ever beheld—features of matchless symmetry
—eyes dark, large, and lustrous—hair in floods
of rich brown waves—a hand that was a model,
from which statuaries contested to be allowed
to copy—and a spirit, energy, and feeling in
her gestures and countenance, that won your
heart before you were aware.

It was upon her that Julian Winstanley
doted. The other girl he thought, and called,
a sweet girl, but his Ella was his darling.
Nothing was too good for Ella; nothing was
to be spared that could please or adorn Ella.
To ride with her in the Park; to visit the
box where she sat at the Opera; sometimes
in a party to hear her sing; seemed to give
him a new pleasure.

Yet there was nothing in all this, unhappily,
to rouse him to a better life: to break the
chain of evil habits in which he was involved.
Ella was a child of this world; an impetuous,
proud, haughty beauty; a contemptuous
disregarder of the weak, the wanting, and, above
all, the low, or the ugly;—living for the day,
as her father lived for the day—she for the
day of vanity and pleasure; he for the day
of vanity and sin. There was that difference,
indeed, and it was a vast one; but he did not
feel it.

There was no pure and holy influence of a
higher and nobler life, diffused from the
beautiful being. She was no angel of light.
She was merely, to all appearance, a very
fine, fashionable girl.

And Clementina, in her gentleness and
softness, was little more. The good seed
which Matty had sown, had fructified at first,
but the briars and thorns were gathering fast
around it. The pleasures of life were choking
it up. It was in danger of being altogether
lost.

Matty had long been gone. She had
married a respectable tradesman, and was in
a flourishing, though small, way of business.
She would have been altogether forgotten
long ago, only that she would not suffer this.
She found herself still welcomed when she did
come; for both the girls loved her, and she
perfectly adored them. So she came, bringing
her little offerings, from time to time—little
matters such as she dealt in, in her shop
—humble, but, for her sake, welcome. These
two girls had both hearts. Where they got
them I don't know.

CHIPS.

SUPERSTITIOUS MURDER.

WHILE on the subject of crimes, (says a
Madras officer, in a letter dated the 16th of
July in the present year,) I may tell you a
story of one recently under investigation here,
and one, moreover, the most remarkable in
its circumstances of any I have ever met
with.

On the occasion of the late festival on the
top of the Chamoondy Hill, at Mysore, six
professional robbers, who were rather " down
in their luck," made a resolution to offer a
human sacrifice to the deity of the hill, in the
full conviction that the deity would then
make his appearance in person and reveal the
spot where some treasure was concealed.
With this view, they persuaded one of their
friends to accompany them at night to the
top of the mountain, and having provided him
with the flowers to offer to the deity, they cut
off his head, while he was in the act of stooping
to hang the garland round the neck of the idol!
They then waited for some time, in the
expectation that the deity would come, but, as he
did not think proper to appear, they concluded
that he was in want of more blood; whereupon
they resolved to make the sacrifice
complete by putting to death one of their
own number. Accordingly they set upon a
man called Nazzayani, who is said by some
to have volunteered to be the victim,  for the
benefit of his companions. As soon, however,
as he had received a severe wound on the
neck, he began to think that life was not so
bad after all, and he took to his heels down
the mountain, pursued by the other five,
who overtook him at the foot. They then
despatched him, and threw his body into a
large tank.

In the morning, the body of the first man
was found at the feet of the idol; and as the
companions with whom he had set out were
well known, they were immediately arrested;
and the story I have been telling you is taken
from their own confessions, fully supported
by the evidence of three women who were
with them during part of the time, and by
many corroborating circumstances. Among
which I may mention that the sword which
was found by the side of the body, covered
with blood, was identified by a blacksmith as
having been brought to him to be sharpened
by one of the prisoners on the morning of the
murder.

ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DISGUISES.

THE slightest dabbler in the study of nature
—one whose knowledge of birds, beasts, and
fishes is vague and obscure, the nearly effaced
recollection of books read on the verge of
childhood—cannot fail to have remarked a
strange current of resemblance, either in
habits and disposition, form or colour,
which links together members of
widely-removed divisions of the animal and
vegetable kingdom.

A singular instance of this thread of
similarity has impressed itself upon my
memory, from one or other of the
individuals being, at one brief period,
constantly before my eyes. The jaguar, one of
the most powerful of the feline race, has a
skin most beautifully marked with spots of
a deep chocolate-brown on a rich yellow
ground. It infests the whole of South
America; and is, in some districts, dreaded
as the direst enemy to man and beast.