he inoculated as many as a hundred children, their poor ignorant parents having scarcely ever heard of such a thing*. By these and the like good actions, he was become almost worshipped by the poor peasants; and as I was his minister, on many of these occasions, their love for me was much increased, by means of Mr. Stanley's bounty. There was a melancholy about my new lodger, which I could not understand. Often and often has he shut himself in his bed-room, from sunrise to sunset, writing, reading, and weeping, without any apparent cause. I did not like to seem curious, and so took no notice of these vagaries; but they puzzled me mightily, notwithstanding. In the mean time, Mr. Stanley grew very fond of me: I humoured his fancies, because I really respected his goodness, and he esteemed me accordingly. My friend, Griffith Williams, the attorney at D-, gave me to understand, that my lodger was not a man of mean birth, but high-born and high-bred; and that he was rich, I had many opportunities of finding out-not only because he always paid his rent in advance, but because he insisted upon paying for the schooling of my two little nephews, an act of great benevolence, for which, I hope, I was properly grateful. But human life is a precarious tenure; and poor Mr. Stanley was taken ill. He had been visiting a poor sick family, high up in the hills, when he was overtaken by a storm, and came home, drenched through and through with rain. He went to bed, and the next morning was too ill to rise. I immediately sent to D-, for doctor C-g; and when he came, he told me, that it would be a hard struggle between life and death; I believe he did all that man could do; but, alas, in vain! in less than a fortnight from the time he took the cold, and at the end of his second year of sojourning with me, my good and benevolent lodger was no more. I watched him, and indeed nursed him like a brother; and the comfort and consolation he found in my prayers, was not the least gratifying part of my reward. Before the spirit left him, he told me he had written his life; and if I thought its publication would benefit mankind, I was at liberty to dispose of it as I pleased. I have therefore printed it in this my book, in the hope that it may afford an instructive moral to the giddy and the gay -the thoughtless and the thankless. CHAP. II. Mr. Stanley's Narrative. THE event of my birth was an era in the history of our family. My father had married a beautiful but poor girl, not only against the consent of his parents, but in utter defiance of their menaces-in the very teeth of their maledictions. He was an only child, the proud inheritor of the honours, the grandeur, and the wealth of one of the noblest and most powerful families in England; and to throw away these excellencies upon a base-born plebeian, was accounted a greater crime, and, in the event, more severely punished, than a sin of far greater magnitude. My father, it should seem, for I never knew him, was of a very sensitive and impetuous temper; and the reiterated persecutions of his proud parents-and proud indeed they were-succeeded in driving him to seek excitement in gaming, which led first to his ruin, and subsequently to his death. He shot himself one night, after an unsuccessful visit to White's. My mother was at that time very near her confinement. She loved my father as few women can love, and the shock of his unfortunate death, communicated to her, as I have heard, with all possible abruptness, and almost with exultation, brought on the pangs of premature labour, and I was ushered into the world, a helpless, feeble, unloved orphan, for my mother did not live even to press upon my unconscious brow the first fond kiss of maternal love and tenderness. The pride which killed my parents, preserved their unfortunate child. I was confided to the care of one of the gamekeeper's wives, by whom I was reared, with more care and affection, perhaps, than most infants so situated. Every one about the castle knew how cruelly my father had been treated, for his open, joy |