perpetually in view the blessed goal, where she already beheld, in imagination, the souls of her departed robed in white. Supported by this spirit, she became a prop to the feeble, and a comfort to the needy. Inspired

by this spirit, she journeyed patiently along the pilgrimage of life, and was enabled, at the end, to lay down the burden of the flesh, rejoicing with the gladness of the captive who leaves his prison-house.

It is a common and popular plan, in writing what is called an autobiography, to account in some plausible manner for the way in which the pretended manuscript has fallen into the author's hands. On the present occasion, however, the picture that is presented to the public, offers so little either of the extraordinary or the marvellous, that it appears quite unnecessary to introduce it under any other character than that of a confidential communication from one lady to another.

Painful as it may be to bequeath to posterity a record of our own errors, the heart that is deeply interested in the well-being of society, will think the instruction of even one of the rising generation cheaply purchased by its own exposure.

To you, the friend of my early years, I submit this manuscript, with strict injunctions to keep it secret until I and mine shall have ceased to suffer the agonies of wounded feeling. You may not outlive us, or if you should, your judgment is now too mature, and your walk in life has ever been too circumspect for you to reap any advantage from my experience. But you have daughters and may they read with charity, and wisely profit by the history which I am about

to give, of that most lamentable of all calamities-most irreparable of all misfortunes, -an "ill assorted marriage."

You who have shared in the pleasures and pursuits of my youth, are aware that my life was unmarked by any incident of sufficient interest to strike the attention of an impartial reader; notwithstanding I was distinguished for my quickness at school, and regarded as a prodigy of genius at home. Early deprived of the blessing of maternal care, and left at the age of sixteen to the unrestrained indulgence of my own tastes and caprices, I set about with the most voracious appetite, to feast upon that species of literature that was most in unison with a sensitive and undisciplined mind, and most conducive to the growth of that morbid melancholy which has followed me through life; restraining the aspirations of hope, weighing down the energies of resolution, and damping the feeble fire of a lukewarm faith. In the spring-time of life, when the heart is most capable of enjoyment, I was consequently wretched. I was told reproachfully, that it was the absence of religion which made me so, and I began to "believe and tremble."

In my father's house we had no religious

Amongst those who frequently sat at my father's table, was a young man of excellent disposition, whose light and easy manners won upon us all, and made him friends for the moment, with every description of character that happened to be brought in contact with his own. He was undergoing the process of preparation for the church, though still but a boy, when we first met; but he had read poetry, and been taught at high schools, and flirted with a young widow; and just for present pastime was very much at my service, either as a butt, a lover, or a convert. As a butt, I first tried him, and found him the liveliest, wittiest, and best tempered creature in the world; as a lover, I did not allow myself to ask what he might be; but as a convert,-I triumphed in the thought. Here was a field for my energies to work in. His good heart,-his habits of dissipation, his deference for, and evidently growing attachment to myself,-what vain woman, building her eternal hopes upon the frail reeds of self-righteousness, could resist a temptation like this? It was too much for

me.

For some time I was made happy in the confidence that I should obtain the reward of having saved a "soul from sin;" for my promising protege, though led away by gay companions, always came back to me in his hours of penitence, and a hopeful and interesting charge I had; until the hope, if not the interest, was somewhat abated, by my young friend proposing himself to me as my future husband.

I own I was a good deal surprised, that he who had always acknowledged such an immense inferiority on moral and religious grounds, should now esteem himself a fitting helpmate for me in the pilgrimage of life: but, forgiving the presumption of the boy in

All this while, however, my heart was ill at ease. I felt like one who goes into the field of battle, bearing the banner of his cause, without having learned to defend it. If we build our religion upon a false foundation, we make but a sorry edifice. Mine was a temple in which I found neither shelter nor repose, but rather a fantastic fabric, whose dizzy pinnacles threatened to fall and crush me in their ruins. Thus my days passed on. If I began to converse on religion, I often concluded by listening to love; and night invariably found me listless, weary, and unsatisfied. My pupil, too, began to exhibit points of character, of which I had not before suspected him. There was a degree of wounded pride with which he listened to my repeated refusals to become his wife, that frequently urged him on to the manly revenge of determined inebriation; while many of my enemies, and some of my friends, wondered at and blamed me, for my intimacy with a being so unrestrained and desperate. Still it was no easy thing to break entirely asunder the chain which linked us together, for all his best hopes both for this world and the next seemed bound up with me: and I had the vanity to believe, that in casting him off, I should most probably consign him to everlasting perdition.

Surrounded by dangers and quicksands on every hand, it never once occurred to me that I was pursuing a wrong course; but still I determined to struggle through, though I felt myself plunging deeper and deeper at every fruitless attempt; and when time and experience brought me to my senses, it was too late to extricate myself from the difficulties in which I was involved. In this manner years passed away.-My lover was confirmed in his habits of dissipation, and my friends had some of them become enemies, loud in their declamations against me, though I observed that when

ever they had an opportunity of receiving his attentions, they were disposed to be any thing but uncharitable towards him.

Disappointed in all my hopes, and hemmed in by difficulties, I endeavoured to seek from the only true source, that help which I ought to have solicited at an earlier stage of my blind and foolish career. I believe I was sincere; but, if I recollect right, I prayed more earnestly that I might be extricated from my present perplexities, than assisted to bend down my spirit in meekness and resignation, to the trials and troubles which followed as natural and inevitable consequences of the course I had chosen for myself.

You remember the tale of my being likely to marry a gentleman at that time residing abroad. It occupied a good deal of our thoughts and feelings; but neither you nor any other of my friends knew the reasons which induced me to consent to such a step. As regards the individual, he did not interest me deeply, only as he was connected with my hopes of emancipation from the thraldom of evil. I believed and still believe him to be an amiable character; but there were circumstances connected with our separation which did not reflect much credit on his name. My friends, consequently, congratulated me, and said, I had had an escape; while others laughed and said, I had had a disappointment. I tried to bear it with an air of philosophy, but all my efforts were vain. As regards the man, the case was comparatively neither aggravated nor cruel, for such things occur every day; but from a Christian friend-from one in whose society I had hoped to find benefit and instruction, I felt the blow, and almost fancied that my God had forsaken me. I had been buoyed up with the prospect of a happy and lasting union with one who would be willing and able to direct my steps aright, with what he persuaded me was a call to serious and imperative duties, away from the temptations which had long beset my path; but now, my spirit was smitten down and prostrate in the midst of its own desolation.

I know not how it is, but there are times when affection wins upon us with tenfold power. I had been willing to leave my home connections, almost entirely for the sake of escaping from all associations with him whose destiny seemed to be myste, riously linked with my own; but he bore the alteration in my prospects so nobly, and then, when he found me left behind and neglected came forward so generously with the same offer of faithful and unalterable attachment which I had so often rejected, that while my spirit writhed under the recent smart, while I fancied myself shut out from all help, either human or divine, I was the more reckless what I sacrificed for the sake of helping others, and in an evil hour I promised to become his wife.

Never shall I forget that day. It was in the month of December. A slight sprinkling of half-melted snow lay on the ground. A shrewd friend was staying with me, whose quick eye seemed to pierce into the secret recesses of my heart. "All things pertaining" to that time are written upon my memory, with a depth and distinctness not to be described; for such was the agony to which my feelings were wrought, that I almost wondered how the common affairs of human life could go on, without any one taking note of my calamity. But so it was.

I will not here trouble you with a relation of what took place preparatory to my melancholy union with one whose joy was beyond bounds, nor how keenly I felt the altered looks and constrained behaviour of those whom I knew to be in their hearts despising me. Had they spoken freely, I could have borne it better; for then there would have been something like a respite in their silence; but from this mute but perfectly intelligible kind of reproach, the heart has no intervals of relief; and I rejoiced at the coming of that day, after which I should be able to say to my conscience, "the Rubicon is now passed," I have no longer the power to return. It came at last; and I set off with my young husband to spend the honey-moon amongst the lakes and mountains of Cumberland.

After deliberately taking what we firmly believe to be a wrong step, we not unfrequently endeavour to console ourselves, and to quiet the whisperings of self-reproach, by doing double duty immediately afterwards; and, in this way, I diligently set about to work that reformation in my husband's heart and character, which I had promised myself should be the happy termination of my Christian labours.

For a short time every thing went on pleasantly enough, for we had no one to interrupt our gravity; his mind seemed willingly to take the tone of mine; and it was not difficult under such circumstances to draw forth even from him the often repeated quotation about looking

"From Nature up to Nature's God."

The first sabbath that we spent was at a small town on the banks of one of the most picturesque lakes in this delightful country; and here, thought I, we shall be able to acknowledge the sweet influence of peace, to enjoy communion with our own and each other's hearts, and to worship in the house of God together.

Perhaps I need not own to you that the prospect of being the wife of a clergyman, was the most powerful reason for my consenting to become Mrs. Henry Wilton; and the gravity and apparent attention with which I now saw my husband conduct himself during the service was a great solace to my heart. I had always considered that his high office would impose a wholesome restraint upon him, and that the respect he was accustomed to evince for the observances of religion, would draw him away from all evil communications. Alas! I had never reflected, perhaps I had never observed, how frail, and worse than frail, are all outward observances, when the thoughts and feelings of an unsubdued nature are rioting within.

On our return from church we were met

by a young man of no very promising aspect, who saluted my husband with the familiarity of a college acquaintance, and I had the mor

tification of hearing a cordial invitation for him to dine with us, as cordially accepted. Nay, he was even kind enough to join us in our ramble by the side of the lake, and when we called for a boat he very readily stepped in, and sat down beside us. It was not difficult to assign a character to my new acquaintance, a character more frequently found than admired; for although college slang was the only medium through which he condescended to convey his ideas, I understood enough and more than enough, even from what was to me an unknown tongue. He was the son of a London silk mercer, and bore about with him the certificate of his pedigree so clearly stamped upon his countenance, that you could scarcely look at him without picturing his father, the keen tradesman, glancing over his ledger, and his aunts and cousins running about from house to house, and from neighbour to neighbour, collecting receipts for sweet cakes, gravies, and Not but that

home-made wines.

"A man's a man for a' that."

But the descendant of this noble house endeavoured to distinguish himself by talking about the onɣyo,* and swearing at waiters, and looking big at inns, for he was evidently unacquainted with any other kind of great

ness.

At such a time, and in such a place, I could scarcely have been brought into contact with a being more repulsive to me, and what made his society infinitely more intolerable was, to see my husband completely led out of his better self, sharing in the vulgar volubility of this heartless, mindless, mockery of a man.

Relieved by any thing which brought a change, I was glad to return to the inn, and here, while the pleasures of the table were prolonged, I was compelled to listen to often

For an unlearned writer to make use of a Greek word, may well be thought a piece of unpardonable pre sumption; but surely the same apology may be repeated -that of painting from private life-from the number of

young men in the middle classes of society, who think

that a college education entitles them to make use of this

expression to distinguish themselves from the common people.