—His voice became inarticulate, and in a few minutes he expired. Julia was with difficulty persuaded to forsake the breathless remains of her father: she clung to his corpse in an agony of unutterable sorrow; and in vain Charlotte endeavoured to sooth

her affliction; in vain Mr. Clifford attempted to console her by the assurance, that it should be the constant aim of his life to promote her happiness. In the bitterness of her soul, Julia shrunk from these assurances: the last sigh of her father seemed to her the extinction of every earthly hope, and her aching heart refused that happiness which he could no longer participate.—Her father had always treated her as a friend, and her affection for him was unbounded. When she looked back on the past, she recollected, on his part, a constant wish to make her happy; and an uniform gentleness of disposition, which rendered that wish effectual. She could recall no expression of harshness, none of those fits of moroseness, or caprice, notwithstanding which, obedience to a parent still remains a duty, but sometimes ceases to be a pleasure.
In the reflection on her own conduct towards her father, Julia felt the soothing

consciousness of having done more than even duty required. She had not only implicitly obeyed every injunction, and complied with every wish of her father; but she had lived in the constant habit of making every sacrifice to his comfort, that the quick sensibility of her own heart could suggest—sacrifices of ease, of convenience, of pleasure, which arose from the confined circumstances of her father; sacrifices, which she carefully concealed from his knowledge, and of which she found the sole reward in her own bosom.
When, at length, the all-subduing influence of time had composed her mind sufficiently to enjoy the beauties of nature, the pleasures of society, and the comforts of affluence, she still frequently lamented, with tears of bitter regret, that her father had not lived to partake longer of those blessings. She reflected, that his life had been the constant struggle of an high and honourable spirit with misfortune,

poverty, and neglect: she wept at the recollection of those difficulties in which she had often seen him involved, of those anxieties he had suffered for her sake; and mourned that the hour of prosperity had scarcely arrived, before the object of her pious affection was mouldering in the dust.
The tranquillity she regained, was not like the sweet glow of a summer morning, enlivened by sunshine, and the exulting song of the birds: it had more affinity to the pensive stillness of the evening, when the
