—We beheld it at last, and hardly could Essex himself have been more welcome to my eyes.
Tracey once more landed, and glad was the greeting on all sides.—He presented each of us letters—dear and precious characters! my soul poured through my eyes when I again beheld them! With lavish tenderness Essex hailed my second resurrection, and vowed to shew his sense of the blessing by an implicit submission to my will.—"You shall no more complain of the terrors of a camp, my love, continued he, I turn for ever from the bloody scene.—A court no longer has any charms for me: inspired with juster sentiments, alive to purer pleasures, in your heart and my own will I henceforth look for the wayward straggler, happiness. I am no longer, my sweet Ellinor, the Essex you have known! I am become an absolute rustic, a mere philosopher. With you I will abjure the world, and in some solitary spot, devote myself to love and the sciences. Oh!

shut your heart, like me, my love, to the past, and look only towards the future. I wait with impatience the news of your safe arrival in Cumberland, and date from it our happiness."
These words were to my soul, what the balmy breath of spring is to the frozen earth: the winds at once cease to blow, the snow sinks into her bosom, the buds put forth their verdure, and nature forgets she has suffered.
Tracey came fraught with gifts rather suited to the spirit of the donor, than that of the accepter, yet, they opened the heart of the Laird of Dornock, who listened to the avowal of Tracey's love without repugnance; and at length promised him his sister, if, at the expiration of two years, his rank in the army entitled him to claim her.—The tears of the young lovers for ever cemented those vows his will thus authorized. Joy having disposed my heart to receive the soft impressions of every gentle passion, extinguishing all that were not so, I re

membered, with astonishment, the moment when I readily adopted the ambitious projects of Essex.—Rank, riches, glory, what are ye? —Gay ornaments which lend splendor indeed to felicity, but which only incumber and weigh down the soul when struggling with the waves of misfortune: gladly we lighten ourselves of such adventitious goods, and grasp in tranquillity and love, the unenvied, but rich essence, of all our fortune.
In life, as in a prospect, we can long enjoy only a bounded view; and all
