of all you hold most dear-But I will dwell no longer upon this melancholy picture, and return

to my story.

Julia had requested to be buried in that particular part of the church-yard by which I found you this morning, and where that marble urn which bears her initials now stands. The fourth day

*

after her decease was appointed for the funeral, and a day of general mourning it proved to the inhabitants of this and the neighbouring villages, for she was the friend and benefactress of the poor, to whom she was ever the "good Samaritan" in their hour of sickness and death: the widow profited by her counsel, and was soothed by her affectionate sympathy; and the fatherless, smiling gratitude, welcomed her approach with rejoicing, whilst the wandering beggar felt and owned her bounty, by his silent but emphatic ges

ture.

"Oh! weep, ye hapless poor, bewail your loss;
A loss you ne'er will have again,

Long as life's storms surround, or tempests toss
Your little barks on seas of pain.

"Ah where is she, our guardian, and our friend,
The staff of age, the ease of care?

Does she some dying mortal's couch attend,
Or kindly stay the widow's tear?

"Yonder runs the brook, and yonder waves the wood,

By which at eve she oft was seen,

All listening to the mountains roaring flood,

Or tripping o'er the meadows green :

"But now, no more will she those pleasures share,

Which but for her we ne'er had known;

Or to our ills shall lend a pitying ear,

And sigh for sorrows not her own :

"Heav'n has, in mercy, ta'en the beauteous maid,
As morn's breath pure, or lily fair;

And in death's narrow house her form is laid,
To sleep in silence ever there."

CHAP. VI.

"Where her glittering towers?

"Her golden mountains, where? All darken'd down
"To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears.

"The great magician's dead! Thou poor, pale piece
"Of outcast earth, in darkness! what a change
"From yesterday! Thy darling hope so near!
"(Long labour'd prize!) O how ambition flush'd
"Thy glowing cheek! ambition truly great,
"Of virtuous praise. Death's subtle seed within,
"(Sly treacherous miner!) working in the dark,

Smil'd at thy well-concerted scheme, and beckon'd
"The worm to riot on that rose so red,
"Unfaded ere it fell; one moment's prey {"

On the morning that was appointed for Julia's

funeral, several hundreds of the honest rustics, whose benefactress she had been, arrived from all parts of the neighbourhood, and flocked round the -melancholy habitation of Mr. Courtney, desirous to bear a last affectionate tribute to the memory of so excellent a being.

Six blooming girls, habited in white garments, and carrying bunches of odoriferous flowers, as emblematic of innocence, bore the remains of their unfortunate young mistress to their eternal rest: these were followed by a long train of villagers, who evinced, by an unfeigned sorrow, a lively sense of the loss they had sustained.

• When the melancholy service for the dead was performed, I hastened to the house of my afflicted friends, hoping to be able in some measure to allay the poignancy of their grief, and likewise to pay my respects to the long-lost Frederick, who had been sent for upon the occasion of his sister's death. It was with a considerable degree of pain I beheld the altered mien of this young man. The uncommon energy, the vast power, and the great elasticity of mind, which he once possessed, appeared to be destroyed amid the ruins of his health, and I am very sorry to add of his virtue. The dignity universally attendant upon an exalted intellect, which had been eminent in an extraordinary degree in him before he quitted his paternal roof, was supplanted by the affected airs and conceits of the coxcomb. The natural fertility of his mind was consumed by a long course of dissipation, whose poison he had inhaled from

an intercourse with a class of men guilty of every species of what is usually termed petty vice; but which, in fact, is productive of more evil than the actions of the highwayman, or the dagger of the murderer: I mean the countless ills that result from the crimes and outrages that are committed by the professed debauchee, which to enumerate and trace through all their many bearings and affections would be an endless task. But it would not be dif ficult to prove, that thousands of individuals suffer in the most material manner by the evils resulting from dissipation, where one is injured by the more determined species of what are commonly termed great crimes. To such a set of men was Frederick united, not by the bonds of friendship, for none but the virtuous can feel the delightful sensations inspired by true affection, but a system of ideal advantage; for when a man becomes deeply initiated in the various windings and in tricacies of debauchery and wickedness, he becomes unfit for any other society than the company of the wretches who were the means of his fall, and to whom he eagerly flies for his only resources of pleasure, and who, by a similar course of atrocious actions, not only give a kind of sanction to his crimes, but in all probability ap