Wisdom, I say, dictated that stile of address which conceals conscious superiority under the mask of gay familiarity. I approached; and, taking her by the hand, observed to her, with an air of jocularity, that the keenness of the wind would blight the blossom of her beauty. She started, modestly withdrew her hand, and hung down her head; and that with an air of dejection so totally exempt from affectation, as made me feel a momentary impulse of repentance. Her tears flowed afresh: I hesitated; a respectful apology for insolent intrusion quivered on my lips. But Worldly Wisdom, scorning to confess her fallibility, whispered that her tears were but the tears of virtue for departed honour. Fortified with this charitable idea, I renewed my attack, and proposed to her to accompany me to the Wells. She gave a silent assent; and, taking the arm I held out to her, we walked gently forward. As we proceeded, I made an attempt...not by kind participation, to soothe her grief; but, by the loose effusions of affected gaiety, to raise a transient smile on the cheek of Sorrow, at the expence of feeling nor was it in the hope that the smile so raised would give to her heart a momentary relief from the painful sensations which seemed to oppress it, but merely with the selfish view of enhancing that pleasure on which my imagination already feasted. The attempt, however, met with the success it merited. Her tears, indeed, had subsided; but they were succeeded by a fixed and settled gloom, equally insensible to the attacks of licentious ribaldry, and the proffered aid of consolatory advice. Her silence continued, in spite of all my efforts to break it, till we came within sight of the house; when she suddenly stopped short with the start of recollection, and exclaimed in the wild accents of despair... My God! whither am I going?" She seemed as if just awakened from a dream, wherein she had advanced to the brink of a precipice, the idea of which still made her shudder with horror. She had withdrawn her arm from mine, was returning with hasty steps, and was already at some distance from the spot on which I stood, before I sufficiently recovered from the astonishment into which this sudden ejaculation had thrown me, to follow her. I, however, soon overtook her; and, laying hold of her hand, earnestly entreated her to return with me to the Wells. This she resolutely refused, and her refusal was accompanied by a torrent of tears. Her distress bore such a visible stamp of reality, Nature had written sincerity on her countenance in such legible characters, that a man of less refinement, one who piqued himself less on his knowledge of the world than myself, could not possibly have erred. But to me this agony of grief appeared the result of deep design, an artful scheme of a finished courtezan. Her garb indeed, our fortuitous meeting, the place in which we met, offered such a combination of unfavourable circumstances to the idea which I entertained of her, as to unbiassed reason, must have produced irresistible conviction; but when the mind has adopted a favourite system, it is curious to observe with what surprizing facility it removes every obstacle, however strongly fortified by art or nature, and renders every thing subservient to its own plan. In full expectation of finding my sagacious conjectures strengthened by the recital, I requested she would favour me with the history of her life; nothing doubting but it could be duly diversified with the usual embellishments of matrimonial promises solemnly made and slightly broken: the simple eye of inno

cence' dazzled by the splendor of rank; long struggles; base decep tions; virtue seduced; and the numerous train of misery ever attendanton similar faur-pas.

6

Come,' said I, let me know your story; your misfortunes, I dare say, are not irremediable; and it may perhaps be in my power to afford you relief.".... Ah, Sir!' said the fair mourner, dropping on her knees, could you but remove the cause of my present anxiety, my life would be too short to repay so large a debt of gratitude as I should thence incur.'...' If the cause come within the bounds of moderation, a much shorter period will suffice: but you excite my curiosity; hasten, therefore, to gratify it.' She arose; I led her to a stile, on which we seated ourselves, and she began as follows...

The story of my misfortunes is short; and to yoù, Sir, I fear, it will prove uninteresting; sorrows, however poignant, must lose by recital; and a simple narrative of artless facts can seldom convey to the breast of a stranger any portion of those feelings which are experienced by an interested narrator. I have not yet attained my seventeenth year; nor, till within this twelvemonth, have I known one painful hour. My father's name was Villars: he was curate of a village in Oxfordshire. His curacy was not lucrative; but, with the addition of an annuity granted him by a young nobleman with whom he had travelled, he, and my mother...who was the orphan daughter of a neighbouring rector, and had been left destitute of fortune, and consequently of friends...contrived to pass their lives in comfort, and to rcserve their mite for charity. My father endued with too much sense to regard poverty as a reproach, and possessed of too much humility to treat it with the scowl of disdain, daily visited the cottage of the labourer; in sickness or in health proved his constant friend. Nor was he weak nor wicked enough to believe that his duty was wholly discharged by the administration of spiritual advice and mental exhortation no! to the wants of the body, not less than to those of the mind, did he administer; nor did the assistance he afforded, always suited to the urgency of the occasion, ever fail to inspire that respect for the preceptor which gives double force to his precepts. I was his only child; and the extraordinary pains which he took with my education... pains which he would frequently exclaim with the partial fondness of a parent, were amply recompensed by my close attention and rapid progress...formed his chief amusement, and almost his sole relaxation from the duties of a station which he justly deemed of sufficient importance to engross a very considerable portion of his time and attention. Thus, loved and respected by the whole parish...except, indeed, by the lord of the manor, of whose sports he had neither leisure nor inclination to partake, and whose coarse invitations, in the bosom of Liberality, were more likely to create disgust than to promote a willingness to accept... thus, I say, with this single exception, an object of universal love and respect, did my father pass his days, in the full possession of that happiness which is the sure result of good actions.

At the beginning of November last, an industrious cottager, one of his parishioners, was seized with a violent fever, which baffled the art of the surgeon whom my father had sent for to attend him. On the second day he was given over; and as the fever was of the putrid kind, my father was warned not to approach his bed. To this warning, alas! he paid but too little attention; he would not suffer

any con

sideration of personal danger to deter him from pursuing the strict line of his duty; he insisted on the necessity of bestowing preparatory consolation, at the approach of that awful hour, which even the mind impressed by education with a just sense of its duty, and urged by rigid principles of moral rectitude to a due discharge of it, cannot behold without some portion of fear and trembling......a weakness inseparable from humanity. All, therefore, that he would grant to the urgent entreaties and repeated solicitations of my mother and self, was to provide himself with vinegar, camphire, and other antisepticks, that our fears might be somewhat diminished by the diminution of danger. This precaution, however, proved ineffectual; my father caught the infection, which evinced itself on his return from the cottager's funeral; and its progress was so rapid, that in eight and forty hours he breathed his last.’ Here she wept bitterly, and it was some minutes before she could compose herself sufficiently to proceed: when she had somewhat recovered herself, she thus pursued her story......

Though resignation, the certain fruit of unaffected piety, my father had constantly preached and practised; to us, in the first hours of agonizing grief, his lessons and example proved of little avail; our reason obscured by sorrow, we gave free vent to our complaints, and dared to accuse the Deity of injustice......impious accusation! to which we may, with justice, attribute our present calamities.

By my father's unexpected death, we found ourselves deprived of all means of support; a new curate was instantly appointed by the rector; we were therefore compelled to quit our habitation; and my mother determined to repair to London, where she had a first-cousin who was in a considerable way of business in the city. Our whole stock of money fell short of a hundred pounds. On our arrival, we enquired for this relation, and found he had quitted business, having acquired a large fortune, and then lived at a house he had purchased about two miles beyond Kilburn. My mother waited on him, and was received in a manner which served to convince her that her kinsman was by no means pleased with her visit: he, however, condescended to assist her with his advice; which was, to take a house in a good neighbourhood,expend what money she was mistress of in the purchase of decent furniture, reserve to herself a single room, and let out the rest of the house ready-furnished. By this means, he said, she would be assured of a subsistence, which might be rendered more comfortable by my labour, as I might take in plain-work, which I should find no difficulty in procuring. This advice my mother readily adopted, and was by him recommended to a gentleman in the city, who had a house to let in Broad-Street, near the Royal Exchange. She was accepted for a tenant; the house was speedily furnished; and a lodger as speedily found, who remained in the lodging till within these six weeks, when he decamped without paying his rent. My mother had repeatedly hinted to him, that she should be glad if he would pay her, but had never courage to press him on the subject: honest herself, she suspected no one of dishonesty; and we lived as well as we could on the produce of our joint labour. At the expiration of the half-year, the landlord applied for his rent, which my mother promised him should be ready by the next quarter; but, ere Michaelmas came, our lodger left the house, and she had not the means of payment. Her landlord, irritated at this inevitable failure in her promise, threatened to seize her furniture, and turn us into the street. He has hitherto confined

himself to threats; but yesterday he called, and positively declared, that if he had not the money by eight o'clock this evening, to-morrow morning he would put his menaces in execution. My mother has made repeated applications, both personally and by letter, to her cousin, who had recommended her to the landlord, but without success: at last, indeed, she was refused admittance, and her letters he never deigned to answer. As we were reduced to this cruel extremity, which has almost broken the heart of my poor mother, I resolved to wait on him myself, and accordingly set out this morning as soon as it was light. I gained admission to his presence merely by being unknown to his servants: he received me unkindly; nay, brutally; turned a deaf ear to all my remonstrances, taxed my mother with imprudence, said she deserved the 'worst that could befal her, and dismissed me from his house, with orders to his servants never more to suffer me to approach it. This cruel treat-` ment almost deprived me of my senses, and I walked homewards mechanically, without knowing whither I was going. I had involuntarily stopped to rest myself, and was lost in reflection on the scene I had witnessed, when you, Sir, roused me from my lethargy. This is the cause of my grief; you see it is not groundless; and, unless Heaven should send some unexpected friend to alleviate it, I know not whither it may lead me.' When she had finished her story, I experienced a mixed sensation of surprize and disappointment; surprize, at the artless simplicity and unaffected piety which she displayed in a narration conveyed in language that bespoke a mind refined and embellished by education; disappointment, at finding my conjectures, stripped of their self-created sagacity, reduced to plain, downright illiberality. How much,' said I, does your mother owe her landlord?...... The rent of the house, Sir, is thirty pounds: we entered it at Christmas, so that there were three quarters due at Michaelmas; but, as my mother made an agreement to pay half-yearly, I apprehend the landlord cannot demand more than six months. A dead silence ensued, and lasted some minutes, during which I weighed the whole matter in my own mind. Um!' said I to myself, Fifteen pounds is a great deal of money to throw away! Not that the money was an object to me, for my income far exceeded my expences, and I had neither friends nor relations who, from situation, had the least claims on my purse. 'Besides,' said Į,

this girl's tale may be all fictitious; she may have been with a company of strolling players, and from them have learnt a correctness of diction and fluency of language adapted to the purposes of deception. To be the dupe of a child, would be to gain the summit of ridicule. No, no, it won't do!' Having thus weighed the matter with that just equilibrium which is ever preserved when interest holds the scales, I resolved, with rigid firmness, to resist the evidence of conviction, and refuse to prove myself a man, lest I should become a dupe. I am sorry, my fair unfortunate,' said I, that fifteen pounds are more than I can afford to part with; but if a brace of guineas will answer your purpose, accompany me to the Wells: it is too late for you to return home to dinner; we'll take a chop together; I'll get change for a note, and they will be much at your service. This liberal proposal was uttered in a tone of familiarity which could not be mistaken. She cast her eyes on me with a look of indignant sorrow; then turning them towards Heaven, exclaimed...... Gracious God! am I reduced to this!' Having said this, she left me, and walked precipitately towards town.

My surprize at the rejection of an offer which most men would have deemed generous, was but short; it speedily gave way to sensations of a less pleasant nature; nor were they much alleviated by the faint resolution which I formed to call the next morning in Broad-Street, and, by the confirmation or refutation of my suspicions, enabled myself to act in a manner which would equally secure me from the raillery of friends and the reproach of conscience.

At dinner, the general harmony which prevailed in the family, and the happiness of its master, which seemed to diffuse comfort over all around him, were incapable of exhilarating my spirits, or of rouzing me from that state of pensive uneasiness which a mind not hardened in iniquity must ever experience at the commission of error, or neglect of the duties of life. Soon after the cloth was removed, I took my leave, and returned the same way I went; determined, in the first place, to keep my promise with the beggar who had implored my assistance in the morning, and to make him amends for the delay by increasing the do-. nation. When I approached the stile near to which I had left him, I saw a number of people collected together; I quickened my pace; and, when I had reached the spot, rushed through the crowd; when an object presented itself to my sight, which instantly struck my soul with horror, and excited such pangs of keen remorse as, till that moment, I had never experienced. It was the old beggar, who lay extended on the ground, pale and motionless. His dog, his sole friend and constant companion, stood at his feet, growling at the mob, as if anxious to defend his master's body from insult; while some of the unfeeling wretches were rewarding his fidelity with blows. Alas! who can reflect on the warmth and steadiness of attachment so frequently evinced by this worthy animal, and not be tempted to exclaim, that friendship and gratitude are unknown to the human species!

I stooped down to feel the beggar's pulse, with a hope that the lamp of life was not yet totally extinguished; and, at the instant, was accosted by a gentleman with whom I had dined at Seaton's. He was a surgeon in the navy: I defired him therefore to examine the body, which he immediately did; and finding some signs of remaining life, I hired two men to carry him to my lodgings in their arms, as no carriage was near, and begged the surgeon to accompany me home. On our arrival, he ordered him to be undressed and put into a warm bed: some wine was heated; and he attempted to pour a spoonful down his throat, but it was impossible; his teeth were fast clenched; his pulse, too, had - ceased to beat. He then attempted, by the usual means, to restore animation, which he thought might be only suspended; but in vain: the soul, tired of its comfortless mansion, had taken its flight to those regions where a few years of virtuous sufferings are repaid by an eternity of bliss. I asked the surgeon what he imagined to have been the immediate cause of his death? He said, as far as he could judge by appearances, he had died through want. I then begged to know, whether, had he seen him some hours sooner, he thought it possible to have saved his life? He answered Doubtless.'

The surgeon now took his leave; and having given my servant orders to go to an undertaker's, and tell him to make every necessary preparation for the decent interment of the body, I retired to my room, to reflect on the transactions of the day. I accused myself with having suffered a fellow-creature to expire, from the want of that relief which,