now, oh, now, more than
ever, has the iron entered into my soul! He has ceased to love me. I have
become an encumbrance; my beauty has faded from exposure and neglect. I
have sunk beneath his blows, have writhed beneath the bitterness of his
sarcasms, his brutal jests, his scornful mockery of my penitence and
tears. I have endured the agony of hunger while he rioted with his
companions in profligate luxury; and yet, if the old smile lights up his
countenance, the old look shines forth from his lustrous eyes, he is again
to me the lover of my youth, and the past is a hideous dream. Oh, woman's
heart, how unfathomable is thy mystery!"

The manuscript here ended abruptly. How sad a moral might be drawn from
the history of this unfortunate! What rare gifts of mind and beauty had
the want of religion marred and blighted! Had the Sun of Righteousness
shone upon that ardent heart, its aspirations had been glorious, its
course

"Upward! upward!
Through the doubt and the dismay
Upward! to the perfect day!"

What mournful tragedies are ever around us, flowing on with the perpetual
under-current of human life, each hour laden with its mystery and sorrow,
sweeping like dim phantoms through the arch of time, and burying the
fearful records in the oblivion of the abyss beyond! How few of the
floating wrecks are snatched from the darkening tide!

I returned the next day to the dwelling of Helen, but it was shut up, and
in the day-time appeared as if long deserted. To all inquiries, the
neighbors answered reluctantly that it had long been uninhabited, and that
its last occupants had been a gang of coiners, who were now suffering the
penalty of transportation. I often visited the same district, but all my
after-search was in vain, and the fate of Helen Corrie still remains an
undiscovered mystery.

THE GOOD OLD TIMES IN PARIS.

The world, since it was a world at all, has ever been fond of singing the
praises of the good old times. It would seem a general rule, that so soon
as we get beyond a certain age, whatever that may be, we acquire a high
opinion of the past, and grumble at every thing new under the sun. One
cause of this may be, that distance lends enchantment to the view, and
that the history of the past, like a landscape traveled over, loses in
review all the rugged and wearisome annoyances that rendered it scarcely
bearable in the journey. But it is hardly worth while to speculate upon
th