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enough to alarm me, and pushed on with greater rapidity, up the green lane leading to our house.

"My father and mother had heard the sound of the wheels, and notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, were at the gate to receive me. You, my dear friend, are blessed with affectionate parents, and can enter into my feelings, as I felt myself alternately pressed in their arms. My mother parted the hair on my forehead, and discovered a fresher colour on my cheek; and my father put his hand upon my shoulder, and congratulated me on the increasing width of my chest, and manliness of my bearing. When the excitement of our first meeting had subsided, I had time to notice the alarming alteration in his appearance; even then the hand of death was upon him, and in ten days from that evening, I was sitting by his pillow, reading extracts from those books, few but excellent, which com prised his unpretending course of divinity. Why should I detain you with records of a sick chamber? It is sufficient to say that my beloved parent was taken away before that son, in whom he had treasured up all his hopes, could bring down his gray hairs in sorrow to the

grave.

"My father's death was attended by no particular suffering; it resembled the placid slumber of a weary man, more than the parting of an immortal soul. On the evening which terminated his mortal career,

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I was sitting by his bed; my mother having retired to take a little rest. Suddenly he turned to me, saying, in a very clear but faint voice, Harry, I am dying.' 'Oh, say not so, my father-there is hope yet; and throwing my arms around his neck, I hid my face in his bosom. I placed his weak and trembling hand upon my head, and I felt that he was praying. I wished to call my mother, but he would not: Let her sleep! For a few minutes he was again silent. At length he said, 'Give me thy hand, my son.' He took it, and pressing it gently, added, in the words of that great Lady Russell, for whose virtues he entertained the deepest veneration, 'Live virtuously, my dear boy, and you cannot live too long, or die too soon.' These were the last words he spoke: I found the pressure of his hand growing fainter and fainter; but several minutes had elapsed before I discovered that another innocent and guileless spirit had flown to the bosom of its Creator. Oh, Seymour! how a Christian dies! It seemed as if my father's tree of life had been softly shaken, and the yellow leaves dropped from the boughs inaudibly.”

Sydney's voice faltered, and I too was deeply affected, for the simplicity and earnestness of his manner went to the heart. "Ten days," he continued, "after this dreadful father's body to the grave.

event, I followed my The church was only

H

and

distant a hundred yards from the parsonage, was remarkable for the peculiar beauty of the surrounding scenery. I had declined the offers of the neighbouring gentry to attend the funeral; for I do not honour the fashion that bows a man into his sepulchre.

"It was a delicious day in June; and as I felt my feet sink into the green turf, glowing with flowers, and beheld the shadow thrown by the pall upon the grass, and heard the bees humming their sleepy music amid the wild flowers, my heart within me was desolate. The little gate of the churchyard closed behind us with a melancholy sound. It would not shut after him any more!

"When we came out of the church, and gathered in a circle round the grave, I think a dry eye was not to be found. Two orphan children, brother and sister, for whom my father had provided, crept noiselessly up to my side, and stood hand in hand, silently gazing, while the field-flowers dropt, forgotten, from their hands. Amid the group of villagers, either led by affection or curiosity to witness the mournful ceremony, was a young and lovely girl, who, with a most tender patience and solicitude, supported an aged and infirm woman, whom I well remembered as an object of my father's bounty. My heart was, indeed, at that moment too much overwhelmed by sorrow for him on whose

coffin the earth was falling, to think of her beauty; but who shall say that even in that melancholy hour the hand of one great Enemy might not have dropped into my heart the seed of that accursed passion, which was so soon to overshadow and destroy myself, and all that was dear to me! By degrees the violence of my grief began to abate, and I resumed my accustomed walks in the neighbourhood, and my intercouse with the villagers, among whom I was always a welcome guest. Oh, that one cottage had never known the sound of my footsteps! My first visits to the aged object of my father's charity were actuated only by benevolent motives; but who could gaze long on Mary Gray, without yielding to those eyes radiant with tenderness; that sweet, serious, religious, smile; that voice of simple, but melting pathos! Sorrow and love could not exist together. The closed shutters, the silent garden, the desolate house, faded every day more and more from my mind. Guard, oh, guard against the first temptation that may solicit you. Spirit has entered the soul, the Sacred Fire will be quickly extinguished, and the Vestals of the heart forsake it, to return no more!

When the evil

"You shrink from the recital; but hear me to the end. We used to amuse ourselves at Cambridge with comparing and analysing the various systems of Philosophy; the wisdom of Socrates,-the beau

tiful mysticism of Plato. Out upon them all! They define Virtue until we are acquainted with every lineament. Virtue, saith Aristotle, is a natural impulse towards good actions, transformed by prudence into a habit. Virtue, affirms Plato, proceeds from God. I will prove Reason to be Virtue, swears Diogenes. They weave a silver veil before our eyes, which the first breath of passion scatters to the winds. There is one Book, indeed, whose philosophy never deceives the sincere inquirer, but I wanted the humility to consult it. If I were to publish these records of my life, how the voice of criticism would be raised against the extravagance, the exaggeration of my narrative. Alas! how can one, turning over the pages of a history in the quiet of his chamber, with his thoughts undisturbed, his evil appetites unawakened, comprehend the feelings of a man tossed in the tempest of a terrible temptation, and beholding, with affrighted eye, every bulwark with which he had surrounded the virtuous principles of his soul beaten down before the rush of new-born desires."

Sydney's agitation and suffering had become so intense, that, overcome as I was by his melancholy story, I urgently entreated him to relinquish the recital. "Nay," said he, with vehemence, "let me go on rending open these gashes in my memory, which time shall never heal. I will, however," he

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