and its contents were soon tumbled into one corner. "Now, Joseph, (said she) I will assist you to bring the body down." "You, my lady! (cried he, staring at her.) "Yes, (rejoined she:) let us go up." she led the way and he followed; having unlocked the room she could not help shuddering; yet took more observation of the gloomy apartment than she had been enabled to do in the morning; and recollecting what she had heard about inscriptions; she got upon a chair, and from thence to a kind of window seat very high from the ground: standing on this she examined the window: it looked out towards a sort of battlement, which surrounded the back part of the castle, the north wind blew full upon it, the only prospects were the walls and distant mountains. On the window, she saw several lines apparently cut with a diamond: in one place she read,
"I am dumb, as solemn sorrow ought to be;
"Could my griefs speak, my tale I'd tell to thee
In another place these lines were written;
"A wife, a mother—sweet endearing ties!
"Torn from my arms, and heedless of my cries;
"Here I am doomed to waste my wretched life,
"No more a mother—a discarded wife."
And again, in another place,
"Would you be happy, fly this hated room,
"For here the lost Victoria meets her doom.
"O sweet oblivion, calm my tortur'd mind,
"To grief, to sorrow, to despair consigned.
"Let gentle sleep my heavy eye lids close,
"Or friendly death the cure for all our woes,
"By one kind stroke, give lasting sure repose.
Several other lines, expressive of misery, though not of poetical talents, were written in different places, that proved the unhappy writer sought to amuse her painful ideas by her melancholy employment.
Poor Matilda concluded the wretched victim to some mercyless man was sacrificed in that closet
