nering, who climbed Skiddaw with you, or shot grouse upon Crossfell? That you, who have remained in the bosom of domestic happiness, experience little change; that your step is as light, and your fancy as full of sunshine, is a blessed effect of health and temperament, co-operating with content and a smooth current down the course of life. But my career has been one of difficulties, and doubts, and errors. From my infancy I have been the sport of accident, and though the wind has often borne me into harbour, it has seldom been into that which the pilot destined. Let me recall to you but the task must be brief the odd and wayward fates of my youth, and the misfortunes of my manhood.

"The former, you will say, had nothing very appalling. All was not for the best; but all was tolerable. My father, the eldest son of an ancient but reduced family, left me with little, save the name of the head of the house, to the protection

of his more fortunate brothers. They were so fond of me that they almost quar relled about me. My uncle, the bishop, would have had me in orders, and offer. ed me a living—my uncle, the merchant, would have put me into a counting-house, and proposed to give me a share in the thri ving concern of Mannering and Marshal, in Lombard Street-So, between these two stools, or rather these two soft, easy, wellstuffed chairs of divinity and commerce, my unfortunate person slipped down and pitched upon a dragoon saddle. Again, the bishop wished me to marry the niece and heiress of the Dean of Lincoln; and my uncle, the alderman, proposed to me the only daughter of old Sloethorn, the great wine-merchant, rich enough to play at span counter with moidores, and make threadpapers of bank-notes-and somehow I slipped my neck out of both nooses, and married-poor-poor Sophia Wellwood.

"You will say, my military career in India, when I followed my regiment there,

should have given me some satisfaction, and so it assuredly has. You will remind me also, that if I disappointed the hopes of my guardians, I did not incur their displeasure that the bishop, at his death, bequeathed me his blessing, his manuscript sermons, and a curious portfolio, containing the heads of eminent divines of the church of England; and that my uncle, Sir Paul Mannering, left me sole heir and executor to his large fortune. Yet all this availeth me nothing-I told you I had that upon my mind which Ishould carry to my grave with me, a perpetual aloes in the draught of existence. I will tell you the cause more in detail than I had the heart to do while under your hospitable roof. You will often hear it mentioned, and perhaps with different and unfounded circumstances. I will, therefore, speak it out, and let the event itself, and the sen timents of melancholy with which it has impressed me, never again be subject of discussion between us.

Sophia, as you well know, followed me to India. She was as innocent.as-gay; but, unfortunately for us both, as gay as innocent. My own manners were partly formed by studies I had forsaken, and habits of seclusion, not quite consistent with my situation as commandant of a regiment, in a country where universal hospitality is offered and expected, by every settler claiming the rank of a gen tleman. In a moment of peculiar pressure, (you know how hard we were some times run to obtain white faces to countenance our line of battle) a young man, named Brown, joined our regiment as a volunteer, and, finding the military duty more to his fancy than commerce, in which he had been engaged, remained with us as a cadet.-Let me do my unhappy victim justice he behaved with such gallantry on every occasion that offered, that the first vacant commission was considered as his due. I was absent for some weeks upon a distant expedition;when I re

-

turned, I found this young fellow established quite as the friend of the house, and habitual attendant of my wife and daughter. It was an arrangement which displeased me in many particulars, though no objection could be made to his manners or character-Yet I might have been reconciled to his familiarity in my family, but for the suggestions of another. If you read over-what I never dare open the play of Othello, you will have some idea of what followed-I mean of my motives-my actions, thank God! were less reprehensible. There was another cadet ambitious of the vacant situation. He called my attention to what he led me to term coquetry between my wife and this young man. Sophia was virtuous, but proud of her virtue; and, irritated by my jealousy, she was so imprudent as to press and encourage an intimacy which she saw I disapproved and regarded with suspicion. Between Brown and me there

existed a sort of internal dislike. He made