A FRAGMENT OF ROMANCE.
WARRANTED GENUINE.
[A young lady who rejoices in the appellation of Czarina Amabelle St. Cloud has addressed a lengthened epistle to us, in which she feelingly deplores the gradual decline and downfall of the Minerva Press. She has favoured us with a catalogue of her unpublished works, and a spirit-stirring extract from her last manuscript romance, which is indeed a masterpiece in a department of literature now unhappily but too much neglected. We willingly subjoin both. For a young lady under twenty years of age, Miss St. Cloud in the most voluminous writer we ever had the pleasure of meeting with.—Ed.]
CATALOGUE OF MISS ST. CLOUD'S UNPUBLISHED WORKS.
Extract.
"Let the tear of sensibility be wiped for the simple Clotilde, who, fresh as an opening zoöphyte, awoke her aged nurse, Fidgita, to prepare her for the evening masque; and still the unconscious being warbled,
"While meekly blends the azure dew, And starry dawn invests the grove, When listening doves in fancy coo, O'er faintest dreams by memory wove; Then shall the blameless brigand bless The suit of his Bohemian fair, Or read in every golden tress The token flowers of India's air! Singing tink a tink, fal lira la, Fal lira la, sing tink a tink!"
"Gramercy!" quoth the garrulous crone, who had numbered ninety summers; "will my foster babe mock with troubadour odes, and ballads, and the like, one whose every artery hath hardened into a tendon? Hear me, wench, and tremble!" In an unearthly and sepulchral tone, she gutturally muttered the ancient Runic prophecy—