"In a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight

Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of night."

VOL. I.

BYRON

LONDON:

T. C. NEWBY, 72, MORTIMER ST., CAVENDISH Sq.

944.

SYBIL LENNARD.

CHAPTER I.

And the home of my childhood is distant far,

And I walk in a land where strangers are:

And the looks that I meet, and the sounds that I hear,
Are not light to my spirit, nor song to my ear.

HERVEY.

VIVIDLY stamped upon my memory are the impressions created by my first arrival at Oakleigh Court. I was a poor, forlorn orphan; a - Swiss by birth. Educated for the profession of a governess, at the age of seventeen, I was admitted as under teacher in a school of some

celebrity in those days-as such, I drudged for

seven years.

Many trials marked that period. Confinement and dependance galled my free mountain spirit; I sighed-nay, groaned for my "Father Land," my beautiful Switzerland! bitter, bitter were the tears that moistened my bread of servitude. However, I was supported by that Friend, who looks with such especial kindness and pity upon the fatherless and destitute; my mind strengthened under the severe lessons of self-denial and discipline which my position afforded; and although I look back, even at this distant period, to the time I passed at Cumberland House—with almost a shudder -still it is with thankfulness I remember, how, in that school of severity, my character was formed and invigorated. The several dispositions with which I had to deal, gave me experience in the varieties of the human mind.

A school is a little world; and young as were the actors upon that confined stage, still

they were embryo characters, all putting forth the different germs of good and evil. Sad it is to think, how much of frailty lurks even in the fairest and youngest--sin, that fatal inheritance from our mother Eve, clings to all her daughters, with a pertinacity which defies education and every other advantage. In my opinion, the plague spot never shows itself in a more decided manner, than in a large school; perhaps the artificial existence, the young creatures endure, sours their tempers; the longing for liberty vexes the spirit. Well, indeed, do I recollect the many cross grained dispositions I had to encounter! Truly, all was gloom to me at Cumberland House. What would I not have given, for one breeze from my mountain air-for one faint echo of that strain of wild music, so dearly loved by my exiled heart, now only heard in my feverish dreams. How I existed, through all the agony I endured, I know not; for certainly, no one