that he had seen her after he had left her at her father's: she also wrote to her cousin Meadows, entreating, that if she was questioned by Sir James, he might be told that she stayed with her till eight o'clock, an hour at which only herself and the ser

vants were up.

6

The billet to Miss Meadows came soon after the chairman had returned with an account of what had happened to the letter; and Mrs. Freeman was just gone in great haste to relate the accident to the captain, as it was of importance that he should know it before his next interview with Sir James: but the captain had been at home before her, and had received both Sir James's billet and that of his lady. He went immediately to the tavern, and, inquiring for Sir James Forrest, was shown into a back-room one pair of stairs: Sir James received his salutation without reply, and instantly bolted the door. His jealousy was complicated with that indignation and contempt, which a sense of injury from a person of inferior rank never fails to produce; he, therefore, demanded of the captain in a haughty tone, Whether he had not that morning been in company with his wife, after he had left her at her father's?' The captain, who was incensed at Sir James's manner, and deemed himself engaged in honour to keep the lady's secret, answered, that after what he had said in the morning, no man had a right to suppose he had seen the lady afterwards; that to insinuate the contrary, was obliquely to charge him with a falsehood; that he was bound to answer no such questions, till they were properly explained; and that as a gentleman he was prepared to vindicate his honour. Sir James justly deemed this reply an equivocation and an insult; and being no longer able to restrain his rage, he cursed the captain as a liar and a scoundrel, and at the same time striking him a

violent blow with his fist, drew his sword and put himself in a posture of defence. Whatever design the captain might have had to bring his friend to temper, and reconcile him to his wife, when he first entered the room, he was now equally enraged, and indeed had suffered equal indignity; he, therefore, drew at the same instant, and after a few desperate passes on both sides, he received a wound in his breast, and reeling backward a few paces fell down.

The noise had brought many people to the door of the room, and it was forced open just as the captain received his wound: Sir James was secured, and a messenger was despatched for a surgeon. In the mean time, the captain perceived himself to be dying and whatever might before have been his opinion of right and wrong, and honour and shame, he now thought all dissimulation criminal, and that his murderer had a right to that truth which he thought it meritorious to deny him when he was his friend: he, therefore, earnestly desired to speak a few words to him in private. This request was immediately granted: the persons who had rushed in withdrew, contenting themselves to keep guard at the door; and the captain beckoning to Sir James to kneel down by him, then told him, that however his lady might have been surprised or betrayed by pride or fear into dissimulation or falsehood, she was innocent of the crime which he supposed her solicitous to conceal:' he then briefly related all the events as they had happened; and at last, grasping his hand, urged him to escape from the window, that he might be a friend to his widow and to his child, if its birth should not be prevented by the death of its father. Sir James yielded to the force of this motive, and escaped as the captain had directed. In his way to Dover he read the letter which he had taken from

the chairman, and the next post enclosed it in the following to his lady:

6 MY DEAR CHARLOTTE,

poor un

'I AM the most wretched of all men; but I do not upbraid you as the cause: would to God that I were not more guilty than you! We are the martyrs of dissimulation. By dissimulation dear Captain Freeman was induced to waste those hours with you, which he would otherwise have enjoyed with the happy dissembler his wife. Trusting in the success of dissimulation, you was tempted to venture into the Park, where you met him whom you wished to shun. By detecting dissimulation in the captain, my suspicions were increased; and by dissimulation and falsehood you confirmed them. But your dissimulation and falsehood were the effects of mine; yours were ineffectual, mine succeeded: for I left word that I was gone no further than the coffeehouse, that you might not suspect I had learned too much to be deceived. By the success of a lie put into the mouth of a chairman, I was prevented from reading a letter which at last would have undeceived me; and by persisting in dissimulation, the captain has made his friend a fugitive, and his wife a widow. Thus does insincerity terminate in misery and confusion, whether in its immediate purpose it succeeds or is disappointed. O my dear Charlotte! if ever we meet again,

:

-to meet again in peace is impossible

-but if ever we meet again, let us resolve to be sincere to be sincere is to be wise, innocent, and safe. We venture to commit faults which shame or fear would prevent, if we did not hope to conceal them by a lie. But in the labyrinth of falsehood, men meet those evils which they seek to avoid; and as in the straight path of truth alone they can see before them, in the straight path of truth alone they

can pursue felicity with success.

Adieu! I am

dreadful!-I can subscribe nothing that does

not reproach and torment me.

Adieu !'

Within a few weeks after the receipt of this letter, the unhappy lady heard that her husband was cast away in his passage to France.

"LONGINUS proceeds to address his friend Terentianus in the following manner:

It is the peculiar privilege of poetry, not only to place material objects in the most amiable attitudes, and to clothe them in the most graceful dress, but also to give life and motion to immaterial beings; and form, and colour, and action, even to abstract ideas; to embody the virtues, the vices, and the passions; and to bring before our eyes, as on a stage, every faculty of the human mind.

Prosopopoeia, therefore, or personification, conducted with dignity and propriety, may be justly esteemed one of the greatest efforts of the creative power of a warm and lively imagination. Of this figure many illustrious examples may be produced

from the Jewish writers I have been so earnestly recommending to your perusal; among whom, every part and object of nature is animated, and endowed with sense, with passion, and with language.

To say that the lightning obeyed the commands of God, would of itself be sufficiently sublime; but a Hebrew bard expresses this idea with far greater energy and life: Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are! And again, God sendeth forth light, and it goeth; He calleth it again, and it obeyeth Him with fear.' How animated, how emphatical, is this unexpected answer, Here we are!'

• Plato, with a divine boldness, introduces in his Crito, the Laws of Athens pleading with Socrates, and dissuading him from an attempt to escape from the prison in which he was confined; and the Roman rival of Domesthenes, has made his country tenderly expostulate with Catiline, on the dreadful miseries, which his rebellion would devolve on her head. But will a candid critic prefer either of these admired personifications, to those passages in the Jewish poets, where Babylon, or Jerusalem, or Tyre, are represented as sitting in the dust, covered with sackcloth, stretching out their hands in vain, and loudly lamenting their desolation? Nay, further, will will he reckon them even equal to the following fictions? Wisdom is introduced, saying of herself: When God prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a circle upon the face of the deep, when he gave to the sea his decree that the waters should not pass his commandments, when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then was I by him as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, playing always before him.' Where, Terentianus, shall we find our Minerva, speaking with such dig