THE first temptations and inclinations to swerve from the paths of honour and propriety of conduct ought to be carefully guarded against, and firmly resisted, as otherwise we may insensibly be led into the most reprehensible errors, the effects of which may prove fatal to all our future peace and happiness.

Charles Euston and Frederic Barlow, having been educated in the same public seminary, had contracted an intimacy with each other which increased every day into the closest connection, and with their ripening years produced the warmest and most enthusiastic friendship. In their youthful sports they were inseparable, and they seemed to possess their little property in common. Neither could want any thing that belonged to the other, for the moment his wish was discovered by his companion it was at his disposal. In their business in the school, each aided the other to the utmost of his ability; and in any little dispute with their com

panions, they invariably took part with each other. When they had attained to more mature years, the same disinterested friendship continued between them; and though they were now sometimes separated from each other for considerable intervals, an espistolary correspond ence maintained their inviolable connection; and their temporary sepa rations seemed only to render their attachment to each other still more close and strong.

When a few years had thus passed on, a more tender and more forcible passion than that of friendship arose in the breast of Mr. Euston. He had seen Amelia Warton. He saw, and he admired; he admired, and he loved; he loved, and he sought her approbation of his passion. This his sincere and natural expression of his ardent affection soon obtained; for Amelia was no coquette, and a stranger to affectation. With a most delicate modesty, and in a languɔge which the heart well understands, Hh2

she gave her consent that he should love her; and Mr. Euston felt a happiness utterly unknown to him before. He seemed as it were to be born into a new world, a new world of transcendent felicity.

In his next letter to his friend Frederic, he communicated to him his happiness. He described his lovely Amelia in the most glowing and rapturous language. He expatiated on the delicacy of her manners, the gentleness of her disposition, and the benign goodness of her heart. In short, she formed almost the only subject of his letter; for as he could think of nothing else, so of nothing else could he write.

A short time after Mr. Barlow made a visit to his friend Euston, and was by him introduced to the idol of his heart, the charming Amelia, Fatal, alas! was the introduction to all the parties. Mr. Barlow had smiled at the panegyric of his friend George,on the beauties and admirable qualities of his mistress; he had taken it for merely the rhapsody of a lover who had been blinded, to defects by his passion: but when he beheld Amelia, he was so struck at the first sight of her, that all the eulogiums of his friend appeared to him poor and barren, in comparison with her excellence. The more he gazed, and the more he conversed with her, the more he admired her; and this admiration soon became a most violent passion, which might be called love, could that name be given to what is contrary to every obligation of honour, to every claim of friendship. Though the solemn union of hands had not absolutely taken place between Mr. Euston and Amelia, Mr. Barlow knew well that their hearts were pledged to each other; and his conscience could not but tell him that it was base and even criminal in no small degree to attempt to break such a bond, espe

cially when it could only be done by acting in the most treacherous manner towards the man with whom he had always lived in habits of the strictest and most ardent friendship.

But Mr. Barlow did not attempt to restrain his reprehensible passion, but suffered it to increase upon him till he formed the perfidious design to supplant, if possible, his friend. He found some opportunities of being with Amelia when Mr. Euston was not present, for the generous disposition of the latter prevented his perceiving or even suspecting the designs of his now treacherous friend. On these occasions he always spoke to her very slightingly of Mr. Euston, and endeavoured to insinuate that he was by no means the man he appeared to be either in character, disposition, or property. When he hoped that by these suggestions he had made some impression on her, he took an opportunity, when they were alone in a park near the residence of Mr. Euston, to throw himself in a suppliant posture, and make a most vehement declaration of his passion. Amelia was thunder-struck, and stood like one almost deprived of sense. When she had recovered herself a little from the first shock, she endeavoured to get from him: but he forcibly detained her, and behaved as if frantic; while she trembled in the utmost agitation, and cried out aloud for assistance, under the strongest impressions of fear for her person.

It chanced that at this very time Mr.Euston had unexpectedly returned home, and was come into the park in quest of his dear Amelia and his friend. He heard her cries with equal astonishment and alarm, and hastily rushing forwards to the spot, found that his bosom friend,in whom he never could have conceived the existence of treachery,was the author of the assault. Rage and indignation on the part of Mr. Euston, surprise

and shame on the part of the perfilious assailant, and confusion and terror on that of Amelia, rendered them all three for some moments silent. At length, the injured lover having enquired of Amelia what had passed, and been imperfectly informed by her, as well as the extreme agitation she suffered would permit, burst forth in a torrent of the bitterest reproaches on the base attempter to supplant him in the affections of her he held dearer than his life. Barlow, enraged at the de tection, and the contemptible situation in which he was placed, answered with equal vehemence and asperity, and from mutual invectives they passed, not indeed to immediate blows, but to a challenge to decide their fatal dispute with pistols. In despite of all the entreaties, of all the adjurations of the agonised Amelia, they met, according to appointment, a few hours afterwards. At the first fire each wounded his antagonist. Mr. Euston received the ball in his body, and Mr. Barlow in the upper part of the arm. Mr. Euston's wound appeared at first the most serious; but the bone of Mr. Barlow's arm being shattered, and a mortification beginning to make its appearance, he was obliged to suffer amputation. The ball was extracted from Mr. Euston's wound, and he seemed to be in no danger, but in a few months it appeared that some internal part of consequence had been so much injured as to produce a rapid decline, to which he fell a victim in less than a twelvemonth. Amelia, from the shock she had experienced, and the effect of immoderate grief for his loss, survived him but a little more than a year; and the bitter remorse which rent the heart of the suffering Bar low, when he recollected the mischief he had occasioned, rendered

- GAIRISH day had given place to sober evening: Sol had terminated his diurnal career, and garnished the west with purple and gold, when I began a solitary walk; not to climb the verdant hill, and view the sylvani scenery of nature, nor to visit my favourite grove, to hear the soft dest cant of the nightingale; but to enter a scene big with solemnity and replete with awe: and to ruminate over the relics of deceased relatives and de parted fellow mortals.

A solemn stillness pervaded the dreary recess; no sounds assailed the listening ear, save the nocturnal dirge of the owl, and the barkings of a watch-dog at a distant farm. The bird of night, on hearing the foot of an intruder, winged his slow flight to some other solitude; and at length sleep and silence closed the eyes and sealed up the tongue of the noisy.

cur.

A mind less tinctured with a be

Fief in apparitions would, perhaps, have felt a tremor while traversing this depository of the dead. To have felt no emotion, he must have been possessed of stronger nerves than I can boast of,

This was the spot where superstitious fear Believes that white-clad spectres oft appear; Where injur'd ghosts arise, and grimly glide To haunt the house where perjur'd swains reside

To fill the guilty mind with awful dread,
And shake the curtains of the murd'rer's bed.
Weak superstitious dream! while there I
walk'd,

No disembodied shade before me stalk'd;
Chas'd by bright reason's clear refulgent ray,
These wild chimeras vanish all away.'

Author's Manuscript Poem.

As I traversed the gloomy domain where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,' the grave of a young friend drew my attention; and retrospection exhibited to view the early period of life, when with the tenant of this humble tomb Iranged through nature's fairest scenes, rambled through her groves, mounted her hills, and descended into her vales, to find the blackbird's mudwalled tenement, or to purloin the linnet of her speckled brood.

- Dear departed youth! those pastimes and recreations I enjoyed with thee (how unlike the amusement of siper years!)

Left no foul stain upon the wing of Time.'

Crossing the church path-way, I beheld the tomb of a respectable old man, who was, in the truest sense of the word, a village philosopher. Let my rustic muse sketch his character.

Near where I trod reclin'd respected age. I knew him well-a venerable sage; Who travell'd thro' this world serenely mild, And Providence upon his journey smil'd: Religion's radiant path he wisely trod, And studied with delight the book of God; From that blest source the best of knowledge drew,

And (pleasing thought 4) he practis'd what he "knew.

Oft on his words my fixt attention hung,

While wisdom flow'd from his persuasive
tongue :
Fond of admonishing unguarded youth,
He pointed out to me the road of truth
Advice when given in language soft and kind,
How grateful to a young enquiring mind.

Thou friend of peace! it was thy constant aim To calm life's storm and quench fierce discord's flame;

Till thy mild spirit, ripe for scenes of bliss, Dropp'd its clay robe, and soar'd to realms of

peace.

Oh how unlike the man of martial fame,
Who rush to arms to gain a glorious name;
Who, goaded by ambition's mad desire,
To gain renown would set the globe on fire;
Would wade thro' seas of blood his wish
t'obtain,

And climb to empire over hills of slain !

Edmund, farewell! Thy philanthropic mind No longer seeks the good of human kind; No more thy feeling, amicable breast Dilates with joy, to see thy neighbour blest: Thy soul, from earth's contentious clime remov'd, Enjoys that sweet serenity it lov'd.'

In the course of my meditations I tion with which the humble, the was led to reflect upon the inattenuseful, and pious man is treated by the bustling world.

The world o'erlooks him, in her busy search

Of objects more illustrious in her view;
And occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the

world.

She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them

not;

He seeks not hers, for he has prov'd'em

vain.

He cannot skim the ground, like summer birds

Pursuing gilded flies; and such he deems

Her honours, her emoluments, and joys.
Not slothful he,though seeming unemploy'd,
And censur'd oft as useless. Stillest streams
Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird
That flutters least is longest on the wing.

Perhaps the self-approving haughty world,
That,as shesweeps him with her whistlingsilks,
Scarce deigns to notice him, or if she see,
Deems him a cypher in the works of God,
Receives advantage from his noiseless hours
Of which she little dreams. Perhaps she