This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
FRANCESCA CARRARA.
265

the dark boughs were motionless like marble, while the pale moonlight kindled the glorious roof—a temple consecrated by the Eternal to his worship!

The young exile felt his spirit grow calm, and the beatings of his heart more still, as he listened to a hymn so often heard in boyhood, and never without reverence.

The notes died away in the distance; a light breeze sprang up and ruffled the leaves, as if the natural unrest of that vast wilderness had only been hushed by the influence of that calm and holy song. The voice of prayer now arose, and the group knelt, with folded hands and bowed faces, on the earth. Evelyn could hear the supplications for help in their present trouble, while some implored a blessing on what seemed a great and painful enterprise.

Evelyn was now convinced that he saw a band of those determined emigrants whom he had before heard were about to quit that country whose rulers, with short-sighted policy, would have persecuted them to the death, or else forced them into hypocrisy,—as if the sincere and the conscientious were not the very sinews of their country, or as if any form or ceremony could