, which will amuse my solitude, and confirm my—I hope, philosophical idea.'

She then produced the opening of her intended book.

SECTION I.

'No blooming coquette, elated with adulation and triumphant with conquest, here counts the glories of her eyes, or enumerates the train of her adorers: no beauteous prude, repines at the fatigue of admiration, nor bewails the necessity of tyranny: O gentle reader! you have the story of one from whom fate has withheld all the delicacy of vanity, all the regale of cruelty—!'

'Here,' interrupted the young biographer, 'will follow my portrait, and then this further address to my readers.'

'O ye, who, young and fair, revel in the attractions of beauty, and exult in the pride of admiration, say, where is your envy of the heiress to whom fortune comes with such alloys? And which, however distressed or impoverished, would accept my income with my personal defects?

'Ye, too, O lords of the creation, mighty men! impute not to native vanity the repining spirit with which I lament the loss of beauty; attribute not to the innate weakness of my sex, the concern I confess for my deformity; nor to feminine littleness of soul, a regret of which the true source is to be traced to your own bosoms, and springs from your own tastes: for the value you yourselves set upon external attractions, your own neglect has taught me to know; and the indifferency with which you consider all else, your own duplicity has instructed me to feel.'

Camilla sought to dissuade her from reflexions so afflictive, and retrospections so poignant; but they aided her, she said, in her task of acquiring composure for the regulation of her future life.

Edgar now received permission to make his communication to the Baronet.

The joy with which Sir Hugh heard it, was for some time over-clouded by doubt. 'My dear Mr. young Edgar,' he said, 'in case you don't know your own mind yet, in the point of its not changing again, as it did before, I'd as leave you would not tell me of it till you've taken the proper time to be at a certainty; frettings about these ups and downs, being what do no good to me, in point of the gout.'

But when thoroughly re-assured, 'Well,' he cried, 'this is just the thing I should have chose out of all our misfortunes, being what makes me happier than ever I was