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A curtain prevented the fair mourner's seeing them. Sir Robert gently touched it, to inform her that they were present, and it was immediately opened. But the young Lord, who thought he had quite enough of dying faces for one morning, turned from the bed, and endeavoured to find more agreeable ones in the street, into which the solitary window looked.

lips I dared not articulate his name. The servants did not seem to be conscious that any extraordinary event had happened, and all things appeared in their usual state of quiet. ⠀ Thus the night passed, and three succeeding days and nights, in all which time I heard neither of my husband nor of the man who had usurped his rights. This frightful calm was at length broken by a tempest.

"On the fourth morning, my father, my dear father, eutered my apartment, with a countenance expressive of unusual sorrow. He took my hand, however, with the utmost tenderness; and, by the softness of his tones, removed the terror which bad seized me on his appearance. He told me he had a deep atiliction to prepare me for; and tried to fortify my mind with every argument of religion aud submission before he revealed it. In this dreadful suspense I uttered not a word, y mind was ou the rack with horrid expectation.⠀ "At length the mill-stone crushed me. He informed me that, three days before, my husband had joined the rebel army, and that he was amongst the first victims of the battle. The effect which this intelligence had on me, was little short of madness. I did not weep, but I grew furious. I called myself my hus baud's murderer, demanded justice on myself,⠀⠀ and talked of circumstances which, though true, passed on those about me as the effects of sudden frenzy: Those violent perturbations ended in a fever, from which it was my punishment to recover.

"My failing spirits," said the poor narrator, "will not permit me to continue in a regular thread; I must pass over many events to tell you that this friend prevailed ou me to accom. pang her to England. Her husband was a loyalist, mine had been one, and the rebels made this a pretext to rob me of all my posses sions too light a punishment for crimes so deep! I left America without daring to men. tion such a design to my father; I could not bear to stab him with the intelligence: and I could still less bear to remain on a spot where every object kept my dishonour and wretchedness alive: yet I wrote to him from the first port, and confessed all my criminality, with a view to make his mind yield to the propriety of my absence, and to lessen his regret for the loss of a child whom he could no longer think worthy of his love.

"With shame I acknowledge, that as my health returned, my passion revived. I now considered myself at liberty, and had no doubt but my tender, passionate lover, panted for the hour in which he could throw himself at my ⚫ feet and make amends for my sufferings by uniting himself to me. Days and weeks glided away, and he appeared not. At first I considered him as sacrificing to decorum ; but at the end of two mouths I could no longer resist enquiring of a lady who visited me, when she had seen the object of all my thoughts. She answered with great unconcern, that he had hardly been seen at all for the last month, for that he was so much attached to a lady whose husband was then in England, that he never spent an hour out of her house; that he boasted every where of his passion, and of his hap-ments, it must be under some other roof.

"On my arrival in England, my friends
carried me to a northern county, where I re-
sided with them almost two years in tolerable
tranquillity. My tears were frequently poured
before the Almighty for my past offences; but
they were tears which always left me more
peaceful and serene. This quiet state was at
length interrupted by the passion of the man
under whose protection I lived. My friend
had unwisely informed her husband of my
former guilt, and he received the intelligence
with malicious pleasure; he now considered
that I had no right to defend myself from his
addresses on principles of honour, having once
outraged them; and he had the cruelty to tell
me so. On my expressing horror at such a
declaration, he had the brutality to add, that
my affected niceness was an ill return for his
benevolence in having supported me, aud that,
if I chose to cherish such ungrateful senti-

piness; and had told his friends he doated on "His roof I instantly quitted, though a
her to such distraction, that he had half re-
stranger in the kingdom, and known to no
solved to give up his country and his profes-human being in it, out of the little circle in
sion, and become an American planter.
which we resided; but to remain there would
have been as if I did not wish to fly from the
enemy who pursued me; and I certainly owed
it to his wife, to leave a situation in which I

her into silence. She had discernment, and
perhaps guessed in some measure, the cause
of so strong an emotion. Urged, therefore, by
prudence or by curiosity, she called no assist-
ance, but endeavoured to recal me to the re-
collection of my miseries by the common
methods. On recovering from my swoon, I
found my head reposed on her bosom, and her
tears bedewing my face. This tenderness un-
locked my whole soul; my woes were too
poignant to admit of concealment, and they
were all poured out before her.

"How long my frien might have continued this interesting detail I know not, had not my suddenly falling senseless at her feet shocked

was every hour exposed to the danger of his
visits A stage-coach which passed at the instant
of these cogitations, offered me relief; it was
winter, and there was not any passenger in
it; which gloomy circumstance was to me ac-
ceptable, for it gave me the leisure of two
hundred miles travelling to ponder over my
sorrows, and to consider what might be my
future fate. The bitterness of those reflections
su overpowered me, that when the coach arrived
in Loudon, I was so ill as to seem to the people
of the inn in a dying state. I bless heaven
they were right. The coachman recommended
me to this house, kept, as he said, by a relation.
I delivered my purse to the mistress of it, who
for a fortnight gave me some attendance; but
since that time she has left me a prey to my
disorder, which will presently."

"Yes, thy woes are over," said the young Lord, who now turned from the window; "thy woes are over! But, oh! Caroline, where will end the anguish which now seizes my soul! Behold the author of all thy afflictions, thy husband's murderer, thy murderer, and the murderer of thy father!"

The lady started from her father's corpse, she fixed her eyes on him with the most horcible expression, and tried to speak, but death had already rendered rigid the organs of speech; his chill band was on her heart, she struggled a few moments, and then, without having uttered a sound, sunk dead on her pillow.

"Damned unfeeling wretch!" exclaimed the youth at the window, who till now seemed attentive only to what passed in the street, though the restlessness of his motions, and now and then a heavy sigh, gave friend room to suspect him of more tenderness than belonged to his character.

Pause here and behold the two friends! Both young, both equally the favourites of health and of fortune. They had arisen in the morning fresh as the sun, when through the portals of the east he first glances his golden beams. The day was before them, their actions were to be chosen. One of them passed its opening hours in indolence, in folly, in vahispidity and expence; the hour of noon beholds

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The sudden force of this execration had a visible effect on the dying lady, but neither she nor the gentleman who had been listening to her melancholy tale had time to notice it; for the door directly opened, and disclosed the nurse tottering under the weight of the venerable patient whom they had first visited. With ghastful eyes he surveyed the lovely creature, already on the threshold of death. He stretched his arm towards her, uttered a deep cry, and falling on the bed expired.

him a conscious murderer, an accumulator of crimes, a wretch bowed down with the sense of his own iniquities. The other began his day like a favourite son of heaven; his heart was filled with benevolence; wherever he went his steps, like the steps of the spring, gave hope, joy, and consolation. Having feasted his mind with his own beneficence, he retires from the woes he had contributed to lessen; he is prepared to taste the pleasures which lay before him, to refine them, and to possess them with a zest of which the pallid libertine can form no idea; he is indeed an epicure, a voluptuary of the first order!--Ye sons of pleasure copy the portrait!

66

My father, my father!" exclaimed the lady, clasping her hands with a wild air, and bending over the corpse; "but I shall join thee, my woes are at an end!"

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MISS SEWARD.

THE liberal attainments of this lady, and getic language. The animation of her counte her devotion to poetry, have long rendered hernance, and the brilliant lustre of her cye, gave name celebrated in the lettered world; whilst her amiable manners, hospitality, and highly cultivated conversation, caused her to be uni versally sought after, and respected. Perhaps no person ever possessed in a greater degree the colloquial power of pleasing than Miss Se-accessible to all; and no one ever parted from ward. To a minute and accurate acquaintance with the English classics, she added an inexhaustible fund of local and literary anecdote. Naturally eloquent, she communicated

a most forcible expression of feeling and intelligence to her words and actions. Conscious of her ability, she freely displayed herself in a nanner equally remote from arrogance and affectation. Her mind and information were

her dissatisfied with himself, or without the desire to renew his visit. In familiar conversation she greatly excelled; and in reading, more particularly poetry, she was uncommonly

her knowledge in the choicest, and must ener-spirited and correct. fier doors were at all

been fondly attached from her childhood, and
her warm imagination naturally became emu-
lous of distinction in her favourite pursuit.
But Miss Seward's genius was not of a class to
strike out new models of poetic excellence;
and her natural good taste had been perverted,
She was deficient in fertility of invention; and
wanted new and forcible combinations of
thought to accomplish such a task. All her
attempts at originality evaporated in turgid
obscurity and pompous inflation. We fre-
quently meet in her poetry with nervous
lines, and sometimes with beautiful stanzas ;
but neither the pleasing vein of easy flowing
verse, nor the more happy inspiration of
graceful energy, ever accompany her long.
We seldom see her thoughts clothed in the
dignified simplicity of nature, but usually find
them loaded with factitious and ill assorted
ornaments. Her prose bears pretty much the
same character with her poetical compositions.
They abound in sparkling sentences, poetical
images, and high sounding epithets; but want
arrangement and precision. It is understood
that she has left the whole of her works as a

times open with liberal hospitality, and to
diffuse cheerfulness and happiness over her do-
mestic, and social circles, was the endeavour
of her life. Of infant genius and merit,
wherever she met them, she was the warm
encourager and zealous friend. Her hand was
ever extended in active benevolence towards
the distressed, and her heart most readily
paid the tribute of overflowing pity, to the
tale of misery. In her intercourse with society
no woman had less pride.

Such, divested of the fulsome praise which
designing flatterers lavished upon her writings
and genius, was the amiable and intelligent
Miss Seward. Her merits were peculiarly
her own; the spontaneous offspring of a good
heart, and a liberally endowed mind. Her
errors arose from a glowing imagination,
joined to an excessive sensibility, cherished,
instead of being repressed, by early habits and
education. At the time Dr. Darwin came
first to reside in Lichfield, Miss Seward was
about thirteen or fourteen years of age. The
circle which the Doctor drew around him, for
ten or twelve years from that period, was com-
posed of young men of acknowledged talents, || legacy to Mr. Scott, the northern poet, with a
and of ardent speculative minds; whose spirits,|| view to their publication in a collected edi-
too buoyant for the beaten track of knowledge, tion, with her life and posthumous pieces;
soared to explore the yet untrodden paths of several of which the present writer has heard
science, and give new systems to an astonished her name. But of all her works, her epis.
world. To turn aside the smooth current of tolary correspondence must be the most de-
nature, and to despise established usages, were sirable. She had all her life an extensive
the principles upon which they conducted acquaintance, and especially with meu of
their researches. Their visionary pursuits literature. Her talents and disposition pecu-
were diguified with the application of philo- liarly fitted her for a species of writing free
sophy; but were evidently more calculated to from the trammels and constraint of regular
gratify their own passions and propensities, composition. It is from this source that the
than to promote the improvement of man- nature of her genius, and the powers of her
kind. Variety and originality were the ob- mind may be fairly appreciated; where, al-
jects of their admiration, to which they sacri- though intermixed with much tinsel and alloy,
ficed without remorse, reason, and common will doubtless be discovered no common por-

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sense.

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tion of sterling metal. In her remarks upon
the writings of her contemporaries, always a

Among those persons were Mr. Day,
who, from Miss Seward's own account of him,
was a capricious wild enthusiast; Mr. Edg-favourite topic of communication with her
worth and Sir Brooke Boothby.-Doctor Dar-
win promoted and encouraged their idle
schemes, and gave consequence to their spe-
culations, by the reputation of his genius, and
the variety of his talents. In this coterie
Miss Seward's early impressions were formed.
In the daily habit of hearing new and ingeni-
ous hypotheses, she became enamoured of
novelty, and sighed for the meed of fame, in
which she was encouraged and flattered by the
gallantry of her admirers. Possessed of a
ductile mind, and a romantic disposition, she
fed with avidity upon the intellectual variety
thus placed before her. To poetry she had

friends, she was fond of displaying much acute
criticism. Her judgment in the selection of
the poetic beauties of others, was for the most
part chaste, and correct; qualities which in
her own compositions seem to be sacrificed to
empty sound and vain show. Had the taste,
and exquisite feeling of this lady, been reared
and cultivated with care and prudence, it is
highly probable that she wonid have ranked
among the first favourites of the muses; in-
stead of which, the candid and unprejudiced
must acknowledge that her poetic fame canuot
long survive the remembrance of her friends,
and the partiality of her personal admirers.

OF

GRAY.

AN ELEGY,

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD,

THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimm'ring landscapes on the sight

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his drony flight, And drowsy tiuklings lull the distaut folds; Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r

The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign.