hopes of others; be it for us, in removing the veil of mystery, to solve the spring of his most secret actions.

CHAP. V.

First and ever nearest to my heart

Was this prime duty, so to frame my conduct
Tow'rd my father, as were I a father,

My soul would wish to meet with from a son;
And may reproach transmit my name abhorr'd
To latest time, if ever thought was mine
Unjust to filial reverence.

Were I crown'd the most imperial monarch,

MALLET.

Thereof most worthy; were I the fairest youth

That ever made eye swerve, had force, and knowledge

More than was ever man's, I would not prize them Without her love. SHAKESPEARE.

BRIGHT rose the morn which ushered into

life the count St. Valery's pride, his hope,

his

his heir, his son; sanguine the anticipations of hereafter years, grateful the tribute of thanksgiving. The The young Montauban thrived; and nestling on Nature's fostering bosom, greeted, with smiles of soft repayment, a mother's tender cares. Oh, God of o'erruling power! can sin invade a breast so guileless?-can destruction's quickening seeds spring and o'errun a heart, taught, reared in honour? Is it example, or is it man's depravity, is it the gust of passion, or the sport of Fortune, which sways the tide of fate, and blackens oft the page of destiny?

Time, wrapped in pleasure's-stealing trance, fled swiftly on; and the revolving year again began to wane, when to St. Valery's arms a second son was given, Short was the hour of triumph, dear the purchased life; that infant pledge no mother

VOL. IV.

E

and snatched her from the world, ere interest claimed the sigh of fond endearment. Loud was the plaint of woe, enervating, chilling the languor of despair, which quick succeeded. Months brought no change; the widowed mourner drooped, nor wooed the smile of kindling love, save in the playful gambols of Montauban.

Alas! the little Theodore, the unconscious sealer of a mother's fate, was banished a father's arms, a father's fond protection; complaint closed in injustice, and the lone child was doomed the victim of mistaken prejudice, of unnatural antipathy. Ah! little could the count conceive the virtues he rejected, little read the heart so cruelly severed! Theodore, claimed by compassion, cheer

ed

ed a grandsire's age, and lived to reverence the arms which gave him refuge; lived to return injustice with forgiveness; lived, e'en in distance, to bless, to pray for the near kindred, whom untimely fate had severed.

In

Not so Montauban; uncurbed, unfet tered, hurried away by quick succeeding passions, he broke through all controul, and scoffed at threatened power. vain St. Valery, awakening from the trance of blind indulgence, urged and implored; in vain he claimed the aid of reason, and the sway of feeling; reason had foundered in the rushing torrent of intemperance, and feeling owned no influence in a parent's cause. Leagued with a train, unprincipled and vicious, buoyed by the glare of promised splendour, and spurred by loud bravado to

acts of shameless daring, Montauban, profaning the sacred purity of religion in a borrowed garb, dared e'en the threatened fury of the church, and from the altar sought to tear a newly-initiated member. Thwarted, discovered, disgrace and ruin pending, he fled the paternal roof, and left his father writhing under the festering pangs of ingratitude and disappointment. 'Twas then, as a cheering sun, shone the contrasting virtues of the banished Theodore; 'twas then, organized in principle, he quitted the princely domain of his grandsire, the count D'Argenton, on the mission of duty and philanthropy, to heal the bleeding sorrows of St. Valery's heart.

Torturing was the pang of self-reproach, distracting the reflection of past injustice; in shame the drooping parent hung