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you,-passed you in the street without me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the notice. To be sure, he is something short-world in general (as these circles in the mind sighted; and it was in your power to have will spread to infinity), reflect with what accosted him. But facts and sane inferences strange injustice you have been treated in are trifles to a true adept in the science of quarters where (setting gratitude and the dissatisfaction. He must have seen you; expectation of friendly returns aside as and S, who was with him, must have chimeras) you pretended no claim beyond been the cause of the contempt. It galls justice, the naked due of all men. Think you, and well it may. But have patience. the very idea of right and fit fled from the Go home, and make the worst of it, and you earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle are a made man from this time. Shut of it, till you have swelled yourself into at yourself up, and-rejecting, as an enemy to least one hemisphere; the other being the your peace, every whispering suggestion vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the that but insinuates there may be a mistake world aforesaid. To grow bigger every -reflect seriously upon the many lesser moment in your own conceit, and the world instances which you had begun to perceive, to lessen; to deify yourself at the expense in proof of your friend's disaffection towards of your species; to judge the world—this is you. None of them singly was much to the the acme and supreme point of your mystery purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive; and you have this last affront to clench them. Thus far the process is anything but agreeable. But now to your relief comes in the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind feelings you have had for your friend; what you have been to him, and what you would have been to him, if he would have suffered you; how you defended him in this or that place; and his good name his literary reputation, and so forth, was always dearer to you than your own! Your heart, spite of itself, yearns towards him. You could weep tears of blood but for a restraining pride. How say you! do you not yet begin to apprehend a comfort? some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters? Stop not here, nor penuriously cheat yourself of your reversions. You are on vantage ground. Enlarge your speculations, and take in the rest of your friends, as a spark kindles more sparks. Was there one among them who has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery as water? Begin to think that the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. That the very idea of friendship, with its component parts, as honour, fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. Image yourself to yourself, as the only possible friend in a world incapable of that communion. Now the gloom thickens. The little star of self-love twinkles, that is to encourage you through deeper glooms than this. You are not yet at the half point of your elevation. You are not yet, believe

these the true PLEASURES of SULKINESS. We profess no more of this grand secret than what ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in our study. We had proceeded to the penultimate point, at which the true adept seldom stops, where the consideration of benefit forgot is about to merge in the meditation of general injustice-when a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of the very friend whose not seeing of us in the morning (for we will now confess the case our own), an accidental oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable generalisation! To mortify us still more, and take down the whole flattering superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, he had brought in his hand the identical S, in whose favour we had suspected him of the contumacy. Asseverations were needless, where the frank manner of them both was convictive of the injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that they perceived our embarrassment; but were too proud, or something else, to confess to the secret of it. We had been but too lately in the condition of the noble patient in Argos :

Qui se credebat miros audire tragœdos,
In vacuo lætus sessor plausorque theatro-
and could have exclaimed with equal reason
against the friendly hands that cured us—

Pol, me occidistis, amici,
Non servâstis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.

ROSAMUND GRAY, ESSAYS,

ETC.

ΤΟ

MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY, Esq.

FORGIVE ME, BURNEY, if to thee these late
And hasty products of a critic pen,

Thyself no common judge of books and men,
In feeling of thy worth I dedicate.

My verse was offered to an older friend;
The humbler prose has fallen to thy share:

Nor could I miss the occasion to declare,

What spoken in thy presence must offend

That, set aside some few caprices wild,

Those humourous clouds that flit o'er brightest days,

In all my threadings of this worldly maze,

(And I have watched thee almost from a child),

Free from self-seeking, envy, low design,

I have not found a whiter soul than thine.

!

ROSAMUND GRAY.

CHAPTER I.

Ir was noontide. The sun was very hot. An old gentlewoman sat spinning in a little arbour at the door of her cottage. She was blind; and her grand-daughter was reading the Bible to her. The old lady had just left her work, to attend to the story of Ruth.

"Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto her." It was a passage she could not let pass without a comment. The moral she drew from it was not very new, to be sure. The girl had heard it a hundred times before-and a hundred times more she could have heard it, without suspecting it to be tedious. Rosamund loved her grandmother.

destitute, without fortune or friends: she went with her grandmother. In all this time she had served her faithfully and lovingly.

Old Margaret Gray, when she first came into these parts, had eyes, and could see. The neighbours said, they had been dimmed by weeping: be that as it may, she was latterly grown quite blind. "God is very good to us, child; I can feel you yet." This she would sometimes say; and we need not wonder to hear, that Rosamund clave unto her grandmother.

Margaret retained a spirit unbroken by calamity. There was a principle within, which it seemed as if no outward circumstances could reach. It was a religious The old lady loved Rosamund too; and principle, and she had taught it to Rosamund; she had reason for so doing. Rosamund was for the girl had mostly resided with her to her at once a child and a servant. She grandmother from her earliest Indeed years. had only her left in the world. They two she had taught her all that she knew herself; lived together. and the old lady's knowledge did not extend a vast way.

They had once known better days. The story of Rosamund's parents, their failure, their folly, and distresses, may be told another time. Our tale hath grief enough in it.

Margaret had drawn her maxims from observation; and a pretty long experience in life had contributed to make her, at times, a little positive: but Rosamund never argued with her grandmother.

Their library consisted chiefly in a large family Bible, with notes and expositions by various learned expositors, from Bishop Jewell downwards.

It was now about a year and a half since old Margaret Gray had sold off all her effects, to pay the debts of Rosamund's father-just after the mother had died of a broken heart; for her husband had fled his country to hide his shame in a foreign land. At that period the old lady retired to a small This might never be suffered to lie about cottage in the village of Widford in Hert- like other books, but was kept constantly fordshire. wrapt up in a handsome case of green velvet, Rosamund, in her thirteenth year, was left with gold tassels-the only relic of departed

grandeur they had brought with them to the cottage-everything else of value had been sold off for the purpose above mentioned. This Bible Rosamund, when a child, had never dared to open without permission; and even yet, from habit, continued the custom. Margaret had parted with none of her authority; indeed it was never exerted with much harshness; and happy was Rosamund, though a girl grown, when she could obtain leave to read her Bible. It was a treasure too valuable for an indiscriminate use; and Margaret still pointed out to her grand-daughter where to read.

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have you think about them sometimes—it would be strange if you did not; but I fear, Rosamund-I fear, girl, you sometimes think too deeply about your own situation and poor prospects in life. When you do so, you do wrong-remember the naughty rich man in the parable. He never had any good thoughts about God, and his religion: and that might have been your case."

Rosamund, at these times, could not reply to her; she was not in the habit of arguing with her grandmother; so she was quite silent on these occasions-or else the girl knew well enough herself, that she had only been sad to think of the desolate condition of her best friend, to see her, in her old age, so infirm and blind. But she had never been used to make excuses, when the old lady said she was doing wrong.

Besides this, they had the Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's Recreation," with cuts-"Pilgrim's Progress," the first part-a Cookery Book, with a few dry sprigs of rosemary and lavender stuck here and there between the leaves, (I suppose to point The neighbours were all very kind to to some of the old lady's most favourite them. The veriest rustics never passed receipts,) and there was "Wither's Emblems," them without a bow, or a pulling off of the hat some show of courtesy, awkward indeed, but affectionate with a "Goodmorrow, madam," or "young madam," as it might happen.

an old book, and quaint. The old-fashioned pictures in this last book were among the first exciters of the infant Rosamund's curiosity. Her contemplation had fed upon them in rather older years.

Rosamund had not read many books besides these; or if any, they had been only occasional companions : these were to Rosamund as old friends, that she had long known. I know not whether the peculiar cast of her mind might not be traced, in part, to a tincture she had received, early in life, from Walton and Wither, from John Bunyan and her Bible.

Rosamund's mind was pensive and reflective, rather than what passes usually for clever or acute. From a child she was remarkably shy and thoughtful-this was taken for stupidity and want of feeling; and the child has been sometimes whipt for being a stubborn thing, when her little heart was almost bursting with affection.

Even now her grandmother would often reprove her, when she found her too grave or melancholy; give her sprightly lectures about good-humour and rational mirth; and not unfrequently fall a-crying herself, to the great discredit of her lecture. Those tears endeared her the more to Rosamund.

Margaret would say, “Child, I love you to cry, when I think you are only remembering your poor dear father and mother;-I would

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Rude and savage natures, who seem born with a propensity to express contempt for anything that looks like prosperity, yet felt respect for its declining lustre.

The farmers, and better sort of people, (as they are called,) all promised to provide for Rosamund when her grandmother should die. Margaret trusted in God and believed them.

She used to say, "I have lived many years in the world, and have never known people, good people, to be left without some friend; a relation, a benefactor, a something. God knows our wants-that it is not good for man or woman to be alone; and he always sends us a helpmate, a leaning place, a somewhat." Upon this sure ground of experience, did Margaret build her trust in Providence.

CHAPTER II.

ROSAMUND had just made an end of her story, (as I was about to relate,) and was listening to the application of the moral, (which said application she was old enough

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