THE RECOVERY.

CHARLOTTE was the only unmarried daughter of widow Armitage, whose husband had left her children fatherless, and herself encumbered with a mortgaged property, and beset with difficulties, at the age of thirty-five. With a mind nerved to meet every misfortune, and convert it to the best possible use, Mrs. Armitage had brought up her children decently, industriously, and reputably. Her son, at an early age, by reason of his father's death, was unavoidably thrown into a situation far beyond his years and experience and as an unpractised swimmer, who is suddenly carried out beyond his depth, for awhile buffets with the deadly element in a vain attempt to save himself; so James Armitage struggled with an overwhelming tide of difficulties, until the current of the trials bore him down. The nature of his business had

thrust him forward into company, and that not of the choicest kind: but how few are there in trade who can select their customers, and deal only with those whose morals are as good as their pockets, and whose religious conduct will bear the test of Christianity? It is a most unfortunate circumstance for any youth to be placed in a situation of manhood, before either his principles are formed, or his education completed; and yet it is the error of the times, in the chain of education, to omit the links which connect childhood with maturity. The female no sooner arrives at her teens, than she sets up for all the privileges which formerly belonged to those only who had left them; and the boy, even in pupilage, arrogates all the prerogatives and pretensions of the man. Hence it is, that so many parents, whose fond anticipations are drawn from the precocity of their children, are disappointed. Like forced fruits and shrubs, their sweetness is only for one season; time which should complete, destroys their mellowness. Thrown into this unfortunate situation by his father's death, James Armitage, though the ingenuousness and natural timidity of youth, joined to the workings of a good disposition,

for a short time suspended the evil blast of corruption, fell, like too many others, into vices which, in their consequences, boded ruin to the little property belonging to his family. He married, unhappily for himself, one whose notions were extravagantly high, and whose mismanagement of his domestic concerns, for his mother and sisters had now left him, completed his destruction. In a few years she died, leaving him five pledges of their union. His mother and sister Charlotte, for his other sisters had entered into the pale of matrimony, returned to him, and became parents to his motherless babes. They had lived together about ten months from his wife's death, when his sister was seized with an illness, which, though trifling at first, gradually assumed a decidedly alarming character. Previously to this, she had left the communion of the church, and attached herself to one of those dissenting meeting-houses which are now so thickly spread throughout the country. Though alienated from the fold of her father, she received a visit from Mr. Deacon, who, in the discharge of his duty, and through respect for her excellent mother, who remained faithful to the altar at which she was dedicated

to God, called to see her at the time when disease lay heavy on her, and "the arrows of the Lord oppressed her sore." He found her strongly tinctured with the sentiments of a sect that assumes the title of Baptists, as if no other denominations of Christians had claim to that appellation, except themselves. Like another class of religionists, who in their self-sufficiency, by forming a Deity carved to the standard of their understandings, assume the distinctions of Unitarians, whilst at the same time they cannot fail to be conscious, that there is no body of Christians (a name they abjure) which is not as much unitarian in worship and belief as themselves; and certainly which has not much better pretentions to Christianity than the disciples of Priestley or Lindsay.

There was something in the appearance of Charlotte that struck the Curate forcibly. The expression of her countenance was divided between the interesting languidness of sickness, and the varying unevenness of incertitude and anxiety. Her voice was tremulous, and her eyes wandered. Like an autumnal day, when gloom and sunshine in their contest for mastery, alternately possess the atmosphere, the ray of

cheerfulness now superseded, now gave way to the cloud of melancholy. The bed of sickness is at all times an interesting object. To behold a fellow creature, struggling under the power of the chilliness of death, and hastening to leave a world, which will scarcely feel conscious of the gap, whilst the denizens of heaven are looking down with intensity of solicitude for the disencumberment of the soul from its earthly coil, is calculated to excite powerful emotions in the heart, which, whilst they proclaim "Thou too art mortal," bid us carry our expectations beyond the dark confines of this world, to that land of purity, peace, and unspotted pleasures, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." This feeling is considerably heightened, when the victim of death is young; one, who in the natural course of things, might have defied his powers for several years, and calculated upon many days of earthly enjoyment. This sentiment flashed through the Curate's heart as he contemplated the object of his attention. There was a timidity in her look, which marked an involuntary shrinking from his presence, which, however, was not so perceptible towards the close of his visit. He re