raving mad. His ravings never forgot his child. Lost to every other recollection, he ceased not to call on her, on Rupert, and on Mrs. Sea

more.

One day he saw the splendid carriage of Rupert, and his pompous retinue approach the town. In a violent paroxysm of phrensy, he burst from his keepers, and rushing into the street, he dropt on his knees, and cursed the villain as he passed along, and his posterity to the end of time.

Though this dreadful crime happened long ago, and Rupert died before I was born, I know his family. It still holds its state: the father's curse has not overtaken it.

The base Rupert was soon satiated; Maria was soon discarded. When she returned to her father's house, Nature had sunk beneath the violence of rage, and he was no more.

O! weep over her disastrous fate !

STOL'N, not LUR'D, by a villain from her native home! She is thrown on the world, spoiled of

The pride of innocence, and fame of virtue!

and driven to seek in new infamy an asylum from the connexions who now bar their doors against her entrance. Without a friend to succour or to soothe; her father's fortune wasted, her respect

in society lost, and her peace of mind destroyed, she yielded to the proposals of a gentleman, who had seen her while at Rupert's house; and for ever resigned herself to wretchedness and despair.

During the remainder of her life, she continued faithful to him, who may be called her second seducer; and without joy though she shared his wealth, and without happiness though he was always kind, her days were embittered by reflections on the past, and by the miserable death of her father.

She had by Mr.

one daughter, who never married, and who after the death of both her parents, lived as companion to a lady, whom in the very early part of my life I knew: and the person who told me the above sorrowful tale, knew Maria.

Is the guilt of him who has perhaps been trained to vice, and taught to live by depredation, equal to the guilt of Rupert? Is the low wretch who snatches a bauble from my side, or picks my pocket of my purse, as criminal as the high-born Rupert; who to gratify a sensual passion, breaks in upon the happiness of a virtuous family, and steals from her paternal roof, and from the bosom, from the care of her father, the innocent child of his love and, without tenderness for the object

of his violation, having satiated the lowest passion of nature, turns her without remorse from his door, to endure the agonies of a blasted reputation, and to shrink beneath the contempt of an unforgiving world?

The miserable victim of low guilt, who makes atonement to society by death upon the scaffold for the crimes he has committed, is, by comparison with Rupert, innocent: and though ignominy attend his fate; Rupert, who died upon a bed of down, shall tremble on that day, when he must answer for the horrors of his crimes, and abide the wrath of retribution.

THE OLD TRUNK.

EVERY body who has travelled in England, knows that there are many manor houses, which once shone in splendour, and were the seats of hospitality and joy, but are now forsaken by their owners, and are either shut up to crumble unre. paired and untenanted, or let to rustic tenants, who, amid the carvings and the gildings of former pomp, lay up their peas and beans, and deposit their winter stores.

Among others, there was, some years ago, one on the coast of Sussex, which I will miscall Clifferton Castle. It had been long untenanted, save by an old seaman and his wife, and much of it was in considerable decay. The last of its masters who had kept up the stateliness of the castle and the family, had long been gathered to his fathers, and his heirs were dispersed, never again to be rallied round the standard of their name.

While old Bernard Truman, and his good wife Beatrix dwelt snugly in one tower of the decaying edifice, a man, who had grown rich in India, sent over remittances to purchase an estate in his native land; and Clifferton Castle was bought by the agent employed. The purchaser's mother, and his daughter, who had been sent to Grandmama for European education, were ordered to make the castle their country residence. In consequence of the mandate, they set off, full fraught with the delight of the grandeur of living in a castle, for the coast of Sussex. Old Mrs. Sunderland, however, when she beheld the ruined mansion, which stood on a hill, the monument of fallen greatness, was much mortified; and the feelings of dignity with which she had glowed during the journey, sunk like a falling star, even in an instant: but Miss Juliana Sunderland, to whose heart ruin and desolation were dear, rejoiced greatly. All the books which she had read, talked of such things; and midnight rambles upon broken turrets, with a lamp that would often expire, and leave her to explore her way in darkness, flitted before her imagination. Juliana had a fille de chambre, named Rachel, who had imbibed all the fancies of her young lady, and was