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SOME PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A HARP.
By the Author of "The Artist," "The Lady Emmeline," &c.

"Ad mortem fidelis."

"INTENDED for a birth-day gift, a pure and classical taste presided over the formation of the instrument with which,

profusion of ringlets shadowy and auburn; an intellectual forehead; a brow calm and meditative, such as the spirit of

from the moment of its construction, I || Leonardo* would have loved to linger on;

was associated, as are the spirit and the material substance; and I am justified in asserting that graceful in form, and unrivalled in tone, I issued from Erard's a perfect specimen of skill.

"Conveyed to a superb mansion in

I was carefully inspected by a gentleman, who, attaching to me a billet inscribed 'A Father's Gift to his Daughter,' directed me to be carried into a drawing-room, furnished with the luxurious attributes of fortune, and apparently prepared for the reception of guests. Placed in a corner, and left to my own reflections, I had a full opportunity of dwelling upon the scene destined to mark my entrance into life. Drapery of azure silk, fringed with silver, and looped up with large tassels of the same material, decorated the walls of the apartment, in which alternate recesses were occupied by some of the most exquisite and costly specimens of art, while vases of porcelain, filled with odoriferous flowers, stood in the angles of the room, and superb chandeliers depended from the ceiling.

"In the midst of my inquisitive survey I was interrupted by the entrance of a young lady, who, perceiving me, approached with an evident sensation of surprise. While the colour rose and deepened upon a cheek pale as the waterlily, a tear glistened in her eye as she regarded me, and the words 'dear, dear father!' issued from her lips. These artless indications of her sensibility increased the favorable impression made upon me by the sylph-like and elegant appearance of this fair girl.

"I call her 'fair,' for human eye never rested upon a fairer or a sweeter. I have already said that she was pale, monumental marble could be scarcely paler; a form of extreme youthfulness and gracility; a head of Grecian dignity, with a

an eye which, neither light nor dark, captivated by the charm of its melancholy tenderness, with a full, rich lip, that wore a seraph's smile, presented an entire almost ideal in loveliness.

"Beautiful in character, although not coldly beautiful in feature, she seemed as she bent over me a bright creation unfitted for a pilgrimage of tears—something too fragile, too visionary for earth. Reared in the home of luxury and ease, and as yet in the infancy of life, the blight of sorrow could not have fastened upon her heart, yet in her mien there was an air of pensiveness, a shade of sadness, a something so bordering upon grief, that one unable to dive into the inexplicable mysteries of the spirit might have presumed that the canker-worm of care was

busy within. The common-place, the admirers of mere red and white, blindly insensible to the beauties of expression, would, perhaps, have beheld her without emotion, for as a diamond in the hands of the unskilful, or some fair volume written in a mystic tongue, she was not to be estimated or understood by the ordinary mind; yet even such must have been interested by the early graces of a figure, which the muse of poetry and painting would have gazed upon with delight.

"A dress of pale green silk, with loose white sleeves, fastened at the wrist by

I feel that I shall incur the flaming censure of a large body of connoisseurs, on daring to assert that I prefer the lofty and intellectual loveliness of Leonardo's female heads to the soft, passionless placidity of Raffaelle's; while the latter are pure as infants' dreams in character, they are deficient in mental power, and are frequently heavy and common-place in form: this cannot be affirmed of the former, in which exquisite beauty of outline is intimately associated with intensity of thought and divinity of expression.

bracelets of gold and emeralds, and confined at the waist by a band of white satin; with a twisted necklace of oriental pearls, and pendants of the same gleaming through the classic ringlets that fell in superb masses upon her neck, completed the attire of the young stranger.

"I dwell thus minutely upon my description, because I afterwards loved her with an intensity of which I once believed myself incapable; and they who have given up the affections of their heart, well know how sweet it is to linger around the image of their idol. Years have rolled into oblivion since I beheld her, silence and desolation have hung upon my chords, yet every feature, every trait, every varying light and shade of her angelic countenance, is impressed upon remembrance, never to be forgotten until time or accident shall leave but the memory of my being."

The silvery tones which in the last sentences had faltered through agitation now died away like the summer breeze when it murmurs amid the leaves of the forest; the spirit of the harp was mute, and some moments elapsed ere she* resumed the narration of her adventures: || it was then with renewed energy she recommenced. "The party which assembled to celebrate the natal anniversary of my youthful possessor was numerous and brilliant. As might be expected, I was displayed and honoured with eulogium; and while the light as well as awkward hand swept across my chords, the ready tone of admiration burst from every lip. || 'Beautiful,' incomparable,'' superb,' resounded through the room; but my triumph was incomplete till, at general request, Emma, diffidently, seated herself beside me, and with all the delicate mastery of art, mingled with the witchery of feeling, drew forth the richest volume of harmony. No frigid adherence to rule, no dashing display, no sacrifice of senti

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In ascribing the fair and, of course, feminine gender to the harp, I am not only swayed by the propriety of deciding that to be feminine, which is so exquisitely sweet and harmonious, but I presume to guarantee my judgment by referring to the origin of this captivating instrument as fabled by the poet in his beautiful melody to the air of "Gage Fane." What lady will dispute my acumen ?

ment to bravura, no seizure of admiration by storm, depreciated her style; all was genuine and exquisite taste, genius wedded to science; and while her parents listened, enraptured, to the applause which she excited, her manner deprecated its warmth.

"And there was another in the room, who, with her father, gloried in the consciousness of her superiority, and to whom her eyes timidly retreated when withdrawn from the paternal gaze; he was stationed at her side, and when the company were loud in their panegyrics, an eloquent glance, and a whisper in her ear as he bent forward, apparently to arrange her music, conveyed the treasured meed of his approval.

"The only surviving branch of a once noble family, Edward Cavendish was the pride, the hope and solace of his venerable grandmother, who in the stripling youth, committed by a departing daughter to her charge, beheld the last descendant of her race, and the sacred bequest of her widowed and broken-hearted child. The son of a soldier, he inherited from his intrepid father a portion of military ardour, which was in no small degree animated by the pride of ancestry; and at the time of my first beholding him he held a Captaincy in the regiment. The army was thus adopted as the path of his profession, but the fire of inspiration had been kindled by nature in his bosom, and from early boyhood he had been an abstracted student, a wooer of the muse, and a worshipper at the eternal shrine of art. Burning with the nameless susceptibilities and imaginings of genius, fervid and impetuous, yet ever guided by the dictates of reason and principle, he was worthy of the fair and noble minded girl by whom he stood; and it is but truth to affirm that he regarded her with that absorbing devotedness, that idolatrous intensity of affection, which the young and the stainless nourish amidst the blights, the chills, and perfidies of a cold and artificial world.

"His thought by day, his dream by night, Emma was to him the load-star of existence, nor was his attachment unrequited; for with all the tenderness and constancy of woman's love Emma had resigned to him her heart, parental con

currence had been obtained, and the
union of this youthful and highly-gifted ||
pair was to be celebrated on the com-
pletion of Edward's majority. A head
marked by an air of patrician grandeur,
a countenance of absorbing interest, and
a slender but nervous figure, formed the
outlines of his features and person. But
why need I enter into detail? like the
heroic Körner, he was a poet and a sol-
dier, the envy of many, and the admira-

tion of all.

mendous powers opposed to the energies of France. The regiment to which Edward belonged was ordered upon duty; three days were allowed for his arrangements, and, at their expiration, with a beating heart he prepared to tear himself from the arms of his parent, and to take an impassioned and a solemn farewell of his adored girl, ere he hurried to the field of glory. The parting was all that love the fondest and the purest could dictate in a moment when, alas! it had every thing to fear. I remember, for the memory of such though bitter, is yet sweet

*«The birth-day festivities concluded with a ball, and the company waved their adieux at an early hour in-I remember it was on a mellow and the morning. Returning to its usual pursuits, the family of Mr. Lascelles afforded me an opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with its members. Edward was a daily visitor, and perhaps nothing could be more delightful than to watch the interchange of sentiment between the youthful pair. A small but beautiful garden, assiduously cultivated, lay behind the house, and, in the summer evenings, was all sunshine and verdure, fragrance and flowers. At the bottom of this fairy retreat, protected by poplar trees, a bower of clematis, intermingled with roses, sweet-briar, and jessamine, was fancifully constructed; and here, canopied by green leaves, with poetry and music, amidst the wild humming of bees, the floating of natural perfume, and the soft tinkling of the silver rivulet that bubbled over a bed of shining pebbles, Edward and Emma were wont to pass the noontide and the twilight hour. I was their frequent companion; and at such periods I strove to give forth the whole essence of my harmony, and, as it were, identify myself with the happiness of the lovers.

"I must hasten in my narrative. At the date of my introduction to the family of Mr. Lascelles, Edward had just entered his twenty-first year; and the lapse of a few months only was required previous to the celebration of the nuptial ceremony; but, alas! how unsubstantial is all earthly felicity! how baseless and unreal all human expectation!

"Roused into resistance by the ambition of Napoleon, Europe had risen in arms against the conqueror, and England, the scourge of despots and the deliverer of nations, leagued herself with the treNo. 83.-Vol. XIV.

luxuriant twilight that Edward, habited in regimentals, came to breathe his final adieu. The ardour of the soldier had yielded to the feelings of the lover, and as he pressed his mistress to his bosom, and vowed eternal fidelity upon her lip, the tear that glistened in his eye, the deep yet stifled accents of his voice, the unutterable intensity and lingering tenderness of his gaze, told what was passing in the still chambers of his heart. They stood beneath the shade of that bower in which they had so often held sweet converse; all around them was calm and exquisite in loveliness; the moon shone brightly in the vaulted sky; the breath of flowers stole upon the soft summer gale; the poplars waved pensively in the breeze; and the little river made pleasant melody as it passed; trifles as they were, these || aided the solemnity of the 'farewell,' but nothing could deprive it of its weight. Tears rapidly chased each other down the pale face of Emma, as with a darkened spirit she listened to the vows and assurances of her Edward. He spoke of glory, of the soldier's fame; she thought of mortal scathe and peril, of a blood-red field, and an ensanguined grave; and when he told of faith and love that could know no change, she beheld the ruins of a blighted and a broken heart. Alas! alas! her bodings were too true. They separated;—and death might have been mercy to the pain.*

"When fettered by a viewless chain,
We turn and gaze, and turn again;
Oh! death were mercy to the pain
Of those that bid farewell."
Bishop Heber.

2 I

solitude, I sometimes soothed her into a momentary oblivion of her sorrows.

"From the time of Edward's departure the tone of Emma's spirits saddened, and the shade upon her fair brow became "Upon Lord Henry F****, Edward's deeper and deeper; an extreme delicacy companion in arms, devolved the responof constitution had attended her from in- sible office of conveying to Emma some fancy, but reared like some costly exotic, memorials from Edward, confided to him and watched over with ceaseless solici- on the field of battle, when the vital tude, she seemed to acquire strength as stream was fast ebbing to a close, and she grew up, and gave promise of a these were accompanied with the last blooming meridian. Still to shield her assurances of his love. This melancholy from the storms and roughnesses which duty was performed with respect and ruder forms and spirits might encounter manly tenderness by Lord Henry, who, without peril, was the aim of all around her. labouring under the effect of a severe "It was now the most beautiful season sabre-wound in the shoulder, weak, pale, of the year; June was about to tread in and attenuated, presented a spectacle of the flowery step of her sweet sister May, harrowing interest to the family. The and the heart's-ease, the rose, and the interview was painfully distressing, but lily of the valley welcome her approach. supported by the chief sufferer with a News from the continent was received; fortitude that surpassed the expectation and in a letter from Brussels, Edward of her friends. She endeavoured to look gave intelligence of having joined the calm, while it was evident that her heart army in safety. His epistle was fraught was bursting: no shriek-no idle tear with the fondest expressions of affection, escaped her; and the hysterical sob which the sweetest assurances of faith; and he at length broke from her surcharged alluded to the approaching conflict, merely bosom, was scarcely deeper than that to hang upon the picture of re-union with with which Lord Henry, concluding his all the buoyancy of youthful emotion. In narration, put into her hands a lock of a letter to his grandmother, written at hair, once bright and auburn, but now the same time, he, however, spoke of the faded and discoloured with a sanguine hue. risks of his profession, and besought her It was her own-her own-the ringlet to sustain and console 'his Emma' in the which she had given her Edward-and issue of his fall. They were the last com- which he had worn as a talisman, and munications which he ever penned. The kissed a thousand and a thousand times Gazette announced the brilliant victory while gazing upon each golden hair. And of Waterloo, and dwelt in proud and tri- that stain-that deep and horrid stain !— umphant strains upon the glories of the could it be mistaken?-Oh! no- his day; to the statesman and the politician it || heart's-blood had dyed and consecrated might have appeared blazoned in gold, that fair tress. Her eyes closed, and pitybut to the widowed and the childless, the ing nature suspended the consciousness of desolate and the orphan, it teemed with characters of blood. Edward had fallen in the field; the tidings of his decease came wedded with the voice of victory; and from that fatal hour Emma drooped and faded like a flower which has neither sun nor moisture. In vain her distracted parents strove to wean her from her melancholy; despair, quiet but certain despair, had fixed upon the delicate springs of her existence; her thoughts and her memories lay too deep for tears,' and, silent and uncomplaining, she appeared passing to the 'green pastures and still waters' of the blessed. Music became her principal solace; and it is to me a mournful pleasure to imagine, that as the sharer of her

woe.

*

"Having discharged his mission, the gallant nobleman withdrew; but the impression made upon him by the appearance of Emma was too serious to be erased. His calls were repeated; and Mr. Lascelles, hoping to wean his child from her strong agony of thought, fostered his visits of etiquette, till they ripened into those of friendship. The prepossession in favour of the young mourner, thus matured into passion the most ardent, the most delicate, and sincere, and Lord Henry waited but for an opportunity of declaring his affection, and flinging himself, his title, and his dazzling possessions at her feet.

"With its deep and mellow livery, its splendid and glowing sunset, and its rich and shadowy twilight, the autumn came and went; the winter also passed away; and the sweet notes of the throstle and the wood-lark hailed the arrival of the spring. Nature, reviving, assumed the aspect of gladness; and the iris, the pansey, the violet and the primrose peeped out from their concealment. But Emma was unaffected by the beauties of the season. It is true that, for her parents' sake, she prayed for resignation-but, alas! her heart was in the tomb; and when her noble wooer, trembling with agitation, revealed the nature of his sentiments towards her, a cold shuddering crept over her, and with averted eyes she motioned him away, while the ashy hues of her countenance, the convulsive movement of her lip, and the inflexion of her sweet brow, told him too plainly that he had made shipwreck of his love. Pale as she had ever been, she soon became paler, and the rare graces of her figure faded into the traces of premature decay. The worm lay buried at the root, and the fall of this fair flower was inevitable. Symptoms of pulmonary decline made themselves visible in the increased lustre of her eye, the fitful hectic of her cheek, and in excess of apprehension Mr. and Mrs. Lascelles summoned additional advice; the physicians of royalty obeyed the call; but when the blight is at the core, man's art availeth nought; and thus, ere the summer waned away, it shed its brightest blossoms upon the grave of Emma. Fair and stainless being, unfitted for a world of sin and sorrow, the first rude touch of trial severed a chain the links of which had long been dissolving, and gave back her pure spirit to the Creator who endowed it.

"The sun had sunk beneath the horizon, but its radiance still burned upon the west, when turning her eyes, for the last time, upon that glowing sky, and then fixing them upon her parents with unutterable tenderness and solemnity, Emma grasped a hand of each, and pressed it to that poor heart whose pulses were fast hastening to decay. It was a trying and an awful moment, and strong as was the hallowed hope of re-union within her breast, it was evident that the frailty of

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"A quivering of the under-lip, a tremor of the closing eyelids, and a 'longdrawn, struggling sigh,' were the termi❤ nation of the conflict!

"Left, as she had placed me, in the window of her own apartment, I was converted into the witness of her forlorn mother's anguish, and the sad inmate of the chamber of death. How shall I describe my emotion, as I beheld all that remained of the being whom I adored? Beautiful in dissolution, she reposed upon that couch from which she was doomed to rise no more: those eyes which I had so often dwelt upon with joy, were then closed for ever-their lids were sealed, and the golden lashes with which they were fringed lay like a soft shadow upon a cheek paler than the mountain-snow. The bloom of vitality had passed from that enchanting lip-but still the traces of a radiant smile hung round it, and told how divinely sweet it must have been in life; while upon her guileless brow sat a calm and hallowed serenity, blended with the gentler traits of suffering and sorrow. Unshorn, and unshrouded by the ceral band, the long auburn ringlets which had so often swept over me like wreaths of silk, now receding from her temples, formed a mellow contrast with the marble hues of that transparent face. *

"The evening wore away, and the noiseless-the mysterious night came on. A rustling in the room excited my attention ;—the mother had stolen from her attendants to watch, and weep, and mourn over the relics of her angel-child; and now that there was no eye-no ear to hear her save HIS, she abandoned herself to the deep and stirring agony of a mother's woe.

"And was it for this,' she exclaimed

was it for this, my Emma, that I cherished thee at my bosom-that I nursed thee in the cradle-that I tended thee by day, and hung over thee by night? Was it for this, my fair and only one? Was it, alas! for this sad and weary scene ?'

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