as it did from those who, in their days of prosperity, professed nothing, while those who professed all things had done nothing. Mary would so reason, and then retire to her own chamber to weep alone over things more hard to bear.

It is painful to observe what bitterness will creep into the heart and manner of really kind girls where a lover is in the case, or even where a commonplace dangling sort of flirtation is going forward; this depreciating ill nature, one of the other, is not confined by any means to the fair sex. Young men pick each other to pieces with even more fierceness, but less ingenuity; they deal in a cut-and-hack sort of sarcasm, and do not hesitate to use terms and insinuations of the harshest kind when a lady is in the case. Mary (to distinguish her from her high-bred cousin, she was generally called Mary Charles) was certainly disappointed when her wedding was postponed in consequence of her uncle's death; but a much more painful feeling followed when she saw the admiration her lover, Edwin Lechmere, bestowed upon her beautiful cousin. Mary Charles was herself a beauty-fair, open-eyed, warm-hearted the beauty of Repton; but though feature by feature, inch by inch, she was as handsome as Mary, yet in her cousin was the grace and spirit given only by good society; the manners elevated by a higher mind, and toned down by sorrow; a gentle softness, which a keen observer of human nature told me once no woman ever possessed unless she had deeply loved, and suffered from disappointed affection; in short, she was far more refined, far more fascinating, than her country cousin. Besides, she was unfortunate, and that at once gave her a hold upon the sympathies of the young curate. It did no more; but Mary Charles did not understand these nice distinctions, and nothing could exceed the change of manner she evinced when her cousin and her betrothed were together.

Mary thought her cousin rude and petulant; but the true cause of the change never occurred to her. Accustomed to the high-toned courtesy of well-bred men, which is so little practised in the middle class of English society, it never suggested itself that placing her chair, or opening the door for her to go out, or rising courteously when she came into a room, was more than, as a lady, she had a right to expect; in truth, she did not notice it at all; but she did notice, and feel deeply, her cousin's alternate coldness and snappishness of manner. "I would not," thought Mary, "have behaved so to her if she had been left desolate; but in a little time, when my mother is more content, I will leave Repton, and become independent by my talents." Never did she think of the power delegated to her by the Almighty without feeling herself raised-ay, higher than she had ever been in the days of her splendour in the scale of moral usefulness; as every one must feel whose mind is rightly framed. She had not yet known what it was to have her abilities trampled on

or insulted; she had never experienced the bitterness consequent upon having the acquirements-which, in the days of her prosperity, commanded silence and admiration-sneered at or openly ridiculed. She had yet to learn that the Solons, the lawgivers of English society, lavish their attentions and praise upon those who learn, not upon those who teach.

Mary had not been six months fatherless, when she was astonished first by a letter, and then by a visit, from her former lover. He came to renew his engagement, and to wed her even then, if she would have him. But Mary's high principle was stronger than he imagined. "No," she said; "you are not independent of your father, and whatever I feel, I have no right to draw you down into poverty. You may fancy now that you could bear it; but a time would come-if not to you, to mewhen the utter selfishness of such conduct would goad me to a death of early misery." The young man appealed to her uncle, who thought her feelings overstrained, but respected her for it nevertheless; and, in the warmth of his admiration, he communicated the circumstance to his wife and daughter.

"Refuse her old lover under present circumstances!" repeated her cousin to herself as she left the room; "there must be some other reason than that; she could not be so foolish as to reject such an offer at such a time." Unfortunately, she saw Edwin Lechmere walking by Mary's side under the shadow of some trees. She watched them until the foliage screened them from her sight, and then she shut herself into her own room, and yielded to a long and violent burst of tears. "It is not enough," she exclaimed in the bitterness of her feelings, "that the comforts of my parents' declining years should be abridged by the overwhelming burden to their exertions-another family added to their own; it is not enough that an uncomfortable feeling has grown between my father and mother on this account, and that cold looks and sharp words have come where they never came before, but my peace of mind must be destroyed. Gladly would I have taken a smaller portion, if I could have kept the affections which I see but too plainly my cousin has stolen from me. And my thoughtless aunt to say, only yesterday, that at all events her husband was no man's enemy but his own.' Has not his want of prudent forethought been the ruin of his own children? and will my parents ever recover the anxiety, the pain, the sacrifices, brought on by one man's culpable neglect? Oh, uncle, if you could look from your grave upon the misery you have caused!"-and then, exhausted by her own emotion, the affectionate but jealous girl began to question herself as to what she should do.After what she considered mature deliberation, she made up her mind to upbraid her cousin with treachery; and she put her design into execution that same evening.

It was no easy matter to oblige her cousin to understand what she meant; but at last the declaration that she had refused her

old lover because she had placed her affections upon Edwin Lechmere, whom she was endeavouring to "entrap," was not to be mistaken; and the country girl was altogether unprepared for the burst of indignant feeling, mingled with much bitterness, which repelled the untruth. A strong fit of hysterics into which Mary Charles worked herself was terminated by a scene of the most painful kind—her father being upbraided by her mother with loving other people's children better than his own," while the curate himself knelt by the side of his betrothed, assuring her of his unaltered affection. From such a scene Miss Adams hastened with a throbbing brow and a bursting heart. She had no one to counsel or console her; no one to whom she could apply for aid. For the first time since she had experienced her uncle's tenderness, she felt she had been the means of disturbing his domestic peace; the knowledge of the burden she was, and the burden she and hers were considered, weighed her to the earth; and in a paroxysm of anguish she fell on her knees, exclaiming, "Oh! why are the dependent born into the world? Father, father! why did you leave us, whom you so loved, to such a fate!" And then she reproached herself for having uttered a word reflecting on his memory. One of the every-day occurrences of life-so common, as to be hardly observed--is to find really kind good-natured people weary of well-doing. "Oh, really I was worn out with so and so; they are so decidedly unfortunate that it is impossible to help them," is a general excuse for deserting those whose continuing misfortunes ought to render them greater objects of sympathy.

Mr Charles Adams was, as has been shown in our little narrative, a kind-hearted man. Estranged as his brother and himself had been for a number of years, he had done much to forward, and still more to protect, his children. At first this was a pleasure; but somehow his "benevolence," and "kindness," and " generosity" had been so talked about, so eulogised, and he had been so seriously inconvenienced by the waywardness of his nephews, the thoughtless pride of his sister-in-law, the helplessness of his younger nieces, as to feel seriously oppressed by his responsibility. And now the one who had never given him aught but pleasure, seemed, according to his daughter's representations, to be the cause of increased sorrow-the destroyer of his dear child's happiness. What to do he could not tell. His daughter, wrought upon by her own jealousy, had evinced under its influence so much temper she had never displayed before, that it seemed more than likely the cherished match would be broken off. His highminded niece saved him any farther anxiety as far as she was concerned. She sent for, and convinced him fully and entirely of her total freedom from the base design imputed to her. "Was it likely," she said, "that I should reject the man I love lest I should drag him into poverty, and plunge at once with one I do not care for into the abyss I dread? This is the common-sense

to-morrow.

view of the case; but there is yet another. Is it to be borne that I would seek to rob your child of her happiness? The supposition is an insult too gross to be endured. I will leave my mother An old schoolfellow, older and more fortunate than myself, wished me to educate her little girl. I had one or two strong objections to living in her house; but the desire to be independent and away has overcome them." She then, with many tears, intreated her uncle still to protect her mother; urged how she had been sorely tried; and communicated fears, she had reason to believe were too well founded, that her eldest brother, feeling the reverse more than he could bear, had deserted from his regiment.

Charles Adams was deeply moved by the nobleness of his niece, and reproved his daughter more harshly than he had ever done before for the feebleness that created so strong and unjust a passion. This had the contrary effect to what he had hoped for: she did not hesitate to say that her cousin had endeavoured to rob her both of the affection of her lover and her father. The injured cousin left Repton, bowed beneath an accumulation of troubles, not one of which was of her own creating, not one of which she deserved; and all springing from the unproviding nature of him who, had he been asked the question, would have declared himself ready to sacrifice his own life for the advantage of that daughter, now compelled to work for her own bread. To trace the career of Mary Adams in her new calling would be to repeat what I have said before. The more refined, the more informed the governess, the more she suffers. Being with one whom she had known in better days, made it even more hard to bend; yet she did her duty, and that is one of the highest privileges a woman can enjoy.

Leaving Mary for a moment, let us return to Repton. Here discord, having once entered, was making sad ravages, and all were suffering from it. It was but too true that the eldest of the Adamses had deserted: his mother, clinging with a parent's fondness to her child, concealed him, and thus offended Charles Adams beyond all reconciliation. The third lad, who was walking the London hospitals, and exerting himself beyond his strength, was everything that a youth could be; but his declining health was represented to his uncle, by one of those whom his mother's pride had insulted, as a cloak for indolence. In short, before another year had quite passed, the family of the once rich and fashionable Dr Adams had shared the fate of all dependents-worn out the benevolence, or patience, or whatever it really is, of their best friends. Nor was this the only consequence of the physician's neglect of a duty due alike to God and society: his brother had really done so much for the bereaved family, as to give what the world called just grounds to Mrs Charles Adams's repeated complaints, "that now her husband was ruining his industrious family to keep the lazy

widow of his spendthrift brother and her favourite children in idleness. Why could she not live upon the fine folk' she was always throwing in her face?" Their daughter, too, of whose approaching union the fond father had been so proud, was now, like her cousin whom she had wronged by her mean suspicions, deserted; the match broken off after much bickering; one quarrel having brought on another, until they separated by mutual consent. Her temper and her health were both materially impaired, and her beauty was converted into hardness and acidity.

Oh how utterly groundless is the idea, that in our social state, where one human being must so much depend upon another, any man, neglecting his positive duties, can be called only "his own enemy!" What misery had not Dr Adams's neglect entailed, not alone on his immediate family, but on that of his brother! Besides, there were ramifications of distress; he died even more embarrassed than his brother had at first believed, and some tradespeople were consequently embarrassed; but the deep misery fell upon his children. Meanwhile, Mrs Dr Adams had left Repton with her younger children, to be the dependents of Mary in London.

It was not until a fatal disease had seized upon her mother, that Mary ventured to appeal again to her uncle's generosity. "My second brother," she said, "has, out of his small means, remitted her five pounds. My eldest brother seems altogether to have disappeared from amongst us: finding that his unhappy presence had occasioned so fatal a separation between his mother and you -a disunion which I saw was the effect of many small causes, rather than one great one-he left us, and we cannot trace him. This has broken my poor mother's heart; he was the cherished one of all her children. My youngest brother has been for the last month an inmate of one of the hospitals which my poor father attended for so many years, and where his word was law. My sister Rosa, she upon whom my poor father poured, if possible, more of his affection than he bestowed upon me-my lovely sister, of whom, even in our poverty, I was so proud-so young, only upon the verge of womanhood-has, you already know, left us. Would to God that it had been for her grave, rather than her destroyer!-a fellow-student of that poor youth, who, if he dreamt of her dishonour, would stagger like a spectre from what will be his deathbed to avenge her. Poverty is one of the surest guides to dishonour; those who have not been tempted know nothing of it. It is one thing to see it, another to feel it. Do not think her altogether base, because she had not the strength of a heroine. I have been obliged to resign my situation to attend my mother, and the only income we have is what I earn by giving lessons on the harp and piano. I give, for two shillings, the same instruction for which my father paid half-a-guinea a lesson; if I did not, I should have no pupils. It is more than a month