ther's new guest. Her mother, who had lost two brothers in the religious civil wars which for so many years desolated France, was of a pensive character, and a strict Catholic, which religion, as well as her sedateness, had descended to her daughter; but though Constantia was calm and serious, and had hitherto seen nothing that had in the smallest degree touched her heart, she by no means deserved the imputation of indifference and coldness with which she was sometimes charged. On the contrary, she was deeply susceptible; her apparent want of feeling being nothing but a want of sympathy with the society among which she moved. It might be truly said of her that her desires "were dolphin-like, and showed themselves above the element she lived in." Never was a young female more strikingly misplaced. An enthusiast both in religion and virtue, lofty and perhaps even romantic in her notions, she was exposed to the sordid solicitations of Dutch brokers, ship-owners, manufacturers of madder, and vulgar wooers of all sorts, who, courting her fortune while they were indifferent to her charms, floundered about her like so many porpoises around a flying-fish.

From such a revolting reality she took refuge in the dreams of imagination, devouring the romances of the Scuderis and others, which then inundated France, with an avidity that increased her distaste for the sphere she occupied, by filling her with notions of a more exalted and chivalrous state of exist

ence. The fancies thus imbibed, and the aspirations thus cherished, might be visionary and fantastic; but her delusion was not the craziness of a female Quixote, nor the romance of a precocious school-girl. It was a high and holy enthusiasm, which while it fixed her thoughts upon a model of perfection that was perhaps unattainable, at least stimulated her to every thing that was virtuous and noble. At the perusal of any great and magnanimous action in the books on which she doted, her heart leaped, and the blood rushed thrilling through her whole frame. If she encountered any thing of an opposite tendency, her large eyes kindled; while a fiery look attested the fierceness of her scorn and indignation.

Will it be deemed wonderful that such a young enthusiast as we have been describing, accustomed hitherto to no other society than that of the mercantile boors of Rotterdam, or the plodding foreigners who drove their bargains over her father's wine, should instantly see realised in Jocelyn the bright creation of her fancy, the very being for whom her soul had secretly panted, and yield herself to the delusion with all the fervour of an ardent temperament? His personal recommendations, his prowess, his musical talents, would not alone have thus inflamed her imagination; though these, it must be confessed, form a combination not easily resisted. When the same hand, that has wielded with distinction the lance and the sword, can taste

fully touch the guitar; when the voice, that has cheered the war-horse in the field, can warble a soft love-ditty in a lady's bower, the ordinary avenues to a female heart are already gained. These united qualifications Constantia had seen in Jocelyn, and had been contented to admire them; but that which she had felt in her inmost soul, that which had awakened the dormant affections of her heart, was the knightly and chivalrous impulse which prompted him to punish the ungenerous Bohemian baron, to vindicate the insulted Queen of England, to succour and liberate the fair victim of Lord Rochester's violence. She looked upon him as her sex's champion; and seeing him ruined and exiled for those very actions, which would have raised him to the pinnacle of glory in the pages of Clelie, Ibrahim, or the Grand Cyrus, she considered him abundantly entitled to her admiration and pity; little reflecting, or perhaps not knowing, that those feelings are but the insidious disguises under which Love masks his advances.

CHAPTER VII.

"Your mind is tossing on the ocean,
There where our Argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers, on the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,

That curtsey to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings."
SHAKSPEARE.

As Jocelyn entered the hall with the Burgomaster, for the purpose of visiting the spice-ship, he found several servants waiting in rich liveries, one of whom threw over his master's shoulders a superb Palatine cloak, which fastened across the chest with a broad golden agraffe enchased with jewels. As he gazed upon his companion's wide-flapped hat, looped up on one side with a button of black bugles, on his peaked and grizzled beard, his old-fashioned basket-hilted sword, whose handle glittered as it now and then escaped from beneath his cloak, and the commanding height and portliness of his figure, he might almost have fancied that he beheld some

haughty Spanish grandee of the olden time, had not his ideas been instantly recalled to Holland by the meerschaum pipe, from which the worthy Burgomaster seldom parted. When he remembered that this grandeur of appearance was combined with a reputation for immense riches, he was no longer amazed at the reverencé, almost amounting to awe, which his presence seemed to inspire; nor at the profound obeisances with which he was every where greeted as he moved along. Their progress to the water-side was impeded by a little bustle among the men, owing to their having seized a caitiff in the act of filling his coat-pockets from a sugarhogshead.

"Who had the watching and repairing of those casks?" inquired the Burgomaster, when he learned the cause of the disturbance.

"Wont von Goocht," replied two or three voices.

"Hand me the wharf-book," continued the merchant.

He took it; and running the pen through the of fender's name, said:"Give him his wages and dismiss him. My people are well paid, and they shall do their duty. Besides, he who leaves the door open makes the thief."

"Mercy! mijn heer, for the love of God!" cried he sugar stealer, whom they were rudely hauling away. "As you are rich and great, and powerful,