soul with her love; hers was no stinting
nature, as I read it in those gloomy eyes; it
was bountiful, and warm, and mellow as July.
Yes, I think once it was as a rich
inexhaustible treasure, from which might have
been gathered by a hand faithful as well as
tender the heart-sustenance of a long, long
life; but, it was a hand worse than wasteful,
that could pull down its safe enclosure, and
let in upon the ripened harvest such a sea-
flood of suffering and wrong as had made her
soul desolate for ever, as a land sown with
salt. I see her passing forward from the
gentle, all-hoping, all-believing time of maidenhood,
to the fair, blushing bride, sweet, loving
wife,—never, O! never a mother! That holy
grace came not to her, else there would not
be that fatal fire-mark on her heart to-day:
Jealousy is the Devil.

A little while of the great, the intense
happiness, and then, methinks, I see a weariness
in the lover-husband, a distrust in the young
wife, and a cloud rising, lightly, at first, but
deepening and increasing until it becomes a
blackness of darkness for ever. She is on
the watch, always on the watch. Every
bright, captivating woman's face he lets his
eyes rest on for a moment is to her more
dreadful than a basilisk's. At first, all women;
then one woman in particular, is her deadly
rival. He can mock at her pain; he can
parade his power, he can show her others, and
fairer than herself, dwelling on his words,
courting his approval and admiration. He
thinks it is a little thing to stab a wife's heart
with pin-pricks every day; she will never die
of the torture—women, wives especially, are
so patient. Patient? Yes, patient, if they
cease to love; but, where that survives,—
Jealousy is the Devil!

Every tender sentiment, every gentleness
of woman-nature, is scorched and withered
under its deadly heat. Amongst their blackened
relics, and under that furnace glow, but
one plant will thrive and blossom,—that
plant is Revenge, and its fruit is Death.

In her passionate heart it grew and
blossomed fast. He had dangerous secrets: the
law should be her blood-hound, and hunt him
down. She, to whom he was unfaithful, she
at whose remonstrances he laughed, would
set it on his traces. He should be broken from
her rival. He should be at her mercy.
Revenge conceives designs quickly, and will not
tarry ere it brings them forth. He is
betrayed. She, who would once have died for
him, is his betrayer. Did she think, I wonder,
did she ever think, that she was betraying
him to his death? In the name of womanhood,
I hope not!

He is in prison now, and already repentance
stings her. He will not see her when she goes
to his cell. He will send her no message, and
he will receive none. He knows who has
wrought his destruction. She was pitiless for
him, and he will be pitiless for her. The
clay of trial conies: she cannot bear witness
against him, or for him, but others have his
secrets who can, and she may listen, while
each link of evidence is added on, and
repentance harasses her in vain. It is over.
They tell her he is to die. She hears the
doom pronounced. Then and there only, do
his eyes meet hers, and in them such an
agony of dread, reproach, and misery lightens,
as she cannot endure to see. She is
seized with a sudden frenzy, and cries: " I
have killed my husband: Jealousy is the
Devil."

She entreats that she may kneel at his feet.
and be forgiven; but his answer to her prayers
is always, " No." Others he will receive, but
her he repels with detestation. The terrible
interval is past, the death-day is come. She has
not seen him. She is in despair. She escapes
from those who watch her, aud hangs on the
skirts of that awful crowd. She is quite,
quite mad now. She can bear to listen to
the bell that tolls for the dying. She can bear
to listen to the coarse comments. Who could,
that was not mad? For the penalty of her
great sin, every day at noon her diseased
imagination reproduces the scene of her
husband's death, with no ghastly detail
omitted.

What his crime was, speculation passes
over: he died thus, and her jealousy killed
him. Her punishment is by far the more
terrible, and her sin was the greater.

Ah me! what sorrow there is in the
world! How pale and colourless are these
shadows I have made from fancy of this
grand tragedy of a woman's life. We see
the rack; but our limbs must lie on it,
wrenched and broken, ere we can estimate its
torture, as our soul must writhe in remorse
unavailing,and the quickest pangs that human
feeling can endure, ere we can appreciate that
daily outcry of the Lady on the Mall.

SPIRITS OVER THE WATER.

AMERICAN religionists have long since left
their Emerson and their Ossoli far behind in
the great race after spiritual truths, as being
too common-place and simple souls to " thrill
in harmony with the secret sympathies of the
universe." The denizens about the Great
Salt Lake may indeed express their
devotional feelings vulgarly enough, as in their
well known invitation to camp meeting,
addressed to their poorer brethren:

                 Come wretched, come filthy,
                    Come ragged, come bare;
                 You can't look too horrid,
                    Come just as you air;

or in their little less celebrated compliment
to the sagacity of Providence:

                 You will have to rise up airly
                 If you want to take in Heaven;

but it is a comfort to feel that upon
the same great continent there is also a