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intimacy with Lady Thimble; the adulation of a learned man (for that he surely is) intoxicated me with self-opinion, and the gravity of his character compleated the folly and destruction of mine.’ What do I hear,' said I, interrupting her, the destruction of your character ?' Have patience,' she replied; when I disclose the sorrows of my heart, you will own that my destruction is compleat.'-Melancholy as these words were, the deduction notwithstanding that I drew from them was a relief, compared to what at first I apprehended.— Alas! Sir, resumed Calliope, I have lost the affections of the most amiable, the most beloved of men: He was my father's darling, and from a boy was educated by him in the profession of the sea; he shared every service with my father except the last fatal one, in which your friend unhappily was lost; Providence, that ordained the death of the one, has in the same period enriched the other; he is lately returned from the West Indies, and by his duty has been confined to the port he arrived in, so that we have not met since his return to England: here is the first letter he wrote to me from Plymouth; read it, I beseech you, and then compare it with the fatal one I received last night.' Calliope put a letter into my hands, and I read as follows.

'MY DEAREST NANCY!

I have this instant brought my frigate to an anchor, and seize the first moment, that my duty permits, to tell the loveliest of her sex, that I have luckily come across a prize, that makes a man of me for life: a man did I say? Yes, and the happiest of men, if my dear girl is still true, and will consent to share the fortune of her faithful Henry.

I cannot leave Plymouth this fortnight, there

fore pray write to me under cover to my friend the Admiral. Yours ever,

HENRY CONSTANT.'

When I had returned this letter to Calliope, she resumed her narrative in the following words :The joy this letter gave me fet my spirits in such a flow, that in the habit I was of writing verses, I could not bring my thoughts to run in humble prose, but giving the reins to my fancy filled at least six sides with rhapsodies in verse; and not content with this, and foolishly conceiving that my poem would appear at least as charming to Henry, as the flattery of my own sex had persuaded me it was to them, I enclosed a fair copy and sent it to him in a packet by the stage coach: the next return of the post brought me this fatal letter I received last night.

6 MADAM,

Though there cannot be in this world a task so painful to me, as what I am now about to perform, yet I think it an indispensible point of honour to inform my late most lovely and beloved Nancy, that if I am to suppose her the author of that enormous bundle of verses I have received from her hand, it is the last favour that hand must bestow upon her unhappy Henry.

My education you know; for it was formed under your most excellent father; I served with him from a child, and he taught me, not indeed the knack of making verses, but what I hope has been as useful to my country, the duties of an officer. Being his daughter, I had flattered myself you would not like me the less for following his profession, or for being trained to it under his instruction.

But alas! Nancy, all these hopes are gone. My ignorance would only disgrace you, and your wit would make me contemptible; since you are turned poetess, how can my society be agreeable? If those verses you have sent me are all your own making, you must have done little else since we parted, and if such are to be your studies and occupations, what is to become of all the comforts of a husband? How are to fulfil the duties of a mother, or manage you the concerns of a family? No, no; may heaven defend me from a learned wife! I am too proud to be the butt of my own table; too accustomed to command, to be easily induced to obey; let me ever live a single man, or let the wife I chuse be modest, unpretending, simple, natural in her manners, plain in her understanding; let her be true as the I sail by, and (pardon the coarseness of the allusion) obedient to the helm as the ship I steer; then, Nancy, I will stand by my wife, as I will by my ship, to the latest moment I have to breathe. For God's sake what have women to do with learning? But if they will step out of their own profession and write verses, do not let them step into ours to chuse husbands; we shall prove coarse messmates to the muses.

compass

I understand so much of your poetical epistle, as to perceive that you are in the family of Sir Theodore and Lady Thimble: three days of such society would make me forswear matrimony for ever. To the daughter of my friend I must for ever speak and act as a friend; suffer me then to ask if any man in his senses will chuse a wife from such a school? Oh grief to think! that one so natural, so sincere and unaffected as was my Nancy, could be the companion of such an ugly petticoated pedant as Lady Thimble, such a tame hen-pecked son of a taylor as Sir Theodore!

As for the volume of verses you sent me, I dare say it is all very fine, but I really do not comprehend three lines of it; the battles you describe are what I never saw by sea or land, and the people who fight them such as I have never been accustomed to serve with; one gentleman I perceive there is, who combats stoutly against love; it is a good moral, and I thank you for it; cost what it

may, I will do my best to imitate your hero.

• Farewell.

'I must be only your most faithful friend, HENRY CONSTANT.'

NUMBER VII.

CALLIOPE has favoured me with the following letler; it is dated from the house of a worthy clergyman, a friend of her father's, who with an exemplary wife lives upon a small country vicarage in primitive simplicity, where that afflicted young lady

took shelter.

'SIR,

'After you left me at Lady Thimble's, I seized the first moment, that the anguish of my mind permitted me to make use of, to put myself in readiness for taking my final leave of that family, and, according to the plan we had concerted, came without delay to this place, where, if any thing could have given absolute peace to my mind, the consolation of these excellent people, and the serenity of the scene must have done it. As it I felt my afflictions lighten, my self-reproach became less bit

was,

ter, and, whilst the vanity, which flattery had inspired me with, has been cured by their admonitions, the doubts that infidelity had raised have been totally removed, and truth made clear to my eternal comfort and conviction. Had it not been for this, I should have been given up to despair; for as I heard no more from Captain Constant, I was convinced he had renounced me for ever; in the mean time I wrote many letters, but sent none to him; some of these letters were written in a high tone, most of them in an humble one, and in one I gave a loose to passion and despair in expressions little short of phrensy; all these I constantly destroyed, for as I had not the heart to write angrily to him, so I dreaded to appear mean in his eyes, if I was too plaintive; nay I was not sure, since his fortune had become so superior to mine, but I might lay myself open to a charge of the most despicable nature.

Thus my time passed, till yesterday morning, upon observing the house in one of those bustles, which the expectation of a visitor creates in small families, I found my good hostess deeply engaged with her pastry, and having myself become a considerable adept in the art under her tuition, I was putting myself in order to assist her in her preparations, when turning to me with a smile, which seemed to spring from joy as well as benevolence

Come, my dear child,' says she, I have been at work this hour; and if you had known it was to entertain a friend of your father's, I am persuaded you would not have let me been so long beforehand with you.'-I asked her who it was she expected'No matter,' she replied, fall to your work, and do your best, like a good girl, for your mistress's

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credit as well as your own.'- -The significant look, with which she accompanied these words, set my heart into such a flutter, that my hands no