This familiar Miscellany, from which religiousand politicalmatters are excluded, containsa variety of originalandselected Articles: comprehending Literature, Criticism, Men and Manners. Amusement, Elegant Extracts, Poetry, Anecdotes, Biography, Meteorology, the Drama, Arts and Sciences, Wit and Satire, Fashions, Natural History, &c. &c. forming a handsome Annual Volume, with an Indexand l'it e-page.-Its circulation renders it a most eligible medium for Advertisements. No. 315.-Vol. VII. The Philanthropist. INSTRUCTION OF THE DEAF AND DUMB. Every institution which has for its object the melioration of the condition of those most forlorn and destitute of our species who are deprived of the use of hearing and of speech, must possess strong claims to the sympathy and patronage of the philanthropist and the Christian. Never was human ingenuity more usefully employed than in devising the means by which our deaf and dumb fellowcreatures are enabled to communicate with each other, and with the rest of mankind; but the process is slow, tedious, and difficult, in proportion to the importance of the result; and too much praise cannot be bestowed upon those who have devoted themselves to the benevolent pursuit. Such an individual is our townsman, Mr. Comer, to whose unremitting and disinterested exertions Liverpool owes the honour of having at length an establishment for the instruction of the deaf and dumb. In the discharge of this most important task considerable expense and responsibility have been incurred, in which the public at large ought in fairness to participate. At a general meeting of the gentlemen favourable to the institution, held on Thursday last, in Slater-street, the Report, which we shall presently lay before our readers, was read, and the object of the meeting will be best understood by the annexed advertisement, which we here insert gratuitously, as our contributory mite to the subscription. INSTITUTION FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF the 42, WOOD-STREET, AND 28, FLEET-STREET. A of Gentlemen favourable The Chairman having opened the business of the Meeting, Based viz. with power to add to their number, viz. Mr. Robert Bickersteth, Mr. Thomas Kaye, Samuel Parkes, James Ryley, Jun. Edward Cropper, " Edward Dearman, Robert Russell, William Donald, Samuel Staniforth, Thomas Forsyth, William Tarlet, Adam Hodgson, Henry Wilson, Samuel Hope, " R. V. Yates. William Jones, 화 Mr. RICHARD RATHBONE, Treasurer. 1 That the Committee be requested to solicit the patro- TUESDAY, JULY 11, 1826. pupils and their master, which fully establish the fact, PRICE 324 no emolument from the pupils whose parents could afford to pay for their instruction. the opening of the school was about twenty; but they were The number of children and young persons admitted at soon reduced to twelve of the youngest, as the parents were generally too poor to do without the earnings of those who were old enough to get employment. The change in the appearance of these children was very soon apparent. Instead of the dull, stupid, heavy, Re-they soon became lively, cheerful, animated, and intellimonotonous countenances which they at first exhibited, gent. We shall now lay before the public Mr. Comer's REPORT. It was, said Mr. Comer, about three years since his at- The school opened on the 18th of January, 1825, under That, during the time that these interesting objects of our Christian sympathy have been at school, which, exclusive of the holidays, is scarcely fifteen months, the improvement they have made is such as to give the most cheering anticipations, that, by the time they have been at school an equal number of years to children attending other day schools, they will be sufficiently instructed in all that is essential for them to know, to qualify them for the proper fulfilment of the duties of life, and to enable them to become useful members of civil and religious sosaid it was only necessary to appeal to the observation of ciety. In proof that this expectation is well founded, he those who were present at the late examination of the pupils. On this occasion the children manifested a degree of intelligence, and an acquaintance with the rudiments of by children attending, for an equal length of time, at our learning, scarcely, if at at all, inferior to that possessed common schools. In addition to the twelve poor children, there had been for the last twelve months a young gentleman and his sister, from Oswestry, received as private pupils. The former had been, for four years previously, with Mr. Anderson, in Glasgow, and his parents were so much pleased with the rapid progress he had made, that, as soon as his health, which became impaired, was restored, they immediately placed him and his sister (whom he had instructed his at in this institution. these had hitherto been boarded in the dwelling-house already alluded to, in which was fixed a respectable female, under whose care it might with great confidence be recommended that children should be placed. dumb, in the way he had proceeded, merely as an experiThat, considering the attempt to instruct the deaf and ment, he had declined receiving more children into the school, until those first admitted had made that progress which would demonstrate to all impartial persons the practicability of teaching mutes in a school conducted on the same plan, and held during the same hours, as schools for the instruction of children who enjoy the inestimable blessing of speech. That the experiment had, he thought, fully succeeded, and when it was considered that the school had been under little or no patronage, had been left almost entirely to the management of the master, without the aid and assistance of an efficient committee; and that, in these respects, it had not enjoyed the advantages common to all our other charity schools; the result was quite as favourable as he could have expected. Much credit was certainly due to Mr. Anderson, for his assiduity and attention to his pupils, whose entire confidence he seemed to possess. ations and additions, amounted to rather more than £1600, That the first cost of the buildings, including the alterand the current expenses of the establishment, since its commencement, to £425, towards which £30 had been received for the education of the two private pupils, together with unsolicited donations amounting to £200. In conclusion, he said, that, in compliance with the wish of several ladies and gentlemen who had witnessed the anxious that the benefits of the institution should be exprogress of the children's improvement, and who were into the hands of such gentlemen as may be appointed a tended as far as it is possible, he now offered to transfer it committee for its future management. The Bouquet. "I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them." MONTAIGNE. Having lately had occasion to consult the last number of the London Magazine, for the pupose of commenting upon an article which appeared in that work on the subject of John Dunn Hunter, the great traveller, or soi disant great traveller, we took the opportunity of perusing the other contents of the Magazine, and were so much entertained with the Suicide, that we immediately made up our minds to lay aside some prepared communication tended for this day's Kateidoscope, in order that we might lay before our readers the whole of this very amusing, instructive, and well-written story.-Edit. Kal. THE SUICIDE. free to make my final election. My father further tered into a treaty with me, to allow me, during period, at the rate of £200 a year, while I punctually attended the office, but in default of attendance the allo ance was to be stopped. These arrangements having be made, I was packed off to London, having only just had time to snatch a parting interview with Louisa Daventry in which I vowed never to be an attorney's clerk, and mutually swore to preserve unshaken constancy. It is unnecessary to tell the reader that I of coun imputed the vexatious resolution of my father to machinations of my stepmother; and also failed not lay to her account a kind of hint that Louisa's father Sir Toby, had given me, that my visits to his house were favours which he should value more highly if they we rarer. My stepmother, however, had in truth nothing do either with the one affair or the other, for she w harmless, inoffensive being, possessed of one all-absorbing wish, which was to increase the family of the Squanderin A desire which, however natural, Providence, in its merc did not vouchsafe to gratify. were all gone,-anticipated by my brothers; and now be gan my troubles, and the vexatious affair which led to the remarkable incident that is the main subject of this paper. One of my father's earliest and fastest friends was Mr. W. an eminent London solicitor. Business brought this worthy man to our part of the country just at the time that the peace had thrown my brother Charles back on my father's hands a half pay ensign, and also my brother James a no-pay midshipman, and that my brother John had returned from college to take up his abode in the paternal mansion till a stall should be opened to him by a Whig admininistration. At this happy moment of reunion, Mr. W. became our guest, and professionally acquainted as he was with my father's affairs, the sight of his board, so graced with well-grown sons from barrack, sea, and in-college-not to mention nine daughters, whose pink sashes alone must have required half a mile of ribbon-filled him with a friendly concern. My three brothers had their professions; I alone was unprovided for, and there was a sobriety in my air which found favour in the eyes of our guest. The truth is, that I was naturally a romantic, melancholy lad, and at this particular period a little affair While on my journey to London I consoled myself un of sentiment had deepened this complexion to a very der all my cares with the idea of the many pleasurses that respectable seriousness of deportment. So favourable was awaited me in the capital; but after the novelty of the impression I produced on Mr. W. that a few days first two or three days had worn off, I cannot describe how after he had left us for London, a letter arrived from him much, and in how many small points of comfort I de containing an offer to my father, couched in the handplored the change in my habits of life. I had no acquain somest terms, to take me into his house as an articled clerk tance in London excepting M. W. whom I looked on as without the usual premium; and concluding with an in- | professional quiz, and his family were not in town: as f timation that in good time he would take me also into the clerks in his office, it was enough for me that they his firm. My father considered my fortune as made, but were clerks-I was a Squanderly. Then I had exchanged there was a sound in the word clerk that did not please me; a good house; a genteel, sufficiently furnished, though it seemed to confound me with excisemen's clerks, par- not handsome table, and the society of a large and always son's clerks, and all the other clerks that I could think of cheerful family, for a lodging up two pair of stairs in a in the town of D. At all events, thought I, Louisa little street called Gloucester street, Queen square, and a Daventry must be consulted before I accede to this dero- solitary meal on a blackened tough chop, or an impreg gatory proposal: I don't like it I am free to confess, but nable beef-steak. Every thing was squalid within, and I will hear what she says. And that very evening Louisa melancholy without. I thought of our dear skies and Daventry was consulted, and never shall I forget her pleasant fields, and sighed at the view of dull, dirty houses, look of absolute horror as she exclaimed, "An attorney's and a dun-coloured canopy of smoke over head, which es clerk! What! and wear short black gaiters!" The cluded the sight of even a cloud fresh from the country. affair was finished! I resolved firmly, and swore to From sheer ennui I took to the office for a few days, br Louisa, never to be classed with a body of men chargeable when there I was expected to share in its duties, and with short black gaiters! But knowing my father's pre-hated the look of the parchments more than the view d judices in favour of the road to wealth, and that he did the smoke buildings of Gloucester-street, and found copy not view short black gaiters in the same light with Louisa ing an indenture more intolerable than the solitude of m and myself, I returned home full only of the honour of dingy apartment. This did not last long. I began our family, and represented to him that it would be highly haunt the theatres at night, (the first step in the Raff unbecoming that one of the ancient house of Squanderly progress,) and to read novels and romances in the day should become an attorney's clerk. My father very coolly abandoned Mr. W.'s altogether, killed time, spent m answered that our ancient house could no longer keep our money, ran in debt, and got letters of reproach from ancient family; that, in short, he could not support me father, nay, even from my brothers. To make short in idleness, and that I must accept of Mr. W.'s offer or the discreditable details, at last I received a resolute wan remain a burden to my family; a thing, which, in justice ing from my father, that if I did not resume my attend to my sisters, he could not permit. He told me, further, ance at Mr. W.s, and make up my mind to avail myse to be under no sort of uneasiness about the honour of the of the means offered of procuring my bread, justice to th family, reminding me that I was only a younger son, and other members of his family required that he should with that my eldest brother was charged with the maintenance draw my allowance, and leave me to pursue my ow of our house's dignity, while I was free to get rich as I course. This communication somewhat shocked me; b could, like other younger brothers. With all respect II thought of Louisa, and resolved to suffer the last extr intimated to him that he was entirely in error in his view mity rather than degrade myself in her bright eyes. of the matter, and that my regard to the name of the therefore persevered in the cause which had drawn do Squanderlys must compel me to disobey his commands. my father's displeasure, and after the lapse of a fortnig I observed on the baseness of making sacrifices to wealth, received from him the following letter:and quoted such passages from the classics as my educa tion had stored me with in disparagment of riches. My father's good opinion of wealth remained unshaken, however, and he was wholly unmoved by my citations. I dared not quote my best authority, Louisa, nor could I urge the black gaiters; this was, I felt, an argument for refined souls, and somehow or other, with every respect for my father, I knew that it would be worse than thrown away on him. My father was a Shropshire country gentleman, who, to an ancient descent and narrow income, added the blessing of a family of thirteen children. My mother having died in giving birth to the thirteenth of us, he married a second wife, whose single misfortune it was, as she used feelingly to lament, to have no offspring. My father, though a tender husband, bore this dispensation without repining; reconciled, no doubt, in some degree to it, by the daily cheering sight of thirteen rosy boys and girls, of all ages and sizes, seated at six o'clock in full health, appetite, and activity, at the long mahogany dining-table. This consoling spectacle was strongly backed by the butcher's weekly bills, which reminded our parent punctually every Saturday morning, that Heaven had already done much for him in respect of progeny, and sent him to church on Sunday perfectly resigned to the barrenness of his second lady. These considerations operating on a naturally contented mind, indeed, so weighed with my father, that instead of sharing in my stepmother's distress at having no children by his second marriage, he appeared solicitous about nothing so much as how to dispose of that ample stock which he had been blessed with by his first. It happened, unfortunately, to our house, as to many other good houses, that while our honours had increased with time, our fortunes had waned with it; years, which had steadily added to the antiquity of our name, had as regularly abstracted from the rents and profits of the domain; the genealogical tree shot its roots deep, and spread its branches far and wide, but the oaks were felled, and there was as much parchment on the land as would have sufficed for all the pedigrees of the Welsh principality. When my father came into the possession of the estate, a prudent wife and genteel economy just enabled him to support the dignity of Place; he kept fewer servants, fewer horses, saw less company, than his father before him; but still the establishment was on a creditable and comfortable footing. As my mother, however, successsively blessed him year after year with some one of us, matters began to wear another aspect; it became necessary to pare things closer and closer, and by the time that I, the seventh child and fourth son, had arrived at my full appetite, it was necessary to practise the most rigid economy, in order to keep half an ox on our table for our daily meal, and two or three clowns in livery behind our chairs, to change our plates and fill our glasses. Had our wants stopped here, all would have been comparatively well, but being gentlemen of name in the county, it was essentially necessary to us that we should do as others of our own rank did; we were all, accordingly, for hunting, racing, cocking, attending balls, music meetings, &c. and miserably was my poor father importuned to provide the means of our various indispensible amusements. this state of things, it was not surprising that his most earnest wish was to see us strike root into the pockets of the people" in some way. But he was a Whig, unfortunately, and could therefore do no more than put us in the right path against a favourable turn in public affairs; which, in the vulgar phraseology, is the turn out of the opposite party, and the turn in of one's own. My eldest brother, John, took orders that he might be ready for a living; the second, Charles, got, through the friendly interest of our Tory neighbour Sir Marmaduke Boroughly, an ensigncy in the 60th foot; James went into the navy with a view to a ship when our friends should come in, and, poor fellow, he is at this day a midshipman of twelve years' standing. Unluckily, having come into the world after my three brothers, I found, when my time arrived, that all the best things were disposed of. The Whig bishopric in expectancy, the staff appointment, the ship, In I need not describe the details of the contest; my father was what I called obstinate, and I what I called firm. The substance of the argument between us might be summed up in these common forms of disputation," you shall,” and “I won't.” Through the kindness of a friend, Mr. W. was duly informed of the gracious reception I had given to his kind offer, and of the consequent dispute raging between father and son. On learning these circumstances, he wrote at once to my father, entreating him to put no force on the young gentleman's inclinations, regretting that his proposal, meant for the best, should have occasioned domestic uneasiness, and hoping that no more would be thought about the matter. My father, however, who, having succeeded in getting so many children, knew the advantage of getting rid of thein, replied to such effect as to bind Mr. W. to his offer, but with this proviso-that I should go up to town and attend the office of Mr. W. regularly for six months, after which time I should be Henry, As I hear that my last admonition has not You duced you to present yourself at Mr. W.'s, I must take it I have children eno with claims on the allowanee which has been for some mon thrown away on you. From this moment cease to expee We all wish you well, and success in the scheme of life have resolved on pursuing, whatever it may be. J. I thought that I had long made up my mind to worst consequences of my disobedience, but it seemed this letter opened my eyes for the first time to my u helplessness, when abandoned to my own resources. debts (small, very small, as they really were) first occu to me-how were they to be discharged? how coul meet the applications of my creditors? how could Squanderly, endure the insolence of these importu people, an insolence of which I had already had a san or two?-then, how was I to support myself, how to ply my daily wants? I knew not how a stiver was earned. could hunt, shoot, draw a badger, fight a t of cocks, with any youth of my age in the kingdom; though thus accomplished in my proper sphere. I sessed no one kind of knowledge or skill on which t at a price. "How am I to live?" was the question; low; but it were cowardly to economise, when death And say, when summoned from the world and thee, 66 • ing them my forgiveness, and my debts. I set out at about three, on a mild but blowy December day, and walked from my lodgings to Millbank, thence on to Chelsea; for though it was high-water, and the river ran deep at Millbank, I passed on, preferring, I don't exactly know why, the more distant Battersea-bridge for my fatal plunge. When I arrived at the bridge, the evening was fast closing in, the tide had turned to the ebb, and was sweeping ra pidly through the wooden arches, curled, blackened, and hurried, by a brisk south-westerly wind. I thought myself ready for my leap; I first turned to the western side of the bridge, but that aspect did not suit my deed. There was still a good deal of light in the West, and as the breeze raised the clouds from the horizon, and chased them on, a momentary change of scene from quickly vary. ing light and shadow was produced, which did not harmonize with my purpose. Those clouds seemed to carry my thoughts from gloom and death to the pleasant home of my youth. Many an evening, on returning from a Though there certainly was nothing in me that seemed day's hunting or shooting, I had delighted to imagine particularly born for the skies," yet I failed not to apply them thus sweeping over, on their long, long journey, to the sentiment to my intended untimely fate; and the big hang over the sailor's storm-tossed ship, and lend their tears coursed down my cheeks, while Miss Tree breathed gloom to the horrors of the tempest. I turned from the the sweet air with that soul and expression for which she west to the east side; here all was blackness and haze; I sing that song, and that song only, when I should be gone; foot on the rail, and fixed my eye on the whirling black was so justly celebrated. I thought that Louisa should resolved not to hesitate another moment; I placed my forgetting at the instant that Louisa did not sing; and eddies below, which seemed to my then excited imagi requiring, in my own mind, that she should practically nation as the smiles on the face of a fiend laughing at my belie the injunction of it, by weeping the whole time. On destruction. A thought perfectly ridiculous then occurred leaving the theatre I was too sleepy to think of suicide. to me. I have said that I could not swim. I thought, The next day I read the Sorrows of Werter, wrote a letter then, I shall sink at once; and while yet full of life, I to Louisa, and cut off a large lock of my hair, which I shall struggle, perhaps stand, and walk, on the slimy bed enclosed in it. On the third day my money was getting of the river, with the waters pouring and rushing by over low, and I thought of the choice of deaths. Shooting was my head. I don't know why, but this idea was full of out of the question, for I had no pistols; and if I had horror to me; I was prepared to die by drowning, but not had any, I conceived that there would be an ugly crunch, with my feet on earth. Had the water been a hundred like the drawing of a tooth, and perhaps a lingering pain- fathoms deep, I thought I could have made the plunge I was at that time as strong as a horse, and, like Tony ful death, which I felt extremely anxious to spare myself. without hesitation; but the apprehension of feeling my Lumpkin, never coughed except when my liquor went the Throat-cutting I disapproved also, for I was habitually a natural, while destroyed by another, element, was terrible; wrong way; but, nevertheless, it pleased my sentimental neat man in all things, and I did not like to make a mess and having looked at the water for two or three minutes, soul to imagine myself fated to early death by consump-in my lodgings; the sensation of the gash, too, I fancied during which time the idea gathered strength, I turned tion; and I recited these lines with all the eloquence of a might possibly stay one's hand, for I could, by no means, away, walked off the bridge through the toll-gate, instead lover, and the peculiar tenderness of one anticipating his dismiss my tenderness for my flesh. The idea of drown- of the way I had projected, and took the nearest way home. own demise. Louisa was moved, and sunk sobbing on ing pleased me most, for I delighted in the water, and As I approached my lodgings I became birterly ashamed my shoulder. I triumphed in those tears; and it afforded thought that death would come most endurably in the shape of myself-I felt that a tragic resolution had been defeated me at this period an indescribable satisfaction to think, of a bath. I was no swimmer, too. So much the better. by a most absurd and fantastic idea. I had determined to that the desperate expedient I contemplated would cause On drowning, therefore, I resolved. It may seem odd, drown myself, and changed my purpose because the them again to flow in sorrow for my too real and too but it is, nevertheless, true, that, in considering the means thought of struggling in the mud occurred to me! I re tragic fate. Yes, I thought, my death will put its sad I escaped all thought of the catastrophe itself. I had de- solved to drown myself the next day. When I got home seal on her young affections She will never love another termined to die, and pondered on the mode; but the thing I took tea, dinner I did not choose to afford myself, and I -No! She will pass the remainder of her blameless itself, death, occupied no portion of my thoughts. I had ate several rounds of toast, just as if I had not been a man life in retirement, and "think on all my love and all my resolved to put out the light, and reflected seriously whe-whose mind was set on suicide, and who was about to play woe." The thought was luxury to me. The thought of the ther I should clap the extinguisher on it, or snuff, or blow his part in a grand and sad tragedy, for so I considered it. late regrets of my family also pleased me. I felt that they it out, or turn it down in the socket, or ram it against the had every thing to answer for; it was their selfishnes that wall, or quench it in a basin of fair water; but I had never made me a suicide. In my own judgment I stood clear troubled myself with any idea of the consequent darkness. of all blame. I never cast the slightest reproach to my Death was a mere word to me: but words were every own account. I looked upon myself as an injured, per- thing to me. It was the word degradation which led me secuted being, driven to death by the base, worldly, sordid to the remedy death. I had quarrelled with the profession covetings of my kinsmen. I cannot express how I com- allotted to me, because I should bear the name of clerk; passionated myself, and how affectionately I took my own about the thing I never troubled my head, the sound had part. The best friends in the world have found something irresistible power; and that, and Louisa Daventry's conmiss in my conduct; they all, on such occasions, find ception of attorneys, as black-gaitered men, had given the faults on both sides; but I myself was my own best friend, colour of my destiny. These names had led me to the and I found no fault on my side. I was as magnani- brink of destitution; and nothing stood between me and mous to myself as Hector is to Helen, in the Iliad. I the word degradation, but the word death. But though I never blamed the main cause of the calamity. I gene- did not think deeply of death, I thought it a pitiable thing rously carried my reproaches and my wrath elsewhere. that I should die; and I lamented myself, and grieved Of course, my poor innocent stepmother came in for a over myself, with a true and tender sorrow. Being alone handsome portion of both. Many a night, after having privy to my own intended demise, I was, as it were, my burned with indignation at her imagined machinations, I own chief mourner; and I conscientiously believe that the have been softened to tears by contemplating my own office was never more sincerely or affectionately filled. My distress; and have wept over myself with the tenderness poor stock of money was flying much quicker than a of a mother weeping over the sufferings of an innocent weaver's shuttle; there was, therefore, no time to lose, babe. It is astonishing how affliction endears us to our- more especially as I had some secret distrusts, which I heselves. If what Sheridan says of woman is, as I believe sitated to confess even to myself, of my own resolution. I it is, true that a woman never loves a man with passion dreaded lest want and misery should bind me to existence, tul she has suffered for his sake; it is no less true, that as I had observed that men always cling to life with a tewe never love ourselves with full fervour till we have nacity inversely proportioned to its worth. Give a man suffered for our faults. A man is his best friend; there health and vigour, and he will be ready to throw up his is nobody that feels so much for him as he feels for him- life for a straw: fix him to the bed of sickness, blind his self; and there is nobody who espouses his quarrels with eyes, dull his senses, paralyse his body, make him a cripthe same zeal and blind spirit of partisanship. ple, helpless to himself and burdensome to others, and he Having now determined on self-destruction as the only cherishes his maimed existence with frightful earnestness, means of avoiding want, misery, and degradation, the and contemplates, with horror, the robber Death, who time for carrying my resolution into effect was the only has little to deprive him of but his pains. The seremaining point to be settled. I was in no immediate cret dread of sinking to this abject pass, made me I would not willingly, methinks, lose sight harry to be cruel to my flesh. While I had the means of hasten to my measures: like a child taking physic, I Of a departing cloud. living, I thought there was no reason for dying; but I felt the policy of a hasty gulp; and, in the afternoon of Painters know the value of clouds, but unfortunately determined not to put the deed off to the last moment, or the third day since the date of my tragical resolve, I went they cannot paint them moving; they can only seize the ather to the last pound. In my treasury I found only forth with the purpose never to return, having left a packet ing ever-varying effects. They are incessantly shading and one effect: but the great virtue of clouds, is that of produc three pounds and some silver. My sand, thought I, runs for Louisa, and a short letter for my family, bequeath-colouring the objects beneath them. The next day I rese late, made additions to my letter to Louisa, read Werter till nearly four, and then again went forth to do the deed, but having had enough of Battek sea, I chose not to go farther than Millbank this time While looking out for a proper spot, I saw two genteel lads engaged in a row with some drunken blackguards, who were hustling and bullying them; I believe that I word, and I interfered now more boldly in the affray than never wanted courage in the common acceptation of the perhaps I should have done at another season and in another frame of mind. After a few blows and more words, the ruffians sheered off, the youths were all gratitude, and we walked together to Westminster; when we parted, suicide was as much out of my head as if it had never been in it. I again found my way to my last home in Blooms I have stated that I was a romantic youth; and I believe, without meaning a bad pwn, that the heads of all romantic youths are a good deal in the clouds: that is to say, if they are brought up in the country; for town-bred smoke and clouds of dust. But to us country-folks, who people appear to have no idea of any clouds, except clouds of are at all tinctured with fancy, the clouds furnish an evervarying prospect; and not only do they vary themselves, would grow stale to our eyes but for their passing touches of and very beautifully, but they vary our landscape, which light and shade. People talk of the sky of Italy; it is doubtless fine to look at once, but the landscape under it, however beautiful, must want variety, and a changing expression. Living in it, must be like being wedded to a beautiful woman who wants play of feature, and whose brightest charms become insipid from sameness. I love our bold fleecy clouds, whose constant motions give an appearance of life to our skies. Wordsworth is the only poet who has made any use of the clouds. In his Excursion, this beautiful thought is suggested by a solitary spot -In such a place Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb, In life's early beauty hath hid from our eyes; bury, and did not feel ashamed of my postponement of the execution of my purpose this time as I did before. My gallantry in the affray assuring me of my courage. But after this I thought no more of drowning, persuading myself that there was a fatality against it. The conclusion of this day brought me to my last shilling, but instead of running out my last sand with it as I had projected, I bethought myself of two or three arti. cles of jewellery, of small value, which I possessed, and I resolved to sell them, and to live a day or two longer on the money. This I did; how I lived I care not to tell; suffice it to say, I sought distraction in every possible way. On Christmas-day I came to my last dollar, and a melancholy day it was. The excitement which I had produced for some hours past, by artificial means, had given place to the usual consequent depression: my purse was just exhausted the people at my lodgings looked suspiciously on me; my duns threatened me for the morrow: I was alone in this great city, without a hope for the future, or a friend to cheer the present moment. I remained for many hours in an agony of misery. At one instant I thought of throwing myself on my family, and, if necessary, conceding to their wishes; but when I reflected on the high tone I had assumed, and the firm resolution I had professed, a resolution on which I extravagantly piqued myself, I fancied that it would be the height of meanness in me to succumb. I had in truth vapoured a good deal; I had played the hero of romance to the life. I had filled the glass; I must drink it, thought I. Louisa Daventry shall lament, but never despise me. To a friendless, unconnected man, in a large city, a great festival which draws together each domestic circle, and leaves the stranger alone, solitary-is a melancholy occasion. To me, destitute, full of sad thoughts, and desperate resolution, it was a day of bitterness indeed. I saw gladness all around me, and felt misery within. Every sign of cheerfulness quickened the sense of my own forlorn condition. I envied every creature that met iny sight, for I fancied that every creature but myself made one welcome guest in some dear circle. I was no where linked in this vast social chain. The thought was bitterness to me, and it afflicted me more than my poverty and its attendant miseries. I have hinted that I was the creature of sentiment, and thrown as I had been, suddenly, out of the fostering bosom of a family, on the cold wide world, it may not be difficult to understand my feelings. About the middle of the day my landlady came up stairs, and in that peculiar voice and manner which are produced in landladies by an unpaid bill, asked me whether I did not dine out, taking care to remind me at the same time that it was Christmas day. I told her I did, and at hout four o'clock I left the house, intending to walk about till night, when I purposed to end all my earthly troubles and mortifications. The evening was close and heavy, a drizzling rain fell now and then, and every thing out of doors looked blank and gloomy. As if to seek out a place more melancholy under these circumstances than another, I unconsciously took the way to the city, and strolled for some time through its filthy, and, at this season, deserted streets; thence I crossed London Bridge, and passed from the Borough into Saint George's Fields; the squalor and misery of this district would at another period have disgusted me, but now I felt more at home there than any where else. There was no appearance of any thing social or cheerful here to shock me by contrast. Hence wandered to Westminster, and as it began to rain smartly as I passed over the bridge, I made that accident a pretext for taking a seat under one of the covered recesses on that bridge. Here also was a woman rather advanced in life, and of a genteel, but very subdued air; her clothes, which seemed scanty and unsuited to the season-a light shawl and silk petticoat-were dripping wet, and I looked upon her with compassion as a sister in calamity; she avoided looking on me at all. She had a little girl with her whom she held by the hand, and during the time that I was in their company, not a word was exchanged between them; the child gazed up intently in the woman's wan face sometimes, but neither spoke a syllable. I thought they seemed numbered with misery. The only action of the mother, if such she was, was to pass her hand frequently over the child's clothes, and to endeavour to wring the moisture from them. The dollar m my pocket I could not part with; it was reserved to purchase my death, and I could not bestow it to support the lives of these poor creatures. When the rain ceased, the watchman came and desired us to move on, and the woman hurried away with an alarmed air, as if a being apparently so sunk in misery had still something to dread. We went in opposite directions. After having walked so many miles in darkness, I heard, to my amazement, the cry of past eight o'clock; I thought it should be near midnight, and it seemed to me that there would be no end of this dismal night. Foot sore, drenched with rain, and exhausted, I resolved to make now for my lodgings, and on my way I went into a chymist's near Bloomsbury, and asked for an ounce of oxalic acid to clean boot tops. The man looked at me, I fancied, as much as to say, you are above cleaning boot-tops, and below wearing such smart gear. He, however, weighed out the quantity, wrote- OXALIC ACID-POISON," on the paper, and extended it towards me without any observation. I took the packet with a steady hand, and having before laid the dollar down on the counter, was about to leave the shop without receiving the change. He called me back, reminding me of my omission, to my some small confusion. I had no farther use for these poor coins, and on my way to my home I looked out for some object on whom to bestow them. I met with none, however; I seemed to myself the only miserable creature walking the streets on that night, so joyous to the rest of the world, and joyless to me. My knock at the door of my lodgings was answered by the servant of the house: she was in truth a Maritornes such as is common to lodging-houses; but as she opened the door to me for the last time, and lit and handed me my candle, I invested her with that sort of adventitious dignity which belongs even to the humblest performers in a great tragedy-my dark destiny seemed to shed a romantic colour on the commonest and vulgarest objects around me. The woman, who was dirty, careless, and stupid, had never been in favour with me; on the contrary, indeed; but now I was softened even towards her, and as she performed these homely little offices for me for the last time, I felt moved, absurd as it may sound, and thanking her with a voice of kindness, told her that I was ill, and therefore going early to bed. Truth compels me to say that she appeared perfectly unconscious that her part at this instant, mean as it was, was one in tragedy, and she wished me good night, just as if I had been a man destined to see the morning. When in the room it struck me that I should want some warm water to dissolve my oxalic acid, and I rang the bell, which was answered by my landlady's daughter. She came up, I knew, in order to display the finery which she were in honour of the day. I thought, You little know what is passing in the mind of the man whose eye you would surprise with these miserable gauds." She was no more fitted for the part of witness to a romantic catastrophe than the maid, for she was plain and squinted; but these are after thoughts-at the time I had no such trash in my contemplation. While the girl was fetching the water I strode up and down the room in some perturbation of spirits. This was the most painful interval in the whole of that terrible day to me. The impossibility of facing the morrow, had completely braced me for my deed before, but this pause at the very point of execution, seemed to relax my purpose why, I knew not. In a minute, however, the girl returned with the warm water, and asked me, when about to retire, at what hour I would be called in the morning? I felt a choking sensation as I replied-" At the usual hour." She then left the room, giving that slam to the door which reminds a lodger that he has not paid his bill. A moment's communing with myself, shame for my perturbation, and an appeal to my pride, restored me to my resolution, and I was again strung for my purpose. I walked deliberately to the table, mixed the dose, shaking the last grains of the powder from the paper into the glass, and then set it on the looking-glass stand to cool. I then walked up and down the room, composed, and to the best of my recollection perfectly thoughtless-my mind was either vacant, or so loaded that it had lost its action. When I concluded that the draught was sufficiently cool, I walked up to the toilet, took it, and raised it to my lips with a steady hand; at this instant my eye rested on the reflection of my own face in the mirror, and I felt proud of its composure, and pleased to look on it while I drained the deadly draught. This done, I set down the glass with a firm hand, and again walked up and down the room, with some confusion of thought going on in my mind, but no pain or apprehension-those feelings had had their day; they were now gone. Being weary, after a time I laid down on the bed, waiting the action of the poison, and comforting myself with the reflection that the pain would be short, that it would soon be over, and I at peace. Louisa Daventry, I remember, and my family, did not fill much of my thoughts, which were all centered in my self: my anxiety was all about myself, and how I should bear my sufferings, and whether my courage would hold out as the shadow of death darkened my intellect. Strange as it may seem, while thus meditating, my ideas wandered, and a doze came over me, and I slumbered, I should imagine for nearly an hour; on waking suddenly, I felt the common shock of recollection under calamitous circumstances, and wondered that my body was still at ease, as the long wick of the candle showed me that doze had not been short. It will last me out, I thoug and I continued for about half an hour gazing at the light and fancying the likenesses of fantastic forms in gloom beyond it, while the wind howled, and the pattered against my window. Then, for the first tim felt some twinges of pain, which admonished me that enemy was at work, and which increased gradually in lence, till I suffered what I knew to be the usual opera of poison. I thought now of nothing but my pains, perceived that the work of death was by no means dignity corresponding with its horror. The process gri my flesh, and shocked my sentiment. As the pains g sharper I began to repent of what I had done, wishi undone or over, and frequently examined my puls ascertain the exhaustion of my strength-other pains fancies then possessed me. But I must draw a veil the scene here, for even at this distance of time, there circumstances in it which cannot bear to remem much less to commit to paper. My groans, groans more of mental than of phys suffering, at last alarmed some part of the family; my landlady's daughter tapped at the door and asked whether I was ill? No answer being returned, she of ed the door and repeated her inquiry; I replied "L me alone-leave me alone-I have taken poison-leav to die in peace.' On this she uttered a loud scream, t rushed to the head of the stairs, and stood screaming t till the whole family, which had sat up carousing, brought to the spot. In answer to their questions al the cause of the uproar, she only screamed, and at let to explain the matter more clearly, went into hyste After the lapse of some valuable minutes, when they found that nothing was to be learnt from her, the ma of the house, a coarse fellow, applied to me to inform what had happened, and I told it to him pretty nearl the same words in which I had told it to his daughter. received the intelligence differently. "A pretty busi this here," said he, "I would not have had such a th to happen in the house-no, not for a thousand pound And then off he went, as he said, for the doctor. I fai told him it would be of no use-that human aid w not avail; but I must confess that I felt no disposition offer any vehement resistance to the experiment. My was now surrounded by the members of the family, ceased not to ask me how I came to do such a thing, to admonish me of the sinfulness of the action; at same time that they seemed full of the most te anxiety to alleviate my bodily pains. Indeed, such their zeal for me, that but for the good sense of a vis they would have made me swallow all the sallad oil w there happened to be in the cruet stand, on the strengt its antidotical reputation, without waiting the arriv the doctor. After the lapse of about a quarter of an which seemed to me an age, the apothecary arrived, having very sensibly commenced business by clearing room, he asked me what the poison was, the quantity, how long I had taken it. I told him what it was, quantity, and that I took it at about nine; he pulled his watch, looked at the time-half past twelve, and l ed grave. "What did you take it in ?"-I replied po ing to the glass on the toilet. He walked up to it I thought, with strange deliberation, and unfeeling c posure, and seeing the paper on the table, took it up, the inscription, and dropped it with a manner which to my heart, and made my teeth chatter in my head then felt, for the first time, the horror of death. then seemed, for the first time, to feel that I was ind dying,-fated in a few quick minutes to cease to be,passing bitter was that moment of agony! Still I watc the apothecary, as if my last shadow of hope rested on uncouth person. Having laid down the paper as I described, he immediately took up the glass-and period, short as it was, was the period which contained me an age of anguish-he dipped his little finger in moisture at the bottom of the glass, carried it to his 1 tasted it, and looked surprised,-tasted it again, an burst into a loud laugh! My blood boiled against monster, but before I could find words, he said, come, young gentleman, there is no harm done after Here has been a lucky mistake. You have taken a of Epsom salts instead of oxalic acid, and it will cool y blood and do you a great deal of good, and you will all the better for it to-morrow, and thankful that you alive and kicking. Say your prayers, thank God for his mercies, and go to sleep. Good night." And v these words, and a ha! ha ha! he closed the door. a minute the whole house rang with the same soun every creature was giggling and chuckling, and I he their smothered titters as they passed the door. "Co From an agony of dread I now passed instantaneou to an agony of shame. My tragedy had, in a seco |
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