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This letter, the language of which breathed such a spirit of contrition and good sense, excited the surprise, while at the same time, it gratified the feelings of Mr. Walsingham. Its effect on Adeline was not less striking; her own injuries were forgotten and absorbed in compassion for the miseries of him who had inflicted them; and, much as she had reason to abhor the vices of the profligate nobleman, she could not avoid weeping over the death-bed of the penitent sinner.

"I thank God," exclaimed Mr. Walsingham, as he laid the letter on the table, "that this hitherto unfortunate man has, at length, seen the error of his ways; racked by disease, and alarmed by apprehensions of approaching dissolution, he now bitterly repents, I rejoice to perceive, the iniquities of his past life, his ingratitude towards his Maker, and his neglect of the duties of religion. Yes, my love," he added, addressing Adeline, "I will immediately attend the couch of the dying Buckingham. I shall be able, I trust, to carry consolation to his bosom, not only by an assurance of the recovering state of Edward, but by placing before

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him, in their proper light, those requisites for salvation in another world, of which, I am afraid, he has too long lost sight in this."

As he uttered these words, he ordered the Duke's servant to be re-admitted, and telling him that he would immediately accompany him to his master, gave directions for his own horse to be got ready.

(To be continued.)

No. XX.

See! where the British Homer leads
The Epic choir of modern days,
Blind as the Grecian bard.

WEST.

It is obvious that our interest in, and sympathy for, the sufferings of our fellow-creatures will be in proportion to the personal merit of the parties, and to the authenticity, accuracy, and particularity of the circumstances which have reached us in relation to their misfortunes. Thus, interested as we have lately been, by the distant and indistinct views which the lapse of ages has just permitted us to take of the blindness of Homer, how much more powerfully should we have sympathized with the great poet, had the history of his calamity, and of the feelings to which it gave birth in his bosom, come down to us with any degree of minuteness and fidelity!

It is owing to a fuller detail of the emotions which may be supposed to agitate a great and virtuous mind from such an awful visitation, that we enter with a deeper sense of fellow feeling and commiseration into the fate and fortunes of Ossian. Yet pathetic as are the frequent allusions which the Bard of the Highlands has made to his loss of sight, they are faint and evanescent in their impression on the mind, when compared with the effect which has resulted from the history of a similar infliction in the person of our divine MILTON.

The privation which has for ever associated the memory of Homer and Ossian with sentiments of pity and endearment, appears to have fallen upon them in the decline of life, and as one of the numerous infirmities of old age; an infliction, it is true, at all times, severe and distressing, but when, as in the case of Milton, it occurs in the very vigour of life, more peculiarly does it render the sufferer an object of interest and attention.

But this circumstance, important as it is, is by no means the most distinguishing feature in the history of Milton's blindness; it is to the

very striking fact, that he voluntarily sacrificed his eye-sight to his sense of duty, that we owe much of that deep admiration mingled with love and compassion which now accompanies the memory of this sublime poet.

It was about the year 1644, as we learn from his letter to Leonard Philaras, and when he was but thirty-six years of age, that his sight first became weak and dim, occasioned partly by protracting when very young, his studies to a late period of the night, and partly by the frequent recurrence of head-ache. He had lost nearly the use of the left eye, and experienced considerable weakness in the other, when, in 1649, he was called upon by the Government of England to reply to the Defensio Regia of Salmasius, a task from which, though forewarned that the utter extinction of his eyes would be the result of the undertaking, his patriotism and sense of duty would not suffer him to shrink. Nothing can, indeed, exceed the magnanimity and self-devotedness with which, notwithstanding the prediction of his medical friends, he entered upon his difficult and dangerous labour; and, when subsequently

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