, my beloved children, on perusing these words:—words, of an import so dreadful, and which you never could have conceived connected with your father's name. Heaven has, • trust, accepted the tribute of sufferings, which heaven alone could have enabled me to endure; and ere these lines are submitted to your knowledge, as all my sorrows will be laid at rest, let

the consideration of that felicity which I humbly hope will be then my portion, console and sustain you under the shock your sensibility must receive from the tale of woe I am about to unfold. You must often have regretted, I am convinced, the solitude in which I have obliged you to live; and I make no doubt, in secret condemned that averseness to all social intercourse, which I have uniformly testified as long as your remembrance can trace back. This, and many other particulars, which perhaps may have at times proved matter both of surprize and concern, I mean here fully to explain; and in particular that question will at length receive a satisfactory reply, which has been hitherto productive only of vague, evasive, and embarrassed answers, viz.— how I, an Englishman, apparently attached to my own nation, and partial to its customs, should have voluntarily exiled myself from my country, and secluding

myself from my family, my friends, and the world, formed the singular resolution of terminating my days in a retired spot in the South of France.
I hasten therefore to inform you, that even your name has hitherto been a secret to you.
My father, though my misconduct has cast a cloud over his days, I hope, and believe, is still alive;—at least, I had intelligence of his being in good health, within a few days from this date. He is Earl of Belmont, a nobleman of extensive interest in his own country; and I am the eldest of two sons, which, with one daughter, whose birth occasioned the death of her mother, is all the family he ever possessed.
I pass over the early part of my life, which I spent at home, and generally in the country under the direction of a very worthy man, who presided as tutor over my brother and myself. My father,

who was violent in prejudice and rigid in principle, allowed us few indulgencies; and had made choice of our preceptor rather for the integrity of his heart, than on account of the superior abilities of his mind, which had been narrowed by the retirement of life, and total ignorance of the world: but my Lord,