, Rebecca had experienced none; not even of the parental kind; and merely from the overflowings of a kind nature (not in return for affection) had she ever loved her father and her sisters. Sometimes, repulsed by their

severity, she transferred the fulness of an affectionate heart upon animals: but now her alienated mind was recalled and softened by a sensation that made her long to complain of the burthen it imposed—those obligations which exact silence, are a heavy weight to the grateful—Rebecca longed to tell Henry "that her life would be too little to express the full sense she had of the respect he paid to her." But as modesty forbade not only every kind of declaration, but every insinuation purporting what she felt, she wept through sleepless nights from a load of suppressed explanation; yet still she would not have exchanged this trouble, for all the beauty of her sisters.


OLD John and Hannah Primrose, a prudent hardy couple, who, by many years of peculiar labour and peculiar abstinence, were the least poor of all the neighbouring cottagers, had an only child called after the mother, Hannah: and this cottage girl was reckoned, in spite of the beauty of the elder Miss Rymers, by far the prettiest female in the village.
Reader of superior rank, if the passions which rage in the bosom of the inferior class of human kind are beneath your sympathy, throw aside this little history, for Rebecca Rymer and Hannah Primrose are its heroines.
But you, unprejudiced reader, whose liberal observations are not confined to stations, but who consider all mankind alike deserving your investigation; who believe that there exists in some, knowledge without, the advantage of instruction; refinement of sentiment independent of elegant society; honourable pride

of heart without dignity of blood; and genius destitute of art to render it conspicuous—You will, perhaps, venture to read on; in hopes that the remainder of this story may deserve your attention, just as the wild herb of the forest, equally with the cultivated plant in the garden, claims the attention of the botanist.
When young William saw Hannah, he thought her even more beautiful than she was thought by others; and on those days that he felt no inclination to ride, to shoot, or to hunt, he would contrive, by some secret device, the means to meet with her alone, and give her tokens (if not of his love) at least of his admiration of her beauty, and of the pleasure he enjoyed in her company.
Hannah listened with a kind of delirious enchantment to all her elevated and eloquent admirer uttered; and in return