your son when he most needed my services, besides using other arguments which my feelings suggested, till at length Master Edward seemingly consented, stipulating only that I should not come on board till the vessel was just about to sail, in order, he said, to guard against discovery by his father. He bade me bring him, in the afternoon, all the presents he had brought from England, which he said were of value more than sufficient to pay the expenses of both of us, though, in my own mind, I had resolved I would never cost him a rial."

"Juan

be quick with your story; or leave me." "Pardon, señor,— I am not used to be tedious; but I carried him the articles in the afternoon, favoured by the Señor's close retirement, and returned again at evening without having been missed. This morning, just before day-break, I stole to the shore, with the expectation of finding a boat for me, as Master Edward had promised. The boat was indeed there, and the vessel lay off the Placer, just ready to set sail; but one of the boatmen said that the Señorito had sailed in another ship during the night, leaving word for me to return to my duty to his father, as pursuit would be idle.— O, señor he is gone

יי!.

“Well, sir,— and what then?”

"What then!" exclaimed the poor black, forgetting where he was, in his amazement at my apparent unconcern.- -"Does the Señor, then, know where Master Ed. ward is fled ?"

"Yes; there was a vessel to sail for Jamaica last night; I suppose your master, sir, will find his way, thence, back to England. Leave the room."

and the door locked

Juan gone the play was over. I threw myself prostrate on my bed, and groaned aloud. * *

Let us cut short this wearisome detail.— With the first conveyance I despatched a letter to Sir James Maitland, informing him of my son's flight, and probable intention

of returning to his friends in England, and requesting the baronet to send me any information he could gather relating to the youth.

Of the miserable interval, which seemed as though it never would have end, between this period and the receipt of Sir James's answer, I could say much. I will not. Let the Reader, if he please, discourse with himself upon my sufferings. He may draw thence an useful homily,his text (It will serve, too, to mark the time omitted in my narrative, describing, by a single stroke of the pencil, the state in which I lived for many months) In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and great mourning,— Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

The months passed; the answer came;- Edward had not been heard of.- One terrible pang, and my decision was taken; for I had already made up my mind how I would act in case of such an answer.

"Juan."

The faithful fellow is before me,-his eyes upon the letter.

"Do you love my son, and me, with such devotion, that you could at any time be ready to leave your country, and travel with your master, in search of his lost

child?"

"Do I, sir!

Señor! Do not ask me! "

"Then be prepared; for, as soon as I can settle my business, I shall leave this land for ever."

Juan leaped for joy. But I

wept.

when alone,

I

Filial ingratitude!

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to't? **

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

BOOKS EIGHTH AND NINTH.

At length his castle irksome grew,
He loathes his wonted home;
His native country he forsakes,
In foreign lands to roame.

There up and downe he wandered far,

Clad in a palmer's gown;

Till his brown locks grew white as wool,
His beard as thistle-down.

PERCY's Reliques.

It was originally my purpose to proceed regularly with my narrative; but my publishers object that the work, for a débutant, is already too corpulent to force its way through the press of public favour, and against their decisions what may I, poor devil, whose life and death are in their hands, presume to offer! They have turned their thumbs upward, I have no kind Editor to interfere, and my poor two Books must be butchered, and dragged from the arena.- It may be, however, that the Reader is no sufferer by this unfeeling measure; for though he would have found, perhaps, sufficient of the humorous in their composition, yet, for the amorous, or dolorous-paragraphs of "passionate feeling," or scenes of "deep and thrilling interest," (except he would count of this nature the loss of my faithful Juan, who died on the voyage to England *,) he must have put on spectacles to discover

* His last words were:-"Dear Señor, will you give this to Master Edward," (taking a plain gold ring from his finger,)" and beg him to preserve it for the sake of the poor black, who loved him better than he did his own honesty?" Noble fellow! I have known many of his colour to equal him in heart, but none in head. Requiescat in pace!

such in the Books condemned,

consisting, as they

chiefly do, of sketches of odd characters taken, during my long pilgrimage through different countries, rather from a wish to lose the sense of self, than from any love of observation, and the "humani nihil à me alienum puto" which, like Chremes, I boast of in my nature.

And why mention this omission? There was no necessity of giving my reasons for passing unnoticed the space of time that would be described by these two Books ;the Reader might have been carried at once to the next division of the work, calling it the Eighth, and would only have supposed that he owed me thanks for omitting what I thought would prove tedious to him;-but, when we cannot do as we would, there is a vast satisfaction in tell. ing what we meant to do.

As for the information, which it is really important the Reader should have, before he be conducted to the Tenth and last division of my memoirs, thus it is in few words :

Leaving Cumana, I returned to my native country. Edward had not yet been heard of by his friends, nor, on diligent inquiry at all the principal port towns in England, could I learn of the arrival of any individual answering to his description. Suspecting, then, that the orders left with the boatmen at Cumana for Juan were a mere artifice on the part of Edward, and that the youth had actually gone to Spain, I immediately took ship for Cadiz. It was too late; Edward had indeed been in Cadiz, but had left it for Lisbon many months before my arrival. To Lisbon then I went ;-Edward was not there. Thus did I pass from country to country, and city to city, travelling over half the continent, and staying sometimes more than a twelvemonth in one place, at others scarcely a day, till I found myself even in St. Petersburg. There, learning that I had been on a false scent ever since my quitting Portugal, and receiving no encouragement from my friends in England, with whom I kept up a constant

correspondence, I gave up the search as hopeless. I had left the shores of South America, a man of middle age, erect, and little scarred by the vicissitudes through which it had been my lot to pass; fifteen years had dragged their harrows over me since then; and I re. turned to the nearest relatives I had now on earth, wrinkled, bent, and gray.

About two years, or a little more, from this period, a friend of Sir James Maitland's-(not the Sir James we have hitherto spoken of, but his son and heir the old man being no more *—) a friend of Sir James Maitland's returned from a visit to the United States. The baronet, anxious, as well on his own account as mine, to clear upthe mystery that enveloped the fate of my son, made inquiries of his friend; when, behold, the latter instantly exclaimed that he had met, on his arrival in New-York, with an English gentleman of the name of Levis, who, he now remembered, was singularly inquisitive about Sir James's family, though for what reasons he never could imagine.

Need I say more! The next week sent me, with renovated spirits, to seek a new existence in the United States of North America.

* In his death he was preceded but a short time by his wife's sister, Lady Arne. Peace to their ashes! they deserve it.