of mortality! often have ye seen me labouring under the afflictions which Providence had laid upon me. Ye have seen me in a strange land, without friend, and without comforter, poor, sick, and naked; ye have seen me shivering over the last faggot which my last farthing had purchased, moistening the crust that supported na

ture with the tears which her misery shed on it! yet have ye seen me look inward with a smile, and overcome them.-If such shall ever be my lot again, so let me alleviate its sorrows; let me creep to my bed of straw in peace, after blessing God that I am not a Man of the World.

I was born to a life of wandering, yet my heart was ever at home. Though the country that gave me birth gave me but few friends, and of those few the greatest part were early lost, yet the remembrance of her was present with me in every clime to which my fate conducted me; and the idea of those, whose ashes reposed in that humble spot, where they had often been the companions of my infant sports, hallowed it in my imagination with a sort of sacred enthusiasm. I had not been many weeks an inhabitant of my native village, after that visit to the lady mentioned in the First Part, which procured me the information I have there laid before my readers, till I found myself once more obliged to quit it for a foreign country. My parting with Mrs Wistanly was more solemn and affecting than common souls will easily imagine it could have been, upon an acquaintance accidental in its beginning, and short in its duration; but there was something tender and melancholy in the cause of it, which gave an impression to our thoughts of one another, more sympathetic perhaps than what a series of mutual obligations could have effected.

Before we parted, I could not help asking the reason of her secrecy with regard to the story of Annesly and his daughter. In answer to this she informed me, that, besides the danger to which she exposed herself by setting up in opposition to a man, in the midst of whose dependants she proposed ending her days, she was doubtful if her story would be of any service to the memory of her friend: That Camplin (as she supposed by the direction of Sir Thomas Sindall, who was at that time abroad) had universally given out, that Miss Annesly's elopement was with an intention to be married to him; on which footing, though a false one, the character of that young lady stood no worse, than if the truth were divulged to those, most of whom wanted discernment, as well as candour, to make the distinctions which should enable them to do it justice.

Several years elapsed before I returned to that place, whence, it is probable, I shall migrate no more. My friend, Mrs Wistanly, was one of the persons after whom I first inquired on my arrival. I found her subject to the common debility, but not to any of the acuter distresses of

VOL. V.

age; with the same powers of reason, and the same complacency of temper, I had seen her before enjoy. "These," said she, "are the effects of temperance without austerity, and ease without indolence: I have nothing now to do, but to live without the solicitude of life, and to die without the fear of dying."

At one of our first interviews, I found her accompanied by a young lady, who, besides a great share of what is universally allowed the name of beauty, had something in her appearance which calls forth the esteem of its beholders, without their pausing to account for it. It has sometimes deceived me, yet I am resolved to trust it to the last hour of my life; at that time I gave it unlimited confidence, and I had spoken the young lady's eulogium before I had looked five minutes in her face.

Mrs Wistanly repeated it to me after she was gone. "That is one of my children," said she, "for I adopt the children of virtue; and she calls me her mother, because I am old, and she can cherish me."-" I could have sworn to her goodness," I replied, "without any information besides what her countenance afforded me."“'Tis a lovely one," said she, “and her mind is not flattered in its portrait: though she is a member of a family with whom I have not much intercourse, yet she is a frequent visitor at my little dwelling; her name is Sindall."—" Sindall," I exclaimed.-"Yes," said Mrs Wistanly, "but she is not therefore the less amiable. Sir Thomas returned from abroad soon after you left this place; but for several years he did not reside here, having made a purchase of another estate in a neighbouring county, and busied himself during that time, in superintending the improvement of it. When he returned hither, he brought this young lady, then a child, along with him, who, it seems, was left to his care by her father, a friend of Sir Thomas's, who died abroad; and she has lived with his aunt, who keeps house for him, ever since that period."

The mention of Sir Thomas Sindall naturally recalled to my mind the fate of the worthy, but unfortunate, Annesly. Mrs Wistanly told me, she had often been anxious in her inquiries about his son William, the only remaining branch of her friend's family; but that neither she, nor Mr Rawlinson, with whom she had

2 G

corresponded on the subject, had been able to procure any accounts of him; whence they concluded, that he had died in the plantation to which he was transported in pursuance of his mitigated sentence.

She farther informed me," that Sindall had shown some marks of contrition at the tragical issue of the scheme he had carried on against the daughter's innocence and the father's peace; and to make some small atonement to the dead for the injuries he had done to the living, had caused a monument to be erected over their

graves in the village church-yard, with an inscription, setting forth the piety of Annesly, and the virtues and beauty of Harriet. But, whatever he might have felt at the time," continued she, "I fear the impression was not lasting."

From the following chapters, containing some farther particulars of that gentleman's life, which my residence in his neighbourhood, and my ac quaintance with some of the persons immediately concerned in them, gave me an opportu nity of learning, my readers will judge if Mrs Wistanly's conclusion was a just one.