

Forsook by her admiring train,

She spreads her tattered nets in vain ;
Short was her part upon the stage;
Went smoothly on for half a page ;
Her bloom was gone, she wanted art,

As the scene changed, to change her part:
She whom no lover could resist,
Before the second act was hissed.
Such is the fate of female race,
With no endowments but a face;
Before the thirtieth year of life,

A maid forlorn or hated wife.

Stella to you, her tutor, owes
That she has ne'er resembled those ;
Nor was a burden to mankind
With half her course of years behind.
You taught how I might youth prolong;
By knowing what was right and wrong;
How from my heart to bring supplies
Of lustre to my fading eyes;
How soon a beauteous mind repairs
The loss of changed or fallen hairs;
How wit and virtue from within
Send out a smoothness o'er the skin:
Your lectures could my fancy fix,
And I can please at thirty-six, **
Long be the day that gave you birth,
Sacred to friendship, wit and mirth;
Late dying may you cast a shred
Of your rich mantle o'er my head;
To bear with dignity my sorrow,
One day alone-then die to-morrow!

Tytler's History of Scotland. W. Tait: spiracy. Some of them are mere insinua

UPON the faith of a new discovery, Mr. Tytler has tried to make it out that John Knox was cognizant of the conspiracy against Rizzio's life, and, consequently, that he must have been an associate in furnishes no direct evidence of his being guilt with the perpetrators of that barbarous cognizant of the plot or associated with act. This is a grave charge to have brought the plotters. In fact, Rizzio's assassination against the great apostle of the Scottish was mainly, if not entirely, an affair of poReformation. It cannot be denied that Mr. litical and private revenge. It was conTytler's disclosures, gathered from the cocted by persons with whom Knox was State Paper office, have elicited circum- not in confidence at the time, and originstances that throw a darker shade over ated from motives in which he was not some of the proceedings of the Reformers likely to participate. The prime instigator in their connection with the conspiracies of the murder was Darnley himself, who and assassinations of that fierce aud tur