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company with some friends, he conceived, while long labyrinth of troubles; but previous to his standing with them in the quadrangle of Christ- departure, Galt composed his novel, The Last of church, the design of writing a Life of Cardinal the Lairds, also descriptive of Scottish life. He Wolsey. He set about the task with ardour; but set out for America in 1826, his mission being his health failing, he went abroad. At Gibraltar, limited to inquiry, for accomplishing which eight Galt met with Lord Byron and Mr Hobhouse, then months were allowed. His duties, however, were embarked on their tour for Greece, and the three increased, and his stay prolonged, by the numersailed in the same packet. Galt resided some ous offers to purchase lots of land, and for detertime in Sicily, then repaired to Malta, and after- mining on the system of management to be wards proceeded to Greece, where he again met pursued by the Company. A million of capital with Byron, and also had an interview with Ali had been intrusted to his management. On the Pacha. After rambling for some time among the 23d of April (St George's Day) 1827, Galt proclassic scenes of Greece, Galt proceeded to Con- ceeded to found the town of Guelph, in the Upper stantinople, thence to Nicomedia, and northwards Province of Canada, which he did with due cereto Kirpe, on the shores of the Black Sea. Some mony. The site selected for the town having commercial speculations as to the practicability been pointed out, 'a large maple-tree,' he says, of landing British goods in defiance of the Berlin was chosen; on which, taking an axe from one and Milan decrees, prompted these unusual wan- of the woodmen, I struck the first stroke. To me, derings. At one time, when detained by quaran- at least, the moment was impressive; and the tine, Galt wrote or sketched six dramas, which silence of the woods that echoed to the sound was were afterwards published in a volume, constitut- as the sigh of the solemn genius of the wilderness ing, according to Sir Walter Scott, the worst departing for ever.' The city soon prospered in tragedies ever seen.' On his return he published three months upwards of 160 building-lots were his Voyages and Travels, and Letters from the engaged, and houses rising as fast as building Levant, which were well received. Galt next re- materials could be prepared. Before the end of paired to Gibraltar, to conduct a commercial the year, however, the founder of the city was business which it was proposed to establish there, embroiled in difficulties. Some secret enemies but the design was defeated by the success of had misrepresented him—he was accused of lowerthe Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula. He ex- ing the Company's stock-his expenditure was plored France to see if an opening could be found complained of; and the Company sent out an there, but no prospect appeared, and returning accountant to act not only in that capacity but to England, he contributed some dramatic pieces as cashier. Matters came to a crisis, and Galt to the New British Theatre. One of these, The determined to return to England. Ample testiAppeal, was brought out at the Edinburgh theatre mony has been borne to the skill and energy with in 1818, and performed four nights, Sir Walter which he conducted the operations of this ComScott having written an epilogue for the play. pany; but his fortune and his prospects had fled. Among Galt's more elaborate compositions may Thwarted and depressed, he was resolved to battle be mentioned a Life of Benjamin West, the artist, with his fate, and he set himself down in EngHistorical Pictures, The Wandering Jew, and land to build a new scheme of life, in which The Earthquake, a novel in three volumes. He the secondary condition of authorship was made wrote for Blackwood's Magazine, in 1820, The primary.' In six months Galt had six volumes Ayrshire Legatees, a series of letters containing an ready. His first work was another novel in three amusing Scottish narrative. His next work was volumes, Lawrie Todd, which is equal to The The Annals of the Parish (1821), which instantly Annals of the Parish or The Entail. It was well became popular. It is worthy of remark that The received; and he soon after produced another, Annals had been written some ten or twelve years descriptive of the customs and manners of Scotbefore the date of its publication, and anterior to land in the reign of Queen Mary, and entitled the appearance of Waverley and Guy Mannering, Southennan. For a short time in the same year and that it was rejected by the publishers of those (1830) Galt conducted the Courier newspaper, works, with the assurance that a novel or work but this new employment did not suit him, and he of fiction entirely Scottish would not take with gladly left the daily drudgery to complete a Life the public! Galt went on with his usual ardour of Byron. The comparative brevity of this memoir in the composition of Scotch novels. He had now (one small volume), the name of Galt as its author, found where his strength lay, and Sir Andrew and the interesting nature of the subject, soon sold Wylie, The Entail, The Steam-boat, and The three or four editions of the work; but it was Provost, were successively published-the first sharply assailed by the critics. Some of the two with decided success. These were followed at positions taken up by the author (as that, 'had no long intervals by Ringan Gilhaize, a story of Byron not been possessed of genius, he might the Scottish Covenanters; by The Spaewife, a have been a better man'), and some quaintness tale of the times of James I. of Scotland; and and affectation of expression, exposed him to Rothelan, a novel partly historical, founded on the ridicule. Galt next executed a series of Lives of work by Barnes on the Life and Reign of Edward the Players, an amusing compilation; and Bogle I. Galt also published anonymously, in 1824, Corbet, another novel, the object of which, he said, an interesting imaginative little tale, The Omen, was to give a view of society generally, as The which was reviewed by Sir Walter Scott in Black- Provost was of burgh incidents simply, and of the wood's Magazine. In fertility, Galt was only sur- sort of genteel persons who are sometimes found passed by Scott. His genius was unequal, and he among the emigrants to the United States. does not seem to have been able to discriminate Disease now invaded the robust frame of the between the good and the bad. We next find novelist; but he wrote on, and in a short time Galt engaged in the formation and establishment four other works of fiction issued from his penof the Canada Company, which involved him in a | Stanley Buxton, The Member, The Radical, and

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His

Eben Erskine. In 1832, an affection of the spine
and an attack resembling paralysis, greatly reduced
Galt, and subjected him to acute pain. Next
year, however, he was again at the press.
work was a tale, entitled The Lost Child. He also
composed a Memoir of his own life in two volumes
-a curious ill-digested melange, but worthy of
perusal. In 1834 he published Literary Miscel-
lanies, in three volumes, dedicated to King William
IV., who generously sent a sum of £200 to the
author. He returned to his native country a
perfect wreck, the victim of repeated attacks of
paralysis; yet he wrote several pieces for period-
ical works, and edited the productions of others.
After severe and protracted sufferings, borne
with great firmness and patience, Galt died at
Greenock on the 11th of April 1839.

his

Placing of a Scottish Minister.

It was a great affair; for I was put in by the patron, and the people knew nothing whatsoever of me, and their hearts were stirred into strife on the occasion, and they did all that lay within the compass of their power to keep me out, insomuch that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery; and it was a thing that made my heart grieve when I heard the drum beating and the fife playing as we were going to the kirk. The people were really mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, and reviled us all, and held out the finger of scorn at me; but I endured it with a resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness and blindness. Poor old Mr Kilfuddy of the Braehill got such a clash of glaur [mire] on the side of his face, that his eye was almost extinguished. When we got to the kirk door, it was found to be nailed up, so as by no possibility to be opened. The sergeant of the soldiers wanted to break it, but I was afraid that the heritors would grudge and complain of the expense of a new door, and I supplicated` him to let it be as it was; we were therefore obligated to go in by a window, and the crowd followed us in the most unreverent manner, making the Lord's house like an a fair-day with their grievous yelly-hooing. inn on During the time of the psalm and the sermon they behaved themselves better, but when the induction came on, their clamour was dreadful; and Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious zealot in that time, got up and protested, and said: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.' And I thought I would have a hard and sore time of it with such an outstrapolous people. Given, that was then the minister of Lugton, was a jocose man, and would have his joke even at a solemnity. When the laying of the hands upon me was a-doing, he could not get near enough to put on his, but he stretched out his staff and touched my head, and said, to the great diversion of the rest: This will do well saying of Mr Given, considering the time and the place, enough-timber to timber;' but it was an unfriendly

and the temper of my people.

Mr

Of the long list of our author's works, the greater part are already forgotten. Not a few of his novels, however, bid fair to be permanent, and The Annals of the Parish will probably be read as long as Waverley or Guy Mannering. This inimitable little tale is the simple record of a country minister during the fifty years of his incumbency. Besides many amusing and touching incidents, the work presents us with a picture of the rise and progress of a Scottish rural village, and its transition to a manufacturing town, as witnessed by the minister, a man as simple as Abraham Adams, imbued with all old-fashioned national feelings and prejudices, but thoroughly sincere, kind-hearted, and pious. This Presbyterian worthy, the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, is a fine representative of the primitive Scottish pastor; diligent, blameless, loyal, and exemplary in his life, but without the fiery zeal and 'kirk-filling eloquence' of the supporters of the Covenant. Micah is easy, garrulous, fond of a quiet joke, and perfectly ignorant of the world. Little things are great to him in his retirement and his simplicity; and thus we find him chronicling, among memorable events, the arrival of a dancing-master, the planting of a pear-tree, the getting a new bell for the kirk, the first appearance of Punch's Opera in the country-side, and other incidents of a like nature, which he mixes up indiscriminately with the breaking out of the American war, the establishment of manufactures, or the spread of French revolutionary principles. Amidst the quaint humour and shrewd observation of honest Micah are some striking and pathetic incidents. Mrs Malcolm, the widow of a Clyde shipmaster, comes to settle in his village; and being 'a genty body, calm, and methodical,' she brought up her children in a superior manner, and they all get on in the world. One of them becomes a sailor; and there are few more touching narratives in the language than the account of this cheerful, gallant-hearted lad, from his first setting off to sea, to his death as a midshipman in an engagement with the French. Taken altogether, this work of Galt's is invaluable for its truth and nature, its quiet unforced humour and pathos, its genuine nationality as a faithful record of Scottish feeling and manners, Thomas was standing at the door with his green and its rich felicity of homely antique Scottish duffle apron and his red Kilmarnock night-cap-I mind phrase and expression, which to his country-him as well as if it was but yesterday—and he had seen men is perhaps the crowning excellence of the

author.

In the following passage, the placing of Mr Balwhidder as minister of Dalmailing is admirably described:

After the ceremony we then got out at the window, and it was a heavy day to me; but we went to the manse, and there we had an excellent dinner, which Mrs Watts of the new inn of Irville prepared at my request, and sent her chaise-driver to serve, for he was likewise her waiter, she having then but one chaise, and that not often called for.

But although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was resolved to cultivate civility among and therefore the very next morning I began them; a round of visitations; but oh! it was a steep brae that I had to climb, and it needed a stout heart, for I found the doors in some places barred against me; in others, the bairns, when they saw me coming, ran crying to their mothers: 'Here's the feckless MessJohn;' and then, when I went in into the houses, their parents would not ask me to sit down, but with a scornful way said: 'Honest man, what's your pleasure here?' Nevertheless, I walked about from door to door, like a dejected beggar, till I got the almous deed of a civil reception, and-who would have thought it! from no less a person than the same Thomas Thorl that was so bitter against me in the kirk on the foregoing day.

me going from house to house, and in what manner I was rejected, and his bowels were moved, and he said to me in a kind manner: 'Come in, sir, and ease yoursel'; this will never do the clergy are God's corbies, and for their Master's sake it behoves us to

respect them. There was no ane in the whole parish mair against you than mysel', but this early visitation is a symptom of grace that I couldna have expectit from a bird out of the nest of patronage.' I thanked Thomas, and went in with him, and we had some solid conversation together, and I told him that it was not so much the pastor's duty to feed the flock, as to herd them well; and that, although there might be some abler with the head than me, there wasna a he within the bounds of Scotland more willing to watch the fold by night and by day. And Thomas said he had not heard a mair sound observe for some time, and that if I held to that doctrine in the poopit, it wouldna be lang till I would work a change. I was mindit,' quoth he, 'never to set my foot within the kirk door while you were there; but to testify, and no to condemn without a trial, I'll be there next Lord's day, and egg my neighbours to be likewise, so ye 'll no have to preach just to the bare walls and the laird's family.'

length enabled to return to Scotland in some style. and visit the place of his nativity. This Scottish jaunt is a blemish in the work, for the incidents and descriptions are ridiculously exaggerated. But nothing can be better than the account of the early struggles of this humble hero-the American

sketches of character with which the work abounds the view it gives of life in the backwoods-or the peculiar freshness and vigour that seem to accompany every scene and every movement of the story. In perception of character and motive, within a certain sphere, Galt stands unsurpassed; and he has energy as well as quickness. His taste, however, was very defective; and this, combined with the hurry and uncertainty of his latter days, led him to waste his original powers on subjects unfitted for his pen, and injurious to his reputation. The story of his life is a melancholy one; his genius was an honour to his country, and merited a better reward.

The Windy Yule, or Christmas.—From The Provost. In the morning, the weather was blasty and sleety, waxing more and more tempestuous, till about mid-day, when the wind checked suddenly round from the nor-east to the sou-west, and blew a gale, as if the Prince of the powers of the air was doing his utmost to work mischief. flapped, pigs from the lum-heads came rattling down The rain blattered, the windows clattered, the shop shutters like thunder-claps, and the skies were dismal both with cloud and carry. Yet, for all that, there was in the streets a stir and a busy visitation between neighbours, and every one went to their high windows, to look at the five poor barks, that were warsling against the strong arm of the elements of the storm and the ocean.

Still the lift gloomed, and the wind roared; and it was as doleful a sight as ever was seen in any town afflicted with calamity, to see the sailors' wives, with their red cloaks about their heads, followed by their hirpling and disconsolate bairns, going one after another to the kirk

The Ayrshire Legatees is a story of the same cast as The Annals, and describes (chiefly by means of correspondence) the adventures of another country minister and his family on a journey to London to obtain a rich legacy left him by a cousin in India. The Provost is another portraiture of Scottish life, illustrative of the jealousies, contentions, local improvements, and jobbery of a small burgh in the olden time. Some of the descriptions in this work are very powerfully written. Sir Andrew Wylie and The Entail are more regular and ambitious performances, treble the length of the others, but not so carefully finished. The pawkie Ayrshire baronet is humorous, but not very natural. The character of Leddy Grippy in The Entail was a prodigious favourite with Byron. Both Scott and Byron, it is said, read this novel three times-no slight testimony to its merits. We should be disposed, however, to give the preference to another of Galt's three-volume fictions, Lawrie Todd, or the Settlers, a work which seems to have no parallel, since Defoe, for apparent reality, know-yard, to look at the vessels where their helpless breadledge of human nature, and fertility of invention. The history of a real individual, a man named Grant Thorburn, supplied the author with part of his incidents, as the story of Alexander Selkirk did Defoe; but the mind and the experience of Galt are stamped on almost every page. In his former productions our author wrought with his recollections of the Scotland of his youth; the mingled worth, simplicity, pawkiness, and enthusiasm which he had seen or heard of as he loitred about Irvine or Greenock, or conversed th the country sires and matrons; but in Lawrie Todd we have the fruit of his observations in the New World, presenting an entirely different and original phase of the Scottish character. Lawrie is by trade a nailmaker, who emigrates with his brother to America; and their stock of worldly goods and riches, on arriving at New York, consisted of about five shillings in money, and an old chest containing some articles of dress and other necessaries. Lawrie works hard at the nailmaking, marries a pious and industrious maiden-who soon dies-and in time becomes master of a grocer's shop, which he exchanges for the business of a seedsman. The latter is a bad affair, and Lawrie is compelled to sell all off, and begin the world again. He removes with his family to the backwoods, and once more is prosperous. He clears, builds, purchases land, and speculates to great advantage, till he is at

winners were battling with the tempest. My heart was really sorrowful, and full of a sore anxiety to think of what might happen to the town, whereof so many were in peril, and to whom no human magistracy could extend the arm of protection. Seeing no abatement of the wrath of heaven, that howled and roared around us, I put on my big coat, and taking my staff in my hand, having tied down my hat with a silk handkerchief, towards gloaming I walked likewise to the kirkyard, where I beheld such an assemblage of sorrow, as few men in situation have ever been put to the trial to witness.

In the lee of the kirk many hundreds of the town were gathered together; but there was no discourse among them. The major part were sailors' wives and weans, and at every new thud of the blast, a sob rose, and the mothers drew their bairns closer in about them, as if they saw the visible hand of foe raised to smite them. Apart from the multitude, I observed three or four young lasses, standing behind the Whinnyhill families' tomb, and I jaloused that they had joes in the ships, for they often looked to the bay, with long necks and sad faces, from behind the monument. But of all the piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my thoughts more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate of one of the vessels in the jeopardy. He was an Englishman that had been settled some years in the town, where his family had neither kith nor kin; and his wife having died about a month before, the bairns, of whom the eldest was but nine or so, were friendless enough, though both my gudewife, and other well-disposed ladies, paid them all manner of attention, till their father would come home. The three poor little things, knowing that he was in one

295

of the ships, had been often out and anxious, and they were then sitting under the lee of a headstone, near their mother's grave, chittering and creeping closer and closer at every squall! Never was such an orphan-like sight seen. When it began to be so dark that the vessels could no longer be discerned from the churchyard, many went down to the shore, and I took the three babies home with me, and Mrs Pawkie made tea for them, and they soon began to play with our own younger children, in blithe forgetfulness of the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the shutters rattled, and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and dismayed by something he knew not what. Many a one that night walked the sounding shore in sorrow, and fires were lighted along it to a great extent, but the darkness and the noise of the raging deep, and the howling wind, never intermitted till about midnight; at which time a message was brought to me, that it might be needful to send a guard of soldiers to the beach, for that broken masts and tackle had come in, and that surely some of the barks had perished. I lost no time in obeying this suggestion, which was made to me by one of the owners of the Louping Meg; and to shew that I sincerely sympathised with all those in affliction, I rose and dressed myself, and went down to the shore, where I directed several old boats to be drawn up by the fires, and blankets to be brought, and cordials prepared, for them that might be spared with life to reach the land; and I walked the beach with the mourners till the morning.

As the day dawned, the wind began to abate in its violence, and to wear away from the sou-west into the norit; but it was soon discovered that some of the vessels with the corn had perished; for the first thing seen was a long fringe of tangle and grain, along the line of the high-water mark, and every one strained with greedy and grieved eyes, as the daylight brightened, to discover which had suffered. But I can proceed no further with the dismal recital of that doleful morning. Let it suffice here to be known, that, through the haze, we at last saw three of the vessels lying on their beamends, with their masts broken, and the waves riding like the furious horses of destruction over them. What had become of the other two, was never known; but it was supposed that they had foundered at their anchors, and that all on board perished.

in London, purchased a large house and a country mansion (Deepdene, near Dorking), and embellished both with drawings, picture-galleries, sculpture, amphitheatres for antiques, and all other rare and costly appliances. His appearances as an author arose out of these favourite occupations and studies. In 1805, he published a folio volume of drawings and descriptions, entitled Household Furniture and Decorations. The ambitious style of this work, and the author's devotion to the forms of chairs, sofas, couches, and tables, provoked a witty piece of ridicule in the Edinburgh Review; but the man of taste and virtù triumphed. A more classical and appropriate style of furniture and domestic utensils gained ground; and with Mr Hope rests the honour of having achieved the improvement. Two other splendid publications proceeded from Mr Hope, The Costume of the Ancients (1809), and Designs of Modern Costumes (1812), both works evincing extensive knowledge and curious research. In 1819, Mr Hope burst forth as a novelist of the first order. He had studied human nature as well as architecture and costume, and his early travels had exhibited to him men of various creeds and countries. The result was Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek, written at the close of the Eighteenth Century, in three volumes. The author's name was not prefixed to the work-as it was given forth as a veritable history-but the secret soon became known, and Mr Hope, from being reputed as something like a learned upholsterer or clever draughtsman, was at once elevated into a rivalry with Byron as a glowing painter of foreign scenery and manners, and with Le Sage and the other masters of the novel, in the art of conducting a fable and delineating character. The author turned from fiction to metaphysics, and composed a work On the Origin and Prospects of Man, which he did not live to see through the press, but which was published after his decease. His cosmogony is strange and unorthodox; but amidst his paradoxes, conceits, and abstruse speculations, are many ingenious views and eloquent disquisitions. He was author also of an Essay on Architecture, not published till 1835-an ingenious work, which went through several editions. Mr Hope died on the 3d of February 1831, and probate was granted for £180,000 personal property. Beckford and Vathek are the only parallels to Mr Hope and Anastasius in oriental wealth and

The day being now Sabbath, and the whole town idle, everybody in a manner was down on the beach, to help and mourn, as the bodies, one after another, were cast out by the waves. Alas! few were the better of my provident preparation; and it was a thing not to be described, to see, for more than a mile along the coast, the new-made widows and fatherless bairns mourning and weeping over the corpses of those they loved. Seven-imagination. teen bodies were, before ten o'clock, carried to the desolated dwellings of their families; and when old Thomas Pull, the betherell, went to ring the bell for public worship, such was the universal sorrow of the town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, ran up the street to stop him, crying, in the voice of a pardonable desperation: 'Wha, in sic a time, can praise the Lord!'

THOMAS HOPE.

THOMAS HOPE (1770-1831), the author of Anastasius, was one of the merchant-princes whom commerce led to opulence, and who repaid the compliment by ennobling his origin and pursuits with taste, munificence, and genius. He was one of three brothers, wealthy merchants in Amsterdam. When a young man, he spent some years in foreign travel, visiting the principal places in Europe, Asia, and Africa. On his return he settled

Mr

Anastasius is one of the most original and dazzling of modern romances. The hero is, like Zeluco, a villain spoiled by early indulgence; he becomes a renegade to his faith, a mercenary, a robber, and an assassin; but the elements of a better nature are sown in his composition, and break forth at times. He is a native of Chios, the son of Greek parents. To avoid the consequences of an amour with Helena, the consul's daughter, he runs off to sea in a Venetian vessel, which is boarded by pirates and captured. The pirates are in turn taken by a Turkish frigate, and carried before Hassan Pasha. Anastasius is released, fights with the Turks in the war against the Araonoots, and accompanies the Greek dragoman to Constantinople. Disgrace and beggary reduce him to various shifts and adventures. He follows a Jew quack-doctor selling nostrums-is thrown into the Bagnio, or state-prison - afterwards

embraces the Turkish faith-revisits Greeceproceeds to Egypt-and subsequently ranges over Arabia, and visits Malta, Sicily, and Italy. His intrigues, adventures, sufferings, &c. are innumerable. Every aspect of Greek and Turkish society is depicted-sarcasm, piquant allusion, pathos and passion, and descriptions of scenery, are strangely intermingled in the narrative. Wit, epigram, and the glitter of rhetorical amplification, Occupy too much space; but the scene is constantly shifting, and the work possesses the truth and accuracy of a book of travels joined to those of a romance. The traveller, too, is a thorough man of the world, has a keen insight into human weaknesses and foibles, and describes his adventures and impressions without hypocrisy or reserve. The most powerful passages are those in which pathos is predominant-such as the scenes with Euphrosyne, whom Anastasius has basely violated -his sensations on revisiting Greece and the tomb of Helena-his reflections on witnessing the dead Araonoot soldier whom he had slainthe horrors of the plague and famine-and, above all, the account of the death of Alexis, the child of Anastasius, and in whom were centred the only remains of his human affection, his love and hope. The gradual decay of this youth, and the intense anxiety and watchfulness of his father, constitute a scene of genuine grief and tenderness. We forget the craft and villainy of Anastasius, thus humbled and prostrate. His wild gaiety and heartless jests, his degeneracy and sensualism, have passed away. They had palled upon himself, but one spring of pure affection remained to redeem his nature; and it is not without the strongest pity and kindred commiseration that we see the desperate adventurer reduced to loneliness and heart-broken despair. The scene is introduced by an account of his recovering his lost son in Egypt, and carrying him off to Europe:

The Death of Anastasius's Son.

My cousin's letter.had promised me a brilliant lot, and-what was better-my own pockets insured me a decent competence. The refinements of a European education should add every external elegance to my boy's innate excellence, and, having myself moderately enjoyed the good things of this world, while striving to deserve the better promised in the next, I should, ere my friends became tired of my dotage, resign my last breath in the arms of my child.

The blue sky seemed to smile upon my cheerful thoughts, and the green wave to murmur approbation of my plan. Almighty God! what was there in it so heinous to deserve that an inexorable fate should cast it to the winds?

In the midst of my dream of happiness, my eye fell upon the darling object in which centred all its sweets. Insensibly my child's prattle had diminished, and had at last subsided in an unusual silence. I thought he looked pale; his eyes seemed heavy, and his lips felt parched. The rose, that every morning, still so fresh, so erect on its stalk, at mid-day hung its heavy head, discoloured, wan, and fading; but so frequently had the billows, during the fury of the storm, drenched my boy's little crib, that I could not wonder he should have felt their effects in a severe cold. I put him to bed, and tried to hush him to sleep. Soon, however, his face grew flushed, and his pulse became feverish. I failed alike in my endeavours to procure him repose and to afford him amusement: but, though playthings were repulsed, and tales no longer attended to, still he could

not bear me an instant out of his sight; nor would he take anything except at my hands. Even when-as too soon it did-his reason began to wander, his filial affection retained its pristine hold of his heart. It had grown into an adoration of his equally doting father; and the mere consciousness of my presence seemed to relieve his uneasiness.

Had not my feelings, a few moments only before, been those of such exceeding happiness, I should not so soon perhaps have conceived great alarm; but I had throughout life found every extraordinary burst of joy followed by some unforeseen calamity; and my exultation had just risen to so unusual a pitch, that a deep dismay now at once struck me to the heart. I felt convinced that I had only been carried to so high a pinnacle of joy, in order to be hurled with greater ruin into an abyss of woe. Such became my anxiety to reach Trieste, and to obtain the best medical assistance, that even while the ship continued to cleave the waves like an arrow, I fancied it lay like a log upon the main. How, then, did my pangs increase when, as if in resentreally left our keel motionless on the waters! My ment of my unjust complaints, the breeze, dying away, anguish baffled all expression.

In truth, I do not know how I preserved my senses, except from the need I stood in of their aid; for, while we lay cursed with absolute immobility, and the sun ever found us, on rising, in the same place where it had left us on setting, my child-my darling child-was every instant growing worse, and sinking apace under the pressure of illness. To the deep and flushing glow of a complexion far exceeding in its transient brilliancy even the brightest hues of health, had succeeded a round full orb was wont to beam upon me with mild settled unchanging deadly paleness. His eye, whose but fervent radiance, now dim and wandering, for the most part remained half-closed; and when, roused by my address, the idol of my heart strove to raise his languid look, and to meet the fearful inquiries of mine, he only shewed all the former fire of his countenance extinct. In the more violent bursts, indeed, of his unceasing delirium, his wasting features sometimes acquired a fresh but sad expression. He would then start up, and with his feeble hands clasped together, and big tears rolling down his faded cheeks, beg in the most moving terms to be restored to his home: but mostly he seemed absorbed in inward musings, and, no longer taking note of the passing hour, he frequently during the course of the day moved his pallid lips, as if repeating to himself the little prayer which he had been wont to say at bed-time and at rising, and the blessings I had taught him to add, addressed to his mother on behalf of his father. If-wretched to see him thus, and doubly agonised to think that I alone had been the cause-I burst out into tears which I strove to hide, his perception of outward objects seemed all at once for a moment to return. He asked me whether I was hurt, and would lament that, young and feeble as he was, he could not yet nurse me as he wished; but promised me better care when he should grow stronger.

In this way hour after hour, and day after day, rolled on, without any progress in our voyage, while all I had left to do was to sit doubled over my child's couch, watching all his wants, and studying all his looks, trying, but in vain, to discover some amendment. Oh, for those days,' I now thought, when a calm at sea appeared an intolerable evil, only because it stopped some tide of folly or delayed some scheme of vice !'

At last one afternoon, when, totally exhausted with want of sleep, I sat down by my child in all the composure of torpid despair, the sailors rushed in one and all-for even they had felt my agony, and doted on my boy. They came to cheer me with better tidings. A breeze had just sprung up! The waves had again begun to ripple, and the lazy keel to stir. As minute pressed

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