Before we took our leave, poor Miss Crawford was the only person who ventured to touch openly on the subject of her danger; and this she did in a manner that shewed how little it concerned herself, and how anxious she was that the same religious hopes which had supported her should also reconcile her father to what was inevitable. She smiled sweetly as she said she thought her illness would not trouble her much longer. She had never had cause to do other than rejoice in her sufferings; they had done her good; they had brought her heart home to God, and she was strong in her trust of his mercy. Many bright hopes were hers, for had she not friends gone before her, and a dear mother awaiting her in heaven; and on earth had she not the comfort of her fondest, her kindest father; her only concern now was the sorrow she occasioned in him. She hoped that she had overcome all the rest, and one day she looked to meet him in a better world, where, through God's blessing, she doubted not they should be as a family in heaven.

to us,

Miss Crawford looked in her father's face as she thus spoke, and smiled upon him; he caught her to his bosom as the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the father seemed to fill his soul with feelings of unutterable affection. We were too much moved at such a scene to offer any common-place attempts at consolation; we could but say, "God bless you!" and we parted from both in silence and in tears. Ere we quitted the house, we learnt from the old housekeeper, who made no secret of it that poor Miss Crawford's illness had been all brought on by fretting about the death of Captain Robertson. It was in consequence of her refusing him that he had, by his own seeking, gone back to that unhealthy climate, which very soon killed him; and then Miss Crawford blamed herself for his death, and fretted as if her heart would break, till she became so ill it had brought her into the condition in which we found her. Such was the account we learnt of the sequel of these melancholy events; they ended in the death of that amiable young woman.

Once, and only once, afterwards I saw the little doctor; it was not long before his decease. We found him still in the same house, still employing himself in the same round of occupation, going from the garden to the plantation, or from the plantation to the field, and tending with extreme care a flower-bed, that we guessed had been a favourite with his daughter. He still extended his charitable offices, as a medical man, to the poor, though his declining strength compelled him to limit his sphere of doing good. He sometimes turned to his books; but they were now of a different nature,

since all but those connected with religion appeared no longer to engage him, Alas! he was, indeed, a changed man. His body was more bent, his frame tottered, and a nervous disorder made his hands tremble in the least thing he did; his eye had lost its lustre; and all the quick penetrating character it once possessed, seemed to be for ever gone; it looked on nothing with interest. A deep and settled melancholy had so changed the whole man, that but for an occasional beam of benevolent and kindly feeling that would even now lighten up his countenance for a moment on the sight of an old friend, there was nothing by which we could have recognised the once active, lively, intelligent being, whose whole life had been employed in a discharge of those useful occupations that he had turned to such good account. His hair was silvered, and his dress neglected, whilst all around him seemed to stand still. All things were much as they were left at the time his daughter died. The sofa on which she used to lie, till the very day before she expired, he had never suffered to be removed from that particular spot; a few books that had been on a table that stood near her as she there rested, were forbidden to be touched. The gloves she wore to cover her poor thin hands, and that he had drawn off from them himself (the housekeeper told us) the very last time she was in the parlour, he had taken after her death, and placed in his own bosom. She had since several times seen him kiss them, saying they were almost the last things that had touched her dear hands. Every thing that had been hers was thus treasured, and kept as much as it could be, exactly as she had left it; all were now relics, and therefore sacred.

There was a portrait of Miss Crawford which had been painted by Hoppner long before her illness; it was not a good likeness: indeed her face was one of those of which we never see a good likeness; for none of its features were prominent, and all depended on the expression-that expression which is the result of the emotions of the mind that vary with every sensation, and speak more eloquently than words. The pencil cannot fix such characters as these; they elude its touch, and the heart and the imagination can alone shadow them forth in memory and in feeling, when the tomb has closed upon the living subject for ever. The poor doctor spoke little; he seemed to shun conversation, even with his old friends, almost as much as he did general society; and he mingled no more with the world. He seemed to live in his own thoughts; to brood over the past in detail, but to look to the future with only one idea, one hope, one expectation-his own death. That such an event was a release to him-a welcome rest to a

weary and overburthened spirit, cannot be doubted; it was not long delayed.

He was in the habit of taking his evening walk to the churchyard of R- where Miss Crawford was buried in a particular spot, which she had herself pointed out; it was one of quiet and beauty, under the aged yew tree, that had for many centuries there flourished, and witnessed the birth, and rise and fall of so many generations. The churchyard commanded a beautiful view; it was a scene where the heart might repose in the solemnity of contemplation, unseen of man, in its own hours of salutary sorrow for the dead; those hours which make good minds perfect, and open the sternest heart, like the smitten rock, till it pours forth the stream of living

waters.

One evening the little doctor took his accustomed walk to the churchyard, where rested the mortal remains of his daughter. He was met on his way by a poor but respectable inhabitant of the village, to whom he had charitably afforded medical relief in a late illness. He stopped and spoke to him, and gave him some advice relative to the completion of his cure. The man thought there was something unusual in the appearance of his benefactor; he did not know what there was to fear; but on relating the circumstance, he used the expression that he thought the doctor seemed at times lost when he spoke, and stopped and recollected himself, and that he looked very ill and very sad. He followed him at some distance; saw him pass within the gate, and walk slowly up to his daughter's grave. He was leaning on the stick which he always walked with, and looking down on the turf, when the man ceased to observe him, and turned back.

The little doctor was very exact in his hours: eight o'clock came, and he did not return home. Nine struck, and he was not to be seen; the housekeeper grew uneasy: she sent in quest of her old master. The alarm was spread by the messenger on his way, and many joined him, for all respected the little doctor, loved him for his kindness and his charity, and pitied his bereaved and forlorn state. They soon found their way to the spot where he had been last seen alive-his daughter's grave; and there now lay the father—a corpse!

VICISSITUDES.

PART THE FIRST.

EARLY SCENES.

THE principal events on which I have founded the narrative about to be laid before my readers have at least their origin in real life. Some of them were related to me in the spring of 1835, by a lady who experienced many strange vicissitudes of fortune, and with whose remarkable story I was till that period only partially acquainted. The circumstances also here related of her travels in various countries will, I hope, interest the reader.

In a narrative of this nature it is almost needless to state that real names are, with two or three exceptions, suppressed; or that fictitious ones sometimes supply their place where blanks and dashes would be inconvenient in the progress of the work. I am aware that one incident (that of the gipsy) in one particular resembles so much an occurrence in a tale already told, that I almost determined to omit it altogether, as it might expose me to the charge of having borrowed from myself. But when I recollected that the incident to which I have just alluded (it will appear in an early part of the present narrative), was founded on a fact related to me, I did not think I should be warranted in leaving it out, merely because it bore a slight resemblance to a circumstance stated in a former part of these volumes. I am also aware that the adventure with the King of Sweden, and that of the two young persons who inhabited the rock on the coast of Norway, are of a nature which might be considered almost too bold for probability; yet she who related these things was well known to have experienced them; and was altogether of a character much too guileless to be capable of anything like exaggeration in what concerned herself. She was a lady of great worth; she had seen much of foreign countries, and in her youth had been remarkable for her extraordinary beauty of person; she had the remains of it when I saw her last, though

time and sickness had done their part to produce a very considerable change, even since I could remember her, during the period of our former acquaintance.

The story of her life was to me but one proof more, in confirmation of an opinion which I had long entertained, that did we but note down the circumstances and events that we meet with ourselves, or hear of as having befallen our friends, -did we carefully observe human feelings and character in connexion with such circumstances, no book of romance would surpass that strange and chequered volume presented to us in the page of real life; and that Private Biography would be no less instructive than the Memoirs of public and more eminent persons. Indeed it would often be more practically useful. Few who read the reminiscences of the great or greatly-gifted, can exactly draw a parallel between such persons and themselves. They may, it is true, receive a general and a striking lesson; but in private biography all ranks, conditions, and capacities, may find an interest; as all may take home to their hearts the examples that are near akin to their own station, feelings, and pursuits.

Ill health, occupation, and many circumstances arose to prevent me, for more than a year, commencing the following narrative; and for some time I felt doubtful how I should write it. All points considered, I at length determined to throw it into the form of personal narrative; it appeared to me the most natural, and the best; more especially as my long acquaintance with the character of the individual had rendered me perfectly familiar with her sentiments and feelings. The reader will, therefore, be so good as to fancy that she speaks in the following pages; and to consider me something like one of those four secretaries who were employed by the famous Duke de Sully, after his retreat, to pen from his own mouth the events of his own life. My preface being thus spoken, I retire, and leave the stage free for the entrance of the chief character, in her own proper person; for whom, as a daughter of long suffering and misfortune, I crave a kindly reception both from reader and critic.

My father was a native and inhabitant of Hull in Yorkshire; and though from circumstances, of which I shall hereafter speak, he occupied no higher a station in society than that of a tradesman, yet he was of what is usually called a good family in a worldly sense, and certainly deserved the name in an acceptation of a very different nature. His grandfather was no less a person than the famous Bishop - the cele