Did you ever enjoy the luxury of an easy convalescence, surrounded by every comfort, and attended by a smiling beauty, and jovial young companion? What Elysium-like dreams employ the languid fancy—and what a world of impossibilities gather around us, like tangible and familiar things. I dreamed of a life of love and joy with fairy Charlotte. I would win her, and bear her like a rich trophy to my transatlantic home. Oh! we would be so happy. How would her buoyancy of spirit enhance all my joys; and her ready sympathy, how it would soothe my sorrows; and then what a nurse she would be, whenever I was ill. She liked me, that was certain; of course I could win her love, and then my happiness was secure. And I indulged in all the passionate vagaries of love dreaming, until I felt that unconnected with Charlotte there was for me no futurity. Thus passed one week more, and then I was permitted to occupy the cushioned chair, and sit by the open window. It was singular that I had felt so little curiosity respecting my host, and the singularity of surrounding objects, but my love fancies had fully occupied my mind. Now, as I sat at the casement, which extended from floor to ceiling, and had no other protection for the crystal crown-glass than the clinging vines without, and the embroidered tapestries within, and looked out upon the wild scenery, apparently uninvaded by the hand of cultivation, which substitutes the useful for the beautiful, the production of Art for the sublimity of Nature, I felt the awakening of a thousand wonders, as to where I was, and with whom, and how the wealth of that chamber found its way to that singularly hidden spot; and who was the stately lady who occasionally came to my bedside; and how such a man as Malcomb Douglas came to be an inhabitant of those mountain wilds? I had seen him but seldom, since I regained my consciousness, but his manners were perfect, and his conversation displayed unconsciously the treasures of a rare and richly cultivated intellect. He seemed a being altogether above the level of mankind. It would have seemed absurd to fancy him talking nonsense, discussing fashions, or inquiring what he would get for dinner. Yet he was not ignorant or unmindful of the courtesies, and little conventionalities of life—but he seemed to hold them of no moment, and give no thought to such trifles—which came to him intuitively, and as belonging to daily intercourse.