Part 23 (1/1)

I retired in a fewrew up undercare, lovely and beloved

'While every day, soft as it roll'd along, Shew'd some new charm'

I observed your affection for each other with a flattering presage

With the features of your father, you inherited his intrepidity, and ht I perceived the seeds of his inflexible spirit; but the caresses of my Emma, more fortunate than her mother--yet, with all her mother's sensibility--could, in an instant, soften you to tenderness, and melt you into infantine sweetness

I endeavoured to forenerous sentiment--You received, from the same masters, the same lessons, till you attained your twelfth year; and ress I observed, with a mixture of hope and solicitude, her lively capacity--her enthusiastic affections; while I laboured to ulate them

It now became necessary that your educations should take a somewhat different direction; I wished to fit you for a commercial line of life; but the ardor you discovered for science and literature occasioned ht unfit you for application to trade, in the pursuit of which so many talents are sed up, and poasted Yet, as to the professions my objections were still more serious--The study of law, is the study of chicanery--The church, the school of hypocrisy and usurpation! You could only enter the universities by a radation, that must check the freedo it in an inexplicable maze of error and contradiction, _poison virtue at its source_, and lay the foundation for a duplicity of character and a perversion of reason, destructive of every rity For the science of physic you expressed a disinclination A neighbouring gentleh in his profession, and of liberal manners, to whose friendshi+p I was indebted, offered to take you You were delighted with this proposal, (to which I had no particular objection) as you had a taste for drawing and architecture

Our separation, though you were to reside in the same town, cost us many tears--I loved you withround the neck of her beloved brother, her Augustus, her playfellow, and sobbed on his bosole yourself from our embraces Every moment of leisure you flew to us--my Emma learned from you to draw plans, and to study the laws of proportion

Every little exuberance in your disposition, which, generated by a noble pride, sometimes wore the features of asperity, was soothed into peace by her gentleness and affection: while she delighted to emulate your fortitude, and to rise superior to the feebleness fostered in her sex, under the specious name of delicacy Your mutual attachment encreased with your years, I renewed my existence in my children, and anticipated their more perfect union

Ah! e with the tale of sorrow? Can I tear open again, can I cause to bleed afresh, in your heart and my oounds scarcely closed? In her fourteenth year, in the spring of life, your Ehted by a killing frost--After a few days illness, she drooped, faded, languished, and died!

It was now that I felt--'That no agonies were like the agonies of a mother' My broken spirits, from these repeated sorrows, sunk into habitual, hopeless, dejection Prospects, that I had ht, were for ever veiled in darkness Every earthly tie was broken, except that which bound you to er cord of affection You wept, in my arms, the loss of her whom you, yet, fondly believed your sister--I cherished the illusion lest, by dissolving it, I should weaken your confidence in my maternal love, weaken that tenderness which was now ustus, _ for dissolution, still continues to flutter! I have unfolded the errors of my past life--I have traced them to their source--I have laid bare my mind before you, that the experiments which have been made upon it may be beneficial to yours! It has been a painful, and a huuish As the enthusiasm--as the passions of otten emotions have been revived in s of contemned love_--the disappointment of rational plans of usefulness--the dissolution of the darling hopes of e sheds its snows uponfra closes upon me, the seasons revolve, without hope; the sun shi+nes, the spring returns, but, to me, it is mockery

And is this all of human life--this, that passes like a tale that is told? Alas! it is a tragical tale! Friendshi+p was the star, whose cheering influence I courted to beahted course The social affections were necessary to my existence, but they have been only inlets to sorrow--_yet, still, I bind them tostrangely wrong in the constitutions of society--a lurking poison that spreads its contagion far and wide--a canker at the root of private virtue and private happiness--a principle of deception, that sanctifies error--a Circean cup that lulls into a fatal intoxication But h the advance is tardy

Moral martyrdom may possibly be the fate of those who press forward, yet, their generous efforts will not be lost--Posterity will plant the olive and the laurel, and consecrate theirto trace, to their springs, errors the most hoary, and prejudices the most venerated, emancipate the human mind from the tranity and virtue, consist in being free_

Ere I sink into the grave, let e of hiave an early, but a mortal blow, to all ustus, escaped from the tyranny of the passions, restored to reason, to the vigor of his nity of active, intrepid virtue!

The dawn of ht day; before its noon, thick clouds gathered; its looild with a ; before the scene shuts, and veils the prospect in impenetrable darkness