Alas, for all that God gives and man destroys! Alas, for all that might be and is not! Genius and intellect, which should subdue and regenerate worlds, and with noble thoughts, and words of fire, carry the truth from one hemisphere to the other--where are ye? What do ye? Consumed upon the altar of a withering selfishness--cramped and debased by the bonds of a narrow scepticism--man has prostituted you to vile uses. Slaves of his passions, and ministers of evil, He has made you;--and where God had said, "Let there be light," has too often answered, "Let there be darkness." Henry's gloomy and wayward depression increased every day, although his intellect was not wholly obscured; but at the times that it was clearest, he seemed to suffer more than during its hours of partial aberration. He gave way less than at first to fits of violent irritation; the terrible expressions he used to utter, and the murmurs and curses which rose to his lips with such frightful bitterness, were at an end. He even ceased to ask that fatal question with which he had been wont to torture his wife and sister; he listened in silence to what they said, and once made a faint attempt to smile when Alice spoke cheerfully to him. He often gazed on her in silence, and watched her intently as she moved about the room. Once, when she was sitting at her work opposite to him, she heard him say, in a low voice, "_Notre Dame de bon secours_." She looked up with tears in her eyes; he rose wildly, and cried, "Your tears shall not avail you;" and then he turned away, and did not speak for some hours. One morning that the sun was shining brightly, and the mild air forestalled the spring, Alice had thrown open a window that looked upon the flower-garden. A bird was chirping a few shrill notes near it; and Henry listened to them with an appearance of pleasure. When the bird flew away, he went to the window, and gazed earnestly on some early spring flowers, which were just coming into blossom. Alice opened a book on the table, and read aloud the following lines:-- "Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies. Bathed in soft airs and fed with dew, What more of magic in you lies To fill the hearths fond view? In childhood's sports, companions gay In sorrow, on life's downward way, How soothing! In our last decay. Memorials prompt and true." Henry held out his hand for the book, and read over these lines in silence; he then glanced at the title-page, shuddered, and flung it from him. Alice picked it up, and looked anxiously at him. "Was not Dr. Dodd hung for forgery?" he exclaimed. She turned very pale. He saw it; and said, "You need not be frightened now. I am not _mad_. In that very book I _forged_ the first link of that infernal chain with which I bound and destroyed her." Alice knelt by him, and whispered-- "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." He drew fiercely back, and cried--