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of his time since: that he had set off for London the very day he wrote, had sought you out, and conversed fully with you upon the effects his letter had produced; that, hearing I was come to this place, he would have followed me with an immediate explanation, if you had not prevailed with him to the contrary (for which advice I cannot now find in my heart to condemn you ;) that however he had placed himself within two miles of me in a neighbouring village, where he had daily intercourse with the worthy vicar, who gave him punc tual intelligence of the state of my mind, and the total revolution effected in it; that what he suffered during this state of trial and suspense no words of his could paint, but the accounts he received of me from this good man, and the benefits he knew I was gaining by his counsel and conversation, kept him from discovering himself, till he had permission for so doing; that he threw himself upon my candour and good sense for justification in the honest artifice he had made use of, and now that I added to my good qualities those religious and domestic virtues, which the society of unbelieving pedants had obscured, but not extinguished, he hoped there was no further bar in the way of our mutual hap-* piness; but that I would condescend to accept a man whose heart and soul were devoted to me, and who had one recommendation at least to offer in his own behalf, which he flattered himself no other person could produce, and which he was sure would have some weight with me: so saying, he put a letter into my hands, which I had no sooner glanced my eye upon, than perceiving it was the well-known hand-writing of my ever honoured and lamented father, I sunk back upon the couch and dissolved again into tears: even the manly heart of my Henry now gave way, and the sad remembrance

of his departed friend melted his brave bosom into all the softness of a woman's.-Then, Sir, oh then indeed I loved him, then he triumphed in my heart; how dear, how noble, how almost divine did he then appear! his eyes, whose ardent raptures had affrighted me, now, when I saw them bathed in tears, inspired me with the purest passion, and con. templating him with the affection of a sister, not regarding him as a lover, I cast off all reserve, and following the impulse of the soul, dearest and best of men! I cried—and sunk into his arms.

Thus, Sir, you have the full and unreserved account, to which your friendship is entitled ; still there remains one act of kindness in your power to shew me, and which my Henry jointly with myself solicits, which is, that you would stand in the place of your deceased friend upon our marriage, and complete the kind part you have taken in my wel. fare, by joining my hand with that of the most deserving man on earth.

I had almost forgot to mention to you a circumstance, that passed as we were sitting at table after dinner, and by which our good friend the Vicar undesignedly threw me into a confusion that was exceedingly distressing, by repeating some verses from Pope's Essay on Man, in which he applied to me to help him out in his quotation: I certainly remembered the passage, and could have supplied his memory with the words; but Henry being present and the recollection of what had passed on the subject of poetry, rushing on my mind, at the same time that I thought I saw him glance a significant look at me, threw me into such embarrassment on the sudden, that in vain endeavouring to evade the subject, and being pressed a little unseasonably by the Vicar, my spirits also being greatly fluttered by the events of the morning, I could no longer com.

mand myself, but burst into tears, and very narrowly escaped falling into a second hysteric. Nothing ever equalled the tenderness of Henry on this occasion; nay, I thought I could discover that he was secretly pleased with the event, as it betrayed a consciousness of former vanities, and seemed to prove that I repented of them: whatever interpretation he might put upon it, still I could not bring myself to repeat the verses; and believe I shall never utter another couplet whilst I live; I am certain I shall never make one.

I inclose you a copy of my father's letter to Henry and am, Sir,

"Your sincere friend,

and most obliged servant, Anne'

Though the letter, of which my amiable correspondent has inclosed a copy, is hastily written in the bustle and hurry of service, yet, as it breathes the sentiments of the friend, the father, and the hero, and as every relic of so venerable a character is, in my opinion at least, too precious not to be preserved, I shall take permission of the reader to subjoin it.

'Dear Harry,

'This perverse wind has at last taken shame at confining so many brave fellows in port, and come about to the east, so that we are all in high spirits getting under weigh: the commissioners yacht is along-side, and I drop these few lines by way of farewell to assure my brave lad, that whether we meet again or not, you shall not hear a bad account of your old shipmate, nor, with God's blessing, of his crew. I think we shall soon come into action, and that being the case, d'ye see, few words and fair dealing are best between friends: you tell me

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if you get a prize, you mean to marry Nancy; that is honest, for the girl is cruelly in love with you, and I like her the better for it; a seaman's daughter should be a seaman's friend, and without flattery, I don't believe a braver lad ever trod a plank in the king's service than yourself-so enough of that, you have my consent, and with it all the fortune Í have to bestow, which is little more than my blessing,

There is one thing, however, I must warn you of, which is, that the girl, though of a good nature in the main, has got a romantic turn in her head, and is terribly given to reading and making verses, and such land-lubber's trash, as women and sailors have nothing to do with; now I would not have you make a fool of yourself, Harry, and marry a learned wife, though she was of my own begetting. If therefore Nancy and you come to an understanding together, when my old carcase shall be feeding the fishes, remember it is on this express condition only, which I charge you on your honour to observe, that you burn her books, as I will do if ever I get at them, and never yoke with her till she has renounced these vagaries of poetry, which if you cure her of, you have my free leave to make her as good a husband as you can, and God bless you with her and this you will observe and obey as the last will and testament of him who is Yours till death,

****

P.S. Remember I tell you, Harry, this old ship is damn'd crank and leewardly; but our wise-acres would not take her down, so they must stand by the consequences; she is a fine man of war at the worst, and if she comes along-side of the Monsieurs, will give their first-rates a warming Hurrah! we are under sail!

NUMBER VIII.

UPON revising what I wrote for Calliope, in answer to Dr. Mac-Infidel's discourse against Christ's miracles, I find the argument so connected with certain passages in the life of the great heathen philosopher Pythagoras, which the adversaries of Christianity have set up against the scriptural records of the Messias, that I have been tempted to enlarge upon what I gave to that young lady, by prefacing it with an account of what I find curious in the relations of the sophists and biographers touching that extraordinary man,

The variety of fictions, which the writers, who treat of Pythagoras, have interspersed in their accounts, makes it difficult to trace out any consistent story of his life: his biographers agree scarcely in any one fact or date: Porphyry says he was born at Tyre; Jamblichus will have it to be at Sidon, probably as being the more ancient city; Josephus says it is as hard to fix the place of his nativity, as Homer's, or to ascertain the year of his birth, Jamblichus, glancing at the gospel account of the birth of Christ, says, that when the mother of Pythagoras was with child of him, her husband being ignorant of her pregnancy, brought her to the oracle at Delphi, and there the prophetess told him the first news of his wife's having conceived, and also that the child she then went with, should prove the greatest blessing to mankind; that her husband thereupon changed her name from Parthenis to Pythais, and, when the child was born, named him

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