in the neighbourhood, I found reason to applaud the line of conduct I had pursued, for (setting aside the idea of a mutual attachment, which I confess never occurred to my imagination) truth obliges all who know them to confess, that few French officers are, in manners or principles, such as a parent of ordinary prudence would wish to introduce into his family.

A young Italian, however, recently enrolled under the French standard, formed a striking exception to the petulance, the brutality, or the coxcombry of his French companions, and powerfully interested me by his expressive countenance, his deep dejection, and the exquisite skill and taste which (though with evident reluctance, conquered only by his desire to oblige) he occasionally displayed in the bewitching music of his country. Till I met Ludovisi, I entertained the popular error, that Italian music, calculated for the exhibition of mere science and execution, (and indeed too often in England perverted to that soie object,) was little fitted to affect the heart, and to express its every emotion, from the effusions of an irresistible gaiety, to the accents of the most contagious melancholy. But when, after dissolving a breathless auditory into tears by one of those simple national airs, the melancholy cadences of which too well recalled his absent country, he suddenly chased these emotions and his own by the playful strains of a beacarolle, I first owned the power of a music which has no rival in the world; and, perhaps, naturally enough conceived the wish of imparting to the exquisite voice of my Constance, somewhat of this magical influence.

With this view I studied the character of the young Italian, and found in his conversation abundant proofs of a liberal education, and an amiable disposition. His family, he rather incidentally than ostentatiously mentioned, was among the noblest in Verona, but reduced by a series of misfortunes, and particularly by the opposition of his father to the French usurpation, to comparative indigence. On the death of Signor Ludovisi, and after all efforts to preserve Italy from the French yoke had failed, the young man, to contribute to the comfort and support of his surviving parent, had been induced, reluctantly, to accept a commission in an Italian

corps destined to co-operate in a distant expedition, by joining which he hoped to reap glory, and escape the sight of his country's humiliations. Political opinions, as well as the gentleness of his manners and refinement of his pursuits, tended to estrange him from the society of his companions in captivity, and the recent loss of his mother, by increasing his despondence, increased my sympathy for a grief so natural and unaffected. The early lessons of this lamented parent had, I was happy to perceive, proved as yet a complete antidote against the infidelity of his companions, while the good sense of an enlightened mind escaped the opposite weakness of superstition.

Foreseeing (as I thought) from all these observations, little danger to the mind or morals of my child, from an occasional intercourse, which promised many advantages towards the completion of her education in those points most difficult to be supplied at a distance from London, I ventured to give Ludovisi first a particular, and then a general invitation, his delicacy and reserve in availing himself of which, confirmed my favourable opinion.Music and Italian literature were of course the chief topics in these preliminary visits, and I perceived with parental pride, that my daughter's proficiency in both astonished, as well as interested Ludovisi, and paved the way for a request as delicately made as it was gratefully acquiesced in, that he would devote to their perfection a little of that redundant leisure of which he feelingly complained.

Although little entitled to claim the praise of penetration or sagacity, I nevertheless think I should have been struck with anything like those sudden prepossessions which young people, thus thrown together, have sometimes conceived for each other: but no such symptoms were visible. Difference of country, of religion, and of fortune, made Ludovisi at first consider his young pupil merely as the daughter of one, who, by rousing him from solitude and dejection, had a claim upon his gratitude; while Constance passed from the shyness, with which her retired education made her regard every stranger, insensibly to a degree of innocent confidence and familiarity, which the unassuming manners of her preceptor were particularly calculated to inspire. Lulled into

security by this apparent indifference, and delighted with the progress Constance hourly made under one, who handled the pencil with the ease, if not the correctness of a master,-who spoke French and Italian with equal fluency, and whose lessons and example soon enriched her powerful and flexible voice with those charms of taste and feeling so seldom acquired out of Italy, I gave myself up to visions of parental pride and exultation.

Months rolled on in a species of pleasing dream, from which all seemed spontaneously to awake, when the return of peace, and consequent restitution of prisoners, rendered a separation apparently inevitable. The feelings which I myself experienced in looking forward to Ludovisi's departure, (for which, to do him justice, he immediately prepared,) were sufficiently painful to have taught me to appreciate those of Constance, the suppression of which was, I have now no doubt, the cause of a dangerous and lingering illness, during which the sympathy of Ludovisi was my only consolation. Though this event retarded his return to the continent, (now rendered no longer compulsory, by the immediate reduction of the supernumerary corps to which he had belonged,) yet a suspicion of the true cause of my daughter's illness, as well as the light it had thrown on the state of his own heart, taught this naturally honourable young man to withdraw gradually from a society which he had not yet strength of mind wholly to relinquish. His visits became short and constrained, and his health, which the climate of England had before affected, seemed also to decline. These circumstances, and the hints of officious neighbours, at length roused me from my infatuation, and, like all those who have great reason to be angry with themselves, I preferred discharging the weight of my indignation on the comparatively innocent accomplices of my folly, with a violence foreign to my nature, and totally at variance with all my previous unlimited indulgence. I reproached my daughter and Ludovisi with abusing my facility to destroy my peace, and concealing an attachment, which, till I thus imprudently defied its strength, had never been, on either side, embodied in language.

There are instances in the lives of all men, especially those who, like myself, are the slaves of impulse, in which they seem to step out of themselves, to act a foreign character, and, in so doing, communicate to all with whom they come in contact, a portion of their own inconsistency. Knowing me as you do, it would scarce surprise you to have heard, that, melted by the distress of two young and ingenuous lovers, and conscious of my own culpable negligence, I had yielded an immediate consent to a union, repugnant to my opinions and destructive of my dearest hopes. This, at least, would have been consistent and characteristic folly. The obvious course pointed out by reason, was by paternal remonstrances, and an appeal to those sentiments of honour which as yet Ludovisi had never forfeited, to wean both parties from an attachment, hitherto unavowed, and the ineligibility of which it would have been easy to demonstrate. But by an inexplicable fatality, I threatened when I should have persuaded, and irritated instead of conciliating. My injudicious attack drew from Ludovisi an indignant avowal of a passion, which under other circumstances he had determined to bury in eternal silence; and my daughter, whom one soothing expression would probably have melted into tearful acquiescence, derived from my harshness a determination, of which neither she nor myself believed her to be capable. She confessed to me, (what she then for the first time confessed to herself,) that daily and hourly intercourse with an amiable and accomplished young man had insensibly ripened into a solid and unalterable attachment, and seriously, though tremblingly asked, whether I was prepared to sacrifice to prejudices of country and fortune that happiness, which I had ever fondly assured her it was the object of my life to promote. Here again Constance, in exchanging the tenderness of supplication for a tone of deliberate firmness, which I construed into undutifulness, equally mistook her interests; and my answer was calculated to extinguish every hope of my concurrence to a union, of which I bitterly enumerated the disadvantages.

Silenced but not convinced, awed but not softened, Constance was roused from the state of mute dejection

into which my severity had plunged her, by the recital of the injurious treatment I had lavished on her lover, and which he bore with a dignified mildness on which I now reflect with shame. After a few days passed in a state of mutual constraint and estrangement, contrasting but too forcibly with our former unreserved confidence, we were surprised by a visit from my sister, who, as if possessed with the same evil genius, already sworn to destroy our peace, completed by her indiscreet asperity the triumph of passion over duty in the mind of my misguided daughter. From the hourly sarcasms of her aunt, from a paternal severity she had never before for a moment experienced, from the already rejected, and now more than ever distasteful assiduities of her cousin, is it much to be wondered that a child of seventeen, deprived by seclusion even of the scanty experience of her years, should escape, to shelter herself in a lover's arms, from a storm which her knowledge of my temper must have taught her to look upon as temporary? Ludovisi yet lingered in the neighbourhood, and conceiving himself emancipated by my injustice from those restraints which the laws of hospitality and gratitude had formerly imposed, soon prevailed on Constance to take the fatal step, and trust to time and paternal tenderness for a reconciliation.

In so doing, I find myself compelled to allow that no sordid or interested motive actuated one, whom, had I thought otherwise, it would have been hard, indeed, to forgive. With premature reason, and uncommon steadiness, Ludovisi unites somewhat of the characteristic insouciance of his country, which permitted him as little to calculate the advantages, as to appreciate the evils, of the step he had in view. Feeling that equality in birth (chiefly indispensable in Italian marriages) placed him on a level with his beloved, he only rejoiced to hear that a small legacy, which my daughter could immediately claim, joined to a remittance he had received of the trifling reversion accruing to him from the death of his mother, would place them above immediate want, and allow him, in the event of my remaining inexorable, to gratify his national pride by showing his bride that be

loved Italy, which, as a residence, he was for her sake willing to renounce.

These particulars I learned from a letter which Constance wrote to a young female friend, the sole companion of her childhood, whom, with commendable discretion, she had forborne to implicate in her disobedience. For me, she left a few lines expressive of the warmest filial affection, deploring the fatal necessity of choosing between a temporary sacrifice of my favour, and the eternal surrender of the happiness of her future life; and entreating that forgiveness which a secret presentiment seemed to say would be granted and received with equal transport. She concluded by a fervent hope, that by an immediate answer, addressed to the care of a mutual friend, I would tranquillize her mind, and obviate, by opening my arms to the most affectionate of children, the necessity of her following the fortunes of her husband to his native country.

So little had I been prepared for this decisive step, that all other emotions were at first lost in painful surprise. This would in all probability, had I been left alone, soon have given place to those relentings of parental tenderness, on which my hitherto idolized child had perhaps rather too obviously relied; but that circumstance, carefully commented on by my indignant sister, conspired with her own stern suggestions to make me ashamed of an immediate compliance with my poor child's request. With a stoicism, on which I now look back with wonder, I suffered some time to elapse without dispatching those conciliatory words, which would have saved me much subsequent suffering. My daughter (as I learned from my correspondent in London) flew, immediately on her return from Scotland, to seek those consolatory tidings which it was not then in his power to afford, and his description of the agonies into which she was thrown by the disappointment of hopes so sanguine, inflicted pangs yet more severe upon her father. It was, however, some consolation to learn, that the affectionate letter which I wrote, as soon as Nature gained the ascendency, must have reached her, as it was taken away in her name from the banker's, though she was too much agitated again to call in person-Yet its tenor was such, as to make it mat

ter of surprise, as well as regret, that she should, after its receipt, have persevered in flying from a parent, whose arms were thus but too readily opened to receive her!-I lingered on a few anxious days in London, and then, as you know, followed to Paris, where I fondly hope, should I not succeed in tracing them, at least to receive, forwarded from home, such a dutiful and consolatory answer as my letter was calculated to call forth. In it, I had inclosed a letter of credit, both on my banker in town and on the most respectable foreign houses, (though the latter, I flattered myself, would be superfluous,) so that I felt easy on the score of her pecuniary comforts-I had hoped, on arriving in Paris, that this might have afforded some clue to their motions, but I found from Lafitte that

no application had been made to him for money, by the thoughtless and disinterested enemy of my peace. The sum indeed, insignificant as it was, with which they started, could not yet be exhausted.-Italy, I know, must be their ultimate object, and thither, of course, I now bend my steps, with slender hopes from aught but time and reflection, which must, sooner or later, bring my repentant child to my feet.

At Geneva, where I must pass a day or two among the surviving relations of my poor Louise, I shall have melancholy recollections in abundance. Would to God they might be gladdened by tidings of all she has left to attach me to life! Yours ever,

E. SELWYN.

How shall I communicate to you, my dear friend, the various emotions which swelled my bosom on re-entering Geneva, connected as is every feature of its lake and mountains with the gloomiest and happiest periods of my existence, with (what seems, indeed, an inversion of the order of nature) the sorrows of my youth, and the happiness of my maturer life!

There are, in every man's history, passages, which he would fain obliterate even from his own memory, and which, viewed even through the vista of years, fill his bosom with remorse, and crimson his cheek in solitude Follies, though their remembrance may excite wholesome repentance, it can seldom be profitable to relate; but my youth was darkened with errors far more singular and inexcusable than those which fashion sanctions and ordinary youth indulges. On this spot, and this alone, where every dash of the midnight wave recalls the strange history, do I for the first time feel prompted to impart to you events, which, while they exhibit in a stronger light the weakness and inconsistency of your friend's character, may give him a deeper claim on that compassion which his recent griefs demand.

You are already aware that I was educated at Geneva, and at a period

Geneva, July 18when the hollow sarcasms of Voltaire, and the eloquent sophistry of Rousseau, exposed at this their shrine the principles of youth to an ordeal, which few, alas! had steadiness entirely to resist. The cold derision of the apostle of infidelity made little impression on my mind, but the impassioned eloquence of the champion of suicide and equality too often made the "worse appear the better reason." I read and worshipped, until I had created an ideal world.

In the midst of these dangerous reveries, I becaine of age, and was summoned to England to take possession of my estate. Inexperienced as I was, I soon discovered that my guar dian, a wily man of law, who had availed himself of my father's decli ning years to abuse his confidence, had enriched himself at my expense, to an extent which made acquiescence impossible. To the law I triumphantly resorted, with all the confidence the justice of my claims could inspire; but my trustee had, by his professional knowledge, entrenched himself behind technical barriers, impervious to the attacks of truth and reason; I lost my cause, and the laws of my country became, in my eyes, contrivances to sanction crime and defy punishment.

I had an only sister, whom I recollected but as a lovely child, and whom

my fancy had invested with the perfections of a Julie. Judge with what renewed indignation I viewed the trammels of an artificial civilization, when I learned that strong measures had been adopted by the aunt to whose care she was consigned, to prevent her forming a connexion unsuitable in the eyes of a prejudiced aristocracy!

I heard with exultation that she had escaped to unite her destiny with that of her lover, and flew as soon as the decision of my law-suit left me at liberty, to the retreat where I expect ed to find the happiness of the golden age! A few weeks had sufficed to awaken my poor Bella from her dream of passion, and to rob her hero of those qualities with which romance and opposition had alone invested him. I had hastened to sanction with my presence their stolen vows, and came only in time to arrange the conditions of a separation which the peace of my poor de luded sister rendered indispensable. Disappointed in the amount of her fortune, the native brutality of his character soon took place of illfeigned tenderness; to free her from persecution, I purchased a commission for the unworthy object of her childish partiality, and retired with her to Herefordshire, to enjoy in my paternal mansion that seclusion which her wounded feelings made desirable.

Here we remained for some time; but, disgusted with the bluntness of our rustic neighbours, and their rude efforts to console and amuse us, I flew for variety to the dissipation of London, leaving my sister under the care of her now reconciled aunt, to enjoy the only alleviation her sorrows admitted in the prospect of becoming a mother.

Like all those who resort to dissipation, neither from the irresistible force of passion, nor the insensible control of habit, but experimentally, to "minister to a mind diseased," I plunged headlong into the vortex; drinking and playing, not because either gave me the slightest pleasure, but because I had heard them extolled as specifics against pain.

In my case, however, the remedy proved worse than the disease; and I awoke from a six-months' revel with shattered nerves, a drained purse, and a settled despondency of mind, which even now I shudder to look back upon. Suicides, from disappointed VOL. XXI.

passion, are (whatever may be said to the contrary) more common in other countries than in England; but I fear that in the number of those proceeding from mere weariness of life, our foggy atmosphere must ever retain its "bad eminence." I paid my debts, settled my estate on my sister and her unborn babe, and at the age of threeand-twenty, left England with a fixed purpose (I shudder while I write it) to put an end to my existence on the spot where self-destruction had first been consecrated as a virtue!

I travelled to Geneva with more than English rapidity, by the way of Flanders and Alsace; determined that neither the fascinations of Paris, nor the beauties of the Rhine, should divert me from my gloomy purpose. The French Revolution had for sometime been going on, and like all the young, and many of the oldest and wisest of that period, I had hailed it as a renovation of the human race. Its horrors were, however, beginning to belie these fond anticipations, and tales of blood and misery from every quarter, added social calamity to private dejection. Geneva was too well leavened with democratical principles and speculative infidelity, not to follow the example; and political convulsions, (like the waves of her own lake,) the more formidable from the narrow sphere within which they raged, desolated that flourishing and industrious commonwealth. I arrived just in time to witness the sad fruits of anarchy, in the exile and ruin of many I had loved and honoured; and to see coldness, distrust, and poverty, usurp the place of cordiality and joy, under the lately hospitable roofs of Geneva. But I was at this period too selfish for sympathy, and I availed myself of the public distress, to shun all my former acquaintance, and fortify my resolution to quit a world so fertile in misery. To a mind in this peculiar and irritable state, the slightest incident will sometimes prove the single drop which the cup can no longer bear without overflowing. A favourite French servant, who had attended me from the time I first came abroad, with every demonstration of affectionate fidelity, availed himself of the relaxation lately introduced into the code of morality, and of the vicinity to the frontiers of his own ungoverned country, to decamp with th

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