6 I wonder why I was so uneasy under my late loss of fortune,' said a very worthy gentleman to me one day,seeing it was not occasioned by my own misconduct; for the health and content I now enjoy in the humble station I have retired to, are the greatest blessings of my life, and I am de voutly thankful for the event, which I deplored.' -How often do we hear young unmarried people exclaim- What an escape have I had from such a man, or such a woman. And yet, perhaps, they had not wisdom enough to suppose this might turn out to be the case at the time it happened, but complained, lamented, and reviled, as if they were suffering persecution from a cruel and tyrannic Being, who takes pleasure in tormenting his unoffending creatures.

An extraordinary example occurs to me of this criminal excess of sensibility in the person of a Frenchman named Chaubert, who happily lived long enough to repent of the extravagance of his misanthropy. Chaubert was born at Bourdeaux, and died there not many years ago in the Franciscan convent; I was in that city soon after this event, and my curiosity led me to collect several particulars relative to this extraordinary humourist. He inherits a good fortune from his parents, and in his youth was of a benevolent disposition, subject however to sudden caprices and extremes of love and hatred. Various causes are assigned for his misanthropy, but the principal disgust, which turned him furious against mankind, seems to have arisen from the treachery of a friend, who ran away with his mistress, just when Chaubert was on the point of marrying her; the ingratitude of this man was certainly of a very black nature, and the provocation heinous, for Chaubert, whose passions were always in extremes, had given a thousand instances of romantic generosity to this unworthy friend, and reposed an entire confidence in

him in the matter of his mistress: He had even saved him from drowning one day at the imminent risque of his life, by leaping out of his own boat into the Garonne, and swimming to the assistance of his, when it was sinking in the middle of the stream: His passion for his mistress was no less vehement; so that his disappointment had every aggravation possible, and, operating upon a nature more than commonly susceptible, reversed every principle of humanity in the heart of Chaubert, and made him for the greatest part of his life the declared enemy of human nature.

After many years passed in foreign parts, he was accidentally brought to his better senses by discovering that through these events, which he had so deeply resented, he had providentially escaped from mi. series of the most fatal nature: Thereupon he returned to his own country, and entering into the order of Franciscans, employed the remainder of his life in atoning for his past errors after the most exemplary manner. On all occasions of distress Father Chaubert's zeal presented itself to the relief and comfort of the unfortunate, and sometimes he would enforce his admonitions of resignation by the lively picture he would draw of his own extravagancies; in extraordinary cases he has been known to give his communicants a transcript or diary in his own hand wri. ting, of certain passages of his life, in which he had minuted his thoughts at the time they occurred, and which he kept by him for such extraordinary purposes. This paper was put into my hands by a gentleman who had received much benefit from this good father's conversation and instruction; I had his leave for transcribing it, or publishing, if I thought fit; this I shall now avail myself of, as I think it is a very curious journal.

"My son, whoever thou art, profit by the word

of experience, and let the example of Chaubert, who was a beast without reason, and is become a man by repentance, teach thee wisdom in adversity, and inspire thy heart with sentiments of resignation to the will of the Almighty!

"When the treachery of people, which I ought to have despised, had turned my heart to marble and my blood to gall, I was determined upon leaving France, and seeking out some of those countries from whose famished inhabitants nature withholds her bounty, and where men groan in slavery and sorrow: As I passed through the villages towards the frontiers of Spain, and saw the peasants dancing in a ring to the pipe, or carousing at their vintages, indiguation smote my heart, and I wished that heaven would dash their cups with poison, or blast the sunshine of their joys with hail and tempest.

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"I traversed the delightful province of Biscay, without rest to the soles of my feet or sleep to the temples of my head. Nature was before my eyes dressed in her gayest attire:- Thou mother of fools,' I exclaimed, why dost thou trick thyself out so daintily for knaves and harlots to make a property of thee? The children of thy womb are vipers in thy bosom, and will sting thee mortally, when thou hast given them their fill at thy improvident breasts.' The birds chaunted in the groves, the fruit-trees glistened on the mountain sides, the water-falls made music for the echoes, and man went singing to his labour:-Give me,' said 1,

the clank of fetters, and the yell of galley-slaves under the lashes of the whip'-And in the bitterness of my heart I cursed the earth as I trode over its prolific surface.

I entered the ancient kingdom of Castile, and the prospect was a recreation to my sorrow-vexed soul: I saw the lands lie waste and fallow; the vines

trailed on the ground and buried their fruitage in the furrows; the hand of man was idle, and nature slept as in the cradle of creation; the villages were thinly scattered, and ruin sate upon the unroofed sheds, where lazy pride lay stretched upon its straw in beggary and vermin. Ah! this is something, I cried out, this scene is fit for man, and I'll enjoy it.—I

saw

a yellow half-starved form, cloaked to the heels in rags, his broad brimmed beaver on his head, through which his staring locks crept out in squalid shreds, that fell like snakes upon the shoulders of a fiend. Such ever be the fate of human nature! I'll aggravate his misery by the insult of charity. Iark. ye, Castilian,' I exclaimed, take this pisette; it is coin, it is silver from the mint of Mexico; a Spaniard dug it from the mine, a Frenchman gives it you; put by your pride and touch it!'-' Curst be your nation,' the Castilian replied, I'll starve before I'll take it from your hands.' Starve then,' I answered, and passed on.

"I climbed a barren mountain; the wolves howled in the desart and the vultures screamed in flocks for prey; I looked and beheld a gloomy mansion underneath my feet, vast as the pride of its founder, gloomy and disconsolate as his soul: it was the Escurial. Here then the tyrant reigns,' said I, 'here let him reign; hard as these rocks his throne, waste as these desarts be his dominion!' A meagre creature passed me; famine stared in his eye, he cast a look about him, and sprung upon a kid that was browsing in the desart, he smote it dead with his staff, and hastily thrust it into his wallet.-' Ah sacrilegious villain !'--cried a brawny fellow; and leaping on him from behind a rock, seized the hungry wretch in the act; he dropped upon his knees and begged for mercy. Mercy!' cried he that seized him, do you purloin the property of the church and ask for mer,

6

cy?'-So saying, he beat him to the earth with a blow, as he was kneeling at his feet, and then dragged him towards the convent of Saint Lawrence: I could have hugged the miscreant for the deed.

"I held my journey through the desart, and desolation followed me to the very streets of Madrid; the fathers of the inquisition came forth from the cells of torture; the cross was elevated before them, and a trembling wretch in a saffron-coloured vest, painted with flames of fire, was dragged to execution in an open square; they kindled a fire about him, and sang praises to God, whilst the flames deliberately consumed their human victim: He was a Jew who suffered, they were Christians who tormented. See what the religion of God is,' said I to myself, in the hands of man!'

"From the gates of Madrid I bent my course towards the port of Lisbon; as I traversed the wilderness of Estremadura, a robber took his aim at me from behind a cork-tree, and the ball grazed my hat upon my head. You have missed your aim,' I cried, and have lost the merit of destroying a man.'-'Give me your purse,' said the robber, — Take it,' I replied, and buy with it a friend; may it serve you as it has served me!'

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"I found the city of Lisbon in ruins! her foundations smoaked upon the ground; the dying and the dead laid in heaps; terror sate in every visage, and mankind was visited with the plagues of the Almighty, famine, fire, and earthquake. Have they not the inquisition in this country?' I asked; I was answered they had. And do they make all this outcry about an earthquake?' said I within myself, let them give God thanks and be quiet.'

"Presently there came ships from England, loaded with all manner of goods for the relief of the in, habitants; the people took the bounty, were pre.