or be proportionate to the sins of the brilliant man, who, winning the world's gayest smiles, had blighted his own domestic peace, and broken two trusting hearts.

And when, at length, to conclude his confession, Lord Sevridge whispered the name of his second victim-when he pronounced the name of poor Clara Grey, Lord Cunnington involuntarily shuddered; he remembered the gentle girl as she was when visiting at Cunnington Abbey,-he marvelled at her power of endurance, and he actually shed tears over her suffering and death.

But those tears served only to soften still more that noble heart, ever open to the most exalted feelings of human nature; like the gentle spring-showers refreshing the tender buds, those tears hallowed the forgiveness which the nobleman offered his unhappy friend.

He heard, with pity, of sleepless nights, of torturing remorse; he heard of those phantom fears which haunt the conscience when trammelled with sin; he heard and believed that the gayest laugh had been only the echo of smothered grief; and, above all, he heard that each applause, each new wreath of fame, had been for many years galled with the dire recollection that no fame whatever could bring happiness to a faithless heart.

Oh, no, it cannot! It is an empty sound, that applause of the world,-that praise from without, when all is withered within; and political applause of all others is, perhaps, the least comforting to an aching heart; for there is so much after-leisure, when politics are at rest, and men are imagined to be seeking in the bosoms of their family for that sweet enjoyment which cannot spring in the whirl of

political excitement during each annual

session.

And how doubly gratifying it is to return to those arduous duties, feeling that the interregnum has been devoted to those gentle virtues, which always ennoble man! how doubly sweet, when the private character of a politician corresponds with those opinions of right feeling with which his public career abounds!

Lord Sevridge had felt the disparagement which had long existed between his public and private character, and to be "a man of words, and not of deeds," had galled his soul. Oh, how often an upbraiding epistle from his Scottish Lily had met his gaze, sent down at the same time, when his table was strewn with papers containing eulogiums "of the worthy and talented Lord Sevridge!" How little does the public know the man it is blindly wor

shipping, thought the unhappy nobleman! but still he did not amend. His heart yearned to the safe land of domestic bliss, to the haven of domestic virtues; but if one foot was on the land, another was on the wide sea of ambition, and at length plunging into the maddest eddies of the waves, the verdant shore receded each moment from his grasp, until the wide ocean of vice was spreading far around him. But as the nobleman had told his friend, at the commencement of the last chapter, he had his moments of reflection,-moments when he probed the emptiness of fame, and then he wished that he were an altered man : he thought of his Lily, his fair Scotch flower; he remembered the days when, pressing her to his bosom, he had sworn fidelity, and she had reposed there, so sure of the truth of his love he thought of her since, tearful, upbraiding, proud in her grief; and, forgetting

her deep wrongs, the gay husband persuaded himself his wife had no right to be proud; as if aristocracy alone were worthy of virtuous resentment.

It cannot possibly be denied that Lord Sevridge's conduct had been very sinful; and when, in the fulness of those absorbing hours of grief, the penetration of Lady Cunnington had enabled her to know that Lord Sevridge was suffering from concealed grief, even gentle, forgiving, Christian-minded as she was, she recoiled from the confession she heard; yet, after overcoming by virtuous thoughts the horror she felt towards the erring man, she shuddered to think that such a father must protect a beautiful and innocent girl, and she determined to screen her from the prying eyes of the world, sooner than she should suddenly be introduced as Miss Sevridge.

What would that illiberal world have.