SIXTY YEARS OF THE LIFE OF JEREMY LEVIS. BOOK FOURTH. CHAPTER I. Vale, conjux dulcissima. Anc. Mon. Inscription. WHEN we parted at the close of the last book, dear Reader, I stood at the marriage altar with the woman who held the highest place as well in my esteem as my affections. Look now upon this tomb-stone, and learn the unsteadiness of human happiness :— MARY, WIFE OF JEREMY LEVIS. DIED-October MDCCXCII, AGED XXII YEARS. CHAPTER II. And now I give my sensual race the rein. Measure for Measure. Prologue or epilogue-I'm the man!-I'll write you both. The Dramatist. STILL another. Thus, through life, have I been doomed to see all I loved drop from me in decay, just when I had learned their true value, and begun to cling to them with most attachment.-Thirteen months of nearly perfect happiness I enjoyed with Mary; for her virtues grew upon acquaintance. I might say, indeed, and be pardoned the exaggeration, that every day served to unfold some amiable trait of character that I had not supposed to exist, or to place in a new and beautiful light excellencies I had before admired and thought unsusceptible of further lustre. A son had blessed our union, a noble child, whose birth increased my affection for the mother, as it added new ardour to that mother's love for me, for Mary's attachment to her husband differed from that which bound him to her; her's was love-real love, such as is implied when we speak of it as existing between the sexes; mine was rather a fervent friendship, the growth of pure esteem, deriving its occasional passion merely from temporary excitement.—Such was the feli. city which I was scarcely permitted to taste, before the cup was snatched from my enjoyment. A month's sickness parted Mary and me, and left me to grieve. My sorrow was not like that, which, in another land, was soon to bow me almost to the earth; but yet it was sincere as ever husband was afflicted with, for never wife was more deserving of it. It must be pardoned me that I dismiss this subject with so much haste. As I presume that no reader (that is worth writing for) travels through any book, and especially one of this nature, without occasionally stopping to indulge in contemplation of the scenes presented to his view, I have thought that merely to mention the death of my poor Mary, as in the preceding chapter and the para. graph immediately above, was a better way to excite the sympathy I desire, than to mix the pure silk of the subject with common stuff, in order to weave a tissue of such sentimental nonsense as may be gathered ready made from a schoolboy's essays. If my own reader has not, hitherto, thus perused these memoirs, I hope that what I have now said may serve him as a caution for the future; for no work, (that is not mere patchwork,) can be perused with profit, or even with real enjoyment, except the mind be employed much more than the eyes. I have now to disclose the broadest stain that marks my history. Not four months had the sod pressed the bosom of my Mary, before I relapsed into my old habits of debauchery. The morality on which I had so prided myself had been owing merely to the absence of temptation: now, that I was once more unmarried, my former dissolute companions again sought my society, and I was child enough to be laughed out of virtue and applauded into its opposite. My little boy, to whom I had given the name of Edward-Clayton Arne, had been placed immediately on his mother's death under the care of Lady Arne. During the short period of four months above mentioned, it was my custom to visit him daily; but, as my dissipated habits grew upon me, I became less punctual in my attentions, not so much from a decrease of affection-though paternal affection, like every other proper feeling, shrinks before the selfishness of debauchery-but from a dread of meeting the just reproaches of my mother-in-law. This restraint acted very unfavourably; for I felt ashamed that I was ashamed, and as it is |