For five days I had been torn from my former self by a continued series of disaster and passionate suffering, and so constantly and rapidly had each astonishment succeeded the other, that I was become, I thought, in great measure callous to the most surprising change that could now possibly take place. But here I was placed all at once, and that when least of all expected, on the same ground as when I had parted from Ellen on the night before our first separation; and all the intermediate ordeal of terror and despair was past, and from it I had come out a bolder, truer, and happier man. It may well be credited, then, that my thanks to the Providence, through whose inscrutable hands I had been thus kindly dealt with, were full and fervent; and it may well be supposed how Ellen wondered, with blushes and doubtful confusion, what the embrace, so sadly tender yet so ardent, might mean, when both her guardian and her lover congratulated her on the dispersion of her threatened calamities. Natural sorrow took its course; and grief for the parent, wretched as he was, claimed its indulgence of time and solitude. I had not forgotten the advice of my excellent friend, about making a man (worthy such a wife) of myself by my own exertions; and receiving official directions to join the fleet, after I had made the necessary depositions, I left Ellen with her tears scarce dried, on the understanding that I should return, so soon as of age, and claim her for my own. DI VASARI. A TALE OF FLORENCE. BY THE LATE CHARLES EDWARDS, ESQ. [_MAGA._ DECEMBER 1826.] CHAPTER I. "It is the Plague Fiend--the King of Fever! Look! at his garments of the grave; His bloodless lip, white cheek, and glassy eye! See how he shoots, borne on his car of fogs, over our city!"