murderer; and the vast power my adversary possesses at court is rendered still more dangerous to my life and fame, by the pains that have been taken to prepossess those who would have to decide upon my fate. But should the death of my declining brother call me to act in the same sphere with my proud oppressor, and put my life into safer guardianship, I will burst from the retreat which I sometimes fear was unadvisedly chosen, and either fall by an unjust sentence, or vindicate my innocence. I will no longer, like the mountain-boar, owe a precarious existence to the untrodden wilds in which I hide from my pursuers." Even now, when the universal passion for luxury and self-enjoyment renders prosperity so alluring, subdues our native energies, and makes us the puppets and slaves of fortune, there are some lovely young martyrs who immolate prudence on the shrine of love. It may easily be imagined, therefore, that this heroine of a simpler age, instead of being discouraged by the difficulties her Allan had to encounter, loved him with more intense affection. He an assassin!--the eye that flamed defiance on an ungrateful vicegerent of the King, when every knee but his bent in homage, could never pursue a court-butterfly, or guide a murderous dagger to a page's breast, while indignant virtue pointed the sword of justice to a public delinquent. Isabel agreed that it was wrong in Evellin to fly; but when, on her lonely pillow, she cast her thoughts on the alternative, and contemplated her beloved, in the hands of him before whom a potent peer had recently fallen; in the power of a man armed with the confidence of two successive monarchs, and now the idol of the people; when she saw Evellin arraigned before a packed jury, no evidence to prove him innocent, and scarce an advocate sufficiently courageous to defend him; female softness shrunk at the image of such perils. She blessed the prudent De Vallance who had snatched him from sure destruction, and rejoiced at an event which afforded her the means of seeing human nature in its most captivating form.