GAMBLING.

WITH Arthur, peace forsook his babe and fair,
His lure but dice, dishonour, and despair.
A husband fled, his tender place supplies
A widow's anguish and an orphan's cries.
Inhuman wretch! But whither fled? None know,
And but a few enquire the mother's woe.
His debtors' loud much more than pity's moan,

She, crazy vagrant, with her child has flown.

And now far distant from her once-loved home,
O'er brake and moor see hapless Emma roam:
See thick'ning skies seem mourning for her grief,
But hideous thunders are her sole relief.
Her famish'd charge, too, vivid lightnings scare;
Phrenzy and screams her fainting frame impair.
Her cries are heard. By whom? A needy outcast,
More cruel than the storm, all hope to blast.
The ruffian weapon calls for all her wealth-
A treasured infant's all, now found by stealth.
Balk'd of his booty, stern he stalks away,
But lightnings meet him, and he starts astray;
When dawn, it haps, directs his downward eye,
To view his wife and child with famine die.
O'er their wept forms, remorse now shudders, raves,
And the rash gamester all the future braves.
Headlong the pistol rends the tortured brain,
And elsewhere seeks what here he sought in vain,

In the welfare that accompanied me, I ever found a sort of check, when growing very prosperous, which leads me to think, that should hope ever point to any material eminence, like Dean Swift's lady," I shall be out of breath before I

"

get to the top of it." Still, however, the indulgence of theatrical vanity attended me (and the gratification of most worldly pursuits is that of vanity), though it is but justice to say that I ever laboured hard to earn it, and disdained any pleasure or pride at the cost of another's sufferings. In a celebrated bathing-place I had once a strong disposition to know, besides the applause which was showered down upon me, the fuller and private opinion of what respectable individuals I could. To this end, I wrote upon the seats and railing leading down a cliff, and where verses with other inscriptions had been pencilled, these words What do you think of Mr. Y. the

< actor.' The next day answered in several hands with the most agreeable and bewitching dialect; yet vanity, like some first-rate beauties, expects every urn to pour out its nectared adoration, and, not content, I even ventured to ask opinion respecting other performers. Notwithstanding, all this delight led to no opulence; and I was wont to address the notes which my benefits counted, with Shakspeare to his ghosts

"Come like shadows, so depart."

Some of the profession, I observed, did manage (though not a very easy thing generally) to quit the stage for some other pursuit: a desideratum long since my own, though finances, or the doubt of success; a long time discouraged the attempt. There had been, certainly, actors more fortunate, or who pursued means I could not to obtain property; and I have seen a theatrical ruler, like

Sylla, having laid down the dictatorship, "live a private senator with perfect security in "that city, where he had exercised the most bloody tyranny." To escape the stage, schoolkeeping offered to my conceptions the only opening of respectability, and I resolved to watch the favouring opportunity.

I wrote the following, after studying the character of a lover for a new play, meaning to preserve the amorous mania.

CHARITABLE ELLEN.

O ELLEN, dear Ellen, how graceful thy gait!
O Ellen, dear Ellen, expression's thy face!
But these, my dear Ellen, as satellites wait,

To borrow a lustre from virtue's bright grace.

From mountains and vales how active

you bound:

Compared to your step, lags the hart all so fleet!

Your voice cheers the swain more than horn cheers the hound, For the accents of charity echo thy feet.

Oh stay, gentle Ellen, and list to my plaint!
Oh never was heart, Ellen, troubled as mine!
Compassionate alms would I beg of a saint,
Might a pensioner live on the smiles that are thine.

I now began more intently than ever to contemplate with pity genuine, that wandering, sauntering, idle fellow, the bachelor: What do you 'do here upon earth,' cried I, staring and ogling children? What

C at other men's wives and

R

right have you to find fault with the breaches ⚫ of matrimonial constancy, who have set but a negative example of virtue yourself? By what ⚫ authority do you blame the wrong breeding of this man's children, when you produce no pat⚫tern for their imitation? It is infamous. You admire the pretty women-a very virtuoso in female ascendencies and valentine rhodomon'tade and yet dare not confide in any! Oh, for shame! get thee a wife, Charles Bennett, and do better for the future. Thou art launched upon an ocean subject to storm, your owner has 'pointed out your destination, but neglect has made you miss your reckoning: you are out of your proper latitude, sailing without compass or chart, and cannot expect to reach the proud ́est port of human felicity.'

Nettled with this rebuke, I looked boldly around me, " brushed my hat i' mornings," won

a mate from the Norfolk coast, nestled on the wave, am surrounded with a brood of lovely plumage; and though the sky may lower, and the damps of adversity may chill for the present, yet together will we cower, close as the down nearest to the heart, and thus encircled never envy nor fear the proud eagle, though, from his rocky height, his piercing eye may look down on our