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PREFACE 
 
 TO THE PRESENT EDITION. 
 
 LondcT, jNov:;r-iber ijD. :S3^ 
 
 " Caleb Williams" has always been regarded by the 
 pubHc with an unusual degree of favour. The pro- 
 prietor of " The Standard Novels " has therefore 
 imagined, that even an account of the concoction and 
 mode of writing of the work would be viewed with 
 some interest. 
 
 I finished the " Enquiry concerning Political Justice/' 
 the first work which may be considered as written by 
 me in a certain degree in the maturity of my intellec- 
 tual powers, and bearing my name, early in January, 
 1793 ; and about the middle of the following month the 
 book was published. It was my fortune at that time 
 to be obliged to consider my pen as the sole instrument 
 for supplying my current expenses. By the liberality 
 of my bookseller, Mr. George Robinson, of Paternoster 
 Row, I was enabled then, and for nearly ten years 
 before, to meet these expenses, while writing diiferent 
 things of obscure note, the names of which though 
 innocent, and in some degree useful, I am rather 
 inclined to suppress. In May, 1791, I projected this, 
 my favourite work, and from that time gave up every 
 other occupation that might interfere with it. My 
 agreement with Robinson was, that he was to supply 
 ly vants at a specified rate, while the book was in the 
 rain of composition. Finally, I was very little before- 
 A 3 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 hand with the world on the day of its publication, and 
 was therefore obliged to look round and consider to 
 what species of industry I should next devote myself. 
 
 I had always felt in myself some vocation towards 
 the composition of a narrative of fictitious adventure ; 
 ajid among the things .of obscure note, which I have 
 above referred Ucjweie two or three pieces of this 
 npture*. It is. not therefore extraordinary that some 
 ,proji:tc't of the rorttsB,6u]d have suggested itself on the 
 present occasion. 
 
 But I stood now in a very different situation from 
 that in which I had been placed at a former period. 
 In past years, and even almost from boyhood, I was 
 perpetually prone to exclaim with Cowley, — 
 
 « What shall I do to be for ever known, 
 And make the age to come my own ? " 
 
 But I had endeivoured for ten years, and was as far 
 from approaching my object as ever. Every thing I 
 wrote fell dead-born from the press. Very often I was 
 disposed to quit the enterprise in despair. But still I 
 felt ever and anon impelled to repeat my effort. 
 
 At length I conceived the plan of Political Justice. 
 I was convinced that my object of building to myself a 
 name would never be attained, by merely repeating and 
 refining a little upon what other men had said, even 
 though I should imagine that I delivered things of this 
 sort with a more than usual point and elegance. The 
 world, I believed, would accept nothing from me with 
 distinguishing favour, that did not bear upon the face 
 of it the undoubted stamp of originality. Having long 
 ruminated upon the principles of Political Justice 
 persuaded myself that I could offer to the public, ' 
 

 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 treatise on this subject, things at once new, true and 
 important. In the progress of the work I became more 
 sanguine and confident, I talked over my ideas with a 
 few famihar friends during its progress, and they gave 
 me every generous encouragement. It happened that 
 the fame of my book, in some inconsiderable degree, got 
 before it's publication, and a certain number of persons 
 were prepared to receive it with favour. It would be 
 false modesty in me to say, that its acceptance, when 
 published, did not early come up to every thing that 
 could soberly have been expected by me. In conse- 
 quence of this, the tone of my mind, both during the 
 period in which I was engaged in the work, and after- 
 wards, acquired a certain elevation, and made me now 
 unwilling to stoop to what was insignificant. 
 
 I formed a conception of a book of fictitious adven- 
 ture, that should in some way be distinguished by a 
 very powerful interest. Pursuing this idea, I invented 
 first the third volume of! my tale, then the second, and 
 iast of all the first. I bent myself to the conception of 
 a series of adventures of flight and pursuit ; the fugitive 
 in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with 
 the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his ingenuity 
 and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most 
 fearful alarm. This was the project of my third 
 volume. 
 
 I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and 
 impressive situation adequate to account for the im- 
 pulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to alarm 
 and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolu- 
 tion never to allow him the least interval of peace and 
 security. This I apprehended could best be effected 
 by a secret murder, to the investigation of which the 
 A *4 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 innocent victim should be impelled by an unconquer- 
 able spirit of curiosity. The murderer would thus 
 have a sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy 
 discoverer, that he might deprive him of peace, cha- 
 racter and credit, and have him for ever in his 
 power. This constituted the outline of my second 
 volume. 
 
 The subject of the first volume was still to be in- 
 vented. To account for the fearful events of the third, 
 it was necessary that the pursuer should be invested 
 with every advantage of fortune, with a resolution that 
 nothing could defeat or baffle, and with extraordinary 
 resources of intellect. Nor could my purpose of giving 
 an overpowering interest to my tale be answered, with- 
 out his appearing to have been originally endowed 
 with a mighty store of amiable dispositions and virtues, 
 so that his being driven to the first act of murder 
 should be judged worthy of the deepest regret, and 
 should be seen in some measure to have arisen out 
 of his virtues themselves. It was necessary to make 
 him, so to speak, the tenant of an atmosphere of 
 romance, so that every reader should feel prompted 
 almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were 
 ample materials for a first volume. 
 
 1 felt that I had a great advantage in thus carrying 
 back my invention from the ultimate conclusion to the 
 first commencement of the train of adventures upon 
 which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity 
 of plot would be the infallible result ; and the unity of 
 spirit and interest in a tale truly considered, gives it a 
 powerful hold on the reader, which can scarcely be 
 generated with equal success in any other way. 
 
 I devoted about two or three weeks to the imagining 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 and putting down hints for my story, before I engaged 
 seriously and methodically in its composition. In these 
 hints I began with my third volume, then proceeded 
 to my second, and last of all grappled with the first. I 
 filled two or three sheets of demy writing-paper, folded 
 in octavo, with these memorandums. They were put 
 down with great brevity, yet explicitly enough to secure 
 a perfect recollection of their meaning, within the time 
 necessary for drawing out the story at full, in short 
 paragraphs of two, three, four, five, oi* six lines each. 
 
 I then sat down to write my story from the begin- 
 ning. I wrote for the most part but a short portion in 
 any single day. I wrote only when the afflatus was 
 upon me. I held it for a maxim, that any portion that 
 was written when I was not fully in the vein, told for 
 considerably worse than nothing. Idleness was a thou- 
 sand times better in this case, than industry against the 
 grain. Idleness was only time lost ; and the next day, 
 it may be, was as promising as ever. It was merely a 
 day perished from the calendar. But a passage 
 written feebly, flatly, and in a wrong spirit, constituted 
 an obstacle that it was next to impossible to correct 
 and set right again. I wrote therefore by starts ; 
 sometimes for a week or ten days not a line. Yet all 
 came to the same thing in the sequel. On an average, 
 a volume of " Caleb Williams " cost me four months, 
 neither less, nor more. 
 
 It must be admitted however, that, during the whole ^\ 
 period, bating a few intervals, my mind was in a high ! : 
 state of excitement. I said to myself a thousand times, . 
 " I will write a tale, that shall constitute an epoch in the 
 mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, 
 shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before." 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 — I put these things down just as they happened, and 
 with the most entire frankness. I know that it will 
 sound like the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But 
 such perhaps ought to be the state of mind of an 
 author, when he does his best. At any rate, 1 have 
 said nothing of my vain-glorious impulse for nearly 
 forty years. 
 
 When I had written about seven-tenths of the first 
 volume, I was prevailed upon by the extreme impor- 
 tunity of an old and intimate friend to allow him the 
 perusal of my manuscript. On the second day he 
 returned it with a note to this purpose : " I return 
 you your manuscript, because I promised to do so. If 
 I had obeyed the impulse of my own mind, I should 
 have thrust it in the fire. If you persist, the book will 
 infallibly prove the grave of your literary fame." 
 
 I doubtless felt no implicit deference for the judg- 
 ment of my friendly critic. Yet it cost me at least 
 two days of deep anxiety, before I recovered the shock. 
 Let the reader picture to himself my situation. I felt 
 no implicit deference for the judgment of my friendly 
 critic. But it was all I had for it. This was my first 
 experiment of an unbiased decision. It stood in the 
 place of all the world to me. I could not, and I did 
 not feel disposed to, appeal any further. If I had, how 
 could I tell that the second and third judgment would 
 be more favourable than the first ? Then what would 
 have been the result ? No ; I had nothing for it but 
 to wrap myself in my own integrity. By dint of reso- 
 lution I became invulnerable. I resolved to go on to 
 tlie end, trusting as I could to my own anticipations of 
 the whole, and bidding the world wait its time, before 
 it should be admitted to the consult. 
 
 i 
 
PREFACE. Xl 
 
 I began my narrative, as is the more usual way, in 
 the third person. But I speedily became dissatisfied. 
 I then assumed the first person, making the hero of 
 my tale his own historian ; and in this mode I have 
 persisted in all my subsequent attempts at works of 
 fiction. It was infinitely the best adapted, at least, to 
 my vein of delineation, where the thing in which my 
 imagination revelled the most freely, was the analysis 
 of the private and internal operations of the mindj 
 employing my metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing 
 and laying bare the involutions of motive, and record- 
 ing the gradually accumulating impulses, which led the 
 personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the 
 particular way of proceeding in which they afterwards 
 embarked. 
 
 When I had determined on the main purpose of my 
 story, it was ever my method to get about me any 
 productions of former authors that seemed to bear on 
 my subject. I never entertained the fear, that in this 
 way of proceeding I should be in danger of servilely 
 copying my predecessors. I imagined that I had a 
 vein of thinking that was properly my own, which 
 would always preserve me from plagiarism. I read 
 other authors, that I might see what they had done, 
 or more properly, that I might forcibly hold my mind 
 and occupy my thoughts in a particular train, I and my 
 predecessors travelling in some sense to the same goal, 
 at the same time that I struck out a path of my own, 
 without ultimately heeding the direction they pursued, 
 and disdaining to enquire whether by any chance it for 
 a few steps coincided or did not coincide with mine. 
 
 Thus, in the instance of " Caleb Williams," I read over 
 a little old book, entitled " The Adventures of Made- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 moiselle de St. Phale," a PVench Protestant in the times 
 of the fiercest persecution of the Huguenots, who fled 
 through France in the utmost terror, in the midst of 
 eternal alarms and hair-breadth escapes, having her 
 quarters perpetually beaten up, and by scarcely any 
 chance finding a moment's interval of security. I 
 turned over the pages of a tremendous compilation, 
 entitled " God's Revenge against Murder," vi^here the 
 beam of the eye of Omniscience was represented as 
 perpetually pursuing the guilty, and laying open his 
 most hidden retreats to the light of day. I was ex- 
 tremely conversant with the " Newgate Calendar," and 
 the " Lives of the Pirates." In the mean time no works 
 of fiction came amiss to me, provided they were written 
 with energy. The authors were still employed upon 
 the same mine as myself, however different was the 
 vein they pursued : we were all of us engaged in ex- 
 ploring the entrails of mind and motive, and in tracing 
 the various rencontres and clashes that may occur be- 
 tween man and man in the diversified scene of human 
 life. 
 
 I rather amused myself with tracing a certain simi- 
 litude between the story of Caleb Williams and the tale 
 of Bluebeard, than derived any hints from that admir- 
 able specimen of the terrific. Falkland was my Blue- 
 beard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes, which if 
 discovered, he might expect to have all the world 
 roused to revenge against him. Caleb Williams was 
 J the wife, who in spite of warning, persisted in his at- 
 1 tempts to discover the forbidden secret ; and, when be 
 ^ had succeeded, struggled as fruitlessly to escape the 
 consequences, as the wife of Bluebeard in washing the 
 key of the ensanguined chamber, who, as often as she 
 
PREFACE. XIU 
 
 cleared the stain of blood from the one side, found it 
 showing itself with frightful distinctness on the other. 
 
 When I had proceeded as far as the early pages of 
 my third volume, I found myself completely at a stand. 
 I rested on my arms from the 2d of January, 1794, 
 to the 1st of April following, without getting forward 
 in the smallest degree. It has ever been thus with me 
 in works of any continuance. The bow will not be for 
 ever bent. 
 
 " Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum." 
 
 I endeavoured however to take my repose to myself 
 in security, and not to inflict a set of crude and inco- 
 herent dreams upon my readers. In the mean time, 
 when I revived, I revived in earnest, and in the course 
 of that month carried on my work with unabated speed 
 to the end. 
 
 Thus I have endeavoured to give a true history of 
 the concoction and mode of writing of this mighty 
 trifle. When I had done, I soon became sensible that 
 I had done in a manner nothing. How many flat and 
 insipid parts does the book contain ! How terribly un- 
 equal does it appear to me I From time to time the 
 author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken man. 
 And, when I had done all, what had I done ? Written 
 a book to amuse boys and girls in their vacant hours, 
 a story to be hastily gobbled up by them, swallowed in 
 a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without chewing 
 and digestion. I was in this respect greatly impressed 
 with the confession of one of the most accomplished 
 readers and excellent critics that any author could 
 have fallen in with (the unfortunate Joseph Gerald). 
 He told me that he had received my book late one 
 evening, and had read through the three volumes before 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 he closed his eyes. Thus, what had cost me twelve 
 months' labour, ceaseless heart-aches and industry, 
 now sinking in despair, and now roused and sustained 
 in unusual energy, he went over in a few hours, shut 
 tlie book, laid himself on his pillow, slept and was re- 
 freshedj and cried, 
 
 " To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." 
 
 I had thought to have said something here respect- 
 ing the concoction of " St. Leon," and " Fleetwood." 
 But all that occurs to me on the subject seems to be 
 anticipated in the following 
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 February 14. 1805. 
 Yet another novel from the same pen^ "which has twice be- 
 fore claimed the patience of the public in this form. The 
 unequivocal indulgence which has been extended to my 
 two former attempts, renders me doubly solicitous not to 
 forfeit the kindness I have experienced. 
 
 One caution I have particularly sought to exercise : '^*'not 
 to repeat myself." Caleb Williams was a story of very 
 surprising and uncommon events, but which were supposed 
 to be entirely within the laws and established course of 
 nature, as she operates in the planet we inhabit. The 
 story of St. Leon is of the miraculous class ; and its design, 
 to " mix human feelings and passions with incredible 
 situations, and thus render them impressive and inter- 
 esting." 
 
 Some of those fastidious readers, — they may be classed 
 among the best friends an author has, if their admonitions are 
 judiciously considered, — who are willing to discover those 
 faults which do not offer themselves to every eye, have re- 
 marked, that both these tales are in a vicious style of 
 writing ; that Horace has long ago decided*, that the story 
 
 * Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi» 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 we cannot believe, we are by all the laws of criticism called 
 upon to hate ; and that even the adventures of the honest 
 secretary_, who was first heard of ten years ago, are so much j 
 out of the usual road, that not one reader in a million can [ 
 ever fear they will happen to himself. 
 
 Gentlemen critics, I thank you. In the present volumes I 
 have served you with a dish agreeable to your own receipt, 
 though I cannot say with any sanguine hope of obtaining 
 your approbation. 
 
 The following story consists of such adventures, as for 
 the most part have occurred to at least one half of the 
 Englishmen now existing, who are of the same rank of life 
 as my hero. Most of them have been at college, and shared in 
 college excesses : most of them have afterward run a certain 
 gauntlet of dissipation ; most have married ; and, I am 
 afraid, there are few of the married tribe who have not at 
 some time or other had certain small misunderstandings 
 with their wives * : — to be sure, they have not all of 
 them felt and acted under these trite adventures as my 
 hero does. In this little work the reader will scarcely find 
 any thing to " elevate and surprise;" and, if it has any 
 merit, it must consist in the liveliness with which it brings 
 things home to the imagination, and the reality it gives to 
 the scenes it pourtrays. 
 
 Yet, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a 
 certain kind of novelty ; a novelty, which may be aptly 
 expressed by a parody on a well known line of Pope ; it 
 relates — 
 
 " Things often done, but never yet described." t^ 
 
 In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I 
 have endeavoured to avoid such as a thousand novels before 
 mine have undertaken to develope. Multitudes of readers 
 have themselves passed through the very incidents I relate ; 
 but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded 
 them. If I have told them truly, I have added somewhat 
 to the stock of books which should enable a recluse, shut up 
 
 * I confess however the inability I found to weave a catastrophe, such as I 
 desired, out of these ordinary incidents. What I have here said therefore 
 must not be interpreted as applicable to the concluding sheets of my work. 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 in his closet, to form an idea of what is passing in the 
 world. It is inconceivable meanwhile_, how much, by this 
 choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my 
 task. It is so easy to do, a little better, or a little worse, 
 what twenty authors have done before ! If I had foreseen 
 from the first all the difficulty of my project, my courage 
 would have failed me to undertake the execution of it. 
 
 Certain persons, who condescend to make my supposed 
 inconsistencies the favourite object of their research, will 
 perhaps remark with exultation on the respect expressed in 
 this work for marriage ; and exclaim, ^^ It was not always 
 thus !" referring to the pages in which this subject is treated 
 in the Enquiry concerning Political Justice for the proof of 
 their assertion. The answer to this remark is exceedingly 
 simple. The production referred to in it, the first found- 
 ation of its author's claim to public distinction and favour, 
 was a treatise, aiming to ascertain what new institutions in 
 political society might be found more conducive to general 
 happiness than those which at present prevail. In the 
 course of this disquisition it was enquired, whether mar- 
 riage, as it stands described and supported in the laws of 
 England, might not with advantage admit of certain modi- 
 fications } Can any thing be more distinct, than such a 
 proposition on the one hand, and a recommendation on the 
 other that each man for himself should supersede and 
 trample upon the institutions of the country in which he 
 lives ? A thousand things might be found excellent and 
 salutary, if brought into general practice, which would in 
 some cases appear ridiculous, and in others be attended 
 with tragical consequences, if prematurely acted upon by a 
 solitary individual. The author of Political Justice, as ap- 
 pears again and again in the pages of that work, is the last 
 man in the world to recommend a pitiful attempt, by scat- 
 tered examples to renovate the face of society, instead of 
 endeavouring by discussion and reasoning, to eflPect a grand 
 and comprehensive improvement in the sentiments of its 
 members. j 
 
FLEETWOOD: 
 
 VOLUME THE FIRST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I WAS the only son of my father. I was very young at 
 the period of the death of my mother, and have retained 
 scarcely any recollection of her. My father was so much 
 affected by the loss of the amiable and affectionate partner 
 of his days, that he resolved to withdraw for ever from 
 those scenes where every object he saw was associated with 
 the ideas of her kindness, her accomplishments, and her 
 virtues : and, being habitually a lover of the sublime and 
 romantic features of nature, he fixed upon a spot in Meri- 
 onethshire, near the foot of Cader Idris, for the habitation 
 of his declining life. 
 
 Here I was educated. And the settled melancholy of 
 my father's mind, and the wild and magnificent scenery by 
 which 1 was surrounded, had an eminent share in deciding 
 upon the fortunes of my future life. My father loved me 
 extremely; his actions toward me were tender and indulgent; 
 he recognised in me all that remained of the individual he 
 had loved more than all the other persons in the world. 
 But he was also enamoured of solitude; he spent whole 
 days and nights in study and contemplation. Even when 
 he went into company, or received visiters in his own house, 
 he judged too truly of the temper and propensities of boy- 
 ish years, to put much restraint upon me, or to require that 
 I should either render myself subservient to the habits of 
 
2 '. ,' ; J'ipHTWOOD. 
 
 my elJ^.rs^ or^ l?y, a ridiculous exhibition of artificial talents, 
 evd&iS'(Pixt. tfi' ^^XrAc\\^ojqt ^^/. politeness nourishment for 
 his paternal vanity or pride. 
 
 I had few companions. The very situation which gave 
 us a full enjoyment of the beauties of nature, inevitably 
 narrowed both the extent and variety of our intercourse 
 with our own species. My earliest years were spent among 
 mountains and precipices^ amidst the roaring of the ocean 
 and the dashing of waterfalls. A constant famiUarity with 
 these objects gave a wildness to my ideas, and an un- 
 common seriousness to my temper. My curiosity was 
 ardent, and my disposition persevering. Often have I 
 climbed the misty mountain's top, to hail the first beams of 
 the orb of day, or to watch his refulgent glories as he sunk 
 beneath the western ocean. There was no neighbouring 
 summit that I did not ascend, anxious to see what moun- 
 tains, valleys, rivers, and cities were placed beyond. I gazed 
 upon the populous haunts of men as objects that pleasingly 
 diversified my landscape ; but without the desire to be- 
 hold them in nearer view. I had a presentiment that the 
 crowded streets and the noisy mart contained larger ma- 
 terials for constituting my pain than pleasure. The jarring 
 passions of men, their loud contentions, their gross pursuits, 
 their crafty delusions, their boisterous mirth, were objects 
 which, even in idea, my mind shrunk from with horror. 1 
 was a spoiled child. I had been little used to contradiction, 
 and felt like a tender flower of the garden, which the blast 
 of the east wind nips, and impresses with the tokens of a 
 sure decay. 
 
 With such a tone of mind the great features of nature are 
 particularly in accord. In her chosen retreat every thing 
 is busy and alive ; nothing is in full repose. All is diversity 
 and change. The mysterious power of vegetation continually 
 proceeds ; the trees unfold their verdure, and the fields are 
 clothed with grass and flowers. Life is every where around 
 tiie solitary wanderer ; all is health and bloom ; the sap cir- 
 culates, and the leaves expand. The stalk of the flower, the 
 trunk of the tree, and the limbs of animals dilate, and assume 
 larger dimensions. The cattle breathe, and the vegetable 
 kingdom consumes the vital air; the herds resort to the flowing 
 
FLEETWOOD. 3 
 
 stream, and the grass drinks the moisture of the earth and 
 the dew of heaven. Even the clouds, the winds, and the 
 streams present us with the image of Ufe, and talk to us of 
 that venerable power which is operating every where, and 
 never sleeps. But their speech is dumb ; their eloquence is 
 unobtrusive ; if they tear us from ourselves, it is with a 
 gentle and a kindly violence, which, while we submit to, 
 we bless. 
 
 Here begins the contrast and disparity between youth 
 and age. My father was a lover of nature ; but he was 
 not the corapariion of my studies in the scenes of nature. 
 He viewed her from his window, or from the terrace of 
 earth he had raised at the extremity of his garden ; he 
 mounted his horse for a tranquil excursion, and kept along 
 the road which was sedulously formed for the use of tra- 
 vellers. His limbs were stiffened with age ; and he was 
 held in awe by the periodical intrusions of an unwelcome 
 visiter, the gout. My limbs, on the contrary, were full of 
 the springiness which characterises the morning of hfe. I 
 bounded along the plains, and climbed the highest emi- 
 nences; I descended the most frightful declivities, and often 
 penetrated into recesses which had perhaps never before felt 
 the presence of a human creature. I rivalled the goat, the 
 native of the mountains, in agility and daring. My only 
 companion was a dog, who by familiarity had acquired 
 habits similar to mine. In our solitary rambles we seemed 
 to have a certain sympathy with each other ; and, when I 
 rested occasionally from the weariness of my exertions, he 
 came and lay down at my feet, and I often found relief 
 in dalliance with this humble companion amidst the un- 
 inhabited wilds which received me. Sometimes, when I 
 foresaw an excursion of more than usual daring, I confined 
 him at home ; but then he would generally break loose in 
 my absence, seek me among the mountains, and frequently 
 meet me in my return. Sometimes I would tie him to a 
 tree or a shrub, and leave him for hours : in these cases he 
 seemed to become a party in the implied compact between 
 us, and waited in mute resignation till he saw me again. 
 
 Every thing, however, was not exertion in the rambles I 
 describe. I loitered by the side of the river, and drank in 
 
4 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 at leisure the beauties that surrounded me. I sat for hours 
 on the edge of a precipice, and considered in quiet the 
 grand and savage objects around me, which seemed never 
 to have changed their character from the foundation of the 
 world. I listened in delightful idleness to the sound of 
 the stones, which I gently let fall into the cavities of the 
 rocks, or followed them with my eye as they bounded from 
 protuberance to protuberance, till by distance they became 
 invisible. I stretched myself at my length along the jut- 
 ting precipice, while my head hung over the vast billows 
 of the ocean, which seemed to gape and prepare themselves 
 to receive me into their remorseless bosom for ever. Often 
 I reposed by the side of a cataract, and was insensibly 
 lulled into slumber by the monotony of its dashings. 
 
 While thus amused, I acquired a habit of being absent 
 in mind from the scene which was before my senses. I 
 devoured at first with greedy appetite the objects which 
 presented themselves ; but by perseverance they faded on 
 my eye and my ear, and I sunk into a sweet insensibility 
 to the impressions of external nature. The state thus 
 produced was sometimes that which we perhaps most ex- 
 actly understand by the term reverie, when the mind has 
 neither action nor distinct ideas, but is swallowed up in a 
 living death, which, at the same time that it is indolent 
 and inert, is not desitute of a certain voluptuousness. At 
 other seasons the abstraction of my mind was of a more 
 busy and definite sort. I was engaged in imaginary 
 scenes, constructed visionary plans, and found all nature 
 subservient to my command. I had a wife or children, 
 was the occupier of palaces, or the ruler of nations. There 
 is this difference between the visions of the night, and the 
 dreams, the waking drfeams 1 mean, of the day : the former 
 are often painful, the latter are perhaps always grateful and 
 soothing. With the visions of the night there is ordinarily 
 mixed a depressing sense of impotence; things without 
 are too strong for us : in those of the day we are all- 
 powerful ; obstacles no sooner present themselves than they 
 are conquered; or, if it is otherwise, we wilfully protract 
 the struggle, that we may prolong our pleasure, and en- 
 hance our triumph. In the dream of the night, our 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 powers are blunted, and we are but half ourselves: the 
 day-dream on the contrary is the triumph of man; our 
 invention is full, our complacency is pure; and, if there 
 is any mixture of imbecility or folly in' the fable, it is a 
 mixture to which the dreamer at the moment scarcely ad- 
 verts. The tendency, therefore, of this species of dreaming, 
 when frequently indulged, is to inspire a certain propensity 
 to despotism, and to render him who admits it impatient 
 of opposition, and prepared to feel every cross accident, as 
 a usurpation upon his rights, and a blot upon his greatness. 
 This ejBPect of my early habits I fully experienced, and it 
 determined the colour of my riper years. 
 
 My youth, however, was not wholly spent in the idle 
 and frivolous task of constructing castles in the air. The 
 regard and affection my father felt for me, rendered him 
 anxious that my education should not be neglected. He 
 hired me a private tutor. I was perhaps sufficiently fortu- 
 nate in the character of the person who was thus established 
 in our house. He was not a clergyman. He did not 
 shackle my mind with complex and unintelligible creeds, 
 nor did he exhibit that monastic coldness and squareness 
 of character which is too frequently the result of clerical 
 celibacy. He was, however, a man of morals and of reli- 
 gion. But religion was distinguished in his mind more by 
 sentiments than opinions. Whatever related to his conduct 
 toward God or man was regulated principally by a desire 
 to satisfy his conscience and obtain his own approbation, 
 not to maintain a certain character and name in the world. 
 He had been designed by his parents, who were poor, for 
 the profession of the law; but he ultimately declined this 
 pursuit, from an aversion, as he said, to disputes, and so- 
 phistry, and the deriving a subsistence from the misfor- 
 tunes of others. He was one of those characters, so 
 frequently found in civilised Europe, who imagine in 
 themselves a vocation to the muses, and an interest in the 
 temple of literary immortality, which all their efforts are 
 unable to realise. He certainly was not a man of genius ; 
 and, though he had acquired a considerable facility in the 
 art of rhyming,, he was totally a stranger to those more 
 essential qualities which constitute the soul of poetry. 
 B 3 
 
n FLEETWOOD. 
 
 But he was that which is better than a mere poet; he was 
 an honest man. His heart was guileless; his manners 
 were simple; and, though he could never be cured of a 
 lying estimation of his own greatness, this did not prevent 
 him from feeling and discharging what was due to others. 
 He also possessed those accomplishments, the reputation of 
 which had principally recommended him to my father's 
 choice; he had a very decent portion of learning, and un- 
 derstood the elements of Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, 
 as well as possessed a smattering of astronomy, natural 
 philosophy, mathematics, and history. But his favourite 
 study was mythology ; his select reading was in Plato, at 
 least in his translators and commentators, which he inces- 
 santly perused, I am afraid without exactly understanding 
 them. He had made great progress in what I may name 
 a concordance of all religions. This was the second basis 
 upon which, together with his poetical effusions, he pro- 
 posed to erect the edifice of his fame. He allegorised 
 whatever is fabulous or historical in the sacred books of all 
 nations, and explained them all to signify a certain sublime 
 metaphysics, the detail of which is to be found for the 
 most part in the writings of Duns Scotus and Thomas 
 Aquinas. 
 
 This was exactly the sort of tutor adapted to my dis- 
 positions. I read with him occasionally the classics, and 
 the elementary books of science, because I was unwilKng 
 to thwart or give any one pain, more especially my father, 
 and because I was strongly impressed with a certain love 
 for literature and science. But I studied for the most 
 part when I pleased. My father was contented to discern 
 in me a certain inclination to learning, and did not think 
 of putting on me a task greater than I was willing to 
 endure. 
 
 In the mean time there was this peculiarity in my 
 tuition : though I learned from my preceptor almost every 
 thing valuable that he was able to teach, I never looked up 
 to him. His foibles were obvious, and did not escape my 
 observation. The understanding of my father was incom- 
 parably greater than that of this inmate of our family ; 
 nor did my father always refrain from ridiculing in his 
 
FLEETWOOD. 7 
 
 absence, and even sometimes alluding by a passing sarcasm 
 in his presence, to my tutor's weakness. I secretly de- 
 spised the good gentleman's sonnets and odes, and listened 
 with an unattending ear to his mythological mysteries. I 
 never dreamed for a moment that it could be less than sa- 
 crilege to measure his understanding with my own. This 
 systematical persuasion of superiority occasionally broke 
 out into little petulancies, which did not fail grievously to 
 wound my kind friend's self-esteem. I was positive,, 
 assuming, and conceited. But the difference of our ages 
 prevented these disputes from having any serious con- 
 sequences. If I entertained little deference for my tutor's 
 talents, I was not insensible to that degree of consideration 
 which is due to superior age, particularly when united with 
 virtue ; and my father, in his general demeanour, set me 
 too excellent an example in this respect, for it to be possible 
 for me not to profit by it. I might, perhaps, in my own 
 nature have been sufficiently inclined to the impetuous and 
 turbulent ; if 1 had been one only of a class of pupils, it is 
 probable enough that I should have joined in the conduct 
 of unlucky tricks to be put upon my instructor : but I was 
 alone ; and therefore, however quick-sighted I might be to 
 his weaknesses, they did not so expressly present them- 
 selves to my apprehension in the shape of ridicule. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The proper topic of the narrative I am writing is the 
 record of my errors. To write it, is the act of my penitence 
 and humiliation. I can expect, however, few persons to 
 interest themselves respecting my errors, unless they are 
 first informed what manner of man I am, what were my 
 spontaneous and native dispositions, and whether I am such 
 a one as that my errors are worthy of commiseration and 
 pity. This must be my apology for the topic I am here to 
 introduce, — a topic on which all ingenuous minds are dis- 
 B 4 
 
8 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 posed to be silent^ and which shall in this place be passed 
 over as slightly as possible, — my beneficence and charities. 
 
 I was fond of penetrating into the cottages of the poor. 
 I should be greatly unjust to myself, if I suffered the 
 reader to suppose that the wild elevation and intellectual 
 luxuries I indulged, had the effect to render me insensible 
 to the miseries of man. Nothing was squalid, loathsome, 
 and disgusting in my eyes, where it was possible for me to 
 be useful. I shrunk from the society of man in general ; 
 and foresaw, in the intercourse of my species, something for 
 ever prepared to thwart my sensibility, and to jar against 
 the unreal world in which I Uved. But I never shrank 
 from the presence of calamity. From the liberal allowance 
 with which my father supplied me, I relieved its wants ; I 
 sheltered it from the menaces of a prison ; and I even pre- 
 vailed on myself to resort willingly to such towns as our 
 vicinity afforded, to plead its cause, and parley with its 
 oppressor. 
 
 No doubt, my pride did not come away ungratified from 
 these enterprises. Far be it from me to assert, with certain 
 morose and cold-blooded moralists, that our best actions 
 are only more subtle methods by which self-love seeks its 
 gratification. My own heart, in every act of benevolence 
 I ever peformed, gave the lie to this execrable doctrine. I 
 felt that it was the love of another, and not of myself, that 
 prompted my deed ; I experienced a disinterested joy in 
 human relief and human happiness, independently of the 
 question whether I had been concerned in producing it; 
 and, when the season of retrospect arrived, I exulted in my 
 own benevolence, from the divine consciousness that, while 
 I had been most busily engaged in the task, my own 
 gratification was forgotten. 
 
 There is, however, as I have intimated, a very subtle 
 and complicated association in human feelings. The 
 generous sympathy which animated my charitable deeds 
 was pure ; it flowed from a celestial source, and maintained 
 its crystal current, as unmingled with the vulgar stream of 
 personal passions as the oil extracted from the most aro- 
 matic fruits flows separate, and unconfounded with the 
 mire of the kennel on which it may have fallen. There is 
 
FLBETWOOD. 9 
 
 no doubt, however, that the honourable character I exhi- 
 bited on these occasions prompted me the more joyfully to 
 seek their repetition. Humanity and self-complacency were 
 distinct causes of my beneficence ; but the latter was not 
 less powerful than the former in nourishing it into a habit. 
 In other scenes of human intercourse, I played an equal 
 and a doubtful part : the superior eloquence or information 
 of my competitor might overwhelm me ; he might have 
 more passion to pursue his purpose, or more want of 
 feeling to harden him against the obstacles that opposed : 
 but in the cottage to which my benevolence led me, I ap- 
 peared like a superior nature ; I had here no opposition to 
 contend with, no insult to awaken my irritability, and no 
 superciliousness to check the operations of my sentiment. 
 It was also fortunate for me, that the cases of distress 
 which came before me in this remote part of the island 
 were not numerous enough to distract my choice, or to 
 render me callous by the too great frequency of their 
 impressions. 
 
 One adventure of this sort interested me so much by the 
 liveliness of its incidents, that I cannot refuse briefly to 
 describe it in this place. The season had for many days 
 been uncommonly wet. The waters were swelled with con- 
 tinual rains, and the low lands were almost inundated. It 
 was July. After a series of heavy showers, one afternoon 
 the sky brightened, the sun burst forth with redoubled 
 splendour, and all nature smiled. This is a moment parti- 
 cularly dear to the lover of rural scenery. Dry weather tar- 
 nishes the face of nature, fades the lovely colours of hill 
 and valley, and profanes and destroys those sweet odours 
 which, more than any thing else, give the last finish to the 
 charms of nature. I hastened to enjoy the golden oppor- 
 tunity. By long practice, I knew how to find the paths 
 where mire and swamps would not occur to interrupt my 
 pleasure. My way led me by a steep acclivity of the 
 mountain, which overhangs the basin that forms the source 
 of the Desunny. I gained the eastern extremity of the 
 ridge, that I might the more amply enjoy the beams of the 
 setting sun as he sunk beneath the waves of the Irish Sea. 
 It was the finest evening my eyes ever beheld. The re- 
 
10 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 splendent colours of the clouds, the rich purple and bur- 
 nished gold in various streaks fantastically formed and 
 repeated, were beyond any imagination to conceive. The 
 woods were vocal. The scents that surrounded me, the 
 steaming earth, the fresh and invigorating air, the hay and 
 the flowers, constituted, so to express myself, an olfactory 
 concert, infinitely more ravishing than all the concords of 
 harmonious sound that human art ever produced. This 
 lovely moment combined in one impression the freshness of 
 the finest morning, with all the rich and gorgeous effects 
 peculiar to the close of a summer's day. 
 
 I stood, as I have said, on the edge of the precipice. I 
 gazed for a long time upon the various charms that what we 
 ordinarily, but improperly, call inanimate nature unfolded. 
 I saw the rustic, as he retired from endeavouring to repair 
 the injury his hay had sustained ; and the flocks, as they 
 passed slowly along to their evening's repose. Presently an 
 individual object engrossed my attention. A young Iamb 
 had wandered by some accident to the middle of the pre- 
 cipice, and a peasant was pursuing it, and endeavouring to 
 call it to his arms. I shuddered at the sight. The preci- 
 pice was in some parts almost perpendicular. The rains 
 had rendered the surface exceedingly slippery. The peasant 
 caught at the shrubs and tufts of grass as he descended ; 
 and, with a skill peculiar to the inhabitants of the moun- 
 tains, seemed to proceed securely in the most desperate 
 places. The lamb, whether from heedlessness or wanton- 
 ness, advanced further along the mountain-side, as the 
 shepherd pursued. 
 
 While I was engaged in observing this little manoeuvre, 
 I suddenly heard a scream. It came from a spot exceed- 
 ingly near to me. Two boys sat in a nook where I had 
 not perceived them, and cried out, " My brother ! my 
 brother !" A venerable grey-headed man was with them. 
 He exclaimed, " My son ! my William ! " and prepared to 
 plunge down the precipice. The scream I had heard was 
 the effect of what at that moment happened before my eyes; 
 yet such is the curious structure of the human senses, that 
 what I heard seemed to be prior in time to what I saw. The 
 peasant had almost overtaken his lamb. The lamb was on 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 1 
 
 the point of escaping by a sudden leap ; the peasant sprung 
 upon him, and both were at the bottom of the precipice, and 
 plunged in the basin, now swelled into a lake, with the 
 rapidity of lightning. I flew to the group 1 have described; 
 I laid hold of the old man at the moment of his purposed 
 descent ; I cried out, " Stay, poor man ! what can you do ? 
 I will save your son ! " I knew a path, more secure, yet 
 scarcely more circuitous nhan that which the peasant had 
 followed. I had the advantage over him, that I was not 
 diverted from my course by any object whose deviations I 
 pursued. For some time I went on safely; I saw the peasant 
 rise to the surface of the water, and sink again ; my im- 
 patience was too great to combine any longer with wariness ; 
 I lost my footing, and in an instant I also was in the lake. 
 
 My fall had been from a less terrible height than his, 
 and I recovered myself. I swam toward the place where 
 he had last sunk ; he rose ; I threw my arm round his neck, 
 and supported him. The difficulty, however, which re- 
 mained appeared insuperable ; the shores on almost every 
 side were shelving, and impossible to be scaled with the 
 peasant in my arms, who was in a state of insensibility. 
 As 1 was endeavouring to find the means of escaping from 
 this difficulty, I saw a boat advancing toward us ; it was 
 rowed by a young woman; it approached; she was William's 
 mistress, and the owner of the lamb for which he had ven- 
 tured his life ; we got him into the boat ; he was more 
 stunned with the fall, than injured by the water ; he ap- 
 peared to be gradually recovering ; even the lamb was saved. 
 
 By the time we had reached the shore, the father and 
 the two brothers were come round to our landing-place. 
 All their attention was at first turned upon William ; I was 
 nothing to them : I retired to a little distance, artd observed 
 the group. The eldest boy supported William, as he sat ; 
 the blooming maid rubbed his temples ; the father sat be- 
 fore him, and clasped his son's hands between his. It was 
 an interesting spectacle ; a painter might have sketched 
 them as they sat. The eye of the boy glistened with eager- 
 ness ; the girl hung over her lover, while her colour alter- 
 nately changed from its natural ruddiness to a languid 
 paleness ; the hairs of the old man were as white as snow 
 
12 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Presently "William uttered a profound sigh; it was a wel- 
 come sound to the whole assembly. The least boy was a 
 first wrapped in silent attention ; but presently began to 
 play with Molly, the pet lamb, that frisked about him. In 
 a short time the old man exclaimed, " Where is our de- 
 liverer ? " It was now my turn ; I was at a short distance ; 
 they were all tumultuous in their expressions of gratitude. 
 The peasant-girl and myself supported "Wilham to his 
 cottage ; I offered my other arm to the father ; the biggest 
 boy Jed their favourite lamb by a string which hung from 
 his neck ; the youngest bore in triumph his father's stick, 
 who, as he leaned on my arm, no longer needed its support. 
 Such was the com.mencement of my acquaintance with 
 an honest family. The habitation of the girl was at a small 
 distance from theirs ; she was one of a numerous assemblage 
 of sisters who lived with their mother. I found that the 
 young persons had been lovers for more than a year, but 
 had deferred their marriage for prudential reasons. The 
 industry of Wilham was the support of his own house ; his 
 father was past his labour ; they had resolved not to marry 
 till the next brother should be able to take the place now- 
 filled by the eldest. The accident that had just occurred, 
 in which the cottage-maid preserved the life of her lover, 
 increased their affection, and doubled their impatience ; an 
 impatience, however, which they were resolute to subject to 
 the most honourable considerations. I saw them often ; I 
 loved them much. WiUiam was ingenuous and active ; the 
 maid added to a masculine intrepidity most of the more lovely 
 graces of her own sex. The father often lamented, even 
 with tears, that he was no longer capable of those exertions 
 which might enable "William freely to obey the dictates of 
 his heart. The attachment which I felt to them was that 
 of a patron and a preserver ; when I observed the degree of 
 content which prevailed among them, when I witnessed the 
 effusions of their honest esteem and affection, my heart 
 whispered me, " This would not have existed but for me !" 
 I prevailed on my father to bestow a farm upon the lovers ; 
 I engaged, out of my own little stock, to hire a labourer for 
 the old man ; they married, and I had the satisfaction to 
 convert one virtuous establishment into two. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Such were the principal occupations o my juvenile years. 
 I loved the country, without feeling any partiaHty to what 
 are called the sports of the country. My temper, as I have 
 already said, was somewhat unsocial ; and so far as related 
 to the intercourse of my species, except when some strong 
 stimulus of humanity called me into action, unenterprising. 
 I was therefore no hunter. I was inaccessible to the piti- 
 ful ambition of showing, before a gang of rural squires, that 
 X had a fine horse, and could manage him gracefully. 1 had 
 not the motive, which ordinarily influences the inhabitants 
 of the country to the cultivation of these sports, — the want 
 of occupation. I was young : the world was new to me : I 
 abounded with occupation. In the scenery of Merionethshire 
 I found a source of inexhaustible amusement. Science, 
 history, poetry, engaged me by turns, and into each of them 
 my soul plunged itself with an ardour difficult to describe. 
 In the train of these came my visions, my beloved and 
 variegated inventions, the records, which to me appeared 
 voluminous and momentous, of my past Hfe, the plans of 
 my future, the republics I formed, the seminaries of edu- 
 cation for which I constructed laws, the figure I proposed 
 hereafter to exhibit in the eyes of a wondering world. I 
 had a still further and more direct reason for my rejection 
 of the sports of the field. I coidd not with patience regard 
 torture, anguish, and death, as sources of amusement. My 
 natural temper, or my reflective and undebauched habits as 
 a solitaire, prevented me from overlooking the brutality and 
 cruelty of such pursuits. In very early youth I had been 
 seduced, first by a footman of my father, and afterward by 
 my tutor, who was a great lover of the art, to join in an 
 excursion of angling. But, after a short trial, I abjured 
 the amusement for ever ; and it was one among the causes 
 of the small respect I entertained for my tutor, that he was 
 devoted to so idle and unfeeling an avocation. 
 
14 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 HAPTER III. 
 
 At the usual age I entered myself of the university of 
 Oxford. I felt no strong propensity to this change ; but I 
 submitted to it, as to a thing in the regular order of pro- 
 ceeding, and to whicli it would be useless to object. I was 
 so much accustomed to self-conversation as to have little 
 inclination to mix in the world ; and was to such a degree 
 satisfied with my abilities, and progress, and capacity of 
 directing my own studies and conduct, as not to look with 
 any eager craving for the advice and assistance of pro- 
 fessors and doctors. 
 
 In setting out for the university, I was to part with my 
 father and my preceptor. The first of these was a bitter 
 pang to me: I had scarcely, from the earhest of my 
 remembrance, ever been a week removed from the sight of 
 the author of my being. He was the wisest and the best 
 man I knew. He had all those advantages from nature, 
 and from the external endowments of fortune, which were 
 calculated to maintain my reverence. We had gradually 
 become more qualified for each other's society and confi- 
 dence. Our characters had many points of resemblance : 
 w^e were both serious, both contemplative, both averse to 
 the commerce of the world. My temper, as I have said, 
 was to an uncommon degree impatient of contradiction ; 
 and a certain degree of heart-burning had not failed occa- 
 sionally to invade my breast on this score, even toward this 
 excellent parent. But my resentment and indignation in 
 these instances had been short-lived. As the only repre- 
 sentative of his person in existence, my father was ardently 
 attached to me, and the occasions he administered to my 
 impatience and displeasure were exceedingly few. On the 
 other hand, whatever faults of character might justly be 
 imputed to me, I had yet betrayed no tokens of an un- 
 manageable boisterousness ; my propensities were innocent ; 
 and my pursuits, most of them, such as seemed to conduce 
 to the improvement of my understanding and my heart. In 
 a word, my father and I, allowing for those failings which 
 
FLEETWOOD. 15 
 
 in some form or other are inseparable from the human 
 character, were excellent friends ; and it was not without 
 many tears shed on both sides that we parted, when I 
 mounted the chaise in which I set out for Oxford. 
 
 The separation between me and my tutor, which took 
 place at the same time, was productive of a mixed sens- 
 ation. I had long nourished in my mind a supercilious 
 disregard of his mental discernment, and felt as if it were a 
 degradation to me to listen to his instructions. The lessons 
 he gave me appeared as a sort of shackles, the symbols of 
 infantine imbecility. I was confident of my virtue and my 
 perseverance, and longed to shake off these tokens of my 
 nonage. But, besides these intellectual sources of weariness 
 and impatience, there was an animal sensation, which made 
 me regard the day of my separation from my tutor as the 
 epoch of my liberty. His voice was sickly and unpleasing 
 to my ear. He had cultivated the art of being amiable ; 
 and his cadences were formed by habit to a kind of tune 
 of candour, and gentleness, and humanity. His gentleness 
 was, unfortunately, twin-brother to the softness of his un- 
 derstanding, and expressed nothing so plainly as his igno- 
 rance of all the avenues of persuasion, and all the secret 
 springs of hope^ and fear, and passion, and will. In 
 addition to this, the good gentleman loved to hear himself 
 talk ; and his explanations and exhortations were as long as 
 the homilies of Archbishop Cranmer. At my age, — the age 
 of restlessness_, and activity, and enterprise, — these dis- 
 courses, unhappily, did not generate a propensity to sleep, 
 and therefore produced in me an insupportable listlessness 
 and ennui. 
 
 Yet I did not finally part with my old friend without 
 pain. It was impossible a more innocent creature should 
 live. If I did not highly respect him, I could not help ap- 
 proving and loving him. Had it been otherwise, there is 
 something in the nature of habit which will for ever prevent 
 us from parting with that to which we have been long 
 accustomed, with indifference. I had been used to see my 
 preceptor every morning. He was part of the furniture of 
 our eating-room. As we had very unfrequent opportunities 
 of various society, I often found relief in entering into 
 
1 6 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 conversation with him. If he could tell me nothing that 
 appeared to me highly worthy of attention, in the way of 
 fancy or deduction, he was at least well qualified to inform 
 me of what he had read in books, relatively either to 
 chronology, geography, or science. I am persuaded that 
 if, when my tutor left me, I had remained among the same 
 scenes, the crisis would have been a severe one. As it 
 was, my understanding approved of the separation : I 
 recollected that it was an event for which I had often and 
 anxiously sighed ; yet to part with a good man, — a man 
 to whose cares and patience I owed much, who had be- 
 stowed on me a thousand benefits, and between whom and 
 myself there had, from familiarity, grown up a considerable 
 affection, — was no desirable task. I kissed his hand ; 
 1 thanked him a hundred times for his constant exertions ; 
 with bitter self-reproach, I entreated him to forgive every 
 act of rudeness, impetuousness, and disrespect, I had been 
 guilty of toward him : at this moment, these things struck 
 upon my conscience like crimes. 
 
 My father was anxious that a decent provision should be 
 made for his dechning years. There was an ecclesiastical 
 living of considerable value vacant in my father's gift, and 
 he entreated my tutor to enter into holy orders, and accept 
 of it; but this my old friend strenuously declined. His 
 creed did not exactly accord with the principles of ortho- 
 doxy contained in the code of the Church of England; and 
 he disdained to compromise with his conscience. Besides, 
 regarding himself, as he undoubtedly did, as the first lumi- 
 nary of his age, he could not think with perfect temper of 
 devoting the last maturity of his mind to the society of fox- 
 hunting squires, and the reading prayers and sermons to 
 rustics and old women. He retired, upon a small annuity 
 which my father settled upon him, to a narrow lodging in 
 an obscure street of the metropolis, and published from time 
 to time pocket volumes of poetry, and sketches of a synopsis 
 of his mythological discoveries, which some persons bought 
 out of respect to the good qualities of their author, but 
 which no person read. 
 
 A third separation which took place on this occasion, 
 and which, I hope, the reader will not think it beneath the 
 
I 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 17 
 
 dignity of history to record, was between meand my dog. 
 He was my old and affectionate friend, and the hours I had 
 spent tcte-d'iete in his society were scarcely less numerous 
 than those I had spent with my tutor. He had often been 
 the confidant of my sorrows ; and I had not found it less 
 natural to complain to him, than the heroines of fable or 
 romance to the woods and the wilds, the rocks and the 
 ocean, of the cruelties they experienced, or the calamities 
 that weighed them down to the earth. One instance in 
 particular I remember in very early youth, when my father 
 had spoken to me with unusual sharpness about some fault 
 that, in my eyes, by no means merited great severity of 
 censure. I retired to the terrace in the garden which has 
 already been mentioned, threw myself at my length upon 
 the turf, and indulged a short fit of mutiny and misan- 
 thropy. As I lay, poor Chilo (that was the dog's name) 
 discovered me, and leaped toward me with his usual demon- 
 strations of joy. I was in too ill a humour to notice him ; 
 and he, who seemed to have at least as much skill as my 
 tutor in discerning what passed in my mind, crept along 
 the turf toward the spot which supported my head, with 
 pleading and most diffident advances. At length I suffered 
 my eye to fall on him. This brought him close to me in a 
 moment. He licked my hands and face, with every token of 
 gratitude, affection, and delight. I threw my arms round 
 him. " Fond fool ! " said I, " every one else treats me 
 with unldndness and injustice; but you will love me 
 still!" 
 
 It was judged proper that this animal, who had passed 
 the meridian of his life, should not accompany me in my 
 entrance into the world, but should remain at home. I ac- 
 cordingly left him in Merionethshire. What was my sur- 
 prise, then, one day, as I came down the steps of the chapel 
 from morning prayers, after having been a week at Oxford, 
 at meeting my dog ! He fawned upon me, played a thousand 
 extravagant antics, and was transported out of himself at 
 the joy of finding me. I afterward learned that he had 
 been at my rooms, had been repulsed there, and finally 
 found his way to the chapel. By what sort of instinct an 
 animal is thus enabled, for a distance of one hundred and 
 
 
 
18 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 seventy miles, to discover the trace of his master, I am un- 
 able to say. The thing itself, I am told, is not uncommon. 
 But every ingenuous mind to whom such an incident has 
 occurred, feels, no doubt, as I did, a most powerful impulse 
 of affection toward the brute who has shown so distinguished 
 an attachment. 
 
 What is the nature of this attachment ? A dog, I be- 
 lieve, is not less attached to a fool than to a wise man, to a 
 peasant than to a lord, to a beggar inhabiting the poorest 
 hut, than to a prince swaying the sceptre of nations and 
 dwelling in a palace. Ill usage scarcely makes a\lifFerence. 
 At least, the most sparingly dealt kindness of the surhest 
 groom affords a sufficient basis of attachment. The case 
 is considerably parallel to that of a nobleman I have some- 
 where read of, who insisted that his mistress should not 
 love him for his wealth nor his rank, the graces of his per- 
 son nor the accomplishments of his mind ; but for himself. 
 I am inclined to blame the man who should thus subtly 
 refine, and wantonly endeavour at a separation between him 
 and all that is most truly his; but, where the course of 
 nature produces this separation, there is a principle in the 
 human mind which compels us to find gratification in this 
 unmerited and metaphysical love. 
 
 At Oxford, the whole tone of my mind became speedily 
 changed. The situation was altogether new, and the 
 efiects produced were strikingly opposed to those which I 
 had hitherto sustained. In Merionethshire, I had been a 
 solitary savage I had no companions, and I desired none. 
 The commerce of my books and of my thoughts was 
 enough for me. I lived in an ideal world of my own 
 creation. The actual world beneath me I intuitively 
 shunned. I felt that every man I should meet would be 
 either too ignorant, too coarse, or too supercilious, to af- 
 ford me pleasure. The strings of my mind, so to express 
 it, were tuned to too delicate and sensitive a pitch: it was 
 an Eolian harp, upon which the winds of heaven might 
 ^'^ discourse excellent music ;" but the touch of a human 
 hand could draw from it nothing but discord and disso- 
 nance. 
 
 At the university all that I experienced for some weeks 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 9 
 
 was pain. Nature spoils us for relishing the beauties of 
 nature. Formed as my mind had been, almost from in- 
 fancy, to delight itself with the grand, the romantic, the 
 pregnant, the surprising, and the stupendous, as they 
 display themselves in North Wales, it is inconceivable with 
 what contempt, what sensations of loathing, I looked upon 
 the face of nature as it shows itself in Oxfordshire. All 
 here was flat, and tame, and tedious. Wales was nature 
 in the vigour and animation of youth: she sported in a 
 thousand wild and admirable freaks; she displayed a 
 master-hand; every stroke of her majestic pencil was clear, 
 and bold, and free. But, in the country to which I had 
 now removed, nature to my eyes seemed to be in her dotage ; 
 if she attempted any thing, it was the attempt of a dri- 
 veller; she appeared like a toothless and palsied beldame, 
 who calls upon her visiters to attend, who mumbles slowly 
 a set of inarticulate and unintelligible sounds, and to whom 
 it exceeds the force of human resolution to keep up the 
 forms of civility. Why does the world we live in thus 
 teach us to despise the world? 
 
 My father's house had been built in a style of antique 
 magnificence. The apartments were spacious, the galleries 
 long and wide, and the hall in which I was accustomed 
 to walk in unfavourable weather was of ample dimensions. 
 The rooms appropriated to my use at Oxford appeared 
 comparatively narrow, squalid, and unwholesome. My 
 very soul was cabined in them. There were spacious 
 buildings in Oxford; there were open and cheerful walks : 
 but how contrasted with those to which I had been accus- 
 tomed! There I expatiated free; I possessed them alone; 
 Nature was my friend, and my soul familiarly discoursed 
 with her, unbroken in upon by the intrusion of the vulgar 
 and the profane. Here I had no green and heaven-formed 
 retreat in which I could hide myself; my path was crossed 
 by boys ; I was elbowed by gownmen ; their vulgar gabble 
 and light laughter perpetually beset my ears, and waked 
 up curses in my soul. I could pursue no train of thought; 
 the cherished visions of my former years were broken and 
 scattered in a thousand fragments. I know that there are 
 men who could pursue an undivided occupation of thought 
 c 2 
 
20 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 amidst all the confusion of Babel; but my habits had not 
 fitted me for this. I had had no difficulties to struggle 
 withj and I was prepared to surmount none. 
 
 The morning of life is pliable and docile. I speedily 
 adapted myself to my situation. As I could not escape 
 from the coxcombs of the university, I surrendered myself 
 with the best grace I could into their hands. It is the 
 first step only that costs a struggle. At the commencement, 
 the savage of Merionethshire made but an uncouth and 
 ludicrous figure among the pert youngsters of Oxford. 
 Their speech and gestures were new to me. I had hitherto 
 spent more words, the repetition of lessons only excepted, 
 in soliloquy than in conversation. My phrases were those 
 of enthusiasm and the heart. They had the full and preg- 
 nant form which was given them by a mind crowded with 
 ideas and impelled to unload itself, not the sharp, short, 
 pointed turn of a speaker whose habitual object is a jest. 
 My muscles were not formed to a smile ; or, if at any time 
 they had assumed that expression, it was the smile of 
 elevated sentiment, not that of supercilious contempt, of 
 petty triumph, or convivial jollity. 
 
 As soon, however, as I had chosen my part in the di- 
 lemma before me, I became instinct with a principle, from 
 which the mind of ingenuous youth is never totally free, 
 — the principle of curiosity. I was prompted to observe . 
 these animals, so different from any that had been before 
 presented to my view, to study their motives, their pro- 
 pensities, and their tempers, the passions of their souls, 
 and the occupations of their intellect. To do this effec- 
 tually, it was necessary that I should become familiar with 
 many, and intimate with a few. I entered myself an 
 associate of their midnight orgies, and selected one young 
 person for a friend, who kindly undertook my introduction 
 into the world. 
 
 It happened in this, as in all cases of a similar nature, 
 that familiarity annihilated wonder. As the hero is no 
 hero to his valet-de-chamhre, so the monster is no monster 
 to his friend. Through all the varieties of the human 
 race, however unlike in their prominent features, there 
 are sufficient chords of sympathy, and evidences of a com- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 21 
 
 mon nature, to enable us to understand each other, and 
 find out the clue to every seeming irregularity. I soon 
 felt that my new associates were of the same species as 
 myself, and that the passions which stimulated them, had 
 seeds of a responsive class, however hitherto unad verted to 
 and undeveloped in my own bosom. "^^ 
 
 It is surprising how soon I became like to the persons 
 I had so lately wondered at and despised. Nothing could 
 be more opposite, in various leading respects, than the 
 Fleetwood of Merionethshire and the Fleetwood of the 
 university. The former had been silent and apparently 
 sheepish, not, perhaps, more from awkwardness than pride. 
 He was contemplative, absent, enthusiastical, a worshipper 
 of nature. His thoughts were full of rapture, elevation, 
 and poetry. His eyes now held commerce with the phe- 
 nomena of the heavens, and now were bent to earth in 
 silent contemplation and musing. There was nothing in 
 tliem of the level and horizontal. His bosom beat with 
 the flattering consciousness that he was of a class superior 
 to the ordinary race of man. It was impossible to be of a 
 purer nature, or to have a soul more free from every thing 
 gross, sordid, and grovehng. The Fleetwood of the uni- 
 versity had lost much of this, and had exchanged the 
 generous and unsullied pride of the wanderer, for a pride 
 of a humbler cast. Once I feared not the eye of man, 
 except as I was reluctant to give him pain ; now I was 
 afraid of ridicule. This very fear made me impudent. I 
 hid the qualms and apprehensiveness of my nature under 
 " a swashing and a martial outside." My jest was always 
 ready. I willingly engaged in every scheme of a gay and 
 an unlucky nature. I learned to swallow my glass freely, 
 and to despise the character of a flincher. I carefully 
 stored my memory with convivial and licentious songs, 
 and learned to sing them in a manner that caused the walls 
 of our supper-room to echo with thunders of applause. 
 Here, as in Wales, I advanced toward the summit of the 
 class of character to which I devoted my ambition, and 
 was acknowledged by all my riotous companions for an 
 accomplished pickle. In the contrast of the two personages 
 I have described, I confess, my memory has no hesitation 
 
 a 
 
22 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 on which side to determine her preference. Oh, Cadei* 
 Idris ! oh, genius of the mountains ! oh, divinity, that 
 president over the constellations, the meteors, and the 
 ocean ! how was your pupil fallen ! how the awestruck 
 and ardent worshipper of the God who shrouds himself in 
 darkness, changed into the drinker and the debauchee, the 
 manufacturer of " a fool-born jest," and the shameless 
 roarer of a licentious catch ! 
 
 I did not, however, entirely depart from the dispositions 
 w^hich had characterised me in Wales. My poetical and 
 contemplative character was gone; all that refinement 
 which distinguished me from the grosser sons of earth. 
 My understanding was brutified ; I no longer gave free 
 scope to the workings of my own mind, but became an 
 artificial personage, formed after a wretched and con- 
 temptible model. But my benevolence and humanity were 
 still the same. Among the various feats of a college-buck 
 I attempted, there was none in which I came off with so 
 little brilliancy, as that of ^' quizzing a fresh-man," and 
 making a fellow-creature miserable by a sportive and in- 
 temperate brutality. What scenes of this sort I have 
 witnessed ! There is no feature of man, by which our 
 common nature is placed in so odious and despicable a 
 light, as the propensity we feel to laugh at and accumulate 
 the distresses of our fellow-creatures, when those distresses 
 display themselves with tokens of the ungainly and un- 
 couth. I engaged in a project of this sort once or twice, 
 and then abjured the ambition for ever. Thenceforward 
 it was my practice to interfere in behalf of the sufferers by 
 such hostilities ; and my manner carried with it that air 
 of decision, that, though the inferference was unwelcome, 
 it was successful ; and the dogs of the caustic hunt let go 
 their hold of the bleeding game. Another motive actuated 
 me in this plan of proceeding. Though I had assumed an 
 impudent and licentious character, I despised it; and I 
 made conscience of debauching new converts into the in- 
 glorious school, which was usually the object and end of 
 these brutal jests. I was contented to associate with those 
 whose characters I judged to be finished already, and whom 
 I persuaded myself my encouragement would not make 
 
FLEETWOOD. 2S 
 
 worse ; and thus with wretched sophistry I worked my 
 mind into the behef that, while I yielded to a vicious 
 course, I was doing no harm. In the midst of all this, 
 my heart entered with prompt liberality into the difficulties 
 and distresses of others ; and as in Wales I was assiduous 
 to relieve the wants of the industrious and the poor, so in 
 Oxford, the embarrassments of those young men, whose 
 funds derived from their families did not keep pace with 
 the demands of their situation, excited in me particular 
 sympathy, and received frequent and sometimes secret 
 relief from the resources with which my father's bounty 
 supplied me. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ix this place I feel inclined to relate one of those stories 
 of ingenious intellectual victory, as they considered them, 
 of dull and unfeeling brutality, as they really were, in 
 which too many of my college contemporaries prided them- 
 selves. A young man, during my residence at the uni- 
 versity, entered himself of our college, who was judged by 
 the gayer Oxonians singularly well formed to be the butt 
 of their ridicule. The dress in which he made his ap- 
 pearance among us was ungainly and ludicrous : the flaps 
 of his waistcoat extended to his knees, and those of his 
 coat almost to his heels : his black, coarse, shining hair, 
 parted on the forehead, was every where of equal length, 
 and entirely buried his ears beneath its impervious canopy. 
 He had hitherto been brought up in solitude under the sole 
 direction of his father, a country clergyman ; but he was 
 an excellent classic scholar and a mathematician, and his 
 manners were the most innocent and unsuspecting that it 
 is possible to imagine. In addition to these qualities, he 
 had an exalted opinion of his own intellectual accomplish- 
 ments ; and he had brought with him, among his other 
 treasures, the offspring of his stripling meditations, a tra- 
 gedy founded on tiie story of the Fifth Labour of Hercules, 
 c 4) 
 
24 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 In this performance the contents of the Augean stable 
 were set out in great pomp of description ; the ordure 
 which had accumulated in thirty years from the digestion 
 and dejection of three thousand oxen was amphfied and 
 spread out to the fancy ; and Withers (this was the name 
 of the poet) might be said^ Kke Virgil, to " fling about his 
 dung with an air of majesty." The tragedy opened with 
 a 'pathetic lamentation between the groom and the herdsman 
 of the king, respecting the melancholy condition of the 
 stable, and the difficulty of keeping the cattle which were 
 so unroyally lodged in any creditable appearance. A herald 
 then entered with a proclamation, declaring that three 
 hundred of the king's oxen should be the prize of him who 
 should restore the stable to a wholesome and becoming 
 state. The chorus next sang an ode, in which they ex- 
 posed the miseries of procrastination, and declared that 
 none but a demigod could accomplish the task which had 
 so long been postponed. In the second act Hercules ap- 
 peared, and offered to undertake the arduous operation. 
 He has an audience of the king, who dwells upon the 
 greatness of the effort, and exposes, in a loftier style, what 
 had already been described by his servants in familiar 
 verse, the filth the hero would have to encounter. Her- 
 cules answers modestly, and enters into the history of the 
 four labours he had already accomplished. The bargain is 
 struck ; and the chorus admire the form and port of the 
 hero, and pray for his success. The third act begins with 
 expressing the general terror and astonishment. Hercules 
 removes the oxen from their stalls ; and then a mighty 
 rushing sound is heard of the river leaving its ancient 
 bounds, and pouring its tide through the noisome and 
 infectious walls. The rest of the play consisted of the 
 arguments on the part of the king and of the hero, as to 
 whether Hercules had fulfilled his engagement ; and the 
 punishment of the tyrant. Here many hints were bor- 
 rowed from the contention of Ajax and Ulysses in Ovid, 
 respecting the preference of wisdom and ingenuity over 
 brute force : King Augeas insisting that the nuisance should 
 have been displaced with shovel and wheelbarrow ; while 
 Hercules with great eloquence maintained that to remove 
 
FLEETWOOD. 25 
 
 the whole evil at once, by changing the course of a river, 
 was a more wonderful and meritorious achievement. 
 
 This tragedy soon became a source of inexhaustible 
 amusement to the wits and satirists of our college. One 
 of the drollest and demurest of the set had first wormed 
 himself into the confidence of Withers, and extorted from 
 him his secret, and then, under the most solemn engage- 
 ments not to name the matter to a living creature, ob- 
 tained the loan of this choice morsel of scenic poetry. He 
 had no sooner gained possession of it, than he gave notice 
 to four or five of his associates ; and they assembled the 
 same evening, to enjoy over a bottle the treasure they had 
 purloined. It must be owned that the subject of the 
 drama was particularly calculated to expose the effusions of 
 its author to their ridicule. The solemn phrases, and the 
 lofty ornaments, with which every thing was* expressed, 
 afforded a striking contrast to the filth and slime which 
 constituted the foundation of the piece. A topic of this 
 sort, however slightly mentioned, must appear low and 
 absurd ; but, when the dung, accumulated in thirty years, 
 by three thousand oxen, together with the solemn engage- 
 ment between a demigod and a king for its removal, is 
 set out in all the pomp of verse, the man must be more sad 
 than Heraclitus, and more severe than Cato, who could 
 resist the propensity to laughter at the hearing of such a 
 tale. In the present case, where every joyous companion 
 was predetermined to find materials for merriment, the 
 peals of laughter were obstreperous and innumerable ; 
 many passages were encored by the unanimous voice of 
 the company ; and, in conclusion, the scoffer, who had ob- 
 tained for them their present amusement, was deputed to 
 procure them the higher and more exquisite gratification 
 of hearing the piece gravely declaimed to them by its 
 author. 
 
 Accordingly, in a few days, he waited on Withers with 
 a grave and melancholy face, manuscript in hand, and con- 
 fessed, that by a very culpable neglect, he had fallen into a 
 breach of the engagement he had made to the author on 
 receiving it. He then named a young man of ingenuity 
 and fancy in the same college, who had obtained consi- 
 
26 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 derable notoriety by several pieces of fugitive poetry, 
 which were much admired at Oxford. Withers had heard 
 of him, and felt that respect which might naturally be 
 expected for a brother of his own vocation. Morrison, the 
 jester, added, that this votary of the muses, and himself, 
 were upon so intimate terms, that each had a key to the 
 other's chamber ; that he, not recollecting this at the mo- 
 ment, had left the manuscript, being called away by a par- 
 ticular occasion, open upon his desk, had locked the door, 
 and departed ; and that the poet, arriving soon after, had 
 discovered, and seized with avidity, the Fifth Labour of 
 Hercules. 
 
 Withers was greatly distressed at this tale. He had 
 those feelings of modesty, which, under certain modifica- 
 tions, are most incident to such persons as are pervaded 
 with an anticipation of their future eminence. He did not 
 pretend, however, to blame his friend for a fault into 
 which he seemed so innocently to have fallen, and which 
 he so ingenuously confessed. On the other hand, Morri- 
 son soothed the dramatist, by describing to him the trans- 
 ports of admiration with which the poet had been impressed 
 in the perusal of this virgin tragedy. 
 
 While they were yet in conversation, the poet knocked 
 at the chamber-door. The verses of this young man, 
 Frewen by name, were not deficient in merits 9r even in deli- 
 cacy ; but his features were harsh and his manners coarse. 
 He began with saying, that he could by no means deny 
 himself the pleasure of soliciting the acquaintance and 
 friendship of a youth, to whose mind he had the vanity to 
 believe his own was in so many respects congenial. He 
 then launched out in rapturous praise of the Fifth Labour 
 of Hercules. Seeing the manuscript on the table, he re- 
 quested permission to open it, and point out to the author 
 one or two places which had struck him as particularly 
 excellent. He then read part of a speech from King 
 Augeas's groom, and that with such emphasis of delivery^ 
 and seeming enthusiasm of intonation, as might have per- 
 suaded the most sceptical bystander that he was really 
 smitten with approbation of the verses he pronounced. 
 The eyes of Withers glistened with joy. His self-love 
 
FLEETWOOD, 27 
 
 had never experienced so rich a treat. Frewen then pro- 
 ceeded to descant, with great ingenuity, upon certain me- 
 taphors and ornaments of style interspersed through the 
 composition ; showing how happily they were chosen, how 
 skilfully adapted, how vigorously expressed, and how ori- 
 ginal they were in the conception ; and, though some of 
 the clauses he fixed upon were to such a degree absurd, 
 that the poet himself, when he heard them thus insulated 
 from their connection, began to suspect that all was not 
 right, yet the remarks of his panegyrist were so subtle, and 
 above all, were delivered with an air of such perfect sin- 
 cerity, that he finished with being completely the dupe his 
 false friends had purposed to make him. In conclusion, 
 Mr. Frewen observed that he had a select party of friends, 
 whom he was accustomed to make judges of his own pro- 
 ductions ; and he earnestly entreated Withers that he 
 would no longer conceal his talent, but would condescend 
 to recite the tragedy he had written, to the same circle. 
 
 Withers unaffectedly shrunk back, with the diffidence of 
 a young man, who had never yet, in so striking a manner, 
 burst the bounds of modesty ; but, urged alternately by 
 the solicitations and the encomiums of his tempters, he 
 suffered them to " wring from hihi his slow consent." A 
 day was then to be fixed. He refused to make it the same 
 evening : he confessed to his visiters that it would be an 
 unprecedented exertion to him, and that he must string up 
 his mind to the task : it was ultimately fixed for the day 
 following. 
 
 In the interval Withers had many qualms. 
 
 " Between the acting of a dreadful thing. 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream." 
 
 He felt the sort of arrogance which was implied, in the 
 seating himself in the chair of honour, fixing the eyes of 
 different persons, strangers, upon him, and calling their atten- 
 tion to the effusions of his brain, as, to something worthy of 
 their astonishment. He recollected the faults of his poem, 
 the places where he had himself doubted, whether he had 
 not embraced a Sycorax instead of an angel. He recol- 
 lected his youth and inexperience, and the temerity of 
 
S8 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 which he had in reality been guilty^ in undertaking, in his 
 first essay, to celebrate, perhaps, the most prodigious of the 
 labours of the immortal Hercules. He remembered what 
 he had somewhere heard, of the satirical and malicious 
 turn of the elder Oxonians, and feared to become their 
 butt. On the other hand, he called to mind the beauties 
 of his poem, and was encouraged. Above all, he consi- 
 dered his character and fortitude as at stake, in the en- 
 gagement he had contracted, and was determined, at every 
 hazard, to complete it. 
 
 The evening arrived ; the company assembled ; the un- 
 happy poet, the victim of their ridicule, was introduced. 
 Mr. Frewen, at his entrance, took him by the hand, led 
 him into the middle of the room, made a short oration in 
 his praise, and, in the name of the company, thanked him 
 for his condescension, in admitting them to such a pleasure 
 as they were about to receive. After a variety of grimaces on 
 the part of the persons present, the manuscript was laid on 
 the table. The poet took it up to read ; but, in the first line, 
 his voice failed him, he turned pale, and was obliged to 
 desist. Morrison his original seducer, and another, had 
 so placed their chairs, that their countenances and action 
 could not be perceived by the reader, they being partly 
 behind him : they winked the eye, and pointed the finger 
 to each other, and by various gestures endeavoured to 
 heighten the entertainment of the party. The table was 
 covered with bottles and glasses. Frewen, when he saw 
 the unaffected marks of Withers's distress, began to feel an 
 impulse of compunction ; but he knew that such an im- 
 pulse would render him for ever contemptible to the pre- 
 sent society, and he suppressed it. He filled Withers a 
 bumper, which he obliged him to take off; he snatched 
 the play from his hand, and read with much gravity and 
 articulation, the opening speech from the stable-keeper to 
 the herdsman, in which the former bewails the miserable 
 state of the stalls, and, not knowing what to quarrel with, 
 shows himself ready to quarrel with his fellow-officer, 
 laments that there are such animals as oxen, or that oxen 
 cannot live but by food and digestion. This speech was 
 received with bursts of applause, and Frewen particularly 
 
FliEETWOOD. 29 
 
 commended the " long majestic march and energy divine" 
 of the concluding verse. The poet was encouraged ; he 
 had had time to reason with himself, and recover his for- 
 titude ; Frewen restored to him his manuscript, filled him 
 another bumper, and the scene commenced. 
 
 That my readers may more exactly understand the 
 spirit of the transaction, I will insert here a part of the 
 chorus at the end of the third act, with which the auditors 
 pretended to be especially struck : — 
 
 1. 
 
 Illustrious hero, mighty Hercules ! 
 
 Much hast thou done, and wondrously achieved ! 
 
 Before thy strength 
 The Nemaean lion fell subdued, 
 
 Closed in a worse than Cornish hug ! 
 The heads of Hydra, one by one, were crush'd 
 
 Beneath thy club of brass: 
 While little lolas, thy gentle squire. 
 Stood by. 
 With red-hot salamander prompt. 
 And sear'd each streaming wound ! 
 The stag so swift of (Enoe the fair 
 Thou didst o'ertake, 
 Or, if not overtake. 
 Didst catch it in a trap ! 
 How glared the eyes of Erymanthus' boar ! 
 How fierce his tusks ! 
 How terrible his claws ! 
 His fire and fury calm thou didst survey, 
 And calm didst knock his brains out ! 
 
 Oh ! mighty man ! 
 Or rather shall I name thee god ? 
 A different labour now demands thy care : 
 No fangs now menace, and no tongues now hiss, 
 No rage now roars, nor swiftness flies thy grasp ; 
 Terror no longer waits thee ; 
 But strength is here required; 
 Strength, patience, constancy, and endless resolution. 
 
 3. 
 Behold these mountains, how they rise ! 
 The slow collections of three hundred moons ; 
 Nay almost four ! 
 
30 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Sleek were the oxen that produced them ; 
 And royally were fed ! 
 Canst thou abate the nuisance ? 
 What gulf so wide that would receive its bulk ! 
 Much likelier might'st thou seek, 
 With single strength, 
 To level Ossa, or to cast mount Athos 
 Down to the vasty deep ! 
 
 4. 
 Here too thou must encounter odours vile, 
 And stand begrimed with muck : 
 
 Thy cheeks besmear'd, 
 Thy lineaments deform'd, 
 Beneath the loathsome load : 
 A guise how much unworthy such a hero ! 
 Ah, no ! those godlike fingers ne'er were made 
 To ply the nightman's trade ! 
 
 Ah, cruel fate ! 
 Ah, step-dame destiny ! 
 Inflicting such disgrace 
 Upon the last-born son of mighty Jove ! 
 
 One apology may be made for the contrivers of this 
 scene, that they by no means foresaw, in the outset, how 
 far they should be drawn in to go, and the serious evils of 
 which they might become authors. The purpose of the 
 auditors was, under extravagant and tumultuous expres- 
 sions of applause, to smother the indications of their ridi- 
 cule and contempt. In this, however, they could not 
 uniformly succeed. A phrase of a ludicrous nature in the 
 piece, an abrupt fall from what was elevated to something 
 meanly familiar or absurd, would sometimes unexpectedly 
 occur, and produce a laughter that could not be restrained. 
 Nor would the feelings allied to laughter always occur in 
 the right place. Persons eager in search of the ludicrous, 
 will often find it in an image, or a mode of expression, 
 which by others, not debauched with this prepossession, 
 would be found fraught with pleasing illustration and na- 
 tural sentiment. The circle^ too, assembled on this occa- 
 sion, acted by sympathy upon each other, and pointed 
 many a joke, and gave vigour to many a burlesque idea, 
 which, perhaps, to any one of the associates, in his retire- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 31 
 
 ment, would have appeared unworthy to move a risible 
 muscle. 
 
 For a short time the jesters, who had made Withers their 
 prey, observed a certain degree of decorum. They bit 
 their lips, affectedly raised their eyes, applied the finger to 
 the mouth, the nose, or the forehead, and thus pacified and 
 appeased their propensities to ridicule. One and another 
 incessantly showed themselves lavish in commendation of 
 the beauties of the poem ; and with every comphment the 
 glass of Withers was filled, and he was excited to drink. 
 Presently the laugh, imperfectly suppressed, broke out in 
 one solitary convulsion, and was then disguised in a cough, 
 or an effort to sneeze. The dumb gestures of the auditors 
 were unperceived by the reader, who for the most part 
 kept his eyes on the paper, and but rarely ventured, when 
 he came to some bolder flight, to look round him for ap- 
 plause. Then the countenances of the hearers suddenly fell, 
 and their limbs were at once composed into serenity. This 
 transition produced an effect singularly humorous, but 
 which was wholly lost upon Withers, who had the misfor- 
 tune to be purblind. 
 
 By and by an outrageous laugh burst forth at once from 
 one of the audience. The poor novice, their victim, started, 
 as if he had trod on a serpent. Frewen, making a mo- 
 tion to him to be tranquil, addressed the offender with much 
 apparent gravity, and begged to know what he could find 
 ludicrous in the passage which had just been read, at the 
 same time repeating the two last lines with a full and lofty 
 voice. The culprit, as soon as he could resume his serious- 
 ness, humbly sued for pardon, and declared that he laughed 
 at nothing in the poem, of which no one could be a sincerer 
 admirer, but that his fancy had been tickled at the sight of 
 a corkscrew (picking it up), which had just dropped from 
 Jack Jones's pocket. This apology was admitted. In a 
 few minutes the same person broke out into an equally loud 
 and clamorous fit of merriment, in which he was now 
 joined by two or three others. Greater anger, as the tumult 
 subsided, was expressed toward him ; a more bungling and 
 imperfect apology was tendered ; and Frewen offered, if 
 Mr. Withers required it, to turn tlie culprit out of the 
 
32 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 room. In one or two instances the poet was requested to 
 read again some passage which the requester affected par- 
 ticularly to admire; and these repetitions were ever attended 
 with additional merriment, sometimes suppressed, and some- 
 times ungovernable. In one or two of the choruses, several 
 of the auditors repeated the concluding verses after the 
 reader, sometimes as nearly as possible keeping pace with 
 him, and at other times pursuing one another after the 
 manner of a fugue in music ; and, when the author expressed 
 his surprise at this phenomenon, they defended it, first, 
 from the enthusiastic admiration they felt, and next, from 
 the nature of a chorus, which was designed to be sung, or 
 chanted, and not spoken, and from their desire to enhance 
 their pleasure, by bringing the tragedy they were hearing 
 to as near a resemblance as they could, in this respect, to 
 the state of actual exhibition. 
 
 By this time the mind of Withers was in a pitiable situ- 
 ation. That noviceship and total inexperience on his part, 
 which made his torture, constituted the great pleasure of 
 his remorseless tormentors. He was unaccustomed to wine; 
 and they had made him extremely inebriated. He was un- 
 accustomed to high commendations and vociferous applause; 
 and they had raised his mind and purer feelings into a state 
 of intoxication, little inferior to that of the more ponderous 
 and corporeal particles of his nerves and brain. All was 
 confusion and tempest within him. Upon this state of the 
 man were superinduced the demonstrations of ridicule and 
 laughter, which by degrees broke out in the audience. His 
 brain was clouded ; his understanding was in a maze ; he 
 apprehended nothing distinctly. Grave apologies were made 
 to him ; and he accepted them seriously ; though, presently 
 after, he was compelled to doubt whether they did not wholly 
 originate in the grossest hypocrisy. Had he possessed the 
 smallest portion of knowledge of the world, he could not 
 have harboured a moment's uncertainty ; but he was in all 
 these respects a child. They nursed him, so to speak, in 
 mistake, and rocked him in the cradle of delusion. By de- 
 grees they persuaded him to mount upon the table, that he 
 might recite some of the most briUiant passages wtih greater 
 effect. They crowned him with wreaths of parsley, which 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 2$ 
 
 happened to be the vegetable at hand ; they anointed him 
 with libations of wine ; and by this time his apprehension 
 was so completely subverted, that he was unable to distin- 
 guish whether these things were done in mockery or ho- 
 nour, and wiUingly resigned himself to the more agreeable 
 construction. At length the reading was finished ; and the 
 rioters (for all was now in a state of riot) burst open the 
 door, placed the poet, crowned with parsley, and trickling 
 with wine, in a chair, and carried him triumphantly through 
 tlie streets to his apartment, with shouts, and vociferation, 
 and uproar, enough to awake the dead. 
 
 The deluded rioters, for they laboured under a state of de- 
 lusion not less complete than their victim, persuaded them- 
 selves to look back with complacency upon the diversion of 
 the evening, and even agreed that they had not yet extracted 
 amusement enough from so rich a subject as the unhappy 
 Withers. The ringleaders, in their insatiate thirst after this 
 species of gratification, planned a further scene to be grafted 
 on what had passed in the evening of the reading. 
 
 Morrison accordingly waited on Withers the next morn- 
 ing, and found him a prey to a miserable headach. The 
 poet was also, now that the fumes of wine were dissipated, 
 full of melancholy reflections on the incidents of the day, 
 and extremely apprehensive that in all that had passed he 
 had been an object of mockery to the assembly. Morrison 
 put the best gloss upon the whole, assured his dupe that all 
 was done in sober sadness, apologised for the most extra- 
 vagant particulars by observing that the whole party was 
 nearly drunk, and declared on his honour that the manifest- 
 ations, however uncouth, were those of genuine admiration; 
 adding that, for the sake of their sincerity and good mean- 
 ing, the poet ought certainly to excuse the rudeness and 
 ungraciousness of the form they had assumed. During the 
 harangue of this buffoon, the eyes of Withers once or twice 
 flashed fire ; they were turned upon the speaker with a 
 searching penetration as if they would look him through ; 
 and the poet swore a great oath, that he believed he was 
 deceived, and that, if it were so, he would die sooner than 
 endure it. 
 
 This subject having been discussed, Morrison informed 
 
 D 
 
34i FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Withers that he had a piece of bad news to communicate 
 to him. The master of the college, he said, had got 
 information of the riot of the preceding night, and the dis- 
 order they had committed in the streets, and had hinted 
 that he was determined to make an example. While they 
 were upon this painful topic, Frewen entered, and added to 
 Morrison's intelligence, that by some unaccountable accident 
 the master had got hold of the name of Withers, and that, 
 as he had been carried in the chair, it was to be feared that 
 he would be selected as the object of punishment. Withers 
 was a young man of great intrinsic modesty and sensibility, 
 and he felt the utmost distress at this information. While 
 his hollow-hearted companions were pretending to console 
 him, a young man, a stranger to Withers, entered in the 
 character of a messenger from the master, and summoned 
 the poet to make his appearance before his academical 
 superior the same evening soon after sunset. 
 
 Machinery, such as the malicious and riotous genius of 
 the young men concerned in the plot suggested to their 
 thoughts, was prepared for the occasion. In a chair near 
 the wall, at the upper end of a spacious room the use of 
 which they procured, was seated a puppet, dressed up in a 
 gown and wig similar to those of the master, which it was 
 proposed to pass on the unfortunate Withers for the iden* 
 tical person of the superior whose reproof he dreaded. 
 This image, by tlie ingenuity of some of the parties to the 
 plot, was so contrived as to have its head and hands capable 
 of being moved by one of the confederates, who unseen 
 held the springs for that purpose. Morrison, so much 
 admired by hii:: fellow-collegians for wit and humour, had 
 among other accomplishments the art, commonly called 
 ventriloquism, of uttering articulate sounds without any vi- 
 sible motion of the lips, and of causing his voice to appear 
 to come from whatever quarter he pleased ; added to which 
 he was an excellent mimic, and could copy the peculiarities 
 of speech in almost any one he pleased, to a supreme 
 degree. The fame of these qualities would no doubt in a 
 short time have reached the ears of Withers ; but he was 
 newly come to the university, and had as yet no suspicion 
 that Morrison was even considered as a wit. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 35 
 
 In the evening, just after the shut of the day, Withers 
 was introduced into the apartment which had previously 
 been prepared. He was accompanied by Morrison, Frewen, 
 and the other offenders ; some having thrust themselves un- 
 authorised into the list of offenders, that they might have 
 an opportunity to be witnesses of the expected sport. The 
 figure which stood for the master of the college then ap- 
 peared to call over the names of the culprits ; and a young 
 person below him, who seemed to officiate as his secretary, 
 answered to each of the names that the person called upon 
 was present. The master began his harangue. He ad- 
 dressed himself first to Frewen, and after to Morrison ; 
 and each of these attempted a sort of excuse for the out- 
 rage, and professed great contrition. The address to Mor- 
 rison was particularly diverting to the spectators, every one 
 of whom, except Withers, well knew that it was Morrison 
 in person who thus pronounced a severe and apparently 
 angry censure upon himself. 
 
 The speech of the principal was then directed toward 
 Withers, whom he declared he felt himself obliged to treat 
 as the ringleader, as he had been the person elevated in the 
 chair ; he added, that certain privileges were by long prac- 
 tice conceded to the senior students in the university, but 
 that it was intolerable for a young man, not many weeks 
 entered in this seat of learning, to be seen drunk in the 
 streets, and to be complained of for a riot. 
 
 Withers defended himself with more spirit than was 
 expected. He protested that he was no drunkard, and was 
 exceedingly chagrined that an unfortunate accident had 
 exhibited him under that character. He added, that, so 
 far from being the ringleader in the riot, he was made an 
 unwilling tool in the hands of others. 
 
 '^ Name them!" replied the master, in a strong and 
 imperious voice. 
 
 '' Name them ! " rejoined Withers : '^ no, I will not be 
 an informer ; consider me as the ringleader ! " 
 
 He then proceeded to question the propriety of the rule 
 just dehvered, of punishing strictly in the juniors, what 
 was winked at or shghtly animadverted on in those of 
 longer standing. 
 
56 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 '' Sir," interrupted the master, ''' you were not sent for 
 to criticise our rules, and to teach me how to conduct my- 
 self; and you have just shown yourself refractory to the 
 first principles of academical discipline by refusing to 
 become what you call an informer. What now remains 
 is, that I should vindicate the decorum of the college, by 
 punishing you for the riot you have committed ; and I 
 accordingly order you to strip off your gown in my pre- 
 sence, and direct that you be excluded from all academical 
 privileges for one month ; at the end of which term, upon 
 your expressing a proper degree of sorrow and humiliation, 
 you may possibly be restored." 
 
 Withers felt indignant at this censure, and was going to 
 remonstrate ; but was prevailed on by those who stood near 
 him to submit. He however threw his gown to the floor 
 with some resentment, and could not refrain expressing in 
 three or four words some contempt for such trappings, and 
 the privileges annexed to them. At this moment, to his 
 utter astonishment and confusion, the figure lifted up its 
 hand, as if in the intention of striking him. This indignity 
 put Withers beyond all patience, and worked him into a 
 momentary insanity : he flew at the master, and positively 
 began to cuff the image with violence : the machine was 
 unable to resist this species of rudeness, and actually feU 
 in pieces about the ears of its assailant. The candles were 
 extinguished, and the room left in utter darkness ; and at 
 the same moment a long, obstreperous, and deafening peal 
 of laughter burst out from every person in the assembly. 
 
 Thus ended the scene plotted and conducted by these 
 ingenious gentlemen ; but not thus ended the consequences 
 which resulted from it. The impression it made upon the 
 mind of Withers was indelible. He had given himself up 
 passively from the beginning to the ideas which his de- 
 luders wished to excite in him ; the last incident, therefore, 
 of their comedy had taken him at once, like a thunderbolt. 
 He slunk away in confusion and silence. His mind had 
 been violently acted upon by the events before him, while 
 the whole appeared to him as serious. He had been a 
 stranger to any greater applause than that of having con- 
 strued well an ode in Horace ; and he now found himself 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 37 
 
 treated in one of our famous seats of learning as the fore- 
 most among the votaries of the muses. He had been a 
 stranger to pointed rebuke under the indulgent discipline 
 of his father ; and he now found himself called before the 
 dignified master of a college, and treated with injustice and 
 contumely. He had been acting, as he imagined, a high 
 and conspicuous part before his fellow-coUegians, acquiring 
 laurels in the temple of Apollo, and asserting the cause of 
 justice against insolent and tyrannic authority. On a sud- 
 den all this was reversed; instead of honour, he encoun- 
 tered disgrace ; he found he had been made a laughing- 
 stock to all around him. The concluding moment of the 
 business explained to him the whole ; he saw that the ap- 
 plauses he had received were all ironical, that he had been 
 invited to the reading his play only for contempt, that he 
 had been treated as the weakest, the absurdest, and the 
 most despicable of mankind. The scene of the master, the 
 affected reprimand he had received, the stripping of his 
 gown, the attempted blow, constituted a still deeper insult. 
 It must be acknowledged that this was no flattering induc- 
 tion of an innocent and artless rustic into a great university. 
 Withers lifted up his head no more. He could not bear to 
 face any of his fellow-students ; those who had not been 
 actors in the plot against him were, he nothing doubted, 
 well acquainted with all that had passed ; he shut himself 
 up, as much as possible, in his own apartment. After a 
 brief interval it was sufficiently visible that his intellects 
 were impaired ; a keeper was planted over him. He raved 
 against poets and poetry ; he seized with avidity every scrap 
 of written paper he could meet with, that he might commit 
 it to the flames. These excesses, however, were rare ; the 
 greater part of his time was spent in dejection and silence. 
 One morning he escaped from the man who was appointed 
 to watch him, and was soon after found drowned in the 
 Isis. The cause of his unhappy catastrophe became 
 public ; the particulars were enquired into ; and Frewen 
 and Morrison were expelled from the university with a dis- 
 grace which pursued them for the rest of their lives. 
 
 This may serve as one specimen of the sort of grave- 
 faced trick and delusion which the choice spirits among us 
 D 3 
 
38 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 delighted to put upon the more innocent and unsuspecting 
 members of the university. The example here given was 
 perhaps the most memorable, and attended with the most 
 fatal effects, of any that occurred in my time. But all the 
 tricks which were played were of the same class ; all turned 
 upon considering the simplicity displayed, and the anguish 
 endured by the sufferer, as a source of merriment. For 
 myself, as I have said, I had no relish for this amusement. 
 Once or twice, inconsiderately and precipitately, I yielded 
 to the importunity of my companions, and became entan- 
 gled in such adventures ; but I presently abjured every 
 thing of the sort ; and, having set my face against pleasures 
 so criminal in their temper, was repeatedly successful in 
 delivering the bleeding prey from the jaws of its devourers. 
 The adventure which I have here recorded may seem 
 foreign to my object, of painting my own story : I know 
 not where, however, I could have found a more apt il- 
 lustration to set before my reader the character of the 
 persons by whom I was now seduced, and with whom I 
 at present associated. They were such youths as Frewen, 
 Morrison, and the rest, whose applauses I sought, whose 
 ridicule awed me, and whose judgment I looked to for the 
 standard of my actions. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 I 
 
 It is not my purpose to convert these honest pages into a 
 record of dissipations ; far less, of the rude and unseemly 
 dissipations of an overgrown boy. There are few cha- 
 racters more repulsive than that in which we find con- 
 joined the fresh and ingenuous lineaments of a young man, 
 in whom the down has scarcely yet shaded his prosperous 
 cheek, with the impudence of a practised libertine. I look 
 back upon it with horror. Youth, if once it has broken 
 through the restraints of decorum, is the minister of 
 cruelty. Even in me, whose disposition was naturally 
 kind and humane, there was too much of this. It is suf- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 B9 
 
 fering only that can inspire us with true sympathy, that 
 can render us alive to those trifles which constitute so large 
 a portion of earthly misery or happiness, that can give us a 
 feeling of that anguish, which, sometimes in human beings, 
 as most evidently in the brute creation, works inwardly, 
 consuming the very principle of life, but has no tongue, 
 not the smallest sound, to signify its excess, and demand 
 our pity. Over this, of which the soberest and most dis- 
 ciplined mind is scarcely prepared to make a true estimate, 
 youth, when flushed with convivial gaiety and high spirits, 
 tramples without remorse, and unhesitatingly assures itself 
 that "All is well." Among the manifold objects which 
 shock our imperfect reason, and make us wish that the 
 constitution of things was in certain respects other than it 
 is, I confess there is none which has at all times been more 
 impressive with me than this, the vast variety of speechless 
 misery which is every where to be found. 
 
 I passed through the usual period of education at the 
 university, and then, by the liberality of my father, was 
 sent to make a tour of other countries for my improvement. 
 My father had, particularly, an old and much valued friend 
 in Switzerland, whose kindness he wished me to cultivate, 
 and whose affectionate and benevolent wisdom he thought 
 would contribute much to the perfecting my character. To 
 him I was furnished with a most exemplary letter of pa- 
 rental introduction, as well as with letters of the usual 
 description to several distinguished and honourable in- 
 dividuals in the courts and principal cities of Europe. 
 
 The day on which I quitted the university was an im- 
 portant era in my life, and might have been expected to 
 redeem me from the vices which I had there contracted. 
 The necessities (such I was disposed to regard them) 
 which had rendered me dissolute, were now removed. I 
 had become vicious by the operation of a populous and 
 crowded residence (from a contact with the members of 
 which I found it impossible to escape) upon a young man, 
 unwarned by experience against the rocks that awaited 
 him, and stimulated to confidence and enterprise by the 
 feeling that he was born to a considerable estate. When 
 I quitted Oxford, I had once more the globe of earth to 
 D 4 
 
40 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 move in. I had elbow-room^ and could expatiate as I 
 pleased. I was no longer cooped and cabined in a sort of 
 menagerie, in which 1 continually saw the same faces, 
 knew the names and the httle history of those I saw, and 
 was conscious that I in my turn became the subject of their 
 comment, of their contempt or their approbation. I now 
 saw once again the fairest and most glorious of all visages, 
 the face of nature. If I passed to the Continent, I should 
 have the opportunity of viewing her in new aspects ; and, 
 if I hastened, as my father wished me to do, to Switzerland, 
 I should be led to the contemplation of a more admirable 
 scenery than my eyes had ever yet beheld. If I sojourned 
 for a short time in cities, my situation there would be 
 very different from what it had been at Oxford. There 
 would be no particular set of men appearing under such 
 circumstances as in a manner extorted my confidence, but 
 I might associate indifferently with any, or with what 
 persons I pleased. 
 
 Another cause was favourable to the melioration of my 
 character. The great disadvantage to which young men in 
 a populous place of education are exposed, is the freedom 
 they enjoy from the established restraints of decorum and 
 shame. They constitute a little empire of their own, and 
 are governed by the laws of a morality of their own de- 
 vising. They are sufficient to keep each other in counte- 
 nance ; and, if any one of them can preserve the good 
 opinion and esteem of the rest of the body, it is all of 
 which he feels that he stands in need. The principles by 
 which he is regulated are voted by an assembly that is 
 prompted by turbulence, high spirits, convivial good- 
 humour, and a factitious sense of generosity and honour; 
 and, provided these principles are obeyed, he looks down 
 with contempt on the sense of mankind in general. Even 
 the soberer laws which are promulgated by his academical 
 superiors, are canvassed in a mutinous temper, and re- 
 garded as the decrees of fro ward age ; obedience to them 
 is sometimes contemplated as a dire necessity, and some- 
 times as a yoke which it is gallant and liberal to disdain. 
 
 But, when the same person goes out into the world, he 
 becomes the member of a larger republic. He respects 
 
FLEETWOOD. 41 
 
 himself proportionably more, as he feels that he is acting 
 his part upon a wider theatre. He grows a graver cha- 
 racter, and is conscious that tumult and frolic are not the 
 business of human life. He demands, not a boisterous ap- 
 probation, but a sober deference and respect, from those 
 with whom he has intercourse. 
 
 I grieve to say, that my character did not gain so much 
 by this transplantation, as a person anxious for my re- 
 putation and welfare might have been willing to hope. It 
 was at sixteen that I had repaired to the university, and I 
 had resided there four years. ^^These four years are the 
 period of the developementof the passions^When I looked 
 back from the close of this period, the years I had spent 
 in Merionethshire appeared to me as a delightful dream, 
 but only as a dream. It was a season of nonage, the in- 
 fancy of man. It was visionary, and idle, and unsubstantial. 
 I had now risen (thus I understood it) to the reality of 
 life. The scenes I had passed through in Oxford were 
 sensible, were palpable ; those of my earlier and better 
 years were the illusions as of a magic lanthorn. I clung, 
 at least on the threshold, and during the novelty of life, to 
 the realities, and could not bear to exchange them for 
 shadows. I felt as if I could not so exchange them if I 
 would. I had leaped the gulf; I had passed the bourne, 
 from which, as it seemed to me (in a different sense from 
 that of Shakspeare), " no traveller returns." Having once 
 plunged into the billoAvs, and among the tumult of the 
 passions, I must go on. It was thus I reasoned, when'the 
 temptations, which presented themselves in the different 
 stages of my travels, solicited my acceptance. 
 
 I would not, however, be understood for worse than I 
 was. My life at Oxford was a life of^^issipatiou;,; but 
 it was not all dissipation. That curiosity, which had been 
 one of my first seducers into vice, often assunped an in- 
 genuous form. The various sciences which invited my 
 attention at the university, did not always solicit in vain. 
 My nature was not yet so brutified as to render me in- 
 different to the venerable achievements of human intellect 
 in successive ages and in different countries. My mode of 
 passing my days had too much in it of the life of a game- 
 
42 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 some and inebriated savage ; but all my days were not so 
 passed. The same vanity that led me among the licentious 
 to aspire to a licentious character, gave me the ambition to 
 show that I could be something more. I aspired to re- 
 semble the true Epicurean of ancient times, the more 
 illustrious philosophers who had adorned that sect in Greece, 
 or Horace, the graceful and accomplished ornament of the 
 court of Augustus. I had therefore my fits of study and 
 severe application, as well as my seasons which were ex- 
 clusively devoted to pleasure. And, when I once secluded 
 myself from my riotous companions, I may, without vanity, 
 affirm, that I effected more, and made a more full and 
 pregnant improvement of knowledge in a week, than many 
 of the mere bookworms of the university, and some too of 
 no mean estimation among their fellows, did in months. 
 
 At Paris I met with Sir Charles Gleed, a young man 
 who had been at Oxford at the same time that I was, and 
 who had occasionally made one in the riotous and dissolute 
 parties that I frequented. Sir Charles had appeared with 
 no great brilliancy in Oxford. His mind was slow and 
 indocile. He had a tutor, who took great pains with him, 
 and who had occasionally persuaded Sir Charles to take 
 pains too ; but though the labour, and still more the ap- 
 paratus and report had been great, the produce had been 
 little. There was a bluntness and hebetude in poor Sir 
 Charles's parts, that seemed to prove him adapted to an 
 office like that of the horse in a mill, rather than of the 
 race-horse or the hunter. When this operose and hard- 
 Vv'orking student descended from his closet, and gained a 
 sort of tacit leave from his tutor to join in the circle of us 
 gay and high-spirited fellows, the part he played was no 
 more advantageous to him, than his former exhibition had 
 been among the learned. He wished for the character of a 
 wit, and had thought that the ample estate attached to his 
 birth would be a sufficient indorsement to the repartees 
 which he uttered. But in this he was deceived. We were 
 too thoughtless and frolic, perhajis 1 might say too liberal 
 and independent of soul, to decide on the talent of our 
 companions from the length of their purses. Sir Charles 
 soon found that he was better qualified to be " the cause of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 43 
 
 wit in others," than to be a wit himself ; and the asperity 
 and indignation witli which he bore this, and the awkward 
 attempts by which he endeavoured to shake it off, fluctu- 
 ating between resentment and a suspicion that what he 
 suffered was not a fitting ground of resentment, only made 
 the general effect upon bystanders the more irresistibly 
 ludicrous. 
 
 I observed, with surprise, that Sir Charles was received 
 upon a very different footing at Paris, from what he had 
 been at Oxford. Here he performed the part of an elegant j 
 and was generally admitted as a man of breeding, amuse- 
 ment, and fashion. No one laughed at, and almost every 
 one courted him. 
 
 It has frequently occurred to me to see this metamor- 
 phosis, and to remark persons, who in their boyish years had 
 been thought dull and poor fellows, afterward making a 
 grave and no dishonoured figure upon the theatre of life. 
 At school, certainly, the number of dunces is much beyond 
 its due proportion, (particularly if we have regard to the 
 higher classes of society,) to those who are ordinarily put 
 down for such in maturer life. Perhaps scarcely more than 
 one boy in a hundred is clever ; but, when these boys grow 
 up to be men, the dullard will frequently play his part to the 
 great satisfaction of the spectators ; and not only outstrip 
 his more ingenious competitor in the road of fortune, but 
 even be more highly esteemed, and more respectfully spoken 
 of, by the majority of those who know him. I have often 
 been desirous to ascertain in what manner we are to ac- 
 count for so curious a phenomenon ; and I have found 
 that there are two ways in which it may happen. 
 
 First, the man who plays his part upon the theatre of 
 life, almost always maintains what may be called an arti- 
 ficial character. Gravity has been styled by the satirist, " a 
 mysterious carriage of the body to conceal the defects of 
 the mind ; " and young men educated together are scarcely 
 ever grave. They appear in simple and unvarnished colours ; 
 theirs is not the age of disguise ; and, if they were to attempt 
 it, the attempt, so far as related to their colleagues, would be 
 fruitless. The mind of a young man at college is tried in as 
 many ways^ and turned and essayed in as various attitudes. 
 
44 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 as the body of an unfortunate captive in the slave-market 
 of Algiers. The captive might, with as much probability 
 of success, endeavour to conceal his crooked back or mis- 
 shapen leg, as the Oxonian or Cantab to hide his dulness, 
 his ill-temper, or his cowardice. But, when the same 
 persons are brought out into the world, there are certain 
 decorums, and restrictions from good manners, which oper- 
 ate most wonderfully to level the varying statures of mind : 
 and (to pursue the idea suggested by the slave-market) 
 the courtier, the professional man, or the fine lady, do not 
 more abound in advantages for concealing their bodily 
 deformities, than for keeping out of sight those mental im- 
 becilities, which the lynx-eyed sagacity and frolic malice 
 of schoolboy against schoolboy are sure to discover and 
 expose. 
 
 Beside which, secondly, the part which a man has to 
 play upon the theatre of life is usually of much easier 
 performance than that of a stripling among his fellows. 
 The stripling is treated with a want of ceremony, which 
 deters him from properly displaying many of his powers. 
 It has been remarked, that the severity of criticism in ages 
 of refinement suppresses those happier and more daring 
 fruits of genius, which the dawn of science and observation 
 warmed into life ; and in these respects the entrance of a 
 young man into the world operates in a way something 
 similar to the transportation of the poet to a period of 
 primeval simplicity. He is no longer rudely stared out of 
 countenance. To change the similitude, a college-life may 
 be compared with a polar climate ; fruits of a hardy 
 vegetation only prosper in it, while those of a more deli- 
 cate organisation wither and die. The young man, having 
 attained the age of manhood, no longer suffers the liberties 
 to which he was formerly subjected, and assumes con- 
 fidence in himself. This confidence is in many ways fa- 
 vourable to his reputation and success. It grows into 
 a habit ; and every day the probationer is better enabled 
 to act with propriety, to explain his meaning effectually, 
 and to display that promptitude and firmness which may 
 command approbation. I should prefer, however, I mustj 
 confess, the schoolboy hero to the plausible and well- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 45 
 
 seeming man of the world. Mistakes may occur, indeed, 
 respecting the former as well as the latter. A false taste 
 may lead his fellow-pupils to give the palm to a wild, ad- 
 venturous, and boastful youth, over his more tranquil 
 competitor, though the latter should be endowed with the 
 most perspicuous intellect, the finest imagination, or the 
 most generous temper. There is, too, a ready faculty of 
 little depth, a rapid mimetic, superficial memory, which 
 will sometimes pass on inexperienced observers for a con- 
 summate genius. The judgment, however, which is formed 
 on the phenomena of early youth, has two advantages : 
 first, as this period of human life is free from deception 
 and false colours ; and, secondly, as qualities then dis- 
 covered may be supposed more rooted and essential in the 
 character, than such as discover themselves only jn a season 
 of maturity. 
 
 To return to Sir Charles deed. I found him, as I 
 have said, established on an unequivocal and honourable 
 footing at Paris. He was received with distinction by a 
 minister of state, who invited him to his most select parties. 
 He was a favoured guest in the coteries of ladies of fashion^ 
 and often spent his mornings in the ruelle of a duchess. 
 Sir Charles was certainly a man of displeasing physio- 
 gnomy. It was a picture so rudely sketched, that the 
 spectator could scarcely guess what was designed to be 
 represented by it. The eyes were small and pinking; 
 the nose colossal and gigantic, but ill-defined. The mus- 
 cular parts were fleshy, substantial, and protuberant. His 
 stature, however, was considerably above the middle size ; 
 and his form, at least to an ignorant observer, seemed ex- 
 pressive of animal force. 
 
 Sir Charles w^as perhaps sensible how little he was 
 indebted to the bounty of nature ; and he was careful to 
 compensate his personal defects, by the most minute vi- 
 gilance in conduct and demeanour. By some accident he 
 had acquired, since he left the university, the happiest of 
 all foundations for success in the world, a tranquil confi- 
 dence in himself. . His speech, his motions, were all slow ; 
 hut, as no part was lost in false efforts, in something done 
 that was afterward to be done again, his slowness had, to a 
 
46 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 certain degree, the air and effect of haste. He continually 
 approached to the brink of enterprise, and was never enter- 
 prising. He perpetually advanced to the verge of wit and 
 observation, and never said any thing that was absolutely 
 the one or the other. The man however must, I believe, 
 be admitted to have had some portion of judgment and 
 good sense, who could so speciously imitate qualities, to 
 the reality of which he was a stranger. If he committed 
 a blunder, the bystander might look in his face, and would 
 discern there such an unsuspecting composure, as might 
 lead him almost to doubt his opinion, and believe that there 
 was no blunder. With the ladies he was attentive, officious, 
 and useful, but never bustling or ridiculous ; by which 
 means his services never lost their just value. Nothing of 
 a nature more weighty ever thrust the details of a gallant 
 demeanour out of his thoughts ; and the sex was flattered 
 to see a man so ample in his dimensions, and therefore, 
 according to their reckoning, so manly, devoted to their 
 pleasure. For the rest, whatever they observed, which 
 would have been less acceptable in a Frenchman, was at- 
 tributed to, and forgiven in consideration of, his being a 
 stranger to their language, and having a disposition and 
 bent of mind, appropriate, as they supposed, to the nation 
 from which he came. 
 
 Such was the man who generously performed for me the 
 part of gentleman-usher, and introduced me to the society 
 of the courtiers and belles of France. Our characters were 
 strikingly contrasted. He was set, disciplined, and regular ; 
 I was quick, sensitive, and variable. He had speciousness; 
 I sensibility. He never did a foolish thing ; I wasinces- 
 santly active, and therefore, though frequently brilliant and 
 earning applause, yet not seldom falling into measures the 
 most injurious to the purposes I had in view. Naturally 
 I wasjoQ tremblbi4^-ly alive, to be well adapted to the com- 
 merce of the world : 1 had worn off a part of this at 
 Oxford ; I had gained a certain degree of self-possession 
 and assurance ; yet was my sensibility too great, not fre- 
 quently to lead me into false steps, though I had afterward 
 the fortitude and presence of mind to repair them. 
 
 Sir Charles and I, having every reason to be satisfied 
 
FLEETWOOD. 4-7 
 
 with our reception in this celebrated metropoHs, engaged 
 amicably in similar pursuits, and succeeded with persons 
 of different predilections and tastes_, without in the smallest 
 degree interfering with each other. The court of Louis 
 the Fifteenth, the then reigning sovereign, was licentious 
 and profligate, without decency, decorum, and character; 
 and the manners which prevailed within the walls of the 
 palace, were greedily imitated by every one who laid claim 
 to, or who aped, rank, refinement, or fashion. It were 
 superfluous for me here to describe, what the reader may 
 find in so many volumes amply and ambitiously detailed, 
 the contempt for the marriage bond, and the universal 
 toleration then extended to adultery and debauchery, with 
 the condition only that they should be covered with a thin 
 and almost transparent veil, and not march entirely naked. 
 
 Prepared, as 1 had been, by my adventures at Oxford,, I 
 fell but too easily into the maxims and manners then in 
 vogue in the court of France. Could I have been abruptly 
 introduced to a scene like this, immediately after ray de-/ 
 parture from Merionethshire, I should have contemplatedl 
 it with inexpressible horror. But my experience at thel 
 university had killed the purity and delicacy of my moral . 
 discrimination. In Wales, the end I proposed to myself 
 in my actions was my own approbation ; at Oxford, I had 
 regulated my conduct by the sentiments of others, not 
 those of my own heart. I had been a noisy and jovial 
 companion ; I had associated freely and cordially with cha- 
 racters of either sex, that my judgment did not approve. 
 Friendships like these had indeed been of short duration ; 
 but they were of sufficient power to contaminate the mind 
 and distort the rectitude of feeling and habit. From inti- 
 macies built on so slight and inadequate a basis, from a 
 practical disregard of continence and modesty, the transi- 
 tion was easy to the toleration and abetting of the most 
 shameless adultery, •# 
 
 At the university, I had been driven from a sort of 
 necessity to live upon the applauses of others ; and, the 
 habit being once formed, I carried it along with me in ray 
 excursion to the Continent. In the societies to which I 
 was introduced, no man was considered as any thing, unless 
 
48 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 he were, what they styled, un homme a bonnes fortwies, that 
 \&, an individual devoted to the formation of intrigues, and 
 a favourite with those ladies of honourable seeming, who 
 held their virtue at a cheap rate. The men who were 
 regarded in Paris as models of politeness, stimulated me 
 to pursuits of this sort by the tenor of their conversation, 
 while the women, from time to time, who boasted of rank, 
 beauty, and elegant manners, invited me by their insinu- 
 ations and carriage, and taught me to believe that I should 
 not be unsuccessful in my enterprises. I was young and 
 unguarded ; I had no Mentor to set my follies before me 
 in their true light ; I had passed the Rubicon of vice, and 
 therefore was deficient in the salutary checks of reflection. 
 My vanity was flattered by the overtures of the fair ; my 
 ambition was awakened by the example of the prosperous 
 and the gay: I soon made my choice, and determined that 
 I also would be un homme a bonnes fortunes. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The first woman who in this career fixed my regard was a 
 finished coquette, by which epithet I understand a w^oman 
 whose ruling passion is her vanity, and whose invention is 
 hourly on the rack for means of gratifying it. She was a lady 
 of high rank, and married to a person of great figure at court. 
 I first obtained her attention under favour of the epithet 
 by which the Parisian belles thought proper to distinguish 
 me, of the handsome Englishman. Sir Charles, my intro- 
 ducer, was certainly of more established vogue than myself, 
 and in this respect might have seemed a conquest still more 
 flattering to a person of her character. But the Mar- 
 chioness easily discerned that he would have afforded her 
 less occupation and amusement. Sir Charles would per- 
 haps have equalled me in constancy and perseverance ; but 
 he had a calmness of temper in affairs of this sort, which 
 to her tastes would have been intolerable. Obedient, obse- 
 
FLEETWOOD, 49 
 
 quious^ patient of injuries, he would undoubtedly have 
 shown himself ; he was of a character unalterably obliging 
 toward the fair ; to violence he would have opposed no 
 violence in return, but would have waited till the storm 
 was dissipated, and then have sought to improve the lucky 
 moment when the bird of peace brooded over the subsiding 
 billows, and the tumult of the bosom was ended. 
 
 My character was of an opposite sort. Sir Charles 
 appeared to the animated and restless spirit of the Mar- 
 chioness more like a convenient instrument, or a respect- 
 able piece of furniture, than a living being whose passions 
 were to mix, and shock, and contend, and combine, with 
 her own. She would have preferred a lap-dog who, when 
 she pinched or slapped him, would ruffle his hairs, and 
 snarl and bark in return, to such a lover. To vex the 
 temper and alarm the fears of her admirer was her delight. 
 She would not have thought him worth her care, if she did 
 not ten times in the day make him curse himself, his mis- 
 tress, and all the world. She desired no sympathy and 
 love that were not ushered in by a prelude of something 
 like hate. In a word, she aspired to the character 
 ascribed by Martial to one of his friends ; " There was no 
 living with him, nor without him." 
 
 The singularities of this woman's temper particularly 
 displayed themselves in the gradations she introduced into 
 the favours by which my attachment was ultimately 
 crowned. I might describe the transport of my soul, when 
 I first became assured that there was no mark of her good 
 will which she was inclined to withhold from me. I 
 might delineate the ravishing sweetness of the weather on 
 the day which first gave me possession of her person, the 
 delightful excursion we made on the water, the elegantly 
 furnished cottage that received us, the very room, with all 
 its furniture, which witnessed the consummation of my 
 joys. All these things live in my memory, and constitute 
 a picture which will never be obliterated while this heart 
 continues to beat. But I suppress these circumstances at 
 the risk of rendering my narrative flat and repulsive by its 
 generalities. I w^ite no book that shall tend to nourish 
 the pruriency of the debauched, or that shall excite one 
 
 E 
 
50 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 painful emotion, one instant of debate, in the bosom of the 
 virtuous and the chaste. 
 
 The Marchioness tormented me with her flights and 
 uncertainty, both before and after the completing my 
 wishes. In the first of these periods I thought myself ten 
 times at the summit of my desires, when again I was, in 
 the most unexpected manner, baffled and thrown back by 
 her caprices and frolics. Even after, as I have said, 
 the first ceremonies were adjusted, and the treaty of offence 
 was not only signed, but sealed. 
 
 ' Me of my yielded pleasure she beguiled, 
 And taught me oft forbearance j " 
 
 though I cannot say, in the sense in which Shakspeare has 
 imputed it to his heroine, that she did it, with 
 
 " A pudency so rosy, the sweet look on't 
 Might well have warm'd old Saturn ; that I thought her 
 As chaste as unsunn'd snow." 
 
 It was in my nature to attach myself strongly, where I 
 attached myself at all, and by parity of reason to be anxious 
 concerning propriety of conduct, and the minutenesses of 
 behaviour, in the person I loved. This was exceedingly 
 unfortunate for me in my affair with the Marchioness. It 
 was almost impossible to make her serious. At moments 
 when all other human beings are grave, and even in allow- 
 ing those freedoms which ought to be pledges of the soul, 
 she could not put off an air of badinage and raillery. Her 
 mind greatly resembled in its constitution the sleek and 
 slippery form of the eel ; it was never at rest, and, when I 
 thought I possessed it most securely, it escaped me with 
 the rapidity of lightning. No strength could detain it ; no 
 stratagem could hold it ; no sobriety and seriousness of ex- 
 postulation could fix it to any consistency of system. 
 
 Had this been the only characteristic of her mind, a 
 person of my temper would soon have been worn out with 
 the inexhaustibleness of her freaks and folhes. But she 
 had an ingenuousness of carriage by which I was for a 
 long time deceived. She seemed, when I could gain her 
 ear for a moment, to confess her faults and absurdities 
 with a simplicity and unreserve that were inexpressibly 
 
FLEETWOOD. 51 
 
 charming: and she had in herself an equability of soul 
 that nothing could destroy. Where other women would 
 have been exasperated, she laughed ; and when by her 
 flightiness she had driven her lover to the extremity of 
 human bearing, she mollified him in a moment by a gen- 
 tleness and defencelessness of concession that there was no 
 resisting. Yet it often happened that she had no sooner 
 by this expedient won my forgiveness, than she flew off 
 again with her customary wildness, and urged me almost 
 to madness. 
 
 One passion which eminently distinguished the Mar- \ 
 diioness, was the perpetual desire of doing something that 
 should excite notice and astonishment. If in the privacy of 
 the tete-d-tete she was not seldom in a singular degree pro- 
 voking, in public and in society she was, if possible, still 
 worse. The human being, who is perpetually stimulated 
 with the wish to do what is extraordinary, wiU almost in-_ 
 fallibly be often led into what is absurd, indelicate, and un- 
 becoming. It is incredible what excesses of this sort the 
 Marchioness committed. Her passion seemed particularly 
 to prompt her to the bold, the intrepid, and the masculine. 
 An impudent and Amazonian stare, a smack of the whip, 
 a slap on the back, a loud and unexpected accost that made 
 the hearer start again, were expedients frequently employed 
 by her to excite the admiration of those with whom she 
 associated. In the theatre she would talk louder than the 
 performers; in a dance, by some ridiculous caprice, she 
 would put out those with whom she was engaged ; she was 
 never satisfied unless the observation of all eyes were turned. I 
 on her. 
 
 It might seem at first sight that a demeanour of this *] 
 sort would excite general disapprobation, and make every 
 one her enemy. On the contrary, the Marchioness was a 
 universal favourite, at least with the male sex. Her coun- 
 tenance was exquisitely beautiful ; in her eye was combined 
 a feminine softness with vivacity and fire; her figure, 
 which a little exceeded the middle size, seemed moulded by 
 the Graces ; and every thing she did was done with an ease 
 and elegance that dazzled the beholders. What would have ■ 
 been absurd and indecorous in most women, became pleas- 
 £ 2 
 
52 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 ing and ornamental in her. Though the substance of the 
 action was wrong, the manner seemed to change its nature, 
 and render it brilhant and beautiful. She did impudent 
 things without assumption and arrogance ; and what in 
 another would have been beyond endurance, seemed in her 
 an emanation of the purest artlessness and innocence. Be- 
 sides, that such was the rapidity and quickness of her na- 
 ture, she did not allow to ordinary observers the time to 
 disapprove. She never dwelt upon any thing ; nothing was 
 done with slowness and deliberation ; and she passed so in- 
 cessantly from one object of attention and mode of action 
 to another, that every thing seemed obliterated as soon as 
 seen, and nothing was left in the common mind but a ge- 
 neral impression of wonder and delight. 
 
 This, however, was not the effect upon me. I often 
 took upon myself to censure the improprieties of the Mar- 
 chioness. My murmurs, as I have said, never put her out 
 of temper. Sometimes she would rally me upon my seve- 
 rity, and vow that, instead of a young and agreeable lover, 
 she had by some chance fallen upon a morose philosopher, 
 who wanted nothing but a long gown and a beard to make 
 him the worthy successor of Diogenes. Sometimes she 
 ■would play off her usual arts, and, by some agreeable tale, 
 or amusing sally of wit, force my attention to another sub- 
 ject. At other times she would put the woman upon me, 
 display her charms, assume the attitudes, the gestures, and 
 expression of features, allied to voluptuousness, and make it 
 impossible for a young and susceptible admirer as I was, to 
 give breath to another word of harsh and ungentle signifi- 
 cation. On a few occasions she would personate a serious- 
 ness, responsive to my seriousness, promise to be very 
 good, and to conduct herself hereafter in a manner that 
 should command my approbation. Her most ordinary 
 method, however, was to ridicule my advices, and exasperate 
 me by pertinacious and incorrigible folly; and it was never 
 till she had exercised my patience to the utmost, that she 
 condescended to soothe me with blandishments and promises 
 of amendment. 
 
 Inconsistency was the very element in which she moved; 
 ^d, accordingly, whatever was the penitence she displayed. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 53 
 
 and the amendment she promised, this one feature constantly 
 attended her, that these little expiations never produced any 
 effect on her conduct, and that the fault she professed most 
 solemnly to abjure, was sure to be the fault she would be the 
 earliest to commit. 
 
 The torment which this species of character in a mistress 
 inflicted on me is undescribable. The pain I suffered from 
 the excesses she fell into was vehement : when she frankly 
 confessed how much she had been to blame, I became 
 almost angry with myself for the gravity of my censure : 
 and when again I saw her repeat the same unbecoming 
 folly without reflection or hesitation^ I was confounded at 
 so unexpected an event, and cursed my own infatuation ; at 
 the same time that, in spite of myself, I could not help ad- 
 miring the artless and simple grace, which even upon such 
 occasions did not desert her. One thing that contributed, 
 perhaps more than all the rest, to make this woman of so 
 much importance to me, was the perpetual occupation she 
 afforded to my thoughts. Abroad or at home, in company 
 or alone, she for ever engaged my attention, and kept my 
 soul in a tumult, sometimes, though rarely, of pleasure, 
 frequently of apprehension, alarm, jealousy, displeasure, and 
 condemnation. 
 
 One question continually haunted my thoughts. This 
 woman, so frivolous, so fickle, so uncertain, could she love ? 
 If not, was it not beneath the character of a man to be so 
 perpetually occupied about a person, whom I felt to be of 
 so little genuine worth, and by whom I was continually 
 deluded? These doubts, this self- questioning and com- 
 punction incessantly haunted me. Yet, in the midst of all 
 my struggles, one inviting wave of her hand, one encou- 
 raging glance of her eye, brought me in a moment to her 
 feet. 
 
 Never satisfied in this point, I, however, gratuitously 
 ascribed to her a thousand virtues. Grace has something 
 in it so nearly akin to moral rectitude and truth, that the 
 unvitiated observer can scarcely disjoin them even in ima- 
 gination, or persuade himself to believe that, where the 
 former is, the latter is not. True, unaffected grace seems 
 the very reflection of a candour and sincerity, which, know- 
 E 3 
 
54} FLEETWOOD. 
 
 ing no wrong, has nothing to disguise. It is free from per- 
 plexity and effort ; the heart appears to be on the lips, the 
 soul to beam from the countenance. Was not so perfect 
 an ingenuousness sufficient to atone for innumerable errors? 
 I know not whether the rest of my species are framed to 
 receive so pure a delight as I originally did from the very 
 sight of a serene and composed human countenance. A 
 thousand times, when my heart has burned with anger, the 
 smile of him who has offended me, even though a common 
 acquaintance, has disarmed me. I have said, " That calm 
 expression, that unwrinkled physiognomy, that quiet, un- 
 ruffled eye, can never be the cloke of a mind which deserves 
 my hate ; I feel in it, as it were, the precept of God speak- 
 ing to my eye, and commanding me to cherish, assist, and 
 love my fellow-man." When absent from him who had 
 awakened my resentment, I could feel aversion, and recol- 
 lect many severe and bitter remarks with which I was de- 
 sirous to taunt him; when present, his voice, his countenance, 
 changed the whole tenour of my thoughts, and tamed me in 
 a moment. If this were the case in reference to one of my 
 own sex, and an ordinary acquaintance, it may easily be 
 supposed how I felt towards a mistress, who had excited in 
 me, under some of its forms, the passion of love. 
 
 Our correspondence for some weeks was such, as, while 
 it furnished an almost incessant occupation for my own 
 thoughts, left me, I believed, little reason to apprehend 
 that the Marchioness was less engrossed by me ; but I was 
 mistaken, I was at present wholly new to the world of 
 gallantry. I had led a life of dissipation at Oxford ; but^ 
 hardened and brutalised, as to a certain degree I was, by 
 the associates of my excesses, and having never encountered 
 in these pursuits a woman of distinction, of interesting 
 story, or engaging manners, I had scarcely ever felt a 
 single flutter of the heart in these idle and degrading en- 
 gagements. It was far different now. My vanity was 
 stimulated by a success so flattering as that of my amour 
 with the Marchioness appeared in my eye. Often I trod in 
 air ; often I felt the quick pants of my bosom, and walked 
 with head erect, as if respiring a sublimer element ; even 
 when in solitude I reflected on. the homage which this 
 
FLEETWOOD. 55 
 
 proud beauty paid to the attractions of my person, and the 
 persuasion of my tongue. 
 
 " Of all the trophies which vain mortals boast. 
 By wit, by valour, or by wisdom won. 
 The first and fairest in a young man's eye 
 Is woman's captive heart" 
 
 I was therefore in the wrong to measure the modes of 
 thinking or of sensation in my mistress's bosom by my 
 own. She had long been inured to those things which 
 were new and interesting to me, and she felt them not 
 less coldly than she expressed them. I was willing to im- 
 pute a contrast between her language and her sentiments ; 
 but in this respect I did the Marchioness wrong ; she 
 was no hypocrite here. 
 
 At length Sir Charles Gleed removed the film which 
 had grown over my eyes, and cured me of my infatuation. 
 Sir Charles was a man who, in many points, observations 
 of detail, saw the world more truly than I did. I have 
 often remarked, though I will not affirm how far it is to be 
 taken as a general rule, this difference between men of 
 imagination, and those whom I will call men of simple 
 perception. It is something like a poet and a cultivator of 
 the soil, ascending one of the Welsh mountains, or tracing 
 together the tracts of land, meadow by meadow, which 
 might be discovered from the top of it. The farmer sees 
 the nature of the fields, the character of their soil, and 
 what species of vegetation is most adapted to grow in them. 
 If he looks upward, he can tell the configuration of the 
 clouds, the quarter from which the wind blows, and the 
 prognostications of the weather. When he comes home, he 
 can count up the plots of ground over which he has 
 passed, the regions to the right and left, and enumerate the 
 wheat, the barley, the oats, the rye, the clover, and the 
 grass, which grew in each. The poet, during the progress< 
 we are supposing, saw much less, though his mind was 
 more active and at work than that of the farmer. The 
 farmer's were perceptions; his were feelings. He saw 
 things in masses, not in detail. He annexed a little ro- 
 mance to each. In the clouds he discerned a passage, 
 through which he passed, and beyond which he plunged in 
 
 E 4) 
 
56 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 imagination into the world unknown. It was not green 
 and blue, ripe and immature, fertile and barren, that he 
 saw ; it was beauty, and harmony, and life, accompanied 
 with a silent eloquence which spoke to his soul. The 
 universe was to him a living scene, animated by a mys- 
 terious power, whose operations he contemplated with ad- 
 miration and reverence. To express the difference in one 
 word : what the farmer saw was external and in the things' 
 themselves ; what the poet saw was the growth and paint- 
 ing of his own mind. 
 
 The difference between Sir Charles Gleed and myself 
 was parallel to this when we mingled in the scenes of 
 human society. While he saw only those things in cha- 
 racter and action which formed the substance of what was 
 seen by every beholder, he was led astray by no pre- 
 possessions or partialities, and drew a great number of 
 just conclusions from the indications before him. I, on the 
 contrary, entered into every scene with certain expectations, 
 and with a little system of my own forming ready digested 
 in my mind. If I repaired to Notre Dame at Paris to 
 assist at the celebration of the high mass solemnised on 
 the eve of the Nativity, my thoughts were full of the 
 wonderful efficacy which religion exercises over my species, 
 and my memory stored with the sublime emotions which 
 altars, and crucifixes, and tapers had excited in the souls of 
 saints and martyrs. If I entered the walls of the British 
 House of Commons, and waited to hear an important debate, 
 the scenes of past ages revolved before the eyes of my fancy, 
 and that parliament again filled the benches in which Pym 
 and Hampden, and Falkland and Selden, and Cromwell and 
 Vane, sat together, to decide, perhaps for ever, on the civil 
 and intellectual liberties of my country. These are only 
 instances ; but in reality scarcely any character of the 
 smallest importance came before me, in whom, by re- 
 trospect or anticipation, by associations of pride, of in- 
 struction, or of honour, J did not make to myself a lively 
 interest, and whom I did not involuntarily surround with 
 an atmosphere of my own creating, which refracted the 
 rays of light, and changed the appearances of the scene. 
 These causes rendered me a less dispassionate, and there- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 57 
 
 fore, in many, instances, a less exact, though a much more 
 earnest observer than Sir Charles Gleed. 
 
 When Sir Charles told me what he had remarked, I was 
 struck with inexpressible astonishment. I could not, at 
 first, believe the report he made, and reproached him in 
 my thoughts for that vulgarity of mind which made him 
 always see in the actions of others something aUied to his 
 own. I asked him a thousand questions ; I demanded 
 from him a thousand proofs ; and it was not till he had 
 given me evidences amounting to demonstration, that I 
 consented to part with a delusion which had been so 
 delightful to my mind. That the Marchioness, whom I had 
 so entirely loved, in whose partiality I had so much prided 
 myself, whose smallest errors had afflicted me as spots 
 upon the lustre of her qualities, should be a woman of 
 abandoned character, disengaged from all restraints of 
 decency and shame, that, when I thought I possessed her 
 whole, - 1 really divided her favours with every comer, — a 
 musrc-master — an artisan — a valet, — it is impossible to 
 express how sudden and terrible a revolution this discovery 
 produced within me ! 
 
 ^ CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I WAS in Paris, and I did as people of fashion in Paris 
 were accustomed to do. I consoled myself for the infidelity 
 of one mistress by devoting my attentions to another. The 
 
 qualities of the Countess de B were exceedingly unlike 
 
 tiiose of the Marchioness ; perhaps, led by a sentiment to 
 ■which I was unconscious, I selected her for that very 
 reason. The Marchioness I have compared to the sleek 
 and glossy coated eel: for ever restless, never "contented 
 with the thing or the circumstances under which she was, 
 you could never hold her to one certain mode of proceed- 
 ing. The only way in which for her lover to become 
 satisfied with her, was to persuade himself that her ex- 
 ternal demeanour was merely a guise put on, which belied 
 her heart, and that, when she seemed most impatient, ca- 
 
58 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 pricious, and fantastical, her soul confessed none of these 
 follieS;, but assumed them to veil the too great sensibility of 
 her nature. The Countess, on the contrary, appeared to be 
 wholly destitute of art. Though past the first season of 
 youthful inexperience, she appeared to have acquired none 
 of the lessons of prudery and factitious decorum. Her 
 heart shone in her visage ; the very tones of her voice were 
 modulated to the expression of tenderness. Hers was " the 
 sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul." Her cheek was 
 full, her skin transparent ; the least thought of pleasure or 
 of passion suffused her countenance with a blush. The 
 Countess had no atom of the restlessness of her rival ; a 
 sort of voluptuous indolence continually attended her ; and 
 the busy nothings of ordinary life seemed to be an insup- 
 portable burden to her.^She appeared born only to feeL^ 
 to reflect, to consider, to anticipate, to receive and concoct 
 the elements of instruction, were offices in which she 
 seemed incapable to exist. It was her habit, therefore, to 
 resign herself wholly to her feelings, and to be in them 
 undivided and entire. To judge from every exterior in- 
 dication, it was impossible for a tenderer mistress to exist ; 
 she gave herself up to her lover, and treated him as if he 
 were father, mother, fortune, reputation, and life to her, in 
 one. She placed no restraint on herself, but appeared all 
 anxiety, terror, apprehension, gratitude, enjoyment, as the 
 occasions most obviously led to one or another of these 
 emotions. 
 
 Yet this woman was capable of the more stormy im- 
 pulses of resentment and jealousy, but only in such a way 
 as best accorded with the sensibility and voluptuousness of 
 her character. Her resentment was passive and de- 
 ponding ; when wounded, it appeared incompatible with 
 the purpose of wounding again ; in the person against 
 whom it was directed, it excited not sentiments of hostility, 
 but of pity ; and her tender bosom seemed to wait only 
 the moment of passionate reconciliation. When her lover 
 returned to her, or persuaded her of the sincerity of his 
 affection, gratitude and delight possessed her wholly, and 
 reproach died away upon her lips. The Countess, by her 
 manners, reminded her admirer of the most delicate flower 
 
FLEETWOOD. 59 
 
 of the parterre, which the first attack of a rude and chilling 
 blast immediately withers, but which, by the lustre of its 
 tints, and the softness of its texture, seems to advance an 
 irresistible claim to gentle protection and western breezes. 
 Tears from her sparkling eyes broke forth almost at will ; 
 by a tear she expressed her sufferings, and by a tear her 
 joy. This might, perhaps, have been grievous to her lover, 
 had she had the smallest bias towards a querulous temper. 
 But her character was a perpetual summer ; her storms 
 were only like the soft droppings of a sultry evening, and 
 easily gave place to a fair sky and a radiant heaven. 
 
 The intellect of the Countess de B was of narrow 
 
 dimensions. Her mind had never been turmoiled with the 
 infusions of science ; she scarcely knew that there were an- 
 tipodes, or that there had been ancients. She lived like 
 those insects which the naturalists describe, generated on the 
 surface of certain lakes, that are born only to hover along 
 the superficies of the pellucid element, to enjoy, and to die. 
 
 What pity that the sentiments of such a person as the 
 
 Countess de B were so little entitled to be depended 
 
 upon ! According to the ideas many men entertain of the 
 fair sex, it was impossible for any one, in the particulars 
 above described, to be more exactly qualified for a mistress 
 or a wife, than this fascinating woman. There was no 
 danger that she should become the rival of her lover in 
 any man-like pursuits, or that with troublesome curiosity 
 she should intrude herself into his occupations of learning, 
 of gain, or of ambition. ^She had all the attributes that 
 belong exclusively to the female sex, and as few as possible 
 of those which are possessed by the whole species, male 
 and female, in comraon."> She was rather an Asiatic sul- 
 tana, in her turn of mind, than a native of our western 
 world. And her habits would have been equally accom- 
 modated to the man who, having serious pursuits for his 
 graver hours, wished either not to impart or not to re- 
 member them in his hours of pleasure ; and to the man 
 who, being in the heyday of his youth, and favoured by 
 nature and by fortune, desired to thrust the world aside, 
 and take his swing of indulgence uninterrupted and un- 
 checked. I belonged to this latter description. 
 
60 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the Countess, though she seemed 
 to feel with her soul, had "the spring of her sentiments 
 and actions in her eyes. Where she attached herself, it 
 was with such a show of ardour, that the lover must have 
 been captious and difficult indeed, who was not satisfied 
 with the sincerity of passion she displayed toward him. 
 Yet the passion of the Countess was rather an abstract 
 propensity, than the preference of an individual. A given 
 quantity of personal merit and accomplished manners was 
 sure to charm her. A fresh and agreeable complexion, a 
 sparkling eye, a well-turned leg, a grace in dancing, or in 
 performing the manoeuvres of gallantry, were claims that 
 
 the Countess de B was never known to resist. She 
 
 appeared to administer her decisions upon these diflferent 
 pretensions with the most rigid equity ; and they were 
 sometimes very minute distinctions, scarcely discernible by 
 the naked eye, that decided her hair-breadth preferences. 
 Upon this rigid equity there was only one limitation ; and 
 this also was sufficiently in correspondence with the theory 
 of the subject. Among the various sources of what are 
 called the pleasures of the imagination, one, as learned 
 
 doctors tell us, is novelty. To this the Countess de B 
 
 paid the strictest attention ; and, where there was any un- 
 certainty in tlie comparison of personal advantages or polite 
 accomplishments, the latest pretender was sure to carry the 
 day. Amiable Countess ! Like the wanton bee, which 
 flits from flower to flower, equally enamoured with each in 
 turn, and retaining no painful recollections of that which 
 was last quitted, to render the qualities of the next offerer 
 less agreeable and exquisite. I remember her even at this 
 time with kindness. She seemed to skim the surface of 
 life, and to taste of a continual succession of pleasures. It 
 .yras, perhaps, unreasonable ever to be angry with her. 
 She had almost too little reflection and concatenation of 
 ideas, to make her a competent subject of moral jurisdic- 
 tion. ] It was not, however, always thus with her ; her career 
 was short, and she expiated, by long and severe calamities, 
 for her brief period of unchecked enjoyment. Whatever 
 may be thought of her demerits, few persons ever drank 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 61 
 
 more deeply of the cup of retribution. But this does not 
 belong to my history. 
 
 It will easily be concluded from what \ have stated, 
 that the termination of my amour with the Countess de 
 
 B was very similar to that with the Marchioness. I 
 
 trusted ; I was deceived ; my eyes were opened ; I suf- 
 fered all the torments of disappointment and despair. A 
 quick and living sensitiveness was one of the most obvious 
 characteristics of my mind ; and few men felt disappoint- 
 ment, of almost every kind, more deeply. When the 
 breach took place between me and the Marchioness, I had 
 been for some days like a man distracted. The Countess 
 
 de B presented herself to my observation just at that 
 
 critical moment ; the more than feminine gentleness and 
 softness of her nature, were exactly adapted to allure my 
 attention in this period of anguish ; and it was owing to 
 this fortuitous concurrence, that I recovered my equilibrium, 
 in a certain degree, much sooner than could reasonably 
 have been expected. It has often been a matter of jest in^ 
 the world, when a widower, who seemed to be inconsolable 
 for the partner of his heart, suddenly marries again ; and 
 the inference usually drawn is, that his grief was pure 
 mummery and representation. I grant that the man who 
 thus conducts himself is guilty of a breach of decorum, 
 and that his behaviour is rather calculated to excite our 
 disesteem than our respect ; but I affirm that it is suf- 
 ficiently natural, and that there is no need of having re- 
 course to the imputation of hypocrisy to account for it. 
 There is a principle in man, impelling him to seek his own 
 preservation, and pursue his own happiness ; and this 
 principle will frequently urge him, in proportion to the 
 dreadful vacuity produced by the loss of that which no pos- 
 sibility can restore to him, to seek to replace it by some- 
 what of the same species, and to endeavour to relieve his 
 disconsolate state by a companion, who may in like man- 
 ner share his thoughts and engage his tenderness. ^^ 
 
 The loss of the Countess was much more terrible to me 
 than that of her predecessor. The Marchioness had kept 
 me in a state of perpetual agitation, a temper of mind not 
 unallied to fortitude. The Countess de B — — had softr 
 
62 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 ened and relaxed my mind, and left in me a temper ill 
 suited to the struggling with misfortune. The Marchioness 
 was a woman that I loved and hated by turns ; she was 
 often too mascuHne and peremptory to be an object of ten- 
 derness; her character, adapted continually to produce 
 wonder and astonishment, lost by just so much of the 
 faculty to please. But the Countess was all sweetness. In 
 the eyes of her lover she appeared like an angel. She rose 
 upon him like the evening star, mild, radiant, tranquil, and 
 soothing. In periods of the most entire communication 
 and accord, she seemed to leave him nothing to wish, but 
 appeared in his eyes the exact model of perfection. From 
 the Marchioness you continually expected something ex- 
 traordinary : her ambition was to shine ; and that which 
 is extraordinary must, of course, be sometimes good and 
 
 sometimes ill. But the Countess de B was so simple, 
 
 so intelligible, it seemed as if nothing could happen with 
 her that might not exactly be foreseen ; she was wholly 
 engaged in the object of her selection, and appeared to live 
 for that alone. 
 
 The distress I suffered from the inconstancy of the 
 
 Countess de B was inexpressibly acute. It taught 
 
 me to abhor and revile her sex. It inspired me with a 
 contempt of human pleasures. I felt like the personage of 
 a fairy tale I have somewhere read, who, after being de- 
 lighted with the magnificence of a seeming palace, and the 
 beauty of its fair inhabitants, suddenly sees the delusion 
 vanish, the palace is converted into a charnel-house, and 
 what he thought its beautiful tenants, are seen to be the 
 most withered and loathsome hags that ever shocked the 
 eyes of a mortal. My soul was in tumults. I loathed ex- 
 istence and the sight of day ; and my self-love was inex- 
 pressibly shocked to think that I could have suffered so 
 gross a delusion. I fled from Paris, and sought the craggy 
 and inhospitable Alps ; the most frightful scenes alone had 
 power to please, and produced in me a kind of malicious 
 and desperate sentiment of satisfaction. 
 
 Most earnestly do I entreat the reader to pardon me, 
 for having thus much interspersed these pages with a tale 
 of debaucheries. It is not, I solemnly assure him, that I 
 
FLEETWOOD. 63 
 
 have any pleasure in the recollection, or that I glory in my ^ 
 shame. Some men, I know, would palliate this narrative 
 to themselves, by saying that the things here related belong 
 to the country where my scene is placed, and that morals 
 have no certain standard, but change their laws according 
 to the climate in which they exist. From my soul do I 
 abjure this apology. Without entering abstrusely into 
 the general merits of the question, I intimately feel in 
 myself, that I carry about me, wherever I go, the same 
 criterion of approbation, which bends to no customs, and 
 asks no support from the suffrage of others to make it what 
 it is. At the time of which I have been speaking, I was 
 young and wild ; I had been much injured by the sort of 
 company I frequented for some years before I left Eng- 
 land; and I gave easily and without compunction into 
 the dissipations of the metropolis of France. But I do 
 not look back upon them without aversion. I have written 
 the narrative of this period under impressions of deep 
 pain, and every line has cost me a twinge of the sharpest 
 remorse. There are some kinds of writing in which the 
 mind willingly engages, in which, while we hold the pen 
 in our hand, we seem to unburden the sentiments of our 
 soul, and our habitual feelings cause us to pour out on the 
 paper a prompt and unstudied eloquence. Here, on the 
 contrary, I have held myself to my task with difficulty, 
 and often with my utmost effort I have scarcely written 
 down a page a day on the ungrateful subject. 
 
 Why have I introduced it then .f* Because it was ne- 
 cessary, to make my subsequent history understood. I 
 have a train of follies, less loathsome, but more tragic, to 
 unfold ; which could not have been accounted for, unless 
 it had been previously shown by what causes I, the author, 
 and in some respects the principal sufferer, was rendered 
 what I was. I was a misanthrope. Not a misanthrope of 
 the sterner and more rugged class, who, while they con- 
 demn and despise every thing around them, have a per- 
 verted sort of pleasure in the office, whose brow for ever 
 frowns, whose voice has the true cynical snarl, and who 
 never feel so triumphant a complacency, as when they 
 detect the worthlessness and baseness of whoever comes 
 
64< 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 into contact with them. This sort of man, even in my 
 unhappiest state of desolation, I could always look down 
 upon with pity. My misanthropy was a conclusion, how- 
 ever erroneous, that I unwiUingly entertained. I felt what 
 I was, and I pined for the society of my like. It was 
 with inexpressible sorrow that I believed I was alone in 
 the world. My sensibiHty was not one atom diminished 
 by my perpetual disappointments. I felt what man ought 
 to be, and I could not prevent the model of what he ought 
 to be from being for ever present to my mind. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 I HASTENED, as I havo already said, from Paris, and 
 plunged amidst the wild and desolate scenery of Mount 
 Jura. The next intended stage of my travels was Switzer- 
 land, and I pursued the road which led to that country. 
 The first anxiety I felt was to escape from France. That 
 kingdom had been the theatre of my sufferings and my 
 disgrace. There first I had felt my mind agitated with 
 those emotions which are destined to have so mighty an 
 influence on the fate of man. But how agitated ? I had 
 loved. I had not loved innocence ; I had not loved the 
 chaste simplicity of the female character : my affections 
 had not gone forth toward any object, which might refine 
 and elevate my soul, which might free me from the im- 
 purities I had contracted among the debauchees of the 
 university, restore me to peace with myself, and prepare 
 me to act an honourable part on the theatre of society. 
 Unfortunately my initiation had been in the polluted tracts 
 of adulterous commerce. My mind had been acted upon 
 with vehemence, but not improved. What true sympathy 
 and affection can arise between persons of opposite sexes, 
 when the basis upon which their intimacy is founded is 
 crime ? — when all decorum and character are trampled 
 under foot, and nothing is aimed at but licentious pleasure 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 6S 
 
 at the expense of all our best duties, and all that is truly 
 honourable in human life ? 
 
 I had been interested in the Marchioness, She had 
 originally been considered by me as the model of a spirited, 
 frank, and ingenuous character. But the affections of my 
 soul had been much more strongly excited by the Countess 
 
 de B . The Marchioness was, and had ultimately been 
 
 set down by me for, a character merely artificial. But the 
 Countess was a woman who appeared to set up no de- 
 fences, and employ no stratagems ; who surrendered herself 
 fuUy, with all lier faculties and all her soul, to her lever. 
 In her I persuaded myself that I had found that true 
 simplicity which is most worthy to engage the heart of 
 every beholder. I did not , perceive that she was in the 
 worst sense of the word a sensualist, and that this was in 
 a consummate degree a departure from the genuine female 
 character ; but unfortunately was induced to judge of the 
 whole sex from the specimens which had thus been brought 
 before me. 
 
 Amidst the mountains which separate Switzerland from 
 France, the idea of the Countess was perpetually present 
 to my thoughts. In Troyes and the other towns which 
 lay in my route, along the populous roads, and by the side 
 of navigable rivers, my thoughts were interrupted, if not 
 amused : but the instant I plunged into solitude and the 
 retreats of uncultivated nature, my reveries became endless 
 and inexhaustible. AV'hen I turned round a point of the 
 rock, when I gazed intently, yet with an absent mind^ 
 upon the deep shadows of the mountains, visto beyond 
 visto, enveloped in clouds, lost in obscurity, and where 
 no human form was to be discerned, there the figure of 
 
 , tlie Countess de B flitted before me. I heard her 
 
 voice between the pauses of the echoes, and amidst the 
 dashing of the cascades. 
 
 Why had I left her? Had I left her?-. — Why 
 
 liad she proved herself dishonourable and unworthy ? 
 
 Was she indeed unworthy? 1 believed every thing, 
 
 and I believed nothing. Ten times I was inclined again 
 to turn my face toward Paris, and throw myself at her 
 feet. She could not be guilty : that face was a pledge of 
 
 V 
 
66 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 her rectitude : depravity and inconstancy could not lurk 
 behind the lovely expression of that angelic countenance ! 
 
 What, turn back, and expose myself to the contempt 
 
 of every one in Paris, and to her own ? What, sue to her, 
 that she would forgive to me the vices she had committed ? 
 
 Be a sharer of her caresses with ? There was no 
 
 such woman ! It was all a delusion ! I might look for 
 her through Paris, and through the world, but should never 
 find her. The scales had dropped from my eyes, and I 
 might pray in vain, if I could be worthless enough to pray, 
 for the restoration of my former blindness. 
 
 I descended the Alps, and entered into Switzerland. It 
 may be, the very air of this country, — the country of free- 
 dom, of independence, moderation, and good sense, — had a 
 favourable effect on my temper. I began now to think of 
 M. Ruffigny, to whose protection and counsels my father 
 had so emphatically recommended me. Never did I hear 
 the eulogium of one man pronounced by another with that 
 energy and enthusiasm with which my father spoke of this 
 venerable Swiss. He had told me once and again at our 
 parting, and in the letters he addressed to me in my 
 travels, that, if ever I became the ornament of my house, 
 and the benefactor of my fellows, it was to the friendship, 
 the instructions, and example of Ruffigny that he looked 
 for that benefit. I had seen this friend of my father once 
 only, when I was five years of age ; and the vague and 
 imperfect recollection which remained in my mind, gave a 
 sort of sacredness to his figure, and made him appear in 
 my thoughts like a visiter from the starry spheres. 
 
 As I approached nearer to the residence of this man, I 
 began to examine whether I was prepared to appear in his 
 presence. I painted to myself his habitation as the grotto 
 of an aerial spirit, whither I was repairing to do homage, 
 and to receive the communications of an all-penetrating 
 wisdom. While I had been engaged at Paris in the giddy 
 round of licentious pursuits, I had forgotten this incom- 
 parable friend ; nothing that related to him sobered and 
 awed me ; but, now that I had set my foot upon his native 
 soil, I already seemed to feel the contact of his mind and 
 the emanation of his virtues. 
 
FLEETWOOD, 
 
 67 
 
 M. Ruffigny lived in a neat house which he had built 
 for himself in the valley of Urseren^ near the foot of 
 Mount St. Gothard, the tallest and most stupendous of the 
 hills of his country. It was a fine summer evening when 
 I approached his residence. The beams of the setting sun 
 illuminated the peaks of the mountain, and gave a divine 
 tranquillity to the plains. I felt my heart relieved from 
 the rude tempests and the flagging and noisome atmosphere 
 which had oppressed it. The sun was declining, and the 
 heat of the day was over, when I entered a wood of tall 
 and venerable trees, through which the road lay that led to 
 his habitation. Nothing could be more grateful than the 
 fresh, cool air, which penetrated this wood. After having 
 for some time pursued a serpentine path, I came within 
 sight of the house, and perceived the old man in his gar- 
 den, examining the processes of vegetation, and stretching 
 forth his hand to relieve and to raise such of its produc- 
 tions as stood in need of his aid. I had no doubt it was 
 M. Ruffigny. I leaped from my horse, and, delivering 
 him to the care of my servant, hastened to join the friend 
 of my father. A little wicket at one extremity of the 
 front of the house admitted me into the potagerie. The 
 owner was tall, and of a venerable presence, with a little 
 stoop in his carriage, his visage placid, his eye penetrating 
 amidst the wrinkles of age, and his hair as white as snow. 
 He was somewhat turned from me as I approached, but, 
 hearing a quick step he lifted up his head and surveyed me. 
 
 I was too much engaged in contemplating his interesting 
 figure instantly to announce myself. He hesitated for a 
 moment, and then spoke. 
 
 ^' Casimir Fleetwood ! " said he. 
 
 ** The same." — He pressed my hand with peculiar 
 emotion. 
 
 " The very image of Ambrose Fleetwood, his grandfather ! 
 1 have expected your visit some time. I have a thousand 
 things to say to you, and a thousand enquiries to make. 
 You look like an honest man, and an observing one. It 
 does my old heart good to receive under my roof the last 
 representative of the friends I have loved and honoured 
 more than any others I ever had." 
 p 2 
 
68 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 M. RufEgny proceeded to question me respecting my 
 travels. How long I had left England ? Where I had 
 been ? What stay I had made in Paris ? What society 
 I had frequented ? What connections I had formed ? 
 What remarks and conclusions I had drawn from what I 
 saw ? He addressed to me no interrogatories but such as 
 a friendly anxiety for my welfare might naturally dictate ; 
 yet I could perceive that he endeavoured to draw from his 
 enquiries materials for estimating my understanding and 
 character. I acquitted myself in this experiment as I 
 could, though I felt embarrassed with the recollection of 
 affkirs and transactions in Paris, which I was not at pre- 
 sent disposed to confide to M. Ruffigny. My venerable 
 host listened with attention to what I said, and sometimes 
 interposed his commendation where he judged it deserved, 
 but at no time did there drop from his lips a syllable of 
 censure. He probably conceived that premature criticisms 
 en what I thought proper to unfold, would check the spirit 
 of communication, and lessen the opportunity to discover 
 my character which he was desirous to obtain. 
 
 As we walked up and down in the garden, engaged in 
 this sort of conversation, I turned my eye occasionally 
 round, and examined the spot in which I was placed. It 
 was a scene in which use seemed to take the precedence of 
 ornament. Though roses, woodbines, lilacs, and labur- 
 nums, with such other flowering shrubs as require little aid 
 from the hand of the cultivator, were interspersed, the plots 
 into which the inclosure was divided were principally ap- 
 propriated to pulse and other esculent vegetables, and Xvere 
 bordered with fruit-bearing plants and shrubs. On the 
 lower side of the garden was seen the broad expanse of the 
 Reuss, which, though a little further from its source it 
 dashes over rude fragments of rock in a continual cataract, 
 flows along the valley in a smooth and silent'stream. The 
 opposite side of the garden was skirted by the acclivity of 
 the mountain, the surface of which to a considerable height 
 was covered with the most luxuriant vines my eyes ever 
 beheld. 
 
 After having walked for a considerable time, we went to- 
 ward the house. Upon a smooth turf before the door was 
 
FLKETWOOD. 
 
 69 
 
 spread a table, with a few melons, grapes, and wall- fruit, a 
 loaf of bread, and a flagon of weak but agreeably flavoured 
 wine. " This is my supper," said M. Ruffigny. We sat 
 down together. We talked of England, of France, and of 
 the country in which we then were, and I was charmed 
 and instructed with the acute remarks delivered by my 
 host upon the comparative manners of each. He spoke 
 with enthusiasm of the scenery of his native country, of the 
 enviable freedom enjoyed by its inhabitants, and the happy 
 equality and competence in which they lived. " Here," 
 said he, " you behold, in happy contrast, the simplicity 
 of man^ and the exuberance of nature. My countrymen ap- 
 pear in the plainness of what in England you would call 
 a quaker-hke habit and manners, while the region that 
 sustains them is clothed in all the dyes of heaven, and 
 wantons herself in more various forms of majesty and 
 beauty than mere imagination could ever conceive. Hence 
 I learn to venerate and respect the intelligible rectitude of 
 the species to which I belong, and to adore with sacred awe 
 the mysterious power which draws us into existence, and 
 nurses our inexperience in its genial bosom." 
 
 The adventures through which I had passed, and the 
 misanthropy I had contracted, did not allow me perfectly 
 to accord with this sentiment of M. Ruffigny. 
 
 The next morning, my beneficent friend received me in 
 his library. It was the only spacious apartment in his 
 house, and was fitted up with peculiar neatness and conve- 
 nience. I cast my eyes around upon the shelves, and per- 
 ceived that they were principally furnished with the old 
 poetical compositions of France, Germany, Italy and Swit- 
 zerland, together with a very complete collection of botanical 
 writers, particularly those which treated of the natural pro- 
 ductions of Helvetia. One compartment of the library 
 was devoted to English authors, principally from the age 
 of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 
 
 '' I pass some hours of every day," said the old man, 
 *' in this apartment ; but my life is principally in ^he^ op^^ 
 air: I think more than I read; and I am more attacneJ 
 to the great and living volume of nature, than to the cold, 
 insensible, mechanically constructed pages and sheets that 
 p 3 
 
70 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 have been produced by my fellow- creatures. Let no man 
 despise the oracles of books ! A book is a dead man, a 
 sort of mummy, embowelled and embalmed, but that once 
 had flesh, and motion, and a boundless variety of determin- 
 ations and actions. I am glad that I can, even upon these 
 terms, converse with the dead, with the wise and the good 
 of revolving centuries. Without books I should not under- 
 stand the volume of nature ; I should pass the scanty years 
 of my existence a mere novice ; the life of a single man is 
 too short to enable him to penetrate beyond the surface of 
 things. The furniture of these shelves constitutes an ela- 
 borate and invaluable commentary ; but the objects beyond 
 those windows, and the circles and communities of my con- 
 temporaries, are the text to which that commentary relates." 
 After breakfast, M. Ruffigny and myself walked out, 
 and ascended one branch of the St. Gothard. I was sur- 
 prised to observe with what agility and spirit the old man 
 encountered this species of labour. " It is all use," said he. 
 /'' Temperance and the habit of daily exercise have preserved, 
 ( and probably long will preserve to me, these inexpensive 
 \^nd invaluable pleasures." 
 
 My host pointed out the various beauties of the succes- 
 sive landscapes which from the different points of the rock 
 were presented to my view. It was a boundless magazine 
 of the most ravishing objects. He directed my attention 
 to the different towns, and villages like towns, which were 
 discoverable from various distances, descanted on the inge- 
 nuity of manufactures, and the vigilance and expedients of 
 agriculture. " This whole territory," said he, *^ is one 
 continued monument of the triumph of temperance, indus- 
 try, and independence." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 
 The second day after my arrival, M. Ruffigny conducted 
 me on a little tour to the lake of Uri. ^' My country," said 
 he, " makes but a petty figure in the map of the globe ; and. 
 
FliEETWOOD. 71 
 
 perhaps, it may be a frivolous sort of pride in me, that 
 makes me feel complacency in recollecting that I am a 
 burgher of Uri. I do not merely exult that I am a Swiss, 
 but I sometimes indulge myself in a fastidious comparison 
 between my native canton and the more spacious and opu- 
 lent republics of Zurich and Berne. The little state which 
 I inhabit, is nearly one cluster of rugged and inhospitable 
 mountains ; yet this is the district in which the Swiss 
 liberty was engendered ; and from hence, as a centre, it 
 spread on every side to the furthest boundaries of the 
 union. I am myself descended from the patriots who 
 secured independence to my native soil. As William Tell 
 married the younger of the daughters of Walter Furst, one 
 of the three immortal leaders, who in 1308 conspired for 
 the deliverance of their country ; so an ancestor of mine, in 
 the direct line, married the elder. I know that the pre- 
 t.ension of an illustrious ancestry is too often a chimerical 
 boast. I know that, wherever a pedigree is preserved, or 
 a distinguishing compellation is conferred, it is in the na- 
 ture of things almost impossible, that in a few generations 
 a race should not degenerate, and that fools or villains 
 should not corrupt the blood of the profoundest sages and 
 the most disinterested citizens. I know that, wherever 
 this is the case, wherever licentiousness or imbecility has 
 crossed the glorious breed, every time such a descendant 
 hears the repetition of his name, he hears a more deadly 
 and outrageous satire, than the malice of his worst enemy 
 could invent against him. Forgive me, my friend — I feel 
 that this censure does not fasten on me. If I have not the 
 public merits of a Furst and a Tell, I have their inno- 
 cence of manners, and my life has been usefully and ho- 
 nourably spent. 
 
 '^ Zurich, and Basle, and some of our more opulent can- 
 tons, are full of manufactures and industry ; they contain 
 many citizens who are comparatively wealthy ; and the 
 style of living of several of these would not shame the 
 capitals of Paris or London. My co-burghers are all 
 feeders of flocks or cultivators of the earth ; there are 
 among them none who are opulent, and none who suffer the 
 evils of poverty ; and their tables are such as bring before 
 F 4 
 
72 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 US the uncornipted plainness of patriarchal times. I have 
 visited many countries of the globe ; but this, instead of 
 distasting me toward the simplicity of my early years, has 
 made me relish it the more. Like a true Swiss of the 
 earlier times, I have returned home, and bidden adieu, 
 without a sigh, to the refinements and ostentation of other 
 climates." 
 
 In the course of our excursion, M. Ruffigny pointed out 
 to me the various spots still so dear to the genius of free- 
 dom : Gruti, the village where the three heroes of Switzer- 
 land planned their undertaking ; Brunnen, where the 
 fundamental league between their respective cantons was 
 concluded ; Kussnacht, the scene where an arrow from the 
 bow of Tell reached the heart of Gesler, his own oppressor, 
 and the oppressor of his country ; and Morgarten and 
 Sempach, the fields in which those celebrated combats were 
 fought, that fixed the hberties of Switzerland on a basis 
 which has endured the shock of ages. All these places 
 were within such a distance, that we either actually visited 
 them in the course of the day, or discerned them, almost 
 in full detail, from the tops of the neighbouring eminences. 
 
 After having sated my curiosity in the examination of 
 these venerable scenes, we returned in the afternoon by the 
 lake of Uri. It was along this lake that Tell is related to 
 have been conveyed in fetters by Gesler, that he might be 
 removed from his countrymen, and shut up in one of the. 
 dungeons reserved by the tyrant for the intrepid and the 
 honest. As they rowed along a violent tempest arose. 
 The shores on both sides are extremely craggy and dan- 
 gerous ; and the tyrant began to fear that his boat would 
 be dashed to pieces against these insuperable precipices. 
 Tell, perfect in the accomplishments of a Swiss peasant, 
 ' and endowed with a firm and adventurous temper, sur- 
 passed his contemporaries in the art of navigating his na- 
 tive lakes. Gesler knew this, and, trembling for his coward 
 Hfe, ordered the fetters to be struck off from his prisoner, 
 and the helm to be put into his hand. Tell used the op- 
 portunity which was given him. There are not above two 
 or three points in the whole circumference of this lake^ 
 where it is practicable to land. Tell steered his boat to- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 75 
 
 ward the most rugged of these, leaped suddenly upon the 
 rock, climbed with inconceivable adroitness up the preci- 
 pice, and returned once more to his longing countrymen 
 and confederates. A chapel, erected by admiring posterity 
 on the spot, consecrates the memory of this magnanimous 
 and important achievement. 
 
 One thing surprised me, upon reflection, in the conduct 
 of M. Ruffigny. He had received me with particular kind- 
 ness ; yet he did not so much as mention to me the name 
 of my father. I knew that the connection between them 
 was of the most confidential nature, and included a variety 
 of important obligations, though I was a stranger to the 
 particulars. My host did not enquire when I had heard 
 from my father. He might, indeed, have received letters 
 as lately as I could have done. But he did not ask me 
 respecting his health, his vigour, his sentiments, his habits,- 
 a thousand minutiae, to which ocular inspection alone can 
 qualify a man to speak. It is so natural for a friend to be 
 anxious about these, and to think he can never talk or hear 
 enough upon these interesting topics ! 
 
 After having busily employed ourselves in discovering 
 and examining the various memorable objects which oc- 
 curred in our route, we now passed quietly and silently 
 along the lake. It was a deep and narrow water, about 
 nine miles in length, and skirted on both sides with rocks 
 uncommonly wild and romantic, some perpendicular, some 
 stretching over our heads, and intercepting the view of the 
 upper sky, and clothed for the most part with forests of 
 beech and pine, that extended themselves down to the very 
 edge of the water. The lake was as smooth as crystal, and 
 the arching precipices that inclosed it gave a peculiar 
 solemnity to the gloom. As we passed near the chapel of 
 Tell, the bell happened to toll forth, as if for a funeral. 
 The sound was full, the effect melancholy ; each reverber- 
 ation of the metal was prolonged among the echoes of the 
 rocks. This continued for about fifteen minutes, and then 
 ceased. 
 
 We were attended by only two rowers and a steersn^an, 
 labourers in the corn-fields and garden of M. RuflSgny. 
 Shortly after we had passed the chapel, the rowers sus- 
 
74» FLEETWOOD. 
 
 pended their labour, and we glided in silence over the 
 water. We had been so busied in action and conversation 
 during the whole morning, that the stillness which now 
 succeeded seemed perfectly unforced and natural. I sunk 
 into a deep reverie. I .thought of William Tell, and the 
 glorious founders of the Swiss liberty ; I thought of the 
 simple manners which still prevail in the primitive cantons ; 
 I felt as if I were in the wildest and most luxuriant of .the 
 uninhabited islands of the South Sea. I was lost in visions 
 of paradise, of habitations and bowers among the celestial 
 orbs, of things supernatural and remote, of the unincum- 
 bered spirits of the virtuous and the just, of the pure re- 
 wards and enjoyments of a happier state. I had forgotten 
 Switzerland, and M. Ruflfigny, and the world, and myself. 
 
 Accidentally I lifted my eye, and saw the countenance 
 of my host fixed upon me with peculiar intentness ; a tear 
 moistened the furrows of his cheeks. This spectacle re- 
 called me to the reality of things about me ; but my heart 
 was softened by the images which had passed through my 
 thoughts, and I could not speak. 
 
 " I have not named your father to you," said M. Ruf- 
 
 figny- 
 
 My dear father ! — His name, uttered at that moment, 
 awakened the best feelings of my soul. 
 
 '^ Casimir ! Casimir Fleetwood \" exclaimed my host, 
 '^ where have you been ? " 
 
 ''In France : — at Paris." 
 
 '' How have you been employed ? " 
 
 *' Not well. — My father sent me forth for improve- 
 ment ; but I have been employed in libertinism and dissi- 
 pation." 
 
 '' Fleetwood, I also am your father ; and I will not be 
 less indulgent, scarcely less anxious, than your natural 
 parent. You know in gross, though you do not know in 
 detail, the peculiar attachment I feel for every thing that 
 bears the na^ie of Fleetwood : — am I not your father ? " 
 
 '' This, sir, is the third day that I have ever seen you ; 
 I know little of you yet ; the little I have observed has 
 scarcely had time to strike its fibres deep in my bosom. 
 But all that I do know, makes me presume that, were I 
 
FLEETWOOD. 75 
 
 worthy of the honour, you are the person of all mankind 
 whom I should prefer for an adoptive parent." 
 
 " Casimir ! my dear Casimir ! let not your ears for 
 ever abhor the sound of my voice ; let not my form and 
 my visage be for ever loathsome in your sight ! — I cannot 
 speak" 
 
 " I understand you, sir, — my father is dead !" 
 
 Ruffigny held forward to me a letter ; I took it from 
 him ; I gazed mechanically on the superscription, but 
 could not make out a syllable. My friend drew nearer to 
 me ; he put his arm round me, as I sat ; I rested my head 
 on his shoulder, and burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 The communication of this melancholy intelligence no 
 doubt affected me very differently from what it would 
 otherwise have done, in consequence of the frame of mind, 
 which this day's excursion, and the various objects I had 
 beheld, produced in me. My sensibility was increased by 
 the preparation, and the impression I received was by so 
 much the deeper. I do not pretend to divine Ruffigny 's 
 motives for so contriving the scene. Perhaps he knew 
 enough of human nature to believe that it rarely hap- 
 pened to a son in the bloom of life to break his heart for 
 the loss of an aged parent. Perhaps he understood and 
 disapproved of the train of life in which I had lately been 
 engaged, and thought the thus softening my heart the 
 most effectual way of recalling me to my better self. 
 
 " Why, sir," cried I mournfully, " did you suffer me 
 to remain a moment in ignorance of this dreadful intel- 
 ligence ? Why all this pomp of preparation ? What are 
 scenery, and patriotism, and heroes, and the achievements 
 of past ages to me ? What have I to do with all this 
 world ? — My father ! my only friend ! — Where have I 
 been ? — Losing myself, while you stood in need of my 
 consolation ! Breaking through every plan that was ar- 
 ranged, loitering away my time among the frivolities and 
 licentiousness of Paris, while you laid down an aching head 
 in solitude, while your pulses failed, and your eyes were 
 closed in darkness ! Would to God it were in my power to 
 recal a few past months ! — No matter ! — My prospects 
 and my pleasures are finished ; my life is tarnished ; my 
 
76 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 peace is destroyed : — I shall never again think of myself 
 with approbation J or with patience \" 
 
 I did not say all this aloud^ though a part of it I did. 
 The short time I had passed with lluffigny was yet long 
 enough to make me feel no sort of constraint in his pre- 
 sence. On the present occasion he did not attempt to 
 console me ; he left my grief to its natural course : we 
 finished our voyage in silence. By degrees, as I recovered 
 the use of my reason, I felt myself grateful for his kind- 
 nessj and respected his judgment in this forbearance. 
 
 The night of the day I have described did not pass in 
 repose. Amidst short and disturbed slumbers I saw my 
 father. — I heard his voice. I roused myself, and returned to 
 recollection. '^'^Dead?" said I. — "Impossible!" — Let the 
 reader remember what I have already said of him ; " He was 
 the wisest and best man I knew. He had all those advantages 
 from nature, and from the external endowments of fortune, 
 which were calculated to maintain my reverence. We had 
 gradually become more qualified for each other's society 
 and confidence. Our characters had many points of re- 
 semblance : we were both serious, both contemplative, both 
 averse to the commerce of the world." — This dear friend^ 
 this sharer in all my interests, should I never meet again ? 
 The well-known mansion in Merionethshire, in which I 
 had passed all my boyish days, should I find it vacant of 
 its respected inhabitant ? That mild and affectionate 
 countenance, which for many years I had beheld every 
 day, almost at every hour, should I never again behold it ? 
 Sometimes he was my playfellow, and even shared in my 
 childish amusements. The little implements and mechanical 
 contrivances upon which my boyish thoughts were era- 
 ployed, and which my desires panted to realise, he would 
 often lend me his hand to assist me to form. His lessons 
 were so paternal, so indulgent, so considerate, so well 
 adapted to my opening powers! The confidences he oc- 
 casionally reposed in were so cordial ! His descriptions 
 and pictures of things to excite my curiosity and emulation 
 were so admirable ! I remembered how his manner suc- 
 cessively adapted itself to my growing years and demands^ 
 from prattling infancy to the full stature of man. All these 
 
FLEETWOOD. 'fj 
 
 things rose at first confusedly to my mind, and jostled each 
 other. Sometimes I endeavoured, with melancholy industry, 
 to arrange them ; at other times I threw the reins on the 
 neck of my imagination, and resigned myself to the guid- 
 ance of fortuitous associations. '' My lift," said I, '^ under 
 the roof of my father, was the reality of life. The period 
 I spent at Oxford and Paris was an interval of incoherence 
 and inebriety ; and this is all now ended 1 The reality of 
 existence is for ever gone ! " 
 
 Why is it that, from the hour I heard of my father's 
 decease to the present distant period, the remembrance of 
 that melancholy event has always become associated in my 
 mind with the rocks of Switzerland and the lake of Uri? 
 One of the most affecting of the catastrophes that beset 
 this mortal existence, with what is most solemn and sub- 
 lime in the aspect of the universe? Grief in all human 
 minds soon assumes the character of a luxury to be in- 
 dulged, as well as of a pain to be endured. The mourner 
 recollects with complacency the tenderness of his heart 
 and the purity of his feelings. The conscious recurrence 
 of the scene in which my grief began, gave in my case to 
 the grief itself a new merit at the tribunal of sentiment 
 and taste. Honoured, beloved, ever- to-be-regretted author 
 of my life ! Never were the ashes of an Eastern monarch 
 attended with so magnificent a funeral! The deep glen of 
 the dark and tranquil lake of Uri was the cathedral in 
 which the rites were solemnised! The chapel of the im- 
 mortal Tell tolled out its bell to proclaim the ceremony I 
 The patriots who, five centuries ago, established the in- 
 dependence of Switzerland, composed the procession that 
 attended thee to the grave! All these images are for ever 
 worked up together, and constitute in my memory one 
 melancholy and indelible scene! 
 
 It was many days after the communication of this in- 
 teUigence before my mind could recover any tolerable com- 
 i>osure. How various circumstances combined to make this 
 a terrible blow to me! I felt naked and unshelter-ed from 
 the blasts of the world. I was like a vine that had long 
 twined itself round the trunk of a sturdy oak, and from 
 which at length the support and alliance of the oak is takea 
 
78 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 away. The shoots of my emulation and enterprise lay 
 prostrate on the ground^ and the fibres of my heart were 
 torn and bleeding. If I had been present on this melan- 
 choly occasion, if I had heard from my father the accents 
 of a last farewell, if it had been permitted me to soften 
 the last pangs of expiring life, to say to myself, I now see 
 the friend whom I shall see no more, to kiss his clay-cold 
 forehead, to feel the affectionate pressure of his hand for 
 the last time, my remorse would have been less./ I re- 
 membered with insupportable anguish the manner in which 
 ray absence had been employed. Not in wholesome and 
 salutary studies, not in useful and improving meditation, 
 not in sound observations upon the varieties of man and the 
 distinguishing features of nations ; but in vice, in dissipa- 
 tion, in what I was sure my father would least of all have 
 approved, in a timid and ignominious sacrifice to the licen- 
 tious maxims of a nation among whom I was a sojourner.^ 
 The day after that of the lake of Uri, I did not come 
 out of my chamber. I had no courage to lift up my head, 
 and my passion once and again relieved itself by a flood 
 of tears. I sat for hours immoveable, engrossed in dim 
 and inexplicable reverie. This blunting of the senses was 
 grateful and Hfe-giving; the brief intervals in which I re- 
 turned to myself were filled with intolerable anguish. " How 
 happy was I yesterday I" exclaimed I to myself: ^' how de- 
 solate to-day !" Nevertheless, I was yesterday as fatherless 
 as I am to-day ; my dear parent for more than two months 
 has been no more : but I did not know my misfortune ! 
 With what pleasure did I receive the kindness, observe the 
 habits, and speculate upon the propensities, of my father's 
 friend ! With what interest did I set out yesterday morn- 
 ing upon the little excursion we had planned! How much 
 did I enjoy the scenery, as it was formed by the all-direct- 
 ing hand of nature, and as it was modified by the recol- 
 lection of the human acts which had there been performed ! 
 Cruel Ruffigny, how could you suffer me to live under this 
 delusion ! How could you look on, enjoying in mahcious 
 sport my blindness, and see me amuse myself with straws, 
 while the rock, upon which my habitation had rested, was 
 dissolved away beneath its foundations! — Yet, why, ab. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 79 
 
 why has this delusion ever been taken away ! Yesterday, 
 and the day preceding, and the days before, I did not 
 know my misfortune, and I was happy! Oh, that this 
 dream could have lasted for ever ! — I shall never again see 
 my father, — never, never! — yet why might I not have 
 been led on with the pleasing hope, and have said, " To- 
 morrow, and to-morrow, — a short time yet, — and we shall 
 meet ! " How happy, to have pursued an interminable route, 
 and still have believed that I was almost at my journey's 
 end ! to have trusted for ever, and confided, as long as I 
 continued to live ! 
 
 ]My kind host sent me my morning's repast, but it stood 
 by me untouched. Ever since I had received the news, I 
 had a sensation within me that rejected food, as perempto- 
 rily as the glands of a person labouring under a hydrophobia 
 throw back the water he might attempt to absorb. Dinner- 
 time came; and hunger at length subdued the obstinacy of 
 my grief. With bitter scorn of my own frailty, I swal- 
 lowed a few morsels of the food which was set before me. 
 In the evening, Ruffigny entered my chamber. He sat 
 down, and for some minutes continued silent. At length 
 he spoke. He did not ask me how I had rested, or how 1 
 felt myself. He began with words concerning my father; 
 he made a calculation of their respective ages. I could 
 not stand this : to myself I had repeated my father's name 
 a hundred times; but I could not bear to hear it formed 
 by the voice of another. Rufngny desisted. A few 
 minutes more, and he returned to the same topic with some 
 variation. I now endured it better. He pronounced an 
 eulogium of my father's virtues. This was not altogether 
 without a soothing sensation; though from time to time I 
 covered my face with my hands, struck my forehead with 
 my clenched fist, and broke into other mechanical gestures 
 of impatience. Ruffigny spoke of the years he had spent 
 in society with my father. He recollected a variety of 
 little incidents and adventures, which had served to display 
 his judgment and humanity, the resources of his mind, 
 and the generousness of his temper. If all this discourse 
 had been artificial, if it had resembled the funeral enco- 
 mium of a venal orator, it would only have irritated my 
 
80 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 impatience^ and increased my sorrows. But Ruffigny 
 loved my father only less than I loved him. The chief 
 differences were, that he had not seen him for years, and 
 this had served him for a weaning; and that the instinct 
 of blood, or that prejudice and sentiment which amply 
 supply the place of instinct, was in full ascendancy in me, 
 and was wanting in him. We mingled our tears. His 
 discourse was the overflowing of his heart, — a relief that 
 was necessary to the anguish he felt, and to the restraint 
 he had imposed upon himself in the two first days of my 
 visit. His sorrow would have produced more injurious 
 effects upon him, had it not been that he felt it as a duty 
 incumbent upon him to console mine. 
 
 Ruffigny went on. *' A most valuable life has been ter^ 
 minated, and you do well to weep. A great gap has been 
 made in society ; and, though you are the principal loser, 
 yet all who knew your father, particularly ail who were 
 within reach of his wisdom or beneficence, are losers too. 
 He has left a considerable estate, and there is need of some 
 one to look into its condition and prosperity. He has left 
 tenants, and they will miss his superintendence and in- 
 dulgence. Because they have lost him, I hope that will 
 not be a reason that they should lose you. Your father has 
 perished from the face of the earth, but it is not your de- 
 sign that his memory should perish with him ! Strangers, 
 no" doubt, have already given him a grave. But shall not 
 his son enquire what they have done, and supply what 
 they may have left deficient? Shall no stone mark the 
 place where his ashes rest? Shall no filial curiosity de- 
 mand, from those who were on the spot, the history of his 
 last moments, the paroxysms he suffered, the consolations 
 that relieved them, the last words which were breathed 
 from his dying lips? Shall no one endeavour to draw out 
 an image of his life, by enquiring into his injunctions, and 
 perpetuating the execution of those plans upon which, it 
 may be, his affections were bent ? These are the duties of 
 survivors; it is in this way that our offspring prove their 
 attachment to those to whom they were bound in a thou- 
 sand obligations." 
 . The discourse of Ruflfigny produced in me the revoluticai 
 
FLEETWOOD. 81 
 
 he meditated. " I will set out for England this moment ! " 
 cried I. 
 
 *' Would it/' answered Ruffigny, " be any increase to 
 your satisfaction that I should accompany you ? " 
 
 '^ Good Heaven! venerable old man/' exclaimed I, 
 '^ you cannot entertain the thought ? " 
 
 *' The wish to perform a pilgrimage to the tomb of my 
 ancient friend is uppermost in my heart. Will you permit 
 me to occupy a corner in the chaise that is to convey you 
 to England?" 
 
 r I threw myself into his arms ; I burst into tears ; I even 
 sobbed upon his bosom. — " My father is not wholly dead ! 
 What must be my obligation to the friend, who at such a 
 moment is willing to supply his place!" 
 
 When my first surprise at this generous proposal had 
 subsided, I argued with Ruffigny : I objected his age and 
 infirmities ; I intreated him to ^consider well the extent of 
 so exampled a sacrifice. My arguments were not urged 
 with all the force of which they were capable ; my heart 
 betrayed me; my very soul thrilled with pleasure, and 
 yearned over the old man, who said, ^' Shall I not accom- 
 pany you to England ? " 
 
 My host concealed from me one part of the motive that 
 induced him to this extraordinary resolution. My father, 
 as I have said, had furnished me with a most exemplary 
 letter of introduction to his Swiss friend, and had trusted 
 much to his affectionate and benevolent wisdom for the 
 perfecting my character. When I least suspected it, my 
 deceased parent had obtained accurate accounts of my pro- 
 ceedings at Oxford and at Paris, and had transmitted a 
 faithful abstract of these accounts to M. Ruffigny. He was 
 exceedingly anxious for the future purity of my character 
 and honour of my transactions, and was of opinion that a 
 violent interference, and a rude check put upon my excesses, 
 was by no means the most effectual method for my reform- 
 ation. He therefore scarcely seemed to be aware of my 
 errors, at the time' that he was most exactly informed of, 
 and most disapproved them. He believed that an unsuc- 
 cessful attempt to place them before me in their full light, 
 would be infinitely more injurious than if no attempt were 
 
 o 
 
S2 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 made. His great depjendence was upon my visit to Swit- 
 zerland. He had the most exalted notion of the talents, 
 the virtues, and the zeal of his friend in this corner of the 
 world. He persuaded himself that the operation of novelty 
 would he highly favourable to the accomplishment of his 
 wishes, and that the unexpected meeting with a man so 
 qualified, and the yet untried expedients which Ruffigny 
 would employ for my improvement, would produce the 
 happiest effects. 
 
 My father was now dead; and my host felt the task 
 which had devolved upon him as of double obligation. I 
 was a legacy which the friend most dear to him on earth had 
 bequeathed to him, and a trust with which his last breath he 
 had consigned to his care. As a legacy, the long attach- 
 ment he had felt to the name of Fleetwood made him 
 regard me as the most valuable estate that could have been 
 conveyed to him ; and as a trust, there was nothing for 
 which he more desired to live, than the faithful discharge 
 of what the person conferring that trust expected from 
 him. When the choice of various means were in my late 
 father's power, he had fixed upon the vigilance and dis- 
 cretion of Ruffigny, as that by which he desired to secure 
 my improvement and happiness. Had fate not bereaved 
 me thus untimely of a father's care, he would no doubt 
 have employed various engines and instruments for the 
 same end. While a parent's eye was upon me, however 
 much he trusted to the discretion of this friend, Ruffigny 
 would still have been a deputy, not a principal. Now the 
 task became entirely his ; and every engagement that he 
 felt to the virtues and the memory of my father, called 
 upon him, as the last tribute of friendship, to leave no 
 effort unexerted for my welfare. 
 
 W^:.wv. 
 
 CHAPTER X. ^ 
 
 During our journey, Ruffigny communicated to me at 
 large the particulars of his connection with my family, of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 85 
 
 which I had before heard in general terms, but knew 
 nothing distinctly. 
 
 " While I was yet a child/' said my fellow-traveller, " I 
 had the misfortune to lose both my parents. By this 
 event I fell under the care of an uncle, a brother of my 
 father. Hypocrisy and fraud are natives of every climate ; 
 and there are villains even in Switzerland. My uncle was 
 copious in his professions of affection and fidelity during 
 the last illness of my father, and protested a thousand 
 times that he would in all respects treat me as if I had 
 been sprung of his own loins. It was at about seven 
 years of age that I was delivered to his guardianship. 
 Unfortunately this uncle of mine had a numerous family, 
 and had been unprosperous in several of his attempts for 
 the improvement of his property. He was naturally of an 
 impatient, discontented, and reserved disposition, yet with 
 a considerable mixture of vanity. He had disbursed in 
 several instances more money than he could well command. 
 He had been restless, and eager to engage in various pro- 
 jects; and his projects had failed. My father, on the 
 contrary, who was of an open and free disposition, cool in 
 his temper, and sagacious in his determinations, had con- 
 stantly prospered. Beside which, my father was gi-eatly 
 and universally beloved; every one consulted, every one 
 distinguished him; he was courted by all his neighbours, 
 made an umpire in every controversy, and on all hands 
 admitted to be the most enlightened citizen in the canton 
 of which he was a native. His brother, sullen in his dis- 
 position, perplexed and obscure in his intellect, and rude 
 and unconciliating in his manners, was as generally avoided. 
 The common observation respecting him among the candid 
 and good-humoured Swiss was, ' Our dislike is more than 
 we can give a reason for ; we agree to look upon him as a 
 bad man ; but where is the guilt he has committed ? ' 
 
 " Such was the guardian, into whose family I was at this 
 time removed. He saw me in the circle of his own child- 
 ren with a scowling eye. ' Why,' said he to himself, *" should 
 this little vagabond be entitled to more property than all 
 my children put together ? He will come into possession 
 of superfluity, while his cousins, not less worthy than he, 
 G 2 
 
84 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 will see their lives withered, by the scantiness of means 
 which I have in vain exerted myself to increase.' 
 
 " The observations my uncle had occasion to make upon 
 me in the sequel, did not by any means tend to tranquillise 
 the storm already swelling in his bosom. His children 
 inherited the same slowness and perplexity of intellect 
 which characterised their father ; I was remarked to have 
 that facility of apprehension and quickness of parts which 
 distinguished my deceased parent. Whatever we learned 
 as pupils, we learned together ; but I excelled them all. 
 Whenever, which was not often, any visiter honoured our 
 roof, we put ourselves forward with the easy frankness of 
 Swiss manners, but I constantly bore away the prize. In 
 the little exercises of the adjoining hamlet, in the ques- 
 tions proposed, and the remarks delivered, by the aged, 
 peasantry of the vicinage, the preference still fell to me. 
 
 " This was too much for my uncle's unquiet temper to 
 endure. 
 
 '^ ^ Does the Shitse fate,' murmured he in his meditations, 
 ' still pursue me ? As I was constantly eclipsed by this 
 urchin's father, so shall my children be for ever surpassed 
 by the son ? Is there a fatality entailed upon our race ? 
 Surely from the womb there has been an antipathy between 
 us ; and, as long as the descendants of either exist, my pro- 
 geny will for ever be made slaves to that of my brother !' 
 
 ^'^ About twelve months after the death of my father, my 
 uncle had occasion to make a journey into France, and to 
 my great surprise proposed to take me with him. My 
 father had so disposed of his property, as to vest in his 
 brother the full possession of the income during my mi- 
 nority, under the notion of a compensation for his expense 
 and trouble in the care of my education. Other parents 
 in other countries would have been anxious that the greater 
 part of the income should accumulate, for the purpose of 
 supplying me with a more ample fortune when I came 
 of age. But this idea is foreign to the simplicity of the 
 country in which I was born. The property of which my 
 father died possessed was, without farther improvement, 
 fully equal to any estate in the canton ; and it would have 
 been more agreeable to his modes of thinking, that I should. 
 
 J 
 
FLEETWOOD. 85 
 
 when arrived at years of discretion, come into possession 
 of the very income that he had received, than of a larger. 
 
 '^ One evil, however, originated in this mode of settling 
 his estate. My guardian found, immediately after the 
 decease of my father, a considerable improvement to his 
 own resources. The expenses which were in any way 
 necessary to me at this tender age Avere extremely small, 
 and my uncle had of consequence the whole present emo- 
 lument of my property. This circumstance increased the 
 strong dislike he entertained for me. His avaricious dis- 
 position caused him to look forward with horror to the 
 time when it would be required of him to disburse large 
 sums in the progress of my education, and with still greater 
 horror to the period when it would be necessary to resign 
 the whole. 
 
 " In our journey to France we were also accompanied by 
 my eldest cousin, a youth of about seventeen years of age. 
 This lad had always treated me with singular unkindness ; 
 and at his age he was less under restraint from the laws 
 of decorum, and less capable of disguising his antipathies, 
 than his father was. He never looked upon me but with 
 a scowl of dislike ; he never spoke to me but in a tone of 
 severity and harshness. Some of his brothers were as 
 young as myself, and to these he was a sour and unripened 
 tyrant. Nevertheless, when it was my misfortune to have 
 any difference with them (and indeed we never agreed), 
 he was always, when appealed to, of the party against me, 
 and his decisions were announced by cuffs and blows 
 innumerable. 
 
 " When we arrived at Lyons, my uncle laid aside his 
 proper name, and caused himself to be called M. Mouchard. 
 Upon this occasion he called me in, and addressed me in a 
 style of unusual seriousness. He had taken me round the 
 town of Lyons, shown me the best buildings, and the 
 handsomest of the suburbs, conducted me to the public 
 gardens and the theatres, and endeavoured by every means 
 to make it appear in my eyes an agreeable residence. It 
 was indeed a perfect contrast to the wild and severe faces 
 exhibited by the canton of Uri ; and to my foolish and 
 inexperienced heart, the populous streets, the thronged ex- 
 G 3 
 
86 
 
 FLEETWOODf 
 
 change^ the crowded walks, and the illuminated theatres, 
 appeared like fairy land. 
 
 ^'^ ' When I return home/ said my uncle, ' it i&my inten- 
 tion to leave you at Lyons/ 
 
 '^ My heart leaped within me at the intelligence, and I 
 expressed my delight in unequivocal terms. Unfortunate 
 as I was, I had no prepossessions to attach me to my na- 
 tive land. While my parents lived, I indeed loved it. 
 All my hours had been winged with joy, and I experienced 
 those pleasing emotions which arise in the human heart, 
 when we perceive that we are looked on with partiality 
 and affection by all around us. But the last of my parents 
 had now been dead more than a year, and since that time 
 the scene had been completely reversed. It was indeed an 
 irksome and a melancholy year to me. Till then I had 
 been a spoiled child ; but in my new situation I was ne- 
 glected and disliked by all. Wherever I was, I was one 
 too much ; whatever I did, my uncle and my cousins were 
 sure to disapprove. I did not feel this so much at first ; 
 perhaps the unkindness I experienced was at first not so 
 great as it afterwards became. I made those exertions I 
 have already mentioned, and gained the applause of the 
 neighbourhood and the envy of my cousins. But mine, 
 perhaps, was not an age to struggle with discouragement ; 
 nor had the tenderness and indulgence of my first education 
 prepared me for it. The volatility of youthful spirits in 
 part supported me ; but I had fits of melancholy and de- 
 pression greater than might have been expected at so early 
 a period of life. Gradually I came to hate the scenery 
 about me, and to loath the routine of the passing day. 
 
 '^ ' Your father,' continued my uncle, ' left you to my 
 care, and many have been the anxious hours which this 
 guardianship has cost me. My brother was a very foolish 
 man, and has bred you in such a manner that you will be 
 a great trouble to any one who has to do with you. If 
 you had been brought up soberly and strictly, like your 
 cousins, you would have been a very different sort of a 
 boy ; but that, poor child, is not your fault. I have tried 
 •to bring you into order; but I see it is necessary you 
 should go out into the world. My brother, with all his 
 
 d 
 
FLEETWOOD. 8? 
 
 mistakes, was my brother still ; and you must needs think 
 that I will do every thing in my power for the service of 
 his child. 
 
 " * William, you must be aware that, if I had not a good 
 opinion of your capacity, I should not talk thus to a child 
 of your years. You certainly do not want for capacity, 
 though you are a very perverse and wicked boy. I must 
 own that I do not expect any good of you ; but, if you 
 come to harm, it shall not be through my fault. You will 
 live, I hope, to thank me from the bottom of your heart for 
 what I am now doing for you. 
 
 " ' There is one thing more I have to say to you, a part 
 of which you can understand, and a part you cannot. The 
 part you can understand, I will explain to you ; the part 
 you cannot, you must trust for to my superior judgment, 
 and to the paternal care I have ever shown for you. 
 
 " ' You have observed, that, since I came to this city, I 
 have called myself Mr. Mouchard. That is to be your 
 name ; you are to be called William Mouchard. You are 
 a native of Bellinzone ; that is the story I shall tell of you, 
 and that you are to uphold. There are many things that 
 a child of your years cannot comprehend; you do not 
 know what is good for you, and must trust to the better 
 discernment of your elders. This I have to tell you ; you 
 must never on any account mention my real name or your 
 own ; you must never mention the canton of Uri, or any 
 one of the mountains and valleys among which you have 
 been brought up. You must never write to me or to any 
 creature in Switzerland ; you must never make any en- 
 quiries, or give the least sign that you are alive. I shall 
 have my eyes upon you; I shall provide generously for 
 your support ; and, when I please, shall write to you, or 
 come myself to see how you are going on. Upon this 
 point, boy, I must deal plainly with you. All my atten- 
 tion is directed to your welfare, and I have only this in- 
 junction to give you. Upon your observance of it, depends 
 every thing that is dear to you. The moment you break 
 it in the minutest particle, the most terrible misfortunes 
 will instantly overwhelm you. I cannot tell you what 
 they are ; they are so great, that your understanding would 
 G 4 
 
88 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 be wholly unable to comprehend them. But be sure of 
 this, all I do is for your advantage. When you least ex- 
 pect it, you will see that it is so. Remember and tremble ! 
 I put the happiness of your whole life into your own dis- 
 
 '^ It is inconceivable with what strange sensations I lis- 
 tened to this harangue. The phrases my uncle had em- 
 ployed, of the superior judgment of our elders, the inca- 
 pacity and blindness of children, and every thing that older 
 people do being calculated for our good, was the cant 
 which I had incessantly heard during the last year ; and, 
 though these phrases certainly were never employed upon 
 a more unworthy occasion, they excited in me a myste- 
 rious sensation of reverence and awe, which I felt incapable 
 to shake off. A doubtful opinion, — Was this genuine kind- 
 ness ? Was it a masked hostility ? — hung about me, and 
 perplexed my resolutions. I was not, however, long in 
 doubt. I was delighted with the city of Lyons ; I could 
 not endure the thought of returning to my uncle and his 
 family. I looked upon my native home, now that my 
 parents were removed from the stage of life, with horror ; 
 but I was in the morning of my days, and was inclined to 
 regard every thing new, with hope, with exultation, and a 
 bounding heart. 
 
 '^ One thing appeared to me singular. My uncle told me 
 that Lyons was to be the place of my abode ; but he men- 
 tioned nothing to me of the particular situation in which I 
 was to be placed. Was I to be put en pension at a board- 
 ing school, or how } If I were, methought I should like 
 to have seen beforehand the house in which I was to re- 
 side, the master who was to instruct me, the youths who 
 were to be my companions. But I was totally destitute of 
 every sort of knowledge of the world, and was in the hands 
 of my envious and bad-hearted uncle to dispose of as he 
 pleased. This might, for aught I knew, be the estabhshed 
 mode of proceeding in all similar cases. It was perhaps 
 one of those points, which were reserved for the wisdom of 
 our elders to decide upon, and which the capacity of a 
 child like me was held unable to comprehend. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 89 
 
 " We had been now ten days at Lyons, and the next 
 morning was fixed for my uncle and my cousin to set out 
 upon their return. In the evening a M. Vaublanc visited 
 us in our hotel. 
 
 *^ ^ This is the gentleman,' said my uncle, ' who is so 
 obliging as to provide an apartment for you in his house.* 
 
 " I had never seen him before. He was a little man, with 
 black, straight hair, his countenance clear and sensible, but 
 with muscles that had not often been moulded into the ex- 
 pression of pity or tenderness. His dress was exceedingly 
 plain; not without some appearances of negligence and dirt. 
 My uncle and he talked a great deal about the silk manu- 
 facturers of Lyons ; my guardian seeming to be desirous of 
 information under this head, and the stranger well qualified 
 to afford it. Neither of them took much notice of me, 
 and at an early hour I was directed to go to bed. 
 
 '^ ' My little man,' said the Lyonnese, taking me by the 
 hand, but with no expression of kindness, ' you will be 
 very comfortable at my house ; I havd two little boys just 
 about your age, and you will be nice playmates together. 
 Good night ! I shall come for you in the morning.' 
 
 " I conceived no flattering augury in behalf of my new- 
 landlord. What had pleased me in Lyons was the squares, 
 the public gardens, and the theatres. These were exactly 
 calculated to soothe my youthful curiosity. The plainnesss 
 of the appearance of M. Vaublanc, and the dryness of his 
 manners, were in perfect contrast with these. There was 
 something in them which tended to chill the imagination, 
 and inspire a dreary presentiment of the future. 
 
 " Yet I was willing to launch on this untried sea. I said, 
 ' No, I will not go back with my uncle!' — The morning of 
 our separation was heavy, and presently began to pour 
 down torrents of rain. My uncle, at parting, put a louis 
 d'or into my hand ; I thought I never felt any thing so 
 cold as his hand, when I touched it for the last time. My 
 cousin presented me with a three livres piece. 
 
 " You wonder, perhaps, at my recollecting so minutely 
 a scene which passed at so early an age ; but you will pre- 
 sently perceive what reasons there were that compelled me 
 
90 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 to recollect it. Accustoming myself to contain my recol- 
 lections and ruminations in my own bosom^ they took so 
 much the deeper root. 
 
 " M. Vaublanc was punctual in meeting and receiving me, 
 at the very instant that my uncle was stepping into the 
 carriage which was to convey him to the foot of the moun- 
 tains. I never saw or heard of my guardian from this 
 moment. 
 
 " The wheels of the coach slowly rolled away, and my 
 new landlord led me down another street. Our walk was 
 not short, and we arrived at the meanest part of the city. 
 M. Vaublanc led me up a narrow and silent alley. When 
 we had passed through two thirds of it^ ^ This/ said he, 
 ' is my house.' 
 
 ^' We entered, and were received by his wife, a woman 
 plain and neat in her dress, and of a notable appearance. 
 Presently came in the two boys he mentioned to me. They 
 were clothed in remarkably coarse attire ; and the rudeness 
 of their countenances, and ungainliness of their carriage, 
 well corresponded to their dress. All together, — the alley, 
 the darkness of the apartments, the appearance of the fa- 
 mily, — exceedingly displeased me. And this, thought I, is 
 my residence in the magnificent city of Lyons ! My 
 youthful senses had been idly dazzled with the gaudiness 
 of artificial life, as I had here first seen it. But I could 
 not help saying to myself, ' How preferable are the 
 mountains, and cascades, and cheerful cottages of the 
 Swiss, to this miserable alley ! ' 
 
 '' In one respect, however, my situation was better than 
 I began to expect it would be. After two or three days I 
 was conducted to one of the most respectable seminaries of 
 education in the city of Lyons, such as young persons of 
 the rank of the little Vaublancs never entered, where, 
 under masters of great knowledge and humanity, I began 
 to be initiated in every species of learning suitable to my 
 age. AYhat was my uncle's motive for taking this step, 
 so little in consistency with those which afterward fol- 
 lowed, I could never exactly conjecture. Perhaps he was 
 desirous of letting me down by degrees, and had not the 
 courage to drive me to despair at once, and risk the conse- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 9^ 
 
 quences which that state of mind might produce. Per- 
 haps, wicked as he was, he could not himself form his 
 resolutions immediately, and only by degrees worked up 
 his mind to the plan which was intended to terminate in 
 my ruin. 
 
 '' Be this as it will, the studies and accomplishments, in 
 the pursuit of which I was now engaged, afforded me 
 much gratification. Though I had at first been dazzled 
 with the splendours of Lyons, I knew that pleasure was 
 not the business of life ; and, regarding the acquisition of 
 liberal knowledge as a badge of honour, I was willing to 
 cultivate those improvements which might fit me to dis- 
 charge with respectability the offices of a man. I recol- 
 lected that in my native province I had always appeared 
 to advantage in the field of emulation, and this naturally 
 inspired me with an appetite for similar experiments. My 
 parts were quick, my apprehension was clear, and I almost 
 constantly obtained the praise and encouragement of the 
 regents. The only mortification I suffered, during this 
 period, was in going home every evening to M. Vaublanc's. 
 There was such a contrast between his manners and those 
 of my instructors ! His children were so sordid and gro- 
 veling in their habits, compared with the generous minds 
 and spirited tempers of my schoolfellows, with whom I 
 associated in the course of the day ! 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 *' I HAD for about three months frequented the lessons of 
 my instructors, when one morning the elder of Vaublanc's 
 sons came to my bed-side at about six o'clock, and bade 
 me rise immediately, for his father wanted to speak to me. 
 I obeyed. 
 
 " ' My little lad,' said Vaublanc, ' you are not to go to 
 school to-day.' 
 
^2 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 '^ ' No, sir ? What, is it red-letter day ?* 
 
 " ' Your uncle has written to me to put you into a dif- 
 ferent berth.' 
 
 '^ * Ah, I am very sorry ! Ours is a sweet school, and I 
 like the masters and every body that belongs to it." 
 
 " ' Wilham Mouchard,' said my host, ' I know very 
 little of you or your uncle either; but that is nothing to 
 me. While he requires of me nothing that it is contrary 
 to my notions, or out of my way to do, I intend to be his 
 fair and punctual correspondent. All that he said to me, 
 while he was at Lyons, was like an honest man. He said 
 he had a numerous family of his own, and that he could 
 not do much for you, an orphan cast upon his charity.' 
 
 " I stared. I remembered the severe injunctions of my 
 guardian, and was silent. 
 
 '' ' It appears that he has had repeated misfortunes in 
 the world, and that he can just make shift to bring up 
 his children in a humble way. It cannot, therefore, be 
 expected that he should do much for you. I can make his 
 case my own, and I am sure I should look to my own flesh 
 and blood. He has resolved to keep you from starving, and 
 that is very generous of him. There is only one thing I 
 cannot understand : why he sent you to this school at all. 
 I think he was out in his judgment there.' 
 
 '^ This was the first time in my life that the ideas of sub- 
 sistence and property had been plainly stated to me. My 
 notions, like a child's, were very confused on the subject. 
 But, I suppose, proceeding by a sort of implicit conclusion 
 from the visible circumstances of my father, I had always 
 considered myself as entitled to a full participation of those 
 benefits and blessings which a child can enjoy. What Vau- 
 blanc said, however, convinced me that my uncle was 
 deceiving him. I understood little of the descent of pro- 
 perty, and whether, upon my father's death, it ought to 
 devolve to his son or his brother; but I understood still 
 less of the equity of just preserving from death by hunger 
 the only son of a man who had possessed every luxury and 
 indulgence that were in use in his country. In a word, the 
 views now stated to me enlightened my understanding at 
 once; and, when I found myself thus thrown upon the 
 
FLEETWOOD, QS 
 
 world, I apprehended, as it were by necessity, the laws and 
 constitutions of human life. 
 
 " ' What is to be done with me, sir ? ' said I. 
 
 " ' You must do as I do,* replied Vaublanc. ' People 
 who have nobody else to maintain them, maintain them- 
 selves. You have seen shoemakers, and smiths, and joiners 
 at their work ? ' 
 
 " * They get money by their work, and with that money 
 they buy meat and drink. Does my uncle wish me to learn 
 to be a smith or a joiner ?' 
 
 " ' No, no. Any body that taught you to be these trades 
 would require to be paid for the trouble of teaching you, 
 and you would get nothing by it these seven years. We 
 have a trade in Lyons that we teach to younkers for 
 nothing.' 
 
 " ' And shall I get money by my work immediately ? * 
 
 *' ' No, not for a month.' 
 
 "'What shall I get then?' 
 
 <f ' Twelve sous a week.' * 
 
 " 'Will that be enough to save every body else the 
 trouble of paying any thing for my food, and my lodging, 
 and my clothes ? ' 
 
 '' ' That it will not. A sprig, like you, cannot do that ; 
 he must do what he can.' 
 
 '' ' And my uncle will pay the rest ? ' 
 
 " ' He cannot help himself. You are willing, then, to do 
 what I have been telling you ? ' 
 
 *' ' I must not say much about my willingness, M. Vau- 
 blanc. I never did any work in my life.' 
 
 *' ' The more is the pity ! In Lyons we find work for 
 children from four years old ; sometimes sooner.' 
 
 *' 'And in — in — the country I come from, the children 
 never do any work, till they are almost as taU as their 
 fathers. They do little offices, indeed, to be useful some- 
 times ; but nothing like what you call working for their 
 living. I do not know which way is right ; but I know 
 which is agreeable. I should not so much matter a little 
 hardship ; but you say, I must go no more to school. I 
 
 • Five-pence English. 
 
94i FLEETWOOD. 
 
 cannot think why, M. Vaublanc, you asked any thing about 
 my willingness ! ' And saying this^ a flood of tears burst 
 from my eyes. 
 
 " ^ When a schoolboy/ continued I, ^ is to be punished, 
 the master never asks him whether he chooses it. M. Vau- 
 blanc, I cannot help myself. I am in a strange country ; 
 and have neither father, nor mother, nor any body to care 
 for me. Take me, and dispose of me as you please, and as 
 you tell me my uncle directs. I dare say you are a just 
 man, and will do me no harm. Wherever you put me, I 
 will endeavour to be a good boy, and that nobody shall be 
 angry with me. I will be attentive, and learn as well as I 
 can, and work as hard as I can. But, pray, pray, M. 
 Vaublanc, do not ask me another time, whether I am 
 willing ? ' 
 
 ' " ' That will do, boy,' said he, nodding his head. ^ You 
 will get better satisfied with your situation, as you grow 
 used to it.' 
 
 ^^ Saying this, he put on his hat, and bid me follow him. 
 As we passed along, — 
 
 '' ' You know, I believe, what I am ? ' 
 
 '' ' I have heard : a manufacturer of silk.' 
 
 *^ ' One part of this business is to prepare the silk, as 
 comes from the worm, for the sempstress and the weaver.' 
 This is done by means of mills. I have two or three large 
 ones, and employ a great number of work-people in them. 
 You had rather work for me, than for a master you did not 
 know ? ' 
 
 ^' '^ That I had. The thing is frightful to me, because it 
 is a thing I never thought of. But I should fear it more, 
 if it placed me altogether among strangers.' 
 
 '' ' You cannot think,' pursued M. Vaublanc, ^ what an 
 advantage these mills are to the city of Lyons. In other 
 places, children are a burthen to their poor parents ; they 
 have to support them, till they are twelve or fourteen years 
 of age, before they can do the least thing for their own 
 maintenance : here the case is entirely otherwise. In other 
 places, they run ragged and wild about the streets : no 
 such thing is to be seen at Lyons. In short, our town is a 
 perfect paradise. We are able to take them at four years of 
 
''WOOD. 97 
 
 age, and in some cast ^ey were all sallow ; th^j'- 
 
 as they have well learne emaciated. Several o^^^^^ 
 
 tlie relief of their parents, edging from their size, to >9 from 
 the breast. They learn no -saw such children. f"iet, and 
 orderly, and attentive, and ina^^j^s to reach '^^^ ^ prospect 
 for their future lives ! God himst>Vieir h- approve and bless 
 a race who are thus early prepared to be of use to them- 
 selves and others. Among us, it is scarcely possible there 
 should be such a thing as poverty. We have no such thing 
 as idleness, or lewdness, or riot, or drunkenness, or de- 
 bauchery of any sort. Let the day of judgment come when 
 it will, it will never surprise us in a situation in which we 
 should be ashamed to be found.' 
 
 " I never heard M. Vaublanc so eloquent. Eloquence was 
 not his characteristic ; but he was now on his favourite 
 topic, — a topic intimately connected with his fame, his 
 country, and the patriotic services which he rendered her. 
 He did not completely recollect, while he talked on so in- 
 teresting a subject, that he was addressing himself to a child 
 scarcely more than eight years of age. Some things that he 
 said were not exactly in accord with the vivacity of my 
 temper, and the present state of my feelings. But, on the 
 whole, I was fixed and penetrated by the warm colouring 
 he bestowed on his picture. I checked the rebelliousness of 
 my heart, and said, ' Probably it is better for me that I 
 should be admitted into so pure and exemplary a society.' 
 I longed to set my foot upon the threshold of the terrestrial 
 paradise he described. 
 
 " ]\Iy impatience was speedily gratified. We entered a 
 very spacious building, which was divided, however^ no 
 otherwise than into four rooms, floor above floor. The 
 lower or under-ground apartment was occupied by the 
 horse that gave motion to the mill, and he was relieved 
 every hour. Two horses were the stock to each mill. 
 Above stairs, the walls were lined on three sides with the 
 reels, or, as the English manufacturers call them, swifts, 
 which receive the silk as it is devolved from certain bob- 
 bins. Of these there were about eleven hundred in the first 
 floor, as many in the second, and as many in the third ; in 
 all, between three and four thousand. It was curious to 
 
FLEETWOOD. / 
 
 ,«x.„tf* ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^> ^y means of v^neels and other con- 
 trivc^ij^^^ 1" t^ie machine^ were kept, in perpetual motion by 
 a singi^ quadruped. In each apar*^ment I saw several men, 
 more woi!?"^ ^"d a greater nuj^nDer of children, busily em- 
 ployed. M. v^ublanc was ./'i.o obliging as to take me over 
 the whole, before^e ass^pvned me my task. 
 
 " You will not suppose there was any thing very cheerful 
 or exhilarating in the paradise we had entered. The idea of 
 a mill is the antipathy of this. One perpetual, dull, flag- 
 ging sound pervaded the whole. The walls were bare ; the 
 inhabitants were poor. The children in general earned little 
 more than twelve sous in a week ; most of the women, and 
 even several of the men, but about one French crown.* 
 We must correct our ideas, and imagine a very sober pa- 
 radise, before we can think of applying the name to this 
 mansion. 
 
 ^^ I was most attentive to the employment of the children, 
 who were a pretty equal number of both sexes. There 
 were about twenty on each floor, sixty in all. Their chief 
 business was to attend to the swifts ; the usual number 
 being fifty-six which was assigned to the care of each 
 child. The threads, while the operation of winding was 
 going on, were of course liable to break ; and, the moment 
 a thread was broken, the benefit of the swift to which it 
 belonged was at a stand. The affair of the child was, by 
 turning round the swift, to find the end, and then to join 
 it to the corresponding end attached to the bobbin. The 
 child was to superintend the progress of these fifty-six 
 threads, to move backward and forward in his little tether 
 of about ten feet, and, the moment any accident happened, 
 to repair it. I need not tell you that I saw no great ex- 
 pressions of cheerfulness in either the elder or the younger 
 inhabitants of these walls : their occupations were too 
 anxious and monotonous — the poor should not be too 
 much elevated, and incited to forget themselves. There 
 was a kind of stupid and hopeless vacancy in every face : 
 this proceeded from the same causes. 
 
 " Not one of the persons before me exhibited any signs 
 
 ♦ Two and sixpence English. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 97 
 
 of vigour and robust health. They were all sallow ; their 
 muscles flaccid, and their form emaciated. Several of the 
 children appeared to me, judging from their size, to be under 
 four years of age — I never saw such children. Some were 
 not tall enough with their little arms to reach the swift; these 
 had stools, which they carried in their hands, and mounted 
 as occasion offered. A few, I observed, had a sort of iron 
 buskins on which they were elevated; and, as the iron 
 was worked thin, they were not extremely unwieldy. 
 Children, before they had learned that firm step with the 
 sole of the natural foot, without which it is impossible 
 ever to be a man, were thus disciplined to totter upon 
 stilts. But this was a new invention, and not yet fully 
 established. 
 
 *' This, or nearly all this, I observed upon my first survey 
 of M. Vaublanc's manufactory. In addition to this, I 
 afterward found, what you will easily conceive, that it was 
 not without much severity that the children were trained 
 to the regularity 1 saw. Figure to yourself a child of 
 three or four years of age. The mind of a child is essen- 
 tially independent ; he does not, till he has been formed to 
 it by hard experience, frame^to himself the ideas of autho- 
 rity and subjection. When he is rated by his nurse, he 
 expresses his mutinous spirit by piercing cries ; when he 
 is first struck by her in anger, he is ready to fall into 
 convulsions of rage: it almost never happens otherwise. 
 It is a long while (unless he is unmercifully treated indeed) 
 before a rebuke or a blow produces in him immediate 
 symptoms of submission. Whether with the philosopher 
 we choose to regard this as an evidence of our high destin- 
 ation, or with the theologian cite it as an indication of our 
 universal depravity, and a brand we bear of Adam's trans- 
 gression, the fact is indisputable. Almost all that any 
 parent requires of a child of three or four years of age 
 consists in negatives : stand still : do not go there : do not 
 touch that. He scarcely expects or desires to obtain from 
 him any mechanical attention. Contrast this with the 
 situation of the children I saw : brought to the mill at six 
 in the morning ; detained till six at night ; and, with the 
 exception of half an hour for breakfast, and an hour at 
 
 H 
 
98 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 dinner^ kept incessantly watchful over the safety and regu- 
 larity of fifty-six threads continually turning. By my 
 soul, I am ashamed to tell you by what expedients they 
 are brought to this unintermitted vigilance, this dead life, 
 this inactive and torpid industry ! 
 
 " Consider the subject in another light. Liberty is the 
 school of understanding. This is not enough adverted to. 
 Every boy learns more in his hours of play, than in his 
 hours of labour. In school he lays in the materials of 
 thinking ; but in his sports he actually thinks : he whets 
 his faculties, and he opens his eyes. The child, from the 
 moment of his birth, is an experimental philosopher : he 
 essays his organs and his limbs, and learns the use of his 
 muscles. Every one who will attentively observe him, 
 will find that this is his perpetual employment. But the 
 whole process depends upon liberty. Put him into a mill, 
 and his understanding will improve no more than that of 
 the horse which turns it. I know that it is said that the 
 lower orders of the people have nothing to do with the 
 cultivation of the understanding ; though for my part I 
 cannot see how they would be the worse for that growth 
 of practical intellect, which should enable them to plan 
 and provide, each one for himself, the increase of his con- 
 veniences and competence. But be it so ! I know that 
 the earth is the great Bridev»^ell of the universe, where 
 spirits descended from heaven are committed to drudgery 
 and hard labour. Yet I should be glad that our children, 
 up to a certain age, were exempt ; sufficient is the hardship 
 and subjection of their whole future life ; methinks, even 
 Egyptian^ taskmasters would consent that they should grow 
 up in peace, till they had acquired the strength necessary 
 for substantial service. 
 
 '^ Liberty is the parent of strength. Nature teaches the 
 child, by the play of the muscles, and pushing out his 
 limbs in every direction, to give them scope to develope 
 themselves. Hence it is that he is so fond of sports and 
 tricks in the open air, and that these sports and tricks are 
 so beneficial to him. He runs, he vaults, he climbs, he 
 practises exactness of eye and sureness of aim. His limbs 
 grow straight and taper, and his joints well knit and flexi- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 99 
 
 ble. The mind of a child is no less vagrant than his 
 
 steps; it pursues the gossamer, and flies from object to 
 
 object, lawless and unconlined: and it is equally necessary 
 
 to the developement of his frame, that his thoughts and 
 
 his body should be free from fetters. But then he cannot 
 
 earn twelve sous a week. These children were uncoutli 
 
 and ill-grown in every limb, and were stilS* and decrepit in 
 
 their carriage, so as to seem like old men. At four years 
 
 of age they could earn salt to their bread ; but at forty, if 
 
 it were possible that they should live so long, they could 
 
 not earn bread to their salt. They were made sacrifices, 
 
 while yet tender ; and, like the kid, spoken of by IMoses, 
 
 were seethed and prepared for the destroyer in their 
 
 , mother's milk. This is the case in no state of society, but 
 
 M in manufacturing towns. The children of gipsies and 
 
 w\ savages have ruddy cheeks and a sturdy form, can run lie 
 
 I ]i__Japwings, and climb trees with the squirrel. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 '" You will readily imagine what a thunder-stroke it was to 
 me, to be entered as one of the members in this vast 
 machine. Up to the period of eight years of age I had 
 been accustomed to walk upon the level plain of human 
 society ; I had submitted to my parents and instructors ; 
 but I had no idea that there was any class or cast of my 
 fellow- creatures superior to that in which I was destined 
 to move. This persuasion inspires into the heart, parti- 
 cularly the heart of the young, such gaiety of temper, and 
 graceful confidence in action ! Now I was cast down at 
 once, to be the associate of the lowest class of mechanics, 
 paupers, brutified in intellect, and squalid in attire. 
 
 *' I had, however, the courage to make up my resolution 
 
 at once to the calamities of my station. I saw what it was 
 
 to which it would be necessary for me to submit ; and I 
 
 felt too proud, to allow myself to be driven by blows and 
 
 H 2 
 
100 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 hard usage to that from which I could not escape. I dis- 
 charged with diligence the task assigned me, and wasted 
 in torpid and melancholy labour the hours of the day. 
 
 " What may appear strange, this terrible reverse of fate 
 by no means operated to stupify my intellect. I was like 
 those victims of Circe that we read of in Homer, who, 
 though they had lost the external symbols of a superior 
 nature, retained the recollection of what they had been, 
 and disgust at what they were. You will perhaps scarcely 
 suppose that my age was ripe enough for this. If I had 
 been removed to a pleasing scene, if I had continued a 
 pupil in the schools of hberal education, the impressions of 
 my early years would probably have faded by degrees from 
 my mind. But in the dreary situation in which I was 
 now placed, they were my favourite contemplation; I 
 thought of them for ever. It was by remembering them 
 only, that I felt the difference between myself and the 
 squalid beings around me. When Adam and Eve were 
 driven out of Paradise, and turned loose upon the dreary 
 and inhospitable plains, how fondly did they recollect the 
 bowers and lawns they had quitted, the luxuriant flowers 
 and blushing fruits, and the light and soothing employ- 
 ments which had there been their pursuit ! 
 
 ' " It was naturally to have been expected, that I should 
 look back to my native country, and, finding myself thus 
 cruelly and iniquitously treated, should seek among the 
 scenes and the acquaintances of my infant years the redress 
 of my grievances. If I had returned to the vale of Urse- 
 ren, and the foot of the St. Gothard; nay, if I had whis- 
 pered the particulars of my story in the ears of one man 
 of eminence and respect within the circuit of Switzerland ; 
 it cannot be but that I should have found a friend, a pro- 
 tector, and a champion. But I dared not do this. The 
 mysterious threatenings of my uncle still sounded in my 
 ears. He had given me a new naihe; he had left me 
 among new faces; he had entered me upon a new species 
 of existence. He had expressly prohibited all reference 
 and connection between my former and my present state. 
 What did this mean? I had too little knowledge of the 
 modes of human life to be able to appreciate his menaces. 
 
FLFETWOO'O, rCl 
 
 This was the second revolution in my fortune. By the 
 death of my father I found myself placed in absolute de- 
 pendence upon an uncle, who had before had no power 
 over me. A child has no standard within himself for these 
 things; he is sensible of his own weakness; he watches 
 the carriage and demeanour of the persons about him^ and 
 from thence judges what he is, and what he can be. 
 
 '^ The injustice practised toward me by my uncle, rendered 
 me from the period of my removal to Lyons a creature of 
 soliloquy and reverie. Children, at the early age at which 
 I then was, are usually all frankness and communication; 
 they tell to their companions and playmates every thing 
 they know, and every thing they conjecture. I had a se- 
 cret that must never be uttered. Once or twice in the few 
 '^Kmths in which I frequented the school I have mentioned 
 (for afterward my temptations grew less), I was on the 
 point of disclosing my history to a youthful favourite. 
 But, when I had half resolved to unload my bosom, such 
 apprehension suddenly seized me, that my tongue faltered, 
 and my heart beat with violence, as if it would choke me. 
 At one time, walking with my youngster friend on a nar- 
 row bank, just as I had prepared myself to speak, my 
 foot slipped, and I sprained my ankle, so as to occasion a 
 considerable swelling. At another, by a strange coin- 
 cidence, a terrible clap of thunder burst upon me, suc- 
 ceeded by uncommon lightning and rain, which of necessity 
 forced the thoughts both of my companion and myself into 
 a new channel. These accidents took a superstitious hold 
 of my fancy, and made me more reluctant than before to 
 break the injunctions which had been laid upon me. 
 
 '^ Had I dared to attempt to deliver myself from the cruel 
 bondage into which I had been kidnapped, it would have 
 been a very arduous task for a child of little more than 
 eight years of age. I might have chosen for my confidant 
 and preserver some creature of my uncle, and have thus 
 rendered my situation more desperate. No indifferent 
 man would have undertaken my cause and my rescue; 
 he would have looked on my distress with a sense of mo- 
 mentary compassion, and then, like the Levite in the 
 parable, have passed by on the other side. It could be 
 H 3 
 
102 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 only a man of warm humanity^ animated with a strong 
 love of justice and hatred of oppression, that, for the sake 
 of me, a friendless outcast and an exile, would have strung 
 himself to the encounter of prosperous and successful vice. 
 It would naturally have required on my part, that I should 
 have digested a resolute plan, and have persisted in the 
 execution in spite of every obstacle that might arise. 
 
 " But I had by no means the courage adec^uate to such an 
 exploit. I felt like one of those unhappy beings we readv 
 of in books of supernatural adventures, who are placed in 
 the hands of some powerful genius invisible to mortal 
 sight, who dare not move lest they should meet witk 
 his hand, nor speak lest they should offend an unl 
 known and never-absent auditor. It was thus I feared 
 the ascendancy of my uncle. If men of powerful and 
 vigorous minds, a Rousseau and others, have surrendered 
 themselves to the chimeras of a disturbed imagination, 
 and have believed that they were every where at the disposal 
 of some formidable and secret confederacy, what wonder 
 that I, a boy of eight years old, should be subject to a 
 similar alarm? Childhood is the age of superstition. The 
 more I indulged this fear, the more my terror grew ; and, 
 in a short time, I believe I could sooner have died, than 
 have brought myself to divulge a secret, the publication of 
 which so obviously led to my benefit. Thus, by the ma- 
 chinations of my cruel guardian, I was involved in a state 
 of slavery, body and soul, such as has seldom been the lot 
 of a human creature. 
 
 '^ I remained for a considerable time an inmate of my 
 prison-house. M. Vaublanc found that a person, so mean 
 in his destination as I was, was not entitled to the luxuries 
 and refinements of his mansion and board, and placed me 
 as a lodger with one of the labourers in his mill. At the 
 same time he took from me the clothes which I had 
 hitherto worn, and assigned me a gai-b similar to that of 
 my fellow-slaves. Thus I became in all external respects 
 like the companions with whom I was now associated; and, 
 whatever I might feel within, could in no point be distin- 
 guished by the common observer from the miserable beings 
 around me. I became familiar with objects of distress. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 103 
 
 The sort of training and drilling, necessary at first to pre- 
 serve an infant during twelve hours together from the 
 guilt of a distracted attention, was continually before my 
 sight. The supervisor of the machine contracted, from 
 necessity, a part of the rugged and ferocious character 
 which belongs to a slave-driver in the West Indies. There 
 was one phenomenon among us that might have surprised 
 and misled an ordinary spectator. Our house of confine- 
 ment often echoed with songs, and frequently an hundred 
 voices from different parts of the machine joined in the 
 same tune. Was not this a clear indication of gaiety and 
 tranquillity of heart? I remembered one day, when I was 
 in England, I had occasion to spend two hours in your 
 prison of Newgate. The window of the apartment where 
 I sat overlooked the press-yard, where a number of con- 
 victs were assembled, waiting the occasion of being trans- 
 ported to the other side of the globe. They were employed 
 in the manner I have mentioned, singing out in chorus 
 some of the popular songs of their country. But, alas! 
 there, as in the silk-mills of Lyons, it was a melancholy 
 ditty. The tone was heavy, monotonous, and flat. There 
 was tlie key and the note of gaiety, but the heart was want- 
 ing. It was like the spectacle of a fresh and well-grown 
 human body placed erect against a wall, satisfactory in other 
 respects, — but it was dead. They sung, bold and audacious 
 in the face of despair, just -as the fear-struck peasant sings 
 along the churchyard at midnight, expecting every moment 
 to see a ghost start up at his feet. 
 
 " On each returning Sunday the chains which confined 
 my footsteps were suspended. This day I regularly de- 
 voted to solitude and reverie. It is not to be described 
 what pleasure I derived from this resource. It was a new 
 being that descended upon me. In the room of dead, 
 naked, and discoloured walls, I beheld the • canopy of 
 heaven. In the room of the ever- turning swifts, which in 
 multitudes surrounded me on every side, I beheld the trees 
 and the fields, the fruits of rural industry, and the grand 
 features of all-powerful nature. ' Oh, Switzerland!' I would 
 have said, if I had dared trust my lips even in soliloquy 
 with the enchanting sound, — ' nurse of my cheerful infancy, 
 H 4 
 
104! FLEETWOOD. 
 
 in these beauteous retreats, methinks I see thee still!' — I 
 scented the fragrant air, and I exchanged the flagging 
 songs of my brother-slaves, for the joyous warbling of the 
 vocal woods. The poorest slave that lives, when withdrawn 
 into a solitude like this, is upon a level with the greatest 
 lord. If he does not tread upon floors of porphyry,' and is 
 not canopied with roofs of granite, he, however, possesses 
 himself in the midst of a palace more glorious than human 
 fingers ever formed. 
 
 '' You may think, perhaps, that my Sunday enjoyments, 
 such as I describe, were of too grave and contemplative a 
 character, to belong to such early years. I assure you, 
 however, I do not describe them up to the height of what 
 I then felt, and now remember them. In answer to your 
 objection, I can only remark, that adversity, or rather the 
 contrast between present adversity and past good fortune, 
 tends beyond all other things to sharpen the apprehension. 
 These scenes would have produced no such effect upon the 
 other boys of the m.ill, because they had known no such 
 contrast. They would not have afforded me the delight I 
 describe, had I not been so much restrained from them, and 
 restrained in so hateful a confinement. My heart felt no 
 less unchained and free at these periods, than is the river, 
 which had been locked up in frost, and at length by the 
 influence of genial zephyrs is restored to her beloved mur- 
 murings and meanders. 
 
 " I firmly believe that, if there had been no Sundays and 
 holidays, I should have remained many years the prisoner 
 of M. Vaublanc. My days of labour were days of oblivion. 
 It is impossible to describe to you the state of mind of a 
 human creature, whose incessant office it is from morning 
 to night to watch the evolution of fifty-six threads. The 
 sensorium in man has in it something of the nature of a 
 mill, but it is moved by very different laws from those of 
 a mill contrived for the manufacture. of silk threads. The 
 wheels move in swifter rotation than those I was appointed 
 to watch; and to keep this rotation constantly up to a certain 
 pace is one of the great desiderata of human happiness. 
 When the succession of ideas flags, or is violently restrained 
 in its circumvolutions, this produces by degrees weariness;, 
 
FLEETWOOD. "^ 105 
 
 ennui, imbecility, and idiotism. Conceive how this pro- 
 gress is impeded by the task of continually watching fifty- 
 six threads ! The quantity of thought required in this 
 office is nothing, and yet it shuts out, and embroils, and 
 snaps in pieces, all other thoughts. 
 
 " Another law which governs the sensorium in man it 
 the law of association. In contemplation and reverie, one 
 thought introduces another perpetually ; and it is by simi- 
 larity, or the hooking of one upon the other, that the pro- 
 cess of thinking is carried on. In books and in living 
 discourse the case is the same; there is a constant con- 
 nection and transition, leading on the chain of the argu- 
 ment. Try the experiment of reading for half an hour a 
 parcel of words thrown together at random, which reflect 
 no light on each other, and produce no combined meaning; 
 and you will have some, though an inadequate, image of 
 the sort of industry to which I was condemned. Numb- 
 ness and vacancy of mind are the fruits of such an employ- 
 ment. It ultimately transforms the being who is subjected 
 to it, into quite a different class or species of animal. 
 
 " My Sundays, as 1 have said, restored me to the sort 
 of creature I had been. At first, the feeling of this was 
 enough for me ; I was too happy to be capable of much 
 reflection. I leaped, and skipped, and ran, and played a 
 thousand ridiculous antics, that I might convince myself 
 that I was not wholly an automaton. In a few weeks, 
 however, when the novelty of these periodical seasons of 
 rest was somewhat worn off*, I began to feel my pleasure 
 tarnished by the recollection that, when Sunday was gone, 
 Monday, and after that five other mortal days, would in- 
 evitably follow. The day of rest was so short ! 
 
 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " By degrees I became more serious and meditating. I 
 said to myself, ' What am I } and wherefore am I here ? * 
 
1 06" FLEETWOOD. 
 
 The years of nonage in the human creature are many, 
 partly because he is surrounded with parents, and kindred, 
 and acquaintances, whose habit it is to take care of him, 
 and to direct his steps. Perhaps the majority of human 
 beings never think of standing by themselves, and choosing 
 their own employments, till the sentence has been regularly 
 promulgated to them, — It is time for you to take care of 
 yourself. For my part, I found myself cast upon a new 
 world, without relations, acquaintances, or friends, and this 
 urged me on prematurely to acts of discretion. I could 
 scarcely persuade myself that the life to which I was de- 
 voted, deserved the name of taking care of me, and there- 
 fore began to cast about in my own thoughts what I 
 should do. 
 
 " I need not tell you that I detested the condition in 
 which I found myself placed, and longed to escape from it, 
 and seek my fortune. But whither direct my steps ? I 
 dared not think of Switzerland. There resided my uncle, 
 that malignant demon, the recollection of whom haunted 
 my thoughts, waking and sleeping. In all the rest of the 
 world I knew not even the private and proper name of a 
 human creature. I had listened, however, to the old songs 
 of Switzerland, and had some acquaintance with the ro- 
 mances of the middle ages. Mine were the years of ro- 
 mance. Without knowledge enough of what was actually 
 passing in the scenes of the universe, yet with a restless 
 imagination, and a powerful motive urging me to consult 
 it, I patched up as I could, from narratives of humble life, 
 and tales of chivalry, what it was that I should have to 
 encounter. I knew I must have bread, and that bread did 
 not grow in every hedge. I concluded that I must find or 
 make a friend, by whose assistance to support life, and, if 
 possible, attain to something beyond bare subsistence. 
 
 ^' At first I was somewhat terrified with the project I had 
 conceived. Again and again I sat down in despair, and 
 said, ' I am too young ; I must wait yet some years before 
 1 can launch upon so great an undertaking.' But my tasks 
 would not wait : they beset me from morning till night, 
 and, when I had once conceived the idea of flight, became 
 continually more insupportable. From the extreme of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 107 
 
 despair, I passed to the extreme of sanguine expectation. I 
 brooded over my plans, till all difficulties seemed to vanish 
 before me; the scenes I anticipated at length became as 
 familiar to me, as any thing which had absolutely passed in 
 any former period of my life. 
 
 " You will smile when I tell you that my favourite scheme 
 was to go to Versailles, and throw myself at the feet of the 
 King of France. It was the project of a child, and will show 
 you how ripe and unripe at once was the state of my intel- 
 lect. The Gallic sovereign is, of all kings, the favourite of 
 the people of Switzerland. I had listened to the songs and 
 popular tales concerning Francis I. and Henry IV. ; and a 
 king of France appeared, in my eyes, the most gallant and 
 generous of mortals. I did not know exactly how much I 
 proposed to tell the King ; I scrupled the secret my uncle 
 had so severely enjoined me to preserve ; yet, if he should 
 insist upon knowing the whole, surely he was able to pro- 
 tect me against the resentment of a burgher of Uri ! How- 
 ever this point might be disposed of, I felt in myself a 
 destination superior to that of a handicraft in the silk-mills 
 of Lyons ; I believed that I was capable of extraordinary 
 things. What boy from the swifts, but myself, would have 
 had the boldness to think of applying for redress to the 
 King of France ? I was persuaded that I could interest his 
 Majesty in my case, — that I could induce him to judge me 
 deserving of his protection. I would say to him, ^ Sire, 
 dispose of me as you please ; make me one of your pages ; 
 you shall find me the most zealous and faithful of your 
 servants ! ' 
 
 "Louis XIV. was at this time in the height of his glory. 
 Among the little topics, by my excellence in which I had 
 distinguished myself in the halcyon days of my childhood, 
 was history. It will easily be supposed that my knowledge 
 amounted to scarcely more than a few names and dates ; 
 but I had heard certain familiar anecdotes of Henry IV. 
 pleasing to my boyish imagination, and had long since made 
 him my hero. I was told that Louis XIV. was the worthy 
 grandson of this free-hearted prince. In one of my Sun- 
 days' excursions I fell in with an old French soldier. The 
 military private is usually of a loquacious and coramuni- 
 
108 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 cative temper. I was eager to be acquainted with the cha- 
 racter of his master ; he was no less prompt to tell me all 
 he knew. He spoke of the beauty of his figure, and the 
 affability of his demeanour. He related the victories he had 
 won J and described the palaces and public edifices which he 
 had founded or adorned. He swore that he was the most 
 generous, condescending, and tender-hearted of mankind ; 
 and he happened to have two or three instances, which he 
 affirmed to have occurred under his own eye, not unhap- 
 pily illustrative of this character. Every thing, as I 
 thought, seemed to concur for the success of my design. 
 The magnificence of Louis XIV. fascinated my imagin- 
 ation ; the examples of his gentleness and humanity were 
 so many omens assuring my good fortune. I bought a 
 portrait of this monarch ; it was almost the only extrava- 
 gance of which I had been guilty since my last degradation. 
 I carried it in my pocket. On Sundays, when I had wan- 
 dered into the most obscure retreat I could find, I held it 
 in my hand ; I set it before me, I talked to it, and endea- 
 voured to win the good-will of the King. Sometimes I 
 worked myself into such a degree of fervour and enthu- 
 siasm, that I could scarcely believe but that the portrait 
 smiled upon me, and, with a look of peculiar benignity^ 
 seemed to say, ' Come to Versailles, and I will make your 
 fortune !' 
 
 " While I attended the lessons of the regents of the free- 
 school of Lyons, I received the weekly stipend usually 
 allotted to boys of my age. I had before, as I have men- 
 tioned, received a louis d'or and a three livres piece from 
 my uncle and cousin at parting. Like a boy, 1 sometimes 
 spent my money upon toys and confitures; but for the 
 most part I reserved it, and suffered it to grow into a little 
 stock. Young as I was, from the moment of parting with 
 my uncle I could not conceal from myself that I was in an 
 extraordinary situation. The secrecy that had been enjoined 
 me weighed upon my mind. Compelled to deny my family, 
 my friends, and my country, and suddenly dropped in a 
 city where I was unacquainted with a single creature, I in- 
 cessantly said, ' What is next to befal me ? It is necessary 
 for me to provide myself, and not to be wholly unprepared 
 
FLEETWOOD. 109 
 
 for events which it is not in my power to foresee/ Youth 
 is, in some respects, the age of suspicion ; at least it was so 
 with me. Whenever a child of the age at which I was ar- 
 rived, feels that he is thwarted and rigorously used, he half 
 suspects some motive, obscure and unavowed, in the indi- 
 vidual from whom his mortification is derived. 
 
 " The period I ultimately fixed for my flight was the 
 week of Easter. At this time we were allowed at the mill 
 two holidays, in addition to that of Sunday. I was perhaps 
 partly influenced in choosing this season, by the idea that 
 when I was not wanted at work, my presence or absence 
 would be little taken notice of. The people with whom I 
 lived were too wretched, and too anxious about their own 
 children, to feel much kindness for me ; and I should not 
 be reported to the overseer till Wednesday. But the prin- 
 cipal consideration that guided me was the cheerfulness of 
 the season ; liberty was, to the whole lower class of the 
 people, the order of the day. I had three days of freedom : 
 why should I not make this the starting post of my eternal 
 liberty ? 
 
 " I will not trouble you with a detail of my smaller ad- 
 ventures on the road. Full of the anticipation of my grand 
 undertaking, I had repeatedly turned my steps on my days 
 of relaxation toward Paris, and made many enquiries 
 respecting the way. I had learned the names of the prin- 
 cipal towns. I set out with a beating heart ; and, having 
 walked gravely till I was out of the city, I then began to 
 run. I did not, however, run far ; my thoughts were too full 
 of agitation to admit any regularity of motion. Sometimes 
 I slackened my pace, because I feared I should be taken for 
 a fugitive; and sometimes because I said to myself, ' I must 
 manage my strength, if I expect it to carry me far.' 
 
 " Two hundred and fifty miles was a great undertaking 
 for a boy under nine years of age. One advantage I pos- 
 sessed : I had money, more than I could prudently spend 
 on the passage. My mind was too intently fixed upon the 
 end of my journey, to be capable of much calculation 
 respecting the obstacles I had to encounter. One resolu- 
 tion, however, I fixed, firm as the basis of my native 
 mountains, — ' No consideration on earth, no difficulties. 
 
110 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 no discouragements, shall ever carry me back ! * A me- 
 chanic becomes a sort of machine ; his limbs and arti- 
 culations are converted, as it were, into wood and wires. 
 Tamed, lowered, torpified into this character, he may be 
 said, perhaps, to be content. It is well ! It seems neces- 
 sary that there should be such a class of animated ma- 
 chines in the world. It is probable, if I had continued 
 much longer in the silk-mills of Lyons, I should have 
 become such a being myself. But, with the conceptions 
 and recollections which continually beset my imagination, 
 it appeared the most horrible of all destinies. I, that 
 dared, at nine years of age, launch" myself in the world, 
 — that dared, to a certain degree, to revolve the various 
 chances of human affairs, and defy the worst, — that pur- 
 posed to challenge the attention, the equity, and the com- 
 passion of the King of France, — should I be thus neutralised ! 
 Why did I feel thus ? Because my early education had not 
 prepared me for my present lot. I understood why my 
 companions of my own age were put into the silk-mill : 
 their parents were engaged in employments equally dead- 
 ening ; their parents were unable by their labour to obtain 
 bread for themselves and their offspring : but I did not 
 understand why I was there. I felt such a loathing at this 
 moment to the occupation which had engrossed me for 
 months, that, if I could have been assured that such should 
 be my occupation for as many months to come, I believe, 
 child as I was, I should sooner have taken a knife and 
 thrust it into my heart, than submit to it. 
 
 ^' In thinking over my situation as I passed along, I felt 
 that the thing most immediately pressing upon me was to 
 avoid exciting the curiosity and suspicion of the persons 
 whose assistance might be necessary to me on the road. 
 The production of a louis d'or, for example, might be fatal 
 to a boy of my childish appearance and coarseness of attire. 
 In my journey from Urseren to Lyons, I had learned 
 something of the nature of inns ; and I retained all these 
 things as perfectly as if they had occurred only yesterday. 
 I resolved to go only to the meanest inns, and ask for the 
 plainest accommodations. On the second day I joined a 
 wagoner, who was conducting his commodities to Dijon ; 
 
FLEETWOOD. Ill 
 
 and this considerably facilitated the first part of my 
 journey. I began with asking him of my road to Ma^on, 
 the* first considerable place through which I was to pass, 
 lie was going through Macon. 
 
 " ' How much further ? ' 
 
 " ' To Dijon.' 
 
 '*^ The meanness of my attire encouraged him to question 
 me in his turn. 
 
 " ' What had I to do at Ma9on ? ' 
 
 " ' I was going to see the world/ I replied. 
 
 '' * I perceive, my spark,' cried the wagoner, ' what 
 you are. You belong to the silk-mills ; you are a runaway, 
 and I have a great mind to take you up, and send you back 
 to your master.* 
 
 " I was surprised at his so instantly fixing on my true 
 character ; though, on reflection, it was by no means ex- 
 traordinary that a person just come from Lyons should 
 have made the conjecture; the costume was sufficiently 
 peculiar. 
 
 " ' I will never stay at the silk-mill,' said I ; ^ nobody 
 has a right to confine me there.' 
 
 " ^ Nobody has a right, youngster ? Not your parents ? 
 Your wildness, I dare say, will break their hearts.' 
 
 " ' I have no parents.' — I confessed to him that I was 
 determined to go to Paris. 
 
 '^ ' And what will you do at Paris ? You will be starved 
 to death.' 
 
 '^ * Better be starved, than undergo such misery as I have 
 suffered. But I will not starve ! ' 
 
 " The wagoner began to reflect, that, if I had no parents 
 or kindred, nobody would be greatly injured by my elope- 
 ment. He contented himself, therefore, with seriously 
 expostulating with me on the folly of my project, and 
 advising me to return. Finding his remonstrances of no 
 avail, he agreed to take me under his protection as far as 
 he was going on my way. Thus I conquered more than 
 one third of the road* 
 
 I 
 
112 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 *■' Dijon was so capital a city, that I thought I might venture 
 here to change my piece of gold, the parting present of 
 my treacherous uncle. But I was mistaken. I hated the 
 clothes I wore, since they had led the wagoner to discover 
 the situation to which I belonged. I went into a clothier's 
 •hop with a determination to change them. Unfortunately 
 I plunged headlong into the house of a man of rugged 
 temper and a hard-favoured countenance. The moment 
 I looked at him I trembled. But it was too late to draw 
 back. 
 
 " ' What is your pleasure, my lad ? ' said he. 
 " ^ I want some clothes.' 
 
 " ' Where do you live } Who is to pay for them } Where 
 shall I send them ? ' 
 
 ^^ M am a stranger in Dijon.' 
 
 '^ ' Why does not your father or somebody come with 
 you ? How can such a child as you choose a suit of 
 clothes ? ' 
 
 ^^ *^ I am all alone.' 
 
 " 'Alone ! And how are you to pay for your clothes?' 
 " ' Perhaps you would allow me something for the clothes 
 I have got on. And I have a louis d'or,' — showing it. 
 
 " ' A louis d'or ! ' said he, coming from the other side 
 of the counter. ' Tell me, sirrah, where you got that 
 louis d'or ? ' 
 
 '^ ' My uncle gave it me }' 
 
 " ' Who is your uncle ? I shall send for him immedi- 
 ately, and find out the truth of this.' 
 
 " ^ I tell you, sir, he does not live here ; I am a stranger 
 in Dijon ; never saw the city till last night. But you need 
 not frighten me ; if you do not choose to sell me any 
 clothes, I will go away without them. I assure you, I am 
 an honest boy, and my money is my own.' 
 
 *' ' We shall see that presently. You do not like to be 
 frightened! But I shall frighten you, and most con- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 113 
 
 foundedly too, before I have done with you. You must 
 go with me to the mayor.' 
 
 " ' I will go with you, where you please,' said I, be- 
 lieving it was impossible that any body should be more 
 frightful to me than the honest slopman before me. ' But 
 I had rather go back to my inn.' 
 
 " The trader conducted me to the magistrate. I found 
 myself right in my conjecture, that I should be better off 
 in his hands than in those of the Argus who had first 
 seized me. The mayor was a sober, creditable man, 
 middle-aged, and inchned to corpulence, who made a 
 point of faithfully discharging his duty, but who took no 
 particular pleasure in frightening little boys. He was too 
 much accustomed to office to feel any high gratification 
 in its swagger and insolence. His passions were dead ; 
 he could scarcely be said to love or hate, to be gentle or 
 furious ; he was the law, and nothing but the law. 
 
 "^ As I and my conductor passed along the streets to this 
 man's house, I fixed the plan of action that I would ob- 
 serve. I determined to take refuge in silence and reserve. 
 I said to myself, ' They cannot find out that 1 have stolen 
 my money, because I have not stolen it; and therefore, 
 after having examined and tried me as much as they 
 please, they must dismiss me. I will not betray my family 
 story, and I will not furnish them with a clue by which 
 they may send me back to Lyons.' 
 
 '' The slopman led me into the justice-room, and told his 
 tale. The magistrate listened, and made his observations. 
 My adversary endeavoured in vain to inspire his own pas- 
 sions into the mayor; the clothier was earnest, abusive, 
 and eloquent ; the mayor was considerate and inquisitive. 
 He asked me who I was, and I refused to tell. 
 
 " ' Did I know what it was to be brought before a 
 magistrate ? ' 
 
 " ' Not very well,' I repHed. 
 
 " ' It would be worse for me, if I did not give a proper 
 account of myself.' 
 
 " I answered that I could not satisfy his curiosity. I 
 had been ill-used by cruel relations, but did not dare to 
 complain. I had had a father, who was kind and rich ; 
 I 
 
114 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 but my father was dead^ and I was driven out from my 
 country and friends. 
 
 '' The magistrate employed every artifice to extort my 
 story from me. He said, my secret should be safe with 
 him, and my cruel relations should never know that I had 
 disclosed it. He said, he would take me under his pro- 
 tection, and oblige them by the interposition of the law to 
 do me justice. He then changed his tone, put on an 
 angry brow, and told me, that he perceived that all I had 
 related was a fiction, but that he would send me to prison, 
 and have me punished, till I told the truth. He put a 
 variety of subtle and artfully contrived questions to wrest 
 my secret from me. I stuck to the same point, made two 
 or three answers which I hoped would move him to favour 
 me, and repeated them again and again in return to every 
 interrogatory he uttered. He sent for the people of the 
 inn, where I confessed to have slept the night before: 
 luckily it was not the same inn the wagoner used, and 
 they could discover nothing. 
 
 " The magistrate was as good as his word, and sent me 
 to prison. At entering, it struck me, that the scene was 
 not new to me, but that it was very like a silk-mill ; the 
 same meanness in the building, the same squalidness in 
 the inhabitants, the same dejection in every countenance. 
 Presently, however, I perceived a difference ; the people 
 there were employed, and here were idle ; there were vacant 
 and incurious, and here eagerly crowded about a new 
 tenant of their wretched mansion. 
 
 '' Thus I had twice in one day been introduced into 
 situations calculated to impress a youthful mind with 
 inexpressible horror. To be taken before a magistrate, to 
 be thrust into a gaol, would to most children of my tender 
 years have appeared no less terrible than death. But I 
 had entered upon an extraordinary undertaking, and had 
 worked myself up to an uncommon pitch of resolution. I 
 knew that for such an urchin as I was, to undertake his 
 own establishment in life was no holiday project. I knew 
 that no small degree of courage and perseverance would 
 be necessary to introduce me to the presence and speech 
 of Louis XIV. It is inconceivable, at least judging from 
 
FLEETWOOD. 115 
 
 my own instance, of what an extent of exaltation and 
 enthusiasm nine years of age are capable. Enthusiasm is 
 often indebted for much of its fervour to a complete igno- 
 rance, and want of practice, in the ways of the world ; 
 and, as far as that constitutes a qualification, this immature 
 period of life is of course admirably endowed. In this 
 state of mind, I felt a contempt of difficulties, under which 
 at any other time 1 should have sunk. I seemed to myself 
 as if I were made of iron, and nothing hostile appeared to 
 make any impression upon me. It w^as my business to 
 proceed upon my high destination and my choice of life, 
 and to suffer none of these things to interrupt me. 
 
 " The prisoners crowded about me, and were eager to learn 
 ror what crime such a child as I was, was brought into 
 their society. It was presently rumoured, that it was upon 
 suspicion of having stolen some money; that I had obsti- 
 nately refused to tell the mayor how I came by it, and 
 that I was committed for re-examination. The moment 
 the word money was mentioned, two or three came about 
 me at once, and told me that it was the universal practice 
 for every new-comer to pay a certain sum by way of en- 
 trance-money, at the same time vociferously demanding from 
 me the established fee. It fortunately happened that the 
 magistrate had taken from me my whole stock, to be re- 
 turned the next day, if no discoveries were made ; other- 
 wise it is highly probable these obliging comrades of mine 
 would have stripped me of all that I had. After the first 
 bustle of my introduction was over, a very grave-looking 
 man of the set drew me into a corner, and told me I was 
 the most promising boy of my age he ever saw. He said, 
 he had conceived a particidar liking to me ; and greatly 
 commended my firmness in refusing to tell the magistrate 
 how I came by my money. That showed I was true game ! 
 He observed that he would, if I pleased, put me into a way 
 by which I might make a man of myself for ever ; and 
 offered to become my instructor. He swore, that it would 
 be a thousand pities that such talents as I had showed 
 should be lost for want of encouragement. 
 
 ^' I made little answer to these compliments, though the 
 person from whom they flowed certainly succeeded in ex^ 
 I 2 
 
116 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 citing my curiosity, and I was desirous of hearing to what 
 so extraordinary a preface would lead. Having intimated 
 this_, he entered into a very animated and earnest dissertation 
 upon the different modes of committing theft without dan- 
 ger of detection. Observing, however, that I did not exactly 
 enter into his feelings, he stopped shorty and complained of 
 my timidity. He soothed me in the gentlest, and^ as he 
 believed, the most flattering manner, and employed a hun- 
 dred arts of rhetoric, worthy of a better cause. I told him, 
 that he had mistaken my character, that I had stolen no 
 money, and that what I had was honestly my own. On 
 this he assumed a smile, expressive of grave and gentle de- 
 rision, and replied, that that was all very well, but that it 
 was not worth while to persist in declarations of innocence 
 among friends. My mind was full of other projects, and 
 therefore the representations of my sage Mentor had no 
 effect upon me. This, however, was the sort of exhort- 
 ation to which I was exposed ; and, if I had been the kind 
 of person the magistrate conceived me to be, this night's 
 lodging would, too probably, have completed my character 
 for ever. 
 
 ^^ The next day I was brought again before the mayor, and 
 persisted in my resolution to discover nothing. The interval 
 which had passed during the silence of the night, enabled 
 me to collect more firmness, and to express myself with 
 greater coherence. I said, ' Sir, I am a friendless little 
 boy, and you may do with me whatever you please. But I 
 am not so much afraid of any body, as of my hard-hearted 
 uncle. I am afraid, if I tell you who I am, you would 
 send 'me back to him, or write a letter to him about me. 
 You tell me you would not ; but rich men think it a good 
 action to deceive little boys : I am sure I have reason to 
 know that. Oh, sir, do you think it was a small thing that 
 determined me to run away, and go among strangers } I 
 would sooner die than return !' 
 
 ^' You will easily imagine that what I said, did not in the 
 smallest degree move the man to whom it was addressed, 
 to compassion ; the magistrate, who could consign such a 
 child as I was, for one night, to the horrors and dangers of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 117 
 
 a prison, could be little accessible to the relentings of nature. 
 This reflection is obvious enough to me now ; but it was* 
 not so then. The actions of their elders are always mys- 
 teries to children ; they do not see the springs of the ma- 
 chine ; they waiit with a sort of superstitious anticipation, 
 to observe how their seniors will act upon every new event, 
 and are surprised at nothing. 
 
 " But, though the magistrate was guilty of no meltings of 
 compassion toward me, he was not inflexible. He saw not 
 what he could do further with me ; he had exhausted upon 
 me every expedient he could devise to render me frank and 
 communicative. At length he calculated within himself, as 
 I suppose, the fruitlessness of detaining me : perhaps he 
 was inclined to think me innocent, and to believe the story 
 I told. If he detained me longer, it might be a trouble to 
 him, and ultimately produce a burden to the corporation in 
 which he presided. He dismissed me with a moderate por- 
 tion of good advice; recommended to me not to become a 
 vagrant, in consequence of which I should finally be made 
 a scoundrel and a thief, if I were not so already; and, 
 above all, warned me of the stubbornness of my temper. 
 He had never seen so stiff-necked a little villain; and he 
 augured an untimely and a shameful death from such be- 
 ginnings. I listened to his advice with passive attention ; 
 but, what I prized much beyond his advice, before he sent 
 me from his presence he returned to me my money. 
 
 " I left Dijon with a beating heart. I was full of exult- 
 ation at the thought of my liberty, once more restored to 
 me. I foresaw every thing that was fortunate from the 
 issue of my first adventures. The discovery of my class of 
 life by the wagoner had been productive of no mischievous 
 effects to me. The adventure of the shopman and the 
 louis d'or had seemed to threaten the greatest dangers ; but 
 by my prudence and perseverance (for I was willing to take 
 the whole praise to myself) I had been extricated from 
 them all. All difficulties would vanish before my courage 
 and abilities. I should infallibly become a page to the King 
 of France. From this goal my impetuous imagination 
 took its flight. The marshal's truncheon and the ducal 
 I 3 
 
118 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 coronet danced before my charmed sight : I sighed for 
 princesses^ and the blood-royal was mixed in my offspring. 
 Alnaschar in the Arabian Nights was but a driveller to me. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 *' Nothing further of material importance occurred, till I 
 arrived at Fontainebleau. It is difficult to express the 
 rapture I felt at entering this celebrated scene. Fontaine- 
 bleau had been to the kings of France, what Versailles has 
 become since. It had been particularly honoured by the 
 residence of Henry IV.; and Louis XIII., his successor, 
 was born here. But, independently of this, here was a 
 royal palace belonging to my intended patron, — the first I 
 had ever seen. Having refreshed myself, and rested a 
 short time, I found my way into the gardens, and viewed 
 "with enthusiasm the immenseness of the edifice. The 
 fountains from which the place derives its name, the large 
 and deep forests which on every side met my eye in the 
 distance, aU struck me with an idea of unbounded mag- 
 nificence. 
 
 ^^ '^ I wish the king was here ! ' exclaimed I. Presently, 
 however, I thought again, '' Do I wish it ? I must think 
 a great deal of what I have to do, and what I have to say, 
 before I meet him. No, I am not sorry I have a little 
 further to go ! ' The idea of a king at a distance, is very 
 different from what we feel when we come near him. The 
 imagination never fences him round with so many obstacles, 
 and enchanted circles, within which unhallowed feet may 
 scarcely tread, as the reality presents. The very dinner 
 which is set before him (to instance in a trite circumstance), 
 no untutored fancy ever paints. We shape to ourselves 
 what we have not seen, after the fashion of what we are 
 accustomed to ; and experience does not fail to surprise us 
 with the immeasurable distance which refinement and art 
 have placed between man and man. It would be an 
 amusing picture, to set me on my wooden stool with my 
 little dinner in an earthen pan, as I ate it at the silk-millj 
 
FLEETWOOD. 119 
 
 beside even a petit souper of the King of France. I own 
 that I felt certain qualms about my heart when I thought 
 of my adventure, and looked round upon the splendours of 
 Fontainebleau. 
 
 " As I was wandering about, full of these reflections, a 
 grave-looking man came up and accosted me. He said, 
 he saw I was a stranger, and offered to point out to me 
 the curiosities of the place. It is singular, but I was 
 struck with a certain resemblance between him and the 
 man who had undertaken to be my tutor in the press-yard 
 of Dijon. I was, however, now in a very different temper 
 from that which inspired me then. Then I was under the 
 pressure of a very dangerous embarrassment, and had de- 
 termined to find my safety in the most inflexible reserve. 
 Now my heart was open, and my spirits light; beside 
 which, I was anxious for communication, and had a hun- 
 dred enquiries which I wished to have resolved. 
 
 " I therefore willingly entered into conversation with this 
 stranger. I asked him whether the King of France ever 
 now came to Fontainebleau ; I enquired of him concerning 
 the structure and site of the palace of Versailles, how the 
 King was attended, and where and in what manner he 
 spent the different hours of the day. My communicative 
 friend seemed to be well informed in all these particulars, 
 and his intelligence was copious and interesting. In the 
 mean time he observed me closely, and drew more sound 
 and perfect conclusions respecting me and my fortunes 
 than I was aware. At length he told me that he was 
 going to set out the next morning for Versailles, and offered 
 to become my guide. I willingly accepted his kind pro- 
 posal. 
 
 I 4 
 
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 121 
 
 VOLUME THE SECOND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " We went together to Paris, and arrived about the close of 
 the evening. Our conversation had been eager and ani- 
 mated, and my companion proposed our taking up our 
 lodging at the same inn. I was a total stranger in this 
 great metropoUs, and willingly accepted his suggestion. 
 The streets by which we entered the capital were by no 
 means so sumptuous as the idea of so celebrated a city had 
 given me to expect ; but I presently observed that my 
 conductor led me away from the principal streets, and that 
 his route lay through many a dark passage and many an 
 alley. The house of reception to which we repaired 
 corresponded to the road by which we reached it. My 
 fellow-traveller, however, appeared to be well known to its 
 inhabitants, and I observed various significant winks and 
 gestures that passed between him and the hostess. After 
 a brief supper, we were shown to a room where there were 
 two beds. 
 
 " The equivocal character of the inn in which I took up 
 my night's repose did not disturb me. I sought for no 
 present splendours, and my plan through my journey had 
 been simplicity and economy. When the candle was put 
 out, then the train of my splendours began. My heart 
 bounded with joy, when I thought that I was thus far 
 toward the end of my labours. I folded my arms about 
 me with wanton triumph, as if I would bestow upon myself 
 an embrace of congratulation. The turrets and the spires 
 of Paris, I regarded as the emblems of my independence. 
 
122 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 In the midst of this mighty scene, the conviction came 
 home to me with pleasure, that I helonged to no one ; 
 ' For, alas ! ' said I to myself, ' since the death of my father, 
 I have not seen one human creature to whom I could wish 
 to belong ! I am set loose from all compulsory connections ; 
 but I will not long be alone ! ' 
 
 " This short meditation was to me the precursor of sleep ; 
 and my slumbers were sweet and balmy. I was fatigued 
 with my long peregrinations, and the sun was high before 
 I roused myself from repose. When I awoke, the first 
 thing I observed was that my companion was gone. * I 
 wonder,' said I to myself, ' whether I shall see him again.' 
 I thought that it would full as well content me that I 
 should not. I determined to arrange the particulars of 
 my plan in my own way ; and the having such a companion 
 as this would but have interrupted and embarrassed me. 
 
 " I began to dress myself. Through my whole journey, 
 I had had the precaution to take my breeches, containing 
 my little stock of cash, into my bed, and to place them 
 near, or rather under, some part of my body. At first, 
 I did not remark any difference from the morning before, 
 and the usual appearance of things. Presently, however, 
 a suspicion flashed across my mind ; I passed my hand 
 along the pocket ; it went over smooth and without in- 
 terruption. I felt within — there was nothing ! I went 
 to the other pocket; all was vacancy. I threw back the 
 clothes of the bed, with a faint hope that my money was 
 to be found there. I turned over and shook every thing : 
 I felt in all my pockets a thousand times : I examined in 
 the same manner the bed-clothes of my fellow-traveller : I 
 searched impossible places. 
 
 '^ Pity me, my dear Fleetwood, pity me ! Distant as is 
 the period I am describing from the present, I can never 
 think of this horrible event, without a twinge at the heart 
 which I cannot describe. I was then a little, uninstructed 
 boy, and now I am an old man, and my hairs are white ; 
 yet I cannot mention this adventure without feeling my 
 throat dry, and my voice suffocated. Common robberies 
 are committed upon a man, who goes home, opens his 
 
FLEETWOOD. 123 
 
 escritoire, and puts into his purse the exact sum of which 
 he had heen deprived. I had lost every thing I possessed 
 in the world. I had just travelled two hundred and fifty- 
 miles, and was distant four hundred from the seat of my 
 birth and my relations. All my visions, my golden dreams, 
 my castles in the air, were demolished in a moment. What 
 was I to do ? My visions were not luxuries, were not 
 changes of a worse state for a better ; they stood between 
 me and annihilation. I saw nothing that remained for me, 
 but to be starved. For God's sake, turn to your iEsop ; 
 open at the fable of the Dairy-maid and her IVIilking-pail ; 
 blot it out, and put my adventure in its stead ! 
 
 " But this was not the principal aggravation of my case. 
 Many men at many times have, no doubt, lost all that 
 they had. But perhaps such an event never happened 
 before to a child, entering for the first time a great me- 
 tropolis, without a single friend, and four hundred miles 
 removed from his home. Men have arms to work, and a 
 head to contrive; they have experience, enabling them to 
 foresee and calculate the results of a thousand schemes; 
 and a tongue, to make good their story, to propose things 
 which it shall be for the interest of the hearer to accept, 
 to parley, and to demand, through that spedes of equality 
 which no refinement can destroy, a fair hearing. I had 
 nothing ! 
 
 " I sat down, and found relief in a gush of tears. I 
 wept, till I could weep no more, and felt myself stupified. 
 By and by, a thought occurred, which roused me. If a 
 man were in my place, what would he do ? He would 
 not sit still, and do nothing. I am alone in Paris ; I must 
 be my own man ! 
 
 " I went down stairs, and saw my hostess. ' Where is 
 the person,* said I, ' who came with me last night ? ' 
 
 ^' ' Gone — he has been gone these two hours.' 
 
 " ^ Where is he gone ? ' 
 
 '^ ^ I do not know.' 
 
 " ^ When will he come back } ' 
 
 " ^ I cannot tell. I never saw him in my life before.* 
 
 " To ask these questions I was obliged to follow the land- 
 lady from side to side in the great kitchen of the inn. She 
 
124 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 seemed to be exceedingly busy, and never stood still for a 
 moment. 
 
 '' ' Madam,' said I, ' I have been robbed ; this man has 
 taken away all my money.' 
 
 " These words stopped her perpetual motion, and fixed 
 her to the place where she stood. 
 
 " ' Robbed !' said she ; ^ this is a fine story ! No such 
 word was ever heard in my house. What business, you 
 little rascal, had you to come with a robber to my house ? 
 Robbed ! He is a highwayman, and you are his jackal. A 
 pretty story, quotha, that you have been robbed ! Such 
 little villains as you always outwit themselves. Betty, 
 look up the silver tea-spoons ! Observe the brat ! See 
 what fine linsey-woolsey clothes he has got on ! And pray, 
 my little master, of what have you been robbed ? Of a 
 crooked copper, I warrant ! Yes, I see, there are two of 
 my silver tea-spoons gone. Step for an officer this mo- 
 ment ! Search him ! But that is in vain. The boy 
 seizes the goods, and his companion neatly carries them off. 
 You shall breakfast, my lad, in the Conciergerie, upon a 
 salt eel ! Why are not you gone, Betty ? ' 
 
 "^ I own I was now terrified, in a very different style 
 from any thing I had felt in the presence of the mayor of 
 Dijon. I believed that the house I was in was appropri- 
 ated to the consultations of robbers. I had observed the 
 signals of intelligence which had passed on the preceding 
 evening between my fellow-traveller and the hostess, and 
 now she denied that she had ever before seen him in her 
 life. I did not doubt that the story of the tea-spoons was 
 a concerted fabrication, chosen as the most effectual means 
 of quashing my complaint respecting the loss of my pro- 
 perty. But what chance had I, an unprotected child, 
 without a friend, and without a name, to be able to make 
 good my own cause, and defeat the malicious accusation 
 which was threatened against me ! This was an intoler- 
 able addition to the shock I had just felt in finding myself 
 unexpectedly left without a penny. The whole recurred to 
 my mind at once, and, though already exhausted with 
 weeping, I burst afresh into a flood of tears. 
 
 " Betty, a plump and fresh-coloured girl of nineteen, felt 
 
FLEETWOOD. 125 
 
 her bowels yearn with compassion for my case. ' Pray, 
 madam/ said she, ' do not be too hard upon this little 
 boy. I dare say he know s nothing of the tea-spoons.' 
 
 " ' I dare say no such thing ! ' replied the mistress 
 fiercely. 
 
 " * Upon my soul, madam, if you will send him to pri- 
 son, you may go for an officer yourself. I will have no- 
 thing to do with it. For my part, I wonder what your 
 heart is made of, to think of such a thing.' 
 
 " * Go, you are a fool ! — Well, let him get out of my 
 house ! Let him tramp, as fast as his ten toes can carry 
 him ! If ever I catch him again, I will have no more 
 mercy upon him, than I would upon the claw of a lobster ! 
 Be gone, you gallows little rascal I Off with you ! ' 
 
 *^ I took advice of the relentings of the good woman, and 
 decamped. I know not why, however, I was by no means 
 eager to leave the street in which she lived. I felt as if in 
 her house I had left behind me that property, which had 
 been so essential to my projects. I began to suspect that, 
 notwithstanding her loudness and apparent fury, the men- 
 tion of the Conciergerie was a trick, and that all her aim 
 had been to get me out of her territories. This, however, 
 if true, would by no means mend the case : it was impos- 
 sible that I should obtain redress. 
 
 " It was well for me that I lingered in my pace. I had 
 not departed above two minutes, before I felt some one tap 
 me upon the shoulder. It was my friend, Betty, the bar- 
 maid. She held in her hand a pretty substantial roll of 
 bread ready buttered, which she presented to me. She 
 chucked me under the chin ; and, after an expressive God 
 bless you, my brave lad ! she tripped away by the path by 
 which she came. 
 
 The offerings of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, presented 
 by the wise men of the East, were not more acceptable to 
 the mother of Jesus, than this homely roll and butter were 
 to me at this moment. Yet I was not hungry by sensa- 
 tion ; my heart was too full of the crosses I had sustained : 
 but I was hungry by reflection. This is a distinction that 
 will be perfectly intelligible to every one, however heart- 
 full, who shall suppose himself alone for the first time ia 
 
126 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 an immense metropolis, without a morsel of bread, or the 
 means of procuring it. 
 
 '^ Poor Betty's roll and butter proved to me nectar and 
 ambrosia in one. 1 did not eat it immediately ; but, in 
 proportion as I did, I felt my spirit revive within me. To 
 have been left without comfort and without food at this 
 critical period might have been fatal to me. But the cou- 
 rage of a child, the sunshine of his soul, is easily called 
 back ; and, when the animal feeling of inanition was extin- 
 guished within me, something friendly seemed to whisper 
 to me not to despair. I had conquered the greatest part of 
 the distance ; I was only twelve miles from Versailles. A 
 walk of four hours would bring me to that place which I 
 had regarded as the assured goal of my lasting prosperity. 
 
 CHAPTER JI. 
 
 ^^ No sooner did the thought occur to me, than I resolved to 
 lose no time to realise it. I arrived at Versailles about the 
 middle of a very hot day, broiling with the sun, and co- 
 vered with dust. I immediately entered the park ; and, 
 having gained a favourable situation for viewing the palace, 
 protected by the shadow of overhanging trees, I threw my- 
 self upon the grass. The first idea that struck me "was, 
 Versailles is infinitely grander and more magnificent than 
 Fontainebleau. With my eye I measured the piles, sur- 
 veyed the architecture, and remarked the moveable and 
 immoveable objects around me. 
 
 " Shortly, however, I forgot myself, and fell asleep. Yes ; 
 arrived at my haven, and with every thing for which I had 
 panted apparently within my ken, I fell asleep ! Heat 
 and fatigue contributed to this ; but I apprehend I should 
 not have been thus overtaken, if it had not been for the 
 misfortunes which that morning had overtaken me. A 
 mitigated and familiar sorrow blunts the faculties, and dis- 
 poses to lethargy. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 127 
 
 " I had not slept long before I was roused from my ob- 
 livion by the sound of a fife^ and the passing along of a 
 file of soldiers. This was to me a most agreeable moment. 
 I shook myself, and gazed intently upon the men as they 
 passed. I recognised in them, as I stood still to view, the 
 physiognomy of my native country. While I hved at 
 home, in the canton of Uri, I was unaware of the exist- 
 ence of this physiognomy ; the particulars which distin- 
 guished the persons around me from each other, were more 
 remarked by me than those in which they resembled. But 
 my residence at Lyons had sharpened my perceptions in 
 this respect. Every man loves his native soil ; and the 
 Swiss are said to have more of this sentiment than any 
 other people. I had myself been in a state of banishment, 
 and, as I may phrase it, a state of solitary imprisonment. 
 Whenever I met a Swiss in the streets of Lyons, my little 
 heart leaped within my bosom, and I could not help hail- 
 ing him as a brother in the pecuhar phraseology of my 
 country. My salutation never failed to call forth a cheer- 
 ful and affectionate response from the person to whom 
 it was addressed. This was usually all that occurred : 
 we mutually bade each other good day, and passed on. 
 Yet this kind of encounter often furnished me with an in- 
 tellectual feast for a whole day ; it made the sun shine 
 upon me through the opake windows of the silk-mill, and 
 cheered my soul as I stood at the swifts. An accident of 
 this nature did not fail to happen to me twenty times 
 during my abode at Lyons, and, perhaps, with as many 
 different persons. 
 
 " It had been one of the motives that secretly stimulated 
 me in my project upon the King of France, that I knew 
 that the favourite guards of his court were Swiss, and that, 
 when I came there, I should feel so much the less a 
 stranger, as I should be able to speak, and address my en- 
 quiries to my own countrymen. To a poor, destitute, and 
 pennyless vagabond, it was at this moment like heaven, to 
 gaze upon the countenance of a little cluster of my coun- 
 trymen, at the same time that I recollected that I was four 
 hundred miles distant from my native home. It was like 
 Macbeth gazing upon the descendants of Banquo, except 
 
128 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 that, though the view in each instance was pregnant with 
 emotion, my emotions were of a nature opposite to his : 
 every countenance, as it passed in series and succession be- 
 fore me, gave new sting to my pleasure, and elevated my 
 heart an inch the higher. I said to myself, ' These men 
 will surely be my friends ; removed, as we are, from the 
 spot where Nature produced us, they will feel that here I 
 belong to them ; they will not leave a poor Swiss child to 
 perish for hunger within their quarters.' It was a restor- 
 ation from death to life. 
 
 " As they proceeded along in a sort of parade, I dared 
 not, on this occasion, address them with my customary 
 salutation, I resolved to wait till I could meet with one 
 of them, not upon duty, and alone. It was not necessary 
 for me to wait long. As I strayed about the park, I met 
 with a respectable looking man, a private, with an infant 
 in his arms. I saluted him, and we entered into con- 
 versation. He seemed surprised at seeing me there, and 
 asked me whether I belonged to any of the companies on 
 duty at Versailles. I told him nearly the same particulars 
 of my story as I had communicated to the mayor of 
 Dijon. I said I was the son of a Swiss, and that I was 
 born at home. My parents had brought me up in ease 
 and opulence ; but they were now dead, and, having left 
 me, their only child, to the care of an uncle, this treacherous 
 guardian had turned me adrift upon the world. Agreeably 
 to my former resolution, I did not mention Lyons, and I 
 abstained from violating the secret which my uncle had so 
 tremendously enjoined me. I concluded, however, with my 
 adventure of that morning, and the loss of all that I had. 
 
 " The honest Swiss believed my story. He seated me 
 by him on a bench, and put the child on his knee ; and, in 
 token of his sympathy with my adventures, took me affec- 
 tionately by the hand when I had concluded my little nar- 
 rative. He uttered several exclamations, and made several 
 remarks upon the particulars as I related them ; but, as 
 his remarks were those of a common soldier, and his un- 
 derstanding, as I presently perceived, was in no respect su- 
 perior to his station, they are not worth mentioning. He 
 observed, that he was afraid I had not eaten that day. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 129 
 
 " ' Not a morsel, except the roll and butter given me by 
 Betty, the bar-maid.' 
 
 ^' ' God bless you, my boy ! * exclaimed he, with some 
 emotion, ' come home along with me, and you shall at 
 least partake of the fare, such as it is, that I have provided 
 for my wife and children/ 
 
 *^ I willingly accepted his invitation, and we went together. 
 As we entered the little apartment of his family, ' My love,* 
 said he, ' here is a poor Swiss boy, just come from his own 
 country, and without a penny in his pocket: you must 
 give him a little supper, and he shall stay with us to-night.* 
 The wife was no less prompt in exercising this small hos- 
 pitality than her husband. They had three sons, besides 
 the infant ; and we sat round a cheerful board together. 
 
 " I seized this opportunity of asking the soldier a variety 
 of questions concerning the King, which he regarded, pro- 
 bably, as the mere curiosity of a stranger. He told me 
 that the King was not at present at Versailles, but had been, 
 for some days at Marli, which place he principally fre- 
 quented for the diversion of hunting. I enquired into the 
 situation of this place, and was pleased to find that it was 
 only four or five miles from Versailles. I set off for MarK 
 early the next morning. 
 
 " When I arrived, I found the King had gone forth al- 
 ready to his hunt, and, probably, would not return till the 
 day was considerably advanced. A Swiss soldier gave me 
 my breakfast at MarU, as the private at Versailles had en- 
 tertained me the evening before. This man was a being 
 of more reflection than the former ; and, when I had 
 owned that I was without money, pressed me to inform 
 him what was my errand at Marli, and what prospects I 
 had for the future. This generous anxiety and forecast 
 warmed my heart : the deliberating benevolence of an or- 
 dinary soldier, however narrow may be his power, is not less 
 interesting to the feelings than that of a lord. I begged him, 
 however, to excuse me ; I entreated him to give himself no 
 concern about me ; and assured him that, though I was 
 destitute now, I had means of speedily putting an end to 
 my distress. 
 
 " I broke away from this man as Boon as I decently could, 
 5 
 
130 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 and wandered about the park and gardens. I saw him 
 two or three times in the course of the day, and once 
 passed so near a sentry-box where he was on duty, that he 
 had an opportunity, in a low voice, to desire me to come 
 again to his hut, when his business of the day should be 
 over. At length I heard the sound of clarinets and horns, 
 the signal of the return from hunting. I saw the hounds, 
 and heard the trampling of horses ; and presently the 
 cavalcade appeared. The sound and the sight were cheer- 
 ful, and my bosom was in tumults. Suddenly I recollected 
 myself, and started away for the door, of which I had pre- 
 viously gained information, where the King was to alight. 
 Several attendants and lacqueys pressed to the same spot. 
 I saw the persons on horseback alight ; and, coming up to 
 one of them, cried, with earnestness and enthusiasm, ' Sire, 
 hear what I have to say, and listen to my prayer ! ' In the 
 confusion of my mind, I had mistaken the individual, in 
 spite of my precaution of the portrait : it was not the King. 
 The nobleman to whom I spoke, exclaimed, ^ What, what 
 is all this ? ' The lacqueys hurried me out of the circle ; the 
 King alighted, and the scene was closed. 
 
 " I know not whether it will appear incredible that a child 
 as I was should have been capable of this daring. It was 
 in reality, perhaps, because I was a child, that I was capa- 
 ble of it. I understood very imperfectly the distinctions 
 of rank in artificial society. I was wholly ignorant of the 
 forms and fences which are set up to separate one man from 
 the rest of his brethren. A king, to the imagination of a 
 child, is but a man ; and I was accustomed, as perhaps all 
 boys are accustomed, to meet him in fancy in the fields and 
 the highways, and to conceive him a guest in my father's 
 house. The first time I ever beheld a peacock's feather, I 
 found something royal in it ; and a man wearing a pea- 
 cock's feather upon his bosom would to me have been a 
 king. Add to which, I had never disclosed my plan to a 
 human creature. Timidity is the child of experience or of 
 admonition. I was not without timidity in the present 
 instance ; I understood the degree of presumption there 
 was in addressing a gentleman and a stranger ; and I un- 
 derstood no more. 
 
 " If I set out in my project with these notions, my 
 
FLEETWOOD. 131 
 
 courage was considerably reinforced as I proceeded. I had 
 meditated my project perpetually, till enthusiasm supplied 
 the place of intrepidity. I had so often acted the scene 
 over in my fancy, thatj the whole was become perfectly 
 familiar : it was like some situations which perhaps every 
 man has encountered in life, new and extraordinary in 
 themselves, but which feel like recollections, and he ex- 
 claims, ' This is my dream ! ' Recollect, in addition to 
 these things, the urgency of my condition, the desperate- 
 ness of my fortune, my hatred to the silk-mills of Lyons, 
 the long journey I had performed, the hard adventures I 
 had encountered, the emptiness of my purse, the imme- 
 diate cravings of nature. All these things goaded me 
 forward, and made me look upon the ignominy of deliber- 
 ation as the worst of evils. 
 
 "In the evening the King walked upon the terrace in the 
 gardens. I informed myself exactly of his appearance and 
 insignia, that I might make no second mistake. There 
 was a flight of about fifty steps that led up to the terrace ; 
 and guards were placed upon a landing-place in the middle, 
 and at the bottom. These guards were not Swiss, but 
 French. I had reflected, and found this spot the most 
 favourable in the world for the execution of my project. 
 The King, I was told, usually walked here for an hour, 
 and conversed famiharly with a variety of persons. I ap- 
 proached to ascend, but was stopped by the soldiers. My 
 garb was mean, and they told me, a boy of my appearance 
 could not go up there ! I was filled with impatience. 
 There was a similar flight of steps at the other end of the 
 terrace ; I burst away from these persons, and hastened to 
 the second flight. Here I was stopped again. Repeated 
 disappointments now made me desperate, and I struggled 
 with the soldiers, in the vain hope to pass in spite of their 
 efforts. An attendant who passed by, recognised me for 
 the child who had endeavoured to speak with the King be- 
 fore dinner. This circumstance induced them to conduct 
 me to the guard-house. A child, as I was, they took it 
 for granted could not be a dangerous intruder ; but it was 
 their business to keep off impertinence, and prevent his 
 Majesty from being disturbed. The soldier who took me 
 K 2 
 
152 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 under his care^ asked me, with some degree of kindness, 
 what I wanted, and what purpose I had in view in speak- 
 ing to the King ? But 1 was now grown sullen, and 
 would only answer in gloomy monosyllables. After some 
 time, I was conducted to the gate of the park, and thrust 
 out into the high road. The soldiers left me, and I sat 
 down upon a stone. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ^^ Here my reflections were sufficiently melancholy. I 
 would have returned, if I had been able, to the hut of the 
 sentinel who had invited me ; but that was unfortunately 
 within the inclosure. What was I to do ? I was by no 
 means cured of my project of speaking to the King. How 
 bitter were my rage and indignation against the villain who 
 had stripped me of the trifling sum of money on which I 
 had depended ! I wanted, I thought, but a little time ; 
 but how was I to gain time, when I was without food ? 
 The objection I had heard made against me, was the 
 meanness of my clothing : if my money had not been 
 taken from me, I could have removed this objection. My 
 ruminations were inexpressibly melancholy. As I sat, 
 several gentlemen passed me, who had probably made part 
 of the company in the royal promenade. I must endea- 
 vour to obtain from some one the means of appeasing the 
 demands of hunger. Should I apply to these? There 
 was nothing in their appearance that invited me. Moved 
 by my experience of the past, I was inclined to wait till I 
 could see a soldier and a fellow-countryman. Yet of what 
 avail was the relief I could so obtain ? I had not come 
 hither to subsist upOn the precarious charity of daily bread ! 
 Far different views had animated my steps in a course of 
 three hundred miles ! What was I to do to-morrow ? 
 At Marli, I should find myself marked, and watched, and 
 thwarted in all my attempts. When would the King rci- 
 turn to Versailles ? 
 
 I 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 133 
 
 " Those of the persons who passed me and were on foot, 
 passed me by twos and threes. Others went in carriages, 
 and on horseback. At length one gentleman came alone. 
 He looked at me, and advanced to the place where I sat. 
 
 '' ' My boy/ said he, ^ are not you the little fellow that 
 attempted to speak to the King ? ' 
 
 " I looked up at the gentleman. He was beyond the middle 
 period of human life. I thought I had never seen so be- 
 nign a countenance. Besides, there was something in him 
 that struck me with a remarkable similarity to my own 
 father. 
 
 ^' ' I am, sir,' answered I with a sigh. 
 
 ^' ' And what could you want to say to the King ? ' 
 
 '^ ' I am friendless : I have nobody to take care of me : 
 I wanted to teU him that.' 
 
 '^ * Was your father a military man ? Did he wear the 
 croix de St. Louis ? ' 
 
 " ' My father was no military man : he was never in 
 France in his life.' 
 
 " ' Good God! — And who told you to apply to the King? ' 
 
 *' ' Nobody told me. The scheme is all my own. I have 
 come three hundred miles to execute it.' 
 
 " The stranger became interested in my artless story. 
 
 *' ' Will you come to my lodgings to-morrow morning ? I 
 shall sleep at MarU.' — And he gave me his address. 
 
 " ' I will, sir,' repHed I. ' But — but ' 
 
 " ^ But what, my little man }' 
 
 " ' 1 am very hungry ! ' 
 
 '^ Every new circumstance I mentioned astonished him 
 the more. He perceived, as he afterward told me, that I 
 was by no means without education, and a certain refine- 
 jnent. To have formed such a project, to have come three 
 hundred miles to complete it, and to be here without a 
 penny ! — He was determined to be more fully acquainted 
 with so strange a story ! — He took out his purse. 
 
 " ^ Do you know, my boy, how to procure yourself ac- 
 commodations for the night ? ' 
 
 *' * I have not travelled three hundred miles for nothing.* 
 
 " ' VieW, take care of yourself to-night, and come to me 
 in the morning.' ., 
 
 K 3 
 
1 34* FLEETWOOD. 
 
 '^ I looked at the address. The name on the card was 
 Ambrose Fleetwood. The generous man who accosted me 
 in my desolate condition was your grandfather. This was 
 the first time I had ever seen the name of Fleetwood ; and 
 till this pulse ceases to throb, the occasion that brought us 
 together will never be forgotten ! This is the foundation 
 
 of the friendly alliance of Fleetwood and Ruffigny. 
 
 Upon what a precipice was I then placed ! Even at the 
 distance of so many years, I cannot recollect it without feel- 
 ing my head turn giddy. For what did my destiny seem 
 to reserve me ? For beggary, for hunger, — to perish for 
 want of food ; or, if not, without guide or protector, and 
 with no means of present subsistence, to become the asso- 
 ciate of the worthless and the vile, — the only persons, pro- 
 bably speaking, who would court such an associate. Oh, 
 how infinitely worse would this have been, than the most 
 unpitied death! — The King of France! — was ever poor 
 wretch misled by such an ignis fatuus? did ever condemned 
 criminal brave the fury of the ocean in such a cockle-shell ? 
 
 '^ I repaired at the appointed hour to the residence of my 
 new protector. He asked me a number of questions ; and 
 I gave him the same answers, but with more of detail than 
 I had given on previous occasions. He was urgent in his 
 enquiries ; he spoke to me in the most friendly and soothing 
 manner; I was on the brink of discovering my secret ; I en- 
 treated him, however, to spare me : I had been robbed by 
 my uncle ; but I did not dare to tell wliere and who he was. 
 The generous Englishman perceived that I gasped and turned 
 pale, as I touched on this tremendous subject. He became 
 deeply interested in my behalf. 
 
 " ^ Will you go with me to my own country ?' said he.^ 
 
 " ' Oh, no, no ! If you are so much my friend as to be 
 willing to take me thither, then — pray, pray, sir ! — do for 
 rrie the thing I want ; enable me to change these clothes for 
 others more suitable to my projects.' 
 
 " I raved of the King of France. The scheme of applying 
 to him had been my favourite contemplation for months. I 
 had had his picture so often before me ! The thought of 
 him had soothed my weary steps, and comforted me under 
 all my disasters. I could not give up my plan. I could 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 135 
 
 not divest myself of the sort of robe of nobility with which 
 my fancy had clothed me, and descend into the vale of or- 
 dinary life. I entreated my benefactor, with miraculous 
 and unpacified importunity, that he would direct all his as- 
 sistance to this end. 
 
 " Enthusiasm is always an interesting spectacle. When 
 it expresses itself with an honest and artless eloquence, it is 
 diflScult to listen to it, and not in some degree to catch the 
 flame. Particularly at my age it was so extraordinary in 
 itself, and so impetuous in its way of manifesting itself, 
 that it was impossible to contemplate it without sympathy. 
 There are so many ways in which the heart of man con- 
 ceals itself from man ! Beside the thousand motives which 
 impel us to suppress one thing, and to be reserved respect- 
 ing another, it is necessary that the human mind should be 
 put into motion in order to its being seen. ' Speak, that I 
 may see thee ! ' said the antient philosopher. He might 
 have added, ' Speak upon some subject, respecting which 
 your feelings are spontaneous and strong.' The soul of man 
 is one of those subtle and evanescent substances, that, as 
 long as they remain still, the organ of sight does not re- 
 mark ; it must become agitated, to become visible. All 
 together, Mr. Fleetwood grew exceedingly anxious respect- 
 ing my welfare. 
 
 " On this account he condescended to a certain degree of 
 artifice and temporising. He observed to me that I had 
 ruined my own project at Marli, and that it would be ten 
 days before the King removed to Versailles. He invited me 
 to spend this time with him at Paris, during which I should 
 be clothed and equipped more suitably to the great person 
 I designed to address. He promised me that I should have 
 the earliest intelligence of the removal of the court. 
 
 " In how new a situation was I now unexpectedly placed! 
 I had not heard the accents of genuine kindness for almost 
 two years ; not since the calamitous moment, when my 
 father uttered his expiring breath. Mr. Fleetwood, almost 
 from the first, conceived for me the affection of a father. 
 He did not treat me as a vagabond whom he had taken up 
 out of charity, and kept at a distance from him. I saw 
 him, morning, noon, and night. His accents were those of 
 K 4 
 
136 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 friendly solicitude ; the looks I cast upon him were those of 
 affection. My spirit was softened within me : my new situ- 
 ation took away from me the heart of stone^ and gave me a 
 heart of flesh. 
 
 "^ It was this heart of stone, if you will allow me so to 
 express myself, that led me to the King of France. It was 
 the sentiment of despair : I had sent my enquiring glances 
 round the world, and had not found a friend. Methodically 
 and slowly I had worked myself up to the resolution I had 
 adopted, and I could not immediately abandon it. It was 
 a sort of frenzy; a high pitch of the soul, foreign to its na- 
 tural temper. Kindness, the perpetual attention and in- 
 terest of a real friend, in no long time brought me back to 
 myself. It is impossible to express what comfort, what a 
 delicious relaxation and repose of spirit, was produced by 
 this revolution. Mr. Fleetwood gradually led me to consider 
 the scheme I had formed, as wild, senseless, and imprac- 
 ticable. His expostulations were so gentle, benignant, and 
 humane, that, while they confuted, they had not the effect 
 of mortifying me. He took me with him to England. 
 
 *^ I have been thus minute in the description of my con- 
 dition at Lyons, and of the manner of my deserting it, 
 that I might the better demonstrate to you the infinite 
 value of the kindness your grandfather bestowed on me. 
 If I had not been the most unfortunate, the most abused, 
 and the most deserted of ray species, the favours I received 
 would not have had a tithe of the value they actually pos- 
 sessed. I cannot recollect the situation I deserted, or that 
 upon which I threw myself, without a horror bordering on 
 despair. The generous and admirable mortal that then 
 interposed for my relief, I must ever regard as my guardian 
 genius, and my better angel. How distinctly have I passed 
 over in my mind ten thousand times the stone upon which 
 I sat at the gate of the park of Marli, and the gesture and 
 countenance with which my preserver approached me ! 
 The day was declining, the landscape had assumed the 
 grave and uniform hues of evening, and there was that 
 sadness in the air which wakes up the tone of sensibility in 
 the soul. The circumstances in which I was placed, suf- 
 ficiently prepared me to be deeply affected. The first word 
 
FLEETWOOD. 137 
 
 that Ambrose Fleetwood uttered went to my heart. I had 
 occasionally, perhaps, been treated during my journey 
 with gentleness and civility ; but it was the difference be- 
 tween the voice that tells you which turn you are to take 
 in the road from Auxerre to Sens, and the voice that tells 
 you by implication that the speaker is interested that you 
 shall go right in the road of happiness and life. With 
 what considerate wisdom did this noble Englishman soothe 
 me in the midst of the exalted and enthusiastic fervour 
 which had brought me to Versailles and Marli ! How 
 patiently did he wean me from the wild plan upon which 
 my heart was bent ! And all this to an unknown and penny- 
 less vagabond ! There is, perhaps, more merit in this tem- 
 per, that listened to all my extravagancies without anger, 
 and did not suffer itself to be discouraged by my tenaciousness 
 and stubbornness, than in the gift of thousands. 
 
 ''In our journey to England, I was so fortunate as con- 
 tinually to advance in your grandfather's good graces. He 
 thought me, as he afterward told me, a youth of very 
 extraordinary quahfications, and well deserving of his care. 
 He sent me to proper schools, and had me taught every 
 thing which, he believed it would be important for me to 
 know. He was an English merchant, and he determined 
 to provide for me in some of those departments, in which 
 commerce opens the road to competence and wealth. 
 
 *' It was not till after a very long time that I could prevail 
 upon myself to unfold my heart to my benefactor, respect- 
 ing my extraction, and the way in which I had been driven 
 to the deplorable situation in which he found me. Your 
 grandfather often enquired of me what were the condition 
 in which I was born, and the prospects which my birth 
 had opened to me ; but I manifested such a shrinking of 
 the soul, such a convulsive kind of terror, whenever the 
 subject was started, that for some time he forbore all men- 
 tion of it. The alarm had been impressed on me early, and 
 had taken deep root in my breast. While I was at Lyons, 
 it formed the peculiarity of my situation, and I cherished 
 it with a strange and mingled sentiment, something between 
 horror and delight. Every human creature loves, perhaps, 
 to think that there is something extraordinary about him. 
 
138 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 and dwells with complacency upon that which makes him 
 different from all his race. I felt like an exiled sovereign, 
 or a prince who roams about the world in disguise. I 
 firmly believe that it was partly to both these notions, of 
 self-complacency, and of terror, that I was indebted for 
 the habit of regarding the names of my father and my 
 uncle as the most inviolable of secrets. 
 
 *'^At length I became convinced, by the unaltered kind- 
 nesses of my benefactor, that my secret would be no less 
 safely reposed in his keeping, than in the recesses of my 
 own soul. I told him the whole. He was astonished at the 
 terror with which I had looked forward to the disclosure, 
 and proposed immediately to take such measures as should 
 operate to compel my uncle to resign his ill-gotten wealth. 
 I entreated him that he would engage in no proceedings of 
 that sort ; I reminded him of his promise that my secret 
 should never be communicated to a third person without 
 my consent. My uncle, however deeply he had injured 
 me, was still the brother of my father, and in that quality 
 I could not but feel reluctance at the idea of exposing him 
 to public ignominy. The menaces with which he had so 
 emphatically dismissed me, were impressed on my heart ; 
 they gave me a horrible anticipation of the event which 
 would attend my hostile return to my native land ; and I 
 could not help apprehending that that event would be 
 miserable to me, no less than to him. I implored your 
 grandfather that he would suffer the question to remain 
 unopened, at least till 1 had arrived at a mature age. He 
 had often assured me that, having only one son, he did 
 not regard the expenses I brought on him as a burthen ; 
 but, if he did, I did not desire the situation he provided 
 for me, or the advantages he bestowed; the tithe of his 
 benefits would amply satisfy my ambition and my wishes. 
 To occasion an entire revolution in the fortunes and situ- 
 ation of my family, was a very serious consideration ; it 
 might be the most important transaction of my life ; and I 
 earnestly entreated that in such a transaction I might be 
 allowed to consult the ripest decisions of my own under- 
 standing. Your grandfather generously yielded to these 
 representations. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 3Q 
 
 *' The principal friend I had in England, after my original 
 benefactor, was your father. We were nearly of an age, and 
 your grandfather brought us up together. I saw in him the 
 image of the man who had rescued me from utter destruc- 
 tion, and loved him accordingly. Your father was ac- 
 quainted with my situation, and knew that I had no claim 
 either of blood or alliance upon my preserver : he saw me 
 brought up with himself, and enjoying the same advantages; 
 yet he never repined at the favour in which I was held. 
 Not only while we were children together, he regarded me 
 as a brother ; but this sentiment never altered in him as he 
 advanced in judgment and years. He never looked upon 
 me as an intruder ; never considered the large sums your 
 grandfather laid out to procure me a respectable footing in 
 life; nor even enquired whether, as I equally shared the 
 bounties of my benefactor at present, he might not make 
 a distribution of his property at death no less impartial. 
 Could I help loving so disinterested and noble-minded a 
 companion ? 
 
 '^ Having been perfectly initiated in the principles of com- 
 merce in the country where they are best understood, it 
 happened that, about the time when it was proper I should 
 be launched in the world, a proposition was made to the 
 elder Fleetwood, respecting a banking-house which it was 
 in contemplation to set up at Lisbon. A countryman of 
 my own was the principal in the project ; but his capital 
 was not sufficient for the undertaking as it had been chalked 
 out, and he designed taking in one or two other persons as 
 partners with him in the concern. Provided he could enter 
 upon the affair in the way which had been delineated, he 
 had the promise of being immediately installed as banker 
 to the court of Portugal. Your grandfather was an opulent 
 London merchant, and had no inclination to extend his con- 
 cerns. His son he destined for his successor in the business 
 in which he was himself engaged. Under these circum- 
 stances he thought of embracing the proposal in my behalf. 
 
 *' I was never more surprised than when the idea was sug- 
 gested to me. The money necessary to be advanced, was 
 more than three times the amount which my father's pro- 
 
140 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 perty would have produced, if it had been all sold imme- 
 diately on the event of his death. I was suffocated with 
 the thought of so incredible a generosity exercised toward 
 me. I told my benefactor that I was as far from the ex- 
 pectation as the wish of becoming opulent; and that, inde-» 
 pendently of a secret feeling which led me to the hope of 
 one day settling in my native fields, I could be contented 
 to remain for ever the first clerk in my preserver's count-* 
 ing-house. \ 
 
 " Your grandfather answeredme,thathe much disapproved 
 of a character deficient in enterprise ; and asked, how the 
 humility of the views I at present professed, accorded with 
 the ardour which had formerly led me to throw myself at 
 the feet of the sovereign of France ? He said, I had with 
 my own consent passed through all the stages of a commer- 
 cial education, and that therefore it seemed but reasonable^ 
 that whatever enterprise I possessed, should be directed into 
 that channel. He expatiated upon the uses of wealth ; and 
 observed that, however limited might be my desire of in- 
 dulgences for myself, I ought by no means to forget the 
 great public works which an opulent man might forward for 
 the benefit of his species, or how extensive was his power 
 of relieving distress, of exciting industry, of developing 
 talents, of supplying the means of improvement to those 
 who panted for, but could not obtain them, and of remov- 
 ing the innumerable difficulties which often surrounded the 
 virtuous and the admirable, that impeded their progress^ 
 and struck despair into their hearts. 
 
 '' My benefactor recommended to me to make myself per 
 fectly easy, as to the money necessary to be advanced, to launc] 
 me in the undertaking proposed. He could spare it with 
 out the smallest inconvenience. If my views in life wer 
 unsuccessful, it should never be repaid, and he shoul 
 then have the satisfaction of having exerted himself liberally 
 to establish in life a youth, whom he loved no less than his 
 own son. But he had no doubt that the undertaking would 
 be prosperous; and then he consented, if that would be any 
 gratification to me, that I should repay the present loan, 
 only upon one condition, that the first instalment of the 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 141 
 
 repayment should not commence till that day seven years, 
 counting from the day of my landing in Lisbon : young 
 men, who entered upon business with a borrowed capital, 
 had often received a fatal check in the midst of the fairest 
 prospects, by a premature repayment of the loan which had 
 originally set them afloat on the ocean of life. 
 
 " ' Ruffigny,' continued your grandfather, ' what miser«« 
 ably narrow notions are these which you seem to have fos*. 
 tered in your bosom ! Are all the kindnesses of the human 
 heart to be shut up within the paltry limits of consanguinity!? 
 My son will have enough ; and I am sure he will not re- 
 pine, that you should be made a partaker of the opulence 
 with which Providence has blessed me. If you will, we will 
 ask him, and I will do nothing for you that has not his en- 
 tire and undissembled approbation. Why should I not set 
 up two persons in the world, instead of one } Thirty-six 
 princes, we are told, erected each of them a pillar in the 
 temple of Diana at Ephesus : why should I not erect two 
 pillars in the edifice of human happiness, and prepare two 
 persons, instead of one, to be benefactors of their species ? 
 You are my son, a son whom the concourse of sublunary 
 events has given me, no less dear to me than the heir of 
 my body. I found in you various estimable qualities, which 
 won my attachment in the first hour I saw you ; and, I 
 trust, those qualities have lost nothing in the cultivation 
 I have given them. You belonged to me, because you be- 
 longed to no one else. This is the great distribution of hu- 
 man society ; every one who stands in need of assistance 
 appertains to some one individual, upon whom he has a 
 stronger claim than upon any other of his fellow-creatures. 
 My son belongs to me, because I was the occasion of his 
 coming into existence ; you belong to me, because you were 
 hungry and I fed you, because you wanted education and a 
 protector, and have found them in me. You are now arrived 
 at man's estate, and I regard you as the creature of my vi- ^ 
 gilance and of my cares. Will you not acknowledge me/ 
 for a father?* 
 
 "I was convinced by the arguments of my preserver ; I 
 was moved by the feelings he expressed : my beloved, 
 
142 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 companion, the brother of my heart, declared most warmly 
 his consent to the arrangement. I resided twenty-one 
 years at Lisbon ; and in that time, by honourable and just 
 traffic, made a fortune infinitely beyond the most sanguine 
 of my wishes. I faithfully repaid to my benefactor, at the 
 time he had himself limited, the capital he advanced to me. 
 During the period of my residence at Lisbon, I several 
 times came over to England, and visited the two persons 
 whom I reasonably regarded as the most generous of mor- 
 tals ; and in one of these visits, after I had been ten years 
 engaged as a principal in my commercial undertaking, I 
 witnessed the expiring breath of my original benefactor. 
 Never, perhaps, did I love a human creature, as I loved 
 that man. My father, good, and kind, and affectionate as 
 he had been, was, to my mind, a sort of air-drawn vision, 
 the recollection, as it were, of a pre-existent state. My 
 youthful companion and sworn confidant, no less generous 
 than my preserver, was inexpressibly dear to me ; but the 
 sentiment I felt for him was altogether different. Nature 
 has formed us to the love of the venerable. Filial affection 
 is an instinct twined with the very fibres of our heart. 
 For the grey hairs |of your grandfather, I had a mystical 
 and religious awe ; and age had softened his features into 
 an expression of such calm benignity, that, if I were an 
 adherent of the sect of the anthropomorphites, I should 
 take from his countenance my idea of the object of my 
 worship. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 4 
 
 " I SHOULD have told you, that about the time of my ori- 
 ginal departure for Lisbon, your grandfather settled with 
 my consent a correspondence with a citizen of Zurich, 
 upon whose integrity and discretion he could perfectly rely: 
 he observed, that whatever forbearance I might think pro- 
 per to exercise toward my uncle and his family, it was but 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 43 
 
 reasonable that I should obtain, from time to time, inform- 
 ation of his affairs, and learn which of the family were 
 living and dead. I have already said that my uncle had 
 been unprosperous in all his undertakings : the estate of 
 my father,- which he so wickedly seized, by no means intro- 
 duced a better fortune into his affairs. One by one his 
 children died ; he survived them, but survived not long ; 
 and the estate fell, in the twentieth year of my residence at 
 Lisbon (for it was understood that I was dead, and my 
 uncle procured vouchers to establish the fact) to a distant 
 branch of my father's family. 
 
 *' Circumstances were now sufficiently favourable to the 
 project upon which my wishes were bent, of returning to 
 my native country, and spending the remainder of my days 
 in the valley which had given me birth. I communicated 
 my purpose to my correspondent at Zurich ; but I was 
 somewhat divided in my mind, whether I should purchase 
 my paternal estate, and live upon it as a stranger, or 
 should openly claim it as my rightful inheritance. What 
 inclined me to the former, was, that by this expedient I 
 should avoid casting any slur upon the memory of my false 
 guardian. Our family had always ranked among the most 
 patriotic families of the Union, and had never sustained 
 any dishonour, except in the person of my uncle. On the 
 other hand, I could not bear the idea of appearing as a 
 foreigner in my own country : this was but a half restor- 
 ation. Why did I love my country ? Not merely for that 
 its scenes had been familiar to my infancy; but that the 
 human mind irresistibly wishes to connect itself with some- 
 thing. I had ancestors, the ornaments of the people 
 among whom they were born. These ancestors had mar- 
 ried and given in marriage, had received and conferred 
 obligations and benefits, and their memory was in odour 
 and in favour through the neighbouring districts. I 
 wished to adorn my ancestors, and to be adorned by them. 
 This is the genuine idea of going to one's home. 
 
 *' IHvas averse, however, to the idea of appearing in my 
 own country in the character of a litigant, an individual 
 unexpectedly calling his neighbour into contest about a 
 
144) FLEETWOOD. 
 
 property of which he believed himself to be lawfully pos- 
 sessed. I therefore instructed my correspondent to bring 
 this question to a full decision, before I should take my 
 departure. My resolution was formed, as soon as I re- 
 ceived intelligence of the death of my uncle. I imme- 
 diately transmitted documents to Zurich, proving my 
 parentage and identity, and directed my correspondent to 
 serve the new claimant with a notice, that the true heir, 
 who was supposed to be dead, was still living. He was 
 exceedingly surprised, and somewhat chagrined with the 
 intelligence, as he was a poor man, and burthened with 
 a numerous family. He consented, however, after the 
 manner of the country, to go before the chief court of the 
 canton, for the decision of the question. After a full and 
 minute investigation of the evidences, my claim was ulti- 
 mately established. This point being gained, I despatched 
 to Zurich an instrument, settling on the losing party in 
 the contest, an annuity to one half of the value of the pro- 
 perty of which he was dispossessed, accompanied with bills 
 of exchange destined to repurchase the lands which my 
 uncle had sold, and to redeem them from the burthens he 
 had laid upon them. These objects were, in most in- 
 stances, happily accomplished. 
 
 '^ While my affairs were going on thus auspiciously in 
 Switzerland, I employed the time necessary for maturing 
 them, in adjusting and transferring in the most advan- 
 tageous manner the commercial undertakings, in which 
 more than twenty years of my life had been consumed, in 
 Portugal. When every concern of this sort was now com- 
 pleted, and all things prepared for my reception in my 
 native canton, I bade farewell to Lisbon, and prepared to 
 return to Switzerland by way of London, 
 
 " My business in England was to visit your father. I 
 found him the same in tastes, in moral dispositions, and in 
 affection, as his father's death had left him. In many 
 respects he was different. Ten years of added life had 
 brought him to a nearer resemblance of my original pre- 
 server ; and, as I remarked in him the tokens of advancing 
 age, I felt the agreeable sentiment of contemplating my 
 
FLEETWOOD. 145 
 
 venerable benefactor and my schoolboy associate blending 
 themselves, as it were, in one person. Your father had also 
 married since I was in England, and yourself was born. 
 I think I never saw so affectionate a husband and a father. 
 In domestic life it was impossible to be more fortunate 
 tlian I found my beloved friend. 
 
 " He was not equally fortunate in every thing. He had 
 experienced two or three severe miscarriages in his commer- 
 cial concerns ; and this, so far as I could understand, with- 
 out the smallest |fault on his part. In one instance he had 
 connected himself with, and given large credit to, a house, 
 where all appearances were fair, but where extravagance 
 and secret gaming brought about a ruin, the most sudden 
 and unforeseen. In another instance, a war had broken 
 out at a time when he apprehended no such thing ; his 
 transactions were multiplied in the country which was 
 now declared an enemy ; and all his investments failed. 
 At a different time, bankruptcy upon an extensive scale 
 took place in Holland, one great house drawing on the ruin 
 of another, till half the most opulent merchants of the 
 republic were destroyed : your father suffered deeply in 
 this calamity. 
 
 " I soon discovered a cast of melancholy in the demeanour 
 of my quondam playmate, and that there was something 
 which hung painfully on his mind. In truth, I had 
 somewhat suspected his real situation before I left Lisbon, 
 and this contributed, with other circumstances, to hasten 
 my conclusion of my affairs in that city. With difficulty 
 and effort I wrung from your father a full confession of 
 his misfortune. 
 
 '' '^ Ruffigny,* said he, ' I am a beggar. You and I set 
 out together in life, but under different auspices.'' — He 
 paused. 
 
 '' ' No matter,' added he. ' I hope I shall be able to 
 discharge all my debts to the uttermost. A trifle will re- 
 main to me from the wreck. I will venture no more upon 
 the treacherous sea of commerce. What is the value of 
 riches ? ' I shall still have enough left to retire with to 
 some remote corner of the island, and cultivate a small 
 
 L 
 
146 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 farm in tranquillity. My dear wife will be perfectly con- 
 tented with the exchange. She will give up her equipage 
 and her liveries without a murmur. She will not sigh for 
 the amusements of the court and the metropolis ; and she 
 will look more beautiful in my eyes_, clad in the plain at- 
 tire of a rural house wife^ than hung round, as I have seen 
 her, with diamonds and rubies. My son shall be a peasant 
 swain, not ignorant, not ambitious, viewing the storms of 
 life from a distance, and fearless of bankruptcies, ship- 
 vo-ecks, and war. Is not this happiness } ' 
 
 ^'' Your father never dropped a syllable which should sound 
 toward the asking me to assist him in his adversity. He 
 knew my ability in this respect, and the prosperous event 
 which had crowned my efforts. Perhaps he would have 
 been willing to have made another experiment in the affairs 
 of commerce, and not to have quitted the world a bank- 
 rupt, had he known where to have raised a sum adequate 
 to his purpose, and upon terms sufficiently eligible. But 
 all that I had derived from the bounty of your grandfather, 
 and this consideration sealed up his lips toward me. 
 
 " One morning I came to him early, and requested him 
 to assist me in casting up the profits of my commerce, and 
 the amount of my fortune. He turned upon me a wistful 
 eye, as I stated my proposal. At first sight it seemed to 
 imply an insulting comparison between my success and his. 
 On the other hand, he, perhaps, half suspected the true 
 meaning of my visit. 
 
 '' ' Come, my dear Fleetwood,' said I ; ^ my aflPairs are 
 in good order, and the task will not occasion you much 
 trouble.' 
 
 '' Saying this, I opened again the door by which I had 
 entered, and called to my servant to come in. He brought 
 with him three or four pocket-books and a box. He put 
 them down, and departed. 
 
 " ' Let us sit down ! ' 
 
 " I opened the pocket-books, and examined their contents. 
 Some were bills of exchange ; some were warrants of ca- 
 pital in the English and Dutch stocks ; and some securi- 
 ties of various sorts. I explained to my friend the nature 
 
TLEETWOOD. 147 
 
 of the commerce in which I had been engaged, the profits 
 from year to year, and the particulars of one or two fortu- 
 nate speculations. I took pen and ink, and summed toge- 
 ther the amount of my bills, warrants, and securities. 
 
 ^'^ I then pushed aside the pocket-books, and drew toward 
 me the black box. ' This,' said I, ^ I regard as peculiarly my 
 own.' It contained the evidences of my birth and identity, 
 the sentence of the judge who had awarded to me my 
 estate, the ejectment of the late possessor, and the titles of 
 the landed property which my agent had purchased for me 
 in Switzerland. 
 
 " ^ As I have now quitted trade, resumed I, ' and am going 
 to retire from the world, I have been trying to make my 
 will. Here it is, pulling a pretty large parcel from my 
 pocket : I will leave it with you, Fleetwood ; peruse it at 
 your leisure. One thing only I have to say ; I do not 
 show it you to consult you upon it ; I am peremptory in 
 its contents, and will not alter a letter ; but, between such 
 old friends as we are, I think it right you should be ac- 
 quainted with all my thoughts. 
 
 '^ "^ Is it your will } ' said your father. 
 
 '' ' Pooh ! ' said I, smiling, ' do not let us deal in quib- 
 bles and disputes about a word ! If, however, I must come 
 to definitions, I will tell you, that by a will I understand a 
 paper or parchment, containing my final and irrevocable 
 disposition of that property over which the municipal laws 
 of Europe give me an empire ; and to tell you the truth, I 
 hold a man's making his will and the different provisions it 
 contains, to be one of the most sacred and indispensable 
 duties he can perform, and one of those circumstances 
 which may best serve as a criterion to distinguish the ho- 
 nest man and the knave, the man of narrow, and the man 
 of capacious and liberal, views.' 
 
 " The parcel I tendered to your father contained a regular 
 and formal transfer to him of all the property which I had 
 just put upon his table, with the exception of the contents 
 of the black box. 
 
 *' ' It is not your will,' said Fleetwood: ' I will not 
 touch a farthing of your property.' 
 L 2 
 
148 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 '^ ' You shall not. My property is contained in this 
 black box. The rest is a debt I am come to you to pay. 
 Why will you make many words in a case which common 
 sense decides in a moment ? ' 
 
 '^'^ It is yours. The small germ from which it sprung 
 was the gift of my father. The rest is the accumulation 
 of your industry, the fruits of twenty years' occupation and 
 labour. I insist upon it that you take it away.' 
 
 " ' Fleetwood, if I must speak on such a subject, hear 
 me ! Good God, it is the plainest question in the world ! 
 I have been your father's steward, and bring back the 
 fruits of my stewardship to his son. I have abstracted 
 from it a considerable sum, which was necessary to my eli- 
 gible settlement in my own country. I had always deter- 
 mined to settle exactly in the way I am now executing. 
 You have not disturbed my projects a jot. If I had re- 
 tained the property which is now yours, I never would have 
 spent an atom of it upon myself or any of my relations. I 
 should have been a trustee for others, and a very laborious 
 office I should have had. As it is, the whole is yours. I 
 have calculated the matter with great niceness, and I find 
 that you will this day be placed exactly where your father 
 left you. We shall neither of us be the better or the 
 worse for each other, except, as I hope, we shall be both 
 gainers in the possession of each other's friendship and af- 
 fections. Did I say that we shall neither of us be the 
 better or the worse ? Alas ! how grievous an error did I 
 commit ! I am still indebted to your father and you, for 
 my life, my education, my estimation in the world, the 
 years of respectability and peace I have enjoyed, and the 
 power I have at last exerted to recover the property of my 
 ancestors. When I owe you so vast a debt that I can 
 never repay, how can you be so ungenerous as to endea- 
 vour to prevent me from reimbursing this insignificant 
 portion of the obligation I owe you ? ' 
 
 ^^ I was peremptory, and your father was obliged to sub- 
 mit. We had each our place, assigned us by the destiny 
 under which we were born ; and the arrangement I now ^ 
 made was restoration to us both. I wanted to end my life 
 
FLEETVT^OOD. 1 49 
 
 like my father, a citizen of Uri ; it was proper that my \ 
 friend should live like his ancestors, a great English mer- 
 chant, and, when he retired from active life, an opulent 
 English country gentleman. What had I, a republican of 
 the old model, to do with bonds, warrants, and securities ? 
 To me they were an insupportable incumbrance ; to your 
 father they were necessary. You perceive with me, my 
 dear Casimir, that all the obligation was on one side. Your 
 father and grandfather had done every thing for me ; I did 
 nothing for them. They had taken me in an outcast ; they 
 had made me one of their family equal with themselves ; 
 they had given me my education, and by consequence every 
 quality that made me respectable in the eyes of my fellow 
 beings ; I had lived upon them for twenty years in the 
 style of a German sovereign. If the venerable Ambrose 
 Fleetwood had been more actively my friend, I always con- 
 sidered the part your father acted as not a whit less 
 honourable. Human beings are in all cases so fond of 
 their creatures ! in the objects of their generosity they 
 behold the mirror of their own virtues, and are satisfied. 
 Your grandfather made me his child, and doted on me as 
 such. But your father, without the smallest pretence to 
 this original merit, without any stimulus in the gratifica- 
 tion of his own complacence, entered into the sentiment of 
 my preserver, never uttered a murmur, never felt a com- 
 punction, but fully approved of the lavish bounty which 
 stripped him of so considerable a portion of his fortune. It 
 was this feeling of his heart which made us brothers, bro- 
 thers by a dearer bond than that of nature, by a more 
 sacred tie than that of a common descent. My soul has 
 always panted for an occasion of showing myself worthy of 
 such a friend, of repaying some small part of the obhgation 
 I owe to the name of Fleetwood ; but I shall go down to 
 the grave ungratified in this first wish of my heart." 
 
 L 3 
 
150 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 In such talk I and my friend spent the chief part of our 
 journey to England. We reached Merionethshire, and 
 found a desolated mansion, and a tenanted grave. In the 
 one, and over the other, we united our tears. " My friend ! 
 my father ! most generous of men ! " were the epithets 
 with which a thousand times we saluted the shade of the 
 departed. 
 
 And here I heg leave to protest against the doctrine too 
 commonly promulgated in the world, that we ought to call 
 off our thoughts, as speedily as possible, from the recol- 
 lection of our deceased ^riends, and not waste our spirits in 
 lamentation for irremedldble losses. The persons from whom 
 I have oftenest heard this lesson, have been of the class of 
 the hard-hearted, who have sought in such '' counsels of 
 prudence" an apology for their own unfeeling serenity. He 
 was a wiser man than they, who said, ^'^ It is good to 
 dwell in the house of mourning ; for by the sadness of the 
 countenance the heart is made better." Certainly I found 
 a salutary and purifying effect, in talking to the spirit of 
 my father when I was alone, and in discoursing of his 
 good deeds and his virtues when I came into society. I 
 cannot accuse these habits of having generated in me an 
 inclination to indolence and inactivity ; or, if they intro- 
 duced a short interval of that sort, it was a heaven-born 
 inactivity, by which my whole character was improved. 
 Woe to the man who is always busy, — hurried in a tur- 
 moil of engagements, from occupation to occupation, and 
 with no seasons interposed, of recollection, contemplation, 
 and repose ! Such a man must inevitably be gross and 
 vulgar, and hard and indelicate, — the sort of man with 
 whom no generous spirit would desire to hold intercourse. 
 
 After having spent about two months with me in Me- 
 rionethshire, M. Ruffigny consented to accompany me in 
 an excursion, rendered necessary by particular business, to 
 London. I was not at first exactly aware of the motive 
 
FLEETWOOD. 151 
 
 of my venerable monitor to this new compliance. In the 
 sequel it became sufficiently evident. 
 
 This was the first considerable visit I ever paid to the 
 metropolis of England. Beside the change of scene, I had 
 a new character to sustain. I had travelled in France a 
 young heir, and in a certain sense under a state of pupil- 
 age. In London I was obliged to regard myself as the 
 head of a family, and, in point of fortune, one of the most 
 eminent country gentlemen of that part of the island 
 where my estates lay. This was calculated in its first im- 
 pression to inspire me with a certain seriousness. But, 
 beside this, I felt, by the death of my father, and the 
 society of my father's friend, purified from the dissipations 
 which had too long engrossed me. I swore, in the views 
 which I meditated for my future life, that I would never 
 again yield to the degrading follies which had already cost 
 me so bitter a pang. 
 
 For some time I kept this resolution. By the persua- 
 sions of Ruffigny I frequented, in a moderate degree, the 
 society of my equals ; but the very mourning I wore for 
 my deceased parent served as a memento, keeping alive in 
 my heart the recollection of my duties. 
 
 In one unfortunate moment I felt my good resolutions 
 thawing before the flame of beauty. A friend, who had 
 made one with me in a rather numerous party at dinner, 
 persuaded me, when the company broke up, to accompany 
 him to a petit souper at the lodgings of his mistress. Wine 
 is a most eloquent advocate — the Burgundy and Cham- 
 pagne had been pushed about somewhat briskly at our 
 dinner, and I suffered myself to be persuaded in the gaiety 
 of the moment. I said, no ill consequence can result from 
 this deviation — I am fortified by a thousand arguments 
 against a relapse into my former errors — why should I 
 deny myself the sight of beauty ? 
 
 My inviter. Sir George Bradshaw by name, had boasted 
 of the charms of his mistress ; but there happened to be 
 present, as the friend of the lady of the house, a female 
 whose pretensions, at least in my eyes, outshone those 
 which I had heard so vaunted in an unspeakable degree. 
 I will not allow myself to dwell upon her features or her 
 L 4 
 
152 , FLEETWOOD. 
 
 figure ; suffice it to say, that her motions were lighter aitd 
 more graceful than those of a fawn, that the playfulness of 
 her manner and the sports of her fancy were inexhaustible, 
 that her voice was more rich and harmonious than the 
 lute of Apollo, and she sung twenty frolicsome and hu- 
 morous songs in the course of the evening with an_,inex- 
 pressible charm. The lady was called Mrs. Comorin; — 
 she had lately cohabited with Lord Mantlevillc, but she 
 had quarrelled with her admirer, and her heart and her 
 person were now vacant. 
 
 By what infatuation was it that I instantly felt myself 
 attracted toward her ? Surely, when nature kneaded my 
 frame, she cast in a double portion of her most combustible 
 materials ! Deep scars were left in my heart by my Pari- 
 sian amours, and I believed it impossible that any of the 
 sex could again possess herself of my inmost affections. I 
 had argued myself into a contempt of their character; an 
 opinion that to be a woman, was the same thing as to be 
 heartless, artificial, and perfidious. But what a delightful 
 plaything, what an inexhaustible amusement, should I find 
 in the bewitching Mrs. Comorin ! This was the most 
 dangerous stage of my character. The heart cannot be 
 used for ever ; after a certain number of experiments it 
 becomes obdurate and insensible ; but, if I fell, as I now 
 seemed on the point to do, into the mire of sensuality, I 
 should become a gross and impudent libertine for the term 
 of my life, and remain a hoary and despicable lecher to 
 the brink of the grave. 
 
 I saw this alluring woman again and again, and every 
 time I saw her I was more pleased than before. She was 
 made up of pride of heart, ease of manners, and an inex- 
 haustible flow of spirits, — of sentiment and real attach- 
 ment she was ; wholly incapable. I saw her for such as 
 she was ; but, such as she was, she won my partiality ; 
 and, perhaps, owing to the dear-bought experience, which 
 I could not yet recollect without agony, I liked her the 
 better, for her want of those quahties which had so fatally 
 stung my tranquillity. 
 
 I had strange qualms in my bosom, when the recollec- 
 tion of my inconsistency recurred to my thoughts. I^ 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 53 
 
 that had felt with such bitter remorse my debaucheries at 
 Paris, and the shameful way in which I had wasted my 
 time when my father lay on his death-bed, to be so soon 
 caught in the same toils ! — Yet, what, alas ! is the firm- 
 ness of twenty-one ? Five years of licentiousness had laid 
 the foundation in me, deep and broad, for a dissolute 
 character. In my adventures in Paris I had lost all that 
 ingenuous and decent shame, which so often and so hap- 
 pily stops a young man on the brink of the precipice. 
 Even the original sensitiveness and delicacy of my cha- 
 racter rendered me but the more tremblingly audacious in 
 certain situations. 
 
 I was beyond all things alarmed that the caprice which 
 had thus seized me, should remain unknown to M. Ruf- 
 figny. His thoughts on the other hand were continually 
 alive to watch. I had been in the habit, while I had 
 nothing to conceal, of mentioning to this aged friend, the 
 persons I saw and the places 1 visited, whenever we were 
 separated from each other. A practice of this sort, once 
 begun, cannot, without awkwardness and exciting suspicion, 
 be broken off; circumstanced, therefore, as I now was, I 
 named to my monitor Sir George Bradshaw and the 
 other young men of fashion with whom I associated, but 
 observed an inviolable silence as to the female members of 
 our parties. Ruffigny's suspicions were probably excited. 
 Sir George Bradshaw was by no means the ally he would 
 have chosen for me. Once or twice he expostulated with 
 me upon the new intimacies I seemed to be contracting. 
 I assured him that they were matters of convenience or 
 accident merely, and that I felt no such partiality to the 
 Baronet, as a mere change of place would not immediately 
 break off. 
 
 One evening that I had left M. Ruffigny to his solitary 
 avocations, the fancy took him to beguile a few hours at 
 the opera. As he had no acquaintance among the audi- 
 ence, he sat in the pit. 1 was with Sir George Bradshaw, 
 Mrs. Comorin, and her friend, in the Baronet's box. Ruf- 
 figny perceived me, long before I had an idea that I was 
 become a spectacle to him. The publicity of the situation 
 restrained my familiarities with this new mistress of my 
 
154^ 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 affections within certain bounds ; but Ruffigny saw enough^ 
 to leave no doubt in his mind as to the true explanation of 
 the scene. My fair friend was of too vivacious a temper- 
 ament, not to play a hundred whimsical tricks in the 
 course of an hour ; I caught the tone from her, and made 
 myself no less ridiculous. In the heyday of youthful 
 blood, I was capable of little restraint ; and my infant 
 passion inspired me with unwonted eagerness and activity. 
 In one of my idlest and most forward sallies I caught the 
 eye of Ruffigny; my face instantly became as red as 
 scarlet. 
 
 The next morning at breakfast we met. Ruffigny charged 
 me seriously with what he had discovered, with the dis- 
 grace I was bringing on my father's name, and the weak- 
 ness and frailty of the resolutions I had solemnly made. 
 The infatuation under which I laboured, stung me to a 
 defence of the situation in which I had been found. I 
 more than half suspected that I was wrong; and this 
 rendered me tenfold the more peremptory and earnest in 
 my vindication. 
 
 '^' Could I," asked Ruffigny, " apologise for this recent 
 misconduct, when I had expressed such bitter compunc- 
 tion for the errors I had fallen into at Paris ? " 
 
 " Very easily, and very consistently," I replied. '^ Those 
 errors I should ever regret, and regarded now with as 
 much abhorrence as ever. With whom were they com- 
 mitted.'' With women having husbands and children, 
 and occupying a respectable situation in society. I could 
 conceive nothing, which would be pronounced more atro- 
 cious by an uncorrupted mind. If the crimes, thus com- 
 mitted under a decent veil, and which, like the thefts of 
 the Spartan youth, were commended as long as they were 
 carried on with a dexterous obscurity, came to be detected, 
 what misery and confusion would they produce in families? 
 But, detected or not detected^ they poisoned every thing 
 that was valuable in social ties. They depended for their 
 perpetration upon one eternal scene of hypocrisy and dis- 
 simulation. The guilty female, instead of being that ex- 
 emplary character which her situation called upon her to 
 fill, was devoted to licentious thoughts, and must in her 
 
FLEETWOOD. 155 
 
 cooler moments be the object of her own contempt. The 
 children she brought into the world she could not love, and 
 the husband she received with personated caresses was the 
 individual in the world she was conscious of most deeply 
 injuring. WTiere such a state of society prevailed, every 
 lover must regard his mistress with moral disapprobation, 
 and every husband suspect that by the partner of his bosom 
 his confidence was betrayed. 
 
 " But in the acquaintance I contracted with this English 
 lady, I injured no one. No delusion was practised by any 
 of the parties. She would not be made worse by any thing 
 into which she was induced by me ; and neither I nor any 
 one else understood her but for what she was. Unfor- 
 tunately my adventures in Paris had led me to form such 
 an idea of the sex, that I could never be reconciled to the 
 thoughts of marriage : must I on that account remain as 
 solitary and continent as a priest ? " 
 
 The conversation between me and RufRgny gradually 
 became warmer ; but I was like Telemachus in the island 
 of Calypso, so inflamed by the wiles of the God of Love, so 
 enamoured with the graces and witchcraft of my Eucharis, 
 that all remonstrances were vain. In vain were the reason- 
 ings of honour and truth ; in vain the voice of my vener- 
 able instructor, to which I had vowed everlasting attention. 
 I parted from him with peevishness and ill humour. 
 
 *' Is it possible," said I, as I sallied into the street, " to 
 conceive any thing so unreasonable as Ruffigny ? There 
 are two principal crimes which, in the code of just morality, 
 respect the relations of the sexes, — adultery and seduction. 
 I know that puritans and monks have added a third to 
 the class, and have inveighed indiscriminately against all 
 incontinence. I do not decide whether their censure is 
 wholly destitute of foundation. But was ever any one so 
 absurd, as to place simple incontinence upon a level with 
 incontinence attended by one or the other of these aggrava- 
 tions ? And yet this obstinate old Swiss will not be beaten 
 out of it !" 
 
 This argument, no doubt, was exceedingly demonstrative 
 and satisfactory; but, as I passed and repassed it in my 
 
156 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 mind, I did not altogether like it. I hastened to dine witli 
 Sir George Bradshavv, and to visit Mrs. Comorin. I be- 
 lieved I should derive better lights on the subject from the 
 brilliancy of her eyes, than from Burgersdicius or Con- 
 dillac. 
 
 My sensations of this day were in a high degree painful 
 and perturbed. I confess that at moments Mrs. Comorin 
 never appeared to me so beautiful as now. 1 gazed on her 
 with ecstasy ; but that very ecstasy was tempestuous, and 
 interrupted with visions of my father and my father's 
 friend. Nothing was clear and perspicuous in my mind. 
 I suspected that my present passion was a vapour only, 
 was lighter than vanity ; my thoughts whispered me, that 
 all I had seen most worthy and excellent on earth, was my 
 deceased parent and Ruffigny. My soul was chaos. 
 
 A certain sentiment of remorse led me, sooner than usual, 
 to quit the company and hasten home. I tasked my thoughts 
 as I went, — "Shall I be distant and cold to Ruffigny? 
 Shall I endeavour to soothe him, and appease his anger ? 
 or, shall I sacrifice every thing at once to his invaluable 
 friendship ? " I enquired of my servant as I entered, — 
 '^ Where is M. Ruffigny.?" 
 
 •' Gone." 
 
 "Gone.? Whither.?" 
 
 '^ Into the country. He has been employed all day in 
 preparations, and set out in a post-chaise about half an 
 hour ago." 
 
 " Impossible ! Gone into the country, and say nothing 
 to me of the matter ! " 
 
 " He has left a letter for you." 
 
 I was impatient to peruse this letter. Yet, even while I 
 opened it, a thousand contending thoughts were embattled 
 in my mind. I felt that his going was intimately con- 
 nected with our dissension of that morning. I vehemently 
 accused myself for having so far offended the good old 
 man. I was full of resentment against him for having, at 
 this first difference, conceived a mortal offence. It was 
 not till after repeated efforts, that I found myself in a state 
 sufficiently calm to read the letter. 
 
fleetwood. 15? 
 
 " Casimib Fleetwood, 
 " The fact is at length ascertained. I have travelled 
 from Switzerland to Britain, and my dear friend, your late 
 father, has died, — in vain. 
 
 '^ Is it possible ? Shall this be so ? Casimir Fleet- 
 wood, you are called on to decide ! 
 
 " I cannot descend to altercation. It is not seemly, 
 that tried and hoary integrity should come into the lists, to 
 chop logic with petulant and hot-blooded vice. If events, 
 such as have lately been brought to strike upon your heart, 
 will not waken you, in vain might a stronger impulse be 
 sought in the deductions of Zeno, and the homilies of 
 Epictetus. Remember what I am, and how related to 
 your family ; remember your late father ; remember the 
 day of the lake of Uri ! 
 
 " On that day you said, ^ Would to God it were in my 
 power to recal a few past months ! My prospects and my 
 pleasures are finished ; my life is tarnished ; my peace is 
 destroyed ; I shall never again think of myself with appro- 
 bation, or with patience !' And you are now returned to 
 the course of life which you then censured with so much 
 bitterness. Was it you that said it ? 
 
 '' One of the worst symptoms on the present occasion, 
 is the sophistry with which you defend your error. A 
 beginning sinner offends, and accuses himself while he 
 offends ; a veteran in wrong has still some flimsy, miser- 
 able dissertation, by which he proves that wrong is not 
 wrong. 
 
 ^' Another symptom which almost bids me despair, is the 
 recent date of your conversion and good resolutions. The 
 evening before we set out from Merionethshire, we wept 
 together at your father's grave. The monitor whom you 
 consented, at seventy years of age, to withdraw from his 
 native valley, and to bring along through various climes 
 and states, has not yet quitted you. If you relapse, while 
 all these things are green and fresh before you, what shall 
 be predicted of the actions and pursuits in which you will 
 be engaged a few years hence } 
 
 " Shame, my dear Fleetwood, shame is ever the hand- 
 maid of vice. What is the language you have held to me 
 
158 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 for the last three weeks ? What shall I name you ? Mean 
 prevaricator ! You pretended to inform me who were the 
 persons with whom you associated. You mentioned all 
 the men of your society; you did not hint at a single 
 woman. You said, you felt no such partiality to Sir 
 George Bradshaw, as a mere change of place would not 
 immediately break off. — Do you think, that there is no 
 vice in the conduct, which led you thus pitifully to juggle 
 with your friend ? Do you think that such a juggler is 
 worthy the name of Fleetwood, or worthy the name of 
 man? 
 
 ^^ You say that, in attaching yourself to the mistress of 
 Lord Mandeville, you neither seduce innocence, nor make 
 yourself responsible for the violation of solemn vows. Be 
 It so. A sound mind would prompt you, not to describe 
 your conduct by negatives, but to enquire, what it is that 
 you do ? You sacrifice the serenity of an honourable mind 
 to the tumult of the lowest passions in man. It is as true 
 of the connection you now propose, as of any of the past, 
 that you cannot esteem the person with whom you form 
 this warm and entire intimacy. Every creature that lives, 
 derives some of the colour of his being from the objects 
 which are continually and familiarly around him. 
 
 ^' You have heard it said, that no man can be a great 
 poet, or an elevated and generous writer, v/ho is not first a 
 good man. Goodness is the corner-stone of all true excel- 
 lence. You cannot be blind enough to believe, that the 
 course to which you are returning, is consistent with good- 
 ness. Many of your most familiar thoughts will be sensual 
 and grovelling ; not of the class of impulses of sense, 
 which are purified by the most sacred charities of our 
 nature ; but of those which lead us to associate with the 
 debauched, and to have our favourite resort in the haunts 
 of profligacy. You will have a succession of mistresses ; 
 there will not be one vestige of the refined and the ideal, 
 what is noblest in taste and most exquisite in moral feeling, 
 left within you. By gross and vulgar souls you will be 
 admitted for respectable ; the men who do honour to the 
 species to which they belong, with one consent will pity 
 and will shun you. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 159 
 
 " Fleetwood, you must now decide — now, and for ever. 
 
 '^ Casimir, my heart bleeds for you. Think what my 
 feelings are ; the feelings of Ruffigny, to whom the name 
 of Fleetwood is a name for every thing sacred, who cannot 
 be content that one spot should stain the lustre of its white, 
 who lives only in the hope to discharge a small part of his 
 obligations to your father and grandfather, and whose aged 
 heart will burst, the moment he is convinced the son is 
 fixed to disgrace the virtues of his ancestors ! 
 
 *• You will recollect that I had a business which made 
 it desirable for me to make an excursion into Devonshire, 
 previously to my return to my native country. I have 
 seized this occasion for that purpose. I shall be absent a 
 fortnight. Casimir, I cannot parley with you. I leave 
 you to your reflections. When I return, I shall know, 
 whether Ruffigny is to live or die. 
 
 " Yours, more than his own, 
 
 " J. F. R." 
 
 Before I had half read this letter I rung the bell, and 
 ordered myself a post-chaise. I felt that I could suffer a 
 thousand deaths sooner than pass this fortnight in separ- 
 ation, or suffer my friend to remain a moment in doubt 
 of my good resolutions, when I had formed them. I tra- 
 velled all night, and overtook Ruffigny at Basingstoke. I 
 rushed into his arms ; I could not utter a word ; I sobbed 
 on his bosom. When I could speak, I was endless in my 
 professions of gratitude, and in protestations of a future 
 innocent and honourable life. I spoke of the recent de- 
 lusion into which I had fallen with accents of horror, self- 
 detestation, and despair. Ruffigny was deeply affected. 
 
 " This prompt and decisive return to reason and virtue 
 inspires me with the most sanguine hope," said he. 
 
160 
 
 \ 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 M. RuFFiGNY continued with me several months; and 
 during the remainder of his life, which was about six years, 
 I generally made a visit once a year to the canton of Uri. 
 The relation which existed between his family and mine 
 was of the most interesting sort. Never in any age or 
 country were two parties bound together by ties so noble. 
 I looked in his face, and saw the features of the venerable 
 Ambrose Fleetwood, and of my beloved father. What I 
 remarked was not the thing we denominate family likeness, 
 — the sort of cast of countenance by which descents and 
 pedigrees, whether wise men or fools, whether knaves or 
 honestj are, like the individuals of different nations, iden- 
 tified all over the world. The resemblance I perceived, 
 though less glaring at first sight, extended its root infinitely 
 deeper. It was that their hearts had been cast in the same 
 mould. He must have been a very slight observer of men, 
 who is not aware that two human creatures, equally good, 
 that love each other, and have during long periods asso- 
 ciated together, unavoidably contract a similarity of senti- 
 ments, of demeanour, and of physiognomonical expression. 
 But, beside this resemblance of Ruffigny to my parents, 
 which some will regard as fantastical, the countenance of 
 the venerable Swiss was a book where I could trace the 
 history of my ancestors. It was like the book of the 
 records of King Ahasuerus in the Bible, in which the good 
 deeds and deserts of the virtuous were written, that they 
 might not perish from the memories of those who were 
 indebted to them, unhonoured and forgotten. 
 
 The benefits my father proposed for me from the coun- 
 sels and intercourse of Ruffigny I extensively obtained. 
 From this period I became an altered man. The ebriety 
 and extravagance of youth were at an end with me. The 
 sobriety, the delicacy, the sentimental fastidiousness of my 
 childish days, revived in my bosom ; and I looked back 
 with astonishment at my adolescence, that I could ever 
 have departed so widely from my genuine character, 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 161 
 
 The means employed for my conversion were indeed 
 amply commensurate to the end proposed. There was 
 something so venerable in the figure and appearance of 
 Ruffigny, and primitive and patriarchal in his manners 
 and modes of thinkings that it was perhaps impossible to 
 converse intimately with him, and yet continue whelmed in 
 the mire of licentiousness. But, beside his general quali- 
 fications for the office, he came recommended to me by 
 considerations so sacred, as to render his expostulations, 
 his persuasives, and his alarms to my virtue and honour, 
 irresistible. What an unexampled friendship was that 
 which bound together the names of Fleetwood and Ruf- 
 figny ! Could I listen, otherwise than as to the admonitions 
 of a God, to the discourses of a man who had generously, 
 in his lifetime, and in the full vigour of his age, sur- 
 rendered to my family a fortune almost princely, and 
 tranquilly retired to the simplicity of his ancestors ? In 
 every word he spoke, I felt this circumstance enforcing his 
 remarks. The misery of admonition in general, is that it 
 is so difficult for the person whose benefit it professes, to 
 be convinced of the disinterestedness of his monitor. Some 
 suspicion of selfishness, of ostentation, of vanity, of false 
 colours, and the disingenuousness of a pleader, lurks within, 
 and poisons every clause. Could I suspect any thing of 
 that kind, in this living Curius, who had come from his 
 Sabine farm, the voluntary obscurity to which he had 
 withdrawn his age, purposely to fulfil the last injunctions 
 of my father, and to provide for the tranquillity and virtue 
 of the son ? While I listened to his voice, my conscience 
 whispered me, — It is the voice of him, but for whose ab- 
 solute self-denial and heroic friendship, my father would 
 have been bankrupt of comforts and fortune, and myself a 
 beggar. 
 
 By degrees — let me venture to say — I became assimi- 
 lated, however imperfectly, to my admirable monitor. I 
 whispered to my swelling heart, " Never, no, never will I 
 belong to such men as these, and not make it the first 
 object of my solicitude to become like them. Let other 
 men talk of their heroic blood, and swear they will not blot 
 a long Hne of princes from whom they may be descended ! 
 
162 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Here is my patent of nobility, than which I defy ill tlu 
 monarchs of the earth to show a brighter ; not sealed by 
 the ruin of provinces and empires, but by the purest and 
 most godlike contempt of all selfish views that ever was 
 exhibited. In me the race of the Fleetwoods shall survive f 
 I will become heir to the integrity and personal honour of 
 the virtuous Ruffigny." 
 
 Why do I write down these elevated vows, which, alas ! 
 I have never redeemed? I but the more sincerely sub- 
 scribe to my own condemnation. My history, as I early 
 remarked, is a register of errors, the final record of my 
 penitence and humiliation. 
 
 From this period, however, I ceased to practise the vices 
 of a libertine. The faults I have further to confess are of 
 a diflTerent nature. My heart was henceforward pure, my, 
 moral tastes revived in their genuine clearness, and the 
 errors I committed were no longer those of a profligate. 
 vThus far I became unequivocally a gainer by this great 
 event of my life. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I 
 
 My education and travels had left me a confirmed misan- 
 thropist. This is easily accounted for. I had seen nothing 
 of the world but its most unfavourable specimens. What 
 can be less amiable, than the broad, rude, unfeeling, and 
 insolent debaucheries of a circle of young men, who have 
 just begun to assume the privileges of man, without hav- 
 ing yet learned his engagements and his duties ? "SFhat 
 can be more ignoble and depraved, than the manners of a 
 court and a metropolis, especially of such a court and me- 
 tropolis as those of the last years of Louis XV.? My 
 constitutional temper was saturnine and sensitive. This 
 character of mind had been much heightened in me in my 
 early solitude in Wales. I came into the world prepared 
 to be a severe and an unsparing judge. For a time I did 
 
FLEETWOOD, iGS 
 
 violence to myself, and mingled in tKe vices I witnessed. 
 But this had not the effect of making me less, but more 
 intolerant. When I came to myself, the spots I observed 
 upon the vesture of my innocence, made me feel a still 
 deeper loathing for the foul and miry roads through which 
 "I had journeyed. It has often been said that there is no 
 sharper Argus or severer judge, than a superannuated de- 
 bauchee. I know not how generally this is the case ; but 
 it may easily be supposed that there is much truth in the 
 maxim, where the mind was originally virtuous, and was 
 endowed with a taste vivid and thoroughly alive to the 
 difference of beauty and deformity, whether intellectual or 
 moral. I loved and inexpressibly honoured the characters 
 of Ruffigny and my own immediate ancestors ; but this 
 only whetted my disapprobation of the rest of my species. 
 They were so totally unlike every other person with whom 
 
 I familiarly associated, that they struck me like lumi- 
 sent into the world to expose the opacity and dis- 
 graces of the rest of its inhabitants. Perhaps that is the 
 most incorrigible species of misanthropy, which, as Swift 
 expresses it, loves John, and Matthew, and Alexander, but 
 liates mankind. 
 
 H^J'e then begins the moral of my tale: — I ''^ repented," 
 but I was not '' made whole." My entire future life was 
 devoted to the expiation of five years of youthful folly and 
 
 [fulness. If I had retained the simplicity and guile- 
 
 ss of my Merionethshire character, it is impossible 
 
 should have been happy. As it was, 
 
 — — " All the voyage of my life 
 Was bound in shallows and in miseries." 
 
 contracted a contamination, which could never be 
 |ated. Innocence is philanthropical and confiding, 
 [eveth all things, and hopeth all things." I looked 
 levery thing with an eye of jealousy and increduHty. 
 iniverse had lost to me that sunshine, which it derives 
 §the reflection of an unspotted mind. All was dark, 
 Ireary, and sable around me. I wandered in pathless 
 unable to arrive but at regions of barren rock and, 
 imneasurable sands. Innocence is a sort of magnetism 
 M 2 
 
 I 
 
164 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 by which one good heart understands another. It is 
 peaceful when alone; and, when it comes out into the 
 world, it meets with individual after individual whom it 
 confesses for brothers. I had lost this touchstone. In 
 solitude I was disconsolate ; and, if I mixed in the haunts 
 of men, I understood them not ; in no one did I find a 
 companion; and in the most populous resorts and crowded 
 assemblies, I was perfectly and consummately alone. 
 
 I returned to my solitude in Wales with an arrow in my 
 heart. What did I want? I knew not. Yet I was not 
 happy. I regarded my own life with no complacency or 
 approbation. Oh, Cader Idris ! Oh, beloved banks of the 
 Desunny ! Glorious men once trod your shades, my father, 
 and my father's friend. How can I compare with these ? 
 Their lives were generous, and marked with the most dis- 
 interested sacrifices; but what have I done? If my days 
 had been spent in innocence, that were much. I passed 
 but a short period in the tumult of society; but in that 
 period how many blots did I contract ! These blots make 
 all my history. 
 
 There are but two principal sources of happiness to the 
 man who lives in solitude: memory, and imagination. 
 The recollections which offered themselves to my memory 
 gave me no pleasure. That period of my life which was 
 most fraught with impressions, and which, therefore, made 
 the principal stock of my memory, was hateful to me. 
 Imagination in the days of my youth had been the main, 
 fountain of my delight. The materials of my imagination 
 had been childish impressions, eked out with the books of 
 children, with pastoral ideas, and fairies, and magic, and 
 processions, and palaces. But, when we have mixed in 
 real scenes, the materials furnished by books shrink infe? 
 insignificance. The actual affairs into which the pa ssions 
 of man have obtruded themselves, ambition, and vaniij 
 shame, and love, and jealousy, and despair, take sc 
 faster hold of the mind, that even when we would expatiak 
 in worlds of fancy, these affairs will push forward, 
 spite of us make a part of the landscape we delineate 
 
 I know that most men would have been happy 
 place; at least, much happier than I was. The transactions 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 165 
 
 of my early years have nothing singular in them, except as 
 they were made so hy my turn of mind, and the strong 
 and subtle passions which were thus called forth in me. 
 A dissipated and riotous life at the university, and a suc- 
 cession of mistresses at first introduction into the world, 
 compose the history of most young men, born to the in- 
 heritance of a considerable fortune, and whose education 
 has been conducted in a style of liberal expense. Such 
 young men are usually found to retire contented after the 
 effervescence of youth is over, and unreluctantly to exchange 
 the drawing-rooms of foreign courts, and the contemplation 
 of foreign manners, for the country club and the bowling- 
 green. They lay aside their satin suits, and take up their 
 pipes, and become as complete rustics, as if they had never 
 wandered beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. 
 
 Such was not the case in my instance. At no time of 
 my life did I ever delight in such " worshipful society;" 
 and I retained too deep an impression of the scenes of 
 courtly refinement I had witnessed, to be capable of 
 dwindling into a mere justice of the peace. I sought 
 consolation in the exercise of my beneficence ; and, though 
 I never entered the halls of the wealthy, I often penetrated 
 into the cottages of the poor : and I found what I expected. 
 But, though I found the consolation I looked for, I did 
 not find it in the degree I looked for. I had recourse to 
 the amusements of literature: I formed projects, — some- 
 times of investigating the progress or decay of national 
 genius and taste, and sometimes of following through its 
 minutest ramifications a certain memorable period of history, 
 — projects which led me from author to author in wide 
 succession, and took away the oppressive feelings of pas- 
 siveness which frequently pursue us, when we resign our- 
 selves to the simple and direct reading of a single work. 
 
 But neither beneficence nor study afforded me sufficient 
 occupation. The relieving the wants of our neighbour 
 is a pursuit which can only employ us at intervals, and can 
 never form the leading and regular business of our lives. 
 Reading has its periods of satiety. I fell sometimes, for 
 want of an object sufficiently to exercise the passions, into 
 long fits of languor and depression, wliich were incon- 
 M 3 
 
166 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 ceivably wearisome. Exercise and the scenes of nature no 
 longer relieved me. The inactivity which came over me 
 made it very difficult for me to summon the resolution to 
 go out of doors in search of variety. But, when that dif- 
 ficulty was conquered, variety itself afforded me no pleasure. 
 The landscape was as if it had lost the prismatic illusion, 
 which clothes it to the sense of sight in such beautiful 
 colours. The fields were no longer green, nor the skies blue; 
 or at least they afforded no more pleasure to my eyes, than 
 they would have done if the grass had been withered, and 
 the heavens shrouded in pestilence and death. The beau- 
 tiful and the bold forms of valley and mountain, which 
 had frequently delighted me, seemed to my eye loathsome, 
 and tame, and monotonous. The refreshing breeze, which 
 gives new life even to the wearied patient perishing with a 
 fever, played in vain upon my countenance and among the 
 locks of my hair. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIl. 
 
 Tired of the country, I repaired to London. To be pre- 
 sented at court, and occasionally to make one in the rout, 
 the ball, or the festino of a lady of quality, were rather 
 necessities I submitted to, than pleasures I sought. One 
 advantage which I knew I should find in the metropolis, 
 was an opportunity of frequenting the society of men of 
 genius. 1 heard of a club of authors, several of whose 
 works I had read with pleasure, and I obtained the favour 
 of being admitted an honorary member. The society had 
 assumed to itself a Greek name, as if by way of hint to 
 the ignorant and the illiterate to keep their distance. 
 
 I did not, however, find in this society the pleasure I 
 had anticipated. Undoubtedly, in the conversations they 
 held I heard many profound remarks, many original con- 
 ceptions, many pointed repartees, many admirable turns 
 of humour and wit. I impute it to the fastidiousness of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 167 
 
 my own temper, bred in solitude, and disgusted with the 
 world, that 1 so soon grew weary of this classic circle. I 
 saw better men than myself, men of elevated rank and 
 refined breeding, as well as of accomplished minds, who 
 derived from the dinners and suppers of this club, and 
 still more from the separate society and acquaintance of 
 its members, an enjoyment upon which they set a high 
 value. As far as my observation of the world extended, 
 it was always the more valuable individuals in the class of 
 men of quality and fortune, it was such as possessed the 
 most generous minds and the most comprehensive views, 
 who delighted most in the intercourse of men of literature. 
 They were the fools, the envious, and the selfish, who 
 shunned such intimates, because they could not bear to be 
 outdone by persons poorer than themselves, and because 
 they felt the terrifying apprehension of being reduced by 
 them into ciphers. I saw also, contrary to the received 
 opinion, that the men of real genius, and who were genuine 
 ornaments of the repubhc of letters, were always men of 
 liberal tempers, of a certain nobility and disinterestedness 
 of sentiment, and anxious for the promotion of individual 
 and general advantage, however they might sometimes be 
 involved in petty and degrading altercations and disputes. 
 
 On the other hand, I must do myself the justice to say, 
 that I discovered many real blemishes and errors in these 
 conversations. The literary men whose acquaintance I 
 could boast, were frequently as jealous of their fame and 
 superiority, as the opulent men, their neighbours, were of 
 the preservation and improvement of their estates. This 
 indeed is but natural : every man who is in any way distin- 
 guished from the herd of his species, will of course set no 
 small value upon the thing, whatever it is, to which he is 
 indebted for his distinction. No one who has tasted of 
 honour, would willingly be thrust out among the ignoble 
 vulgar. The only thing which can defend a man against 
 this pitiful jealousy and diseased vigilance, is a generous 
 confidence in his own worth, teaching him that it will 
 find its place without any dishonest and clandestine exer- 
 tion on his part. The individual who is continually blow- 
 ing the fire of his own brilliancy, who asserts and denies, 
 M 4 
 
168 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 is direct or artificial, serious or jocose^ not attending to the 
 inspirations of truth and simpHcity of hearty but as he 
 thinks may best contribute to advance his reputation, if 
 he can at all be acknowledged for a pleasant companion 
 and associate, is so at least with a very powerful drawback. 
 Such men form to themselves an art in conversation by 
 which they may best maintain the rank in intellect they 
 have acquired. They think little of the eliciting truth, or 
 a conformity to the just laws of equal society, but have 
 trained themselves to a trick, either by an artful interrup- 
 tion, a brutal retort, a pompous, full sounding, and well 
 pronounced censure, or an ingeniously supported exhibition 
 of sarcastic mockery, to crush in the outset the appearance 
 of rivalship, and to turn the admiration of bystanders 
 entirely upon themselves. 
 
 This is altogether a pitiful policy. True literary repu- 
 tation does not depend upon a man's maintaining a shining 
 ■figure in the conversations in which he mixes. If an 
 individual has no nobler ambition than to be the chairman 
 of his own club, why does he commit his thoughts to 
 paper, or send them through the medium of the press into 
 the world ? The moment he has done this, he ought to 
 consider himself as having pronounced his disdain of the 
 fugitive character of a conversation wit or a conversation 
 bully. I am inclined to believe that no one ever uniformly 
 maintained, in various companies, the first place in sub- 
 tlety and wit, who has not cultivated this character with 
 dishonest art, and admitted many unmanly and disingenuous 
 subterfuges into the plan by which he pursued it. If so, 
 the shining man of a company is to be put down in the 
 lowest class of persons of intellect. If men entitled to a 
 higher place have too often submitted to this, it is that 
 they have inflicted on themselves a voluntary degradation. 
 — One exception only can I devise to this disingenuous- 
 ness, which is, where a man has the absolute cacoUhes 
 loquendi*j and where his thoughts are so brilliant and 
 elevated, that all other men will be eager to listen to them. 
 
 The man of genius, who has delivered the fruit of his 
 
 • Disease of speaking. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 169 
 
 meciitations and invention to the public, has nothing natu- 
 rally to do with this inglorious struggle. He converses 
 that he may inform and be informed. He wishes to study 
 the humours, the manners, and the opinions of mankind. 
 He is not unwilling to take his share in conversation, be- 
 cause he has nothing to conceal, and because he would 
 contribute, as far as with modesty and propriety he can, 
 to the amusement and instruction of others. But his fa- 
 vourite place is that of a spectator. He is more eager to 
 add to his own stock of observation and knowledge, than 
 to that of his neighbours. This is natural and just : since 
 he knows better his own wants, than he can know the 
 wants of any other man ; and since he is more sure of the 
 uses that will be made of the acquisitions he shall himself 
 obtain. 
 
 Among the literary men I saw in this club, or with 
 whom I in some way became acquainted in consequence 
 of being a member of it, I found one or two exceptions 
 such as I have last described ; but the rest were stimulated 
 by the love of praise in society, as much as they had been 
 in their writings; and the traps they laid for applause 
 were no less gross and palpable, than those employed by 
 a favourite actor, or the author of a modern comedy. 
 
 Even such members of the club as did not sacrifice all 
 truth and justice at the shrine of a sordid vanity, had the 
 habit, as I heard it once expressed by a captious visiter at 
 his return from one of their meetings, of speaking as if 
 they talked out of a book. I admit that this is a fastidious 
 objection. He who spends his life among books, must be 
 expected to contract something of the manner of his con- 
 stant companions. He who would disentangle a knotty 
 point, or elucidate a grave question of taste, morals, or 
 politics, must discourse to some degree in the way of dis- 
 sertation, or he would discourse in vain; and if, like a 
 dissertation for popular readers, he takes care to relieve 
 his style with something pointed and epigrammatic, paints 
 his thoughts, as he goes on, to the imagination of his 
 hearers, interrupts himself gracefully, and is on his guard 
 not to say a word too much, he may be allowed to have 
 played his part commendably. If by talking as out of a 
 
1 70 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 book, is meant no more than that a man speaks correctly, 
 with well chosen words, in a perspicuous style, and with 
 phrases neatly turned, the objection is eminently unreason- 
 able. Such is the true and sound view of the subject; 
 but it was in vain to argue the point ; so I was made, and 
 so I found myself affected. _ 
 
 I was the spoiled child of the great parent. Nature. I 
 delighted only in the bold and the free, in what was at 
 one and the same time beautiful and lawless. What aspired 
 to please me, must be as wild as the artless warblings of 
 the choristers of the woods. Its graces must be unex- 
 pected, and were endeared so much the more to me as 
 they showed themselves in the midst of irregularity. What 
 spoke to ray heart must be a full, mellow, and protracted 
 note, or a bewitching vibration of sound, which seemed to 
 come on purpose to reward me for listening, for a time, to 
 what gave no express promise of so pure a delight. 
 
 But, had it been otherwise, an attendance once a week, 
 during the season, at a club of authors, and the occasional 
 society of its members in the intervals, would have afforded 
 but slender materials for happiness. It might have an- 
 swered to the confections which amuse the palate at the 
 end of a feast, but it could never appease the appetite of 
 him, who feels an uneasy and aching void within, and is 
 in hot chase for the boon of content. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Among the members of our club who were not themselves 
 authors, there were a few who were among the most distin- 
 guished ornaments of the English senate. The intercourse 
 of these men was particularly delightful to me. Their man- 
 ners were more urbane, attentive, flattering, and uniform, 
 than those of the professional authors. They were gentle- 
 men by birth and by education; and, as they had not the 
 same goad urging them along in the pursuit of praise as 
 
FLEETWOOD. 171 
 
 those who embraced literature as a profession, their pas- 
 sions, at least as seen within these walls, were less restless, 
 their views more enlarged, and their souls possessed of more 
 calm and repose. — In this comparison, be it remembered, I 
 speak only of the majority of the authors who were mem- 
 bers of this club. Among them I knew some illustrious 
 exceptions ; and I should think myself highly censurable in 
 deciding, from those I saw, upon the merits of others whom 
 I never knew. 
 
 The pleasure, however, I felt in the intercourse of such 
 of our members as were senators, and the admiration with 
 which I was impressed of their manners and temper, in- 
 spired me with the desire of becoming myself a represent- 
 ative in the English parliament. It will readily be perceived 
 how ill my temper was Suited to the office of courting suf- 
 frages and soliciting votes. In this one instance I conquered 
 my temper. I promised myself that it should be but for 
 once. I blamed myself for being so unbending to the man- 
 ners of the world. I saw that the task I was undertaking, 
 would afford me a copious opportunity of studying the hu- 
 mours and predilections of the middling and lower classes 
 of the community : why should I quit the stage of human 
 life without having obtained such an opportunity ? I made 
 myself popular, and I resolved to do so. I gave entertain- 
 ments, and I delivered speeches. I laughed at the rude 
 jokes of handicraftsmen, and I cracked my jokes in return. 
 I smoked my pipe, and toasted Church and King, and the 
 wooden walls of old England. I saw that, in complying with 
 the plain, coarse manners of my constituents, I ran no such 
 risk as I had done in my former compliances with the man- 
 ners of the Oxonians and the Parisians ; and, instead of 
 despising myself for what I did, I esteemed myself the 
 more, in proportion as I found that I possessed one faculty 
 which I had not before suspected, and as I was able thus 
 stoically to adapt myself to a certain object, and pursue it 
 to the end. I was elected by a considerable majority of 
 votes; and those who had supported me with their suf- 
 frages, or who had vociferated and huzzaed in my behalf, 
 were satisfied that they had gained a more important cause, 
 tlian could have been secured by the deliverance of an op- 
 
172 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 pressed country, or the emancipation of one quarter of the 
 world. 
 
 I entered with awe the walls of the British parliament. 
 I recollected the illustrious men of past ages who had 
 figured upon that scene. 1 recollected the glorious struggles 
 of our ancestors which had there been made, and by means 
 of which greater privileges and liberties had been secured 
 to the people of England, than any of the neighbouring 
 countries could boast. I looked round with complacence 
 upon the accomplished characters who now filled some of 
 the most conspicuous seats on those benches. I eagerly 
 courted the acquaintance of these leaders. I was desirous 
 to understand their views, and enter into their projects. 
 
 There is always something more interesting to a young 
 and uncorrupted mind, in the cause of opposition, than in the 
 cause of administration. The topics on which they have to 
 expatiate are of a more animated and liberal cast : rhetoric 
 ever finds a more congenial and less thorny field, in the office 
 of attack, than in that of defence. Liberty is the theme of 
 their declamation ; and their bosoms beat with the thought 
 that they are pleading the cause of the great mass of their 
 countrymen, who are denied the advantage of being able to 
 plead for themselves. Beside which, modern governments 
 always must, or at least always do, have recourse to various 
 modes of proceeding not exactly in accord with pure 
 notions of integrity : a statesman in place cannot, but in 
 a very limited sense of the word, be an honest man. I 
 therefore enlisted myself in the ranks of opposition. 
 
 But, in proportion as I became more familiarly ac- 
 quainted with the maxims and views of opposition, I felt 
 my satisfaction in them diminished. I saw that their aim 
 was to thrust the ministers in possession out of office, that 
 they might take their places. I became aware that they 
 objected to many things, not because they were bad, but 
 because their defects, real or apparent, afforded plausible 
 topics of declamation. I perceived that the spirit of cen- 
 suring the measures of government grew too much into a 
 habit, and was directed too much by the intention of 
 bringing the immediate conductors of public affairs into 
 discredit and contempt. I acquitted the most considerable 
 
FLEETWOOD. , 173 
 
 of the leaders from the consciousness of pursuing so pitiful 
 a plan. Men of generous minds will always dwell upon that 
 view of the business in which they are engaged, which is 
 most congenial to their natural tempers. But, beside every 
 other disadvantage attending them in this situation, persons 
 of merit, engaged in a party, must accommodate themselves 
 to the views of the dullest and meanest of their adherents, — 
 to their impatience, their perverseness, and their acrimony; 
 they must employ a thousand arts to soothe their prejudices 
 and keep them in temper ; and as, in every party that ever 
 existed, the fools greatly outnumber the men of understand- 
 ing, so in matters of party it will infallibly happen that the 
 honourable and the sage must, on a thousand occasions, be 
 made the tools and dupes of the vilest of the herd. A par- 
 liamentary leader scarcely appeared to me the same man in 
 a poUtical consultation, that he had done in a literary club. 
 In his club he was free, ingenuous, and gay ; in his political 
 character he was vigilant and uneasy, calculating with rest- 
 less anxiety upon appearances and results, and still burning 
 with ever-new disappointments. 
 
 I saw that the public character of England, as it exists 
 in the best pages of our history, was gone. I perceived 
 that we were grown a commercial and arithmetical nation ; 
 and that, as we extended the superficies of our empire, we 
 lost its moral sinews and its strength. The added numbers 
 which have been engrafted upon both houses of parliament 
 have destroyed the health and independence of its legisla- 
 ture ; the wealth of either India has been poured upon us, 
 to smother that free spirit which can never be preserved but 
 in a moderate fortune. Contractors, directors, and up- 
 starts, — men fattened on the vitals of their fellow-citizens, 
 — have taken the place which was once filled by the Went- 
 worths, the Seldens, and the Pyms. By the mere project, 
 — the most detestable and fatal that ever was devised, — of 
 England borrowing of the individuals who constitute Eng- 
 land, and accumulating what is called a national debt, she 
 has mortgaged her sons to an interminable slavery.] 
 
 I did not, however, immediately see things in this point 
 of view. I regarded my entrance into the station of an 
 English senator as a memorable epoch in my life. I said. 
 
174 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 " I have been too long a mere spectator of the scene of ex- 
 istence ; it is owing to this, that I have felt such a constant 
 corroding and dissatisfaction. I will now take an active 
 part. In the measures which are adopted I will have a 
 voice ; I will contribute by my advice to their improvement 
 or their overthrow ; I will study the principles of legisla- 
 tion ; I will detect bad laws, and procure their abrogation ; 
 I will bring forward such regulations as the present state of 
 manners and policy demands; I will from time to time 
 urge and unfold, in a greater or a smaller circle, as occasion 
 may offer, such maxims as may insensibly tend to the cor- 
 rection and elevation of the character of my country." 
 
 I know not whether it was owing to any radical vice in 
 my disposition, but I did not long persist in these gallant 
 resolutions. The difficulties were much greater than at a 
 distance I had imagined. The contrast, which gradually ob- 
 truded upon me, between England as I found her in the 
 volumes of her history, and England as she now was, and 
 had insensibly become for more than a hundred years, 
 damped the ardour of my enthusiasm. 
 
 Once or twice, indeed, I felt that animation which raised 
 my soul to such a pitch, that I was conscious I had nothing 
 left, for the moment, to desire. Some measures in which I 
 had a part, were of immediate importance to the welfare of 
 thousands. . Some struggles in which I had joined were 
 arduous; some victories, in which I was one among the 
 conquerors, carried transport to my heart. I witnessed 
 situations like that which Burke describes upon the re- 
 peal of the American Stamp Act, — " When at length, 
 after the suitors most interested respecting the issue had 
 waited with a trembling and anxious expectation, almost to 
 a winter's return of light, the doors of the house were 
 thrown open, and showed them the figure of their deHverer 
 in the moment of his well-earned triumph; when they 
 jumped upon him like children on a long-absent father, and 
 clung about him as captives about their redeemer." But 
 these occasions were of rare occurrence ; we soon fell back 
 into the shopkeeping and traffic-trained character I de- 
 plored ; and even to these triumphs themselves, so beautiful 
 to the eye. it was often found that treachery, calculation, 
 and cabal had contributed their polluted aid. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 75 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Displeased with the phenomena which I observed in the 
 seat of empire, and satiated with the beauties of my pater- 
 nal estate, I resolved once more to pass over to the Conti- 
 nent ; and to seek, in the spectacle of different countries, 
 and the investigation of dissimilar manners, relief from the 
 i'nnip which devoured me. 
 
 This expedient~seemed at first to answer my purpose. 
 Novelty and change have a sovereign power over the human 
 mind. 
 
 But the efficacy of this remedy did not last long. 
 Wherever I went, I carried a secret uneasiness along with 
 me. When I left Paris for Vienna, or Vienna for Madrid, 
 I journeyed a solitary individual along the tedious road ; 
 and, when I entered my inn, the same solitude and uncom- 
 fortable sensation entered along with me. 
 
 I turned aside to examine remarkable objects, the fame 
 of which had reached me ; I visited some celebrated con- 
 vent of monks ; I took the freedom to introduce myself to 
 some elaborate collector of curiosities — to some statesman 
 or general retired from the busy scene — to some philoso- 
 pher or poet whose lucubrations had delighted the world. 
 I was generally fortunate enough to make my visit agreeable 
 to the host I selected : I flattered his tastes ; I expressed, 
 in the honest language of truth and feeling, the sense I en- 
 tertained of his character and merits. This sort of avoca- 
 tion afforded me a temporary pleasure ; but it often left me 
 in a state of more painful sensation than it found me, and 
 impressed upon me the melancholy conviction of the un- 
 substantial nature of all human enjoyments. 
 
 Sometimes I joined company with a fellow-traveller, 
 whom chance directed to the same point, or whom I was 
 able, by some allurement of pleasure or advantage, to pre- 
 vail upon to pursue my route. In some cases I was disap- 
 pointed in my companion ; found him totally different from 
 what, on a shght observation, I had conceived hira to be ; 
 
176 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 and either separated from him before half our journey was 
 completed, or cursed a hundred times the obligation I had 
 contracted, which, perhaps, for twenty days successively, 
 rendered me the slave of a frigid civility. At other times, 
 it may be, the conversation of my fellow-traveller afforded 
 me an unfeigned delight ; and then I bitterly regretted the 
 fugitive iiature of our intercourse. The sensation I felt was 
 such as has been experienced by passengers in a stage-coach, 
 who have just had time to contract a liking for each other 
 — who have whispered to themselves, " How agreeable, how 
 animated, how well-informed, or how facetious, is this 
 stranger!" — who have met in a domestic way at breakfast, 
 at dinner, and at supper — who have wished each other 
 good night at the close of the day, and met with salutations 
 in the morning; when suddenly the vehicle whirls them into 
 some vast city — the step of the carriage is let down — one 
 passes one way, and another another — one calls for a chaise 
 to convey him up the country, and another hastens with 
 his baggage to the port, being engaged in some distant 
 voyage. 
 
 Frequently I sojourned for two, three, or four months 
 in some polite or learned residence : and, when I had just 
 had time to familiarise myself with its most valuable inha- 
 bitants, was impelled to call to mind that this was not my 
 home, and that it was time to withdraw. Why should I 
 stay ? The language, the manners, and the scene were not 
 native to me ; and it was nothing but the necessity of de- 
 parting that made me regret a place, which, if I had been 
 compelled to take up my abode in it, would speedily have 
 lost its illusion. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 I SAW that I was alone, and I desired to have a friend. 
 Friends, in the ordinary sense of the word, and that by no 
 means a contemptible sense, I had many; friends who 
 
FLEETWOOD. 177 
 
 found pleasure in my conversation, who were convinced of 
 the integrity of ray principles of conduct, and who would 
 have trusted me in the most important concerns. But what 
 sort of a friend is it whose kindness shall produce a con- 
 viction in my mind that I do not stand alone in the world ? 
 This must be a friend, who is to me as another self, who 
 joys in all my joys, and grieves in all my sorrows, not with 
 a joy or grief that looks like compliment, not with a sym- 
 pathy that changes into smiles when I am no longer present, 
 though my head continues bent to the earth with anguish. 
 — I do not condemn the man, upon whom a wound through 
 my vitals acts but as a scratch ; I know that his feelings are 
 natural ; I admit him for just, honest, and humane — a 
 valuable member of society. But he is not the brother of 
 my heart. I will not suffer myself to be beguiled, and to 
 fall into so wretched an error as to mistake the friendship 
 of good-humour, or even of esteem, for the friendship which 
 can best console a man in calamity and wretchedness, whe- 
 ther of mind or external circumstances. I walk among these 
 men as in an agreeable promenade; I speak to one and 
 another, and am cheered with the sight of their honest 
 countenances : but they are nothing to me : I know that, 
 when death removes me from the scene for ever, their 
 countenances will the next day be neither less honest nor 
 less cheerful. Friendship, in the sense in which I felt the 
 want of it, has been truly said to be a sentiment that can 
 grasp but one individual in its embrace. The person who 
 entertains this sentiment must see in his friend a creature 
 of a species by itself, must respect and be attached to him 
 above all the world, and be deeply convinced that the loss of 
 him would be a calamity which nothing earthly could 
 repair. By long habit, he must have made his friend a part 
 of himself; must be incapable of any pleasure in public, in 
 reading,, in travelling, of which he does not make his 
 friend, at least in idea, a partaker, or of passing a day or an 
 hour in the conceptions of which the thought of his friend 
 does not mingle itself. 
 
 How many disappointments did I sustain in the search 
 after a friend ! How often this treasure appeared as it 
 were witliin my grasp, and then glided away from ,my 
 
178 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 eager embrace ! The desire to possess it, was one of the 
 earliest passions of my life, and, though eternally baflBed, 
 perpetually returned to the assault. I met with men, who 
 seemed willing to bestow their friendship upon me ; but 
 their temper, their manners, and their habits, were so dis- 
 cordant from mine, that it was impossible the flame should 
 be lighted in my breast. I met with men, to whom I 
 could willingly have sworn an eternal partnership of soul ; 
 but they thought of me with no corresponding sentiment ; 
 they were engaged in other pursuits, they were occupied 
 with other views, and had not leisure to distinguish and to 
 love me. 
 
 Some one, perhaps, will ask me. Why are qualities of 
 this nature necessary in a friend ? If I die, why should 
 I wish my friend to bear about him a heart transfixed with 
 anguish for my loss ? Is not this wish miserably un- 
 generous and selfish? — God knows, in that sense I do 
 not entertain the wish : I wish my friend to possess every 
 possible enjoyment, and to be exempted from every human 
 suffering. But let us consider the meaning of this. I 
 require that my friend should be poignantly affected by 
 my death, as I require that he should be afiected if I am 
 calumniated, shipwrecked, imprisoned, robbed of my com- 
 petence or my peace. Not that I have any pleasure in his 
 distress, simply considered ; but that I know that this is 
 the very heart and essence of an ardent friendship. I 
 cannot be silly enough to believe that the man who looks 
 on, at my calamity or my death, without any striking in- 
 terruption of his tranquillity, has a vehement affection for 
 me. He may be considerate and kind ; he may watch by 
 my bed-side with an enlightened and active benevolence ; 
 he may even be zealous to procure every alleviation of my 
 pains, and every aid for restoring me to enjoyment and 
 health : but this is not love. No ; if he can close my eyes, 
 and then return with a free and unembarrassed mind to 
 his ordinary business and avocations, this is not love. 
 
 I know not how other men are constituted ; but some- 
 thing of this sort seemed essential to my happiness. It is 
 not wonderful, perhaps, that I, who had been so circum- 
 stapced from my infancy, as to accustom me to apprehend 
 14 
 
FLEETWOOD. 179 
 
 every discord to my feelings and tastes as mortal to the 
 serenity of my mind, should have had so impatient a thirst 
 for friendship. The principle of the sentiment may be 
 explained mechanically, and is, perhaps, to a considerable 
 degree, mechanical in its operation. The circumstances, 
 whether allied to pleasure or pain, in which I am placed, 
 strike upon my mind, and produce a given sensation. I 
 do not wish to stand alone, but to consider myself as part 
 only of a whole. "If that which produces sensation in me., 
 produces sensation no where else, I am substantially alone. 
 If the lash inflicted on me will, being inflicted on another, 
 be attended with a similar effect, I then know that there 
 is a being of the same species or genus with myself. Still 
 we are, each of us, substantive and independent. But, if 
 -there is a being who feels the blow under which I flinch, 
 in whom my sensations are by a kind of necessity echoed 
 and repeated, that being is a part of myself. Every rea- 
 soning and sensitive creature seems intuitively to require, 
 to his perfectly just and proper state, this sort of sympathy. 
 It is inconceivable how great an alleviation is in this way 
 afforded, how it mitigates the agony of every kind of dis- 
 tress. It is inconceivable in how deep and insurmountable 
 a solitude that creature is involved, who looks every where 
 around for sympathy, but looks in vain. Society, an active 
 and a crowded scene, is the furthest in the world from re- 
 lieving the sensation of this solitude. The more moving 
 and variegated is the assembly in which I am present, the 
 more full is my conviction that I am alone. I should find 
 as much consolation and rest among what the satirist calls 
 the vitrified inhabitants of the planet Mercury, as here. 
 
 The operation, as I have said, is in one view of it me- 
 chanical ; in another it is purely intellectual and moral. 
 To the happiness of every human creature, at least in a 
 civilised state, it is perhaps necessary that he should esteem 
 himself, that he should regard himself as an object of 
 complacency and honour: but in this, as well as every 
 other species of creed, it should seem almost impossible for 
 any one to be a firm believer, if there are no other persons 
 in the world of the same sect as himself. However worthy 
 and valuable he may endeavour to consider himself, his 
 N 2 
 
180 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 persuasion will be attended with little confidence and so- 
 lidity^ if it does not find support in the judgments of other 
 men. The martyr^ or the champion of popular pretensions, 
 cheerfully encounters the terrors of a public execution, 
 provided the theatre on which he is to die is filled with 
 his approvers. And, in this respect, the strength of at- 
 tachment and approbation in a few, or in one, will some- 
 times compensate the less conspicuous complacence of 
 thousands. I remember to have heard a very vain man 
 say, '' I have a hundred friends, any one of whom would 
 willingly die, if it were required for my preservation or 
 welfare : " no wonder that such a man should be continually 
 buoyed up with high spirits, and enjoy the most enviable 
 sensations. Alas ! what this man was able to persuade 
 himself he possessed in so wild an exuberance, I sought 
 for through life, and found in no single instance ! 
 
 Thus I spent more than twenty years of my life, con- 
 tinually in search of contentment, which as invariably 
 eluded my pursuit. My disposition was always saturnine. 
 I wanted something, I knew not what. I sought it in 
 solitude and in crowds, in travel and at home, in ambition 
 and in independence. My ideas moved slow ; I was prone 
 to ennui. I wandered among mountains and rivers, through 
 verdant plains, and over immense precipices _; but nature 
 had no beauties. I plunged into the society of the rich, 
 the gay, the witty, and the eloquent ; but I sighed ; dis- 
 quisition did not rouse me to animation ; laughter was 
 death to my flagging spirits. 
 
 This disease, which afflicted me at first but in a mo- 
 derate degree, grew upon me perpetually from year to 
 year. As I advanced in life, my prospects became less 
 gilded with the sunshine of hope ; and, as the illusion of 
 the scenes of which I was successively a spectator wore 
 out, I felt with deeper dejection that I was alone in the 
 world. 
 
 It will readily be supposed, that in these twenty years 
 of my life I met with many adventures ; and that, if I 
 were so inclined, I might, instead of confining myself as I 
 have done to generals, have related a variety of minute 
 circumstances, sometimes calculated to amuse the fancy. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 181 
 
 and sometimes to agitate the sympathetic and generous 
 feelings, of every reader. I might have described many 
 pleasing and many pathetic incidents in Merionethshire : I 
 might have enlarged upon my club of authors, and thus, 
 in place of making my volumes a moral tale, have con- 
 verted them into a vehicle for personal satire : I might 
 have expanded the story of my political life, and presented 
 the reader with many anecdotes of celebrated characters, 
 that the world has little dreamed of : I might have de- 
 scribed the casualties of my travels, and the heart-breaking 
 delusions and disappointments of a pretended friendship. 
 It is by no means for want of materials, that I have 
 touched with so light a hand upon this last portion of my 
 life. But I willingly sacrifice these topics. I hasten to the 
 events which have pressed with so terrible a weight on my 
 heart, and have formed my principal motive to become ray 
 own historian. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 I WAS now nearly forty-five years of age. Travelling on 
 some factitious occasion near the lakes of Westmorland and 
 Cumberland, and listening, as my custom was, after what- 
 ever was extraordinary and interesting (I listened, as the 
 reader has by this time perceived, with vain hope ; what 
 was called extraordinary, had scarcely the power to excite 
 my attention; what interested others, moved not me),— I 
 was told of a gentleman, by name Macneil, that had re- 
 sided much in foreign countries, and was supposed par- 
 ticularly to have possessed the confidence of the celebrated 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau, who had been some years an in- 
 habitant of the banks of the Windermere. He had a 
 family of daughters, to the forming whose manners and 
 mind he and his wife had devoted themselves ; so that this 
 man, who had travelled so much, and whose understanding 
 was so highly cultivated and refined, seemed to have no 
 further business remaining in life, except to provide the 
 N 3 
 
182 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 children, the offspring of his marriage, with the motives 
 and means of a virtuous and happy existence. 
 
 The history of his wife was somewhat uncommon. She 
 had been born on English ground, but he met with her 
 in the Ecclesiastical Territory in Italy. She had eloped 
 to her present consort, not from her parents, but from a 
 man calling himself her husband. This man, an Italian by 
 birth, had been her instructor in music ; he was old, de- 
 formed, avaricious, and profligate. The father of the lady 
 had considered his exterior as a sufficient security against 
 any injury to which his daughter might be exposed, and, 
 pleased with his visiter's conversation and professional 
 talents, had, without scruple, invited him to spend month 
 after month under his roof. This repulsive baboon, how- 
 ever, soon conceived the plan of robbing his benefactor of 
 his only child; and he succeeded in the attempt. He 
 talked the language of love to a blooming and inexperienced 
 girl, to whom that language had never before been ad- 
 dressed ; his voice was harmony, and his manners specious, 
 gentle, and insinuating. He won her regard, and, before 
 she had completed her sixteenth year, prevailed on her to 
 desert her paternal roof. 
 
 No sooner had he conveyed her to his native country, 
 than he threw off the mask toward her. Her fortune was 
 entirely dependent on her father, except a small portion, 
 which was disputed with the worthy bridegroom in the 
 English courts, and which he soon found reason to believe 
 he should never obtain. He made her a prisoner in a dis- 
 mantled and unwholesome castle which he had inherited 
 from his father, and set over her his sister, as ugly as him- 
 self, but who, having obtained no advantages either from 
 education or example was in a singular degree vulgar, 
 insolent, and brutal. 
 
 In this situation she lived when, about twelve months 
 after the period in which she left her father's house, 
 Mr. Macneil, on his travels, heard something of her story, 
 and, like a true knight errant, was prompted to besiege her 
 castle. He had seen her twice under her father's roof; 
 he had lamented, like every other friend of the family, 
 the vile artifices by which she had been trepanned ; and. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 183 
 
 being now informed that she was shut up as a prisoner, and 
 kept from the sight of every human being, except her 
 betrayer, and the hag, his sister, he determined to offer her 
 deliverance. By means of a bribe to one of the servants, 
 he contrived to have a letter conveyed to her hands. The 
 young lady had had leisure to repent of her rashness, and 
 to recollect with infinite remorse the endearments of her 
 natal roof. To receive a line from her countryman, a gen- 
 tleman whom she remembered to have seen at her father's 
 table, afforded her indescribable pleasure. She knew that 
 the character of Mr. Macneil had always been spoken of 
 as the model of integrity and honour. In her perilous 
 situation, which she regarded with infinite loathing, she 
 
 i judged that some risk was indispensable. She wrote an 
 answer, enquiring respecting her father ; mother_§lie-had 
 none in existence. Being informed that he still lived, but 
 was inconsolable for her loss, she became not less earnest 
 than her correspondent, that he should provide the means 
 of her escape. She trembled to think whether her father 
 would receive her : sometimes she represented him to her- 
 
 ^-> self as a stern judge, refusing her entreaties ; at others, as 
 the victim of offended love, reproaching her with eyes of 
 death and despair : she desired, however, to cast herself at 
 his feet, though that moment were to be her last. 
 
 Mr. Macneil concerted every thing with the utmost de- 
 licacy and honour. He provided an Italian, a woman of 
 character, and of some rank, to be the companion of his 
 protege in her journey ; he himself observed the strictest 
 ceremony toward them, and attended them no more than 
 was necessary for safety and indispensable accommodation ; 
 and he had the satisfaction to deliver this interesting female 
 into the hands of her aged parent. 
 
 The reconciliation was easily made, and was scarcely 
 more affecting to the parties themselves, than to the person 
 who had been the happy means of their restoration to each 
 other. Mr. Macneil became the declared lover of the lady 
 he had rescued from slavery. Her marriage with her Ita- 
 lian seducer was speedily dissolved ; and, fortunately, no 
 child had been the issue of this ill-omened connection. 
 Still, however, there was a difficulty. The beautiful pe.^. 
 N 4 
 
1 84 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 tent dwelt, with all the bitterness of remorse, upon her 
 youthful offence, and a thousand times protested that, as 
 she had rendered herself unworthy, she would never con- 
 sent to become the wife of an honourable man. Beside 
 which, she continually recollected with agony the cruel 
 manner in which she had fled from an indulgent father, 
 and almost broken his heart ; and vowed that, so long as he 
 lived, she would never again quit the paternal roof. These 
 objections, the impassioned dictates of a well-constituted 
 mind dwelling with exquisiteness upon an offence so early 
 committed, and so exemplarily atoned, were at length got 
 over ; and, after eighteen months of struggle and sorrow, 
 she gave her hand in second and happy marriage to the 
 man of her father's choice, as well as of her own. 
 
 I know not whether this story will be found so striking 
 in the repetition, as it was to me when I first heard it. But 
 I felt an uncommon desire to visit the family which I heard 
 thus described. My desire was increased by a conversation 
 respecting the character of Mrs. Macneil, between two ladies, 
 within the walls of one of the most elegant mansions on 
 the lakes, at which I happened to be present. One of them 
 was her opponent, and the other her admirer. The latter 
 spoke, in terms of the highest applause, of the qualifications 
 and accomplishments of the young ladies, her daughters. 
 
 This drew from the gentlewoman of severer temper a 
 pathetic lamentation over their unfortunate situation. '^ No 
 woman," she said, ^' who respected her own character, could 
 afford them countenance ; no man, who was not dead to all 
 the decencies of human life, could offer them his hand in 
 marriage. They were devoted to misery and dishonour by 
 the very circumstance of their birth ; and she held the 
 father no less culpable in marrying a woman under Mrs. 
 Macneil's unfortunate predicament, and making her the 
 mother of his children, than if he had married a person 
 on whom was entailed the most loathsome hereditary dis- 
 ease. What could be thought, as a matron, of a girl who 
 at sixteen had run away with an Italian fiddler ? How many 
 clandestine provocatives to depravity must she have listened 
 to from him, before she could have been prevailed upon to 
 ts^e so outrageous a step.^ When he had conveyed her 
 
FLEETWOOD. 185 
 
 into Italy, he introduced her to his own fHends, and no 
 doubt her principal associates for two or three years had 
 been sharpers and prostitutes. The consequence was, that 
 she impudently eloped with a stranger from the husband 
 of her choice, as she had before eloped from her misguided 
 father. Poor, wretched Miss Macneils, sealed to perdition ! 
 What lessons could they receive from such a mother, but 
 lessons of debauchery ! So impure a mind could not 
 instil into them sentiments of virtue, if she would; and 
 would not, if she could. She remembered," the gentle- 
 woman added, " to have seen the young ladies at Kendal 
 theatre : they were fine girls ; the more was the pity ! " 
 
 The partisan of Mrs. Macneil put no less warmth into 
 her reply, than her adversary had given to her invective. 
 '* She knew little of the lady herself, in consequence of the 
 rules of society, by which she was excluded from the visit- 
 ing circles of the neighbourhood. Once, however, she had 
 chanced to be her fellow-traveller in a public vehicle from 
 York to London; and she had heard much more of her, 
 than she had then had an opportunity to observe. From 
 every thing she had seen, and every thing she could collect, 
 she was persuaded it was impossible for any thing in the 
 form of a woman to exceed the present correctness of Mrs. 
 Macneil's conversation and conduct. Why should it be 
 supposed that an error committed before the age of sixteen 
 could never be atoned } How much was a young person, 
 at so immature an age, exposed to the stratagems and wiles 
 of an experienced seducer ! A better judge of morals 
 than she could pretend to be, had pronounced, that deep and 
 exemplary penitence for an unwary fault was a fuller se- 
 curity for rectitude than innocence itself.* Mrs. Macneil,'* 
 her advocate added, " had been distinguished, when a child, 
 for the strength of her judgment and the delicacy of her 
 sentiments ; once she had fallen ; but she had speedily reco- 
 vered ; and maUce itself could not discover a blemish in her 
 since that period. Might she not, if her present character 
 was such as it was represented, be a more perfect monitor 
 for the young, in proportion as she understood more of the 
 evils against which she warned them, and had felt the cala- 
 
 , • Luke, chap. xv. ver. 7. 
 
186 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 inity?" The lady who maintained this side of the argu 
 ment said, that she did not pretend to dispute the propriety 
 of the rule by which Mrs. Macneil was given up almost ex- 
 clusively to the society of the other sex, but added, that a 
 humane judge would often drop a tear of pity over the 
 severity of the sentence he was compelled to pronounce. 
 Why, though Mrs. Macneil could never atone to the rules 
 of established decorum, should we refuse to believe that she 
 had atoned to God, and to the principles of rectitude? 
 Why, though she was forbidden the society of her sex, 
 should the same prohibition be extended to her daughters ? 
 Indeed, most of the ladies in the neighbourhood of the 
 lakes had felt the propriety of the distinction, and had been 
 eager to afford them every countenance in their power. 
 She uhderstood, from the most undoubted authority, that 
 they were brought up with a refinement and rigidness of 
 sentiment, in every point with which modesty was concerned, 
 beyond what was furnished by any other living example 
 of female education. Their father was the most faultless 
 and unexceptionable in his habits, of any gentleman in all 
 the northern counties ; and, if propriety of character in 
 young women could be secured by the diligence, discern- 
 ment, and rectitude of both their parents, there were no 
 persons of their age who bid fairer to be an ornament to 
 their sex than the Miss Macneils. 
 
 All that I heard of Mr. Macneil and his family inspired 
 in me the wish not to quit Westmorland till I had seen 
 them. The father of the family was represented as ex- 
 ta-emely attached to his wife ; and, as her unfortunate his- 
 tory rendered her liable to little slights and affronts, he 
 ^runk from all intercourse with his provincial neighbours. 
 He would not accept any privilege from the males of a 
 house, which might only serve to remind him of the severe 
 law dealt out to the partner of his life. He felt too in- 
 timately for her honour, her pleasures, and her pains, to be 
 capable of being persuaded of the justice of the treatment 
 she received. In truth, as I understood from the most 
 exact information, it was no great sacrifice he made in 
 giving up the conversation of his rural neighbours.' He 
 had resources enough in himself and the inmates of his 
 
 1 
 
FLEETWOOD. 187 
 
 own roof. They were far the most polished and elegant 
 family, if politeness consists in intellectual refinement, in 
 the circuit of the lakes. He had accumulated from the 
 living society of men of genius, the materials and the prin- 
 ciples of thinking. The young ladies excelled in the arts 
 of music and design. The mother had paid dear for her 
 progress in the former of these; but her progress was 
 conspicuous. They frequently made little concerts under 
 their own roof. They read together, and compared the 
 impressions they received from, and the judgments they 
 formed upon, what they read. They spent solitary hours 
 enough in the sobriety of the morning, to inspire them 
 with a zest for each other's society in the latter part of the 
 day. Mr. Macneil, as I have said, had no object which 
 he had at present so earnestly at heart as his children's 
 improvement. He shut up, therefore, no knowledge, no 
 tasteful feeling, no moral sentiment, no speculation or de- 
 duction which his sagacity inspired, in his own bosom. 
 All his treasures of this sort were brought into the common 
 stock. In this happy family there were no discordant 
 opinions, no one ready to say, " This is rash ; that is sin- 
 gular ; this is contrary to the judgment of the world ; 
 you must learn to think like others, or you must expect to 
 be disliked ; " and thus to chill the opening blossoms of 
 reflection and of mind. They needed not to be told, that 
 he who is afraid to think unlike others, will soon learn, in 
 every honourable sense of the word, not to think at all. 
 
 Mr. Macneil, after he had withdrawn from the convers- 
 ation of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, had found 
 himself intruded upon by stragglers, whom the fashion of 
 an excursion to the lakes had brought to his door. Some 
 came with letters of recommendation, and some without. 
 Some were induced by curiosity to see the friend of Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau ; and some to see the lady who had two 
 husbands, both of them living. With the improper con- 
 duct and indelicacy of one or two of these wanderers, Mr. 
 Macneil had been highly displeased. He had desired his 
 friends to yield no more letters of introduction to the mere 
 importunities of the idle. He saw no reason why he 
 should suffer his time to be intruded upon, and his serenity 
 
188 FLEETWOOD- 
 
 the 11 
 
 to be ruffled, by the curiosity of indolent travellers who 
 not know how to dispose of themselves. The lady, 
 advocate of Mrs. Macneil, to whom I communicated my 
 wish, did not fail therefore to assure me, that I should not 
 gain entrance over the threshold of their house. This un 
 favourable prediction, perhaps, piqued me the more; and 
 sat down, and addressed the following letter to the gen 
 tleman whose acquaintance I was desirous to obtain : — 
 
 
 '' Sir, 
 
 '* I have heard your character described in a way so pe- 
 culiarly conformable to my notions and predilections, that 
 I am desirous to be indulged with an hour of your con- 
 versation. 
 
 ''You have been intruded upon, I am told, by the idle and 
 the frivolous ; you are a lover of solitude ; you are happy 
 in the bosom of your family : these are the reasons which 
 have been alleged to me, why I ought not to expect to 
 obtain the favour I solicit. I shall at least weaken the 
 objections which have been urged, if I can satisfy you that I 
 am not of the class of the persons who have occasioned 
 your displeasure. 
 
 '^ I am no curious man: what have 1 to be curious about? 
 I am nearly forty-five years of age. I have seen the world, 
 through all its gradations, and in most of the countries of 
 Europe. In my youth I was a wild roe among the moun- 
 tains of Wales : as I grew up, I entered upon the scenes 
 of active life, foolishly, not criminally. I contracted an 
 early distaste for the practices and the society of the world. 
 I have lived much alone — I have not been happy. 
 When I have gone into company, mere acquaintance have 
 not interested me ; a friend (a friend, in the perhaps 
 romantic sense of the word) I never found. I am, no 
 doubt, a very weak creature ; I am not like Solomon's good 
 man, ' satisfied from myself.' Such is my history ; am I 
 one of those persons whose intrusion you would wish to 
 forbid? 
 
 *' Why am I desirous to pay one visit to the roof of 
 Mr. Macneil ? I know not whether the answer I can give 
 to this question, will be or ought to be satisfactory. I am 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 89 
 
 not idle enough to imagine that our interview will improve 
 into acquaintance, far less into friendship. We dwell in 
 different and remote parts of the island ; we cannot be 
 acquaintance. My habits and temper (it is a miUion 
 chances to one) will not suit you ; in those indescribable 
 minutiae which do not affect the essentials of a character, 
 but which make each man an individual by himself, and 
 which divide you from the rest of your species, you will 
 probably not be approved by me : we cannot be friends. 
 What then ? You are, I believe, a good and a wise man 
 (two qualities much mOre inseparable than the world is 
 willing to allow) : I have found so few of these, as some- 
 times to be almost tempted to think that the race is grow- 
 ing extinct ; and I would not wilhngly miss an opportunity 
 of seeing so extraordinary a creature. Your family is 
 happy — (Oh, happiness! thou perpetual object of pursuit ! 
 always showing thyself in prospect ! always cut off from 
 our attainment by insurmountable precipices and impassable 
 torrents !) — do not refuse me the sight of a happy family ! 
 I ask only for a transient and momentary pleasure ! I ask 
 only for something to stock my memory with — the re- 
 collection of which I may call up from time to time, and 
 with the image of which I may gild my soUtude ! 
 
 " I am, sir, 
 " Your very hurnble servant, 
 " Lowood Inn, " Casimir Fleetwood 
 
 Ambleside." of Merionethshire.*' 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 My application had the desired issue. A polite answer 
 was returned, expressing that Mr. Macneil would be happy 
 to be favoured with my visit. I was the more flattered 
 with this, as the lady to whom I had mentioned my desire, 
 a woman of no common sagacity, had predicted a different 
 ev^t. 
 
190 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 I hastened to make use of the privilege I had obtained. 
 I found the house of Mr. Macneil uncommonly plain in its 
 style, yet replete with every temperate convenience. The 
 father of the family seemed to be upward of fifty years of 
 age, and was tall, robust, and manly in his appearance. 
 His hair was brown, short, and unpowdered ; his ruddy 
 cheek confessed that he was not neghgent of the care of his 
 fields, and that he had received in his constitution the re- 
 ward of his care. Mr. Macneil was a Scotchman. Th^ 
 brogue of every country is, perhaps, pleasing to the ear of 
 sensibility, especially when it falls from the lips of a man 
 of cultivation ; it seems to assure us that simplicity and the 
 native features of mind have not been eradicated. With 
 me the Scottish dialect is somewhat a favourite ; it softens 
 and mellows the sound of our island tongue ; and the 
 gravity which accompanies it, gives an air of sobriety and 
 reflection to the speaker, which are particularly in accord 
 with my serious disposition. It reminds us of the fields, 
 and not of cities. 
 
 " I thank you for your visit," said Mr. Macneil, taking 
 me by the hand. ^' Your letter is a masterly picture of 
 your character. I know not what you have heard of 
 me that made you desirous of seeing me ; but I suspect 
 that I, rather than you, shall be the gainer by the inter- 
 course. I am no humourist, nor misanthrope, though cir- 
 cumstances have obliged me to be a little abrupt wdth some 
 <rf the persons I have seen since I took up my residence 
 here. I am a very plain man, and if you expect any 
 thing else you will be disappointed. 
 
 I did not find Mr. Macneil what I should have called 
 a very plain man, yet I do not blame him for his assertion. 
 It would be best of all, if every man knew himself exactly 
 for what he was, and announced himself accordingly. But 
 this, alas ! is impossible. Every one who does not think 
 too humbly of his qualities, sets too high a value upon 
 them. And how ridiculous a thing is self-importance — a 
 fancied sovereign demanding a tax from his imaginary sub- 
 jects, which they will never pay ! False humility is, indeed, 
 if not a more ridiculous, yet a more degrading error than 
 arrogance. But every man who is aware of all the artiw 
 
FLEETWOOD. ipi 
 
 fices of self-delusion, will rather set his demands below, 
 than above, the true rate. 
 
 Among other subjects, we talked of the character of 
 Rousseau. Mr. Macneil expressed himself with a vener- 
 ation and a tenderness toward this extraordinary man, 
 which I suppose were universally felt by all who ap- 
 proached him, except those who, thinking less of his weak- 
 nesses, and the indulgence they demanded, than of their 
 own offended pride, finished by quarrelling with him. 
 
 ' I saw much of Rousseau," said my host. " He reposed 
 many confidences in me. He often told me that he felt 
 less suspicious and embarrassed with me, than with almost 
 any man he ever knew ; and he asserted that the reason 
 was, that I thought more of the subject discussed, and the 
 scene before me, and less of how they would affect my own 
 tranquillity and importance. I could see that one of his 
 great misfortunes had been, that almost all his intimates 
 were chosen from among the French, that nation of egotists ! 
 Rousseau was a man of exquisite sensibility, and that sen>- 
 sibility had been insulted and trifled with in innumerable 
 instances, sometimes by the intolerance of priestcraft and 
 power, sometimes by the wanton and ungenerous sports 
 of men of letters. He lived, however, toward the close 
 of ^lis life in a world of his own, and saw nothing as it 
 ^ really was ; nor were his mistakes less gross, than if he 
 had asserted that his little cottage was menaced by a be- 
 sieging army, and assailed with a battery of cannon. 
 Whether from the displeasing events that had befallen him, 
 or from any seeds of disease kneaded up in his original 
 constitution, I was convinced, from a multitude of indi- 
 cations, that Rousseau was not in his sober mind. How 
 much are those persons mistaken, who imagine that a 
 madman is necessarily incapable of composing orations as 
 ardent as those of Demosthenes, and odes as sublime as 
 those of Pindar ! How small a portion of the persons who, 
 upon some topic or other, are unhinged in their intel- 
 lectual comprehension, is it necessary to place under cor- 
 poreal restraint ! Yet I was often led to doubt whether 
 Rousseau, spite of the disease under which he laboured, 
 deserved, upon the whole, to be termed unfortunate. 
 
192 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 When he was induced to dwell for a time upon the uni- 
 versal combination which he believed to be formed against 
 him, he then undoubtedly suffered. But he had such re- 
 sources in his own mind ! He could so wholly abstract 
 himself from this painful contemplation ; his vein of en- 
 thusiasm was GO sublime ; there was such a childhke sim- 
 plicity often uppermost in his carriage ; his gaiety upon 
 certain occasions was so good-humoured, sportive, and un- 
 broken ! It was difficult for me to persuade myself that 
 the person I saw at such times, was the same as at other's 
 was beset with such horrible visions." Mr. Macneil related 
 to me several curious anecdotes in support of these ob- 
 servations. 
 
 . The wife of my new acquaintance was one of the most 
 accomplished and prepossessing women I ever beheld. I 
 have often remarked that this mixture and result of the 
 manners and habits of different countries, particularly in 
 the female sex, presents something exquisitely fascinating 
 and delightful. She was never embarrassed, and never 
 appeared to meditate how a thing was to be done, but did 
 it with an ease, a simplicity, an unpretendingness, which 
 threw every studied grace into contempt in the comparison. 
 She had been humbled by the miscarriage of her early 
 youth. But for this, her person and her accomplishments, 
 the acknowledged sweetness of her temper and clearness of 
 her understanding, might, perhaps, have made her proud, 
 and thus have tarnished the genuine lustre of her excel- 
 lencies. The modesty with which she presented herself 
 was inexpressibly engaging. There was a cast of the 
 Magdalene in all she did ; not of the desponding, not of a 
 t«nper deserting its duties, unconscious of recovered worth, 
 or that invited insolence or contempt. It was a manner 
 that had something in it of timidity, yet could scarcely be 
 said to amount to self-reproach ; a manner, indeed, that, 
 by the way in which it confessed her frailty, made reproach, 
 either by look or gesture, from any other impossible. Her 
 failings had chastised in her the pride of birth, and the 
 assurance that superior attainments are apt to inspire, and 
 had generated that temperance, moderation, and gentle 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1 9^ 
 
 firmness, which, wherever they are found, are the brightest 
 ornaments of human nature. 
 
 The young ladies, whose merits I had heard so highly 
 extolled, were three. Each of these had principally de- 
 voted herself to some particular accomplishment, in which, 
 though not unskilled in other pursuits, she had made ex- 
 traordinary progress. The eldest applied to the art of 
 design ; she drew, and even painted in oil ; and her land- 
 scapes in particular had an excellence which, to speak 
 moderately of them, reminded the beholder of the style of 
 Claude Lorraine. The principal apartment of the house 
 was hung round with a series of the most striking scenes 
 in the environs of the lakes, delineated by her pencil. The 
 second daughter had chosen music for her favourite pur- 
 suit ; and her execution, both on the piano forte and in 
 singing, was not inferior to that which her eldest sister 
 had attained on canvass. The youngest was a gardener 
 and botanist. She had laid out her father's grounds, and 
 the style in which they were disposed did the highest credit 
 to her imagination. One side of the family sitting-parlour 
 was skirted with a greenhouse, of the same length as the 
 room, and which seemed to make a part of it. This 
 apartment was furnished with nearly every variety which 
 Flora has ever produced in our island, or which curiosity 
 has imported, and were entirely cultivated by her hand. 
 In her prosecution of the science of botany, she had also 
 resorted to the use of colours ; and, though the employment 
 she made of them was inferior in kind to the studies of 
 the eldest, it is almost impossible to conceive any thing 
 superior to what she had reached, either in faithfulness of 
 delineation, or brilliancy of tints. 
 
 The names of these young ladies were Amelia, Barbara, 
 and Mary. The eldest had no pretensions to beauty, 
 though there was an uncommon appearance of quick con- 
 ception and penetrating judgment in the various turns of 
 her countenance. Barbara was a brunette : her features 
 were regular, her mouth was alluring, and her dark eyes 
 flashed with meaning, and melted with tenderness. Mary 
 had a complexion which, in point of fairness and trans- 
 parency, could not be excelled : her blood absolutely spoke 
 
194 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 in her cheeks ; the soft white of her hands and neck looked 
 as if they would have melted away beneath your touch ; 
 her eyes were so animated, and her whole physiognomy so 
 sensitive, that it was scarcely possible to believe that a 
 thought could pass in her hearty which might not be read 
 in her face. 
 
 I never saw a family that excited in me so much appro- 
 bation. Individuals I had encountered of great worth and 
 extraordinary qualificatiohs ; but here was a whole circle of 
 persons, such as a man would wish to spend his life with : 
 so much concord of affection without any jarring passions; 
 so much harmony of interests, yet each member of the fa- 
 mily having a different pursuit. To me, who was prone 
 to regard the whole world with an eye of censoriousness and 
 displeasure, and who, having conceived this propensity, but 
 too easily found materials to foster and nourish it, this was 
 a ravishing spectacle. The father so well informed ; the 
 mother so interesting ; the daughters so accomplished and 
 so lovely ! Mr. Macneil seemed to feel a kindness for me, 
 proportioned to the gratification I experienced in my visit; 
 and, after having pressed me to partake of their family fare, 
 proposed a ride along the shores of the Windermere the next 
 morning. The day following was occupied in a party on 
 the lake ; and thus, by insensible degrees, I became for a 
 time almost an inmate in the family. I was so far advanced 
 in life, as to preclude any idea of indecorum in my visits ; 
 and I addressed myself to the different members of the little 
 commonwealth, as if I had been a brother to the master of 
 the house, and an uncle to the daughters. I sat sometimes 
 for hours by Amelia as she painted ; I listened with unwea- 
 ried attention to the lessons executed by Barbara : but my 
 chief pleasure was in attending the gentle and engaging 
 Mary, in her morning visits to her flowers, and in heif walks 
 among the avenues which had been constructed, and the 
 bowers which had been planted under her direction. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 1^5 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Mr. Macneil was a man of the warmest philanthropy, and 
 by degrees I reposed in him a confidence, to which I had 
 seldom felt excited toward any other man. After a time, 
 I hired apartments in the house of a substantial farmer in 
 his neighbourhood, that I might the more freely enjoy his 
 conversation and acquaintance, without being an interrup- 
 tion to the domestic economy of his family. I laid before 
 him the secret grief that preyed upon my heart. I described 
 the sickly sensibility of my temper, the early disgust I had 
 taken at the world, and the miserable sense of desolation 
 which preyed upon my life, in my detached and uncon- 
 nected situation. 
 
 ** Come," replied my friend, in that vein of playful good- 
 humour which he delighted to indulge, " whether you con- 
 sult me, as a good Catholic does his priest, for the salvation 
 of his soul, or as an invalid does his physician, for the re- 
 storation of his health, let us try if we cannot make 'a con- 
 version or a cure of it ! " 
 
 Many were the debates that passed between me and my 
 host respecting the true estimate of the human species. We 
 differed, I suppose, first, because we had seen them^ under 
 unlike circumstances, and in unlike aspects. We differed, 
 secondly, because we compared them with different ideal 
 standards. I thought, so to express myself, too highly of 
 the human mind in the abstract, to be able to consider with 
 patience man as he is. I dwelt upon the capacities of our 
 nature, the researches of a Newton, the elevation of a Mil- 
 ton, and the virtues of an Alfred ; and, having filled my 
 mind with these, I contemplated even with horror, the ig- 
 norance, the brutality, the stupidity, the selfishness, and, as 
 it appeared to me, the venality and profligacy, in which mil- 
 lions and miUions of my feUow-creatures are involved. I 
 estimated mankind, with an eye to the goal which it is ar- 
 dently to be desired they might reach ; Mr. Macneil esti- , 
 o 2 
 
196 FLEETWOOD, 
 
 mated them^ with an eye to the starting-post from which 
 they commenced their career. 
 
 '^ In every man that Hves/' he stoutly affirmed, " there 
 is much to commend. Every man has in him the seeds of 
 ^ good husband, a good father, and a sincere friend. You 
 will say, perhaps, these are not suhhme and magnificent 
 virtues ; yet, if each man were enabled to discharge these, 
 the world upon the whole would afford a ravishing spec- 
 tacle. What a spirit of forbearance, of gentle attentions, of 
 anxiety to maintain the cheerfulness and peace of his female 
 companion, inhabits every human breast ! Scarcely do we 
 hear of the monster in whom this spirit is ever extinguished. 
 It accompanies almost all men, with whatever unhappy in>- 
 terruptions, from maturity to the grave. Look upon the 
 poorest clown in the midst of his children ; what a heavenly 
 picture ! How do his eyes glisten at their little pleasures, 
 their sallies of penetration and vivacity ! How disinterested 
 a sentiment burns in his heart ! Yes, disinterested : for I 
 know you will laugh at the silly sophism which, when it 
 regards the immense sacrifices that every father is ready to 
 make for his child, calls the impulse from which they 
 spring a selfish one. I acknowledge, I am weak enough to 
 be as much delighted with tbe spectacle of the lively and 
 ardent affection of an Englishman to his son, as if it were 
 directed toward the child of a Japanese. It is equally af- 
 fection, and equally beneficent. How much good neigh- 
 bourhood there is in the world! what readiness in every 
 man to assist every stranger that comes in his way, if his. 
 carriage is broken down, if his horse has run from and left 
 him, or almost whatever is his distress ! how cheerfully does 
 he give his day's labour, or the produce of his day's labour, 
 to his friend, till that friend, by injustice, has proved him- 
 self unworthy of the kindness! For rny part, instead of 
 joining in the prevailing cry of the selfishness, the wicked- 
 ness ^ie original^ sin, or the sub sequent d epravity of man- 
 kind, I feel myjieart swe ll witEih m e, when I recoHect that 
 I Tjclong toaspecies, a lmost e very luHTviH ual of~which is 
 endowed with angelic virtues. Tain a philanthropist, in 
 the plain sense of the word. Whenever I see a man I see 
 something to love, — not with a loye of compassion, but a 
 
FLEETWOOD. 197 
 
 love of approbation. I need not put the question to him — 
 I know without asking, that he is fully prepared and eager 
 to do a thousand virtuous acts, the moment the occasion is 
 afforded him. 
 
 " I have sometimes had the thought/* continued Mr. 
 Macneil, " of composing a little novel or tale in illustration 
 of my position. I would take such a man, as my friend 
 Fleetwood, for example, who looks with a disdainful eye 
 upon his species, and has scarcely the patience to enter into 
 discourse and intercourse with any one he meets : I would 
 put him on board a ship ; he will, of course, be sufficiently 
 disgusted with every one of his companions : all of a sudden 
 I woyld raise a most furious tempest : I would cause him 
 to be shipwrecked on a desert island, with no companion but 
 one man, the most gross, perverse, and stupid of the crew : 
 all the rest — the captain who, though sagacious, was posi- 
 tive, the surgeon who, though skilful, was tiresome by his 
 pedantry — I would without mercy send to the bottom. 
 "What do you think I would represent as the natural result 
 of this situation.^ My fastidious misanthrope would no 
 longer have a world or a nation, from which to choose his 
 companion, and, after trying all, to reject aU : he would be 
 wholly deprived of the power of choice. Here, sir, I 
 would show how by degrees he would find a thousand re- 
 sources in this despised sailor. He would find him active, 
 spirited, and alert. Where before he believed, without exa- 
 mination, that all was stupefaction, he would find, by a va- 
 riety of tokens, good sense and sagacity. How these two 
 companions would love one another ! How they would occa- 
 sionally spend the livelong night in delightful chat ! How 
 they would study each other's virtues and attainments — even 
 each other's foibles ! With what eager anxiety, when any 
 necessary occasion separated them, would they look for each 
 other's return ! With what daring and superhuman courage 
 
 would they defend each other from danger ! And do 
 
 not be perverse enough to believe that all this anxiety would 
 be the fruit of selfishness ! They would have discovered in 
 each other inestimable quahties, a large stock of sound judg- 
 ment and excellent sense, and an inexhaustible fund of kind 
 and benevolent propensities. After some years I woul 
 o 3 
 
198 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 bring back my misanthrope to England. Sir^ he would 
 never be able to part with his companion in the desert island. 
 He would believe that there was not a creature in the world, 
 take him for all in all^ so valuable. Yet observe, he would 
 only entertain this opinion of him, because he knew him 
 more thoroughly than any of the rest of his species. I took 
 my sailor merely as a specimen of human nature, and of 
 human nature in one of its most unfavourable forms." 
 
 I hope my reader will be convinced by the arguments of 
 Mr. Macneil. What a blessed state of mind was that, to 
 which he appears to have attained! Yet, for myself, I 
 acknowledge, either because truth was on my side, or, it 
 may be, merely from the excessive susceptibleness of my 
 nature, or the accidents of my life, I remained unaltered by 
 his discourses, and, though I wished to be a philanthropist, 
 was a misanthrope still. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " What I have been yet saying," continued Macneil, " is 
 speculation ; let us now come to the most important part of 
 my function, which is practice. Fleetwood, you are too 
 much alone. I hear people talk of the raptures of solitude; 
 and with what tenderness of affection they can love a tree, 
 a rivulet, or a mountain. Believe me, they are pretenders ; 
 they deceive themselves, or they seek, with their eyes open, 
 to impose upon others. In addition to their trees and their 
 mountains, I will give them the whole brute creation ; still 
 it will not do. There is a principle in the heart of man 
 which demands the society of his like. He that has no such 
 society, is in a state but one degree removed from insanity. 
 He pines for an ear into which he might pour the story of 
 his thoughts, for an eye that shall flash upon him with re- 
 sponsive intelligence, for a face the lines of which shall 
 talk to him in dumb but eloquent discourse, for a heart 
 that shall beat in unison with his own. If there is any 
 thing in human form that does not feel these wants, that 
 
FLEETWOOD. 199 
 
 thing is not to be counted in the file for a man : the form 
 it bears is a deception ; and the legend, Man^ which you read 
 in its front, is a He. Talk to me of rivers and mountains ! 
 I venerate the grand and beautiful exhibitions and shapes 
 of nature, no man more ; I delight in solifUde ; I could 
 shut myself up in it for successive days. But I know that 
 Christ did not with more alacrity come out of the wilder- 
 ness after his forty days' sequestration, than every man, at 
 the end of a course of this sort, will seek for the inter- 
 change of sentiments and language. The magnificence of 
 nature, after a time, will produce much the same effect 
 upon him, as if I were to set down a hungry man te a 
 sumptuous service of plate, where all that presented itself 
 on every side was massy silver and burnished gold, but 
 there was no food. 
 
 ^' He is a wise physician, that knows how to prescribe 
 for his own malady. Were the case you have described to 
 me, the case of a bystander, you would immediately see into 
 its merits as clearly as I do. You have no certain and re- 
 gular pursuit ; you have no equal alliances and connections. 
 The miracle would be, if it were possible for you to be 
 happy. You are too rich to be able to engage with sincere 
 eagerness in any undertaking or employment. The remedy, 
 therefore, in your case must be derived from the other 
 quarter. Marry ! beget yourself a family of children ! You 
 are somewhat advanced in life ; time must elapse before 
 your children will be at an age to occupy much of your 
 cares ; if you feel any vacuity in the interval, caU about you 
 your distant relations ! Sit down every day at table with 
 a circle of five or six persons, constituting your own do- 
 mestic group. Enquire out the young men on the thresh- 
 old of life, who, from the regulations of society, have the 
 best claim upon your assistance. Call them round you ; 
 contribute to their means ; contribute to their improve- 
 ment ; consult with them as to the most promising adven- 
 ture in which they can launch themselves on the ocean of 
 life. Depend upon it, you will not then feel a vacuity ; 
 your mind will no longer prey upon itself." 
 
 I was some time before I could believe that my friend 
 was in earnest. — " I, to entangle myself with a numerous. 
 4 
 
200 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 family^ whose temper was so fastidious and sensitive that 
 I could scarcely choose a companion for a day that did not 
 become in twenty ways disgusting and insupportable to me 
 before the close of the day ! 
 
 ^^ I, to marry ! Had I not now passed the flower of 
 my days in a state of celibacy ? Whom was I to marry ? 
 I was near forty-five years of age. Was I to make what is 
 called a suitable match ; that is^ marry a woman of the 
 same age as myself? Beside that there would then be 
 small chance of offspring, I could not say I felt in myself 
 much propensity to fall in love with a lady of this staid and 
 matronly age. 
 
 '^ Add to all this, I am impressed with no favourable 
 prepossessions toward the female sex. I cannot be blind 
 enough to credit what some have maintained, probably 
 more from the love of paradox than any other cause, that 
 there is any parity between the sexes. Till the softer sex 
 has produced a Bacon, a Newton, a Homer, or a Shakspeare, 
 I never will believe it. Who does not see that the quick- 
 ness and vivacity of their temper sets them at an immense 
 distance from profound sense, sublime feeling, and that 
 grand species of adventure, which engrosses, from puberty 
 to the grave, the whole energies of the human soul ? But, 
 beside this, I think ill of their dispositions. The impres- 
 sions of my adventures of gallantry in France I cannot 
 overcome. Perhaps, in the tranquillity of sober discussion, 
 you might bring me to confess that these impressions are 
 unjust ; but there they are ; such are the associations of 
 my mind ; I never can think seriously of a woman, still less 
 propose her to myself as a companion, without calling to 
 
 mind the Marchioness de L and the Countess of 
 
 B . 
 
 ^^ I have another disqualification for marriage worse 
 even than this. I am grown old in the habits of a bachelor. 
 I can bear no restraint. You, sir, happy as you are in 
 your family, must be fully aware that it is impossible for 
 two persons to associate for a day without some clash of 
 their different inclinations. It is like hounds in a leash ; 
 the chain is upon their necks, and not upon their wills. 
 But we bear this wonderfully well for a time, because we 
 
 A 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 201 
 
 see where it will end ; most men bear it better than I do. 
 But let the chain be such, the padlock of which cannot be 
 unloosened but by the death of one party or the other ; 
 Gods, how galling does it become ! In an ' agreeable 
 companion in a post-chaise/ in the guest that visits, or the 
 host that receives me for a day, though his desires are ab- 
 surd, though his manner be abrupt, and his sentiments 
 dissimilar to my own, I am too proud to suffer my temper 
 to be much ruffled by so fugitive an inconvenience. But 
 how trifles swell into importance when the individual 
 whose temper jars with mine is to live with me for ever ! 
 Whatever offends me I feel as in the utmost degree grave ; 
 every accidental difference preys upon my heart, and cor- 
 rodes my vitals." 
 
 Mr. Macneil laughed at the vehemence of my satire 
 against marriage. " No," said he, '^ I do not absolutely 
 insist that you shall fix upon a lady of forty-five years of 
 age, or that you shall estimate her fitness to become your 
 wife by the wrinkles in her brow. The man may love the 
 wife at forty-five, whom, twenty years before, he received 
 a blushing virgin to his bed ; habit may do much for him ; 
 a friendship has gradually sprung up between them, which 
 death only is powerful enough to dissolve ; but this is not 
 exactly the period at which the familiarity should com- 
 mence. No ; if you marry, Fleetwood, choose a girl whom 
 no disappointments have soured, and no misfortunes have 
 bent to the earth ; let her be lively, gay as the morning, 
 and smiling as the day. If your habits are somewhat 
 rooted and obstinate, take care that there is no responsive 
 stiffness in her to jar and shock with. Let her be all 
 pliancy, accommodation, and good humour. Form her to 
 your mind ; educate her yourself. By thus grafting a 
 young shoot upon your venerable trunk, you will obtain, as 
 it were, a new hold upon life. You will be another crea- 
 ture ; new views, new desires, new thoughts, will rise 
 within you. While you are anxious to please and sympa- 
 thise with your beauteous bride, you will feel as alert as a 
 boy, and as free and rapid in your conceptions as a 
 stripling. 
 
 '^ You will tell me, perhaps, that you could not make 
 
202 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 such a young creature happy. I differ from you in that. 
 Women are not like us in their tastes. A lady, as you 
 say, past the meridian of life, will seldom be courted for a 
 bride, unless with some sinister view ; but at least half the 
 young girls you meet with would be well contented with a 
 husband considerably older than themselves. Man marries 
 because he desires a lovely and soothing companion for his 
 vacant hours ; woman marries, because she feels the want 
 of a protector, a guardian, a guide, and an oracle, some one 
 to look up to with respect, and in whose judgment and 
 direction she may securely confide. Besides, Fleetwood, 
 you mistake yourself if you think you are old. Your 
 visage is not wrinkled, and your hair is not grey. The 
 activity of your temper, the many plans of hfe you have 
 tried, your perpetual change of place, have effectually pre- 
 served you from that running down of the wheels of 
 fancy, that decay of the principle of life, which should render 
 you an unfit companion for a blooming bride. 
 
 " You allege, that your temper, which is so fastidious 
 and sensitive, that you can seldom support the companion 
 of a day, is a cause that would reduce you to make an ill 
 figure, in a domestic circle, with five or six individuals 
 who sat down with you every day to table. Alas ! Fleet*, 
 wood, this is the very thing you want, the cause why your 
 temper is so blameably fastidious. The horse, however 
 generous his blood, and graceful his limbs, who has never 
 learned certain paces, and had his temper subdued to the 
 intimations of the bridle, will never be victor in the race. 
 Subject yourself to the law of associating with your fellow- 
 men, place yourself in the situation to be the guardian and 
 benefactor of your consort and kindred, and you will soon 
 feel and bend to the necessity of consulting their predi- 
 lections as well as your own. You will be a million times 
 the better and the happier for it. 
 
 " But the main error into which you have fallen, is to 
 suppose that the way of living between a man and his 
 wife, bears any resemblance to that with a chance com- 
 panion in a post-chaise, or between an ordinary host and 
 his guest. The first principle of society in this relation, 
 if it is actuated with any spirit of kindness, is the desire 
 
FLEETWOOir. 203 
 
 each party feels to be the sacrifice of the other. Instead 
 of regretting the unavoidable differences of inclination, they 
 become, where the topics to which they relate are not 
 fundamental, an additional source of pleasure. Each party 
 is eager to anticipate the desires of the other, to smooth 
 the way to their gratification, to provide for their happi- 
 ness. If, between a pair thus kind and thus wise, any 
 little debates chance to arise, this, too, adds to their en- 
 joyment. You know the proverb which says, ' The falling 
 out of lovers is the renewal of love.' Between man and 
 man differences are gravely discussed and argumentatively 
 settled. Each revises the imaginary brief of his own cause, 
 and becomes confirmed in his private view of the question 
 at issue. But, between man and woman, the smile which 
 unexpectedly displaces the clouded brow, is the symbol of 
 peace. Arguments are thrust away by hundreds, like 
 beggars from the fa9ade of a palace. The party most in 
 the right mourns over this degrading advantage. The 
 party most in the wrong confesses the error incurred with 
 so ingenuous a grace, as to make error look as if it gave 
 new improvement and finishing to a character. — Marry, 
 Fleetwood ! If you live, marry ! You know nothing of 
 happiness if you do not ! You are as ignorant of the true 
 zest of human life, as the oak which at this moment over- 
 canopies us with its branches ! " 
 
 Such were the advices of the intelligent and kind-hearted 
 friend I had thus accidentally acquired. They made a 
 strong impression upon me. I know not whether the im- 
 pression would have been so forcible, had the circumstances 
 under which the advice was given been different. But 
 the reader must recollect that it was addressed to me in 
 the midst of an amiable family, the children of which 
 were daughters. While Macneil was earnest in describing 
 the sort of wife he would recommend to me, I thought of 
 these accomplished young women : when we returned 
 home from the walk or ride which these discussions had 
 occupied, I looked round upon the circle, with different 
 emotions from those which had previously accompanied 
 the spectacle : could it be otherwise ? I have already said 
 that the junior of the three particularly engaged my at- 
 
204 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 tention : I now caught myself repeatedly in my solitude 
 uttering the involuntary exclamation, '*^ Mary, if ever I 
 marry, it is thou that shalt be my bride ! " 
 
 The conversations between me and my host, the sense 
 of which I have thus compressed, occupied many successive 
 excursions. One day, when Macneil was most deeply en- 
 gaged in the argument, I turned suddenly upon him, and 
 cried out somewhat gaily, '' Now, my friend, shall I try 
 whether you are in earnest in all this declamation ? If 
 such a marriage as you describe is desirable for me, it will 
 be no less desirable for the woman I shall choose ; one of 
 the parties in wedlock cannot be happy alone. You say, , 
 I should choose a young person, a person of pleasing | 
 manners, and a cultivated mind : where can I verify this ^ 
 description so truly as by your fire-side .-^ Will you give 
 me one of your daughters }" 
 
 My friend paused. '' A question like this compels one 
 
 to be serious indeed. — But you have no grave mean* 
 
 ing in proposing the interrogatory }" 
 
 " I cannot tell. Your arguments have made me think : 
 I do not say they have converted me. Macneil, I do not 
 wish to trifle with you : if my question touches you too 
 nearly, I dispense you from a reply." 
 - " No ; the question has been asked, and it shall be 
 answered. Only, as I by no means wish to restrain you, 
 by treating your question as a proposal, so I must request 
 you in return to consider my answer, as belonging merely 
 to an abstract illustration, as a logical experiment to try 
 the soundness of my recommendation. I should be as 
 much to blame in violating the modesty and maiden dig- 
 nity of my children, as in imposing fetters of any sort on 
 the freedom of your deliberations." 
 
 " Agreed ! Nothing can be more reasonable." 
 
 '^ Well, then ; I have no objection to your person, your 
 family, your fortune, your understanding, your accomplish- 
 ments, not even to your age. But then as to your tem- 
 per " 
 
 " Ay, there is the point ! " 
 
 ^^ What a strange thing is advice ! How difficult is it 
 to put one's self exactly in the place of another } How 
 
FLEETWOOD. 205 
 
 hard, to be sure that the advice we give, is exactly that 
 which we should think reasonable, could we change per- 
 sons with the man upon whom we are so ready to obtrude 
 it ? Fleetwood, I swear that I am your friend : I swear 
 that the project I urged upon you, was urged in the sin- 
 cerity of my heart." 
 
 " lo, triumphe ! I see, I shall die a bachelor \" — 
 Shall I confess my secret weakness ? My lo, triumphe , 
 was uttered with a heavy heart. The lovely Mary had 
 gained a station in my bosom, from which I felt I could 
 with difficulty dislodge her. 
 
 " I love my children ; you, all the world, would despise 
 me if I did not. It is so difficult to judge for a child, 
 conscious of unripened discernment, and relying on my 
 superior penetration and experience, or by whom, if this 
 rehance is not placed, it clearly ought to be ! I could 
 cheerfully commit my own happiness to the lottery of hu- 
 man affairs, but thus to dispose of the little all of one's 
 daughter, is a fearful responsibility ! 
 
 '^ Yet, after all, this responsibility I must encounter. F[If 
 my daughter marries a wise man or a fool, a prodigal or 
 an economist, an honest man or a knave, and it is done with 
 my approbation, it must 'alike happen that I may consider 
 myself as the author of her happiness or her misery. 
 
 "Well then, Fleetwood, I confess, that the woman who 
 marries you, will engage in a considerable risk. But, 
 God knows, all marriage is a risk — is the deepest game that 
 can be played in this sublunary scene. You say true, that 
 your risk will not be less, than that of the dame who ac- 
 cepts your hand. Yet I adhere to my advice, ' Marry ! ' 
 or, which is, indeed, merely dressing that advice in another 
 guise, ' Fleetwood, take the child of my bosom ! win her 
 partiality and kindness j my approbation waits on her pre- 
 ference ! ' 
 
 ^' By this question, however, which, as I said, I have 
 answered merely under the notion of a logical experiment, 
 you have brought to my recollection a part of the subject, 
 which, before, I ought not to have forgotten ; and I thank 
 you for it. If you should ever feel seriously disposed to 
 adopt my recompiendationj let it not be done lightly and 
 
206 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 unadvisedly. Consider it as the most important transaction 
 of your life. Consider that not merely your own happiness, 
 but that of the woman who has consented to embark hers 
 under your protection, the virtue and respectability of your 
 possible offspring, and 'the peace of the venerable parents 
 who have resigned her to your discretion, are at stake upon 
 the due regulation of your temper. Here, indeed, lies the 
 great difference between your present condition, and that 
 which I have been chalking out for you. Independent 
 and sole as you now stand, you find yourself answerable to 
 none : you can discard your servants when you please ; 
 you can break off with your [acquaintance ; and you need 
 scarcely deign to ask yourself, ^ Was I in fault ? ' But 
 you cannot so break off from the ties of affinity and blood. 
 Believe me, too much independence is not good for man. 
 It conduces neither to his virtue, nor his happiness. The 
 discipline which arises out of the domestic charities, has 
 an admirable tendency to make man, individually con- 
 sidered, what man ought to be. I do not think you, Fleet- 
 wood, worse than your neighbours. You are an honest 
 and a just man, with sense enough to discern the right, 
 and courage enough to pursue it. If you are now way-- 
 ward, and peevish, and indolent, and hypochondriacal, it is ■ 
 because you weakly hover on the outside of the pale of 
 human society, instead of gallantly entering yourself in the 
 ranks, and becoming one of the great congregation of man." 
 It was in such conversation that Macneil and I passed 
 our time in our excursions on the banks of the Windermere. 
 With what delight did I recollect this happy interval of 
 my life ! Ruffigny and Macneil were the only two men I 
 ever knew, the clearness of whose thinking was an ever 
 fresh source of delight ; and the generosity of whose souls, 
 enlightening their discourse, made their face occasionally 
 look as if it had been the face of an angel. But in the 
 society of Macneil my happiness was even purer than in 
 that of my father's friend. Ruffigny, gallant, noble-hearted 
 mortal as he was, stood alone; my intercourse with him 
 was a perpetual tete-a-tete, and had too much of monotony 
 and uniformity for the unsatisfied cravings of the human 
 mind ; but to return home with Macneil, after a morning's 
 
FLEETWOOD. 207 
 
 temperate and sober discussion, and to see him surrounded 
 with his blameless wife and accomplished daughters, what 
 could the heart of man look for more ? Add to which, I 
 was occupied with the new sensations which agitated my 
 bosom for the charming Mary. While I talked with Iherj 
 I forgot my prejudices against her sex ; the Marchioness 
 
 de L and the Countess of B seemed daily more 
 
 and more to become the shadow of a dream ; her convers- 
 ation was so inexpressibly ingenuous, and her sallies so art- 
 less, that, in spite of my preconceptions, she stole away my 
 heart. Her delight was in flowers ; and she seemed like 
 one of the beauties of her own parterre, soft, and smooth, 
 and brilliant, and fragrant^ and unsullied. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Why did these days of yet unexperienced delight pass so 
 quickly away ? Mr. Macneil, before I knew him, had de- 
 termined to pass over with his family to Italy, with the 
 intention of spending the remainder of his days there. He 
 had a friend in the Milanese with whom he had contracted 
 the strictest bonds of intimacy, and who had often pressed 
 him to take up his residence in his neighbourhood; he 
 was promised that circle of female associates and acquaint- 
 ance, which was denied to Mrs. Macneil in England ; and 
 this, though the admirable matron could have dispensed with 
 it for herself without repining, he judged to be an advantage 
 of the first importance to his daughters. Having formed 
 a project of this sort, he had proceeded so far as to have 
 settled to dispose of all his property in England, and to vest 
 his fortune in lands to be purchased on the spot of his des- 
 tined abode. The affairs which related to this intended 
 transplantation had already detained the family in England 
 longer than they wished ; and I agreed to purchase the 
 Westmorland estate, rather to faciUtate the projects of my 
 friend, than with any intention to take up my residence in 
 this part of the island. The property was transmitted. 
 
208 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 and lodged in the hands of a banker at Genoa ; and Mr. 
 Macneil determined to take his passage by sea, from Fal- 
 mouth, for that city. The adventurers in this voyage were 
 Mr. Macneil, his wife, and his two eldest daughters ; the 
 youngest was to remain, at least till the next season, upon a 
 visit to a family, who, in the winter, resided in London, and 
 during the summer, upon their estate in Gloucestershire. * 
 
 Every thing being prepared for the journey, the whole 
 establishment removed from the Windermere, and set out 
 for Falmouth ; I myself, as well as the charming cadette, 
 making part of the escort. I shall not dwell upon the 
 particulars of a tour, stretching almost from one extremity 
 of the kingdom to another ; we reached the celebrated and 
 commodious port from which my friends were to take their 
 passage. Here we spent a period of seven or eight days, 
 which was rendered so much the more interesting to me, 
 as I knew not whether I should ever meet this amiable 
 family again, and as it seemed to be at the mercy of the 
 winds whether almost every hour of our intercourse should 
 be the last. 
 
 The day after our arrival, Macneil and myself took an 
 excursion on the sea coast and among the cliffs, to explore 
 the beauties of this delicious country. Previously to our 
 quitting the borders of the lakes, I had come to a more 
 precise explanation with my friend, of the thoughts I en- 
 tertained respecting his youngest daughter. The removal, 
 which was impending, had brought on somewhat the more 
 hastily the communication of my views. I fairly confessed 
 that the married life was now much in my thoughts ; and 
 I owned that the eyes of Mary had, perhaps, contributed 
 more to my conversion, than the arguments of her father. 
 My friend asked me, if I had ever opened myself to her 
 on the subject, or was informed of the state of her inclin-i 
 ation toward me ? 
 
 I owned I h^d not. The subject was in itself so in- 
 teresting, and was so new to my thoughts, that, whenever 
 the impulse of confessing my partiality had presented 
 itself to me, it had always brought with it such a palpi- 
 tation of the heart, and tremulousness of voice, as had 
 compelled me for the time to desist from my purpose, 
 
FLEETWOOD. 209 
 
 Nor could there ever, in my mind, be sufficient reason for 
 an early declaration, except where the parties were so 
 circumstanced, that they could not otherwise have the 
 opportunity of a protracted intercourse, and a more minute 
 acquaintance with each other's qualifications and temper. 
 Was it not much more gratifying to a delicate mind, by 
 silent attentions to steal away the soul, and to observe the 
 gradual demonstrations of kindness in a mistress, growing 
 up unconsciously to herself, than by an abrupt question to 
 compel her to check or to anticipate the progress of sen- 
 timent ? 
 
 Should I own the truth ? WTienever I meditated the 
 proposing of the question, I was immediately beset in two 
 ways with the passion of fear. I feared to be refused : 
 else why did I put the question ? I also feared to be 
 accepted : perhaps no ingenuous mind, not yet lost to a 
 serious anticipation of the future, could be free from that 
 fear. It was a question of so deep a stake, to both the 
 parties to whom it related ! The man who was about to 
 form it, could scarcely help recollecting on the verge, " Now 
 I am free ; I am master of my own actions and of my 
 plans of life : before the clock shall strike again, it may 
 be I shall be bound by the sacred ties of honour, and the 
 fate of my future life will be at the disposal of another ! " 
 The season of courtship is, at least to the man who has 
 outlived the first heyday of his boiling blood, a season of 
 probation ; it is the business of either party to study the 
 other, and in each interview distinctly to enquire, ^^ Is this 
 the person with whom I ought to embark in the voyage of 
 life ? " Every species of promise, express or implicit, ought 
 to be kept back, that he may preserve, as long as possible, 
 the healthful and genuine character of the scene in which 
 he is engaged. 
 
 " Farewell," said Macneil, in the close of the interesting 
 conversation in which we were engaged. '' I leave my 
 daughter behind me ; and I may say, I leave her in your 
 protection. The family with which she is to spend the 
 winter are very good sort of people ; but they are people 
 of fashion, and without hearts. No man knows any thing 
 amiss of them ; they are correct in their methojjs of acting, 
 p 
 
210 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 and punctual in their payments ; I feel satisfied that no- 
 thing amiss can happen to my daughter while she is an 
 inmate of their house. But it is to your sentiments, as a 
 man of worth and honour, that I confide her. I believe 
 she approves of you; I think she will accept of your 
 tender, if you shall judge proper to make it. In this, it 
 is of course as much your desire, as it is mine, that she 
 should he free. Fleetwood, it is a very deep and solemn 
 confidence that I repose in you. If you marry my daughter, 
 you must be to her, father, and mother, and sisters, and 
 all the world in one. If you are unjust to her, she will 
 have no one to whom to appeal. If you are capricious, 
 and rigorous, and unreasonable, she will be your prisoner ! " 
 
 This pathetic appeal from the father of her I loved, 
 suddenly filled my eyes with a gush of tears. I eagerly 
 pressed his hand. '' Macneil," said I, " I will never be 
 unjust to your daughter ; she shall never find me ca- 
 pricious, or rigorous, or unreasonable. I swear to you, 
 that I will be such a husband as the most tender of fathers 
 would choose for his daughter \" — It will be seen how I 
 kept my oath. 
 
 After the interval of a few days we parted. I will not 
 repeat here what Mrs. Macneil said to me concerning her 
 child, as that would be to go over again in substance what 
 had been already said by the father. This accomplished 
 woman never appeared so amiable to me as during our 
 short residence at Falmouth. She had as much right, 
 perhaps more, than her husband, to urge upon me the 
 justice I should owe to the lovely Mary. Never had any 
 mother more affectionately or more diligently discharged 
 the duties of a parent; never was mother more amply 
 qualified to discharge them. 
 
 I, and Mary, and one of the daughters of the family 
 with whom Mary was invited to visit, attended the rest 
 of the party in a boat, to the side of the vessel in which 
 they embarked for Genoa. We went with them on board 
 the ship, and spent still two hours more in their company. 
 Never was a family so equally or so strongly inspired with 
 love for each other, as the group before me. 
 
 ^' Why am I not going with you } " said Mary. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 211 
 
 " Do not talk of that/' replied the mother ; " we shall 
 else never be able to leave you behind." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 I ATTENDED on horseback the chaise which conveyed 
 Mary^ and the young lady, her companion, to London. 
 Having fixed her there, I was obliged to set out on an 
 excursion of a few weeks into Wales, to inspect some 
 aflPairs which required my presence. It was on the twentieth 
 of September that the Macneils sailed from England ; and 
 the weather had proved squally and uncertain almost from 
 the hour we parted. On that day week from the time we 
 quitted Falmouth, I slept at Shrewsbury ; and never in 
 my life do I recollect a night so tremendously stormy. 
 My thoughts were of course wholly on the Romney, the 
 vessel on board which these dear friends were embarked. 
 I could not refrain from anticipating every thing dreadful. 
 How curiously is the human mind affected by circum- 
 stances ! I have often listened to a storm, without almost 
 recollecting that the globe of earth contained the element 
 of water within its frame ; I have felt entranced with the 
 hollow sound, and the furious blasts, that sung round and 
 shook the roof that sheltered me ; I have got astride in 
 imagination upon the horses of the element, and plunged 
 with fearful delight into the vast abyss. Now every blast 
 of wind went to my soul. Every thought was crowded 
 with dismal images of piercing shrieks, of cracking masts, 
 of the last despair, of dying clasps, and a watery grave. 
 It is in vain to endeavour to give an idea of what, this 
 night, I endured. It was not fancy or loose conjecture ; 
 it was firm persuasion ; I saw my friends perish ; when 
 the morning dawned, I rose with a perfect conviction that 
 they were no more. 
 
 So deep was the suffering I endured, that I had not 
 spirit the next morning to leave Shrewsbury, and proceed 
 p 2 
 
212 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 on my destined journey. I could think of nothing Ijut the 
 sad fate of Macneil^, and affairs of business appeared wholly 
 unworthy of attention. What a long and melancholy day 
 did it seem ! A calm had succeeded ; the sun shone, and 
 nature was cheerful ; to what purpose ? The sun no 
 longer shone on Macneil ! — By the evening, however, the 
 monotony of rest became more intolerable to me than tra- 
 velling ; I ordered a chaise ; I drove all night ; and in the 
 morning arrived a^ my paternal abode. 
 
 The day after my arrival I received a letter from my 
 adored Mary. The sole topic of the letter was the storm 
 of the twenty-seventh. She wrote in broken sentences, 
 with grief, with terror, with distraction. " My all," said 
 she, ^' is embarked in one adventure ! father, mother, sis- 
 ters ! What infatuation prevailed upon me to separate 
 myself from them ? It is a crime no less deep and terri- 
 ble than parricide ! What shall I do alone in the world ? 
 Ye wild and raging winds ! Ye merciless and all-devour- 
 ing waves ! Ye have made me tenfold a vagabond and a 
 beggar upon the earth ! The remembrance of last Satur- 
 day is distraction to me ! Would that total distraction 
 would come and drive all remembrance from my brain for 
 ever ! " She continued in a style no less incoherent, and 
 seemed to be as fully impressed as myself, with the convic- 
 tion that the late storm had proved fatal to her whole family. 
 
 I no sooner read the letter of Mary, than I lost no time 
 in setting out for London, that I might afford her every 
 consolation in my power. It was particularly since this 
 fatal prognostic had struck her, that she felt how forlorn 
 was her situation in the family where she resided. 
 
 She had met one of the daughters upon a visit in Staf- 
 fordshire ; they two had been the only individuals of the 
 party, who had not reached a demure and sober age ; and 
 for a month they had been sole companions to each other. 
 They had sung and danced to each other ; they had strolled 
 through the meadows and reclined in the shade together ; 
 Mary had instructed her friend in botany, and her friend 
 had been eager to learn, because she was told that botany 
 was a fashionable accompUshment ; she had, in return, 
 been copious and animated in her description of the town 
 
FLEETWOOD. 21S 
 
 amusements. All this ended in the two young ladies, 
 with that ardour and levity which is perhaps inseparable 
 from youth, swearing to each other an everlasting friend- 
 ship. Mary was a total stranger to every member of the 
 family, except this young lady ; and the seniors compHed 
 in this point with their daughter's wishes, in inviting the 
 youngest Miss Macneil to pass the winter with them. Mr. 
 Macneil wished, for my sake, to leave Mary in England, 
 and easily turned the balance of her mind toward accepting 
 the invitation. 
 
 For the first two or three days Mary had been dehghted 
 with the metropoUs ; and, no doubt, would have continued 
 to be delighted for as many months, had not anxiety for 
 the safety of her family gradually driven all other thoughts 
 out of her mind. 
 
 • At first she had conceived of a voyage by sea no 
 otherwise than of a journey by land : her father had been 
 a great traveller ; her mother had been in Italy ; yet tem- 
 pests and shipwrecks had made no part of the little his- 
 tories she had heard them relate of their past adventures. 
 The ocean occupied no distinct region of her fancy : she 
 had devoted no part of her thoughts to meditate the natural 
 history of the world of waters. In the past years of her 
 life she had had no interest, giving to her ideas that par- 
 ticular direction ; she had committed no rich freightage to 
 the mercy of the unfaithful element. Now the case was 
 altered. She had parted with her friends in a gentle and 
 prosperous gale ; but the late squally weather had given 
 being and substance in her mind to the phenomena of th© 
 sea. What occupied her thoughts became the theme of 
 her tongue ; but she soon foimd that her fashionable friend 
 lent an idle ear to the monotonous topic. Miss Matilda 
 Rancliffe was what is well expressed by the phrase, a fair- 
 weather friend ; she loved no dismals ; her step was airy ; 
 the tone of her voice was frolic and cheerful; and she 
 owned that her sensibilities were so overpowering, as to 
 make the impulse in her to fly from the presence of distress 
 irresistible. 
 
 The servant at Mr. Ranchffe's showed me into the 
 drawing-room, where the whole family, with one or two 
 
 p 3 
 
214 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 visiters, was assembled. Every one was cheerful and 
 amused ; the young ladies were busy talking of a party of 
 pleasure, and anticipating the happiness they should reap 
 from it. I looked round the circle, and could not at first 
 discover the object of my search. The poor Mary had 
 withdrawn into a corner, neglecting all, and by all neg- 
 lected. Her cheeks were pale ; her eyes were sunk ; her 
 attitude was the attitude of despair. As soon as she saw 
 me, she hastened to me, and led me into another room. 
 
 '' Oh, sir," said she, " tell me all that you know, and all 
 tliat you can guess, respecting my poor father and mother. 
 You, Mr. Fleetwood, are acquainted with these things ; 
 you, no doubt, have witnessed storms at sea, and know the 
 different coasts near which they were to pass in their voyage. 
 Are there any hopes ? Whereabout was the vessel likely 
 to be when the storm came on ? Was there ever so dread- 
 ful a tempest ? " I endeavoured to encourage the unhappy 
 orphan ; I sought to inspire courage, with as much skill as 
 it could be communicated by one who had not a spark of 
 
 hope existing in his mind. 
 
 " And how, Mary," said I, '^ do you find yourself situ- 
 ated in this worthy family ?" " Ah, Mr. [Fleetwood,' re- 
 plied she, with a desponding voice, ' this is a sad place for 
 me ! As long as I was gay, and could join in their amuse- 
 ments, we went on well enough ; I was a sort of favourite. 
 But now that my heart sinks within me, nobody cares for 
 me ; they are glad to pass me by, and crowd together in a 
 laughing knot, at the most distant part of the room. This 
 whole family, — father, mother, brothers, sisters, — seem to 
 live only for amusement. What a situation for me, who have 
 spent my whole life in a family of love ? — a family, where 
 no individual could suffer, without exciting the liveliest 
 anxieties, and the tenderest attentions, in all the rest ? " 
 
 A month longer elapsed, before we had any intelligence 
 of the fate of the Romney. During this period, my visits 
 to the amiable forlorn were unintermitted. If Mary had 
 before conceived a nascent partiality to me, it now became 
 much stronger. The sight of me was the only pleasure 
 tlie day afforded. The contrast b(itween my sympathy and 
 affection, and the indifference of the Rancliffes was extreme. 
 
1^ 
 
 1 : 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 215 
 
 Into my bosom only could she pour her sorrows ; in my 
 eye alone did she meet the expression of humanity. On 
 my part, the situation was no less favourable to the growth 
 of attachment. The sweet and affectionate disposition of 
 Mary was conspicuous. Her desolate, situation rendered 
 her tenfold more interesting. I now felt, for the first time . 
 in my life, how delightful a task it is to console distress, ' 
 whenthe sufferer is a woman, beautiful and young. At 
 the proper hour I always flew to the presence of my charm- 
 ing ward with the most eager impatience. In general, i 
 Pwhen the mind is engaged in the performance of virtuous ; | 
 \ actions, one of the sentiments which most palpably offers \ 
 itself is''^an honest pride. It was not pride that I felt on [ 
 the present occasion. My mind was too much softened to 
 be able to entertain so erect and prosperous a passion, j 
 There was something deliciously languid in the tone of my j 
 spirits; it was sadness, but a sadness not without its grati- ) 
 fications. Sorrow brings two generous hearts nearer to \ 
 each other „thaDL_4oy. I was astonished, when I reflected 
 on the ignorance in which I had lived of the most delicio us 
 eoaalJimsjl£jJieJbaaHa^^ and how near I had been to 
 
 I going to the grave without once participating what is most j 
 \ precious and excellent in the life of man. J 
 
 " The melancholy news at length reached us, which with 
 so sure a foresight we had anticipated. The vessel in which 
 the family of my beloved had embarked, was tossed several 
 days in the Bay of Biscay, and at length dashed to pieces 
 near Cape Finisterre, upon the iron-fronted coast of the 
 province of Galicia. The captain only, and a few of the 
 officers and sailors, were saved in the long-boat. They had 
 proffered to receive two of the passengers into the boat. 
 But this kindred of love refused to be separated ; they could 
 not endure to cast lots upon their lives; and, rather than 
 submit to so dire an extremity, father, mother, and daugh- 
 ters preferred to perish together. How painfully are we 
 apt to reflect afterward upon a project such as this of the 
 voyage to Italy, as partaking of the nature of suicide ! If 
 the Macneils had been content to live in England, they 
 might have enjoyed many years of pleasure, and have been 
 long an ornament and advantage to their species. I never 
 p 4 
 
216 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 from this hour recollected the scene of their embarkation^, 
 without figuring them to myself as so many victims, robed 
 in white, and crowned with chaplets, marching along the 
 beach, as to be sacrificed. 
 
 When the melancholy event was ascertained, it was no 
 longer possible for Mary to continue in the family of theRan- 
 cliflPes. She hired a lodging to which she retired, with only 
 one humble female friend to accompany her. The family, 
 who politely dismissed her, condoled with her upon her mis- 
 fortune. It is impossible to conceive any thing more hard 
 and unfeeling, than the condolences which politeness extorts 
 on so terrible an occasion. If a man could observe, from a 
 place of safety, the roarings of a tiger, as he tore the palpi- 
 tating limbs of his own brother, they would scarcely jar 
 more painfully on the sense. The adieux of the Rancliffes 
 said but too plainly, " As soon as we have shut the door on 
 you and your woes, we purpose to forget that there is any 
 such being in the world." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 I WAS now poor Mary's only visiter. I shall not undertake 
 to detail the progress of our amour under these tragical 
 circumstances. For a long time, though our courtship sub- 
 stantially proceeded, no word of love, or hope, or of pros- 
 pect to the future, fell from my lips. If I had attempted 
 to utter such a word, I should have felt it like sacrilege ; 
 and I am sure the pure and affectionate heart of Mary would 
 have sustained such a shock as must ultimately have, proved 
 a bar to our union for ever. No ; she regarded me merely 
 as a zealous guardian, and a faithful protector. She saw in 
 me her father's friend ; and, as I seemed busy in perform- 
 ing the functions of that friend to his surviving represent- 
 ative, she honoured me for my fidelity, she felt toward me 
 an increasing reverence, and had no thought nearer her 
 heart than the gratifying my wishes, and anticipating my 
 
FLEETWOOD. 217 
 
 requests. \The passion of the sexes will^ perhaps, infallibly 
 grow up between male and female, wherever they are much 
 together, and feel much mutual approbation, provided they 
 are impressed with no adverse prepossessions, and there is 
 nothing in the discipline and decorums of society that for- 
 bids and sets a brand on its completion. The melancholy^ 
 too, that hung over our interviews, softened our minds, and 
 prepared them for tender and passionate feelings. \ — 
 
 One further misfortune impended over my ward; for 
 such by the most sacred obligations she was now become. 
 Her father, as I have said, had converted his whole property 
 into money, which he lodged, previously to his embarkation, 
 in a banking-house in Genoa. He, of course, received, in 
 the due forms practised on such occasions, two complete 
 dupUcates of the titles or instruments by which he, or his 
 representative, might claim the property at Genoa, on pro* 
 ducing the said titles or instruments. These duplicates were 
 enclosed in two boxes of ebony, in figure and appearance 
 perfectly similar. One of them Mr. Macneil designed to 
 take with him on board the Romney, that he might employ 
 his fortune in the purchases he meditated, with the least 
 possible delay; the other was to be left in my hands, with 
 a view to any possible accident or miscarriage. I was pre- 
 sent with my friend when he closed and sealed his different 
 packages, the last day but two before he left the Winder- 
 mere. We read over on that occasion the papers received 
 from the Genoese banker. The room in which we sat was 
 crowded with trunks and boxes, some already locked, others 
 waiting for their last complement. In the middle of the 
 room was a large table, covered with valuable trinkets, 
 bank-notes, money, books of accounts, and packets of pa- 
 pers of a thousand denominations. Suddenly Macneil was 
 summoned out of the room, to speak to a land-bailiff, or 
 tradesman of some sort, who had come for the second time 
 upon some trifling and vexatious question. Before he left 
 the room, my friend hastened to put away his most import- 
 ant papers. He closed the two boxes of ebony, and care- 
 fully placed some other papers in a trunk which was near 
 him. His seal lay on the table ; and, taking it in his hand, 
 he requested me to affix it where it was wanting. In all 
 
218 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 this he seemed to proceed so cautiously^ as to leave my mind 
 entirely free from suspicion ; while^ at the same time^ his 
 attention was really engaged by another subject. This is 
 the only account I can give of the affair. The trunks were 
 opened no more. One of the ebony boxes, together with 
 the rest of the packages, was finally conveyed on board the 
 Romney : the other, as was previously determined, re- 
 mained in my possession. When, in consequence of the 
 shipwreck in which Macneil perished (for he had placed a 
 will he had lately made in my hands, and had appointed 
 me, in conjunction with an eminent barrister-at-law, his 
 executor), I broke the seal, and opened the box which was 
 supposed to contain the title and instruments of his fortune, 
 now become the fortune of his surviving child, 1 found it 
 entirely empty. 
 
 I was thunderstruck with this circumstance. I entered 
 into a correspondence with the banker at Genoa ; I after- 
 ward commenced a lawsuit against him. His answers to 
 my letters were cautiously and artfully expressed; they 
 avoided saying any thing directly respecting the sum of 
 sixty thousand pounds sterling which I stated Mr. Macneil 
 to have remitted; the writer entrenched himself in the forms 
 and language of business; he said that he should be glad to 
 see the titles and instruments on which I founded so con- 
 siderable a claim ; but, till he saw them, he could deliver no 
 opinion on the matter. As this detestable correspondence 
 proceeded, and in proportion as he felt himself more secure 
 of his ground, he assumed a loftier and more insolent tone. 
 He was astonished that I should trouble him with repeated 
 applications in an affair which he knew nothing of, and 
 required that I should desist from such extraordinary and 
 discreditable importunities. This may well appear to the 
 reader somewhat wonderful: the banker who committed 
 this enormous fraud had hitherto borne an unimpeachable 
 character: all I can say is, that the temptation was pro- 
 bably too large for his sentiments of integrity. I may be 
 permitted, as a misanthrope, to remark, that the integrity 
 of too many men has its limits, and that it is to be feared 
 there have been bankers, even in England, who would have 
 sold themselves to the devil for sixty thousand pounds.-— 
 
FLEETWOOD. 219 
 
 The fact is, however, in a word, that the property of the 
 Macneils was never recovered. 
 
 I have often thought it was fortunate for me, that I and 
 my good friend, the Genoese banker, were not inhabitants 
 of the same country. It was certainly in some measure an 
 issue of character that was tried between us. I do believe 
 that, if the Genoese had not entertained the hope of keep- 
 ing his reputation as well as the money, he would have paid 
 Mary her fortune. What applause would he have obtained, 
 if he had disbursed out of his coffers sixty thousand pounds, 
 which, as every one who repeated the story would have been 
 forward to remark, he was not obliged to pay ! On the other 
 hand, what a villain was I, if, on false or uncertain grounds, 
 I charged him with fraudulently detaining so enormous a 
 sum ! '^ I must take care," as he observed to me in some 
 of his letters, '^ how I advanced an accusation against him, 
 tending to subvert the whole basis of his transactions, with- 
 out having in my possession documents by which it could 
 be supported." The good Genoese, as I afterward learned, 
 made out a plausible and even pathetic story, to his acquaint- 
 ance and friends, of the injury he sustained. "' It might," 
 he said, " have been the intention of the unhappy gentle- 
 man who was lost at sea, to have vested this property in his 
 hands ; the more was his misfortune that he never received 
 it ! Sixty thousand pounds, however, was a large sum ; he 
 had never in the whole course of his business held cash to 
 that amount, at one time, for any one individual ; and he 
 took upon him to doubt, from every thing he had heard, 
 whether the deceased had ever been worth half the sum. It 
 was a hard thing, indeed, to be made accountable for mo- 
 ney he never saw, and to be called a cheat and a villain 
 unless he would give away half his estate ; and, though he 
 trusted in the equity of the laws of Genoa to protect his 
 fortune, and in the candour of his countrymen to vindicate 
 his character, yet the uneasiness which the rashness of this 
 Englishman, to say the least of it, had given his mind, was 
 such as no vindication could ever compensate." — I am not 
 sure, if I had gone at this time to Genoa, whether I should 
 not have been publicly hooted, as I passed along the 
 streets. 
 
220 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Yet, in reality, spite of the loss of these important in- 
 struments, I had documents left, sufficient to justify me in 
 the mind of every impartial observer. The amount of Mr. 
 Macneil's fortune was, of course, a matter that had been 
 sufficiently obvious to many. This fortune could not sud- 
 denly be annihilated. The Milanese friend of Macneil was 
 ready to attest that it had been his purpose to lodge his 
 property in this house, and that he certainly believed he 
 had done so. He produced a letter in which the fact was 
 strongly implied, though it was not affirmed in words that 
 admitted not of debate. In his will my friend described the 
 receipt of the sum as being acknowledged by the banker, 
 and entered into some detail as to the number and titles of 
 the instruments under which he claimed. 
 
 But all this was not sufficient to procure a decree in my 
 favour before the Genoese magistrates. The Italian lawyers 
 observed, that a description of property in a man's will was 
 the most unlike thing in the world to a title to an estate; and 
 that, if such a doctrine, as this claim turned on, were admitted, 
 which they well knew the equity of the bench before which 
 they pleaded would reject with indignation, every man who 
 pleased, in every country of Europe, might bequeath his 
 daughter sixty thousand pounds, not only from their client, 
 but from every banking, and even considerable mercantile, 
 house within the limits of the repubUc. They dwelt at great 
 length upon the high character for integrity, which had ever 
 been preserved by the commercial class of the citizens of 
 Genoa, — a class which was well known to consist principally 
 of the most ancient and honourable nobility in the world ; 
 tJiey expatiated pathetically upon the virtues, the charities, 
 the religious observances, and the unblemished life of their 
 client, and the agonies his pure and uncorrupted mind had 
 suffered from so foul an imputation; and they earnestly 
 called on the court by their present decree to vindicate, not 
 the defendant only, whose character in this case had been 
 grievously aspersed, but the whole state, from the suspicion 
 that such a crime could have been so much as conceived by 
 one of her citizens. Their exertions and eloquence were 
 crowned with the most entire success. 
 
 I hesitated long to disclose to the unfortunate Mary the 
 
FLEETWOOD. 221 
 
 new calamity which hung over her. One consideration at 
 length decided me to make her of council in the contro- 
 versy that was going on. I found her mind dwelHng with 
 incessant anguish on the image of her departed kindred. A^*^', 
 She refused all amusement and avocations. The employ- cTmiilk 
 ments which had lately been so dear were now loathsome '^'^^T- 
 to her. The fields and the garden had no charms. Her 
 spirits and her appetite deserted her. I saw that there was 
 no chance of recalling her to life, but by giving her some 
 object to which she could not refuse to attend. I believe 
 the loss of her fortune of sixty thousand pounds was the 
 direct means by which she was preserved from the grave. 
 
 At first she declared in the most peremptory manner 
 that she would listen to nothing that related to the goods 
 of life. What were the means of hfe~to her when she was 
 already bereaved of every thing that made life worth 
 having ! It was a pleasure to her to conceive_, that, when 
 she lost parents and sisters, she had nothing left ! There 
 was something soothing in the idea that the same billows 
 which had devoured her dearest relatives, had swallowed up 
 their wealth, and left her a helpless beggar in the world ! ^^ _ 
 
 By degrees I recalled her to a sounder mind. I repre- (J's 
 sented to her the importance of wealth, and the duty which Av«M(nt*t 
 prescribed the preservation and right disposition of it. 
 With the fortune which had thus devolved to her, how ^ 
 respectable might she become ! She might maintain a ■**•■'♦*• ^- 
 household of temperate and happy individuals. She might 
 relieve the wants of multitudes, might unfold talent, encou- 
 rage industry, and multiply around her the class of sober 
 and honourable citizens in the state. Even the inherent 
 qualities which she or any other individual possessed, were 
 illustrated, when they appeared in conjunction with the 
 goods of fortune. The merits of the poor man were 
 always clouded, undervalued, and baffled of their utility ; 
 while those of the rich were illuminated with the beams of 
 applause, and enabled to appear with tenfold effect upon the 
 theatre of society. I further reminded her of the guilt she 
 would incur, if, instead of endeavouring to make a proper 
 use of the wealth which had devolved to her, she suffered 
 it, by any negligence of hers, to become the prize of profli- 
 
222 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 gacy and fraud, and to be administered in the depraved 
 manner which such dispositions would dictate. 
 
 I prevailed on the sorrowing maid to suffer me to bring 
 to her the barrister^ who was the joint executor of her fa- 
 ther's will. We read together, in her presence, the letters 
 which had relation to the subject. We canvassed the evi- 
 dence, nuncupatory and scriptory, which might be made 
 useful in the cause. We brought together in her apart- 
 ments a consultation of English lawyers, with whom we 
 thought it necessary to advise as to the measures to be pur- 
 sued. Add to this, that the letters which from time to 
 time reached us from the Genoese banker, and from the 
 lawyers it was necessary for us to retain in that city, both 
 when they were expected, and when they arrived, kept 
 alive our interest, and furnished topics for our conversation. 
 A lawsuit is like an adventure in a gaming transaction ; 
 the mind is continually upon the stretch — the affair from 
 day to day assumes a new face — hope and fear dance an 
 alternate measure before the eyes, and we are now sanguine 
 with expectation, and now speechless and dejected with 
 intolerable despair. How many waking and anxious nights 
 may he expect to pass, who, from choice or necessity, is 
 obliged to commit his property to the discussions of tjie 
 wrangling bar ! The degree of uneasiness which is inse- 
 parable from an affair of this sort, was, as I have already 
 said, salutary to Mary, and served by imperceptible degrees 
 to bring her back to the considerations of the world. 
 
 Here, then, was a strange series of vicissitudes in the 
 pecuniary fortune of my destined bride. When I had 
 first contemplated marriage with her, she was one of three 
 coheiresses merely of a man of a given fortune, who might 
 expect on the day of her marriage to receive a certain por- 
 tion, and, after the death of her parents, to divide in equal 
 allotments the property which they possessed. In the few 
 days that elapsed between the melancholy intelligence of 
 the loss of her family, and the period when it became 
 necessary to look into the affairs of my deceased friend, she 
 stood forth the undoubted successor to his ample property. 
 I never had been, in any occurrence of my life, a merce- 
 nary character ; and I doubt whether, in any moment of. 
 
FLEETWOOD, 223 
 
 these few days, the idea of Mary's accession of property 
 offered itself to my thoughts; certainly it was very far 
 from being among the early suggestions inspired by this 
 melancholy catastrophe. But, after this, there was a long 
 time, nearly a year, before the question was finally set at 
 rest (the action, indeed, was not dismissed by the Italian 
 courts under two years ; but I had, before that, resolutely 
 driven the expectation of any advantage to result from my 
 thoughts) ; and during ihis period, amidst the various 
 fluctuations of our cause, and the sanguine hopes which 
 were occasionally held out to me, the successive images of 
 my mistress as the possessor of an ample property, and a 
 beggar, could not but forcibly present themselves to my 
 apprehension. 
 
 What a strange thing is the human mind ! Of what 
 consequence was it to me, whether the amiable and accom- 
 plished woman I married were, or were not, amply endowed 
 with the goods of fortune? I had already enough for 
 every honest and honourable purpose in life. Fortune 
 could not make her more amiable and accomplished than 
 she was : adversity could take nothing from her. I can 
 safely declare that I never repined for a moment that she 
 gave me her hand without bringing me a shilling. Yet I 
 am formed like all other corporeal essences, and am affected 
 by the adventitious and unmeriting circumstances of rank 
 or riches with which my fellow-being is surrounded. Had 
 Mary entered into my alliance a distinguished heiress, 
 this, in spite of my philosophy, would have commanded 
 from me a certain deference and homage. As she was 
 pennyless, a mere pensionary on my bounty, — I swear I 
 did not value her less, ■ — 1 felt more tenderness, more 
 humanity, a more religious kind of forbearance toward her. 
 But the sentiment was of a different sort ; her first claim 
 was upon my pity. I experienced this a hundred times, 
 when I hastened to pay her my customary visit. When I 
 waited upon her as an heiress, I approached with a certain 
 submission ; I looked at her as an independent being ; my 
 thoughts moved slow, and my tongue was apt to falter, if 
 I suggested to her any idea of a freer and more uncere- 
 monious sort. When I visited her portionless, my mind 
 
224 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 moved freer ; I breathed a thinner and more elastic atmo- 
 sphere ; my tongue assumed a tone of greater confidence ; 
 and, at the same time that I felt for her the deepest com- 
 passion and the most entire sympathy, my speech became 
 more eloquent, and I caught myself talking with the con- 
 descension of a superior — superior in the possession of 
 that sordid dirt which the system of human things much 
 oftener bestows upon a driveller or a knave than upon a 
 being of genuine excellence and worth. 
 
 Another idea of a subtler nature offered itself to my 
 thoughts, which I will state here, as calculated to illustrate 
 the whimsical composition of the human mind. I felt 
 that, in consequence of the heavy calamity which had 
 overtaken this beautiful orphan, it was become doubly 
 incumbent on me that I should marry her. She was left, 
 by a deplorable and astonishing event, desolate upon the 
 stage of the world ; and she was in all moral and religious 
 obligation entitled to the full benefit of my fortune. But 
 this is not exactly the idea to which I refer. An ample 
 property of sixty thousand pounds had unaccountably dis- 
 appeared. What was become of it ? I charged the mal- 
 versation on the Genoese banker : he denied the charge. 
 The question was at issue before the laws and lawyers of 
 his country : it was probable that the accused would ulti- 
 mately be acquitted. He would be acquitted, because I 
 had no sufficient evidence to exhibit, to substantiate the 
 assertion. Well, then ; here was a horrible fraud which 
 had been perpetrated. As I charged it on the banker, 
 might not another charge it on m.e ? I had been trusted 
 by Macneil in all his affairs ; there was no apparent indi- 
 vidual to whom the guilt could belong, but the Genoese or 
 myself. He had no more visible temptation than I. His 
 opulence was not less ; and, like me, he was childless and 
 a bachelor ; it was generally believed that, when he died, 
 he would bequeath his property to the church. But, if 
 the fraud were mine, how much more complicated would 
 be my guilt ! I was the friend of the deceased, the Ge- 
 noese a stranger ; I had been fixed on by Macneil, as the 
 select depositary of his interests. Then imagine for a 
 moment, how inexpressible must be the height of my pro- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 225 
 
 fligacy, if, conscious to myself that I alone was guilty of 
 the embezzlement, I deliberately charged it upon another, 
 and solemnly prosecuted the charge ! Imagine what the 
 guilt must be, of stripping a wealthy orphan, left in my 
 guardianship, of her property, at the same moment that 
 fate had robbed her of her natural protectors, and of thus 
 turning her forth pennyless, to seek the means of a wretched 
 subsistence ! 
 
 These, it will be said, are but wild and air-drawn pic- 
 tures. I had passed through the world with an unim- 
 peached reputation : the integrity and liberality of my 
 transactions were known to every one that had heard of 
 my name ; no creature would ever dream of suspecting me 
 of so flagitious an action. Be it so. A man is diversely 
 viewed by the variously circumstanced inhabitants of the 
 globe. Milton is known to one man merely as the Latin 
 translator to a secretary of state ; and the nurse of La 
 Fontaine interrupted his confessor, who was setting before 
 him on his death-bed the terrors of another world, with 
 the exclamation, " For Christ's sake, do not disturb the 
 poor wretch ; he is less knave than fool ; God can never 
 have the heart to damn him." Such was my temper, that 
 I could not sleep tranquilly upon my pillow, while I 
 thought it possible that a native of Genoa or Peru should 
 regard me as a villain, pampering my own follies and 
 depraved propensities with the purloined property of an- 
 other. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. Let it not be supposed 
 that the passion and determination of my mind in favour 
 of this charming girl were less fervent than they ever had 
 been. On the contrary, she became every hour more in- 
 teresting to me. While she sat like Niobe, her whole 
 soul dissolved in tears for the untimely destruction of her 
 family, it was impossible not to feel in its utmost energy 
 
226 FLBETWOOD. 
 
 the wish, Might I be your comforter ! In proportion as 
 she gained the power of attending in some degree to the 
 objects before her, her intercourse gave me nameless 
 emotions. There was a gentle sweetness in her manner, 
 that I never saw in any other human creature. I re- 
 membered her gay, and active, and spirited ; it was now 
 a faint and undefined image of these qualities that pre- 
 sented itself — a sun that yielded an uncertain beam, amidst 
 the mass of clouds that sought to overwhelm it. That 
 transparent complexion, that countenance in which, like a 
 book, the spectator might read every emotion and tem- 
 porary impulse of the soul, rendered every state of mind 
 of the angelic creature to whom it belonged interesting. 
 "WTien the first faint smile, after the death of her father, 
 illumined her features, it struck me like a resurrection 
 from the dead : my sensations were such as those which 
 Admetus must have felt, when Hercules brought back to 
 him his heroic consort from the regions of Pluto. There 
 was something too aerial, too subtle, too heavenly in her 
 countenance, to be properly the attribute of a terrestrial 
 being. The glories of Elysium seemed to hang round 
 her. Poor Mary had nothing on earth left her to love, 
 but me ; and she felt toward me as toward father, mother, 
 sisters, in one. Nothing could be so delicate and flattering 
 to me as the whole of her demeanour ; and every de- 
 monstration of this sort had a double price, as it appeared 
 a gentle, and voluntary, and cheerful restraint upon the 
 state of her mind ; so much taken away from the dead to 
 give to the living. 
 
 Thus we passed the winter. The cheerful blaze of our 
 quiet hearth compensated for the driving hail and snow 
 which raged without. Gradually I endeavoured to engage 
 the attention of my charmer with indifferent objects. I 
 adorned her apartments with the most beautiful products 
 of the gardener's care I was able to procure. I obtained 
 some for her which she had never seen before. She in- 
 structed me in botany ; she brought forth her portfolios, 
 and showed me her charming drawings. I called her at- 
 tention to the beauties of the English writers from Queen 
 Elizabeth to the Civil War, — writers who had alwa 
 
 ra ys a p- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 22T 
 
 peared to me to surpass those of any other age or country. 
 It was one of the agreeable attributes of this winter, that 
 our interviews were never broken in upon by any accidental 
 interloper. One peaceful hour of animated disquisition, or 
 soothing remission, passed away after another, unmarked. 
 When I saw my adorable ward, if not happy, at least 
 peaceful and pleased, my heart beat with honest exultation, 
 Mid I said, " This is my work ! " She was willing to yield 
 equal credit to my exertions. It was the work of nature ! 
 Time, youth, and health, inevitably did so much for my 
 patient, that there was little left for me, her soul's physician, 
 to effect. If the intercourse and position I have describetl 
 would have been delightful to any one with the soul of a 
 man, imagine what they were to me, who, from the hour 
 of my birth till now, had never experienced the sweets of 
 honourable love. 
 
 A brilliant and genial spring succeeded tlie winter. I 
 had never felt this interesting period of the awakening of 
 the universe from its torpor, so deeply as now. Nature 
 became restored to life and the pulses of life, and my 
 charmer sympathised with the general tone of created 
 things. During the winter I had never ventured to propose 
 to her a visit to any of the scenes of public amusement 
 which the metropolis affords ; no one could have looked in 
 her face, and started the proposition ; it would have been 
 treason to the majesty of her grief; it would have been 
 sacrilege, to bring forward the dejected mourner amidst the 
 hardened gaiety and indifference of an assembly, or the un- 
 hallowed jests and obstreperous mirth of a theatre. An 
 excursion into the country is an amusement of a different 
 sort. Nature in her gayest scenes is never drunken and 
 tumultuous. A cheerful sobriety is their characteristic. 
 When I escape from the multitude, and hasten to her 
 retreats, I am never incommoded with obtrusive and dis- 
 cordant sounds ; all around me is silent ; or, if any thing 
 is heard, it is the rustling of the wind, or the uncouth 
 warbHngs of the feathered tribe ; even the lowing of the 
 herds is sweet ; and if I were placed amidst a forest of 
 wild beasts, I should find, could I divest myself of the 
 terror they excite, that the mighty Master had tempered 
 Q 2 
 
228 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 their roarings, till they afforded a suhlime mellowness, not 
 unpleasing to the ear. — I invited Mary to join with me in 
 a short excursion. 
 
 The soft tints of the morning had a staid liveliness in 
 them, which led my poor Mary out of herself, ere she was 
 aware. The air had a sweet alacrity which she could not 
 resist. 
 
 ^' Mr. Fleetwood," said she, " your attentions are a 
 thousand times greater than I deserve. Had they a cha- 
 racter of obtrusiveness and command, I should know what 
 part to take : but I can discover nothing in them which 
 betrays that you think of gratification to yourself; you 
 appear to be the soul of humanity and tenderness. I 
 should be the most ungrateful creature in the world, if I 
 did not accept your solicitudes for my health and in- 
 vitations to the air, or if I refused to smile, when nature 
 and Fleetwood summon me to smile." 
 
 We made a tour in succession to almost all the environs 
 of the metropolis. If one is content to give up the demand 
 for the wild, the majestic, and awful in scenery, I know of 
 no city, the neighbourhood of which affords a greater variety 
 of rich, and beautiful, and animated spots, than London. 
 The Thames is the great wealth of this vicinity. What 
 can be more striking than thexrowd of masts and vessels 
 of various sizes, as discovered from Greenwich, or the frolic 
 meanderings of this rural stream, as it shows itself at 
 Richmond ? What objects can be more unlike than these 
 two ? If you recede from the river, Sydenham, and Epsom, 
 and Esher, and Hampstead, and Hendon, and twenty other 
 delightful scenes, are ready to advance their several claims 
 for the prize of beauty. Let not my readers wonder at 
 this enumeration, which to some of them may perhaps ap- 
 pear trite. Let them recollect that with every one of these 
 places I associate some interesting scene of courtship, which 
 renders the remembrance dear to me. Let them be thank- 
 ful that I dismiss this part of my narrative so lightly. If 
 I were to enlarge upon the history of this beautiful spring, 
 and relate at length the pleasing incidents which occurred, 
 particularly at Epsom and Richmond, instead of consecrat- 
 ing a page to this topic, I should fill volumes. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 229 
 
 In the month of July I became a husband. ^VTien a 
 sufficient period had elapsed to make my poor Mary feel 
 that she belonged in some measure to the world, she was 
 too ingenuous not to disdain the forms and semblances of 
 grief. As she had scarcely any visiter beside myself, it 
 became proper that we shoidd, as soon as might be, put an 
 end to this equivocal situation, upon which the good- 
 natured world is always eager to interpose its constructions. 
 — " My beloved Fleetwood," said Mary, " I feel that I 
 love you to the full as much, I believe more, than I could 
 love a man of my own age. The sentiment that I feel for 
 you has a sort of religion in it, which renders it a thousand 
 times sweeter and more soothing to my heart. I reverence, 
 at the same time that I love you. I shall be infinitely more 
 reluctant to wound you, and more sohcitous for your peace, 
 than I should be, if you were a youth in the full revelry 
 and exuberance of the morning of life. In all partnership 
 engagements, there must be a subordination. If I had a 
 young husband, I might, perhaps, sometimes be pre- 
 sumptuous enough to estimate his discernment at no higher 
 a rate than my own ; but the case is otherwise now. Mis- 
 take me not, my dear Fleetwood. I am not idle and 
 thoughtless enough, to promise to sink my being and in- 
 dividuality in yours. I shall have my distinct propensities 
 and preferences. Nature has moulded my mind in a par- 
 ticular way ; and I have, of course, my tastes, my pleasures, 
 and my wishes, more or less different from those of every 
 other human being. I hope you will not require me to 
 disclaim them. In me you will have a wife, and not a 
 passive machine ; but, whenever a question occurs of re- 
 flection, of experience, of judgment, or of prudential con- 
 sideration, I shall always listen to your wisdom with 
 undissembled deference. In every thing indifferent, or that 
 can be made so, I shall obey you with pleasure. And, in 
 return, I am sure you will consider me as a being to be 
 won with kindness, and not dictated to with the laconic 
 phrase of authority. 
 
 " Yet I am sorry, my dear love, that you should marry 
 a woman who has suffered so cruelly as I have done. My 
 father's advice to you was, ' Fleetwood, if you marry, 
 q3 
 
230 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 choose a girl whom no disappointments have soured^ and no 
 misfortunes have hent to the earth.' Fleetwood, be assured, 
 that I shall often recollect, and recollect with agony, that 
 my father, mother, and sisters, all perished together by an 
 untimely and tragical fate ! Peaceful and serene as I may 
 appear to you, I bear a wound in my breast, which may 
 be skinned over, and seem as if it were cured, but which 
 wiU occasionally break out afresh, and produce symptoms 
 of fever, impatience, and despair. How exquisite are the 
 various charities of human Hfe ! From the most venerable 
 of these, — those which are entailed upon us without asking 
 our leave, and are stamped with the highest sanctity, — I am 
 cut off for ever. I am Hke a being who, by some severe 
 ordination of Providence, is destined to stand alone, to know 
 no kindred, to have no alliance or connection, but what my 
 own election and voluntary engagement may eventually 
 
 supply. If you should fail me, Fleetwood ! I have 
 
 faults ; you unquestionably have faults too. You are dif- 
 ficult to be pleased ; I see it ; my father told me so ; my 
 powers of pleasing, perhaps my inchnation to please, have 
 their limits. If you should fjdl me, I have no one to fly 
 to ; I shall remain a solitary monument of despair ! These 
 thoughts will sometimes intrude, and make me sad. Other 
 persons lose their relations one by one ; they are gradually 
 broken into their forlorn situation. I was overwhelmed at 
 once : and never, so long as I shall continue to exist, shall 
 I recover this terrible stroke. 
 
 " But why do I thus cheat my sorrows, by dwelling in 
 general propositions ! If my lost relatives had been other- 
 wise than they were, I could have borne it, I ought to have 
 borne it. Fleetwood, you knew them ! No, never was 
 there such a father, such a mother, such sisters. How we 
 loved each other ! How happy we made each other, and 
 what powers we had of contributing to each other's hap- 
 piness ! — Barbara ! Amelia ! my father ! my mother ! If 
 I dwell upon the horrible theme I shall go distracted ! — 
 Fleetwood, how I wish that I too could commit myself to 
 the mercy of the ocean ! When the thought of my own 
 death rises to my mind, it never comes in so soothing a 
 form, as if I imagine it to happen by drowning. Believe 
 
FLEETWOOD. 231 
 
 mCj there is nothing I so earnestly pray for, as that this 
 may be the means by which I may cease to exist. I should 
 not feel it as death ; it would be a reunion to all I love ! 
 
 * Life is the desert ; life the solitude, 
 This mingles me with all my soul has loved; 
 'Tis to be borne to sisters and to parents ; 
 'Tis to rejoin the stock from which I sprung. 
 And be again in nature.' " 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 From the church of St. George's^ Hanover Square, where 
 the marriage ceremony was performed, we set out for the 
 baths of Matlock in Derbyshire, where we stayed an entire 
 month. This was the happiest month of my life. My 
 dear Mary became placid and cheerful ; without forgetting 
 the terrible calamity which the last autumn had brought 
 upon her, she opened her heart to the gratifications which 
 were before her ; she felt that, in the solemn contract she 
 had formed, she had undertaken in some degree for my 
 ^tisfaction and tranquillity, and she determined to watch 
 over her trust. Nor will I be guilty of the false modesty to 
 insinuate, that she did this merely as the discharge of a 
 duty; on the contrary, I was so fortunate as to interest 
 and please her. This she manifested by a thousand flat- 
 tering symptoms, attentions which can flow only from the 
 heart, and which the head can never supply. Nor let it be 
 forgotten that, though I was now somewhat beyond the 
 meridian of life, I was not destitute of many advantages, 
 calculated to recommend me to a delicate and refined female 
 companion. My person was pleasing, and my demeanour 
 graceful ; circumstances which had acquired me in Paris 
 the appellation of the handsome Englishman. That very 
 sensibility which constituted the torment of my life, gave 
 a feeUng sweetness to the tones of my voice, and a gentle- 
 ness to my attentions, such as are found peculiarly accepts 
 able to the better order of females. 
 
 If Mary was cheerful and pleased, the happiness I felt is 
 Q 4 
 
932 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 such as cannot be described. [ What a contrast did there 
 exist between the tumultuous scenes of my Parisian amours, 
 and my relative situation with the accomplished female 
 whom I ha(? now made my wife ! The women I had 
 loved, furiously and distractedly loved, in the early period 
 of my life, I had never esteemed. How could I ? They 
 had each a husband; they had each children. How can 
 a woman discharge the duties of these sacred relations''at 
 the same time that she is amusing herself with the wishes, 
 or gratifying the appetites, of a lover? The idea is too 
 shocking to be dwelt upon ! She puts off the matron to 
 play the wild and loose-hearted coquette. She presents to 
 her husband the offspring of her criminal amours, and calls 
 it his. All her life is a cheat, one uninterrupted tissue of 
 falsehoods and hypocrisy. Can she tell her thoughts ? She 
 who has not a single thought which, though it may be tole- 
 rated in silence, would not, if uttered in appropriate lan- 
 guage, make every one of her acquaintance turn to marble 
 at the sound. Esteem her ! She is not worthy to live ; 
 or, if to live, to be confined in some cloister of penitents, 
 where rigid discipline, and coarse attire, and scanty fare, 
 might at length purge her of that ferment in her blood, or 
 that giddy intoxication of thought, which at present renders 
 her the blot of her sex, and the disgrace of the marriage 
 tie! 
 
 There are persons who sport the opinion, that the plea- 
 sure which is gained by stealth, is the genuine pleasure ; 
 and that the prohibition which waits upon the indulgence, 
 gives it its highest zest. It is not so ! This opinion is 
 not more pernicious in its tendency than it is ridiculous in 
 the grounds upon which it rests. What, is it the con- 
 sciousness of crime that makes our pleasure ? the fear 
 which continually haunts us with a presentiment that we 
 shall be detected ? the cowardice that forces our counte- 
 nance to fall in the presence of our fellow-men, and makes 
 a hundred accidental and harmless remarks in convers- 
 ation or in public, enter like a sword into our vitals .f* the 
 fearful struggle for ever repeated within us, which leads us 
 to do the thing we condemn, and repine over our weak- 
 ness that we do it } 
 
FLEETWOOD. 233 
 
 No ; it is innocence that is the soul of pleasure, with 
 which the sentiment of shame is incompatible. The truly 
 happy man lifts up his face with serenity, and challenges 
 the eyes of all the world. Without frankness, without a 
 conscience void of offence, without a feeling that the being 
 I love is of a worthy nature, and that no one can stand up 
 and say, '' In consulting your own inclination you have 
 done me unmanly wrong," there cannot be the ^' sunsliine 
 of the soul." Most especially in the connection of sex 
 with sex, it is necessary to substantial enjoyment, that 
 virtue should spread the couch, and that honour an(l 
 peace of mind should close the curtains. The kiss of 
 honest love, how rapturous ! But the true ingredients in 
 this rapture are, a heart-felt esteem of each other's cha- 
 racter; a perception that, while the eye we see sparkles, and 
 the cheek glows, with affection, the glow is guiltless of any 
 unhallowed and licentious propensity ; in fine, the soothing 
 state of mind which tells us that, while we freely indulge 
 the impulses of our heart, we are not disgracing, but ho- 
 nouring, the mighty power by which we exist. To recol- 
 lect that neither my own character, nor that of the partner 
 of my joys, is injured, but improved, by the scope of our 
 mutual partialities, is the crown of social pleasure. To 
 persons thus attached, thus bound in honourable connec- 
 tion, each day may be expected to add to their enjoyment, 
 and increase the kindness and esteem with which they 
 regard each other. 
 
 To me the situation was new, was such as I had not 
 anticipated, and was so much the more enchanting to me. 
 I had lived long in the world, and I had Hved alone. 
 My soul panted for a friend, and I had never found such 
 a friend as it demanded, — a friend " who should be to me 
 as another self, who should joy in all my joys, and grieve 
 in all my sorrows, and whose sympathy should be incapable 
 of being changed by absence into smiles, while my head 
 continued bent to the earth with anguish." I had not 
 been aware that nature has provided a substitute in the 
 marriage-tie, for this romantic, if not impossible friend- 
 ship. The love which Pythias is said to have borne for 
 Damon, or Theseus for Pirithous, many a married pair 
 
234 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 have borne for each other. The difTerence of sex powerfully 
 assists the intimacy ; similarity of character can never 
 unite two parties so closely, as the contrast of masculine 
 enterprise in one, and a defenceless tenderness in the 
 other. Man and wife, if they love, must love each other 
 vehemently. Their interests are in almost all cases united. 
 If they have children, these children form a new bond, 
 either party pursues the same end, and has its affections 
 directed towards the same object. Independently of this, 
 whatever contributes to the welfare of the one is advan- 
 tageous to the other ; and the calamity or death of either 
 is a kind of destruction which overtakes the by-stander. 
 Habit assists the mutual dependence ; and very often it 
 happens that, when a wedded pair has lived for a long 
 series of years together, the death of the feebler of the two 
 is only a signal caUing on the other to be gone, that he 
 survives but a few days, and they are deposited at the 
 same moment in a common grave. 
 
 Thus does the system of things of which we are a part 
 supply our inherent deficiencies ; and conscious, as it were, 
 in how small a degree we are adapted for sublime virtues, 
 assists, by a sort of mechanical link, in the construction of 
 that vivid and unremitting attachment which the human 
 heart demands. 
 
 To me, who had been accustomed to live alone with 
 dependents, with acquaintance, and with servants, how 
 delicious were the attentions of a beautiful and accom- 
 plished woman, whose interests were for ever united with 
 my own ! A servant dares not, and an acquaintance but 
 coldly performs the ordinary duty of enquiring after your 
 health, and sending you forth to the occupations of the 
 day crowned with their good wishes. How pleasing to be 
 an object of interest and concern to the person whom I 
 deeply esteem and fervently love ! How delicious the eye 
 that glistens with pleasure to hail my return, and the 
 cheek that reddens with kindness ! It is this which con- 
 stitutes the unspeakable charm of home. My home is not 
 a fabric of walls which shelters me ; is not even the win- 
 dows, the furniture, the elbow-chair, and the mute fire- 
 side, which habit has endeared and hung round with a 
 
FLEETWOOD. 235 
 
 thousand pleasing associations ; it is th?.t there I find the 
 countenance that gladdens at my approach, and the heart 
 that welcomes me. The affection of Mary I felt as a 
 charm reconciling me to life ; it gave me value in my own 
 eyesj to observe her beautiful and well-proportioned pre- 
 sence, her speaking eye, her lucid complexion, and to say, 
 " To the soul that inhabits there I am of importance ; she 
 is cheerful, because I am happy and well ; if I perished, 
 she would feel she had lost every thing ! " How flattering 
 to the human heart, that there is a being, and a noble one, 
 whom with one accent of my voice I can delight, with 
 one glance of my eye I can fill with sweet content ! My 
 tenants loved me, because I had power ; my acquaintance, 
 because I could contribute' to their entertainment ; the 
 poor who dwelt near my mansion, for my wealth ; but my 
 wife would love me in sickness or in health, in poverty, 
 in calamity, in total desolation ! 
 
 WTiile we resided at Matlock, we visited the beauties 
 and romantic scenery of Derbyshire. I was familiarly 
 acquainted with the whole before, and I now performed 
 the ofllce of cicerone and interpreter to Mary. But how 
 different were the sensations with which I now visited 
 each charming, or each wonderful scene ! Even a bright 
 and spirit-stirring morn did not now stir in me a con- 
 templative and solitary spirit ; it turned my eye on my 
 companion, it awakened us to the interchange of cheerful 
 and affectionate looks, it tipped our tongues with many a 
 pleasant sally, and many a tender and sympathetic ex- 
 pression. When we looked down upon the rich and fertile 
 plains, when we hung over the jutting and tremendous 
 precipice, I perceived, with inexpressible pleasure, that 
 mine was no longer a morose and unparticipated sensation, 
 but that another human creature, capable of feeling all my 
 feelings, rejoiced and trembled along with me. When I 
 retired to my inn after the fatigues and dangers of the day, 
 I did not retire to a peevish and froward meal among 
 drawers and venal attendants ; I sat down with the com- 
 panion of my heart, and shared the pleasures of idleness, 
 as we had before shared the pleasures of activity. How 
 many agreeable topics of conversation did the rivers and 
 
236 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 the mountains suggest ! how many occasions of mutual 
 endearment did they afford ! It seemed that the spirit of 
 kindness still gained new strength, as the scene was per- 
 petually shifted before our eyes, and as we breathed an 
 atmosphere for ever new. 
 
 END OF THE SECOND VOLUaiE. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 23' 
 
 VOLUME THE THIRD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 After having resided at I\Iatlock spmewhat more than a 
 month, we set out for Merionethshire. Mary had never 
 before entered my paternal mansion ; she had never been 
 in Wales ; and she expressed herself extremely pleased with 
 all she saw. The vast and uncouth forms of the neighbour- 
 ing mountains were exceedingly striking. The mansion it- 
 self was built in a style of antique magnificence ; it had 
 been erected by one of the leaders in the commonwealth of 
 Cromwell ; and, to an admirer of whatever is venerable for 
 age, the shining and polished floors, the huge and mis- 
 ^apen tapestry figures in some of the apartments, and the 
 dark-coloured wainscot with its diminutive panels which 
 adorned the rest, were infinitely more gratifying than all 
 the sumptuousness of modern prodigality. The windows, 
 as well as the halls and galleries, were large, send almost 
 cdUegiate. 
 
 The day on which we entered the house in Merioneth- 
 shire may be considered, in some sense, as the first of our 
 marriage. Here we were to make our establishment, and 
 set up our tabernacle ; at Matlock and other places we shifted 
 as we could. Here then was a rock upon which we were in 
 danger to be destroyed. They were no trifling and fugitive 
 discussions we had to adjust ; I, on my part, had fornied 
 habits, of which it would be difficult for me to divest my- 
 self. 
 
 We arrived in the evening, and were in want of repose. 
 ^Ve sat down to the fire-side where I had sat with my 
 
2$B FLEETWOOD. 
 
 father a thousand times ; we ate a delicious meal, while 
 Mary listened with attention to many little anecdotes I re- 
 lated of the deceased, and stories of ray boyish exploits and 
 sorrows. 
 
 The next morning we walked round the apartments. 
 There was a handsome, retired closet, opening into the prin- 
 cipal drawing-room and at a short distance from my bed- 
 chamber, the window of which commanded the most admir- 
 able prospect we had. The steeple and roofs of a beautiful 
 village were distinctly visible ; the river, beset with willows, 
 meandered below ; a venerable wood of everlasting oaks 
 grew on one side, beyond which was discovered the silver 
 main ; while the other side was skirted by the crags of the 
 gigantic mountain, that from my infancy I almost adored. 
 This closet was my favourite retreat. Here I had been per- 
 mitted to con my lessons while I was yet of schoolboy age; 
 and here it had ever since been my custom to retire with 
 some favourite author, when I wished to feel my mind in 
 its most happy state. In this closet I meditated,- 1 com- 
 posed, I wrote. If I wanted an ampler space to move in, 
 I had but to open the door, and the largest drawing-room 
 in the house offered itself for my promenade. By the side 
 of the closet was a private staircase, which led me, by a 
 short cut, to the river, the wood, and the mountain. I pre- 
 ferred this sequestered nook to all the rest of the mansion 
 taken together. I entered it now, after a twelvemonth's 
 absence, with a full recollection of all the castles which I 
 had sat there and builded in the air, the odes, the tragedies, 
 and heroic poems which, in the days of visionary childhood, 
 upon that spot I had sketched and imagined. I turned to 
 Mary, with the purpose of telling her the many ravishing 
 associations which this closet presented to my mind. 
 
 '' This is an enchanting closet ! " said she. 
 
 ^' It is." — My heart knocked at my bosom, my very 
 soul was full of its little history, as I spoke. 
 
 " Do you know, Fleetwood, I shall take this closet for 
 mine ? I will have all my drawings brought here, and ar- 
 range my favourite flowers in the window. Will you give 
 it me ? " 
 
 " Surely, my love ! I am glad it pleases you so much.' 
 
FLEETWOOD. 239 
 
 My sensations at this moment were of a singular and 
 complicated nature. I had been on the point of employing 
 all my eloquence to describe to Mary how I loved this 
 doset — how unalterably it had fixed its hold upon me as 
 my favourite retreat. For this purpose I had recollected 
 in rapid succession all the endearments that made it mine, 
 all the delights which, almost from prattling infancy, it had 
 afforded me. In an unlucky moment my wife pronounced 
 the decree, " It shall never be yours again !" The decision 
 was unexpected, and my animal spirits were suddenly driven 
 back upon my heart. 
 
 Yet I call Heaven to witness, it was only the suddenness 
 of the blow, and not any intimation of selfishness, that pro- 
 duced this effect. On the contrary, the moment I had had 
 time to recover myself, my sentiment was, — '^ Mary, it is for 
 ever yours ! Dear, angelic sweetness, I shall be too happy, 
 to witness your gratification ! Shall I think this too great a 
 sacrifice, who would offer up my life for you ? It is no 
 sacrifice ! I have more joy in considering the things I love 
 ^ yours, than in regarding them as my own." 
 
 Presently the beU was rung; and the flower-stage, the 
 portfolios, and the drawings, one after another, made their 
 appearance. In the midst of the confusion, I withdrew to 
 have some necessary consultations with my steward. 
 
 After an absence of three hours, I returned, and visited 
 Mary in her retreat. By this time all her little sources of 
 occupation and amusement were in order. I observed with 
 delight the arrangements she had made. I gazed on the 
 features of her charming face; she never looked more 
 beautiful, than thus surrounded with the emblems of the 
 innocence of her mind and the elegance of her taste. My 
 heart exulted in beholding these human graces, associated 
 and set off with a back-ground of my favourite steeple, 
 mountain, and prospect to the neighbouring main. I fed 
 my eyes with the pleasing scene. I sat down by her side, 
 viewed her drawings, and admired the delicate forms and 
 brilliant colouring of the flowers she loved. I turned to the 
 prospect from the window, with the purpose of pointing 
 out to her in detail the objects of which it consisted. 
 
 What a fool is man ! My own folly, however much I 
 
24/0 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 may feel ashamed of it, I have sat down with the purpose 
 to relate. The next morning, and the morning after, I 
 missed my favourite, my old, my long-accustomed retreat, 
 and sought in vain for a substitute for it. My library was 
 in the other wing of the house, and answered to the draw- 
 ing-room I have mentioned. It had a closet in it, built 
 in the fashion of that which had caught Mary's fancy, with 
 no other difference than that the prospect from the window, 
 though for the most part the same, was in two or three 
 points essentially inferior. I repaired to this closet; I 
 took two or three books from the library, one after anomer ; 
 I tried to compose myself. It would not do. This, in the 
 days of my boyhood, had been my father's privacy ; and, 
 when by his death the use of the whole mansion devolved 
 to me, I felt the closet which Mary had chosen as already 
 mine, the scene of a thousand remembered pleasures, the 
 object of my love. 
 
 Discontented here, I resolved to seek the garden. Im- 
 mediately I missed my private staircase. I had no re- 
 source, but in the public staircase of the whole house. •;! 
 could not get to that part of the garden which led to the 
 river and the mountain, but by a formidable circuit. If I 
 might not resort to my favourite haunts at perfect liberty, 
 if I could not reach them unseen by any human eye, they 
 were nothing to me. My domestics knew my customary 
 seasons of taking the air ; they watched the variations of 
 my temper ; and, when I was pensive and melancholy, 
 were careful that the shadow of no one of them should 
 obtrude in my path. 
 
 I will go, and tell Mary what she has done. I wiU 
 confess to her all my weakness. Nothing could be further 
 from her thought than to occasion me this disturbance, 
 and it will afford her the purest pleasure to repair it. 
 
 May 1 perish, if ever I breathe a syllable on the subject! 
 What, shall I paint me thus pitiful arid despicable in her 
 eyes ? Shall I tell her, that I love nobody but myself, and 
 regard her gratifications with indifference ? I will not tell 
 her so ! I will act so, that, if any one else should affirm it, 
 he shall affirm the most impudent falsehood. 
 
 She will never know that I have made this sacrifice at 
 
FLEETWOOD, 241 
 
 the shrine of love. So much the better. I shall know it. 
 It shall be to my own heart a testimony of my affection. 
 I do love her : Heaven only knows how much. I love her 
 for her misfortunes and her desolate condition ; I love her 
 for the charms of her person, and her unrivalled virtues. 
 The smallest indulgence to her, is dearer to me than ten 
 thousand gratifications to myself. 
 
 The generous exultation with which I surrendered my 
 own accommodation in silence was temporary ; the want 
 of that accommodation which I had so long enjoyed, daily 
 and hourly recurred. There is something wonderfully 
 subtle in the operations of the human mind. Do I differ 
 with another, in project for the future, or judgment on our 
 past conduct ? I immediately begin to find a hundred 
 arguments to prove, how absurd and unreasonable he is, 
 how just am I. No man can completely put himself in 
 the place of another, and conceive how he would feel, were 
 the circumstances of that other his own : few can do it 
 even in a superficial degree. We are so familiar with our 
 own trains of thinking: we revolve them with such com- 
 placency : it appears to us, that there is so astonishing a 
 perverseness in not seeing things as we see them ! The 
 step is short and inevitable from complacency in our own 
 views, to disapprobation and distaste toward the views of 
 him by whom we are thwarted. 
 
 '^ Mary, Mary," said I sometimes to myself, as I recurred 
 to the circumstance, " I am afraid you are selfish ! and what 
 character can be less promising in social life, than hers 
 who thinks of no one's gratification but her own ?" It was 
 true, I could not tell her, *^ This, which you so inconsiderately 
 desire me to give up, is my favourite apartment." But she 
 should have enquired of my servants. The housekeeper or 
 the steward could have informed her. She should have 
 considered, that a man, at my time of life, must have 
 fallen upon many methods of proceeding from which he 
 cannot easily be weaned. 
 
 The thing of which I could reasonably accuse her, was, 
 at worst, a rapidity of decision incident to her early years. 
 Could she suspect that my practice was, to leave the closet 
 adjoining to the library, and carry my books to the other 
 
 R 
 
242 Fleetwood. 
 
 end of the house ? — I was incapable^ however, of passing a 
 just judgment in the case, and the transaction had an un- 
 favourable effect upon my mind. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Such was the incident of the first morning of our arrival 
 in Merionethshire. Another question arose. Mary had 
 heard of several respectable families in our neighbourhood, 
 particularly the Philipses and the Morgans, the female 
 members of which she understood to be agreeable and en- , 
 tertaining ; and she was desirous to have intercourse with 
 them. For this purpose it was necessary to go in form to 
 pur village church, and to have it given out that there were 
 certain days on which Mrs. Fleetwood would sit to receive 
 company. In the evening of our first day in Merioneth- 
 shire, my wife entered on the subject. 
 
 To a person of habits different from mine, this circum- 
 stance would have been trivial. To me the idea came with 
 many a painful twinge. I had all my life shrunk from 
 this mummery, this unmeaning intercourse. I had tra- 
 velled from one side of Europe to the other, in search of 
 persons whose conversation should be tolerable to me. 
 Mary saw with how ill a grace I received the proposition. 
 
 " My love," said she, " act in this matter as you please. 
 Whatever shall be your determination, I promise to be 
 satisfied. I will just mention what occurs to me concern- 
 ing it, and will then be silent for ever. We are sitting 
 down in Merionethshire, perhaps for life. Whatever we 
 decide, cannot be reversed ; we cannot repel our neigh- 
 bours in the present instance, and call them about us again 
 hereafter. Recollect, then, my dear Fleetwood, the disad- 
 vantages under which I have hitjierto laboured. My dear 
 mother, the best of mothers, and most admirable of 
 women," — and at this recollection she burst into ao agony 
 of tears." 
 
FLEETWOOD. 243 
 
 " My dearest creature," interposed I, " do not distress 
 yourself with the melancholy recollection ! Mary, I love 
 you. There is no honest gratification, no gratification 
 which you can desire, that I wiU not be zealous to procure 
 you." 
 
 *' Hear me, Fleetwood ! " said she. " Consult the 
 merits of the case, and not the ardour of your kindness. 
 We had no lady visiters. I have had no female acquaint- 
 ance. Shall it be always thus ? The manners of my sex 
 are different from yours ; what is graceful in a man, would 
 be shocking in a woman ; and what would be becoming in 
 a woman, is effeminate and reproachful in the stronger sex. 
 I am afraid I can never learn, and improve myself in the 
 genuine female character, without the observation of my 
 own sex. ' The eye sees not itself, but by reflection from 
 some other thing.' Let me say, too, that the society of her 
 own sex is one of the natural consolations of a woman. I can 
 feel a strong and entire affection for a man ; I acknowledge 
 it for you. But there is a certain repose and unbending 
 in the occasional familiarity of woman with woman, of the 
 softer and more fragile nature with its like, that powerfully 
 conduces to the healthful and contented condition of the 
 mind. Fleetwood, 1 have the greatest reluctance to thwart 
 you in any thing. Choose for me. Determine as you 
 will, I swear you shall never find in me, either by word or 
 look, the hint of a reproach." % 
 
 Our discussion terminated in the formal churching, and 
 the commencement of a tremendous series of wedding 
 visits. Artful hussy ! in the way she put it to me, could 
 I refuse } Could I refuse a thing upon which, in this mild 
 and specious temper of mind, her heart appeared to be set ? 
 
 1 wrong her. There was no art in what she did ; 
 
 it was aU the most adorable ingenuousness and sincerity. 
 Or, if I may venture, by a bold allowance of speech, to 
 call it art, it was that art, with which nature adorns her 
 lovely sex more richly than with all the mines of Golconda, — 
 the art of persuasion, compeUing us to feel the impossibility 
 of resisting their honourable desires, and cheerfully to resign 
 the compass of domestic aftairs into their hands, to set us 
 to what point they please. 
 
 B 2 
 
244 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 On the first two mornings of our residence in Wales, I 
 made a pleasant excursion, by way of exhibiting to Mary 
 the beauties of the country. In the former I showed my 
 wife the precipice from which, at the age of fourteen, I 
 had fallen into the basin, then swelled by continual rains 
 into a lake, which forms the source of the Desunny. She 
 would climb the acclivity along with me. She made me 
 point out to her the inequalities of the almost perpendicular 
 rock along which the lamb had frisked, while William pur- 
 sued. She particularly noted the place from which the 
 peasant and the lamb had been precipitated together. We 
 fancied, as we viewed it, that w£ could see the mark among 
 the tufts of grass, where my foot had shpped thirty years 
 before. After having remained a long time on the spot, 
 we took occasion, by Mary's desire, to make our way home 
 by the cottage of William and the heroic girl, who had 
 come in her boat to save him. The father had long since 
 been dead ; William and his wife had the appearance, by 
 means of perpetual labour and frequent exposition to the 
 air in all weathers, of an old man and woman. They had 
 had a large family of children ; but these were all grown 
 up, the girls gone to service, and the boys to sea ; only 
 their youngest child, a robust lad of fifteen, was at home 
 with them. 
 
 In our mountainous country the use of a carriage is 
 exceedingly limited, and three fourths of the most exqui- 
 site points of view in my neighbourhood would have been 
 lost to my wife, if she had not been an excellent walker. 
 It was with pleasure that I perceived I could take her a 
 walk of ten or twelve miles in extent, or invite her to 
 climb the highest precipices, without her sustaining the 
 smallest injury. When a woman is so unfortunately deli- 
 cate, or has been so injudiciously brought up, as to be unable 
 to walk more than a mile at a time, this effects a sort of 
 divorce, deciding at once that, in many of the pleasures 
 most gratifying to her husband's feelings and taste, she can 
 be no partaker. 
 
 Our excursion of the second day was less adventurous 
 than that of the first, and we were able to make more use 
 the carriage. After dinner I proposed reading with Mary 
 
FLEETWOOD. 245 
 
 a play of my favourite Fletcher. The piece was that ad- 
 mirable one of a Wife for a Month. Mary seemed to enter 
 strongly into the feelings of the poet ; we admired equally 
 the high and generous sentiments of the tragedy, and the 
 glorious imagery with which those sentiments are adorned. 
 The character of Valerio particularly riveted her attention. 
 She agreed with me that no poet of ancient or modern 
 times, as far as her acquaintance with them extended, was 
 able, like the writer before us, to paint with all that body 
 and retinue of circumstances which give life to a picture, a 
 free, heroic, and gallant spirit. We especially commended 
 his style, and coincided in opinion with Dryden, who con- 
 fesses himself " apt to beUeve, that the English language 
 in this author arrived to its highest perfection ; what words 
 have since been taken in being rather superfluous than 
 ornamental." Mary was roused in an extraordinary degree 
 with the exhortations addressed by the queen to the heroine 
 in the second act, stimulating her to the contempt of 
 tyranny and death, and persuading her, that by such con- 
 tempt she will even subdue the tyrant, and compel him to 
 repent his ungenerous purpose. I read the sentiments of 
 the royal speaker, as they occurred, in the animated eye 
 and glowing cheek of the charmer who sat beside me. She 
 could scarcely help starting from her chair. 
 
 I was delighted with the effect of my experiment. How 
 exquisite a pleasure may thus be derived from reading 
 with a woman of refined understanding so noble a compo- 
 sition as that which engaged us [ It is a pleasure that 
 should be husbanded. I have demonstrated to me, at 
 once the acuteness of her taste, and her aptness to conceive 
 and participate the most virtuous sentiments. I almost 
 adore her for these high and excellent qualities. At the 
 same time we are like instruments tuned to a correspondent 
 pitch, and the accord that is produced is of the most 
 delightful nature ! We communicate with instantaneous 
 flashes, in one glance of the eye, and have no need of 
 words. When we have recourse to their aid, I instruct at 
 once, and am instructed. I see how my companion feels 
 the passages as they succeed ; I learn new decrees of taste, 
 and am confirmed in the old. Male and female taste are in 
 
246 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 some respects of different natures ; and no decision upon a 
 work of art can be consummate, till it has been pronounced 
 on by both. Besides^ that in such discussions we intermix 
 
 " Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute 
 With conjugal caresses : from my lips 
 Notnvords alone please her." 
 
 We proceeded, and came to the scene so wonderfully 
 imagined, in which Valerio is seen dressing on the morning 
 for church, and scorning with inimitable grandeur and ease 
 the sentence of the tyrant, who had pronounced, that at the 
 expiration of the first month of his married life he should 
 lose his head. I had just read those words of his — 
 
 Thou, that hast been a soldier, Menalo, 
 
 A noble soldier, and defied all danger — 
 
 Wouldst thou live so long, till thy strength forsook thee , 
 
 Till thou grew'st only a long, tedious story 
 
 Of what thou hadst been ; till thy sword hung up. 
 
 And lazy spiders fiU'd the hilt with cobwebs ? " 
 
 1 
 
 when the door opened, and the servant announced a visiter 
 to my wife. It was the boy of fifteen, the son of WiUiam 
 the peasant, whom we had seen in the cottage of his father 
 the day before. I asked the servant somewhat angrily, 
 why he entered, disturbing our afternoon's tranquillity, to 
 announce a visiter of this class ? 
 
 '' The boy had come down," he replied, '' by the ap- 
 pointment of his lady, who had fixed that hour for his 
 attendance." 
 
 " Bless me ! " replied Mary, '' and so I did : I had 
 entirely forgotten it. Do you know, my dear, in our stroll 
 along the side of Idris yesterday, I observed two or three 
 plants of a very rare species, and I thought I would return 
 to them to-day, and take this boy for my guide ? I would 
 not trouble you yesterday to collect them, for I know you 
 do not like such interruptions." It was true, I had received 
 with pleasure the early lessons of Mary in botany, aided 
 by the beautiful drawings with which she had illustrated 
 them, and relieved with all the piquancy of courtship * 
 but, by some fatality, I could never shape my mind to the 
 office of herborisation : it appeared too pinched and minute 
 an object for the tastes I had formed. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 24-? 
 
 '' I must go : I cannot send the boy away : we will finish 
 with your beloved Fletcher after supper." — And away she 
 tripped. 
 
 " Good bye ! Au revoir, Fleetwood ! you shall see me 
 again by dusk." 
 
 All this passed in a minute. Valerio and Evanthe, 
 their perilous situation, and the deep interest my wife 
 seemed to take in their adventures, were instantaneously 
 banished, as if by the touch of a magic wand. I was too 
 proud ifj struggle with this unsteadiness, even if there had 
 been a probability that my struggle would have been suc- 
 cessful j that is, that my wife w^ould have sat down again to 
 our reading with an unconstrained and genuine preference. 
 
 Before I had time for recollection, I found myself alone, 
 with no object to remind me of what had passed, except 
 the volume of Fletcher which lay open upon the table. 
 The reader must recollect my character, as an old bachelor, 
 as a man endowed with the most irritable structure of 
 nerves, and who from infancy had always felt contradiction 
 with inexpressible bitterness, to conceive how much I was 
 disturbed with this pelting and pitiful incident. 
 
 '' Is this the woman," said I, "whom I have taken as the 
 partner of my life, who is more interested in two or three 
 blades of grass, or a wretched specimen of mosses, than in 
 the most pathetic tale or the noblest sentiments ? If she 
 has no respect for the illustrious dead, who cannot feel her 
 contempt, methinks she might have had some for me, 
 whose heart still beats, and whose blood continues to flow. 
 Oh, it is plain she cares only for herself, and is prepared 
 to tread, as on an insect, upon every one who stands in the 
 way of her present caprice ! A curse on all mosses and 
 botanical specimens ! " 
 
 This was the first sentiment I conceived. Presently 
 however, love, almighty love, returned, and I said, '' God 
 bless you, dear empress of my bosom ! Can any taste be 
 more pure than that which delights in the beauties of na- 
 ture ? How have I sat by her a thousand times, and ad- 
 mired, even in picture, the flowing and graceful forms, the 
 soft and delicate surfaces, and the brilliant tints, of the 
 vegetable tribe ! What an honest and sincere mind is hersj 
 B 4 
 
248 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 that soars to admire the tremendous precipice and the 
 gathering tempest, and can then descend to the frailest and 
 minutest herb which clothes the face of our mother-earth ! 
 They are all alike the productions of that mysterious Ppwer, 
 which is every where at work, and every where engenders 
 the patterns of grandeur, of majesty, and of grace. Would 
 I destroy in Mary this noble relish, this generous affection, 
 
 that embraces all the creatures of God ? God bless her, 
 
 even in her caprices ! They prove the youth and elasticity 
 of her mind ; they mark the morning of life ; they are 
 symbols of that truly feminine character, which so delight- 
 fully contrasts with my own sex, and constitutes the crown 
 and essence of the life of man. I will turn botanist myself ! " 
 
 While these reflections passed in my mind, I was almost 
 tempted to pursue Mary, and join her in her herborising 
 excursion. — ",I know the place to which they are gone; I 
 shall easily find them. How beautiful will the carnation 
 of her cheeks, and the lilies of her soft fingers, the fairest 
 blossoms creation ever saw, appear amidst the parterre of 
 wild flowers that skirts the ridge of Mount Idris ! I 
 think I see her now, as she stoops to cull them. I will 
 tell her that I will never have a taste, a pursuit, a gratifica- 
 tion, but what is hers." Saying this, I put on my hat, I 
 walked out at the hall door, and hurried along the avenue. 
 
 '\ No, I will not go to her ! She has used me ill. She 
 has wounded me in a point, where I am most alive. Fletcher, 
 my old friend, friend of my boyish days, whose flights I 
 have taught the echoes of the mountains to repeat, whose 
 
 pages I have meditated in my favourite closet, she 
 
 has affronted me in thee, Fletcher; and for thee, if not for 
 myself, I will resent it. 
 
 " No, this will not do. I will not be an uxorious, tame, 
 wife-ridden husband. Has she shown any disposition to 
 comply with me ? 
 
 " If I begin, I can never continue to sustain this part. 
 In all my life I have been unused to brook control. The 
 sensitiveness of my temper will never allow me to bear to 
 be thwarted, crossed, the chain of my sensations snapped 
 and crumbled to pieces at every moment, with impunity. 
 There is no reciprocity in this commerce. 1 could be 
 
FLEETWOOD. 24i9 
 
 content to yield much to her. Ay, again I say, God 
 
 bless her in her caprices ! But I cannot be content to 
 
 be reduced to nothing. I must have an existence, a pursuit, 
 a system of my own ; and not be a mere puppy, dangling 
 at her heels, and taught to fetch and carry, as she gives the 
 word." 
 
 As time glided on, these meditations became less pleasant: 
 they burned at my heart, and were bitter in my mouth. 
 Tediously and heavily dragged along the two hours of her 
 absence : I could fix on no plan, I could form no conjec- 
 ture for the future. I could sit down to no occupation or 
 pursuit. I paced the hall and the avenue with impatient 
 strides. Tired with this exertion, I threw myself indo- 
 lently in a chair, and reclined my head on my hands upon 
 the table. 
 
 At the end of two hours, Mary tripped with light and 
 elastic step into the parlour. 
 
 '^ I have had a delightful walk ! " cried she. 
 
 " Have you ? " answered I, with a drooping and heavy 
 voice, my powers blunted by the exhausting eflfects of all I 
 done and thought. 
 
 '' Bless me, Fleetwood ! you are not ill ? " — And, say- 
 ing this, she kissed my hand, drew a chair by my side, and 
 soothed me with irresistible blandishments. 
 
 What a state was mine ! If she had not been thus 
 consummately lovely, if she had not mollified me with so 
 divine a grace, I should have known how to have deter- 
 mined. 
 
 The reader who has had experience of the married life, 
 will easily feel how many vexations a man stored up for 
 himself, who felt so acutely these trivial thwartings and 
 disappointments. Human beings, who enter into the en- 
 gagements of domestic life, should remember, that however 
 man and wife may in interest and affections be one, yet 
 no interests and affections can prevent them from being in 
 many respects distinct. No creature that lives can be 
 always the same. Accidents of body or mind will fre- 
 quently subvert the equilibrium of the system.. Domestic 
 avocations and cares will often call away the mind ; and 
 my wife will be thinking of the family linen or plate, when 
 
250 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 I want her to be thinking of the caverns of Pandemonium, 
 or the retreats of the blessed. Even those observances of 
 ceremonious hfe, which induce us to listen to the story of 
 a stranger with appearances of interest greater than the 
 reality, or which stimulate us to actual attention, cannot 
 always be preserved between persons who live together in 
 a style of equality. He who flies from all contradiction, 
 must dwell alone, or dwell with those to whom he never 
 opens his soul. He who would reap the unspeakable joys 
 of a social existence, must set his account with a life of 
 accommodation, in which both parties will have many 
 things to sacrifice, many things to forgive, many things 
 that will be sure to keep their equanimity and good temper 
 in exercise. — I can reason well upon these things now; but 
 I bought ray power of doing so at a very high price. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 At the close of a visiting-day, when we had had a full 
 circle of the neighbouring gentry, Mary informed me, that 
 she had been invited by the Miss Philipses to join them to 
 a dance, which was to take place at Barmouth the day after 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " And you have accepted the invitation ? " 
 
 " Laetitia offered me tickets, and I have taken two. You 
 will go with me, will not you?" 
 
 " What time do you suppose you shall return home ? " 
 
 " About three or four in the morning. The moon will 
 serve, and it will be a pleasant ride." 
 
 " Mary, did I never tell you my age ? " 
 
 " And what of that ? You are not too old, I hope, for 
 amusement, or for happiness ? " 
 
 ^' My dear love, I have formed inveterate habits, and 
 outlived the age of experiments. I can neither figure in a 
 country assembly, nor sit up with impunity till four in the 
 morning." 
 
FLEETWOOD* 251 
 
 "' Then, Fleetwood, if you will not go, neither will I. I 
 desire no pleasures of which you are not a partaker. I will 
 send John to-morrow morning, to carry back the tickets." 
 
 " Oh, Mary," cried I, " I see more and more that our 
 tastes are different. It is very natural; you are young; 
 you ought to have married a man nearer your own age. Do 
 not let me stand in the way of your amusements ! " 
 
 I had suffered much during the visit which was just 
 concluded. My patience had been played upon beyond the 
 extent of my bearing. I was impressed with a sentiment 
 approaching to despair. Mary did not at this moment 
 comprehend the feelings which agitated me. 
 
 " If it will be more pleasing to you," resumed she, " I 
 will go by myself." ^ 
 
 " And who, do you expect, will be yDur partner in the 
 dance } " 
 
 '^ Laetitia has promised to get me a partner. There is 
 the handsome Mr. Matthews. As a new-comer, she told 
 me, she dared say I might have him." 
 
 "^ Very well ! very well !" 
 
 " My dear love, w^hat is it you would have ? " 
 
 " I wish you were married to Mr. Matthews !" 
 
 " Good God, Fleetwood, what have I done to deserve 
 this unkindness?" — And she burst into tears. 
 
 I took her hand. — '' Do not weep, Mary ! I beg your 
 pardon. I am to blame." 
 
 " I try every way to please you, but in vain. I ask you 
 for your company ; you refuse it. I offer to stay at home; 
 you reproach me with my youth. In the innocence of my 
 heart I name to you a gentleman as my partner, and you 
 insult me. My dear parents I Is my happiness for ever 
 sunk with you in the caverns of the ocean ? " 
 
 As she spoke thus, I felt the bitterest self-reproach for 
 what I had done. Yet she had touched me in a very ten- 
 der point. Loving her as I did, I felt that she must be 
 every thing, or nothing, to me. I could not bear that my 
 wife should have amusements for which I felt no partiality ; 
 least of all, amusements of dissipation. I particularly felt 
 an antipathy to this of dancing. I had not joined in re- 
 creation of that kind since my juvenile residence in France. 
 
252 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 And ^here, at least in the instances of which I had been a 
 si iT, it seemed to me incompatible with decorum or mo- 
 de ^ty. The eyes sparkled, the performers handled each 
 other in a way that fired the blood, the wholesome restraints 
 of sobriety were banished, a species of electricity flowed from 
 the joining fingers and meeting frames, and every thing 
 seemed to beat an alarm to the ruder passions. 
 
 I found in Mary a considerable degree of resentment, 
 or, to speak more properly, a strong impression of sadness, 
 ensuing on this little conversation. The next morning at 
 breakfast she rung the bell, and ordered that John should 
 get ready to go with a message to Mr. Philips's. The 
 moment the servant had left the room, I went up to her, 
 and said, — 
 
 "^ My love, I cannot bear to see you sad. Pray, oblig-e 
 me, and go with the ladies to their assembly." 
 
 '^^ Fleetwood," said she, '^ do you think I regret the 
 assembly ? What have you ever seen in me so frivolous, 
 as to justify the imputation ? No ; it is not the trip to 
 Barmouth, it is the unkind way in which you expressed 
 yourself to me, that I regret. I chose you from all the 
 world. If you prove austere and unkind, what will become 
 of me ? You said, you wished me married to another : how 
 many harsh and unfriendly thoughts are implied in that 
 wish ! " 
 
 '^ I am hasty; I am irritable: you know my foibles. 
 My dear girl will have many things to forgive in me ; but 
 I hope my errors, thus acknowledged, will only draw us 
 together the closer." 
 
 '' Then do not, Fleetwood, let many of them be of this 
 kind ! Have pity on the poor orphan, who has no shelter 
 but in you ! " 
 
 ^^ I will be careful. But do not, Mary, lay any stress 
 on such speeches as that of which you complain ! The 
 thought of not being yours never seriously entered my 
 mind. You are every thing to me. For your sake I am 
 reconciled to the world. In you, for the first time, I feel 
 that I belong to the great family of man, and experience 
 those delicious sensations which grow out of the charities 
 we form for ourselves." 
 
FLEETWOOD. 253 
 
 " Thank you, Fleetwood ! And now who shall sa^ ^^e 
 are not happy ? " 
 
 "But, Mary, — but — there is one favour you must 
 grant me." ' 
 
 " Name it ! What can I refuse you ? " 
 
 '^ You must go to the assembly." 
 
 '' Never. I see you have a strong objection to it, and 
 that is enough. I wonder what possessed me, to think of 
 it. It well suits a poor orphan as I am, to make one in a 
 dance." 
 
 " Fie, Mary ! I shall never think you regard me as 
 your whole family in one, if you always refuse to be gay. 
 I am very angry with what I said to you about it last 
 night. It was harsh ; it was cruel ; it was wicked. I shall 
 not believe that you have forgiven me, unless you execute 
 your original intention." 
 
 We argued the point for some time; but at length I 
 triumphed. In a high spirit of romance I determined to 
 go with her, and even insisted that she should dance with 
 the young and handsome Mr. Matthews, as Miss Philips 
 had proposed. 
 
 Yet my objection to the recreation of dancing remained 
 as strong in my breast as before. I thought that no modest 
 single woman should dance with any partner but her 
 brother, or matron but with her husband. To witness this 
 petty prostitution of my wife, was a penance I enjoined 
 myself, for having so undeservedly mortified and insulted 
 her. 
 
 One thought which occurred to my mind, between the 
 arrangement of this plan and its execution, I will mention, 
 to show how unreasonable and unjust I was prepared to be. 
 — " How came it," said I to myself, " that Mary rung the 
 bell in the breakfasting-room, to give her orders for John 
 to carry back the tickets ? Might she not have done this 
 in some way when I was not present ? Does it not look, 
 as if she designed that the giving these orders should pro- 
 duce a scene } If there was art in this, how deep and 
 odious must be her art, and how egregiously am I her 
 dupe ? " 
 
 We went to Barmouth. It was impossible for man to 
 
254 FLEET WOODi 
 
 entertain a greater detestation for the mummeries of a 
 country assembly than I did. How much had I already 
 suffered from the youthful and heedless disposition of my 
 wife ! I had lost the use of my own house^ in the way I 
 liked. I had attempted to call her attention to the noblest 
 objects of literature and refinement, and the attempt had 
 only ended in my mortification. I was involved in an end- 
 less series of visits with fox-hunting squires, and fat justices 
 of the peace, their wives and daughters. Though I ab- 
 horred this sort of company, I had not equanimity to retire 
 to some obscure corner of the house, and pursue my own 
 occupations, while they acted over their etiquettes and de- 
 corums : nor, indeed, was this compatible with the com- 
 plaisance I wished to show for my beloved. — But the 
 worst was to come. 
 
 I soon distinguished among the beaux of Merionethshire' 
 the handsome Mr. Matthews. He was a man of family, 
 had been well educated, and possessed an advantageous air. 
 He displayed, like some young noblemen I have seen, an 
 easy assurance, which seems designed to put every one, 
 less eminent in rank, or less captivating than themselves, 
 out of countenance. He was soon introduced to my wife, 
 according to the arrangement which had been settled, I 
 stood at a little distance, and observed his debut. Mary 
 was the most beautiful woman in the assembly, and ac- 
 cordingly Mr. Matthews appeared highly satisfied with his 
 fortune. As they passed me, my wife slightly named me 
 to her partner, who bowed ; but I thought I could discover 
 a smothered contempt in his air. Wben they had gone a 
 little way, he looked back at me ; I persuaded myself that 
 he was saying to her, *^^ Is it possible such an old fellow as 
 that, should be husband to so fine a young creature as you 
 
 I could not avoid watching Mary and her partner during 
 the dance. I observed that he was infinitely gallant and 
 attentive to her. To my thought his countenance proved 
 that he was exceedingly struck with her figure and beauty. 
 He omitted no exertion to appear amiable in her eyes. 
 They were the most graceful dancers, as well as the hand- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 255 
 
 somest couple, in the room ; and both entered with no 
 little spirit into the amusement. I never saw Mary ao 
 conspicuously aUve ; Matthews's demeanour, I beUeve, never 
 absolutely overstepped the bounds of propriety ; he was 
 certainly exceedingly well-bred ; yet many of his actions 
 were strikingly free. They escaped being vulgar or of- 
 fensive, by the airy and flying manner in which they were 
 performed ; so that, if a woman, situated as Mary was, 
 might in some instances have been startled, and felt 
 prompted to complain, she would probably have been con- 
 vinced by the little stress which was laid on such advances, 
 that all was meant in innocence. Matthews talked to her 
 incessantly in every interval of the dance, and Mary seemed 
 sufficiently ready to sustain her part in the conversation. 
 
 I was consummately miserable. Whenever they talked 
 with more than usual earnestness, I could not help be- 
 lieving that Matthews was exciting her to lament her con- 
 dition, in being married to a man of more than twice her 
 own age. Every free and familiar action, every attention 
 that this coxcomb paid to my wife, was a dagger to my 
 heart. " How beautiful," exclaimed I to myself, " were the 
 manners, in this particular, of the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans ! How charming does Lucretia appear, spinning 
 at midnight in the midst of her maids, and Cornelia, sur- 
 rounded with her children ! Surely no wife ought to en- 
 deavour to make herself amiable and engaging in the eyes 
 of any other man than her husband ! When a marriage- 
 able girl allows herself, without fixed purpose, in sportive 
 intercourse with a youth of her own age, we call her a co- 
 quette ; what epithet does the mistress of a family deserve, 
 who acts in a similar manner ?" 
 
 Ifelt all the torments of jealousy. How new to me 
 were the sensations I experienced ! I was in this sense a 
 happy fellow, when I had no one's conduct to attend to 
 but my own ; and, being a bachelor, w^as not called upon 
 to be minutely scrupulous in that. Now my reputation — 
 no, that was not the first object of my care ; reputation 
 was not the bread of my life, — my peace of mind — de-i 
 ■pended on the conduct of another. How wretched is the 
 
256 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 state of that man who is deceived in so material a point, 
 who presses to his heart the wanton partner of his bed, 
 and behoves her innocent ; nay, who, perhaps, is habitually 
 engaged in acts of civility to the coxcomb-serpent that 
 stings him in the tenderest point ! But, short of this, I 
 could not bear that Mary should be weaned from me in 
 any respect, or find amusement in the conversation of any 
 man but myself. Perhaps this might lead her by no slow 
 progress to regret that we were ever united. I depended 
 now for all that was dear to me upon the disposition of 
 one who was young, gay, versatile, and a woman. I 
 watched over her, with the same sleepless anxiety with 
 which a miser watches over his treasure: less happy in 
 this, that his vigilance may be expected to be effectual to 
 his purposes, while the vigilance of a suspicious husband 
 is essentially powerless, and often contributes to give ex- 
 istence to the evil, alienation of mind or perpetrated in- 
 fldeUty, which he fears. 
 
 I had prided myself in the generosity of my conduct, in 
 having insisted that Mary should go to the assembly, that 
 she should dance, that I would myself be her escort, and 
 that Matthews should be her partner. If I had yielded 
 one of these points, it was by no means necessary that I 
 should concede them all. There was heroism in my de- 
 termination ; but it was a heroism beyond the mettle of 
 my spirit, and I ought not to have attempted it. 
 
 At length this eternal evening drew to a conclusion. 
 From the day of my birth to the present moment, I had 
 never suffered so many hours of slavery. When we got 
 into the carriage to return, I felt irresistibly prompted to 
 avenge my sorrows by inveighing against the neighbour- 
 hood, the evening, and the gay and elegant dancer who 
 had almost uninterruptedly engaged the attention of my 
 wife. Poor Mary was in high spirits, and pleaded the 
 cause adverse to mine in each of these points. I must 
 confess that I to a certain degree inveigled her into this 
 hostility. I asked her opinion of every thing that had 
 passed, and was tardy in giving my own. She therefore 
 frankly declared, that she was enchanted with our neigh- 
 bours, who she thought were most amiable people, that 
 
FLEETWOOD. 257 
 
 Bannouth assembly was a ravishing scene, and that she 
 had never met a more agreeable and well-behaved young 
 man than Mr. Matthews. 
 
 When she had finished her panegyric, I echoed it with 
 a deep groan. Mary started. My spirits had too long 
 been pent up, and I now gave a loose to my speech. I 
 cursed the neighbourhood, and declared that country as- 
 semblies were a device of the devil. I said that such young 
 men as Mr. Matthews answered no mortal purpose but to 
 disturb the peace of families. The conversation they held 
 was seduction, their attentions were lime-twigs to entrap 
 the unwary, and their touch was contamination. 
 
 " Oh, IMary," cried I, in a tone of heartfelt anguish, 
 ^' did I ever think it would come to this ? Ought you not 
 well to have reflected, before you accepted the hand of 
 Fleetwood, whether your taste led you, in preference to 
 the sobriety of a domestic fire-side, to dances and assem- 
 blies, the society of giggling girls, and the gallantries of a 
 coxcomb ? What prospect can we have of peace and fe- 
 licity, when you have now declared your partiality for those 
 things, which are equally abhorrent to my personal habits, 
 and Irreconcileable to my period of life ? " 
 
 Mary burst into tears. 
 
 " My dear love," said she, " you, in this instance, and 
 not Mr. Matthews, are my seducer. Did not I at the first 
 word give up my engagement ; and did not you insist that 
 I should adhere to it at all points ? AVhen you obliged me 
 to go to this assembly, and to dance with the young gentle- 
 man who has been my partner, you, in all reason, engaged 
 that you would not put yourself in ill humour with that 
 which your own decree imposed upon me." 
 
 " This is evasion, Mary. When I insisted that you 
 should go, I did not include in my demand that your 
 partner should be so insidious and persevering in his siege 
 that you should encourage him to still greater boldness, or 
 that you should afterward become his advocate and eulogist. 
 If your sentiments had been pure, instead of the delight 
 you take in the bare recollection of Matthews, you would 
 not endure so much as to hear him nam^d." 
 
258 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Conversation like this occupied us during a part of our 
 ride home_, which afterward subsided into a somewhat 
 sullen silence. The next morning at breakfast I revived 
 the subject. 
 
 " Mary/* said J, " have you thought of the incidents of 
 yester-evening ? My heart bleeds while I recollect it. 
 It has been the incessant occupation of my thoughts." 
 
 '^ Fleetwood, we might be happy, if you were consistent. 
 Tell me the habits of hfe you wish me to pursue, and I 
 will exert my utmost efforts to conform to your will." 
 
 " Mary, we might be happy, if you were consistent. I 
 do not desire you to conform to any system of my pre- 
 scribing. I want the heart, and not an exterior pliableness." 
 
 '^ Alas ! my love, let me assure you that you do not 
 know what you want. I am young. Fleetwood, you 
 might have married an old woman if you had pleased. I 
 have somewhat, yet I think no inordinate share of the 
 gaiety and spirits incident to youth. Yet I am very sure 
 that my sallies are perfectly innocent." 
 
 '^ Oh, yes, madam ; exceedingly innocent to encourage 
 such an enterprising young fellow as Matthews, and to find 
 an ecstasy of deUght in that scene whch was tearing your 
 poor husband's heart into a thousand pieces ! " 
 
 " Fleetwood, you oblige me to tell you that I have very 
 little encouragement to become a dutiful and attentive wife, 
 when, with the unreserved conformity I use, I find it im- 
 possible to please you." 
 
 '^ Very well, madam! very well!" — And I left the 
 room. 
 
 My character by this time is sufficiently manifest ; I was 
 to the last degree impatient of contradiction. Mary had 
 shown herself an exemplary wife ; if there was any sharp- 
 ness in what she said, it was no more than is inseparable 
 from the clear and open temper of an honourable mind. 
 She was conscious of the entireness of her duty, and the disin- 
 
PI/EBTWOO©. 259 
 
 terested sentiment which animated her ; and it is no wonder 
 that she felt some indignation at the ungracious way in 
 which all this was received. There is not a word that she 
 uttered, which now, as I write it down, I do not approve. 
 She might have courted me more, and have abstained from 
 every thing that could increase the exacerbation of my 
 spirit. But, if she had, she would not have been more 
 successful. 
 
 Every thing I saw and felt at this time was so new to 
 me ! I had scarcely ever been checked by my tutor or by 
 my father. Since I grew up to man's estate, the system of 
 my domestic life had been with servants only, where every 
 thing was done in uncontending obedience. The acute- 
 ness of my feelings had prevented me from being tyran- 
 nical and severe to my dependents ; but, if my government 
 was mild, it was not the less absolute. Now I lived for 
 the first time famiharly, every day, and all day long, with 
 a person claiming to have a will of her own ; with one, 
 who, in every thing she was expected to do, had a right to 
 have her feelings consulted, and was surrounded with pri- 
 vileges of a very different stamp from those of a servant; 
 and, which is perhaps of more importance, with one whose 
 feeUngs made the principal part of the question, and 
 respecting whom it was of less moment what she did than 
 with what temper every thing she did or suffered, was 
 sustained. 
 
 Unused, as I have said, to encounter the smallest obstacle 
 to my will, or to have any of my decisions replied to, I 
 felt the utmost impatience at those gentle manifestations 
 of independence, which, to a man inured to better habits, 
 would have made the person in whom they appeared a 
 tliousand times more lovely. The irritation I expressed 
 was softness and conciliation to what I felt. The words I 
 uttered were nerveless, compared with the tone in which 
 they were spoken, and the gestures that accompanied them. 
 My eyes flashed fire : my teeth ground against each other. 
 When I burst out of the room thus abruptly, chains of steel 
 and rocks of adamant could scarcely have withheld me. 
 
 The scene I have related was hardly over, when Mr. 
 Matthews rode up to my door, to pay his respects to his 
 s 2 
 
260 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 partner of the preceding evening. This circumstance had 
 not been expected ; and^ in the remote situation in which 
 we Hved, strict regulations are not enforced, as in the 
 metropolis, respecting what visiters are to be let in, and 
 what to be excluded. Mr. Matthews was shown into a 
 parlour ; the servant went to seek my wife. It so hap- 
 pened that Mary, who had been in the garden to visit the 
 favourites of her care, entered the parlour by another door, 
 before she was informed that Mr. Matthews was there: 
 otherwise, after what had just passed between us, she would 
 most assuredly have excused herself from seeing him. She 
 was going to retire, but she felt that that was impossible ; 
 and therefore, with much uneasiness and perplexity, entered 
 into conversation with him. 
 
 When I had left my wife, I strayed into a well-known 
 path which led toward the sea-side. At first I felt in the 
 highest degree irritated against her behaviour. " What 
 chance," said I, '^ have we for happiness, if, supposing me 
 to be in the wrong, — it is impossible I should be wrong ! 
 — she, instead of soothing my weakness, thus answers me 
 with taunting and retort ? " 
 
 Soon, however, I came to see the subject in a different 
 light. '^ Fleetwood ! Fleetwood ! " said I, striking my 
 forehead with my hand, " what is it you are doing ? I have 
 entered upon a serious and weighty task, the guardianship 
 of the felicity of a young woman, who, without reserve, or 
 defence, or refuge against me, has thrown herself into my 
 power. What engagements did I form to her father! 
 with how solemn protestations did I undertake to remove 
 aU uncertainty from his mind ! Macneil ! death has given 
 to these engagements an added sacredness : thy ghost shall 
 be appeased ! — Look upon this young creature ! Soft, 
 and tender, and winning as she is, shall I be her destroyer? 
 Do I doubt her innocence ? Truth and honour are written 
 in her front, in characters which folly itself cannot mistake. 
 Was ever conduct more exemplary? Was ever temper 
 more generous and obliging ? What a brute then am I, to 
 misuse, and give uneasiness to so much excellence ! I will 
 throw myself at her feet, and with tears of anguish confess 
 to her my fault." 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 261 
 
 Full of these sentiments of remorse^ I hastened back by 
 the way I came^ and entered the house. As I approached 
 the parlour, and had my hand on the lock of the door, 
 suddenly my ears were saluted from within with a burst of 
 idle and obstreperous laughter. I was in the highest de- 
 gree astonished. Ilnstantly turned back, and enquired of 
 the servants into the cause of this phenomenon. I no 
 sooner heard from whom it proceeded, than all my good 
 resolutions vanished in a moment. In the disturbed state 
 of my thoughts, it seemed to me that the visit of Matthews 
 was an express declaration of war against me ; and, unac- 
 quainted as I was with the circumstances which had be- 
 trayed Mary into the admission of his visit, I regarded the 
 scene now going on, after what had just passed, as the 
 most atrocious of crimes. I wished that my wife had em- 
 barked with the rest of her family, and were sunk in the 
 caverns of the ocean. I wished that her name might never 
 again be pronounced in my ears. I ordered my horse to 
 be instantly prepared. 
 
 Whither was I going } I could not tell. For how long 
 a time did I purpose to be absent ? I knew not. I only 
 knew that all places were paradise compared with that in 
 which I was, and all modes of thinking heaven compared 
 with the reflection that Matthews was at this moment alone 
 with my wife. 
 
 Before my horse was brought to the door, I began, how- 
 ever, to ask myself, whether it became me thus to go away, 
 and leave my wife in undisturbed conversation with her 
 paramour. Incensed with this idea, I suddenly altered my 
 plan, and burst into the parlour. Both my step and my 
 countenance were extremely discomposed. 
 
 My wife, conscious how strange an appearance this visit 
 would have, was greatly embarrassed. Matthews remarked 
 the fierceness of my demeanour, and distinctly read what 
 was passing in my mind ; but, like a man who knew the 
 world, he assumed a more courtly and ingenuous air, in 
 proportion as he saw I was enraged against him. He was 
 aware that, if he gave the least encouragement to my pas- 
 sions, they would produce a scene. But this neither suited 
 him, as a gentleman, nor as a man of the world. His cha- 
 s 3 
 
262 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 racter for insinuation and good breeding was at stake, that 
 he should appease the vehemence of my feelings, without 
 seeming to notice them. He played his part in a masterly 
 manner. At first my answers were short, and sullen, and 
 in a style approaching to defiance. He was upon the alert 
 to avoid every topic, which could, by any chance direction, 
 strike a spark into the train that was ready laid in my bo- 
 som. He praised my house, and the prospect it commanded. 
 He observed, that he had heard I was a great traveller : he 
 had himself lately returned from Paris ; and he described 
 the barriers which had been erected, with some other alter- 
 ations which had recently been made there. By degrees I 
 recovered my self-possession. Mr. Matthews delivered about 
 a dozen remarks of nearly the same degree of importance, 
 but uttered with spriteliness and grace, and then took his 
 leave. 
 
 As soon as he was gone, Mary informed me, in the sim- 
 plest and most ingenuous terms, how she had been betrayed 
 into the receiving his visit. The story was so natural; 
 her countenance, as she spoke, was so sweet and engaging ; 
 she was evidently so much distressed at the eflfect she feared 
 this mal-encontre would produce upon me; I could not 
 altogether resist the force of these demonstrations. I said 
 little ; but I withdrew, that I might seriously take myself 
 to task for the weakness into which I saw I was falling. 
 
 '' Fleetwood," said I, " is it possible thou shouldst com™ 
 mit such egregious folly ? What ground hast thou for this 
 outrageous and frantic jealousy ? What has passed, what 
 can have passed, between Matthews and thy wife ? Is she 
 not the most innocent and affectionate of her sex ? — I am 
 myself the most fortunate of men. After having trifled 
 away the flower of my age, and conceived so strong an an- 
 tipathy to the sex, have I not met with the best of wives, 
 — a creature who, for beauty, for accomplishments, for gen- 
 tleness and tenderness, has not her equal on the face of the 
 earth ? I am old : what matters that ? She does not see 
 it; she does not impute to me an imperfection. Flower of 
 creation, most angelic, noblest of mortals, thou shalt be re- 
 warded ! Yes, if it is in my power, thou shalt be rewarded .' " 
 
 Would to God, I had always continued in this temper ! 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 ^63 
 
 But I was subject to perpetual relapses. Every thing that 
 thwarted and crossed me, still produced in me new displea- 
 sure against this charming woman, She was like the angel 
 appointed by Heaven to defend my steps ; and whatever 
 circumstance of a painful nature occurred to me, still seemed 
 to be chargeable upon some neglect of hers. I suffered from 
 visits and visiters; I felt myself restrained in going out 
 and coming in ; the liveUness of Mary's temper, and the 
 quickness of her perceptions, made her, in spite of her gen- 
 tleness, unfit for the curb ; a thousand times, when I wished 
 to fix her attention to a particular point, and when I had 
 worked up my whole soul with the imagination of it, she 
 was drawn aside by some new phantasy, and left abruptly 
 the pursuit, the lecture, and the professor : all these evils 
 came to me from my wife. 
 
 It is human nature, that a man should retain some re- 
 sentment against the instrument that has often wounded 
 him, however valuable the instrument may be, and however 
 innocent of any purpose to harm. The ^man, who has 
 repeatedly crossed me in my desires, and has constantly 
 stepped before me in the objects of life, it is morally im- 
 possible I should not come to consider as a bad man. It 
 was thus with Mary. Every time she lid any thing that 
 jarred with my propensities, — and by some accident or 
 other no day passed without something, greater or smaller, 
 of this kind, — my favourite theory about the female sex 
 revived ; I recurred to the bitter experience of my youth ; 
 and swore that, however it might in certain instances be 
 glossed over, all women were in the main ahke, selfish, 
 frivolous, inconstant, and deceitful. 
 
 It was a strange war that was continually going on in 
 my bosom. I doted on my wife to distraction ; I felt that 
 I could not exist without her ; I saw that she was every 
 thing that was lovely ; her tones penetrated my soul ; her 
 smiles drew me from my most steadfast purposes, and made 
 me as ductile as wax to the aims she proposed. Yet I 
 taught myself gradually to curse this as weakness, and to 
 regard it as a slavery which some devilish witchcraft had 
 fastened on my heart. I murmured at my way of life ; I 
 roared Uke a lion in the toils. My whole existence was 
 s 4 
 
264 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 tempestuous. At certain moments, when Mary directed 
 against me all her powers of fascination, I felt the joys of 
 heaven ; at other times, and these were of longer duration, 
 I suffered the torments of the damned. 
 
 ^ CHAPTER V. 
 
 The month of September came, and with September that 
 variable weather, which ordinarily marks the period of the 
 equinox. At this time a sensible change discovered itself 
 in the health of ray wife. Her appetite left her ; her 
 nights were sleepless ; she became languid and meagre. 
 I was deeply affected with the alteration I perceived ; I was 
 beset with the fear that my unkindness was the occasion of 
 what I saw. 
 
 " Alas ! Mary," said I, " you wanted a very different 
 treatment from that which you have received from me ! 
 All tender and gentle you are in your own nature ; all ten- 
 derness and gentleness ought to have been the behaviour 
 that was addressed to you. With mildness and benignity 
 were you brought up by the best of fathers and of mothers ; 
 I myself have witnessed their affection ; often have I heard 
 you describe it. It was not fit you should fall from the 
 hands of these kind guardians, into those of a husband, 
 harsh, severe, and capricious as I have been." She has suf- 
 fered the most terrible of all losses ; she thought to find a 
 refuge from calamity, and a compensation for her sufferings 
 in me ; was it right that I should have been the person to 
 aggravate her woes ? She cheerfuUy resigned the preroga- 
 tive and the preference of her sex and age, the marrying a 
 young man, in the bloom of life, with the wholesome hue 
 of youth in his cheeks, with a smooth and unfurrowed 
 brow, not yet enslaved to peculiar and unaccommodating 
 habits, with a warm imagination, and a fresh and unsated 
 relish of the various pleasures of existence. Ought I not 
 to have done every thing that my mature period of life 
 would admit, to lessen to her the sacrifice she had made.'' 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 265 
 
 Mary saw the anxiety and remorse under which I la- 
 boured. She exerted herself, to the utmost of her power, 
 to reheve them. She dressed her pallid countenance in 
 smiles ; they were the smiles of a winter's day, when the 
 sun sends forth a sickly beam, amidst watery and congre- 
 gated clouds. She protested she was happy ; she solemnly 
 assured me that she thought my conduct toward her im- 
 maculate. I caught her repeatedly in tears. I endea- 
 voured to tempt her with parties of pleasure. With very 
 different feelings from those I have formerly described, I 
 called the Philipses and the jVIorgans around me. She re- 
 fused these avocations as often as she could. When com- 
 pelled to accept them, she sat passive and joyless amidst 
 the youthful circle, except at moments when she perceived 
 my eye turned inquisitively upon her, and then she forced 
 an artificial animation, which quickly again subsided into 
 cureless dejection. I enquired after another country as- 
 sembly ; I wished for Mr. Matthews again to waken her 
 into enjoyrnent. When I proposed tickets to her, she 
 smiled significantly in my face ; but added, that it would 
 not do. 
 
 " What a Hfe is this ? " said I. " What a life for me, 
 who had ever led my days free from dependence or re- 
 straint ? Am I converted into a garde-malade, having for 
 my constant occupation to watch the symptoms of another? 
 Are my sensations, to which I have so long been a slave, 
 to pass unheeded, and as nothing ? Is all my happiness, 
 my peace of mind, through every successive moment, to 
 depend, not merely on the good pleasure and compla- 
 cence of another, but on the state of that person's pulse, or 
 the clouds which may accidentally hover over her diseased 
 fancy ? 
 
 " Yet I call Heaven to witness that, however I occa- 
 sionally murmured under a system of life so opposite to 
 that to which I had been accustomed, my love for my wife 
 was no wise diminished. The more she wanted my aid, 
 the more eager I was to afford it. The more she fell away 
 from the healthful sleekness of a beautiful woman, the 
 more she appeared to me hke an angel. If it was but 
 seldom that she could rouse herself to an entire inter- 
 
266 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 change of affectionate thoughts, these intervals became as 
 transporting as they were rare. I could patiently watch 
 through a month of eclipse, to be rewarded at last with a 
 sight of the God of my idolatry. The mother who rears 
 a sickly and perishing child, is always found to love that 
 child better than her robust and comely one ; her own 
 labour has become kneaded up in the little being before 
 her ; he seems the creation of her hands, continually de- 
 pendent for his existence on her breath. It was thus I felt 
 toward Mary. She in return became more affectionate 
 than ever ; she was sensible of my cares, and eager to ac- 
 knowledge them. 
 
 I firmly believe that I am the most capricious and way- 
 ward being that ever existed. I never remained perma- 
 nently in one state of mind. After fits of fondness, anxiety, 
 and disinterestedness inexpressible, my mind, exhausted 
 with cares, would sometimes recoil on itself; and I pre- 
 tended, in the bitterness of my heart, to cast up my gains. 
 '' It is true," said I, " I love Mary ; I cannot help it ; this 
 love is the star of my ascendant for the rest of my days. 
 But what am I the better for it? What are her merits .> 
 What have I ever experienced from her but thwarting and 
 disappointment ? I feel that I have lost the freedom which 
 was once my portion ; and without freedom what is life } " 
 
 Mary, as I have said, was exceedingly anxious to conceal 
 from me the uneasiness under which she laboured. Symp- 
 toms occasionally appeared in her which alarmed me, and 
 which seemed to partake of an alienation of the understand- 
 ing. Though generally comfortless and sad, she would now 
 and then break into an opposite tone of mind, and be 
 seized with fits of merriment arid laughter. I can conceive 
 nothing more horrible than this laughter ; it expressed mi- 
 sery more strikingly than all the sighs, and tears, and groans 
 in the world could have done. 
 
 My wife slept little ; and her short and unfrequent slum- 
 bers were exceedingly disturbed. She talked in her sleep ; 
 her words were murmuring, indistinct, and incoherent ; but 
 they referred to her family ; particularly to her mother. 
 
 " Mary," said I, " you will break my heart. What can 
 I do to comfort you! Your mother I cannot restore to 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 267 
 
 you ; I cannot compel the ocean to give back her dead. 
 But all that I can^ I will do. I will in all things study 
 your inclinations ; I will never thwart and oppose you, as 
 I have done ; I will bestow all my thoughts in the effort 
 to relieve you ; I will seek for still new pleasures, till I 
 find some that shall be cordial to your bosom." 
 
 *^ My dear Fleetwood," she replied, '^ never mind me. 
 Do not give yourself this uneasiness about me. All will be 
 well. I feel a weight just here (clapping her hand to her 
 head) ; but is is only a cloud, that will blow away, and 
 the sun will shine again. I will talk to myself, and bring 
 my temper into better order. I am ashamed, that I should 
 thus torment you, who ought to be your comfort and your 
 helper. It shall not be thus long." 
 
 At other times I talked to her in a style partaking of re- 
 proach. — '^ Would to God, Mary, you loved me as I love 
 you ! \ our thoughts would not then be all upon the things 
 you have lost and cannot regain. You would sometimes 
 think of me, and be happy. To me you are every thing ; 
 I think of you as an angel, and think of nothing else ; 
 having you, I want nothing ; friends, fortune, country, all 
 the gratifications of life, I should never regret, if blessed 
 with your affection. Hard is the fate of him, whose pas- 
 sion is unreturned by the object of his love ; or who, when 
 his bosom burns with all the ardour of attachment, obtains 
 nothing but a moderate and glimmering kindness, insuffi- 
 cient to awake contentment in the mistress of his heart ! " 
 
 There were occasions when I talked to her in a stronger 
 style. I told her, that the weakness she indulged was 
 unworthy of her education and her powers. I described it 
 as the characteristic of a feeble mind and a vacant under, 
 standing, to dwell thus obstinately upon what was now 
 placed beyond the reach of fate. I exhorted her peremp- 
 torily to oppose the foe that had invaded her peace. I told 
 her, that human creatures had a being and duties of their 
 own ; and that it became every one who would escape the 
 contempt of his fellow-men, to rouse himself to the consi- 
 deration of them. 
 
 One further circumstance occurred in the progress of 
 Mary's distemper. She w^ould steal from her bed in the 
 
268 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 middle of the night, when no one perceived it, and make her 
 escape out of the house. The first time this accident oc- 
 curred, I was exceedingly alarmed. I awoke, and found 
 that the beloved of my soul was gone. I sought her in her 
 closet, in the parlour, and in the library. I then called up 
 the servants. The night was dark and tempestuous ; the 
 wind blew a hollow blast; and the surges roared and stormed 
 as they buffeted against the hurricane. A sort of sleet blew 
 sharp in our faces when we opened the door of the house. 
 I went myself in one direction, and despatched the servants 
 in others, to call and search for their mistress. After two 
 hours she was brought back by one of my people, who, hav- 
 ing sought in vain at a distance, had discovered her on his 
 return, not far from the house. Her hair was dishevelled; 
 her countenance as white as death; her limbs cold; she 
 was languid and speechless. We got her, as quickly as we 
 could, to bed. 
 
 This happened a second time. At length I extorted her 
 secret from her. She had been to the beach of the sea to 
 seek the bodies of her parents. On the sea-shore she seemed 
 to converse with their spirits. She owned, she had been 
 tempted to plunge herself into the waves to meet them. She 
 heard their voices speaking to her in the hollow wind, and 
 saw their faces riding on the top of the waves, by the 
 light of the moon, as it peeped precariously through the 
 storm. They called to her, and bid her come along, and 
 chid her for her delay. The words at first sounded softly, 
 so that it seemed difficult to hear them, but afterward 
 changed to the most dolorous and piercing shrieks. In 
 the last instance a figure had approached her, and, seiz- 
 ing her garment, detained her, just as she was going to 
 launch herself into the element. The servants talked 
 something of a gentleman, who had quitted Mary, precisely 
 as they came up to conduct her home. 
 
 She confessed !that, whenever the equinoctial wind 
 sounded in her ears, it gave a sudden turn to her blood and 
 spirits. As she listened alone to the roaring of the ocean, 
 her parents and her sisters immediately stood before her. 
 More than once she had been awaked at midnight by the 
 well-known sound ; and, looking out of bed, she saw their^ 
 
 I 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 269 
 
 bodies strewed on the floor, distended with the element 
 that filled them, and their features distorted with death. 
 This spectacle she could not endure ; she had crept silently 
 out of bed, and, drawing a few clothes about her, had 
 found her way into the air. She felt nothing of the storm ; 
 and, led on by an impulse she could not resist, had turned 
 her steps toward the sea. 
 
 This was a terrible story. I saw that some immediate 
 and decisive remedy was indispensable. I saw that the 
 state of mind she was in, if not eflPectually changed, led in 
 direct course to one of two issues, — derangement of intel- 
 lect, or suicide. Poor Mary ! How deep an impression the 
 fatal catastrophe of her family had made upon her mind ! 
 I was of all men most inexcusable in having forgotten this. 
 I had seen the whole progress of the impression, and with 
 what difficulty she had been recalled to the world at first. 
 If, in the warm affection she had conceived for me, in her 
 marriage and subsequent prospects with the man of her 
 choice, she had in some degree risen from the tomb, and 
 come away from the recent graves of those she loved, did 
 that form an excuse for me .'' On the contrary, it laid me 
 under the highest and most indelible obligation. What a 
 proof of love ! Did ever wife give to her husband, or 
 mistress to the most devoted of her admirers, a more in- 
 controvertible evidence of attachment? And I, in my in- 
 gratitude and insensibility, had shut my eyes upon the true 
 merit of this conduct, and treated with rudeness and as- 
 perity the amiable devotee ! 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Change of scene was a medicine which the case obviously 
 required. She must not be within reach of the sea. She 
 must be, where it was impossible for the ear to catch the 
 roaring of the waters. I further conceived that it was de- 
 sirable to convey her to some place, where variety of amuse- 
 
270 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 ment should draw off her attention from the horrible 
 imaginings with which she had lately been haunted. Mary 
 was young ; and there is something in the spring and first 
 unfolding of life, which seems ^particularly to demand the 
 interposition of diversified objects and vivacious entertain- 
 ment. In the present case, nature herself appeared to 
 point outthe remedy. Mary had shown a decisive partial- 
 ity for visits, and assemblies, and crowds. I now beheved 
 that it was an indistinct consciousness that she could not 
 support herself without these aids, that had directed her 
 choice. I fixed upon a removal to Bath. 
 
 My wife derived great and evident benefit from this 
 transplanting. Some languor remained for a few days ; but 
 it speedily disappeared. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive with what joy I hailed her 
 return to health. I had had the most horrible prospect 
 before me. I had seen the wife of my bosom given up to 
 the agonies of a distracted spirit. I had felt a remorse and 
 oppression of mind, to which, till that hour I had been a 
 stranger. I accused myself as the author of her calamity. 
 The tenderest flower in nature's garden had been committed 
 to my care, and I was deeply responsible for the manner in 
 which I had treated it. If she seemed to have forgotten 
 the premature destruction of her family, I ought not to 
 have forgotten it. I ought to have considered her as a con- 
 valescent, that required every art to defend from a relapse, 
 and to lure away from the action of those causes which had 
 produced her disease. 
 
 For many days I fed upon the pleasure which her re- 
 covery afforded me. I saw, with ecstasies of delight, the 
 roses once more unfolding their bloom upon those cheeks, 
 late so livid and so pale. For several weeks before we left 
 Merionethshire, Mary had gradually become more and 
 more dejected ; and, if at any time she smiled, her smiles, 
 as I have said, had in them something more sad and ter- 
 rible to my heart, than tears in any other case would have 
 suggested. Now I saw in them, once again, the honest 
 expression of a mind accessible to amusement and pleasure. 
 I saw those gathering clouds, which had been felt by me 
 hke the end of the world, dispersed and clearing away, as 
 
FLEETWOOD. 271 
 
 if they had never been. I thanked her a thousand times ; 
 I kissed the new-blown roses ; I clasped her in my trans- 
 ported arms. 
 
 " Mary/' said I, '^ you have brought me back from the 
 very dens of despair. Oh, Mary, what alarms have I felt ! 
 It is indeed an awful thing to be in love! Poor creature, 
 how much must you have suffered ! Do you remember 
 w^hen you sallied forth on that terrible night.'* Do you re- 
 member, when, as you said, some friendly, unknown hand 
 snatched you back, just as you were going to be swallowed 
 
 up by the billows } No, I will mention the subject no 
 
 more. I will be the most cautious and attentive of husbands. 
 Brute that I was, I had not considered how much delicacy 
 and forbearance your sweet frame demanded. You are an 
 angel, and I treated you like a mortal. Will you forgive 
 mc ? " 
 
 I wish this recovery had taken place less rapidly. Mary 
 passed from one extreme to the other, without almost an 
 interval between. She made acquaintances, she resorted 
 to all public places ; she was involved in a perpetual round 
 of engagements ; she laughed, and talked, and danced, and 
 sung, for ever ; at least so it appeared to my sickly ap- 
 prehension. Yet I was upon my guard, not to check, or 
 seem to disapprove, as I had formerly done, the avocations 
 she chose. Sometimes, indeed, with ever-subtle anxiety, 
 I was alarmed for the sanity of her intellect. Once • or 
 twice I hinted to my charmer, in an obscure and distant 
 way, that she was over-acting her part. On these occasions 
 she looked at me with a wistful and wintry smile, that 
 brought back to my recollection all the horrible appre- 
 hensions I had lately entertained. I kissed her, and told 
 her, I saw she was right. 
 
 Here then I was, torn, not now from my closet and my 
 private staircase, but from my paternal mansion, and the 
 haunts, where once my careless childhood strayed. Lately 
 the most independent man alive, I was become a mere ap- 
 pendage to that tender and charming trifle, a pretty woman. 
 I adored my wife; but I had cultivated high ideas of the 
 prerogatives of my sex, and I did not altogether reHsh the 
 being thus reduced to a cipher. My geographical situation 
 
272 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 was now the offspring of necessity, not of choice. I felt 
 like the persons I have somewhere read of, acted upon by 
 a magnetic influence, who wore no chains or fetters, and 
 yet were prisoners, struggling, perhaps, to advance in an 
 apposite direction, but always compelled to follow the steps 
 of him who exerted this ascendancy over them. 
 
 Bath, of all places on earth, I detested. I had some 
 unpleasing associations respecting it, arising from certain 
 trivial adventures, which I have not thought it necessary 
 to record in this history. But, independently of these, I 
 had been, through life, with very few interruptions, a lover 
 of nature, of her romantic and magnificent scenery, of her 
 simple and unvitiated manners. Bath appeared to me the 
 very focus of artificial society; of every ^thing that was 
 frivolous, affected, impertinent, overreaching, and licentious. 
 
 Deeply in love as I was, I could not help speculating, 
 with no agreeable reflections, from the new lights I had 
 derived on the character of my wife. Fickle and capricious 
 I judged her ; and, thus judging, I could not avoid some- 
 times viewing her under the notion of a beautiful toy, a 
 plume of costly feathers, or a copious train of thinnest 
 gauze, which nods gracefully, or floats in a thousand pleasing 
 folds, but which is destitute of substance, firmness, or 
 utility. There must be something, I thought, radically 
 defective in so fluctuating a character. She acted (thus I 
 construed her demeanour) inconsiderately and idly; she 
 could be induced to no fixed spirit of attention ; she was 
 at one moment sunk in the lowest depths of misery, and 
 at another wild with extravagant gaiety, with no interval 
 to qualify the transition, with no self-government to give 
 propriety or moderation to either. A being acting thus, 
 was it entitled to be ranked in the scale of moral existences ? 
 What dependence could be placed upon the consistency of 
 any thing so versatile ? What principles could dwell in 
 the bosom of so mere a woman ? — All these reasonings 
 brought back to my mind Mrs. Comorin, the Marchioness 
 
 de L J and the Countess of B ; and I reverted to 
 
 my long estabhshed sentiment, that the sex were all alike. 
 What a fool was I, ever to have doubted it ! 
 
 Indulging this ill-humoured and inequitable estimate of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 273 
 
 my wife, it was natural that I should be displeased with 
 the figure I made on the present occasion. " Once/' said 
 I to myself, " I was a man ! Ambition had its dwelhng- 
 place in this bosom. How many thoughts, and projects, 
 and inventions, for fame and for usefulness, have passed 
 through my mind ? In reality, it was this ardent desire 
 to be something, to record myself on the rolls of my species 
 for some praiseworthy deed, that had haunted me for ever, 
 and poisoned my tranquillity in every stage. My father 
 and my grandfather were admirable men. What matters 
 it, that they were merely opulent English merchants ? Not 
 to introduce here many other anecdotes scarcely less honour- 
 able to their characters, the senior, who took up the little 
 vagrant Ruffigny and made him his son, and the junior, 
 who willingly yielded that this vagrant should enter into 
 the joint possession of his inheritance, were no ordinary 
 men. Ruffigny himself and Macneil, the two most dis- 
 tinguished of my friends, were of that stamp, who did 
 nothing for fame, but every thing for utility, for venerable 
 simplicity, and for virtue. It was not the loud blast of 
 applause that I demanded ; it was, that I might look on 
 myself with a satisfied mind; and those who knew me 
 most, might love me, and who could judge me best, might 
 say, " He has not lived in vain ! " 
 
 And were all my projects, and was the never-resting 
 anxiety of my bosom, reduced to this ? Formerly I said, 
 "I am nothing;" because no achievement I ever per- 
 formed came up to my own ideas of what became me. 
 Now I might say, " I am nothing ; " because, with regard 
 to any such ideas, I was literally palsied. I was a lover ! 
 Alas ! I was past the age, when a man can rest satisfied 
 with this one frivolous passion, and see in the world only 
 his Julia ! Love is a passion in which soul and body hold 
 divided empire. The meaner half of our nature is essential 
 to its support. It is sex, it is " a set of features and com- 
 plexion, the tincture of a skin," that constitutes its origin 
 and principle. Considered in this light, it is, all through, 
 a selfish sentiment, the pampering of a weakness, a de- 
 licious scheme for beguiling the hours and weeks of our 
 existence. Certainly man, particularly the man whom 
 T 
 
274 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Heaven has endowed with inventive faculties and a com- 
 prehensive intellect^ was made for something better than 
 this. I was now engrossed by a single individual ; I was 
 playing a subservient and humble part in her train ; and 
 even the character and attributes of this individual did not 
 at all times command my approbation. Assuredly I did 
 not always look back upon this with complacence, or with 
 patience. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 It was at Bath that I first reduced to practitse the other 
 part of the advice of my deceased Men tor, — the calling about 
 me my distant relations, young men who, from the regula- 
 tions of society, had the best claim upon my assistance. 
 
 I had had a kinswoman, descended from a sister of my 
 grandfather, with v/hom we had preserved little inter- 
 course, because we had always considered her character as 
 by no means calculated to do credit to any one who should 
 be connected with her. The woman was now dead ; but, 
 while living, she had run a singular career. She had been 
 given in first marriage to a wealthy esquire of Wales, of 
 the name of GifFord. This man she had led for several 
 years a weary life. She was of exquisite beauty, tall, 
 graceful, and captivating. Her tastes were expensive, and 
 her manners gay. Her demeanour was spirited and im- 
 pressive, her passions volatile, and her temper violent. 
 With all this, she was by no means destitute of capacity. 
 She was eloquent, witty, and sarcastic ; exhibiting, when 
 she pleased, the highest breeding, and delivering her re- 
 marks with inexpressible vivacity and grace. Thus en- 
 dowed, she was surrounded, wherever she appeared, with a 
 little army of suitors. Every youth of fashion, who had 
 the courage to look up to her, became her professed ad- 
 jiiirer ; and, among these admirers, it was pretty univer- 
 sally believed that all had not offered up their incense in 
 vain. At length, impunity^made her heedless; she was 
 
FLEETWOOD. 275 
 
 caught in a situation with a young officer, a West Indian 
 of colour, which admitted of no ambiguity ; her husband 
 could no longer overlook her offence ; and a divorce was 
 the result. Her character being thus blasted, she gave full 
 scope to her appetite for pleasure ; she retreated to London, 
 and occupied a very elegant mansion, which was for some 
 time a favourite haunt for the most dissipated of our young 
 nobility. "While the divorce was depending, she was al- 
 lowed, by the ecclesiastical court, a tolerably handsome in- 
 come out of her husband's estates ; and, when this ceased, 
 the defect was understood to be supplied by the more opu- 
 lent of her guests. 
 
 This prosperity, however, did not last for ever. Mrs. 
 Gifford's charms, by the effect of late hours and incessant 
 dissipation, rapidly subsided. She was no longer a no- 
 velty. She had had many fortunate lovers ; but she had 
 not been lucky enough to secure one, who, by the entan- 
 glement of habit or otherwise, should be inclined to pre- 
 serve the autumn of her days from indigence. She retired, 
 with a dejected heart, and an empty purse, into Wales, 
 and took up her residence in a market-town, in the very 
 next county to that where my father lived. But, though 
 Mrs. Gifford was no longer handsome enough for Rotten 
 Row or Pall Mall, she made a great figure in the remote 
 quarter of the world which now received her. Her recom- 
 mendations, as I have already said, were not merely those 
 of person ; she possessed understanding, animation, and 
 taste. She had seen much of the high world, and she had 
 eminently the talent of giving poignancy to her anecdotes 
 and remarks. 
 
 In the town where she dwelt, lived also a Mr. Kenrick, 
 a surgeon, of great skill and ability in his profession. This 
 man was beloved by all the country round, not only on 
 account of his art, and the humane and liberal style in 
 which he dispensed its benefits, but for his manners, which 
 were in the most striking form of artlessness and simplicity. 
 With an uncommon fund of good sense and profound sa- 
 gacity, he was, as to all the affairs of the living world, a 
 child. He was imposed upon by every artful story, and 
 his purse was .open alike to relieve distress and gratify im- 
 T 2 
 
276 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 po" ;ure. He could not find in his heart to be severe to any 
 on ; and the wretch who had ten times deceived him^ was 
 su^e, if detected^ to be dismissed, at worst, with nothing 
 harder than a patriarchal rebuke. Add to this, he was 
 subject to the strangest fits of absence, which often in- 
 volved him in incredible mistakes and absurdities ; though, 
 as if by the interposition of a good genius for ever watch- 
 ful over the steps of this admirable creature, his distrac- 
 tions had never been known to produce a pernicious effect 
 in the exercise of his profession. 
 
 My worthy kinswoman saw at once into the value of 
 this memorable person. She thought him as exactly fitted 
 to become her second husband, as if he had been made for 
 the purpose. Poor fellow ! he had, perhaps, never in his 
 life bestowed a single thought upon love and marriage. 
 But Mrs. Gifford knew, that the man who cannot be 
 brought to enact the personage of a suitor, may, by a 
 dexterous change of the character of the sexes, be an ad- 
 mirable subject for a clever woman, who should think 
 proper to pay her addresses to him. The ladies of Llan- 
 velling refused to admit the visits of this interesting Mag- 
 dalene, and therefore she had no chance to meet the doctor 
 at a third place ; but that obstacle was immediately re- 
 moved, when Mrs. Gifford opportunely fell ill of a lan- 
 guishing distemper. She had great address in conducting 
 the symptoms of her indisposition, as she had address in 
 every thing she seriously undertook ; poor Kenrick could 
 not tell what to make of it. One thing, however, he bet- 
 ter understood, — the charms of her conversation : she ex- 
 erted all her talents to fix herself in his good opinion ; and 
 never, perhaps, in her life had she failed in an attempt of 
 that sort. She did not choose to have a tedious illness ; for 
 it was not to her purpose that he should regard her as a 
 decided invalid. She was ill long enough, however, to 
 secure poor Kenrick's partiality. He had never before 
 experienced, in any eminent degree, the pleasures of female 
 society ; the Welsh ladies were not calculated to afford 
 them to a man of science. Mrs. Gifford's fire-side was a 
 most delightful retreat to the rural surgeon, after the la- 
 bours of the day ; if he was not there every evening, he 
 
FLEETWOOD. 277 
 
 every evening wished to be there. The lady, on the o'tier 
 hand, took every precaution to remove his diffidence ; she 
 showed him, not so much by words, as by affectionate ex- 
 pressions, and a seeming overflowing of the soul in his 
 company, that he could not visit her too often. Kenrick 
 had been a total stranger to this species of flattery, not be- 
 cause his neighbours did not honour his merit, but because 
 they wanted the skill to honour it in this way ; and he was 
 so much the more passive and defenceless to its operations. 
 All this coquetry terminated in marriage ; but the man 
 of medicine found Mrs. Kenrick a very different sort of 
 woman from what Mrs. GifFord had appeared. The bent 
 of his mind rendered him incapable of the habits of accu- 
 mulation ; but the income of his professional labours was 
 far from despicable. When Mrs. GifFord had come down 
 into Wales, fifty pounds constituted the whole fortune, 
 principal and interest, that she possessed. So circum- 
 stanced, it was impossible for any woman to have more 
 unexpensive tastes, or a more decisive relish for rural 
 retirement. No sooner, however, had fortune changed, 
 than she resumed her former propensities. She began 
 with adding an elegant saloon to her husband's house, and 
 decorating his little grounds in a sort of Versailles style. 
 It was in vain for Kenrick to remonstrate ; she was dash- 
 ing and peremptory ; he gentle, forbearing, and unqualified 
 to contend. She soon grew tired of the delights of Mont- 
 gomeryshire. One morning she read in the papers of the 
 death of a surgeon of the first eminence at Bath ; she 
 found that this afforded an opening of the most auspicious 
 nature for her husband, and insisted upon his removing 
 thither. Kenrick's talents and knowledge of his profession 
 would have made their way any where ; but his wife was a 
 clog hung about his neck that made it impossible for him 
 to rise. She filled his house with assemblies of demireps 
 and debauchees ; desperate as to the recovery of any cha- 
 racter in the world, she resolved to make that figure by 
 dissoluteness and effrontery, which, if she had set out 
 right in life, she might have made by elegance, accomphsh- 
 ments, and virtue. Kenrick lost his courage, his activity, 
 and his employers. Death came at a convenient moment, 
 T 3 
 
278 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 and, by means of the disease, usually styled a broken heart, 
 rescued him from the horrors of poverty. His wife had 
 taken no care in the seasons of her prosperity to provide 
 for an evil day. She sunk into obscurity, by all neglected 
 and by all despised ; and, after several years of wretched- 
 ness, terminated her existence in a parish workhouse. 
 
 This woman had two son^. The fate of both was sin- 
 gular. Born, the elde^.^iiicler the roofs of magnificence, 
 and the second in the mansion of competence and plenty, 
 they were reduced at an early age to absolute want. The 
 former bore the name of Gilford. After several years of 
 marriage without the least promise of offspring, his mother 
 had at length presented this son to her first husband. But, 
 in the ecclesiastical proceedings which took place soon after 
 his birth, it was proved to the satisfaction of the court that 
 he was illegitimate, and he was cut off by act of parHament 
 from the large inheritance to which he seemed to have been 
 born. Her second son was the offspring of the excellent 
 and guileless Kenrick ; and he was ruined, equally with his 
 elder brother, by the unhappy issue of his father's profes- 
 sional life. 
 
 Between these two youths there had been an antipathy 
 from the earhest period of the existence of the latter : at 
 least, it was deeply felt by GifFord for his unwelcome cadet. 
 Gifford was a youth of a dark complexion, and elegant 
 figure, sagacious, shrewd, supple, and insinuating. He had 
 been only seven years of age at the period of his mother's 
 second marriage. She had never loved her son ; for she 
 beheld him as the innocent instrument of her disgrace. He 
 harboured in his childish bosom a secret abhorrence of his 
 mother. The extraordinary change which had taken place 
 in his fortunes in infancy had probably, when he came to 
 know it, served in a wonderful degree to sharpen his facul- 
 ties. His nurses and attendants did not fail to tell him 
 that he had, during the early months of his existence, been 
 looked upon as the heir to twenty thousand a year. The 
 eternal recollection that the open misconduct of his mother 
 had been the cause of his losing this, made him look upon 
 her with the sentiments of a demon. Extraordinary as it 
 may seem, long before he was seven years of age, he 
 
FLEETWOOD. 279 
 
 understood all he had suffered, or at least felt it as deeply 
 as a man of forty might have done. This boyish impres- 
 sion of dislike to her on whom he solely depended, taught 
 him early habits of hypocrisy. Two or three times, in the 
 beginning, his feelings of antipathy had broken out ; but 
 the haughty and imperious temper of his mother had 
 crushed them with such terrors as no schoolboy courage 
 could withstand. From this time he learned the tones of 
 submission, and even of reverence; and, being of a re- 
 markably quick capacity^ no Roscius or Richard could have 
 played the character he assumed more consummately. Even 
 the penetrating observation of Mrs. Gifford was deceived, 
 and she was persuaded that this viper doted on her to 
 distraction. Love, in an infinite majority of cases, begets 
 love. Perceiving how much the boy seemed attached to 
 her, and remorseful perhaps for the great injury he had 
 suffered from her licentiousness, she became tolerant and 
 even kind to Lim. His figure was graceful and prepossess- 
 ing; his capacity was every where remarked with senti- 
 ments of astonishment ; the mother gradually became proud 
 of her son. 
 
 She introduced him into the family of the mild Kenrick, 
 and caused him to be treated as the proper heir of all he saw. 
 The age at which Mrs. Gifford had arrived, rendered it 
 somewhat improbable that she should have any child by 
 her second marriage ; the habits of her past life seemed to 
 have increased this improbability. The boy, of course, 
 did not exactly understand the state of his step-father's 
 fortune. He saw every thing in plenty about him ; and 
 meditated in his youthful heart to give himself full scope 
 in enjoying all at present, and to possess the same means, 
 sole and uncontrolled, when the present proprietors were 
 gone off the stage. It was therefore with a sort cf despair 
 that he found that his mother became pregnant in the 
 second year of her marriage. A thousand plans for re- 
 moving this infant rival, whom he regarded as destined by 
 law the proprietor of those funds which he had so lately 
 counted for his own, suggested themselves to his working 
 brain. Again and again he had thoughts of removing 
 him by poison ; Gifford was a coward ; but he was also too 
 T 4 
 
280 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 good a calculator not to give due weight to the chances that 
 this action might conduct him to the gallows. While 
 these sentiments were ever uppermost in his mind^ he 
 carried every thing with an external smoothness ; and often 
 nursed, and seemed to fondle the child whom he wished to 
 strangle. 
 
 The mother of these youths was five summers the wife 
 of Kenrick ; when the honest surgeon died, the dreams of 
 wealth immediately vanished which had for years occa- 
 sioned the little GifFord so many heart-burnings. He saw 
 that his poor half brother was no better off than himself: 
 there was no dispute about the succession, for there was 
 nothing to inherit. Young Kenrick, however, was taken 
 home by his father's relations in the neighbourhood of 
 Llanvelling ; they jwere in narrow circumstances, but ex- 
 ceedingly honest. Gifford was owned by nobody ; unhappy 
 in the incident of his birth, he was akin to no living crea- 
 ture but his profligate mother. Once, in the decline of 
 her life, I made enquiry into her situation, and sent her 
 a handsome present : afterward I lost sight of her. It has 
 been seen, how wandering and uncertain a life I led ; add 
 to which, she had relations by the father's side, nearer to 
 her than myself, and fully, or nearly, equal to me in point 
 of fortune. They neglected her ; they pretended to feel 
 paroxysms of wrath at the very mention of her name ; they 
 would extend no indulgence or assistance to the progeny of 
 her adulterous amours. When this wretched woman was 
 taken to the parish workhouse, it was proposed by the 
 churchwardens to bind her son apprentice, as it was called, 
 to a neighbouring farmer ; that is, to sell him for a term 
 of years to perform the most oppressive and brutish offices 
 of rural drudgery. A neighbouring clergyman, of consider- 
 able learning and a liberal mind, had seen the boy occa- 
 sionally, and observed in him the tokens of a superior 
 understanding. He took him from the situation to which 
 he was condemned, received him into his house, and deter- 
 mined by his own exertions to cultivate and improve the 
 faculties he discerned. 
 
 The mind of GifFord had been deeply affected by every 
 successive revolution in his circumstances. He had written^ 
 
FLEETWOODS 281 
 
 with his mother's connivance, divers very supple and in- 
 sinuating letters to her relations by the father's side : with- 
 out her consent, and in defiance of her prohibition (for in 
 her deepest distress, she still felt an ingenuous pride, which 
 forbade her offering any supplications in this quarter), he 
 wrote to his nominal father. In all things the boy dis- 
 covered a sagacity beyond his years. As long as there was 
 a hope of obtaining any thing from his mother's relations, 
 he was, in appearance, filial and dutiful to her. When 
 every prospect of that kind was at an end, and he seemed 
 condemned to obscurity and misery for ever, the bitterness 
 of his nature broke out. He reviled her in language so 
 harsh and horrible, that it appeared wonderful where he 
 had acquired his fecundity of invective. In cursing to her 
 face the mother who bore him, he seemed to find ease for 
 the disappointments and adversity he endured. A part of 
 every day he devoted to this gratification ; and the once 
 proud and haughty Mrs. GifFord, now reduced by misery 
 and hunger, had not spirits to stand up against this un- 
 natural usage. It was universally believed by those wIm) 
 witnessed the scenes, that the son had thus succeeded to 
 shorten the life of his parent. 
 
 When young Gilford was admitted under the roof of the 
 benevolent clergyman who seemed to intend to adopt him 
 for his own, he may be considered as already consummate 
 in every vicious disposition. He had not, however, lost 
 his talent for hypocrisy ; and, as the world now began to 
 smile upon him, he became more smooth and insinuating 
 than ever. During his residence in this house, his patron 
 was seized with a dangerous fit of sickness, and with great 
 difficulty recovered. A short time after, the clergyman 
 discovered, by an extraordinary train of accidents, that little 
 GifFord had entered into a plot with a knavish attorney, if 
 he had died when it was expected he would, to rob the wife 
 and only daughter of his patron, of all they should possess. 
 This discovery cured Mr. Parkhurst of his fondness for 
 this extraordinary inmate. He sent him to sea, where 
 Gifford speedily acquired the favour of his superior ; and, 
 at the age of twenty-eight, at which I invited him to ray 
 house in Bath, he had passed through a series of adven- 
 
282 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 tures, scarcely less diversified ^than those of GiljBlas or Gus- 
 man d'Alfarache. His evil genius meanwhile still pursued 
 him ; and, however deep were the schemes he had laid^ he 
 had not made that progress in life^ which assuredly his 
 talents would have obtained^ could he have confined himself 
 to the character of an honest man. One, however, of the 
 circumstances, not the least extraordinary, that attended 
 him, was, that he was still followed by the good word of 
 at least half the persons with whom he connected himself. 
 It was not till a considerable time after, that I learned the 
 particulars concerning him which I have here related. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Influenced, as I have said, by what I may call the tes- 
 tamentary advice of the generous Macneil, and desirous of 
 calling about me my nearest existing relations, my mind 
 immediately recurred to the two sons of my frail kins- 
 woman. Previously to this time I had not been wholly 
 inattentive to their interests. Gifford, whose life was 
 wandering and unsettled, I had never seen ; but the Httle 
 Kenrick, who dwelt with his relatives not more than twenty 
 miles from my residence, had often drawn from me the 
 marks of my personal attention. He was a florid and 
 beautiful boy, alert and nimble in his motions, and singu- 
 larly open and ingenuous in his demeanour. A school- 
 fellow of his, a favourite companion, had been destined by 
 his parents for the army ; in their youthful frolics they had 
 played at soldiers ; and little Kenricl^ had often, in his 
 artless prattle, and looking at me with one of his innocent 
 looks, entreated me to let him be a general. I indulged 
 his youthful preference, and at the proper period bought 
 him a pair of colours. A more gallant and kindhearted 
 soldier the world never saw. There was a brilliancy in his 
 eye, a modest blush in his cheek, and a sensibility in his 
 accent, that, all together, constituted one of the most in- 
 teresting objects that can be imagined. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 283 
 
 These two young men, I, at one and the same time, in- 
 vited to come to me at Bath. GifFord was at present out 
 of employment, and to be provided for. The profession in 
 which he was most exercised, though he had left it for con- 
 siderable periods and returned to it again, was that of the 
 sea ; and, if I thought proper to push him forward in the 
 path of independence, I might, in no long time, be able to 
 make him a captain in the navy. Kenrick was engaged ; 
 he was recently entered in the army ; and, at my invit- 
 ation, obtained a leave of absence for two months, to visit 
 his wealthy kinsman. 
 
 Though born of the same mother, it was impossible for 
 two human beings to exhibit a stronger contrast to each 
 other. When Kenrick appeared before me for the first 
 time at Bath, dressed in the uniform of his regiment, and 
 glowing with all the bloom of eighteen, I thought I had 
 never beheld so prepossessing a creature. His address was 
 irresistible ; his words seemed the image of his heart ; 
 and the tone of his voice, when he accosted me, implicitly 
 told the love, gratitude, and respect he entertained for me. 
 The entrance of GifFord, whom I now saw for the first time, 
 by no means impressed me in the same way. His dark 
 complexion, approaching to the mulatto, was no agreeable 
 portent. There was a roving in his eye, which seemed 
 to warn me to put myself upon my guard against him. His 
 general physiognomy conveyed the idea of something ob- 
 scure and problematical, which I was at a loss to expound. 
 He was ten years older than Kenrick ; and, if his under- 
 standing, even in infancy, had been premature, it may 
 well be supposed that he had by this time lost all vestige of 
 juvenile simplicity. I did not like him. I said to myself, 
 " GifFord, you shall not stay a week under the roof of your 
 patron." 
 
 These were first impressions. As I observed more of 
 these young men, my feelings toward them became essen- 
 tially altered. Kenrick was full of gay and volatile spirits, 
 which, though qualified with the best heart in the world, 
 rather shocked with the gravity of my age, and the saturn- 
 ine turn of my disposition. As a boy, I felt kindly to- 
 ward him; but I soon found that he was by no means 
 
284 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 fitted to be my companion. GifFord, on the contrary, Was 
 serious and of wide information ; had read much, and 
 thought more ; his researches, especially into the human 
 heart, were profound. He talked like an oracle ; and I 
 soon learned to place a great dependence upon his judgment. 
 His sentiments in many respects had a striking similarity 
 to my own. But what was most material, he flattered me 
 in my notions and weaknesses, with the greatest imaginable 
 address. It had so happened, that I hitherto had Httle 
 experience of this sort of flattery. I had been too singular 
 and soKtary in my habits, and too frequent in my changes 
 of abode, to have been exposed to this kind of attack so 
 
 ^ much as men of my fortune usually are. Before many 
 days had elapsed, my two kinsmen fell naturally into their 
 places. Kenrick, who had no secret ends in pursuit, de- 
 sired nothing on his part but to preserve a complying and 
 respectful carriage toward me. GifFord purposed, from the 
 moment he entered my house, to possess me entirely to 
 himself, -and proceeded accordingly. That insinuating 
 voice and dexterous artifice I have before described in him, 
 he now employed with unwearied diligence. It is surpris- 
 ing how soon I lost sight of those prepossessions against 
 him, which his first appearance had inspired. I no longer 
 perceived the portentous roving of his eye, or the mysterious 
 significations of his brow ; and the graces of his figure, 
 and the admirable subtlety of his understanding, pleaded 
 strongly with me in his favour. 
 
 He no sooner crossed my threshold, than, agreeably to 
 the uniform tenour of his life, he looked round upon aU 
 the individuals who dwelt there, for the purpose of dis- 
 covering where, and toward whom, the craftiness of his 
 nature might be directed to the greatest advantage. A 
 visit paid to a man so rich as I was, and who had no nearer 
 relation than himself, except so far as depended upon my 
 recent marriage, was an epoch in his life. The first ques- 
 
 \ tion he asked himself, as he set his foot beneath my roof, 
 was, " How can I make myself, by succession or other- 
 wise, the possessor of the estate of my kinsman ? " 
 
 The persons principally entitled to his attention, when 
 he sat down to the solution of this question, were myself. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 28JI. lijP' ,p 
 
 my wife, and the thoughtless but amiable Kenrick. The ^ \. V 
 latter he scarcely deigned to think of as a rival, but rather -r : 
 as an instrument by which his plots might be forwarded. 
 He felt his genius soar above the opposition of such a 
 minor. Mary was at this time with child. She was little 
 advanced in her pregnancy ; and I can scarcely think that 
 Gifford^ when he first entered my house, was aware of her 
 condition. As soon as he was so, his machinations became 
 principally directed against his unborn adversary. He felt, 
 I believe, an unreal and anticipated resemblance between 
 the circumstances of this creature beginning to exist, and 
 those under which^ he had himself been born : and he re- 
 solved that, as he, in the early months of his infancy, had 
 been cut off from an inheritance of twenty thousand a year, 
 so should this child be disinherited and abandoned to the 
 world, before it became acquainted with the first elements 
 of speech or of reason. 
 
 .[ One of the main artifices of Gifford through life was, if 
 he felt animosity toward any one, to personate a more than 
 usual affection and kindness to that individual. By this 
 method he gained possession of that person's secrets, and 
 insinuated himself into his confidence ; while at the same 
 time his ostentatious show of regard gave treble weight to 
 the tales, which the hypocrite seemed reluctantly to utter 
 against his ally. I have already said, that GifFord nourished 
 an inextinguishable antipathy to Kenrick. For this very 
 reason, he assumed the appearance, from the hour they 
 met, of attaching himself to his interests ; and the demon- 
 strations of that attachment were constantly accompanied 
 with notoriety and eclat. Kenrick had a certain tone of 
 levity and giddiness about him, though the goodness of his 
 heart prevented him from falling into the excesses to which 
 suchj dispositions too frequently lead ; and GifFord volun- 
 tarily undertook to be his monitor. The ingenuous and 
 upright character of Kenrick made him receive these offices 
 with the utmost gratitude ; while I myself could not help 
 being edified with this disinterested conduct in the elder 
 brother, where an ungenerous mind would rather have felt 
 envy and a sentiment of competition. 
 
 Gifford early remarked the grave turn of my disposition. 
 
286 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 as well as the volatility of that of his brother ; and he re- 
 solved to improve and heighten these hints of contrast. 
 He accordingly insinuated such remarks as the following, 
 into the ear of Kenrick : — '^^ Do not think, because you 
 observe our -cousin to be of a serious temper, that it is ne- 
 cessary you should suppress before him the gay impulses 
 of your mind. If you do, instead of gaining, you will 
 ruin yourself in his esteem. He told me the other day, as 
 we were walking together, that he had always been accus- 
 tomed to prognosticate ill, of a solemn, sober-sided boy. 
 ' Youth,' said he, ' is the season of cheerfulness ; and it is 
 in this way that the faculties and force of the mind, if any 
 exist, display themselves in early life.' Besides, Mr. Fleet- 
 wood has the most ungovernable dislike to what he calls hy- 
 pocrisy ; and he carries this principle so far, that whoever, 
 in his sight, puts any constraint upon his natural bent, he 
 sets down for a hypocrite. Remember too, that a grave 
 man is a man devoured with ennui, and, however contrary 
 to his temper it may seem, that he feels toward no person 
 so sincere a gratitude, as toward him who convulses him 
 with laughter, and distracts his melancholy wdth sallies of 
 extravagance. I know, my dear Kenrick, that you are too 
 high-souled a lad, to do any thing for the express purpose 
 of insinuating yourself into an old man's testament. But 
 that same temper of yours ought to prevent you from mor- 
 tifying yourself, and giving pain to your protector, to no 
 manner of purpose. Show yourself to him nakedly as you 
 are : he wdll honour you the more, and like you the better 
 for it. Kenrick, you are a spirited fellow ; but you have 
 not the heedlessness and obstinacy, which make many 
 young men of your stamp disdain advice. Yours is the 
 season to lay hold of fortune's plough, and turn up her 
 treasures ; it would not be amiss, as graver years advance, 
 to find that you had a comfortable annuity on Mr. Fleet- 
 wood's estate. He must be an ass, and not a man of 
 spirit, who never thinks beforehand of a rainy day. For 
 ray part, I should have no enjoyment of any legacy our 
 cousin bequeathed to me, if my dear brother, my brother, 
 whom I received in these arms almost on the day of his 
 birth, Avhora 1 have dandled on my knees, and toward 
 
FLEETWOOD. 287 
 
 whom my affection has grown with added years, were not 
 at least equally a gainer with myself." The consequence of . 
 all this sage and generous advice was, that I was perpetu- 
 ally tormented with the huffooneries, the boy's tricks, and 
 the unlucky scrapes, of the handsome young soldier. To 
 many men, no doubt, they would have been exquisitely 
 delightful ; the cheerful and light-hearted tone of voice 
 with which they were accompanied, often spoke to the 
 soul ; and the honest hilarity of countenance that adorned 
 them, a painter would gladly have stolen, when he was 
 delineating the figure of a youthful Apollo. Still they 
 were too much for the habits of my mind, and the restless 
 anxieties that haunted me. Mary, all lovely and bewitch- 
 ing as she was, frequently vexed me with her over-much 
 liveliness and gaiety ; and I could ill brook to have this 
 stimulated and doubled upon me, by the presence of a 
 young man of her own temper and age. 
 
 Gifford speedily discerned the feelings I nourished to- 
 ward my wife, and planned his operations accordingly. 
 '^ Allow me," said he to the young ensign, " to explain 
 to you another feature of our patron's character. He has 
 passed the better days of his life a bachelor. Just at the 
 period of existence, when the most uxorious man alive be- 
 gins to detach himself from the vehemence of passion, he 
 married. You may easily conceive what a ridiculous 
 blunder he committed. He was not long before he de- 
 tected his folly. This is the very reason that has led him 
 to call his relations about him, and endeavour to relieve 
 his domestic scene by the presence of strangers. He wishes 
 to lead a creditable life with his wife ; but he finds him- 
 self disqualified to become her esquire and associate. He 
 is desirous of resuming, as far as possible, the independ- 
 ence of a single state, and of having as little familiarity 
 with his wife as decorum will allow of. It is in your 
 power to amuse him ; it is in mine to beguile his hours 
 with serious discourse ; these benefits he expects from us. 
 But the man who would do him the most precious service, is 
 he who would relieve him from the duty of constant attend- 
 ance upon the skittish, capricious, kind-hearted, excellent 
 creature, to whom he finds himself unfortunately linked. " 
 
288 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 It is no wonder that Kenrick became the dupe of these 
 representations. I was the furthest in the world ' from a 
 hypocrite ; and it was easy to see, ten times a day, how 
 much I vexed myself at sight of the etourderies of Mary. 
 Thus all the weaknesses of the Ensign's character were 
 carefully fed and expanded by his treacherous adviser. 
 He was lively, restless, and turbulent ; Gifford stimulated 
 him to become more so. At his age, and in the very dawn 
 of puberty, his eye was prompt to the notice of female at- 
 traction ; there was nothing to which he was more prone, 
 than to those little frolics and sports, in which the young 
 of either sex indulge themselves reciprocally with the ut- 
 most innocence of thought and intention : GifFord prompted 
 him to turn this foible upon my wife, and to ascribe to 
 himself a merit, while he obeyed the impulses of his 
 nature. 
 
 I have already said, that I had no sooner removed my 
 wife to Bath, than she emerged from the melancholy and 
 dejection which had overwhelmed her at the equinox, and 
 rose to an extravagant degree of vivacity and spirits. She 
 made acquaintances ; she resorted to public places ; she 
 laughed, and talked, and danced, and sung, for ever. It 
 will easily be imagined how this disorder was heightened, 
 now that I had an inmate under my roof, no less wild, re- 
 miss, and rambling than herself. I did not know my own 
 house. A hurricane would have been a mansion of peace 
 to that in which I lived. Consider then the grave cast of 
 my spirits, the trembling sensibility of my nerves ; and 
 imagine what I must have suffered in a scene so new, 
 where my nerves were not only shaken, but my ears some- 
 times deafened, by the obstreperous mirth of Mary, Ken- 
 rick, and their train of visiters. Yet I saw occasionally, 
 in the countenance of my beloved wife, some of those wild 
 and terrible expressions which had driven us from Meri- 
 onethshire ; and I dared not remonstrate. Frequently! 
 took refuge from the tumult in the separate society and 
 conversation of Gifford : this was what the villain in- 
 tended ; he was secure that he should gain more perfect 
 possession of me, in proportion as our conferences became 
 more repeated. Sometimes I desired him to speak t» 
 
FLEETWOOD. 289 
 
 Kenrick about the excess of his riots : he did speak to him ; 
 and the style in which he spoke has already been detailed. 
 
 Thus becoming daily more confidential with the elder 
 of my two kinsmen, I could not refrain from sometimes 
 opening my soul to him on the most sacred of all subjects, 
 — my sentiments respecting my wife. This I did without 
 premeditation or design : it was the genuine overflow of a 
 mind, sometimes irritated, sometimes stung, sometimes 
 swelled almost to bursting. GifFord was the only person 
 on the face of the earth, with whom I now discoursed fami- 
 liarly : who, in my place, could have been uniformly silent 
 upon the subjects always uppermost in his thoughts ? No 
 man : at least no man subject to be so deeply impressed and 
 agitated as I was. None but the worst of villains could 
 have made an ill use of such disclosures. He saw how my 
 bosom was wrung, how my heart was torn in a thousand 
 pieces. Was I a husband, indifferent to the affections of 
 his wife.'* Was I a man, to whom the kindest service 
 would be to relieve him from the uniformity of attendance 
 upon the partner of his bosom ? Did I desire, to have as 
 little familiarity of intercourse with her as the laws of de- 
 corum would allow ? — No, no, no ! Tortured as I was 
 with her instability, I loved her beyond all names of love : 
 to see her happy, was the utmost aim of my ambition : to 
 be gratified with her compliances, the indirect, silent evi- 
 dences of her regard, elevated me to an enjoyment that 
 kings might envy. But I complained — fool that I was, 
 I complained, and dreamed that I received the retribution 
 of sympathy ! — This was enough for Gifford ; this he 
 accepted as the fulcrum of his engines. 
 
 Enamoured of IMary, I also affected, with a love equally 
 sincere, though not equally ardent, the engaging Kenrick. 
 His countenance was so honest ; his manners so affection- 
 ate ! Though occasionally boisterous in his demeanour, he 
 would not intentionally have hurt a fly. Like the elephant, 
 he might have trod down armies in his mood; but, if a 
 bUnd puppy lay in his path, and he was aware of it, he 
 would carefully have removed it from harm. His manly 
 heart was subdued, and his eyes suffused with the precious 
 drops of pity, if he heard a tale of woe. He was unwearied 
 
290 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 and unconquerable in his efforts to relieve distress : nor 
 merely that ; but every opportunity, however trivial in 
 name, to do an act of kindness, and give vent to the good- 
 ness of heart with which his bosom laboured, was sure to 
 be embraced by him. The accents of generosity which 
 this temper supplied to him, thrilled through the frame 
 of every hearer. He was active, impetuous, and ungo- 
 vernable ; but how unlike was the impetuosity of his cha- 
 racter, to that of Morrison, Frewen, and the other untamed 
 barbarians, with whom it had been my unhappy lot to be 
 associated at the university ! One strange thought I could 
 not sometimes defend myself from, when Kenrick and 
 Mary chanced to sit next each other at the breakfast-table, 
 or on other occasions : they were the lovehest couple that 
 Europe perhaps could have supplied ; both so animated and 
 so accomplished; both having that uncommon class of 
 countenance, in which, as it appears, the thoughts may be 
 read. A painter, who wished to represent Romeo and 
 Juliet, as they offered themselves before Friar Lawrence to 
 be joined in bands of holy wedlock, would have been too 
 happy if he could have obtained Kenrick and Mary for his 
 models. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The young Ensign, governed, as I have said, by the admo- 
 nitions of his elder brother, was eager in his attentions 
 and services to my wife. His honest heart, that witnessed 
 the rectitude of his views, prevented him from suspecting 
 that any one could put a wrong construction on his con- 
 duct. One evening, as I returned home at about eleven 
 o'clock from a party in which I had been engaged by the 
 importunities of Gifford, who seemed always anxious to 
 invent means for diverting my melancholy, I was accosted 
 by a woman, well dressed, and, as far as I could distinguish, 
 of a noble air, in the streets. The night was exceedingly 
 dark ; but the air was balmy and refreshing. The incident 
 
FLEETWOOD. 291 
 
 occurred near the door of the Upper Rooms, and took 
 place just at the time the assembly was breaking up. Gif- 
 ford had left me for an instant to speak to an acquaintance 
 who passed us. Several of the ladies went home in chairs ; 
 others, invited perhaps by the softness of the air, and con- 
 sidering the small distance they had to go, preferred walk- 
 ing. The woman I have mentioned was arm in arm with 
 another lady ; but she let go her hold as I approached, and 
 addressed me. Her face was covered with a veil ; so that, 
 particularly in the ghmmer and obscurity of the night, I 
 could make no judgment of her features. 
 
 '^ Your name, I believe, sir, is Fleetwood ? " 
 
 " It is." 
 
 '^ Excuse my speaking to you in this strange manner. 
 I cannot stay a moment. Perhaps I ought not to say a 
 word. But meeting you thus in the instant, my feelings 
 will not be suppressed. Do not make yourself uneasy ; I 
 dare say, there is no cause ; I only wish to warn you." 
 
 " For God's sake, what do you mean ? What is it has 
 happened } " 
 
 '' Only, sir, I do not like the behaviour of Mrs. Fleet- 
 wood and the young ensign, her kinsman, to each other. 
 They were at the Rooms to-night. Really, sir, their 
 manner of proceeding is quite shocking. I cannot tell you 
 the particulars. I know that the Ensign is wholly depend- 
 ent on your bounty. Upon my word, their indecorums 
 will become the talk of every mouth. I cannot bear to see 
 so good a man as, I am told, you are, so grossly abused. 
 Look to yourself ! " 
 
 And with these words the unknown broke from me, 
 joined her companion, and in a moment was lost in the 
 train of persons that poured out of the Rooms. I was too 
 much taken by surprise, to have the thought of following 
 her. Besides, of what use was it that I should know my 
 informer ? She was acquainted with nothing but circum- 
 stances that might furnish ground for suspicion, not that 
 afforded foundation for certainty. 
 
 I might have asked of other persons who were present 
 the same evening. I had no familiar acquaintance there. 
 I could not endure to address such a question to any living 
 u 2 
 
292 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 creature. What husband, not lost to feeling as well as 
 decency, could frame his lips to ask, " Did you observe any 
 undue levity in the carriage of my wife ? Did you see any 
 thing that might lead you to suppose she was unfaithful, 
 dishonest to my bed ? " 
 
 I ought to have despised the tale of this anonymous 
 informer. I could not drive it from my mind. Kenrick 
 and my wife (thought I) must have gone far indeed, if 
 they no longer scruple to expose their familiarities before 
 the whole city. I recollected the scene at Barmouth, and 
 how much I had been tortured by the gallantries of the 
 fluttering Matthews. The idea pursued me to my pillow : 
 all night in my slumbers I imagined myself in the Rooms, 
 and saw the indecorums and guilty intelligence of Kenrick 
 and Mary. The pulses of my head beat violently; my 
 whole frame was in the paroxysm of a fever. I exclaimed, 
 '^ Shall all Bath see these things, and I alone be ignorant 
 and secure ? " 
 
 As the dawn advanced, my disorder in a great degree 
 subsided. At breakfast I saw the parties against whom 
 these suspicions had been insinuated. I searched for guilt 
 in their faces. I never saw a more charming and heartfelt 
 serenity. The brightness of heaven was in their features. 
 I looked round the room. I involuntarily said to myself 
 [it was the contrast only that struck me ; I was far from 
 entertaining a suspicion against my confidential friend], 
 ^^ Under the oHve-tinctured skin of GifFord, beneath his 
 scowling brow, and among the lines which time and cli- 
 mate have indented there, hypocrisy might hide herself; 
 but, in the other two, there is no opacity or discoloration 
 to intercept the passage of a thought, there is not a furrow 
 in their cheeks for treachery to lurk in. Mary, Heaven 
 has moulded its own image in thy features : if thou art 
 false, oh, then Heaven mocks itself! " 
 
 To the mind already indisposed to a liberal construc- 
 tion, every indifferent circumstance is food for jealousy. — 
 Had Mary left any thing behind, in removing from one 
 room to another ? Kenrick was sure to be on the alert to 
 present it to her. Did Mary prepare for a walk in the 
 Circus, or the adjoining fields ? Kenrick's gloves and hat 
 
FLEETWOOD. 293 
 
 were immediately forthcoming. Kenrick had a fine voice 
 and an admirable taste in singing; Mary had never, till now, 
 discovered any vehement propensity that way ; but now she 
 was for ever requesting him to teach her his songs, and prac- 
 tising them with him without end. They danced together 
 at every interval of leisure ; or rather rehearsed particular 
 movements, in which one or the other did not think they 
 had arrived at sufficient ease or grace ; while either, as 
 chance directed, hummed the tune to the other's steps. 
 In this system of conduct GifFord was for ever urging 
 them to persevere. If at any time they observed the deep 
 melancholy that seemed to come over me, he assured them 
 that nothing could operate upon me as a restorative, more 
 than the appearance of gaiety and good spirits in my wife. 
 If I left the apartment in displeasure, he warned them 
 against taking the least notice, or suffering the smallest 
 change in what they did. On the other hand, he was so 
 frequently alone with me, that they placed the most im- 
 plicit confidence in his information as to the state of my 
 thoughts and my wishes. In short, he appeared to each 
 party^the good genius of the household, so benevolent, so 
 attentive, so perpetually on the watch to prevent mistakes, 
 and to provide for the tranquillity and advantage of all. 
 
 I had already, previously to the horrible idea which 
 had now been intruded upon me, and which perpetually 
 disturbed my mind, been incautious and wicked enough to 
 complain to Gifford of the fickle temper of my wife. It 
 is the first word, in cases of this sort, that rends in pieces 
 the veil, as sacred as that which modesty draws over the 
 female form, by the intervention of which, slight misap- 
 prehensions are enabled to digest and disperse themselves 
 in silence. Having proceeded thus far, I could not help 
 naming to him the thoughts that beset me about Kenrick. 
 GifFord appeared to be astonished at the bare suggestion. 
 
 He would stake jhis life upon the integrity of the 
 Ensign. Honesty flowed in the very blood of the Ken- 
 ricks. Could I be so inattentive as not to see, how a self- 
 acquitting conscience brightened in the countenance of his 
 brother, and gave liberty to all his motions ? He must be 
 free enough to put me upon my euard against the vice of 
 V 2 ^ 
 
294^ FLEETWOOD. 
 
 my disposition, and to warn me not, by ill construction, to 
 poison what in itself was as guileless as infancy. Poor 
 Kenrick ! was he to be the victim of my groundless 
 guesses ? He was glad I had named the matter to him, as 
 it was of infinite consequence to check a habit of this sort 
 in the beginning. I had married a beautiful and excellent 
 wife, through whose means he doubted not I should be 
 blessed with a numerous progeny. What infinite gratifi- 
 cations were in store for me ! But all these would be for- 
 feited, if I did not repose in her the confidence she so 
 Justly demanded. The plagues that haunted a suspicious 
 husband, were not less numerous than the joys which 
 waited upon a generous one ; he saw in his wife the in- 
 strument of his dishonour, his bosom-serpent. He could 
 not toy with, and open the flood-gates of affection to, his 
 children, without fearing that a bystander, who saw what 
 passed behind the curtain, should deride him as the most 
 miserable of gulls. 
 
 I named to him the woman, who had given me the 
 mysterious hint at the door of the Upper Rooms. On this 
 intelligence he appeared to ruminate. 
 
 " Did I know her ? '* 
 
 " No." 
 ;■ '^ Had I the smallest guess who she could be ? " 
 
 '• None upon earth." 
 
 ^' It was strange ! very strange, ! It was not easyrto 
 imagine what end she could have in view. An unknown 
 could not have planned to begin with a step of this sort, 
 to alienate my affections from my wife, that she might 
 afterward fix them upon herself? What enemies could 
 Mrs. Fleetwood, or could Kenrick, have at Bath, where 
 nobody knew them, and where, in every respect, their ap- 
 pearance was such as to engage all hearts in their favour } " 
 
 " Be silent ! Gifford ! " interposed I. '^ I cannot bear 
 this methodical and cold-blooded reasoning ! I am sure my 
 wife is innocent ! Are you going to turn the enemy of her 
 good name, and of my peace, at once .f* " 
 
 " You are right, sir, quite right, in the confidence you 
 thus generously repose. It does my heart good to see you 
 take the thing so wisely ! " 
 
 J 
 
FLEETWOOD. 2Q5 
 
 '^ Who was this woman ? Her warning voice pursues 
 me for ever." 
 
 " Never mind who she was. There are people in the 
 world, whose grand pleasure is malignity; whose delight it is 
 to disturb the peace of families ; who never witness a scene 
 of happiness, without a wish to crush it. This anonymous 
 accuser is one of them. Let not your noble mind be dis- 
 turbed by such hateful trash ! " 
 
 '^ Oh, GifFord, what a life is'mine ! Why did I marry ? 
 I know, — I think, I ought to mistrust nothing between 
 your brother and Mrs. Fleetwood. Yet my sick imagin- 
 ation is for ever busy, shaping the attitudes and gestures 
 which this monitor of mine saw, or pretends to have seen. 
 Was it with hands, with eyes, or with lips, that they com- 
 municated their souls ? Was the fire of lust in their 
 glances]? or did their smiles betray a conscious guilt? Did 
 he thrust his arm about her waist, or with sacrilegious fin- 
 gers invade the transparency of her bosom ? — Pity me, Gif- 
 ford ! pity me ! It is not enough that the act of lewdness 
 has not been perpetrated; if Mary has for one instant 
 wished that the tie which makes her mine had never been, 
 the warrant of our divorce is gone forth in the tribunal of 
 souls. Why are she and the Ensign so continually together? 
 why so familiar, so mutually pleased with each other ? " 
 
 ^' It is the proof of their innocence ! Guilt is ever on 
 the alarm !" 
 
 " Is there no such thing as brazen, unfeeling guilt ? " 
 
 " Be tranquil, sir ! I will speak to my brother. You 
 shall not hereafter be offended in the same way." 
 
 '^ What will you say to him ? Will you bid him pur- 
 sue a guilty purpose with more prudence and caution? 
 No ; let me at least see their proceedings genuine and un- 
 forced ! Otherwise I shall never be able to form a just con- 
 clusion, and shall be secretly more tormented than ever." 
 
 What Gifford did in the affair I know not ; but the evil 
 grew worse, as I now perceive was always the case, when 
 this pernicious confident undertook for the cure. I must, 
 however, be ingenuous enough to confess, that it would not 
 have been easy for the young people so to have acted, as to 
 have given me tranquillity. If they were familiar and 
 u 4 
 
296 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 sportive, I was distracted. Did they at any time appear 
 more grave and less confidential ? It was still worse. I 
 believed they discerned the state of my mind, and were only 
 playing a more treacherous game. 
 
 About a week after, the question again arose of their 
 going to the Rooms. As soon as I was aware of this, my 
 mind was distracted by a variety of plans. Should I for- 
 bid the scheme? Should I go myself, and watch their 
 behaviour ? How should I act ? I had recourse to my 
 oracle. 
 
 GifFord said, '' By all means give way to their purpose. 
 If you interpose, you will occasion much disturbance, and 
 a discovery of your jealous thoughts. If you cannot dis- 
 miss these thoughts, go yourself, and watch their actions. 
 If, on the other hand, you can adopt the generous con- 
 fidence you so lately professed, this is the favourable mo- 
 ment to resume yourself, and discard such pernicious cares." 
 ' " I will go myself!" 
 
 ^'^ There is, however, a difl5culty in that. How can you 
 be sure that their conduct will not be quite different, when 
 they see that your eye is upon them ? " 
 
 '' Gifford, you are my friend. Undertake this office for 
 me. You may even witness their behaviour, at the same 
 time that they shall not be aware of your presence." 
 
 " I, sir ! I be a spy upon them ! I play the eaves-drop- 
 per, and watch for intelligence from eyes ! I enter into a 
 plot against my brother ! Where did you ever perceive in 
 me the qualifications fitting me for so base a part ? " 
 
 "^ I thank you, Gifford ! You have now told me all. I 
 perceive plain enough that you know a great deal more than 
 you have confessed. It is very well ! I have no friend ! 
 
 I am the veriest wretch on earth ! If you did not 
 
 believe them guilty, would you not eagerly embrace this 
 opportunity for their vindication, which would afford you 
 a prospect, if your opinion corresponded with your profes- 
 sions, of becoming the ambassador of peace to all ? " 
 
 '' By my soul, I believe them innocent ! I never will 
 harbour a thought to the contrary. And, to convince you 
 of my sincerity, I will undertake the office you propose ! " 
 
 The party took place in the manner which was thus pro 
 
FLEETWOOD. 297 
 
 viously settled. I waited with impatience for the breaking 
 up of the assembly. When they came home, I hurried 
 GifFord to my private apartment. This was a thing that 
 happened so frequently, as to have no tendency to excite 
 notice. 
 
 We drew near to the table, and I looked in his face. I 
 never saw dejection so powerfully expressed. His visage 
 was colourless ; his eyes averted with a mournful air ; his 
 hands hung down, as languid and incapable of motion. 
 
 " What have you seen ? What have you observed ? " 
 
 He spoke not. 
 
 " I need not ask you ; I read it all in your countenance." 
 
 " No, nothing. Let us talk of it to-morrow morning. " 
 
 '^ This hour ! this instant ! This is the moment of my 
 fate. Gifford, by your eternal salvation I adjure you do 
 not trifle with me ! " 
 
 He then proceeded to relate a most artful tale. It con- 
 tained most of those particulars which my diseased imagin- 
 ation had before presented to my thoughts. It contained 
 every thing of impropriety that could be supposed to pass 
 before a public assembly. When Kenrick and Mary 
 caught his eye, and perceived for the first time that he was 
 in the Rooms, he owned that their faces were immediately 
 overspread with the deepest crimson. Yet every circum- 
 stance seemed to come from the relater with unwillingness, 
 and to be softened and quahfied by the guardedness of his 
 manner. From time to time he interposed that this was 
 nothing, that it was mere giddiness and want of reflection, 
 that all was meant in innocence. He concluded in a more 
 earnest and impassioned tone : — 
 
 " And now I have discharged the most painful office of 
 my life. Your character, my dear sir, engages all my 
 partialities ; I feel the warmest gratitude to you as my be- 
 nefactor. But never, never will I be put upon such a task 
 again. What had I to do, to turn spy and accuser upon 
 my brother ? For God's sake, sir, let my name never be 
 mentioned in this business ! I shall never forgive myself 
 for this act of undue complaisance." 
 
 By all these expressions he contrived to fix upon my 
 
298 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 mind the serious nature of the discoveries he had made. 
 He proceeded : — 
 
 '^ Forget for ever the conversation of this evening ! It 
 ought never to have existed. You have obliged me to re- 
 peat trifles the most frivolous and contemptible. I have 
 sacrificed every thing to the faithful performance of my 
 task. Yet, in spite of all the pains I have taken to bring 
 these trifles down to their true level, I can see that you 
 misconstrue every thing. Things make so different a 
 figure, when brought regularly together in a narrative, from 
 what they made as they actually passed. If you had your- 
 self been present, you would have thought nothing of them. 
 You are greatly moved. Do nothing rashly ! Give the 
 "whole a dispassionate examination ! If you make any con- 
 clusions to the disadvantage of my brother or Mrs. Fleet- 
 wood, it is your own fault ! Such conclusions have no sup- 
 port from me ! I will stake my soul on their innocence ! " 
 
 Ten times during the narrative of Giffbrd I felt im- 
 pelled to seek the criminals, believing that such impudent 
 neglect of all decorum could lead to nothing less than the 
 immediate perpetration of guilt. Once he withheld me by 
 force, and succeeded in soothing my tumultuous passions. 
 A second time, when I had almost reached the parlour- 
 door, I was called back by my own reflections, and said to 
 myself, " Whatever is done in a case of this sort, must be 
 done with deliberation and solemnity." Afterward, I met 
 Mrs. Fleetwood's woman in the gallery, who appeased my 
 passions by informing me, in answer to my enquiries, that 
 her lady was gone up to her chamber, and that the Ensign 
 was alone in the supper-room. 
 
 I saw Mary no more that night. When I came to the 
 chamber in which we rested, she was already asleep. I 
 went softly and drew back her curtains. There was a 
 sweet tranquilUty in her countenance; her head reposed 
 gracefully upon her snow-white arm. She looked, as one 
 might conceive the archetype of her sex to have looked, 
 before guilt or fear found entrance into the world. 
 
 I threw myself into an easy chair, and sat for some time 
 in horrible musings. My mind vibrated between discord- 
 
FLEETWOOD. ^99 
 
 ant and opposite judgments. Sometimes I said, " No, 
 Mary, thou canst not be guilty ! Guilt cannot incorporate 
 with a demeanour like thine. Was ever any thing so art- 
 less, so simple, so heartfelt, as all thy accents ? The very 
 playfulness of thy temper is the pledge of thy integrity. 
 Can guilt be so sweetly frolic ? Can guilt smile so like 
 an angel ? " 
 
 Again, my ideas took an opposite beat. '^ Yes," said I, 
 " this Js the very character of the world in which I live. 
 Storms, and tempests, and volcanoes are all beautiful or 
 majestic. Destruction smiles on us from every side. Na- 
 ture herself is the great parent-hypocrite, deluding us 
 onward from the cradle to the grave. Her daughters do 
 but inherit the same treacherous smiles, and tempt us to 
 damnation ! " — Furious with these imaginations, I burst 
 away from the bedchamber, and returned to the apartment 
 where I had listened to the conversation of Gifford. 
 
 '^ I will not injure," thought I, '^ the ill-starred daughter 
 of Macneil, unless I had proofs that rose to demonstration. 
 — "VVTiy do I inherit the guardianship of this desolate or- 
 phan ? — Yes, Mary, I feel that my fate is for ever 
 involved with thine ! The sacred rite that joined us at 
 the altar was a decree upon my life. Without thee, with- 
 out thy affection, I must cease to be. — Then I am dead 
 already ! 
 
 '^ One thing, however, I can do. I can separate thee, and 
 this youth, the disturber of my peace. It is madness to 
 keep him here. As long as he remains, his most innocent 
 actions — God grant they indeed be innocent ! — will fill 
 my brain with images of frenzy. Would he were re- 
 moved to the furthest island of the Indian sea! Would 
 he were merged in the caverns of the ocean ! — When he is 
 gone, my respiration will no longer be choked. My judg- 
 ment will be sound and free ; and I shall make a true esti- 
 mate of the past." 
 
300 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 I INVENTED an errand for the Ensign to the estate of 
 Macneil in Westmorland. I had received proposals for 
 the purchase of it ; and_, not being myself inclined to the 
 journey, I requested Kenrick to take the business on him- 
 self. I further stated it as my pleasure, that he should set 
 out by one or two o'clock of this very day. 
 
 I communicated my plan to the Ensign as soon as he 
 Kose. He listened to it with that deference and desire to 
 oblige, which characterised all his actions ; but I could see 
 that he was not delighted with the expedition. 
 
 '' And shall I return to Bath, my dear sir, when I have 
 finished the business in Westmorland ? " 
 
 '' No : after that, I have some employment for you in 
 Merionethshire. By that time your leave of absence will 
 have expired." 
 
 I watched the countenances of Mary and Kenrick at 
 the breakfast-table. I could see that he had informed her 
 of my plan. All parties were unusually blank. 
 
 " And so, my love," said she, after some minutes' ge- 
 neral silence, " we are going to lose my cousin ? " 
 
 " It is necessary, my dear. A business has occurred in 
 which he can be of great use to me." 
 
 '' I am sorry, methinks," resumed Mary, " that it is so 
 sudden. I had counted upon a visit of two months. 
 Edward (that was his name), I hope you will not forget 
 us !" 
 
 " Never will I forget the pleasure I have experienced at 
 Bath, or this dear fire-side, while I have life ! " 
 
 In conversation like this, frankly demonstrating the 
 sincere regard they entertained for each other, passed the 
 time of breakfast. I withdrew early, and desired Kenrick 
 to hold himself in readiness. When I called him in, and 
 had given him the necessary directions, I held out my hand 
 to him (though with an ill grace), because nothing had 
 
FLEETWOOD. 301 
 
 passed between us that entitled me to part with hira in 
 anger. He took it with both his. 
 
 ^' My dear uncle," — thus he delighted to call me: in 
 his playful and familiar moments he gave my wife the ap- 
 pellation of aunt j a : circumstance, trifling in itself, yet 
 strongly indicative of the innocence of his thoughts, — 
 *' My dear uncle, it breaks my heart to leave you thus. 
 I can see I have offended you ; all your motions prove it. 
 What a fooHsh, hair-brained fellow am I ! I wonder when I 
 shall grow discreet and sober like my brother. I have done 
 something heedless and disrespectful, or I have said some- 
 thing that I ought to cut out my tongue for. I am always 
 getting into scrapes^ and displeasing my best friends. If 
 you could see my heart, I am sure you would not be angry 
 with me. That has always acknowledged you for the best 
 of men ; nothing disobedient or unfaithful has ever har- 
 boured there. Dear uncle, forgive me ! Now I am going 
 away, I cannot offend you. I only wish to carry your 
 love with me. I only wish you to say one word, to enable 
 me to forgive myself.'' 
 
 My heart melted over the boy. My bosom swelled, as 
 if it could no longer contain its fraught. I looked at him 
 with eyes of affection. I sobbed out, " God bless you ! 
 God bless you I God bless you ! " — and burst out of the 
 room. 
 
 The moment I was alone, I cried, " This is the tri- 
 umph of innocence ! No ; it is impossible such expres- 
 sions, such accents, could be forced from a guilty bosom !" 
 — I was beside myself with joy. — " Happy, happy Fleet- 
 wood!" said I: *^ I will make ample amends to both 
 these injured angels, for my misconstruction!" — I 
 wished to revoke the orders I had given for the journey of 
 the Ensign. But no ; part of the amends I owed, was to 
 bury for ever so dishonourable a suspicion in my own 
 breast. I returned to Kenrick. I poured out to him the 
 torrent of my feelings. 
 
 '' Go, my sweet lad," said I, ^' object of my dearest 
 love ! Wherever you are, my heart goes with you. You 
 are the honestest fellow that ever wore the human form. 
 There is no resisting the eloquence of your emotions. 
 
302 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 Depend upon it^ from me^ you never shall experience any 
 thing but kindness ! " 
 
 " Thank you, thank you, uncle ! You have taken a 
 thousand weight from my breast. — But, uncle, you were 
 angry with me?" 
 
 " Do not talk of it ! It is all a mistake. God bless 
 you ! Farewell ! " — We parted. 
 
 Kenrick took a most affectionate leave of his brother. 
 " This is the first time," said he, " we have ever been toge- 
 ther, since I was quite a child. Do not think, however, I 
 have forgotten your kindness to me then ! You have borne 
 me in your arms a thousand times ! You brought me apples 
 and dainties ; and defended me against playmates who 
 wished to injure me. But now, GifFord, we know each 
 other. I do not now like you, because you have procured me 
 pleasure, but because I read your brotherly heart. 1 shall 
 never, I am afraid, be so sagacious and clear-sighted as you 
 are ; but 1 shall always remember how anxious you have 
 been to employ those talents for my benefit. Let us now 
 exchange the engagements of an everlasting friendship ! I 
 can never be of the use to you, that you always have been, 
 and ever will be, to me. Never mind that ! My heart 
 will beat as warmly to you, as heart of brother ever did ; 
 and I know your good-nature will accept that as frankly, 
 as if it brought the Indies along with it. My interests 
 will be safe in your protection ; and you will never allow 
 me to lose ground in the affections of my kind uncle in 
 absence." 
 
 Gifford was not behind his brother in protestations of 
 attachment ; and solemnly prayed that he might so prosper 
 in the journey of life, as he should prove, on every mo- 
 mentous occasion the vindicator and advocate of his friend. 
 Tears embellished the instant of their separation. 
 
 Kenrick had but one spare hour. That hour Mary and 
 he spent in a sociable walk. I felt no displeasure that 
 they did so. No ; I had sworn that suspicion should 
 never again pollute my bosom. I, however, thought it 
 somewhat remarkable; and with an unspotted curiosity 
 determined to watch their steps. They went toward the 
 Abbey churchyard. There a plain slab was affixed against 
 
FLEETWOOD. 503 
 
 the wall, to mark the place where the ashes of the elder 
 Kenrick reposed. They approached it together. Satisfied 
 as I was, that there could be nothing very private in such 
 a conference, I made a small circuit, and joined them as 
 if by accident. 
 
 " Uncle," said Kenrick, " I am glad you are come. 
 Many a pilgrimage have I made to this unornamented spot; 
 and my aunt insisted that, before I left Bath, I should lead 
 her to my father's grave. Look at that stone ! The name 
 and surname inscribed there, and the register of birth and 
 death, are to me the most eloquent epicedium that ever was 
 penned. I do not know whether I at all remember my 
 father ; the images I have of him are mixed up with the 
 descriptions I have heard from his kindred; I was only 
 three years old when he died. Nobody speaks of him in 
 Montgomeryshire without enthusiasm ; the moment they 
 mention his name, the guardian genius of the departed 
 seems to descend upon them, and to utter the words of 
 saintlike praise by their humble organs. They never speak 
 of him, but their eyes emit sparkles of fire. Never man^ 
 according to them, was so consummate in a knowledge and 
 skill, almost supernatural. His flesh was macerated, and 
 his complexion blanched, with indefatigable research ; and 
 he never came forth from his retreat, but to dispense health 
 and scatter benefits all around him. But what they speak of 
 with most admiration, is his temper, so innocent, so sweet, 
 so affectionate ; his mild eye, beaming with goodness to the 
 whole world. The tongue of my father never held ac- 
 quaintance with a falsehood; duplicity and artifice never 
 coloured an action of his life. You cannot think, aunt, you 
 cannot think, uncle, what good it does me to remember 
 my father ! I never hear the honest people talk about 
 him, but I feel his blood stirring in my veins. Yes ; I 
 may do a thousand imprudent and foolish deeds; but 
 the son of Kenrick can never commit an act of lying or 
 treachery." 
 
 The honest eulogium of the poor Ensign drew tears from 
 both his auditors. I was astonished at myself that I could 
 have distrusted so gallant and single-minded a youth. I 
 resolved that this should be a lesson to me, how I ever again 
 
304 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 admitted suspicion into my bosom. Yet there lay^ in appa- 
 rent repose, the embers of jealousy, the communications of 
 ray unknown informer, and the remarks of GifFord upon 
 what he had seen at the Rooms ; liable to be called up into 
 a blaze, whenever new fuel should be brought to the spark 
 within me. The whole family attended Kenrick as he 
 mounted his horse; in going through the passage, he 
 pressed the hand of Mary to his lips, and said, " Remem- 
 ber ! " He was out of sight in a moment. 
 
 The temper by which I was actuated, and which made 
 me all my life no less eager and exemplary to repair wrong, 
 than I was sometimes rash to commit it, directed me on 
 this occasion. I could not bear to think that I had mis- 
 construed the guileless and generous heart of my military 
 cousin. I could not sleep in my bed, till I had atoned to 
 the extent of my power for the injury I had done him. I 
 procured for him an exchange of his colours for a lieu- 
 tenancy, and added to it the lucrative appointment of pay- 
 master to his regiment. I enclosed this double commission 
 in the following letter : — 
 
 " Dear Edward, 
 " You thought I parted from you in anger. You must 
 not think so. Perhaps you are too flighty and full of 
 spirits for such a grave fellow as I am. But, if I ever felt 
 that, it was my infirmity, and not yours, that I accused of 
 unreasonableness. I know your heart, and I would trust 
 my life and all that is dear to me, to its integrity. Go on 
 as you have done : you cannot alter, but for the worse. 
 Your light and lively carriage adorns the rectitude of your 
 sentiments, often makes you amusing, and never leads you 
 to any thing vicious. I enclose you a little Christmas re- 
 membrance. Be assured of the unalterable affection of 
 your faithful friend, 
 
 " Casimir Fleetwood." 
 
 To this letter I received an answer, full of gratitude and 
 the ingenuous phrases of regard. 
 
 The same turn of thought which rendered me thus 
 friendly to Kenrick, inspired me with a more than usual 
 
FLEETWOOD. 305 
 
 degree of kindness to my wife. Though she was unac- 
 quainted with the wrong I had done her^ it did not the less 
 haunt my remembrance: and, as is perhaps always the 
 case with a generous spirit, the innocent person whom I 
 had injuriously treated, appeared more lovely, and worthy 
 of esteem in my eyes, than ever. The departure of Ken- 
 rick gave a little more sedateness to our domestic economy. 
 Mary seemed to have got the better, both of the alarming 
 depression she had suffered at the equinox, and the hardly 
 less alarming levity which had succeeded. She appeared to 
 me scarcely to have a fault. We had never been so happy. 
 I was all solicitude for the gratification of her desires and 
 inclinations. I anticipated her wishes ; I attended her, 
 wherever she went. But, what was most pleasing to her, I 
 sympathised in all her feelings, and was cheerful or serious, 
 as her countenance gave me the signal to be one or the 
 other. While I procured the advancement of Kenrick, I 
 was also employed in negotiating an appointment for 
 GifFord. At no time i)f my life had I been so perfectly in 
 good humour with my own thoughts. I could at least con- 
 gratulate myself on being instrumental to the advantage 
 and happiness of every member of my family. I said, 
 '^ Macneil, you were in the right ; you are no less infallible 
 than the oracles of antiquity were fabled to be ; your ad- 
 vices deserve to be written in letters of gold, and placed on 
 the front of the Pantheon of the human race ! " 
 
 GifFord congratulated me upon the satisfaction I had 
 obtained to all my doubts. He reminded me, how con- 
 stantly he had been on the side which I had now happily 
 embraced; how, under every unfavourable appearance, he 
 had pledged himself for the innocence of both the suspected 
 parties. 
 
 In reality, he witnessed the triumph of truth on this oc- 
 casion, with the sentiments of a demon. Deep as he 
 thought himself in plotting, and consummate in the arts of 
 hypocrisy, he saw all his webs swept away in a moment, 
 merely through the frank and ingenuous carriage of his 
 destined prey. The innuendoes and subordination of a 
 whole month were destroyed. His own practices were 
 turned against him. Kenrick stood higher in my favour 
 
306 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 than ever ; my wife was restored to my confidence ; and, 
 for aught that appeared, my unborn heir might make his 
 entrance into the world, without having the circumstances 
 of his birth tarnished with the blasts of suspicion and 
 calumny. 
 
 Shortly after the time when the honest Ensign took his 
 leave of us, I hired for myself a convenient residence near 
 the town of Newbury in Berkshire. I have already men- 
 tioned that I had a particular antipathy to the city of Bath. 
 I thought myself fortunate, in being able to impute the un- 
 easiness and ill-humour I had sometimes betrayed while I 
 suffered under the practices of GifFord, to this antipathy. 
 Mary was now become the pattern of reason and accommo- 
 dation; our harmony was unmingled and entire; she cheer- 
 fully concurred in, and even promoted, my removal, though 
 it was yet the depth of winter; being desirous, as she said, 
 to make some compensation for the repeated causes of un- 
 easiness she had administered to me. One other circum- 
 stance made this change of scene not ungratifying to her. 
 Mr. Scarborough, the father of a young lady for whom my 
 wife had conceived a strong aflfection at Bath, had a seat 
 within two short miles of the house I had fixed upon ; and 
 he, about this time, summoned his daughter to quit Bath, 
 and return home. Mr. Scarborough himself was disliked 
 by his neighbours, and many calumnious stories were pro- 
 pagated to his disadvantage ; but his daughter was every 
 where regarded with affection. 
 
 Poets have been most ambitious to describe the beauties 
 of nature, as they are seen in the freshness of spring or the 
 luxuriance of autumn. I know not whether it was any 
 depravity of taste in me, that I viewed her with almost 
 equal pleasure in the desolation of winter. Strange sens- 
 ations of grandeur are always produced in my heart, when 
 I behold the leafless trees, and hear the blustering of the 
 north wind. At times when the whole world, both land 
 and water, is bound up in iron, and every branch and 
 shoot are fringed with the congealed moisture which the 
 frost expels from them, I am filled with admiration at the 
 extraordinary scene, so unlike that universal pregnancy and 
 growth which form our most familiar idea of the globe we 
 
FLEETWOOD. SO? 
 
 inhabit. What can be more magnificent than a snow- 
 stormj when ten thousand flakes are whirled in circling 
 eddies, and drifts are formed, that might almost bury an 
 army in their capacious bosom ? The sad-moving cattle, 
 which just serve to spot the unbounded scene, make me 
 feel that the world is not yet robbed of all living inhabitants, 
 and remind me that there is still a Power which cares for 
 the creatures it has made. When the whole heavens are 
 blackened with congregated clouds, I have the sublime 
 sensations of a friendless and deserted adventurer cast alone 
 upon an unknown shore, without the terrible anticipations 
 which fill his heart with anguish : and if at any time, in 
 the midst of this ungenial season, the sun bursts forth with 
 tenfold glory, and seems to diffuse a more resplendent 
 beam than autumn ever knew, I feel that the human species 
 has one friend left — a friend that may gladden the heart, 
 and animate the countenance, of all sadness but despair. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ^^u^p 
 
 \^ 
 
 We had not been long in Berkshire, before Gifford )set his 
 machinations fresh at work. Ignorant as I was of my true 
 interest, of who loved and who hated me, I could not 
 easily command the resolution to part with his society. I 
 carried on certain negotiations for obtaining him an advan- 
 tageous situation in the navy. In this pursuit repeated 
 difficulties started up, that procrastinated our success. To 
 say the truth, GifFord himself did not appear anxious about 
 tlie prosperity of my application. He had projects, in the 
 event of which his guileful heart was more interested, that 
 required his presence at home. 
 
 It was on the day preceding the festival of Christmas, 
 that I happened to pass through my wife's dressing-room, 
 about half an hour after she had set out in the carriage upon 
 a morning visit to the friend and neighbour I have men- 
 tioned. By seeming accident, the corner of a letter caught 
 my eye, which jetted out from one of the toilet-boxes that 
 x2 
 
308 PliEETWOOD. 
 
 formed a portion of the furniture of this apartment. The 
 first undesigning glance I caught of it, suggested to me the 
 idea. It is the hand writing of Kenrick. I could not re- 
 frain from examining the superscription. Beyond a douht 
 it was the pen of the Ensign that had written it. - It was 
 directed to my wife. I started at the circumstance. 
 
 '' This is not well," cried I. '' 1 am satisfied of the in- 
 nocence of your sentiments: yet why correspond? why carry 
 on a clandestine correspondence, of which I have never re- 
 ceived the least intimation } 
 
 Most assuredly this discovery would not have made the 
 smallest unfavourable impression upon me but for the in- 
 cidents and insinuations which had been thrust on my 
 notice at Bath. What if my wife corresponded with my 
 kinsman ? What harm was there in that ? What if these 
 letters had never been communicated to me ? Did I de- 
 mand that Mary should give me an account of all her steps? 
 There is no true generosity in such a demand. There can 
 be no genuine love, love that derives its nurture from the 
 plenteous storehouse of esteem, where a large reliance is not 
 placed on the discretion of the person loved. A thousand 
 actions, not modelled by the laws of hoary-headed vigilance, 
 here are graceful, " Where virtue is, these are most vir- 
 tuous." 
 
 How was I to conduct myself ? Was I to pass on, and 
 not deign to notice what I saw ? Was I to say, I will 
 give an attentive heed to events as they rise, but I never will 
 be indebted for knowledge, either of a gratifying or dis- 
 tressing nature, to any indirect proceeding ? This mode 
 of acting was most agreeable to what was moral and de- 
 corous ; but I had not fortitude enough for this. 
 
 Should I determine to gratify my curiosity by the most 
 generous means ? Should 1 avow to Mary the fact, that 
 I had met with the superscription of the letter by accident, 
 and request her to acquaint me with its contents, and the 
 circumstances that had given birth to it ? Neither was 
 my fortitude equal to this. By applying to Mary in per- 
 son, I put myself in the power of the offender. I should 
 be exciting, almost compelling her, if guilty, to invent a 
 plausible story, by which my understanding might be duped. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 30Q 
 
 All these views of the subject passed through my mind 
 with the utmost perturbation, and I snatched up the letter, 
 resolved not to defer a moment longer the satisfaction of 
 my doubts. I tore it open. I glanced my eyes over the 
 contents. The first words that presented themselves were 
 those of love, " impatience of absence," and amorous com- 
 plaints that the writer's " ardour had not obtained a like 
 return." The paper dropped from my hand. 
 
 " It is all over," I said ; ^' and I am a wretch for ever!" 
 
 This was indeed a thunderstroke to me. The reports 
 of what passed at the rooms at Bath depended for their 
 meaning upon the fidelity of the reporter, and at worst 
 were ambiguous, admitting of a variety of interpretations. 
 Here was the hand-writing of one of the parties, witnessing 
 to the offences of both. 
 
 Was it the hand- writing of Kenrick ? It would be 
 idiotism to doubt it ! The conviction that it was, did not 
 rest upon my infirmity of temper. I had perceived it at 
 once, when I was far from being aware of the guilty con- 
 tents of the writing within. 
 
 " No, no ; never again will I confide in the integrity of a 
 human creature ! Kenrick, did your countenance and tones 
 cure me of all my doubts ? That countenance was the 
 steadiness of a villain ; those tones were the glossiness of a 
 hypocrite. How unheard-of a wretch ! I threw myself 
 into his arms ; that did not move him. I wrote him a 
 letter burning with words of affection ; I told him I would 
 trust my life in his hands. He returned me an answer, 
 echoing and mimicking back to me the emotions of my 
 heart. That did not disturb him ; he did not suspend for 
 a moment his traitor machinations. He put the certificate 
 containing my liberal benefactions into his writing box ; he 
 took out at the same instant the sheet of paper which he 
 has scrabbled over with stimulants of lust and adultery to 
 my wife ! 
 
 I took it up to examine it more minutely. *^ Such a pa- 
 per," said I, '' may be conclusive against the writer ; does 
 it with the same certainty involve the condemnation of the 
 receiver ? Kenrick, thou art a villain ! Thou hast sub- 
 scribed thyself such ! Half my confidence in the human 
 X 3 
 
SIO FLEETWOOD. 
 
 species is subverted for ever. But what mean thy com- 
 plaints ? What means the expression of an ' ardour that 
 is not returned with a correspondent ardour?'" 
 
 ^' Miserable wretch ! what 'straws are these at which I 
 catch to preserve myself from despair ! The natural sense 
 of the phrase is, ' You love me little ; you burn for me with 
 a fervour not altogether equal to that which pervades my 
 bosom.' Would he have written of love, would he have 
 avowed a lover's impatience of absence, to one who had 
 never heard and acquiesced in a similar language from his 
 lips ? Where is the profligate so hardened, that would 
 dare to insult a matron's purity with such an address ? 
 And what did she, when she received the villanous billet ? 
 Did she communicate to me the insult which had been put 
 upon her, and expose the natural viper in the manner he 
 deserved } Did she at least send back the envenomed 
 scrowl to him from whom it came, and by her noble indig- 
 nation convince him how much she disdained his criminal 
 suggestions ? No, no ; none of these. She receives it in 
 all tranquillity, as a matter of course, as a matter well cor- 
 responding with the temper of her mind, and at which she 
 conceives neither surprise nor resentment. She thrusts it 
 carelessly into an open casket, so little does her heart regard 
 it as the horrible thing which it is. 
 
 " Gracious God, to what a height of impudence and re- 
 morseless crime must this woman have attained ! It is the 
 concluding stage of guilt, that takes no precautions against 
 discovery. She who offends for the first time against the 
 laws of chastity and God, with how confused and fearful 
 a mind does she do it ! How does she dread the encounter 
 of every eye ! In what tenfold misery does she enve- 
 lope this deed of darkness ! And Mary scatters about her 
 at random, and without advertence, the evidences of her 
 guilt ! " 
 
 In this terrible state of my thoughts, I sought relief 
 in the conversation of Gifford. I put into his hands the 
 letter I had found. I fixed my eyes upon his countenance 
 as he read it. He betrayed successive tokens of the deep- 
 est consternation. He folded it up, with a slow and de- 
 jected motion. " It is all over!" said he. 
 
FLEETWOOD. Sll 
 
 " She shall not sleep another night under my roof ! " 
 I cried, with a voice frantic with rage and despair. 
 
 GifFord started. " What do you mean ?" 
 
 '' Mean," said I. " Do you think I will hear the pre- 
 sence of an adulteress } Do you think I will not make them 
 both an example, for terror to all future offenders } " 
 
 " Take care, sir, take care ! This is evidence only against 
 one of the parties." 
 
 " One ! Did she not receive it } Did she not receive it 
 in silence ? Has she not kept it in her possession, instead 
 of returning it to the accursed writer?" 
 
 " It is too true ! I can no longer attempt to vindicate 
 either. How much has your worthy and noble nature 
 been abused ? Wretched brother ! No, no longer my 
 brother ! — Yet still, sir, this is not evidence, either for a 
 court of justice, or for an unmoved and cold-blooded by- 
 stander. If you proceed against Mrs. Fleetwood on no 
 stronger grounds, the world will condemn you." 
 
 " What care I for the world ? " 
 
 *^ Dear sir, in so solemn a transaction, let me entreat you 
 to go on the surest proofs. You may wish you had done 
 so, when it is too late. I would have evidences, that none 
 could refute or question, that should shut up the mouths 
 of the transgressors themselves, that should entitle you, if 
 you think proper, to strip her of the name she has dis- 
 honoured, by due process of law. A letter ! a mere love- 
 letter, written at random, that may have been a pure expe- 
 riment, that may be pretended to have been designed for 
 another, that was never answered, so far as we can tell, 
 that was never acted upon ! Fie, sir, fie ! These are not 
 things to annihilate the peace of families, and to dissolve 
 the most sacred ties religion itself can frame ! " 
 
 " What would you have me do ? " 
 
 " Return the letter to the very place in which you found 
 it." 
 
 '^ Well!" 
 
 ^^ Hold yourself upon the alert ! A short time will, no 
 doubt, produce further proofs." 
 
 '^ A short time ! Perhaps not ! Time may weaken, in- 
 stead of corroborate, the proof in my hand. And what 
 X 4 
 
312 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 sBall I do with this short time ? Unhappily, alas ! Mary 
 and 1 have been for some weeks on better and more affec- 
 tionate terms than ever. Barbarous, remorseless crocodile ! 
 — Shall I, for this short time, personate the fond" lover, 
 tlie confident, secure, and transported husband ? Yes ! and, 
 if no new proofs arise, I suppose I am to set all my fears 
 at rest, and confess that this is exemplarily virtuous ! " 
 
 " This letter is, probably, not the only one that has 
 passed between them. There may be others in her posses- 
 sion, which speak of the sort of answers she has returned 
 to her correspondent." 
 
 " That shall be known ! I will break open, and search 
 every repository she has !" 
 
 " And suppose you find nothing ? May there not be a 
 quieter and less violent way of proceeding?" 
 
 '' I will steal her keys from her to-night, as she sleeps." 
 
 Thus we concerted every thing, with a view to the 
 completely confounding the guilty parties. I resolved not 
 to see Mary again, till I completed the search I designed. 
 I took horse, and rode over into Hampshire, leaving word 
 at home, that I should not return till late. This was un- 
 usual ; the days were short ; Mary was alarmed. She and 
 Gifford dined together. The remarks of this conspirator 
 did not tend to calm her spirits. He told her I had gone 
 out, apparently in much disturbance. She enquired of the 
 servants : no letter or message had been brought me, to 
 account for this. All this struck her as of evil augury. 
 She recollected the impatience and unreasonableness of my 
 temper, and was appalled. Gifford artfully turned the con- 
 versation upon the dark imaginations of jealous husbands, 
 and the sufferings of the innocent victims of their suspicion. 
 He left her early, and left her in tears. 
 
 Gifford took his leave of my wife, under pretence of re- 
 tiring to his chamber to look over some accounts which I 
 had desired him to inspect ; but, in reality, to meet me 
 according to appointment, at a small inn in the neighbour- 
 hood. I had passed a joyless and oppressive day. Winter 
 no longer conveyed to me, as it did on my first arrival in 
 Berkshire, sensations of delight. The weather was flag- 
 ging, sombrous, and melancholy. It mutually gave colour 
 
FLEETWOOD. 313 
 
 to, and received it from, what passed within me. I dis- 
 missed my servant, after a few miles' riding/and bade him 
 return home. I could not bear to be subjected to the 
 observation of a human creature. I did not flatter myself 
 with the hope that my wife was innocent. I have, before 
 this, called myself a misanthrope; but I never felt the 
 bitterness of misanthropy invade, and lord it triumphant 
 over my breast, till now. I saw Kenrick, as he stood at 
 the tomb of his father, and in his parting embrace ; I re- 
 collected his letter of thanks on his late promotion, the 
 devotedness of heart that breathed in every line of it. No ; 
 I defy the whole world to draw a picture of hypocrisy, to 
 be compared with that which my recent discovery had 
 brought home to my mind ! 
 
 When 1 thought of my wife, the case was still worse. 
 Till this hour, I never knew how much I had loved her. 
 The passion 1 had felt for the ladies of quality who had 
 been my mistresses in France, young as I then was, and 
 full of the ardour and enthusiasm of beginning life, was 
 nothing. I had entertained for her so perfect an esteem ! 
 My passion, beginning in the instinct of the sexes, had 
 been consecrated by sentiments so generous, so elevated, so 
 spiritual ! We had lived together. He that has never ex- 
 perienced, can form no idea of the effects of sitting together 
 continually at the same hearth on terms of entire equality 
 and cordiality. It had made the partner of my roof flesh 
 of my flesh, and bone of my bone. Recent as our union 
 had been, I could no more form a distinct idea of living 
 without her, than without any of those vital parts, which 
 were born with me, and which together made me man. 
 The very infirmities of her delicate frame had rendered 
 her dearer to me ; I was her shelter, her bed-side watch, 
 the physician of her soul. I wanted such an object to en- 
 gage my care ; she stood in need of such a guardian. 
 
 My last Parisian mistress had driven me out among the 
 wilds of Mount Jura, more a maniac than a man. What 
 was I now ? I had pistols with me ! As I strayed without 
 a path on one of the heaths of Hampshire, I grasped them 
 in my hand. I applied one of them to my head. I dashed 
 it upon the ground. I whirled the other with the whole 
 
314 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 force of ray arm to a distance from me. " Vengeance ' ' 
 vengeance ! " I cried. " I will not die like a dog; I will 
 vengeance!" I dismounted from my horse ; tBe bridle 
 dropped from my hand. The beast stood pensive and 
 faithful beside me. I threw myself on the ground. I 
 wallowed and roared aloud, as I measured my length on 
 the earth. Let my fellow-being look upon me in this ab- 
 ject condition, and despise me ! He that despises me is 
 no man ! 
 
 ''^How ridiculous are all other stories of adultery compared 
 to mine ! The adulterer is no Kenrick ! The accursed 
 minion is not the surviving daughter of Macneil ! They 
 are not two persons, selected out of all countries and ages 
 of the earth, to laugh at future professions of sincerity, to 
 make it impossible that the word Honesty should ever again 
 be pronounced among the children of men. One sees how 
 they came together. One sees their despicable politics and 
 manoeuvres, with what shallow gestures they pretended to 
 be sober, with what flimsy outsides they veiled their pol- 
 lution. One of the parties is practised in guilt ; the other 
 is of so idiot and imbecile a character, as to seem to have 
 waited only for the occurrence of temptation. They are 
 not, like my betrayers, in the full bloom of innocence, with 
 every virtuous sentiment, and every just principle beaming 
 from their eyes. If ever angels fell from the majestic pu- 
 rity of heaven, this at least was the first time that such a 
 scene had been realised on earth." 
 
 
 A^ CHAPTER XII. 
 
 RETURNED toward my own house in a delightful mood 
 for the investigation of matron innocence. I met GifFord. 
 He told me how my wife had conducted herself; that, on 
 the mere intelligence of my absence, she had been greatly 
 alarmed, that she had passed the evening in tears, and that, 
 fatigued with the anxiety of her thoughts, she had retired 
 early to bed. 
 
*LEKTWOOD. 31 b 
 
 I grasped his hand. — "I cannot bear her tears." 
 
 " Are they not the witnesses of her guilt ? Who toLd 
 her you suspected her ? What is it that has thus whis- 
 pered her to anticipate accusation ? " 
 
 '' Gifford, you are my friend ! You do not attempt to 
 excuse her. I may pity her ; my friend cannot." 
 
 We entered the house with cautious and wary steps. 
 We stole along softly to my apartment. I felt that we trod 
 the galleries carefully, like conspirators going to commit 
 murder. 
 
 We had come home late. I said, '^ I can have patience 
 no longer. No doubt, Mrs. Fleetwood is asleep. Sit you 
 here, while I go and fetch the keys, and make the search 
 I have resolved on." 
 
 I entered the bed-chamber. I hastily drew back one of 
 the curtains. She was in a sweet sleep ; I saw no mark of 
 the grief and uneasiness she had endured. There she lay, 
 all unsuspecting of the mischief that impended over her ! 
 In my agitation I threw down a candlestick. She moved. 
 She murmured something indistinctly with her lips. I 
 stooped down that I might catch the words. " Fleetwood, 
 my love ! " she said. 
 
 " Good God ! is her hypocrisy perfect even while she 
 sleeps ? She thinks I hear her ! — No, it is impossible ! 
 For one moment, perhaps for the last moment so long as 
 we both shall live, I will believe her innocent ! " 
 
 I stole a balmy kiss from the ripest lips that nature ever 
 formed. She stretched out her arms toward me. I kissed 
 her again. I felt one flash of the joys of heaven, on the 
 verge of the abyss. I drank in madness as I stood. 
 
 I drew back precipitately ; I found the keys, and hast- 
 ened to my wife's dressing-room. 
 
 A variety of drawers and boxes engaged my attention. I 
 found no letter from Kenrick, no fresh evidence of their 
 familiarity, in any one of them. At first, this circumstance, 
 which ought to have given me pleasure, was felt by me hke 
 a calamity. I said, " They are eluding my search ; their 
 wary guilt will come off with impunity ! "■ By degrees 
 my ideas took another turn. I forgot the letter which had 
 first inflamed me. I said, " Here is nothing ! There is no 
 
31 6 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 guilt ! If there were, they must have written. If there 
 
 were^ letters, they could not escape me. 1 turned to 
 
 the toilet ; I looked at the toilet-box, which had contained 
 the first evidence of their perfidy, and to which, by the ad- 
 vice of Gifford, I had carefully restored it ; the letter was 
 no longer there ! 
 
 Nothing remained to be examinedj but a small casket, in 
 which Mary kept her most valuable trinkets. I no sooner 
 opened this, than the first thing which met my eye was the 
 miniature of Kenrick. I looked steadfastly at it: I burst 
 into an idiot laugh. I examined it again. " What lovely 
 
 features ; what an air of integrity ! " said I. " No, it 
 
 is not so ! Do not you see those lines of dissimulation and 
 craft } Now I consider it more attentively, I mark the 
 devil peeping out from behind the beauteous mask, and 
 laughing in my face !" 
 
 I carried the picture to Giffbrd. I threw it upon the 
 table before him, and then rushed to a sofa on the further 
 side of the room. I buried my face in darkness. 
 
 '' Ha ! ha ! " said GifFord. " Where did you find this } " 
 
 I answered him with a groan. 
 
 *^ Where are the letters } " 
 
 " Th^e are no letters." 
 
 " I am sorry for that ! — What will you do with the 
 picture } " 
 
 I was silent. 
 
 '' Strike it " said Gifford. 
 
 " Strike it ! What do you mean } " 
 
 '- Break the glass ! " 
 
 '^ What then?" 
 
 " Break the glass, and return it to the place in which 
 you found it ! This will be a means to ascertain the guilt 
 or innocence of the possessor. If she is innocent, she will 
 enquire how it came by this accident ; she will express her 
 anger against the carelessness of her maid. If she is guilty, 
 and retains this portrait to foster her guilt, she will not 
 utter a word." 
 
 ^'^ This picture," pursued my adviser, " is a circumstance 
 that may well prove distressing to your mind. But it 
 does not carry you forward in the design in which you 
 
FLEETWOOD. 317 
 
 were engaged. It is no evidence. A married woman 
 may possess the portrait of her young kinsman ; may^ even 
 in such a place as Bath, have caused it to be painted, un- 
 known to her husband, in perfect innocence." 
 
 " What shall I do ? Advise me to no delay ! Do not 
 bid me wait the progress of events ! I cannot bear it." 
 
 '^ Dispose of the picture as I told you. If Mrs. Fleet- 
 wood says not a word on the subject, that will be some- 
 thing. But, if you are impatient to bring the affair to an 
 
 immediate conclusion, I could advise a measure 1 do 
 
 not like the office. What have I to do, to destroy Mrs. 
 Fleetwood and my brother ? " 
 
 ^' GifFord, when you see me in this terrible situation, if 
 you refuse me your aid, you are not my friend ! " 
 
 " I am conquered ! Let Kenrick be invited here 
 
 into Berkshire. When I was a schoolboy, I had a parti- 
 cular facility in the imitation of hands. I am sure I could 
 imitate Mrs. Fleetwood's with the utmost nicety. If you 
 approve of it, I will write a letter, in her name, to my 
 brother. It shall speak, unequivocally, the language of a 
 mistress to a favoured lover ; it shall entreat him, for pri- 
 vate reasons, to come down incognito into Berkshire, and 
 grant her an interview. If he comes, this will be to you 
 the most incontestible evidence of their mutual crime ; and 
 the interview, of the very day and hour of which you will 
 be apprised, and can provide yourself witnesses of it ac- 
 cordingly, will, probably, produce something that wiU at 
 once place the criminals under the lash of the law." 
 
 I consented to this perfidious measure. My mind was 
 in a state of too violent ferment, to perceive all the marks 
 of a degraded axul dan^rous character, which this proposal 
 Vjetrayed. 
 
 Giffi^rd artfully led to another pait of the subject 
 
 " Mary was with child. From what time iid she date the 
 commencement of her pregnancy }" 
 
 ^' From October." 
 
 " Full three months after your marriage ! It was before 
 you removed to Bath ? " 
 
 '' It was." 
 
 " I do not know whether you recollect, — I ..m not 
 
 \ 
 
318 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 sure, indeed, that you observed, — when Mrs. Fleetwood 
 and Kenrick met at Bath, that they did not meet like per- 
 sons who saw each other for the first time ? " 
 
 " I did observe it. I saw it with surprise, and, to con- 
 fess the truth, not without perturbation." 
 
 " Well ! Did they ever account to you for this ? *' 
 
 " My wife told me she had seen him in Merionethshire. 
 She reminded me of the person, whom she had spoken of 
 as rescuing her from the waves, when she laboured under 
 tliat terrible ahenation of mind at the period of the equinox." 
 
 " From that period their intercourse commenced. It 
 was kept a secret from you, till you invited Kenrick to come 
 and reside under your roof. Perhaps, indeed, you were 
 never told how frequently they met." 
 
 Thus did this damnable calumniator lead me on, with 
 half words, with broken sentences, and " ambiguous 
 givings-out," to the most horrible conclusions. All the 
 while, he interspersed his innuendoes with the remark, that 
 this was nothing, that these were particulars which had no 
 necessary connection, and adjured me to draw no infer- 
 ences which might disturb my future peace, or urge me to 
 any unjust proceeding. These cautions of GifFord per- 
 suaded me, that he was a conscientious and scrupulous 
 observer, that I might trust all my interests to his hands, 
 and that he " saw, and knew more, much more, than he 
 unfolded." 
 
 Only this aggravation could have been added to my 
 calamity. With what feelings had I gazed on my wife in 
 a state of pregnancy ? I had anticipated a successor to the 
 Macneils and the Fleetwoods, with emotions of ecstasy. If 
 I looked upon my individual existeuiip •w\ih Jt fj:]e compla- 
 cency, and regarded myself «!cs a degenerate shoot, I was 
 determined that my cMd should not be so. He should be 
 a genuine reprpjentatiye of the benefactors of the citizen of 
 Uri. The lowest wretch that lives, the offender who is 
 just going CO expiate his crime at the gallows, yet loves his 
 offspring, and rejoices that he shall thus survive himself 
 in an innocent infant. To be cheated here was the cruel- 
 est of a^ impostures. To strain to one's bosom the thing 
 that wf hold as our own flesh and blood, while that thing 
 
FLEETWOOD. 319 
 
 is, in reality, the impure brood of unhallowed lust, the en- 
 during monument of the worst of crimes ! Already I had 
 begun to conceive that, if Mary proved unworthy, and 
 were cast out, I might find some small refuge from despair 
 in this child, who, in spite of her degeneracy, I judged was 
 truly mine. This, I believed, would be an unadulterate 
 Macneil, the substance in which the innocent Mary, the 
 wife I had so fervently loved, would survive her fall. 
 That last consolation Gifford tore from me. I could never 
 again return to serenity and fearless confidence. I, who 
 had been so wretchedly deceived in one point nearest my 
 heart, had a right to believe all the rest : it was the proper 
 and legitimate second part to the imposition that had been 
 acted. 
 
 AU was done as GifFord had projected. The picture, 
 with its glass broken, was restored to Mary's casket. The 
 letter, to invite Kenrick to a secret interview, was written. 
 I never saw so exquisite a forgery. You might have taken 
 a letter of Mary's, and placed it by the side of the coun- 
 terfeit, without discovering a single character that, by the 
 imperfectness of imitation, could have led to a suspicion. 
 This letter was never sent. 
 
 Our consultations and proceedings took up the greater 
 part of the night. Toward morning I threw myself upon 
 my bed. To sleep I had not the smallest inclination. 
 My eyelids were weighed down with the anguish of my 
 tortured heart ; but they shut out, instead of receiving 
 within their folds, the balm of repose. Every articulation 
 of my frame seemed to beat with a separate pulse ; I was in 
 a high fever. I tossed and turned from side to side ; my 
 eagerness to make an end of the scene which engaged my 
 thoughts was inexpressible. 
 
 Mary rose with the dawn of the morning. She was in- 
 vigorated with repose ; she had an animation and alacrity, 
 the symbols of conscious innocence. She approached my 
 bed; in the gentlest and sweetest voice that ever came 
 from a human organ, she pronounced my name. I feigned 
 sleep. She stole out of the room, and shut the door softly 
 after her. 
 
 No sooner was she gone, than I started from my bed. 
 
320 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 I paced the room with strides of rage and despair. The 
 breakfast-parlour, to which my wife had bent her steps, 
 was in a distant part of the house. 
 
 In about an hour Mary came to me again. I could no 
 longer persuade myself to play the farce of sleep. 1 looked 
 at her with eyes that glared. She spoke in the most sooth- 
 ing and affectionate accents. She enquired for my health, 
 whither I had gone yester-evening, and at what hour I had 
 returned. She tried by smiles and little sallies of cheerful- 
 ness to excite me. I muttered between my teeth, '' Hypo- 
 crite ! monster ! devil ! woman ! " but I retained sufficient 
 command of my passions not to break out into open extra- 
 vagance. I answered with coldness and indifference. I re- 
 garded what she did as a perfect scene. The manner was 
 like that which had subdued me, on the evening of the day 
 when we read Fletcher's " Wife for a Month." But the 
 present case was out of the reach of such remedies. It was 
 thus that Cleopatra inveigled Mark Antony to his ruin, 
 when she had determined to play him false with his confi- 
 dent Dolabella. As my wife left the room, I saw her ap- 
 ply her handkerchief to her eyes, for anguish that she could 
 not please me, and conscious that it was some unjust dis- 
 pleasure against her that was at the bottom of my conduct. 
 I steeled my heart against her sorrow : I said, " She must 
 perceive that I am animated with some resentment; and 
 were she not cowed with guilt, she would certainly demand 
 an explanation." 
 
 The next time she approached me, she said, " My love, I 
 am sure all this disturbance proceeds from some groundless 
 resentment you have conceived against me. Acquaint me 
 with the cause, and I have no doubt I shall be able to 
 satisfy you." — This I found I could bear least of all. It 
 seemed to me the most incredible degree of effrontery, to 
 challenge a discussion^ The proofs of her crime were too 
 certain. The very child that existed in her womb wit- 
 nessed that she was unfaithful. In spite, however, of the 
 tortures I suffered, I constrained myself to play the dis- 
 sembler. I told her, " No, it was nothing; I was perfectly 
 satisfied ; I had no complaint to make." I then kissed 
 her. Oh, such a kiss was transport, was frenzy ! My Mps 
 
FLEETWOOD. 321 
 
 seemed to feel again the Mary that I had adored. I then 
 recollected, that Kenrick had planted a thousand miscreant 
 kisses upon that very spot. I wished that my lips could 
 have made a brand upon her cheek, as broad, as deep, as 
 horrid and distempered, as her guilt. I added with a se- 
 pulchral voice, that she should be informed what it was 
 that had weighed upon my mind. 
 
 I waited all the morning for the event of Gifford's stra- 
 tagem of the picture. Mary spent a full hour in her dress- 
 ing-room. This apartment had a glass door with a curtain. 
 Gifford assured me, that, passing accidentally by this door, 
 and the curtain being displaced about a quarter of an inch 
 at the bottom, he had seen Mary open the casket with 
 some caution, examine the glass of the picture with marks 
 of surprise, and then return it to its place. Certain it is, 
 she made no enquiries or remarks upon the subject of the 
 accident. 
 
 We made a silent dinner ; and soon after it was over, I 
 walked into the garden. The weather was bleak and se- 
 vere ; but I felt it not. A sharp north wind blew in my 
 face ; it only seemed to increase the heat within me. By 
 and by I saw Mary come down the avenue. The day was 
 so exceedingly disagreeable, that there could be no question 
 her sole errand was to seek me ; I turned into another 
 walk to avoid her. I thought she was gone in. Presently, 
 having taken a small circuit, she was close upon me before 
 I was aware. 
 
 " My dear Fleetwood," she said, '^ you are not well. 
 Why do you expose yourself to the weather on such a 
 day.?" 
 
 '^ Mary, take care of yourself. You are tender and open 
 to impression. It will do me no harm." 
 
 She took hold of my hand. — " Bless me, how cold you 
 a^ ! Come in, my love ! " 
 
 '^ Mary, I cannot go in. Leave me." 
 
 " You do not love me ! " 
 
 ^^ Love you ! — Why do you talk thus ? By God, 
 
 I love you to madness. Those eyes, those lips, these arms, 
 why were they formed so beautiful ? I feel you through 
 my soul ; and your idea lives in every fibre of my heart." 
 
 Y 
 
322 -. FLEETWOOD. 
 
 " If you loved me^ you would not make me a stranger 
 to your thoughts." 
 
 '' I have told you, you shall know them. You will 
 know them too soon." 
 
 '^ And in the mean time I see you pale, indisposed, and 
 uneasy in mind ! Fleetwood, I am your wife. What did 
 you mean when you made me so ? I have a right to know 
 your thoughts, and share your sorrows. Think how we 
 stand toward each other, if you deny me this ! " 
 
 ^' You claim, then, justice and your rights ? Have a 
 care!" 
 
 " I will claim nothing. I will accept every thing as 
 favour and indulgence. Fleetwood, my life, do not dis- 
 tract me with uncertainty and fears ! If you have any 
 compassion for me, tell me what it is that distresses you ! 
 Open your bosom to your faithful wife, and let me soothe 
 your sorrows ! I will smooth your pillow, and cover you 
 with my arms ; I will take care, by my assiduities, to de- 
 serve your confidence." 
 
 I turned upon her, enraged at her duplicity. — " Be 
 gone ! How dare you torment me thus ! I intended to 
 have been gentle and forbearing with you, but you compel 
 rae to be severe. Learn not to intrude upon my privacy, 
 when I choose to be alone ! By the eternal God, you shall 
 repent your officiousness !" 
 
 Mary heard me with, astonishment, and burst into tears. 
 
 — " Fleetwood — is it come to this ? — This is too much 
 — - too much I" 
 
 I listened to her with an unmoved heart. I said to 
 myself, '' These tears are Kenrick's ! " 
 
 She took hold of my arm. — ^^ If ever you had com- 
 passion on the wife of your bosom ! " 
 
 I shook her from me. I said, " Will you not leave me? " 
 She trembled, and fell with one knee and one hand uppn 
 the ground. I hurried to another part of the garden. 
 When I was got to a distance, I could not help looking 
 back after her. I saw her return with staggering steps to 
 the house. I said to myself, " I did not wish for this. 
 No, though I will be severely just, I would not be a brute!" 
 
 — I recollected she was with child. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 323 
 
 Demons of hell ! why was I reserved to this ? What 
 an insupportable, what a damnable situation ! — Why was 
 she formed so beautiful ? Why are innocence and truth 
 written on her front ? How like a saint, how like the 
 purest of all mortal creatures, she talked ! — With child ! 
 the child is Kenrick's ! — Grant, all-merciful Heaven, that 
 it may never see the light ! Would God, it could be in- 
 tercepted in its entrance into existence ! — Why did I 
 marry ? I, that had already passed the middle stage of 
 life ? I, that knew the sex so well, that had gained my 
 knowledge by such bitter experience ? — What shall I do? 
 How shall I signalise the terribleness of my justice ? And 
 in what dungeon shall I afterward hide myself ? 
 
 Mary did not yet suspect any connection between the 
 disorder in which she saw me, and the accident of the 
 picture. Her innocent heart failed to suggest to her that 
 I could be jealous of my kinsman. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. i 
 
 I SPENT this night from home, at an obscure inn, where I 
 was entirely unknown, and returned in the morning. About 
 two o'clock I walked out with Gifford. He was my con- 
 fident ; and I consulted him a little respecting the past, 
 and talked somewhat by broken sentences in gloomy an- 
 ticipations of the future. But my heart was too heavy to 
 allow me to say much. My steps were those of despair ; 
 my frame was worn out with watching and perturbation. 
 Gifford led me unawares toward a little remote public 
 house. 
 
 '^ Come in here," he said. ^' It may be worth your 
 while." 
 
 I followed mechanically. I paid no heed to what he 
 said ; I scarcely heard it. I was totally indifferent whither 
 he led me. 
 
 He conducted me to a room on the first floor. Beneath 
 
324 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 the window there was a double row of elms with a smooth 
 and regular turf between them. The afternoon was fine. 
 It was a clear, frosty day ; and the sun, as it now ap- 
 proached to the west, painted the clouds with brilliant 
 colours. These things I scarcely perceived at the time ; 
 but I have recollected them since. 
 
 After a time I heard the sound of voices at a little dis- 
 tance from the window. It was not natural that in my 
 state of mind I should have paid attention to this ; but, 
 though the voices were low, there was something in the 
 accents that arrested my soul. After a minute's earnest 
 and impatient listening, I rushed to the window. I saw 
 the speakers. They were Kenrick and my wife ! Asto- 
 nishing, soul-blasting sight ! They appeared to be in the 
 jvCt of parting. 
 
 I rushed down stairs in a state of frenzy. Before I 
 could get round to the spot, they were at some distance 
 from each other. I pursued the villain. I called to him 
 to stop. He stood still, but did not advance toward me. 
 As I came up to him, he seemed to be in great confusion. 
 
 " My uncle ! " 
 
 " Kenrick, how came you here ? " 
 
 '' I beg your pardon, sir. You shall know all. Indeed 
 you shall." 
 
 ''^ Know all? — Am I of so little consequence to you? 
 Have not you received the commissions I sent you ? Did 
 not you protest that your life would be too little to show 
 your devotedness ? Ungrateful villain ! " 
 
 '' I am afraid I have been wrong. Do not be angry with 
 me!" 
 
 '' Be gone, sir ! — I shall find a time for you !" 
 
 f^ Only one word, uncle. Do not betray me ! Do not 
 tell any one that you saw me ! It may do me the greatest 
 injury in the world." 
 
 ^' Scornful boy ! insolent wretch ! I command you to 
 leave me. I only wanted to be sure it was you. Go ; I 
 will be obeyed ! " 
 
 Kenrick was aghast at the vehemence of my manner. 
 He would have expostulated. But I would not hear him. 
 I even raved at so shameless a persistence, till at length he 
 
FLEETWOOD. 3^5 
 
 became convinced that this was no time for conference, 
 and departed. 
 
 I was alone. Gifford presently came and joined me. — 
 '' Oh, God ! oh, God !" I cried ; '' could I have believed it ? 
 li'-Was but yesterday that I discovered the last proof of her 
 falsehood ! It was but yesterday that I confounded her 
 with the bitterness of my reproaches upon her guilt ! And 
 to-day she meets him here ! How came he here ? What 
 
 is the meaning ? Gifford, leave me ! For a moment, 
 
 leave me ! " 
 
 " I dare not. In the state of mind in which I see you, 
 I am afraid lest you should do some act of desperation 
 upon yourself ! " 
 
 ^' Upon myself ! — Ha ! ha, ha ! I value them not a 
 straw. I have no love for my wife ; I never did love her ! 
 I hold myself at a price greater than ten thousand such 
 strumpets and profligates ! They have no power to ruffle 
 my thoughts. I am calm ! perfectly calm ! They thought 
 to sting me ! I never possessed my soul in more entire 
 
 tranquillity than at this moment ! Go into the house ; 
 
 I will join you instantly." Gifford left me. 
 
 " Shall I go to my wife, and confront her with this new 
 evidence of her guilt ? — No, I will never speak with her, 
 never see her more. It is a condescension unworthy of an 
 injured husband, ever to admit his prostituted consort into 
 his presence ! It is as if God should go down and visit 
 Satan in his polluted, sulphureous abodes ! — How from 
 my inmost soul I abhor her ! How I will hold her up to 
 the abhorrence of the world ! How I should like to see 
 
 her torn with red-hot pincers ! To what a height I 
 
 have loved her ! No, no, no, no, no never ! " 
 
 Presently the words which Kenrick had uttered came 
 back to my ears. What did he mean, by asking me not 
 to betray him, not to let any one know I had seen him ? 
 Was he mad .'* Are these the words of a dependent, who 
 has wronged his patron in his bed ? 
 
 " If they were but innocent ! — if they were ! — I will 
 go this moment to my wife ! " 
 
 I left Gifford waiting for me in the public house : I 
 entirely forgot him. 
 
 Y 3 
 
326 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 As I passed along, I endeavoured to collect my thoughts. 
 I determined to exercise the utmost degree of subtlety and 
 craft in exploring the truth. I found Mary in her dress- 
 ing-room. 
 
 I said to her, ^^ Have you seen my shirt-pin ? — I have 
 lost one of my tan-coloured gloves. — I think it is a long 
 time since we heard from Kenrick." 
 
 The words seemed to stick in my throat, as I endea- 
 voured to speak them. When I uttered the name of my 
 kinsman, I fixed my eyes upon her countenance. I saw 
 she was much disordered. 
 
 " It is a long while." 
 
 " How long ? " 
 
 " It must be almost a month." 
 
 ^^ You have not heard from him ? " 
 
 Her lips formed themselves to say the word, " No." 
 
 -' You have not seen him to-day ? " 
 
 '' To-day ? — How should I ? — Is not he at his quar- 
 ters at Beverley ? " 
 
 I grasped her by the arm. — '' Did not you see him to-day, 
 in the elm-walk behind the alehouse of the Spotted Dog ? " 
 
 ^^ Unhand me, sir ! — Mr. Fleetwood, this is not the 
 tone in which I am to be interrogated ! " 
 
 " Cunning witch ! artful hypocrite ! What matters 
 it whether the questions are asked in polished words and a 
 gallant tone ? They must be answered ! — How came 
 Kenrick in Berkshire ? " 
 
 ^' That is a question I am not at liberty to resolve. 
 And, whatever may be the consequence to myself, I will 
 not reply to it ! " 
 
 '^ Not at liberty to answer ! And all the confusion you 
 betrayed at the mention of his name, your prevarication, 
 your circumlocution, the guilty stops in your voice, these 
 you disdain to account for I" 
 
 ^^ Fleetwood, you will repent this violence ! Yesterday 
 in the garden, for no cause whatever, you used me like a 
 brute." 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! — Answer to the purpose, and leave 
 these subterfuges ! — When were you first acquainted with 
 this wretch ? How frequent were your interviews in 
 
FLEETWOOD. 327 
 
 Merionethshire ? — You are with child ! Mary, fall upon 
 your knees, and answer me, by the great God, who made 
 heaven and earth, whose child is that in your womb ? " 
 
 '^ Almighty God ! and is it I, of whom such a question 
 is asked ? — Lightnings blast me ! God, in thy mercy 
 strike me dead ! — Fleetwood, if I were to live to the ages 
 of eternity, never from this hour would I hold intercourse 
 with you ! " 
 
 I was moved at the earnestness, the dignity, that ap- 
 peared in her rage. ''^ Mary, I entreat you ; by every thing 
 sacred, by all the endearments that have passed between 
 us, answer my questions, and resolve my doubts ! Oh, if 
 you could but take away the horror that overwhelms my 
 soul, worlds could not buy the happiness ! " 
 
 I thought she hesitated for a moment. — ^' Fleetwood, it 
 is too late ! I have been an exemplary wife to you ; from 
 the hour of our marriage I have studied your happiness 
 in every thing ; my tenderness and forbearance have only 
 served to render you more unjust. I am an altered woman 
 since yesterday. And the man who has uttered against 
 me such brutal reproaches as you have now done, is no 
 husband of mine ! " 
 
 ^' Very well, madam, very well ! I was a fool to ask 
 you a single question. I had evidences enough before. 
 But the despicable subterfuges to which you have now 
 resorted, one after another^ are equal to a thousand wit- 
 nesses." 
 
 She cast up her eyes with wildness, yet with a con- 
 centred spirit. — '' My dear father ! my angel mother ! you 
 are my only refuge ! Come, and let your spirits rest upon 
 my bosom ! Come, and console your brutally treated, 
 unsheltered daughter." 
 
 This was the tenderest argument upon which she could 
 have touched. It ought to have won my protection and 
 forgiveness, even to an adulteress. It struck upon a wrong 
 string. Bursting as I was with rage and agony, I could 
 not bear any thing that was calculated to excite an oppo- 
 site passion. It created confusion in my mind ; it made 
 me half fear I was doing wrong : and to conquer this fear, 
 I became ten times more furious and peremptory than ever . 
 
328 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 ^^ Be gone from my presence. For the last time, be 
 gone ! — Horrible wretch, do you think to disarm my jus- 
 tice by naming your parents ! How dare you take their 
 pure and sacred name into your lips ! " 
 
 She proceeded a few steps ; she moved with all the pride 
 of innocence. — She recollected herself, and turned again. — 
 '^ Hear me, miserable, deluded Fleetwood, a word!" 
 
 One expiring sentiment of nature stirred in my breast. 
 In a dead and scarcely audible voice 1 said, " Speak ! '* 
 
 ^' I have no wishes for myself. I scorn to defend my 
 actions. You are nothing to me. — But Kenrick, poor 
 Kenrick, — it is my last request — do not let him suffer for 
 
 any misconstruction on my conduct ! You will soon be 
 
 undecei ." 
 
 At the name of Kenrick thus falling from her lips, my 
 heart swelled as if it would have leaped from my bosom. — 
 
 " Impudent harlot ! Do you come back for this? Yes, 
 
 I will fondle and caress him ! — T wish I had him now 
 writhing at my feet ! Kenrick ! Ha, ha, ha !" 
 
 - T> 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 I BURST out of the room. As I went, I met Gifford. I 
 caught hold of his arm. — '^ Lead me, lead me any whither 
 from this hated house!" — We passed along. We came 
 near the great road. A chaise (how it came there I knew 
 not ; I did not once think of so unimportant a question ; I 
 scarcely considered any thing I did) was standing near a 
 stile. We got into it. It proceeded toward Newbury. 
 '^ I will set out for the Continent this night !" 
 GifFord expostulated with me on this sudden resolution. 
 His objections were for the most part trivial and insignifi- 
 cant, when weighed with the terrible situation in which I 
 stood. Slight opposition, as he well foresaw, only served 
 to make me more determined. If he suggested any diffi- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 329 
 
 culty which seemed of more serious import^ he took care 
 himself to supply me with the arguments that might in- 
 validate it. 
 
 We went across the country to Brighthelmstone, whence 
 I immediately took passage for Dieppe. From the former 
 of these places I despatched a letter to my principal homme 
 d'affaires, acquainting him of my intention of instantly 
 proceeding for the Continent, where I might perhaps re- 
 main for years, and directing him how to conduct himself 
 with regard to the remittances to be forwarded, to me. 
 But the main purport of my letter was concerning my wife. 
 I gave the most peremptory orders, that she should not 
 rerhain another night under my roof, that she should be 
 suffered to take away with her nothing but what strictly 
 belonged to her person, and that she should, on no pre- 
 text whatever, receive a farthing out of the produce of 
 my estate. — I delighted myself with the hope that she 
 would perish in abject misery. — This letter was in the 
 hand-writing of GifFord, and I annexed to it my sig- 
 nature. — From Dieppe 1 and my fellow-traveller proceeded 
 to Paris. 
 
 It is impossible for words to express any thing so wretched 
 as the state of my mind during the whole of this journey. 
 Sometimes I was turbulent and ungovernable ; I was little 
 less than raving mad. At other times I was silent, and 
 seemed wholly bereft of sensation. For days I did not 
 utter a single word ; I could scarcely be prevailed on to 
 take a particle of sustenance. Sleep was wholly a stranger 
 to my eyes ; for fourteen days and nights neither I nor my 
 companion was aware that I slept for a moment. Nothing 
 could be more exemplary than the attention I received from 
 Gifford during the whole of this period. He never left 
 me ; he never ceased from studying the means of restoring 
 me ; the meanest offices were not repulsive to his kindness 
 and zeal. I am certain that, in this extremity, I owed the 
 preservation of my life to his care. 
 
 Yet I did not thank him for all his assiduities. Life 
 was the object of my hatred. Often did I meditate the 
 means of self-destruction. Ten times did he prevent the 
 accomplishment of my purpose, by the indefatigable way 
 
330 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 in which he watched the turn of my eye, and the move- 
 ment of my limbs, and by constantly removing from me 
 the instruments of death I had fixed upon. He talked to 
 me in tones of the sweetest humanity. He contrived a 
 thousand ingenious methods of diverting me from the griefs 
 that absorbed my mind. Frequently I fell into paroxysms 
 of rage against him. I loaded him with every opprobrious 
 term that frenzy could invent. I would not suffer him to 
 sit down at table with me. I obliged him to squeeze him- 
 self intQ the remotest corner of our travelling carriage, and 
 raved with resentment and fury, if he happened to touch 
 me. He bore all with unconquerable patience. — At times 
 I became sensible of his merit in this. I thanked him for 
 his distasteful attentions, and begged his pardon for all my 
 violence and unreasonableness. I owned (and then a burst 
 of tears gushed into my eyes) that I had no friend in the 
 world but him, and entreated that he would never desert 
 me. He readily promised that he would stick to me for 
 life. 
 
 In the bitterness of my soul I imprecated the most 
 horrible curses that imagination could devise, upon the me- 
 mory of the excellent Macneil. But for him I should have 
 exhausted the miserable dregs of my existence in quiet. I 
 had fallen into a sort of lethargy compared with what I 
 now felt, in which, if I was wretched and forlorn, habit 
 had taught me not to writhe under my misery. Every one 
 of his advices had fallen out unhappily to me. He had 
 recommended to me a wife, the society of my kindred, and 
 that I should cherish the fond anticipation of offspring. 
 Each of these pretended sources of happiness had proved a 
 scorpion, stinging my before palsied senses into a capacity 
 of the acutest torments. — Had Mary and Kenrick been 
 really as guilty as I believed them to be, if they had seen 
 the condition to which I was reduced, they would have 
 pitied me ; and guilt itself would have generously wished 
 to impart its privileges to my insupportable innocence. 
 There was but one man, who, whatever fair appearances he 
 might put on, never pitied m.e for a moment. 
 
 Every time a packet of letters reached me from England, 
 strange as it may seem, I tore them open with furious 
 
FLEETWOOD, 331 
 
 impatience, in ,hope of finding one line from Kenrick or 
 Mary. I had built my conclusions upon such strong cir- 
 cumstances, that scarcely a husband in existence would 
 have resisted their evidence. Yet a sentiment still lingered 
 in the corner of my heart, that whispered me at times the 
 possibility of their innocence. I therefore suffered a con* 
 tinually renewed anguish in the still repeated disappoint- 
 ments I experienced. In my frenzy I had written letters 
 both to Mary and the adulterer, full of the sharpest re- 
 proaches, curses, expostulations, stained with blots, and in 
 every other respect expressive of the disorder of my mind. 
 These GifFord, with apparent propriety, confessed he had 
 intercepted. When I had outlived the most terrible dis- 
 temper of my mind, I wrote to my wife a sedate, heart- 
 breaking letter, in which I rebuked her conduct, described 
 with what vehemence I had loved her, and informed her 
 that I had ordered my steward to supply to her one thou- 
 sand pounds per annum in quarterly payments. Could any 
 thing but self-convicted guilt have persisted in so ill-boding 
 a silence } 
 
 GifFord hurried me from place to place, through France, 
 Germany, and the north of Italy. He had acquired an 
 ascendancy over me during my frenzy, which afterward I 
 could not easily shake off. I did not fully understand the 
 reason of these frequent removals, but I regarded them 
 with an eye of passiveness and indifference. GifFord's 
 general pretence was the benefit which my health would 
 derive from traveUing and change of air. 
 
 At length the time came, when it was necessary that I 
 should think of the law-proceedingsy if they were to be 
 entered upOn, for a divorce and the illegitimating my un- 
 born child. GifFord often reminded me of these things, yet 
 contrived to present the subject under such faces, as could 
 least suggest the idea of his being animated by any views 
 of personal interest. I on my part willingly entertained 
 the project. It well suited the gloomy conceptions in my 
 mind, of the justice I was bound to execute upon my 
 guilty wife ; nor could I endure to think that the child of 
 her polluted embraces should inherit any part of my estate. 
 I had also for some time cherished the plan of making my 
 
332 FLEETWOOD. * 
 
 faithful and entire friend heir to the gross of my fortunes, 
 and this I could not do without thus cutting off the descent 
 of my land. When every thing was ready, I requested 
 GifFord to proceed to England for the management of my 
 cause. My presence was judged not to be indispensable, 
 and I gladly excused myself from the journey. We parted 
 at Marseilles. There I met with an English lawyer of 
 some eminence, with whom I advised on the subject ; for 
 I was peremptory that I would not separate myself from 
 this only friend I possessed, till I had executed an instru- 
 ment, by which I should make him, to the utmost of my 
 power, in the event of my decease, the successor to all my 
 estates. Among other provisions of this my last will and 
 testament, I stated that it was my intention, in case, which 
 I had every reason to expect, the proceedings now depend- 
 ing should terminate in rendering my marriage null, and 
 declaring the child with which my wife was great a bastard, 
 that my kinsman and fellow-traveller should be deemed to 
 be as fully and entirely the successor to my property, as if 
 he had been my only son. Gifford seemed earnestly to 
 oppose the execution of this testament. He represented 
 such a measure, particularly under the present uncertainty 
 of my affairs, as in a high degree indecorous and premature. 
 The more he resisted my pleasure in this article, the more 
 obstinately I became bent upon it. The will was drawn 
 out in complete form ; I delivered it into his hands, and 
 insisted upon it, as he valued my future favour or peace, 
 that he should never suffer it to go out of his possession. 
 
 The proceedings upon my complaint were complicated 
 and tedious. I know not whether my mode of existence 
 during this suspense and desertion, does not deserve to be 
 styled more deplorable, than under all the agony and de- 
 lirium of the first detection. My mind was then hurried 
 with never-ceasing vehemence from thought to thought. 
 Even when 1 appeared, to the eye of the bystander, bereft 
 of all sensation, and was wholly without motion or notice 
 to indicate that there was a soul shut up within my corporal 
 bulk, my brain was for ever busy, and I might fitly be 
 compared to an immense pile of mechanism, the furniture 
 of a dead and windowless structure, on surveying the walls 
 
FLEETWOOD. 333 
 
 of which you perceive no signs of activity, though a thou- 
 sand cogs and ten thousand wheels are for ever working 
 within. The distempered activity under which I then suf- 
 fered, was now gone. I became jaundiced, body and soul. 
 My blood loiteringly crept through palsied veins. I was 
 like one of the metamorphoses of the Grecian fables, rooted 
 to a spot, and cursed with the ineffective wish to move. 
 How slowly did the never-ending days and nights revolve 
 over my head ! How deep was the despair that embraced 
 and struck its fangs into my soul ! Hope, under no one of 
 the varied forms in which she ever showed herself to mortal 
 eye, came near me ! My great constant sensation was a 
 sickness of heart, nauseating existence, and all that exist- 
 ence brings along with it. With vacant eye I observed 
 every thing that moved around me, and said, " Would to 
 God it were all still ! " What a relief would death, or the 
 resolution to die, have been from this insupportable bur- 
 den ! 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ r • CHAPTER XV. 
 
 July came, and brought along with it the anniversary of 
 my marriage. It was July, too, that was to give birth to 
 the child, to whom I had once looked forward with rap- 
 tures, on whom I now thought with sensations little less 
 than infernal. I resolved to solemnise a strange and 
 frantic festival on my wedding-day. I wrote to Gifford 
 to procure me, by some means, a complete suit of my 
 wife's clothes, together with a lieutenant's uniform, made 
 to pattern, according to the mode of the regiment to which 
 Kenrick belonged. I assured him that my life depended 
 upon the fulfilling my present demand. Ever faithful to. 
 gratify my slightest request, he punctually sent me the 
 articles I desired. I had in my possession a miniature of 
 my wife. I went to a celebrated modeller in wax, in the 
 city of Florence, where I now was, and caused him to 
 make a likeness, as exact as he could, of the size of life. 
 
334f FLEETWOOD. 
 
 I was myself not without some skill in modelling, and I 
 directed and assisted him. For the wearer of the regi- 
 mentals, I fixed upon a terrible and monstrous figure of a 
 fiend, which I found in the magazine of my artist. I 
 ordered a barrel-organ to be made for the same occasion. 
 I- recollected the tunes which Mary and Kenrick had sung 
 together when at Bath, and I caused my instrument to be 
 made to play those tunes. I bought a cradle, and a chest 
 of child-bed linen. It is inconceivable what a tormenting 
 pleasure I took in all these preparations. They employed 
 me day after day, and week after week. 
 
 When at length the fifteenth of July came, I caused a 
 supper of cold meats to be prepared, and spread in an 
 apartment of my hotel. All the materials which I had 
 procured with so much care and expense, were shut up in 
 the closets of this apartment. I locked myself in, and 
 drew them forth one after another. At each interval of 
 the ceremony, I seated myself in a chair, my arms folded, 
 my eyes fixed, and gazed on the object before me in all 
 the luxury of despair. When the whole was arranged, I 
 returned to my seat, and continued there a long time. I 
 then had recourse to my organ, and played the different 
 tunes it was formed to repeat. Never had madness, in 
 any age or country, so voluptuous a banquet. 
 
 I have a very imperfect recollection of the conclusion 
 of this scene. For a long time I was slow and deliberate 
 in my operations. Suddenly my temper changed. While 
 I was playing on my organ one of the tunes of Kenrick 
 and Mary, — it was a duet of love ; the mistress, in a lan- 
 guishing and tender style, charged her lover with indiffer- 
 ence, the lover threw himself at her feet, and poured out 
 his soul in terms of adoration, — my mind underwent a 
 strange revolution. I no longer distinctly knew where I 
 was, or could distinguish fiction from reality. I looked 
 wildly, and with glassy eyes, all round the room ; I gazed 
 at the figure of Mary ; I thought it was, and it was not, 
 Mary. With mad and idle action, I put some provisions 
 on her plate ; I bowed to her in mockery, and invited her 
 to eat. Then again I grew serious and vehement ; I ad- 
 dressed her with inward and convulsive accents, in the 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 S35 
 
 language of reproach ; I declaimed, with uncommon flow 
 of words, upon her abandoned and infernal deceit ; all the 
 tropes that imagination ever supplied to the tongue of man, 
 seemed to be at my command. I know not whether this 
 speech was to be considered as earnest, or as the Sardonic 
 and bitter jest of a maniac. But, while I was still speak- 
 ing, I saw her move — if I live, I saw it. She turned 
 her eyes this way and that ; she grinned and chattered 
 at me. I looked from her to the other figure ; that grin- 
 ned and chattered too. Instantly a full and proper mad- 
 ness seized me ; I grinned and chattered, in turn, to the 
 figures before me. It was not words that I heard or 
 uttered ; it was murmurs, and hissings, and lowings, 
 and howls. I became furious. I dashed the organ into a 
 thousand fragments. I rent the child-bed linen, and tore 
 it with my teeth. I dragged the clothes which Mary had 
 worn, from off the figure that represented her, and rent 
 them into long strips and shreds. I struck the figures ve- 
 hemently with the chairs and other furniture of the room, 
 till they were broken to pieces. I threw at them, in 
 despite, the plates and other brittle implements of the sup- 
 per-table. I raved and roared with all the power of my 
 voice. I must have made a noise like hell broke loose; 
 but I had given my valet a charge that I should not be 
 intruded upon, and he, who was one of the tallest and 
 strongest of men, and who ever executed his orders literally, 
 obstinately defended the door of my chamber against all 
 inquisitiveness. At the time, this behaviour of his I 
 regarded as fidelity ; it will be accounted for hereafter. 
 He was the tool of GifFord ; he had orders that I should 
 not be disturbed ; it was hoped that this scene would be 
 the conclusion of my existence. I am firmly persuaded 
 that, in the last hour or two, I suffered tortures, not infe- 
 rior to those which the North American savages inflict on 
 their victims ; and, like those victims, when the apparatus 
 of torture was suspended, I sunk into immediate insensi- 
 bihty. In this state I was found, with all the lights of 
 the apartment extinguished, when, at last, the seemingly 
 stupid exactness of my valet gave way to the impatience 
 of oihers, and they broke open the door. 
 
336 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 The ceremonies of this evening had a terrible effect 
 upon me. For fifteen days I never left my bed. For the 
 most part of the time I was really insane, but I was too 
 weak to break out into the paroxysms of insanity, and 
 those about me were scarcely aware of the degree of my 
 derangement. From the moment the physicians were 
 called in, they pronounced that it was impossible I should 
 recover. I gradually , wasted away, till I seemed to be ar- 
 rived at the last gasp. They were mistaken, however ; 
 I was reserved for more sufferings, and for stranger adven- 
 tures. A favourable crisis took place in my disease, and I 
 became slowly and tediously convalescent. 
 
 Gifford wrote to me regularly during the whole period 
 of his absence. I always opened his letters with vehement 
 emotion ; a strange expectation still hngered about me, 
 that I should find the accused parties innocent. Nothing 
 in Gifford's communications encouraged this idea ; the de- 
 lays that the cause suffered, appeared to be no more than 
 is always incident to such prosecutions. He wrote me 
 word, that he had procured witnesses of the criminal con- 
 versation of my wife and her paramour, in Merioneth- 
 shire ; he had even been so fortunate as to meet with an 
 evidence, to whom Mary had expressly confessed, that the 
 child with which she was great, was the child of Kenrick. 
 The lieutenant had quitted England ; heavy damages were 
 awarded against him in the Court of King's Bench. A 
 decree of divorce was obtained from the ecclesiastical 
 judges. At length my correspondent informed me, that an 
 act of parliament, completing my objects, had gone through 
 nearly all the forms, but the last ; and he desired me to 
 meet him on a certain day at Paris, where he assured me 
 he should arrive, bringing over with him the full and con- 
 summate fruit of his labours. I had already crossed the 
 Alps, and come as far as Montpelier for that purpose. 
 
 Gifford had received but an imperfect information of 
 the state of my health during the latter part of July. As 
 soon as I became capable of reflection, I was alarmed, lest 
 the accounts he received from my valet should have the 
 effect of making him desert the business in which he was 
 engaged, and come over instantly to Florence to attend 
 
FLEETWOOD. 331 
 
 me. Gifford was in no danger to be misled by any such 
 sentiments as I imputed to him. All the world could not 
 have induced him to such an act. He had my testament 
 in his possession ; and the cause was by this time in such 
 forwardness, that the news of my death could not arrive in 
 time to suspend the conclusion. Besides, he had given the 
 necessary directions for making my death, if it took 
 place, a secret, till he should give the signal for its pub- 
 lication. I went at Florence by a false name. Pre- 
 viously to his departure for England, he had watched over 
 me with more anxiety, with more demonstrations of affec- 
 tion and concern, than a mother over her firstborn son. 
 Now he did not care, if I died. He had punctually sup- 
 plied me with all the particulars I required, for the so- 
 lemnity of the fifteenth of July, in the hope of such a 
 consequence as resulted, and that that consequence would 
 have led to a more perfect termination. 
 
 How perverse was the constitution of my mind ! The 
 act of parliament, dissolving my union with my wife, and 
 disinheriting my only child, was an object I had sought for 
 with the greatest ardour. When Gifford and I parted at 
 Marseilles, I thought the only chance I had for ever enjoy- 
 ing a peaceful moment rested in the success of his expe- 
 dition. What could be more natural ? "VVTio would not wish 
 to be disjoined for ever from a perfidious and abandoned 
 consort, and to prevent all possibility that the offspring of 
 her guilty amours should succeed to the inheritance of his 
 ancestors ? Yet, as I have said before, it was Gifford that 
 kept alive this object in my mind. When he had left me, 
 my contemplation took a different turn. If I thought of 
 Mary as guilty, still I remembered how I had loved her, I 
 regarded her as a consecrated piece of earth, never to be 
 violated by any irreverence or levity of mine ; if I beheld 
 her covered with the deformities and leprosy of her fall, I 
 did not also fail to recollect how white, and smooth, and rich 
 in lustre, that figure had once appeared to me. I never 
 repeated her name in soliloquy, in my sober moments, 
 without that awe, and suspension of voice, with which a 
 pious man speaks of his God. But I did not always think 
 of her as guilty : I had visions of her restoration to cha^ 
 z 
 
338 FLEETWOOD, 
 
 racter and honour. These sentiments^ and the feelings 
 with which I was accustomed to open his letters, sometimes 
 obtruded into my replies to Gifford, and made him com- 
 prehend that I was not a man to be depended upon. In 
 my earliest letters after the event of July, I spoke of my 
 determination to see Mary once again, and to extort from 
 her own lips an explanation of her perfidy. 
 
 It was the end of August. I was no longer subject to 
 the transports of passion from which I had already suffered 
 so much. My frame was feeble and languid. I was 
 wasted almost to a skeleton. My face was thin, and wan, 
 and colourless. I seemed to be overtaken with a premature 
 old age. My hair was almost changed to grey. Yet, as I 
 have said, I was convalescent. My eyes were brighter than 
 they had been, and my countenance, though exceedingly 
 pale, was of a less leaden and death-like hue. It seemed 
 probable that I was reserved for years more of existence. 
 My constitution had been originally robust ; I had been all 
 my life accustomed to travelling and exercise ; and these 
 favourable circumstances now began to show on which side 
 the victory would be — for Ufe, or death. 
 
 1 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 I APPROACHED Paris. The day and hour had been fixed 
 between Gifford and me, at which I should arrive. About 
 six miles from the capital we had to pass through a wood, 
 celebrated for the robberies and murders that had been 
 committed in it. I thought not of this, and paid Httle at- 
 tention to any of the objects in the road. As we entered 
 the wood, my mind was absent and dreaming ; I was Uke 
 a man asleep, but my eyes were open. I was in my travel- 
 ling chariot, with my valet sitting beside me. Suddenly 
 I heard a voice, which called to the carriage to stop. It 
 stopped. Three men in masks came up to the door, opened 
 it, and laid violent hands upon me. Mechanically I had 
 
FLEETWOOD. 339 
 
 had recourse to my pocket, and drawn out my purse, which 
 I proffered to the assailants. They took no notice of this 
 action, but proceeded to endeavour to force me from the 
 chariot. Alarmed at this, I struggled with the ruffians, 
 and called out to my valet, and to my servants who were in 
 sight, to assist me. No one assisted me ; and, as I was 
 dragged from my seat, I felt my valet give me a push from 
 behind. In all the confusion and violence of the scene, 
 tliis action forcibly struck me. It gave a sort of convulsive 
 shock to my mind, and made me view all that was passing 
 in a very different light. Is it one of the effects of wealth, 
 that with it we enlist men into our service to murder us ? 
 The feeling of my situation made me desperate, and I 
 struggled more violently than my feeble condition could 
 have given reason to expect. I wished for my pistols ; it 
 was too late ; they were left in the carriage. I saw that it 
 was impossible to escape, and that I had but a few minutes 
 to live. 
 
 Two men who had hold of me, dragged me a consider- 
 able way from the chariot ; a third stayed with the carriage ; 
 my own servants remained behind. At the fatal moment, 
 four horsemen advanced at full speed in the opposite direc- 
 tion. As they came near, the assassin who had hold of me 
 on the right side_, presented his pistol at my head. It 
 missed fire. Goaded with desperation, he struck me a fu- 
 rious blow with the butt end of it just above the ear, which 
 brought me senseless to the ground. Instantly the ruffians 
 left me, and ran as fast as they could. One of the horse- 
 men remained with me ; the other three pursued the fugi- 
 tives. The assassins endeavoured to make their way into 
 the thickets : one of them was shot dead by the pursuers ; 
 the other two escaped. 
 
 The horseman who had remained to take care of me, 
 had endeavoured to raise me from the ground ; the others 
 now assisted him, and conveyed me to my chariot. I was 
 stunned with the blow I had received, and continued 
 speechless. My conductors, therefore, did not convey me 
 to the hotel in Paris where I was to have met Gifford, but 
 to another of their own choosing. They put me to bed, 
 and sent for an eminent surgeon, who took from me a con- 
 
 z 2 
 
340 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 siderable quantity of blood, and then left me, with direc- 
 tions that I should be kept as quiet as possible. 
 
 In the course of the night I perfectly recovered my 
 recollection. I saw myself in a strange chamber, with a 
 taper glimmering in the chimney, and an old woman sit- 
 ting at some distance from the bed, to watch by me. I said, 
 "Where is my friend, my only friend ? — where is he.'*" 
 
 " Who, sir?" 
 
 " Mr. Gifford." 
 ; " I never heard of him." 
 
 " Where is my valet ? " 
 
 " I do not know. You are a stranger to me." 
 
 *' In what place am I ? Whose are these apartments V* 
 
 " I am ordered not to answer questions. You are in 
 very good hands. Keep yourself quiet. Suspend your 
 curiosity till the morning." 
 
 Here our dialogue ended. After a minute's silence, I 
 heard the door of my chamber softly open ; and the nurse 
 went toward it, and she, and the man who opened it, spoke 
 two or three times alternately. What was said was uttered 
 in a whisper ; yet I thought the voice of the unseen was 
 like some voice with which my ear was acquainted. I could 
 not solve the mystery. The door was then shut again with 
 equal caution. I obeyed the injunction of the nurse, and 
 was silent. 
 
 The woman who had watched in my chamber during 
 the night, was French. In the morning, when the sur- 
 geons attended me, a second female of menial rank entered 
 the apartment. There was something about her that 
 caught my attention, and made me inquisitive. I was sure 
 I had seen her before, and that feelings of warmth and in- 
 terest had been connected with her person in my mind. 
 This was my first impression. After a few minutes of doubt 
 and perplexity, I perceived who it was. It was Martha, 
 the wife of William, the Merionethshire peasant, whose life 
 I had contributed to save, while yet a boy with my father. 
 '^ Bless me, Martha,"said I, " is it you } " When the sur- 
 geons had finished their visit, she was going out of the room 
 with them. I said softly, " I want to speak with you." She 
 promised to return, and was not long in keeping her word. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 341 
 
 " My dear master/' said she, " the doctors say you are 
 better, and have given me leave to speak to you, so it be 
 only for five minutes. I did not understand their jabber, 
 but my master's gentleman told me that was the meaning 
 of it." 
 
 " Who is your master ? How came you in France .''" 
 
 " Ah, sir ! that is a long story. You shall know all by 
 and by." 
 
 " Whose apartments are these .^ They are not the same 
 I tenanted before." 
 
 " They are Mr. Scarborough's." 
 
 " Of Berkshire ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " How came I here ? "WTiere is Mr. Gifford ? ** 
 
 Martha shook her head. — " You will not see him, I be- 
 lieve, of one while." 
 
 " What misfortune has happened to my friend ? Is he 
 not in Paris ? " 
 
 "That he is!" 
 
 **■ "\Yliy is he not with me ? WTiy am I separated from 
 the only man that for a long time I have dared to trust ? 
 I insist upon his being sent for immediately. Go, Martha, 
 and tell Mr. Scarborough I am dying to see him." 
 
 " Mr. Gifford is in prison ; the Bastille, or the Con — 
 Concier , I do not know what name they call it." 
 
 '^ In prison ? my friend in prison ? I will rise this 
 moment, and procure his freedom ! What is he in prison 
 for.?" 
 
 " Why, sir, it is a queer kind of a story. I do not 
 exactly understand it. It is something about your valet, 
 that ran away from you yesterday. They are both in pri- 
 son. Captain Lord bless me, I had hke to have let 
 
 it all out ! — the gentleman, you know, sir, that delivered 
 you from the robbers yesterday " 
 
 " That gentleman was not Mr. Scarborough ! " 
 
 " No, sir, no, but I am bid not tell his name. Well, 
 sir, he went to a place they call the Police. Those people 
 of the Police are as quick as lightning. The first inkling 
 we had of the matter was from the valet's running away. 
 
 Captain the gentleman, I mean told them no 
 
 z 3 
 
342 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 more than that ; and what did they do, hut caught GifFord 
 last night, and this morning early they sent word they had 
 caught the valet too." 
 
 Saying this, she left me ; and in about an hour returned. 
 — " Well, sir," said she, '^ it is all out. GifFord is the 
 great rascal of the whole gang, and he will be hanged.*' 
 
 " Martha, be silent. I always had a respect for your 
 qualities, and I cannot bear to hear from your mouth, 
 whatever I might from others, these scurrilities against the 
 only honourable man I have lately found in the world. — 
 Where is Mr. GifFord ? what has happened to him ? " 
 
 ^'^We all saw from the first, sir, that it could be no 
 common robbery. Why did your valet take to his heels, 
 and leave you ? " 
 
 *^ Martha, I am thoroughly convinced in that point. He 
 was an accomplice with the villains who attacked me." 
 
 " Ah, sir, but that is not all. If he had been only their 
 accomplice, he would have been only a robber. What have 
 you lost ? You must have been some time in the hands 
 of the rogues, and yet your watch, your purse, your rings, 
 your pocket-book, every thing is safe. They meant to 
 murder you, sir, to murder you, not for what you had about 
 you, but for your estate ! " 
 
 " Martha, leave me ! I shall for ever abhor the sight of 
 you, if you talk thus. It has been my fault to be too mis- 
 trustful " 
 
 '" That it has, sir !" 
 
 ^' I cling to Mr. GifFord as my last hold upon human 
 nature. If I could think him base, I would fly the face 
 of man, and herd with wolves and tigers. Thank God, 
 there is no danger of that ! He has done me such services, 
 as scarcely ever one man did for another. He unmasked 
 all my treacherous friends." 
 
 ^^ He put on a mask yesterday." 
 
 '' When their perfidy had reduced me to the brink of 
 the grave, when it had unseated my reason, and made me 
 a maniac, he only comforted me ; he watched by me day 
 and night ; his services and attention were inexhaustible ; 
 he has saved my life over and over. He conspire my death .' 
 —Pooh, pooh, Martha, if you would deceive me, let it be 
 
FLEETWOOD. 54S 
 
 with things possible, and not with such absurd romances 
 as children would laugh at." 
 
 "What signifies talking, sir? — They have given the 
 valet the boots, they call it — a contrivance the French have 
 to squeeze the truth out of a man — and he has confessed 
 that Gifford was at the bottom of all." 
 
 ^' I am more grieved than I can express, at what you 
 tell me, Martha. But that accounts for all. Diabolical 
 contrivance ! — Oh, England ! beloved country, that gave 
 me birth ! nurse of liberty, virtue, and good sense ! never 
 shall thy gallant name be deformed with this sabaoth of 
 demons ! — Now, Martha, learn from me, and blush for 
 what you have said ! Can you, a Briton, believe, that 
 torture makes a man speak the truth ? that, when he writhes 
 with agony, and feels himself debased below a brute, his 
 words are to be regarded as oracles ? Would not a man 
 then say any thing, to put an end to what he suffers } I 
 would not hang a dog on such evidence ! What sort of 
 creature should I be, if I could give up my friend, my tried 
 friend, a man unequalled in fidelity of spirit and honourable 
 sentiment, for the random accusations of a thief on the 
 rack } " 
 
 '^ There may be something in that, sir. But we knew 
 Mr. Gifford before. The valet can tell nothing of him too 
 bad for what he has done already. — However, they will give 
 him the boots, and we shall then hear what he will say \" 
 
 " God of heaven ! — Gifford ! — God, that we were es- 
 caped from this den of barbarians ! — Call Mr. Scarborough ! 
 Say, I must speak to him immediately !" 
 
 '^ I will, sir. All, I see plain, will soon come out." 
 
 " I understand you, Martha. You have been cheated 
 with the story of those domestic pests of mine, whom Gif- 
 ford's generous exertions have succeeded to rid me of for 
 ever. Every unhappy transgressor against virtue and in- 
 tegrity has a plausible story of his own to tell ; and does 
 not fail to boil with indignation against some one of those 
 by whom he is detected and punished. I did intend to 
 give a fresh hearing to the cause of my unhappy, pernicious 
 wife " 
 
 " God bless you ! I am very glad of that ! " 
 z 4 
 
344 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 '' But I have no leisure for this now. GifFord is to me 
 father, brother, wife, and children, all in one ! " 
 
 Mr. Scarborough came in. I had seen him casually in 
 Berkshire, but I had never carefully observed his figure till 
 now. There was something almost awful in it, and that 
 even to me, who could have no extrinsic occasion to stand in 
 awe of my country neighbour. He was tall, and of a car- 
 riage bold and graceful. His hairs were of a pure brown, 
 uncontaminated with art. There was good sense and 
 penetration, mixed with an uncommon air of severity, in his 
 countenance. He seemed born to command. When he 
 spoke, there was no spark of self-diffidence or embarrass- 
 ment. He appeared always to see the right method of 
 proceeding, to confide in his own judgment, and to be firm. 
 Had I beheld such a figure placed on a bench of justice, I 
 should have said, " There sits one of the judges of the 
 patriarchal world, invested with native rank and conscious 
 discernment, not one of the modern race, who place their 
 hopes to awe us in accoutrements of velvet and ermine ! " 
 
 '■^ Mr. Scarborough," said I, " I know not exactly how 
 I came here, but I have first to thank you for your hos- 
 pitality." 
 
 He bowed. 
 
 '^ Having acknowledged this favour, I have another still 
 greater to demand. My friend and kinsman, Mr. GifFord, 
 is in prison. Martha, your servant, tells me he is in a 
 very distressing situation. I am not in a fit condition to 
 go and solicit his liberation myself '' 
 
 " Mr. GifFord is a viUain ! " 
 
 ^^ For God's sake, Mr, Scarborough ! — This is no time 
 to discuss his merits. You are, I am sure, too generous 
 and too just to defame the absent." 
 
 ^'^ I wish Mr. GifFord had been so. My friend. Lieu- 
 tenant Kenrick " 
 
 '^^ Kenrick ! is he in Paris ? " 
 
 ^^ He is under this roof." 
 
 " Oh ! then I see how it is ! You are deceived, Mr 
 Scarborough. You are the dupe of unfortunate criminals 
 that hope, by means of your character and authority, to 
 destroy the honest man whose integrity they fear." 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 S45 
 
 *' You are deceived, Mr. Fleetwood. You are the dupe 
 of a criminal, a wretch whom I will not condescend to 
 grace with the term unfortunate. / am not used to be de- 
 luded, sir, nor does this case admit of ambiguity. Mr. 
 Kenrick, the best man on earth, and who loves you the 
 most devotedly, — it was he who rescued you last night 
 from the assassins who were on the point to murder 
 you " 
 
 '' Kenrick ! " 
 
 '^ — Went instantly, when he had conducted you hither 
 to the police. He had no information to give, but that of 
 the disappearance of your valet, and that he saw a figure 
 among the ruffians greatly resembling that of Giffi)rd." 
 
 " Accursed calumniator ! " 
 
 " On these grounds Monsieur the lieutenant criminel pro- 
 ceeded. He caused both the persons informed against to 
 be apprehended. Though the valet had taken refuge in a 
 remote part of the city, he easily succeeded to discover his 
 retreat. Gifford appeared boldly at his own lodgings. When 
 told, however, that the valet was in custody, he dropped 
 something of his assurance. The wretched hireling, being 
 put to the torture, laid open a long train of villany, and 
 pointed out his accomplices ; they are all now in custody." 
 
 " Mr. Scarborough, I will not stay a moment longer 
 in this house. Procure me a litter, a fiacre, any thing ! 
 I fly to the vindication of my friend." 
 
 " Of the man who waylaid you yesterday ? Who, with 
 his own hand presented a pistol to your head ? " 
 
 ^' It is waste of words for us to talk longer. You lend 
 your ear to the wretched, the unnatural Kenrick, the Cain 
 who is at this moment pursuing the destruction of his vir- 
 tuous brother. Do you, as you please ! I, for my part, 
 listened to and believed him too long." 
 
 If you wish to see the lieutenant criminel, he will in two 
 hours transport himself hither to complete his examinations. 
 I cannot consent to your removal, which, in your present 
 situation, might be fatal. If you wish to serve Gifford, 
 you cannot do it more speedily, than by waiting the arrival 
 of the magistrate. — In the mean time, suffer me to in- 
 struct you in some particulars. It will bring the matter 
 
346 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 to a more ready conclusion. I wish to satisfy you of the 
 innocence of Kenrick and your wife. 
 
 " Mr. Scarborough, it is absurd for us to talk on that 
 head. I did not proceed but upon the most demonstrative 
 evidence. The case has been tried by the criminal courts 
 of my country ; the wariness of justice has been satisfied ; 
 Kenrick has been declared guilty, my wife an adulteress, 
 and her child illegitimate. Why should you open afresh 
 wounds in my soul, to which, the blow I received yesterday 
 is the stroke of a feather, and which will assuredly bring 
 me to the grave ? " 
 
 " Mr. Fleetwood, ask yourself ! Would it afford you 
 no pleasure to find, that your wife is the most innocent of 
 mortals, that Kenrick's heart is as honest and generous 
 as his countenance, and that the lovely boy which Mrs. 
 Fleetwood has brought into the world, is your true and pro- 
 per offspring ? " 
 
 '^ No pleasure ! It would make me young again ! It 
 would translate me to Elysium ! I should feel as the 
 founder of the human race felt, before guilt and treachery 
 got footing in the world ! " 
 
 *^'^ And is not the chance of this worth one hour's enquiry?" 
 
 '^ The very thought transports me ! Go on ! " 
 
 '^ Be patient then, and strict, and impartially severe. 
 What evidence had you of Mrs. Fleetwood's guilt ? " 
 
 *^ A love-letter of Kenrick, which I took on her dressing 
 table." 
 
 '^ That letter was not written to her." 
 
 ^'^ For whom was it intended ? " 
 
 " For my daughter. — What else ? " 
 
 " The miniature of Kenrick, which I found locked up 
 in her casket." 
 
 '' That, too, was for my daughter. — Proceed ! " 
 
 '' An interview which I witnessed between her and her 
 paramour in the elm-walk, on the right bank of the Kennet. 
 My perfidious kinsman came from Beverley to Berkshire 
 for the express purpose of this interview." 
 
 ^^ That also had relation to my daughter." 
 
 '' My wife, when challenged by me respecting this in- 
 terview, prevaricated, pretended to know nothing of the 
 
FLEETWOOD. 347 
 
 matter, and asked whether Kenrick was not at his quarters 
 in Yorkshire." 
 
 " That I can explain." 
 
 " These were the circumstances on which I acted person- 
 ally. But the whole has since been cleared up by the laws 
 of my country. Witnesses have proved the criminal con- 
 versation in Merionethshire, as well as Mary's confession, 
 that the child was the child of Kenrick." 
 
 **^ These witnesses were suborned. They are now under 
 prosecution for perjury." 
 
 " Why did my wife refuse to justify herself, when, for 
 the last time before I left England, I reproached her with 
 her guilt, and called upon her to answer } " 
 
 '^ Fleetwood, you then said to her, — you adjured her 
 by the great God, who made heaven and earth, to tell you, 
 whose child was that she bore in her womb ? — Could a 
 woman, shocked with such a question, a woman who knew 
 the integrity of all her actions, the purity of all her thoughts, 
 the devotion with which she had ever watched and served 
 her lord, answer the deluded insolent that proposed such 
 an interrogatory ? Then may virtue stoop to vice, then 
 may heaven and hell mix in eternal confusion, and honour 
 and nobleness of soul no longer have a name in the universe ! 
 
 ^'^ As you put it, it was an insufferable question, and such 
 as conscious rectitude might well disdain to answer. Yet 
 surely, after the first shock had subsided, the interests of 
 herself and her unborn child, the happiness and reputation 
 of all the parties, which were so intimately concerned, might 
 have induced the most innocent and proudest woman on 
 earth to descend to explanation ! " 
 
 ^^ It was exactly thus that Mrs. Fleetwood conducted 
 herself. She transmitted you, three days after, when, to 
 my knowledge, you were still at Brighthelmstone, a detailed 
 explanation of the whole affair. Why did you take no no- 
 tice of that letter ? " 
 
 " I received no such letter." 
 
 '^ Received ! — I am not surprised. The master- villain, 
 whose task it has been to paint every thing in false colours, 
 and to obstruct all the glimpses of truth and virtue, has 
 then intercepted it. Other letters were written by your 
 kinsman, and by me; did you receive none of these ?" 
 
348 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 '' None. You express your surprise,, Mr. Scarborough, 
 at my not answering letters. I was not less surprised at 
 Mary's returning no answer to the letter, in which I in- 
 formed her that, notwithstanding all I had suffered from 
 her perfidy, I had spontaneously settled upon her an an- 
 nuity of one thousand pounds. Guilt itself, I thought, 
 would have expressed some gratitude for my generosity. 
 Innocence! — it was impossible that innocence . should at 
 »ich a moment have sat down in silence ! " 
 
 " Seeing the case as you saw it. this was a generous 
 determination, Mr. Fleetwood, and proves to me that you 
 are the good and honourable man I ever believed you to 
 be. — No such letter as you describe, no letter of any kind, 
 was ever received from you by Mrs. Fleetwood. I see 
 plainly that, from the moment you left Berkshire, you 
 have been a close prisoner in the keeping of the villain, 
 who was proceeding with rapid, yet deliberate steps, to 
 thrust you out from the scene of the world, and to reap 
 the inheritance of your estates. Bnt it is time, my dear 
 sir, that you should be somewhat acquainted with the af- 
 fairs of myself and my daughter, which have so intimate 
 a relation to Mrs. Fleetwood's unfortunate story." 
 
 " Proceed, sir ! You have created in me a desire, at 
 least to hear what can be suggested in behalf of my wife, 
 and of the man you call your friend. You have made bold 
 assertions ; I do not see how they can be supported. If 
 they can, I have been the most unfortunate, the most un- 
 just of mankind. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ^'^ I HAVE been many years a widower," resumed Mr. Scar- 
 borough. " When my wife died, she left to me the' care 
 of two infants, a son and a daughter. The birth of my 
 daughter, my Louisa, who is now with me, preceded by 
 only two years the death of her mother. The charge 
 which thus devolved upon me, weighed heavy upon my 
 mind, and it is with unintermitted anxiety that I have 
 sought to perform it. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 340 
 
 " I brought into the world with me the seeds of a stern 
 and severe disposition ; this has been the source of all my 
 misfortunes. My temper is firm ; my judgment^ perhaps, 
 is clear ; and I have ever been somewhat too peremptory 
 in enforcing it. My ordinary speech — whatever (added 
 he, smiUng) you may have found it on the present occasion 
 — s pithy and sententious. I have been prone to lay 
 down the law, and too impatient of the perverseness, real 
 or imaginary, that demurred to my dictates. I have always 
 seen these faults of my character, though never so clearly 
 as now, and have endeavoured to correct them. But either 
 they were so twisted with my nature, that they could not 
 be separated and discarded, or I have found myself weak, 
 and insufficient to the office. 
 
 " I wished to inspire attachment and confidence into my 
 wife ; but I could never succeed. She was a gentle and 
 amiable creature, beautiful as the day, and of manners in- 
 expressibly enchanting. She confessed, that she feared, as 
 much as she loved me ; I thought that the former was the 
 predominant passion. The perception of this, instead of 
 correcting me, rendered me more gloomy, and increased 
 my original defects. I sav/ that I was poisoning the ex- 
 istence of her I loved. I believe that, when she came to 
 die, she was the more reconciled to her fate, because, while 
 living, she was a stranger to the enjoyments of life. Oh, 
 Mr. Fleetwood, you called yourself the most unfortunate 
 of mankind ! You have never known, like me, the misery 
 of not being able to excite love in any of the persons most 
 dear to you ! Men style me honest, and honourable, and 
 worthy ; I am alone in the world, surrounded with a magic 
 circle, that no man oversteps, and no man is daring enough 
 to touch me ! This is called Respect — its genuine name 
 is Misery ! " 
 
 As Mr. Scarborough spoke thus, I saw his lips quivering, 
 and he wiped the moisture from his eyes, and from his 
 brow. After a pause he resumed : — 
 
 " My son was the loveliest boy that ever was beheld. 
 His temper was gentle, his heart was affectionate, his un- 
 derstanding was clear, and his views were noble. I was 
 the father of this boy — it was I that killed him ! You 
 
350 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 will not suppose that I did not love him ; I loved him to 
 the utmost excess of paternal attachment. But this very 
 excess rendered me restless^ impatient, and exacting. I 
 was never satisfied with any thing short of perfection. I 
 crossed him in all his humours ; I never allowed him a 
 moment of freedom. Task still succeeded to task, and in 
 none of them could he obtain my applause. He was often 
 very earnest in his exertions ; but earnestness gradually 
 gave place to despair. With what severity I have rebuked 
 him ! with what contumely and contempt I have treated 
 him ! It is one of the infirmities of our nature, that the 
 very sound of the voice of him who reproves, warms the 
 speaker into higher passion and more terrifying fury. The 
 very dissatisfaction that we feel with ourselves, the con- 
 sciousness that all is not right in this mode of proceeding, 
 increases our ill-humour, and impels us to plunge into 
 greater excess, in the hope that so we may drown our 
 remorse. The spirit of my son was broken. Finding 
 himself habitually treated with contempt, he began also to 
 despise himself. He became negligent of his person and 
 his health ; and, bereft of hope, he was incapable of ex- 
 ertion. As he grew taller, he felt more deeply the misery 
 of his situation, and at the age of thirteen literally fell a 
 victim to my ill-placed severity. 
 
 ^' He sunk into a deep dechne. Too late I became 
 sensible of my injustice. How many bitter tears I have 
 shed over him ! They were almost as plentiful, as those 
 which my cruelty so often caused to trickle down his in- 
 nocent, beautiful cheeks. He told me that he pardoned 
 me with all his heart, that he was conscious that all I did 
 had been designed for his advantage. I sought to recover 
 him to cheerfulness and health ; I promised that I would 
 never again utter a harsh word, or entertain a harsh 
 thought toward him. It was too late. With his dying 
 lips he kissed the lips that had so often reviled, and the 
 hand that had smitten him. 
 
 "^ You would think, Mr. Fleetwood, that two such ter- 
 rible events as the deaths of my wife and son would have 
 been sufficient to correct in me this odious propensity. It 
 did for a while. I made a thousand good resolutions. It 
 
FLEETWOOD. 351 
 
 was impossible to feel with more horror than I did, that I 
 was the murderer of my only son_, and deserved the gallows 
 more than all the highwaymen and housebreakers that are 
 brought thither. But the habit was rooted within me, 
 and, though repeatedly pared away to the quick, it shot up 
 again with as vigorous and rank a vegetation as ever. You 
 only, by the entanglement of your affairs with mine, have 
 led me to reflect decisively on the enormity of my crime, 
 and inspired me with the resolution to banish it for ever. 
 
 *' You have seen my daughter. I need not tell you 
 that she is beautiful, or that she is the most gay and ani- 
 mated creature in the world. These last advantages she 
 has owed to my happy providence, in taking care that she 
 should be seldom, and only for short intervals, at home. If 
 she had resided with me, I should have rendered her as 
 gloomy as myself; I should have sown in her infant con- 
 stitution the seeds of destruction. But I determined^ that 
 a man, Hving alone, w^as by no means the proper person to 
 form the mind and manners of a daughter. I resigned the 
 care of her to her mother's relations. They were of the 
 same soft and gentle mould with my deceased wife. If I 
 may presume to judge, in a point where I have myself so 
 greatly erred, they rather exceeded on the side of in- 
 dulgence. 
 
 " She was at Bath with one of her aunts, when she 
 first formed an acquaintance with Mrs. Fleetwood and 
 Lieutenant Kenrick. With the former she exchanged the 
 vows of an eternal friendship. She was delighted with 
 both ; and it was, perhaps, the circumstance of seeing her 
 chosen female friend and the amiable young soldier con- 
 tinually together, that made her with girUsh heedlessness 
 conceive a passion for the latter. The sentiment was 
 mutual ; and Kenrick, infinitely superior to all interested 
 views, became enamoured unawares of the opulent heiress. 
 From the moment they were lovers, they grew sensible 
 of the necessity of secresy. I cultivated with great assi- 
 duity ambitious projects for my daughter, and resolved not 
 to marry her below the peerage. I also prescribed it as 
 an indispensable condition, that her husband should lay 
 aside the name of his own family, and assume that of mine. 
 
352 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 With both these resolutions Louisa was acquainted ; but, 
 alas ! she did not love me. She lived much with her 
 mother's relations, and little with me ; the austerity of my 
 manners, though I endeavoured to tame and assuage it, 
 repelled her, and she was influenced by what had been told 
 her of the unhappy fate of her mother and brother. She 
 felt, therefore, in a very small degree the iilclination to 
 oblige me ; and, perhaps, you will think they were no 
 trivial compliances that I required of her. 
 
 ^^ This situation was the first cause of the equivocal ap- 
 pearances you observed at Bath. Kenrick and Louisa 
 contrived to be as much together as possible ; but my 
 daughter prescribed it as an indispensable condition to this, 
 that they should avoid all public manifestations of the un- 
 derstanding which subsisted between them. Mrs. Fleetwood 
 was attached to both ; the kindness of her nature rendered 
 the idea of thwarting their desires alien to her thoughts ; 
 she lent herself willingly to the prosecution of their plans. 
 It was concerted that, whenever they walked together, Ken- 
 rick should give his hand to your wife, while my daughter 
 should accept the civilities of any chance comer. They 
 seldom or ever sat together; they scarcely spoke. Mrs. 
 Fleetwood was the interpreter of their mutual passion. She 
 received and conveyed from one to the other the protest- 
 ations of eternal love ; she stood the proxy of each, listening 
 to the effusions of sincere affection, till a bystander might 
 have imagined that Louisa mistook her for a lover, and 
 that Kenrick was employing every detestable art to seduce 
 her from her wedded faith. This situation undoubtedly 
 led to extreme familiarity between Mrs. Fleetwood and 
 your kinsman ; but, if Kenrick had not been secured 
 against a guilty flame by his admirable principles and the 
 integrity of his nature, he would at this time have been 
 triply armed by his passion for my daughter, which, the 
 more it was restrained, the more it grew. Louisa, per- 
 petually terrified with visions of a haughty and inexorable 
 father, was unintermitted in her injunctions of secresy, and 
 above all insisted that you should on no condition be ad- 
 mitted to a knowledge of the affair. 
 
 ^' At length Incompleted the preliminaries of the business 
 
FLEETWOOD. S5B 
 
 I had most at heart, the splendid marriage of my daughter. 
 I negotiated a union for her with the eldest son of Lord 
 Lindsey, whose estate was in a ruinous situation, and who 
 therefore willingly agreed to all my conditions. The affair 
 was already in great forwardness, when I summoned my 
 daughter from Bath, without informing her of the purpose 
 I had in view. She came to me with a presentiment of 
 evil, and certainly not with a mind prepared for com- 
 pliance. I presented the young gentleman. I will now 
 confess, that his most striking characteristics are ugliness, 
 imbecility, and effeminacy. But, infatuated with the gran- 
 deur of his alliance, I did not at that time notice these dis- 
 advantages. The proposition of marriage had been agitated 
 between me and Lord Lindsey, before I saw the young 
 gentleman ; and, when he was introduced, I turned my 
 attention to the father, who was handsome, sagacious, and 
 accomplished, and, in the pleasure of his conversation, found 
 reason to approve my choice. 
 
 '^ Louisa, if she had not been already prepossessed in fa- 
 vour of another, would most likely have shrunk from the 
 marmot I presented to her. Her character on this occa- 
 sion exhibited a singular mixture of na'ivete, rashness, and 
 fear. I could discern a wanton air of contempt and ridi- 
 cule in her glance, whenever she looked at her noble ad- 
 mirer ; it sometimes expressed itself in little sarcastic 
 sallies, and smothered bursts of laughter. When she 
 caught the flash of my eye her countenance instantly fell- 
 She would often, if I were absent, or if she thought I did 
 not observe her, amuse herself with leading him a fool's 
 dance, and humorously praising his wit, his accom- 
 phshments, or his beauty, till the poor gentleman was 
 completely in a labyrinth, and looked with a whimsical 
 perplexity, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. When- 
 ever I remarT^ed these things, I sternly discountenanced 
 them. I endeavoured to convince her of the advantages 
 of the proposed marriage. I talked much of parental au- 
 thority and the duty of a child. I even condescended to 
 ■entreat her to yield to a plan upon which my heart was 
 entirely bent. She tried at first to rally me out of my 
 purpose. She painted her suitor in ludicrous colours. Shi 
 
 A A 
 
S54 FliEETWOOD. 
 
 repeated his foolish sayings, and mimicked his gestures. 
 But she soon found that this was a style in which her 
 father would not endure to be treated. She then, in the 
 most pathetic manner, besought me, that I would not sacri- 
 fice the whole happiness of her life, and solemnly protested 
 that she should never know a tranquil moment, if united 
 to the son of Lord Lindsey. But neither of these modes 
 of attack succeeded with me. I was unalterably fixed 
 upon my project. Thus situated, my native character 
 came over me. I exclaimed that I was the most abused 
 of fathers. I burst into paroxysms of rage. Often in 
 her absence, sometimes in her presence, I cursed her for 
 her unnatural obstinacy, and swore that I would rather 
 follow her to her grave, than not see her united to the 
 husband I had chosen. 
 
 " The only confident my daughter and Kenrick had in 
 the whole of this business, except Mrs. Fleetwood, was 
 Gifford. He was his brother's friend, as your wife was 
 the friend of Louisa. Various advantages seemed to spring 
 to the emamoured pair from this arrangement. GifFord 
 and Mrs. Fleetwood consulted together for their benefit; 
 and, though nothing could exceed the zeal of your wife^ 
 she was by no means a matcli for GiflPord in policy and 
 expedients. Beside this, I looked upon the friendship 
 Louisa had formed with a jealous eye ; I naturally judged 
 that woman would be apt to be the abettor of woman 
 in rebellion against the stronger sex. But I had met 
 with and conceived an immediate kindness for GifFord. 
 His serious and contemplative nature seemed easily to 
 assort with the sternness of mine. I had an entire con- 
 fidence in his prudence. I laid before him all the arrange- 
 ments I had made for the marriage of my daughter, and 
 described its various recommendations. As I saw Louisa 
 paid him a particiilar attention, I requested him to endea- 
 vour to subdue her repugnance, which he readily promised 
 to do. 
 
 '' To the young lovers he appeared as anxious for the ac- 
 complishment of their views, as in conversation with me 
 he showed himself favourable to mine. At first, indeed^ 
 when Kenrick communicated to him at Bath the secret of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 355 
 
 his passion, he set himself in opposition to it, and urged 
 to his brother the many misfortunes and adversities he saw 
 likely to grow upon it. But, as he perceived his remon- 
 strances were fruitless, he changed his tone, yielding rather 
 to the vehemence of Kenrick's importunity, than to the 
 propriety of the pursuit. He swore he would move heaven 
 and earth, rather than not conquer every obstacle to his 
 brother's wishes. He encouraged him to go on, and 
 often told him that all difficulties yielded to perseverance. 
 He, however, recommended, as earnestly as my daughter 
 had done, that you should be kept in entire ignorance of 
 the affair. He said, that your prudence would make you 
 insist that Kenrick should renounce the pursuit, and that 
 you would consider yourself as for ever disgraced at your 
 importioned kinsman's clandestinely aspiring to the hand 
 of an heiress. He was consulted in every thing. Not a 
 letter was written on either side that did not pass through 
 his hands. In short, he appeared so actively engaged in 
 the interests of the lovers, that the further interference of 
 Mrs. Fleetwood would have been unnecessary, were it not 
 that she had been originally in the affair, that her attach-« 
 ment for the parties was vehement, and that Louisa, though 
 always respectful and grateful to Mr. Gifford, felt a repug- 
 nance to him. 
 
 " If you found a letter of Kenrick thrown carelessly into 
 one of the toilet-boxes in Mrs. Fleetwood's dressing-room, 
 I now entertain no doubt that it was placed there by Gif- 
 ford. Mrs. Fleetwood was too careful of the secret of her 
 friend, ever to have been guilty of such negligence. As 
 to the letter itself, the address was the address of your 
 wife, which, for the sake of precaution, it was agreed should 
 always be used ; but the person to whose acceptance every 
 Mne of the contents referred was my daughter. Gifford 
 knew of the miniature, which had the same destination, 
 and could have referred you at once to the very spot where 
 it was found. 
 
 " Thus, Mr. Fleetwood, were you, and I, and indeed all 
 
 the parties in this unhappy business, made the dupes and 
 
 puppets of a single villain. Louisa, who till now had seen 
 
 but little of me, though she had always heard my name 
 
 AA 2 
 
356 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 with a certain degree of dread_, had hy no means at first 
 that terror of my anger and inflexibihty which she after- 
 ward conceived. She beheved that I could not be inexor- 
 able to the tears of my only child ; and in this vain hope 
 had indulged with less apprehension the passion of her 
 virgin heart. She longed to tell me that her affections 
 were engaged, and that, if the son of Lord Lindsey had 
 not been in all respects so repulsive as he was, she could 
 never, without a certain kind of prostitution, have become 
 his wife. But the more carefully she watched for an 
 opportunity, the more clearly did she perceive that an op- 
 portunity, attended with the smallest degree of auspicious 
 appearance, would never arrive. I in the mean time con- 
 tinued to act the part of a despotic father, and pursued 
 my schemes unintermittingly, in the opinion that the ca- 
 prices of Louisa would at length yield to my enhghtened 
 firmness. Driven to extremity, she came into the plan of 
 an elopement to the north. 
 
 " Gifford was a party to every thing that was settled, but 
 he secretly r€solved that the marriage should never take 
 place. It was a part of his project, that Kenrick should 
 be reduced to beggary. Gifford really stood in awe of his 
 honest and single-hearted brother, and never thought he 
 should be entirely safe, till Kenrick was brought to a state 
 of impotence and desolation. The first great mortification 
 he suffered from the hour that he became an inmate of 
 your family was on the day that Kenrick set out for West- 
 moreland from Bath. That day, to his astonishment, a 
 reconciliation took place between you and your younger 
 kinsman. The consequence was, your procuring for Ken- 
 rick a lieutenancy and adjutantship, and thus raising him 
 at once into the receipt of a plentiful income. Gifford's 
 measures, for months after, were directed to the repairing 
 this miscarriage ; and his inward animosity to his brother 
 was heightened by the recollection that, while he was 
 pursuing his ruin, he had unwittingly rendered bins an 
 important service. His present plan was, by infusicnq of 
 jealousy to ruin Kenrick for ever in your esteem, at the 
 same time that he should give me timely notice of the 
 projected elopement, and, by the representations he should 
 
FLEETWOOD. 357, 
 
 induce me to make to the lieutenant's superiors, deprive 
 him at once of his military appointments. 
 
 ^' Gifford was acquainted with the day and hour of Ken- 
 rick's arrival from Yorkshire, and himself contrived the 
 interview between him and Mrs. Fleetwood in the elm-i 
 walk on the right bank of the Kennet. He took care to 
 prepare you with proper view^s of the affair, and to induce 
 you to believe that the lieutenant came, by Mrs. Fleet- 
 wood's invitation, for the basest and most unnatural pur-< 
 poses. The rest you know. 
 
 " An anonymous letter was brought to me at this time, 
 informing me that my daughter was on the point of eloping 
 to Scotland with lieutenant Kenrick, a kinsman and de- 
 pendent of my nearest neighbour. This letter was the 
 contrivance of Gifford ; it could come from no other 
 quarter. I never felt so terrible an access of rage as at 
 that moment. I sought Louisa, my child, in the spirit of 
 a murderer. It was, perhaps, happy for us both that she 
 had already disappeared. The letter by some accident had 
 been brought too late. I ordered post-horses without a 
 moment's delay, and set off in pursuit of the fugitives. I 
 took the noble youth, my intended son-in-law, in the chaise 
 with me. My daughter being no where to be found, left 
 no doubt on my mind as to the authenticity of the intelli- 
 gence I had received ; and, though I could gain no intel- 
 ligence of her at Newbury, I easily conceived that the 
 ravisher might have procured the means of her flight from 
 some other quarter. 
 
 '' I pursued the route of Scotland for upward of one hun- 
 dred miles. But, though I was incessant in my enquiries, 
 I could learn no tidings of the persons I sought, at any one 
 of the stages. I then began to believe that it was to no 
 purpose to go in this direction any further. With a heavy 
 heart I turned my face toward home. By this time we 
 happened to be near one of Lord Lindsey's country seats, 
 and I gladlydropped my travelling companion. I was too 
 disturbed in mind for society. Now, for the first time, I 
 felt toward my daughter like a father. If I had overtaken 
 her on the road, nothing would have exceeded my fury. 
 It would then have been a question of rebellion to have 
 A A 3 
 
S58 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 I now 
 
 been quelled, and guilt to have been prevented. 1 now 
 felt as if I had lost her for ever, and anger died away in 
 my breast. To be thus left totally alone, wife, son, and 
 daughter, to be successively lost, and all by my own fault, 
 — it was too much ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ^^ When I returned to my own house, I enquired eagerly 
 from every one of Louisa: they had no intelligence to 
 give. I had not been at home half an hour, when lieute- 
 nant Kenrick was announced. At the mention of that 
 name all my blood boiled up at once ; my rage returned in 
 full force ; the paternal feelings, which had begun to sway 
 me, instantly vanished. He entered. His looks were ex- 
 pressive only of the deepest distress and anguish. 
 
 ^^ ' Villain,' I cried, '^ what have you done with my 
 daughter ? ' 
 
 ^^ ' I appear before you,' answered the graceful youth, 
 ' a criminal. But I repent of my fault ; I will restore to 
 you your daughter, pure and uncontaminated as she came 
 into my hands. But, sir, I also come as a supplicant. You, 
 and you only, can repair a thousand mischiefs, which I 
 have undesigningly perpetrated.' 
 
 " He then told me all that had passed at your house ; that 
 by equivocal appearances you had been induced to believe 
 the existence of a criminal familiarity between him and 
 your wife ; that you had insulted her in the most oppro- 
 brious terms ; that even in such a moment she had hero- 
 ically refused to betray the secret of her friend ; that you 
 had quitted your house with a determination not to return 
 for years, and gone nobody knew whither ; and that you 
 had since written to your steward, ordering that Mrs. 
 Fleetwood should instantly be expelled from your home. 
 *' ' Do you think, sir,' added my visitor, * that on such 
 
FLEETWOOD. 359 
 
 an occasion, when I have been the cause of so vast a series 
 of calamities, I can aim at any gratification to myself? 
 Do you think, that while my patron and his amiable w4fe 
 are plunged in the depths of distress, I can engage in the 
 festivities of marriage ? No ; take back your daughter ! I 
 love her with an imperishable affection. But I have no 
 heart, even for Louisa, while I witness this desolation of 
 all that ought to be most dear to me. I never till in this 
 instance engaged in a plan of dissimulation ; and see to 
 what it has led me ! Do you believe I will ever repeat it ? 
 No ; I will never wed your daughter, unless it pleases 
 Heaven that I shall wed her in the face of day.' 
 
 '^ My soul yearned toward the boy. There is a con- 
 tagion in virtue and ingenuousness, that not the hardest 
 heart in nature, not even my heart, can resist. The pa- 
 ternal feeUngs, which had so auspiciously begun to in- 
 fluence me in my journey home, revived as he spoke. I 
 said to myself, ' This is the husband for my daughter ! ' — 
 I was never mercenary. I had always been an admirer of 
 virtue, though, alas ! from a distance. My stubborn 
 nature bowed before the integrity of Kenrick. I locked 
 his hand in mine. I said, ' You are an honest fellow ! I 
 forgive you the past ; I will find a time to settle accounts 
 with you. I will be the protector of Mrs. Fleetwood ; I 
 will not rest, till I have cleared the misunderstanding be- 
 tween her and her husband.' 
 
 '^ ' Let us then,' said Kenrick, ^ set out hand in hand 
 on this pious expedition ! I have no fears for our success, 
 if I am supported by a man of Mr. Scarborough's fortune 
 and consequence.' 
 
 '*^ I took Mrs. Fleetwood into my own house " 
 
 I interrupted my neighbour in his narration. — ^' Into 
 your own house ! Oh, if I had known that single circum- 
 stance, how much anguish should I have been saved ! I 
 should instantly have commenced a new and temperate in- 
 vestigation of the whole affair." 
 
 Mr. Scarborough resumed. — ^'^That and every other 
 particular were solicitously concealed from you by the vil- 
 lain who held you his prisoner. It is his characteristic, 
 wherever he goes, to scatter darkness around him, and 
 
 A A 4 
 
360 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 every man who comes within his circle, is smitten with 
 blindness. 
 
 ''^ I left Mrs. Fleetwood and Louisa together, and pro- 
 ceeded with Kenrick to Brighthelmstone. You- were gone. 
 We crossed to Dieppe, and went on to Paris. You were 
 not to be found. 1 employed my agents in England to 
 discover the place of your abode ; but to no purpose. 
 Sometimes I imagined I had gained a clue ; I pursued it ; 
 always without success. 1 have now no doubt that these 
 false intimations were supplied to my people by Gifford. 
 At length I learned, by letters from home, that a pro- 
 secution for adultery and divorce was commenced on your 
 part against your wife. When we received this inform- 
 ation, we were already in Poland, lured on by the false 
 intelligence that had been supplied to us. We instantly 
 set out for England ; we met with some unavoidable de- 
 lays ; and, wh«n arrived, we found that the trial had been 
 pushed on with extraordinary exertions ; that a solemn ad- 
 judication had been pronounced at midnight, just seven 
 hours before we reached London ; and a verdict, with ten 
 thousand pounds damages, had been given against your 
 kinsman. 
 
 ^' For our regale at our first breakfast in the metro- 
 polis, the newspaper was brought to us, seven columns of 
 which were filled with the trial for criminal conversation, 
 Fleetwood versus Kenrick. 
 
 ^' It is impossible to conceive the astonishment with 
 which we perused it. First came the speech of an eloquent 
 counsellor, who detailed the case with all its aggravations 
 before the court. He said, that so strong and complicated 
 a charge had never been submitted to that bench. That 
 the defendant, a mere pauper, a very distant relation, had 
 been taken up by the plaintiff out of charity. That, while 
 he had been receiving hourly benefits from your hands, he 
 had gone on for months polluting the wife of your bosom 
 under the roof of his benefactor. He mentioned the evi- 
 dences he had of the criminal conversation in Merioneth- 
 shire, who would state such particulars, as would leave no 
 doubt in the minds of any of his hearers. He added, that 
 he could further establish the charge, by a witness^ a dis.- 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 361 
 
 carded servant, who had heard the confession of the ille- 
 gitimacy of the child just born, from the mouth of the 
 adulteress." 
 
 " ^ The counsellor is mad/ said I. ' What does he mean?* 
 
 '^ ' These allegations,' he proceeded, ' are all in my 
 instructions.' 
 
 ^' I looked on to the report of the evidence : they stated 
 and swore specifically to every thing the pleader had de- 
 scribed. The paper dropped from my hand. 
 
 '' Kenrick ! 
 
 *^The lieutenant fell upon his knees. — ' By the great 
 God that made me,' he said, ^ all this is utterly false ! ' 
 
 ^^ For a moment, prepared as I was with a knowledge of 
 the truth, I believed the examinations on the trial. Ken- 
 rick at length succeeded — what is impossible to ingenu- 
 ousness like his ? — in restoring himself to my good 
 opinion. If you had witnessed his earnestness, his agi- 
 tation, his vehemence, his broken exclamations of surprise, 
 and his tears, you would have been convinced, as rapidly 
 as I was. 
 
 " I sent instantly for the lawyers whom I had retained 
 for the defence, and we settled measures for the pro- 
 secution of the perjurers. Kenrick knew them all, and 
 was able to supply such a clue for their detection, as bore 
 with it every promise of success. If we had arrived in 
 London a week sooner, my lawyers assured me the cause 
 would have taken a very different turn. 
 
 " Having occasion to go out about some business in the 
 evening, I saw from the window of my coach the figure of 
 Gifford gliding along by the light of the lamps. 1 had 
 now no doubt that he was the secret spring of all these 
 machinations. I stopped the carriage. 1 was in the street 
 in a moment. I no longer saw him. I glanced a figure 
 that seemed to be his. At the corner of a street I lost it. 
 Of two directions I did not know which the person had 
 taken. I suppose I took the wrong first; but I saw him 
 no more. 
 
 " The next morning, as Kenrick and I sat at breakfast, to 
 our exceeding surprise, Mr. Gifford was announced. "We 
 consulted for a moment. I said, ' Kenrick, he is come 
 
362 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 with a warrant to arrest you for the damages awarded ; 
 you had better withdraw.' — This seemed infinitely im- 
 probable; Kenrick could not resist the desire he felt to 
 face his brother ; he was admitted. 
 
 ^'^ This accompHshed hypocrite succeeded in convincing 
 us, that he had no concern in the plot, which had advanced 
 thus far triumphantly against us. He owned that he had 
 almost constantly attended upon you; but he protested 
 that his motive had been the desire to mitigate your re- 
 sentment against Mrs. Fleetwood and his brother. He 
 said, that after encountering much resistance and obstinacy, 
 he had in a great degree subdued you, and had come over 
 for the express purpose of postponing the trial. But, un- 
 fortunately, he had come too late; the diligence of the 
 lawyers had outstripped his. He called Kenrick aside ; he 
 enquired particularly into the situation of Mrs. Fleetwood, 
 and gave him a draft of two hundred pounds for her use. 
 He furnished us with the address of the place where he 
 said you at present were, and advised Kenrick by all means 
 to repair to you, and to improve upon the measures of re- 
 conciliation which he had so happily begun. 
 
 " At the city in Italy which GifFord pointed out to us, we 
 learned that you had lately been there, but were gone, and 
 had left no clue by which we could pursue you. We 
 made an appointment, on our return, to meet Mrs. Fleet- 
 wood and Louisa at Paris, whither a relation of Mrs. Fleet- 
 wood's mother, whom I had waited upon when, a few 
 months before, I came to that metropolis, and to whom I 
 had explained the unhappy situation of her kinswoman, 
 invited her, to come and lie in. This seems to be the only 
 circumstance that escaped the vigilance of GifFord. He 
 had improved the period of our absence to complete the 
 ecclesiastical proceedings, and the act of divorce. He con- 
 trived, at the same time, to put off the trials for perjury. 
 Reviewing the whole affair, I have now no doubt that he 
 succeeded in corrupting our lawyers, the solicitors, if not 
 the pleaders, as well as made use of extraordinary appli-. 
 cations to accelerate his own. 
 
 " At Paris we received an account of the conclusion of the 
 wh ole proceedings, and certainy now saw the conduct of 
 
FLEETWOOD. 
 
 363 
 
 Gifford in a very different light, from that in which he had 
 persuaded us to view it in London. It would have been 
 madness any longer to doubt. The veil which hid from 
 us the truth was demolished, even beyond the skill of that 
 arch-deceiver to repair it. Not the generous confidence and 
 fraternal sentiments of Kenrick himself could delude him. 
 GifFord, in the mean time, came over to Paris, pursuant to 
 his appointment with you. We were once more within the 
 walls of the same city. 
 
 " Two days since, Kenrick and Gifford met each other in 
 the Palais Royal. They were mutually surprised, neither 
 having the least idea that the other was in Paris. The 
 behaviour of Gifford, on this occasion, was very different 
 from what it had been a few months before in London. 
 Kenrick went up to him with a fixed brow, and said, — 
 
 " ' Whence do you come, sir ? Who is it that has been 
 so diligent in procuring the decree of the ecclesiastical 
 court, and the act of parliament, against my aunt ? Ap- 
 pearances are grievously against you ! ' 
 
 " ^ Have a care, my friend ! ' retorted Gifford. ' I will 
 not be suspected for nothing ! " 
 
 '^ ' Gifford, Gifford, if in reality you have been playing a 
 traitor's part, it is time you should drop the mask ! ' 
 
 " ' You discredit, then, the professions I have made you } 
 Every thing that I have done to save you from ruin you 
 regard with a maligant eye? Another time you shall 
 know whether I am your friend ! The next service I ren- 
 der you, be sure of it, shall have your thanks ! * 
 
 " ' Where is my uncle ? is he in Paris ? ' 
 
 '^ ' Your uncle and your aunt ! Lay aside these fopperies, 
 ■which so ill become you. Talk, if you can, like a man ! — 
 If Mr. Fleetwood persists in believing you perfidious, am 
 I to blame } If he is able to prove it to the satisfaction of 
 the whole world, whose fault, pray, is that } ' 
 
 '^ ' Where is Mr. Fleetwood ? ' 
 
 '' '^He is not in Paris. — I will answer no more ques- 
 tions. — Kenrick, I do not understand the tone you assume. 
 I have stuck by you too long. Henceforth be no brother 
 of mine ! ' 
 
 ^' ' Then as enemies ! ' 
 
364> 
 
 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 *' ' Then as enemies !' 
 
 "^ '^ In that character I shall find a time, and shall call 
 you to account ! ' 
 
 " ' When you please. I am to be found.' 
 
 '^ GifFord, it appears^ was now so near the accomplishment 
 of all his objects^ that he thought it unnecessary to practise 
 disguise any further. The devil himself sometimes grows 
 tired of the character of a deceiver, and appears in his true 
 colours. In imagination already the possessor of all your 
 estates^ GifFord was in haste to shake off his brother as an 
 useless incumbrance. 
 
 " He had^ in reality, no time to lose. You had expressed 
 repeatedly a desire to elucidate the truth in person, and by 
 a temperate discussion with the parties themselves. Gif- 
 ford found that we were in Paris ; and, perhaps, suspected 
 that Mrs. Fleetwood might be so too. One unlucky horn- 
 might overturn the fabric which he had erected at the ex- 
 pense of such a world of guilt. He touched the goal. 
 
 ^' Kenrick had the next day, yesterday, an engagement 
 with a young French nobleman to proceed to Fontainebleau. 
 They were attended each with a servant. They met you 
 on the road. You know the rest." 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 4 
 
 I LISTENED to the narrative of Mr. Scarborough, with 
 emotions of shame and horror against myself. It was a 
 wonderful story ; but I was convinced. 
 
 I had scarcely had time to utter a few incoherent ex- 
 clamations it drew from me, when Kenrick burst into the 
 room. It was he I had heard in the night conferring with 
 my nurse. He had constantly kept watch at my chamber- 
 door ; but he had not ventured to intrude, till Mr. Scar- 
 borough had prepared the way by a full explanation. 
 
 He flew to my knees ! " Uncle, uncle/' said he, " will 
 
FLEETWOOD. 365 
 
 you forgive ? It was all my fault. How could I dare to 
 deceive, to have a secret from, a benefactor I so loved ? " 
 
 " This is too much I" I exclaimed ; and fell back upon 
 my pillow. I thought Jiat_, if Mary and Kenrick were 
 proved innocent, it would be all joy. It is the reverse. It 
 is a feeling without a name. It is worse than remorse; 
 it is hell. " Kenrick, I dare not look upon you. Kill me_, 
 my friends, in pity kill me ! I am unworthy to live." 
 
 Kenrick exerted himself to soothe me ; and never did 
 male of the human species enjoy so great powers for the 
 purpose. Martha understood what was going on, and would 
 come in. She had a child in her arms." 
 
 " Oh, sir, you asked me whose servant I was, and I 
 Tvould not tell you. I am my mistress's, your lady's, ser- 
 vant. She brought me over to France. She would have 
 me to be with her in her lying-in. And there is her child, 
 the dear boy, that so much harm has been brewed about. 
 Look at him ! He has exactly your mouth ; nothing can 
 be more like than his brow ; I will take my death, that he 
 is as like you, as if you had spit him out of your mouth. 
 Oh, my dear master, my benefactor, will you acknowledge 
 him ? Kiss him ! I die to see you kiss him." 
 
 I took the child in my arms. I willingly believed all 
 that Martha said of him ; my eyes were too much dimmed 
 with tears to see any thing distinctly. I pressed him to 
 my bosom. I felt that he was the pledge of the most in- 
 jured of women. I experienced a hundred times the joy 
 that the tenderest-hearted man in the world ever felt, when 
 his first-born son was presented to him ; because I had 
 believed — what had not infernal villany induced me to 
 believe ? 
 
 Mary, my wife, the mother of my child, only was 
 absent. I enquired for her with a faltering tongue. 
 " Ah, sir ! she lives," said Martha. 
 " Do not think I enquire for her, as wishing to see her ! 
 Dear, injured saint ! I could not look at her. What had 
 I to do to marry ? to choose the most accomplished and 
 admirable of her sex ? I, that had done wrong, and mis- 
 carried, in every station and stage of my life ! Would God 
 my eyes were closed for ever ! that recollection were at an 
 
366 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 end in my mind ! that mountains pressed down in peace 
 this hand that has acted^ and these Hps that have spoken, 
 so much evil ! — Yet tell me_, I entreat you, Martha, how 
 your mistress is ? " 
 
 '^ It will do you little good, sir, to hear of that I" 
 '^ Dear uncle," interrupted Kenrick, '^ compose your- 
 self! You appear scarcely glad to have all your sus- 
 picions removed. That which should elevate you with the 
 highest pleasure, seems only to torment you." 
 
 " True, true, Kenrick ! Can I do otherwise than lament, 
 that the woman I have lost for ever is so excellent, — 
 would have made me inexpressibly happy, had I not been 
 the wickedest of men ? She can never approach me, never 
 condescend to speak to me, more. Have not you heard her 
 say so ?" 
 
 They were silent. 
 
 The period at which I quitted her, had been to Mary 
 a terrible crisis. What I did appeared to my own mind 
 sufficiently justified, for I regarded her as guilty of the 
 most enormous of all social crimes, a complicated, a stu- 
 dious, a shameless delusion put upon the husband of her 
 bosom, an elaborate pretence to the purest faith, when all 
 was false and hollow. But as it appeared to her, — let me 
 speak plainly, — as it w^as in itself, as it appeared in the 
 eyes of heaven and earth, — my conduct was the most cruel 
 and atrocious that ever was perpetrated. 
 
 Poor Mary ! her heart, that heart which had '' grown 
 with her growth, and strengthened with her strength," was 
 buried in the caverns of the ocean. Fifteen months before 
 the period at which I deserted her, she no longer held to 
 the great mass of living existences but by a single thread. 
 For my sake, with great difficulty and anguish, she had 
 formed to herself a new scheme of being, and had come 
 back into the world from which she was broken off. And 
 now I, the man for whom she had done this, left her with- 
 out a home, without reputation, without bread. I had 
 ''^ delighted myself with the hope that she would perish in 
 misery." 
 
 How had all this happened ? Mary had never, till 
 within a few minutes of our final parting, heard her name 
 
FLEETWOOD. 367 
 
 coupled disreputably with that of Kenrick. Kenrick, half 
 an hour before, when I flew toward him, bursting with 
 abhorrence and revenge, did not understand me, was unable 
 to conceive the slightest idea of what it was that had roused 
 me to this tumult. However strong were the grounds that 
 I thought I had for condemning my kinsman and my wife, 
 she could discern none ; to her it must appear the most in- 
 famous caprice that the heart of man ever harboured. 
 
 ]Mary was turned out, like Lear in the old chronicles, 
 to the fury of the elements. Had not Mr. Scarborough 
 taken the generous resolution to shelter her, she must have 
 died. At the time when she found herself treated with 
 this inconceivable barbarity, was that a moment when she 
 could devise schemes to support existence.^ She would 
 not have had the spirits to ask one human creature for a 
 morsel of bread. Speechless she would have sunk into 
 the arms of death. And she was several months gone 
 with child ! 
 
 Louisa did every thing in her power to support her lan- 
 guishing friend. Alas,* poor Mary abhorred the light of 
 heaven ! She detested the idea of taking nutriment within 
 her lips. Her state of pregnancy co-operated with the 
 disorder of her mind. For the first two days she was al- 
 most continually in fainting fits. Her Hfe was not ex- 
 pected. It seemed scarcely less than a miracle, that her 
 condition did not at least produce a miscarriage. 
 
 Indignation, I believe, in this situation served her for 
 her daily bread. Though her nature was gentle, and her 
 manners bland and unassuming, she had pride at the bottom 
 of her heart, a pride that perhaps towered the higher, in 
 proportion as it was slow to be awaked. She remembered 
 the scene in the garden when I had so brutally insulted 
 her ; she remembered the dialogue in which I had inter- 
 rogated her, " Who was the father of the child she bore in 
 hef womb ? " She sat down under this treatment without 
 any manifestations of violence and rage. But she said to 
 herself, " The daughter of Macneil shall never forgive this !" 
 She reflected, as was but natural, upon the desolate con- 
 dition in which her family misfortunes had left her, and 
 she regarded these as so many aggravations of the cruelty 
 
368 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 slie had experienced. — '' Fleetwood^ if I had had patrons 
 and protectors still living, if I had not come dowerless to 
 your bed, you could not have used me thus ungenerously. 
 No; I could live at a distance from the abodes of my 
 species on the fruits of the earth ; I could labour among 
 peasants for my bread ; this I should not feel as humili- 
 ation ; but I cannot stoop ever again to hold intercourse 
 with the husband that has wronged me." 
 . If Mary recollected these aggravations of my offence, 
 they did not present themselves with less bitterness to my 
 mind. I dwelt upon her innocence, her merits, her de- 
 fenceless situation, her extinguished race, her embezzled 
 fortune. It seemed as if, now that what the vulgar mind 
 would call the obstacles to our re-union were removed, we 
 were more certainly divided than ever. While charges, 
 and accusations, and historical details, were the mountains 
 that separated us, the case was not altogether hopeless. 
 These might be cleared away and refuted. Now we were 
 separated by sentiments, that must for ever twine them- 
 selves with the vitals of every honourable individual, and 
 that can only be exterminated by the blow which lays the 
 head that has conceived them in the dust. 
 
 Once, as we have seen, Mary so far mastered her feel- 
 ings as to write me a letter. The purport of that letter 
 was to reinstate the injured Kenrick in my good opinion, 
 and to claim my justice for the child, my own child, which 
 was shortly to be born : even in that letter she recited the 
 decree that she had herself pronounced between us, that 
 we were never to see, that we were mutually to be dead to 
 each other. When she saw that letter producing no effect, 
 the horror she had conceived against me changed, from a 
 passion, into a habit of her soul. She never thought of 
 me, but as of a man resolutely unjust, to whom the most 
 earnest appeals of eternal truth might be addressed with as 
 much hope as to the Great Wall of China. 
 
 Kenrick and Scarborough were indefatigable in their 
 endeavours to restore me to her good opinion and favour. 
 They assured her that the letter upon which she laid so 
 much stress had never reached me : they described to her 
 the compUcated machinations of the villain Gifford, which 
 
FLEETWOOD. 3^9 
 
 might have succeeded with the most clear-sighted and 
 cold-blooded husband in the world. She listened to all 
 this with an unattending ear. ' "Very well!" said she. 
 '' Do not you perceive, that one dispassionate question, one 
 five minutes of tranquil investigation, would have brushed 
 away in a moment the cobweb intrenchments of Gifford ? 
 Did I deserve no more than this ?" 
 
 Kenrick was now become my confident. I related to 
 him all that had happened from the evening that I burst 
 away from him on the banks of the Kennet. These things 
 he faithfully repeated to my wife. He described to her 
 my sufferings, my insanity, my despair. He spoke of the 
 supper 1 had celebrated on the fifteenth of July. On 
 this she seemed to ponder. " Poor Fleetwood !" she said. 
 
 My wife and I had now been four weeks in Paris, with 
 only the length of a street between us. I thought of her 
 continually ; but I knew the integrity and elevation of her 
 sentiments; and I felt as if I should die, if I met her even 
 by chance. 
 
 One evening I sat alone in my hotel, I had had a long 
 and affecting conversation with Kenrick. I had settled 
 the arrangements of my future existence, and had been ac- 
 quainting him with the particulars, I was resolved to 
 retire to a strange, wild, despairing situation, which had 
 formerly left a deep impression upon me, in the midst of 
 the Pyrenees. I found that this httle estate was to be sold. 
 I reserved to myself an annuity of four hundred pounds a 
 year upon my property in England. The rest of my pos- 
 sessions I made over in full to my wife and child, except 
 one agreeable manor, worth about eighteen thousand pounds, 
 which I settled on Kenrick ; a testimony that, of all the men 
 living on the face of the earth, he was the one that most 
 deserved my love. I demanded of him that he should 
 visit me in my retreat once in two years, bringing my 
 child with him, and should remain each time a few weeks 
 imder my roof. 
 
 It was dusk. Miss Scarborough and another lady en- 
 tered the room where I sat. The apartment was large ; 
 they withdrew to a distant corner of it ; and, upon the 
 terms on which we lived, it was not necessary for me to 
 
376 FLEETWOOD. 
 
 derange myself. If it were a Frenchwoman of fashion and 
 high spirits, she would be told^ it was only the melancholy 
 Enghshman ; and that would be deemed a sufficient apo- 
 logy. I was buried in my own thoughts. They seated 
 themselves, and continued in a dead silence. I know not 
 how it was, but this silence disturbed me. It was so 
 unlike what I had been accustomed to expect. I looked 
 toward them. Just at this moment lights were brought 
 in, and placed silently upon the table* The strange lady 
 was clad in black, and a veil covered her face. It struck 
 me that her figure was the most beautiful that was ever 
 seen. Her attitude was expressive of dejection and me- 
 lancholy. She seemed, so far as I could judge, again and 
 again to glance at me, and then turn away. I felt my 
 heart thump at my bosom, and my sight grew dizzy. — 
 She wrung her hands, and put them to her head. She 
 rose as if to go, and leaned on Miss Scarborough. Her 
 legs tottered, and she sat down again upon another chair. 
 *' Fleetwood ! " said she. — Oh, that voice ! Contending- 
 emotions, hope, fear, transport, and shame, held me mo- 
 tionless. 
 
 She threw back her veil, and I saw the godhke irradia- 
 tions of innocence : pale she was, and emaciated with aU 
 she had suffered. She looked the less Hke an inhabitant of 
 this terrestrial globe. 
 
 " Take my hand ! " she said; and stretched it out. " Take 
 my heart." She fell into my arms. " You shall not make 
 your next wedding supper like the last ! " 
 
 It is impossible for any one to imagine what I felt at 
 that moment. Whenever I recollect it, I am astonished 
 that I did not expire on the spot. Remorse, while the 
 party against whom we have oflPended still retains its re- 
 sentment, and regards us with disdain, scarcely raises the 
 outermost cuticle of the heart. It is from the hour in which 
 we are forgiven, that the true remorse commences. That 
 I could ever have acted thus toward the angelic creature 
 •who condescends to pardon me for what I acted, — this is 
 the sensation that is sharper than all the pains of hell ! 
 
 Another feeling succeeded. Mary never looked half so 
 beautiful, half so radiant, as now. Innocence is nothing. 
 
FLEETWOOD. 371 
 
 if it is merely innocence. It is guileless nature, when im- 
 pleaded as a stern and inhuman bar, when dragged out to 
 contumely and punishment, when lifting up its head in 
 conscious honour, when Heaven itself seems to interpose 
 to confound the mahce of men, and declares, '' This is the 
 virtue that I approve \" there, there is presented to us the 
 most ravishing spectacle that earth can boast. I never till 
 now was sensible of half the merits of ray wife. 
 
 Gifford died by the hands of the public executioner. 
 The ministers of law who pronounced upon him, knew 
 little of the series of his crimes ; but it was proved that 
 he had assailed me on the highway, and purposed to assas- 
 sinate me that he might possess my estate ; and he was 
 adjudged to die. 
 
 I shed no tear upon the bier of GiflPord. I reviewed the 
 whole series of his life from the cradle to the scaffold. I 
 have always regarded with horror those sanguinary laws 
 which, under the name of justice, strike at the life of man. 
 For his sake I was willing to admit of one exception. 
 His whole existence had been a series of the most mon- 
 strous and unnatural crimes. For what society, or plant- 
 ation of men, in the remotest corner of the globe, was he 
 fitted? What discipline, or penitentiary confinement, 
 could rationally be expected to inspire him with one touch 
 of human nature? Die then, poor wretch, and let the 
 earth, which labours with thy depravity, be relieved .' 
 
 On the seventh day from that in which Mary and 1 met 
 in the manner I have described, Kenrick and his Louisa 
 were united : and Mr. Scarborough, who had shown him- 
 self so harsh and austere as a parent^ became the most 
 indulgent of grandsires. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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