monitor, as if, instead of moral health, it would have brought to us disease or death.

"Thus passed the few years subsequent to my college life. In those years I lost my mother. An admonitory letter written to me on her death-bed caused me to pause in my career. In that letter she recommended my brother, who had married imprudently, to my care, and almost to my bounty. For him she dreaded misery and poverty, while for me she had bright and splendid prospects. That brother has never needed my services. By the strenuous exertion of his talents he has supported himself honourably and independently, and is an ornament to his name and to his country. His father was thoroughly sensible of his worth, and he cheered the latter days of that father's existence; while I, long a cherished and favourite child, the heir of inalienable property, have been glad to skulk through life with no radiance but that of riches, no distinction but that of disgrace.

"Hamond, I find myself less equal to the task I have undertaken than I had hoped. Like a traveller who has to ford a dangerous river before he can proceed on his journey, I linger on the bank, when I should plunge into the' wave.. I delay the evil moment of communication, as if delay could spare your feelings, or in any degree deaden my own.

"But to return. Before my career of heedless dissipation received the check I have already alluded to from my mother's letter, I had accidentally renewed a school acquaintance with a friend of the name of Cressingham. He was many years my senior; but this disparity, unfortunately, had not proved a bar to an intimacy more nearly resembling friendship than usually exists between a great boy and a little one. At Eton I had liked Cressingham, and it was a melancholy Election Monday to me, on which for the last time I watched him into his postchaise. A few years after, I heard that he had quitted England for India, that he held a lucrative situation there, and had married. I again lost sight of him for some years, till in an evil hour, at a dinner party in town, we were introduced as strangers. But neither had forgotten the name of the other, and a few moments were sufficient for recognition. Yet, how changed in person, how altered in mind was Cressingham! The freshness. of youth was exchanged for the yellow tinge of disease, the

cheerfulness of boyhood for the querulousness and irritability of care and disappointment. The sight of me seemed to inspire him with new life; and when talking over past scenes, a gleam of his former self would irradiate his altered

countenance.

"It was under these circumstances that Cressingham first introduced me to Mrs. Cressingham and his already numerous family:-to his wife, as his carliest and best friend,— one of the very few of all his former acquaintance who had made his return to England pleasurable,-to his children, as his early playfellow and most beloved companion.

"And it was that earliest and best friend, that most beloved companion, who was to deprive that husband of his wife, those children of their mother!"

CHAPTER VII.

Beneath the good how far.-GREY.

MR. LANGHAM'S MS. CONTINUED.

I ADMIRED Mrs. Cressingham as a beautiful, I pitied her as an unfortunate woman, for I soon presumed to ccnsider her unhappily married. To a man such as I then was, these were dangerous feelings. From pity, from the expression of it, under such circumstances, brief indeed is the passage to love, and oh! briefer still the path from love to guilt! Would that I could blot out the remembrance for ever!

"Few circumstances of real importance perhaps ever happen to us without our minds frequently recurring to one particular event, or well-remembered point of time, as the source from which all consequences, whether good or evil, have flowed. I at least have often done so; and in recalling the first look of sympathy I ever dared to glance at Mrs. Cressingham when her husband expressed himself harshly towards her, I have even exclaimed aloud, oh! had she not returned it! that she had but at that moment made me feel

that my sympathy was unvalued, my compassion considered as an insult!

"Late and useless, and unavailing regrets! they came not till visited by some compunction for what I had achieved, till I felt real sorrow for the victim I had ensnared. For, I say it not to exonerate myself from blame, (I am, on the contrary, a hundred times more culpable in my own eyes from the fact), but I meant not to have taken Mrs. Cressingham from her home. Nothing was farther from my thought, or could be more contrary to my wishes. All I contemplated was, to possess myself of her affections! I too soon felt that they were securely mine, and success awoke repentance. I could not bear to meet her heavy eye, when surrounded by all that should have made her happy. Still less could I bear her restless wretchedness when she put on, as she sometimes would, the semblance of her former natural gayety. To add to my tortures, Cressingham appeared, more than ever, to desire my society; and, in proof of his attachment, purchased an estate in the immediate neighbourhood of that which he knew would ultimately be mine, that in future years, he said, distance might not impede our intercourse. This last mark of his friendship smote me to the quick, and I longed to confess to him my delinquency. But this could not be done without implicating her in whom he trusted, on whom he doted: so difficult is it to regain the path of rectitude when once we have quitted it.

"The good sentiments of our souls, which in a just cause always act in conjunction, in a career of evil are opposed to each other; and we are compelled to compromise, extenuate, and sacrifice, till their influence is weakened, and their seeds all but eradicated.

"But repentant feelings had been awakened in my mind, and trusting that the past would not be inquired into, I resolved never again to see Mrs. Cressingham except in the presence of her husband. In order to effect this, I quitted London, and commenced a course of visits to friends and relations of my father in the West of England. I was fortunate in the first family I entered, for I saw a large and happy circle of useful, intelligent, and benevolent beings around me, rendered cheerful and respectable by their selfimposed tasks for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. At

first I stood as a cipher among them, a mere wondering and admiring spectator. But my idleness was not in vain. My belief in the efficacy of virtue, which had been considerably staggered by the life I had led, returned; whatever of excellent was existing in my nature was drawn forth, and my best intentions strengthened. Yes, I can well recollect how the conviction that had before but dawned, then shone full upon me, that I had been utterly mistaken in the path of life I had chosen, if I wished either for peace or happiness. There is probably a period in the lives of most men to which they can refer as the season of their greatest mental and moral improvement. This was mine: I thought, and felt, and looked around me, as if new senses and perceptions had been bestowed upon me. Books, which had long been abandoned, were resumed, and helped me in my labour of reform. But, I must pass on to events.

"During the period I have endeavoured to describe, Cressingham took possession of his newly-purchased property. An occasional letter from him was a most serious interruption to my pleasurable sensations, for they forced on my remembrance disagreeable reflections and indisputable facts; they moreover required replies, and to write to Cressingham was a heavy and difficult task. The sin of hypocrisy lay the weightiest on my soul when compelled to address him as my friend, or subscribe myself, though only by inference, as his. At length wearied, as I concluded, by my eternal apologies of being a bad correspondent or my promise of becoming a good neighbour, he ceased to write

to me.

"And now am I arrived, my dear son, at a part of my history, that might well be omitted, but that I feel, it has helped most powerfully to fill up the measure of my punishment. The relatives I have mentioned, after I had quitted them, removed to Sidmouth to meet an Irish family of the name of Lyndon travelling in search of health for their eldest daughter, who had been pronounced consumptive. It was at Sidmouth I was introduced to them, and in conjunction with my friends, helped to amuse the invalid and give false hopes to her family."

CHAPTER VIII.

MR. LANGHAN'S MS. CONTINUED.

"I AM not conscious that I ever admitted to myself the painful anticipation that Mary Lyndon must die; but cer tainly, much as I admired her, my heart, from the first, was attracted towards her sister. Amelia's approving and silent smile, I soon discovered, was a dearer pleasure to me than the thanks of the invalid, or her grateful mother. Her mother! Oh! what a woman was Mrs. Lyndon! In the wane of her beauty, how lovely!-in intellect, how superior! -in manner, how irresistible!--As I approached her then, so do I think of her now; and so closely is she associated in my heart and memory with the image of my loved Amelia, that my mind's eye seldom beholds the one unaccompanied by the other.

"Isoon grew intimate as a brother with this interesting family, and, alas! I soon grew happy. I disclosed my love to Amelia, and received her promise of being mine as soon as her sister recovered. I pass briefly over the winged moments of a raptured lover, because I feel I ought not here to recall them, I loved Amelia as I had never loved before, and in fixing my affections on one so kind and so disinterested, I believed, I still believe, I was laying up a treasure for myself on earth, that nothing could corrupt. In the midst of my new-born happiness, the past was as completely forgotten by me as if the waters of oblivion had rolled over my soul. To a mind in the state mine had been, and was, oblivion is happiness,

On

"Mrs. Lyndon's expressions of satisfaction were candid and flattering in the extreme; and to her I committed the charge of acquainting Mr. Lyndon with my attachment, and of soliciting his consent. His answer was favourable. the night that it arrived, Mary appeared better; and I had the exquisite bliss of hearing my dearest Amelia bless her happy destiny! In the dark retrospect of my life, how alternately bright and mournful has that one moment been