son-in-law, in agony, shook his hand and bade him farewell. He has not stirred a hair's breadth, his watery eyes are yet in fixity on the floor. He rises, and as if awakening from a dream of forgetfulness, hurries to the chamber of his broken-hearted child. "Alas! alas! exclaims he, "what a wretched man am I!"

The father stands by the couch of prostrate sorrow, he kisses gently, tenderly kisses her blanched cheek; she gives a shrill scream, ravingly tosses her arms, opens her eyes, and looks for an instant wildly around her. "James, James, my darling James! Great God! Oh! forgery-death, death!" Yes, these are harrowing accents, unconnected words, wellings from the cavern of grief. She has fallen again into slumber, hush! let her dream of sunlit days gone by, -tread with downy step, and wake her not. Gideon, that free flow of tears will happily relieve your congested brain-resume your chair, and check not those burning rills. The domestics are all kindness and tenderness, they watch over their young mistress, even with heart bleeding solicitude.

Time has worn away, and it is nearly seven o'clock; the shadows of night wax darker and darker, and the chamber of anguish is gloomier still. Gideon is yet seated in that bed-room, and Letitia is now in a slow, breathing, natural sleep. Her father looks out of the window, and he gazes distractedly at the evening star, which from the regions of the blessed is shedding its holy rays of serene and silvery light on a world now silent and sombre; and it verily seems a world of peacefulness and calm; but toil, and tribulation, and anguish, and death are there, yea, as "the poisonous henbane amongst sweet flowers!"

Hark! there is a timid ring at the halldoor bell. Who can it be? Gideon, don't startle, for surely this day can bring to you no other misfortune; we will excuse your anxiety, as with gentle step you descend the stair to ask of the comer.

Ah! Mr. Meek-worthy Mr. Meek, is it you! Verily are you of those who are an honour to our common nature! You think it better to go into the house of mourning

than into the house of riot and feasting. In the inward consolations, in the comfortyielding applause of your own heart, you doubtless have your reward. No sooner do you hear of this tremendous calamity, than you hurry off to proclaim the glad tidings that there is yet "balm in Gilead," and the thunder-words of Ezekiel's song are on your lips, "Cast away from you all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed, and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, O house of Israel!" Nay, nay, your visit needs not apology. squire is consoled by the friendliness of your call-he may, too, listen to what you say about the trials of this transitory scene; but alas! he has passed through life in the lamentable condition of spiritual deadliness; he has no secret support to fall back upon this trying hour-the matter-of-fact concerns of accumulation, and influence, and so forth, have constituted the grand, the absorbing, the all-in-all ideas of Gideon Clynchiere.

The

in

Religion, say you? He has observed the respectable custom of going to church; and

he has ever regarded the establishment as an institution admirably adapted for the machinery of good government, as decidedly beneficial in its relations to social order and general advancement; but as to its awestriking truths-as to those supernal realities -those momentous, eternal considerations bound up in its fearful declarations and glorious promises, they have never been themes of serious-of solemn contemplation with him; and the inspired pages of the faith he professed had been as little his study as the Talmud or the Koran.

learnt in any manner to put his

He had never

trust in the divine saying of the Hebrew of old-he has never learnt to "cast his bread upon the waters, in the hopes of finding it after many days." No-the present, the tangible, the appreciable, the mundane, have been the culminating points whither all thoughts concentrated, and all ennobling, lofty, souluplifting aspirations, to such he has been a stranger. But you have come, Mr. Meek, in the season of distress; and may your pious ministrations, as said Moses in the wilder

ness, "drop as rain, your speech distil as dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass;' " and Milton has finely told us

"Apt words have power to assuage The tumours of a troubled mind,

And are as balm to fester'd wounds."

Yea, well will it be if you produce these impressions on a heart which hath hitherto been so cold, so selfish, and so much wrapped up in its own interests and vanities! The barren soil may, after having long lain an unproductive waste, be made to give forth the purple clusters and the golden ears; and the tree that hath hitherto been a mere cumberer of the ground, may, under the late but vigorous husbandman, even yet bring forth good fruit!

In the course of ten days or a fortnight, Gideon determined on going to London. Letitia still kept her bed. Though the shock of this awful catastrophe had expended its first fury, yet the blighting effects were broadly apparent. The father would, had he consulted his own choice, have deferred the