THE BED OF DEATH.

IN the course and intercourse of life, people of different ranks, of different faiths, of different politics, of different virtues and vices, of different hopes and fears; in short of every difference which can distinguish man from man, and woman from woman, are thrown together; and sympathies, antipathies, friendships, and animosities arise, nobody knows wherefore, and every body wonders how.

My mother, whom it is the pride of my heart to remember, and the delight of my heart to mention, was, in the progress of some business into which it is needless to enter, brought acquainted with a young woman whom I will call Auburn. She lived in a good house in Cumberland Place, had many servants, and kept a carriage. She called herself Mrs. Auburn, and was therefore

supposed to be a widow. Though many messages, and some few letters passed between her and my mother, they were personally unknown to each other. My mother had never seen her but once, and that was as she passed in her carriage, and was pointed out as Mrs. Auburn. Soon after, lo! the house in Cumberland Place was shut up, and no one knew whither Mrs. Auburn had retired.

It might be after the lapse of two, or perhaps three years, that my mother received a message from her to call according to the direction sent. She went, not to Cumberland Place, but to a house in an obscure street. She was shewn up stairs, where in bed lay a person who could no longer be recognised as the beautiful Mrs. Auburn, who had, so short a time ago, been the admiration of every beholder. She was nearly at life's close. She was on the bed of death.

I have solicited you to come to me, in these my last moments, she said, that I may explain to you why I have withdrawn myself to this obscurity; knowing, from all that I have heard of you, that you will palliate my conduct, and not be rigid in the pending business. She entered into many particulars, which it would be tedious to relate, but the sum of her story is as follows.

Her father was the vicar of a small village, and

she was the eldest of five daughters. She had received an excellent education from her father, who had himself superintended it; and she had been instructed in all ornamental accomplishments by the best masters in the neighbourhood of the vicarage and, as the vicar's daughter, had visited among the surrounding gentry. Imagine her disappointment when her father told her that he was thus careful to educate and accomplish her and her sisters that they might be able to gain their own livelihood by some means more eligible than millinery or servitude. She drooped in grief, and happiness vanished from her hopes.

While she was thus desponding, her malignant stars brought a dissipated gay young man of large fortune into the village. Smitten by her exceeding beauty, he proposed an elopement to her. In an evil hour she listened to his proposals, fled from the protection of her father, and accompanied Mr. Dorton to London. Either in the excess of his passion, or the artfulness of his foresight, hẹ took the house in Cumberland Place in her name: and though he supplied the money every thing was purchased, and all the servants were hired in her name.

Thus she lived three years, when his presents began to be sparingly given; his visits became

less frequent: and while she continued to live in the same splendour, he married and forsook her; leaving her answerable for all debts, without a guinea to discharge them. Thus reduced, she wrote to her family, but they disowned her. She then left her sumptuous habitation; and pining with grief and remorse, in poverty and in want, without friendship or attendance, she died the day after she had seen my mother; one among hundreds of the wretched victims of seduction and desertion.

I will not enter into the greater or less degree of crime attached to Mr. Dorton and Mrs. Auburn: but, I would to heaven that I could be the moans of convincing young women how great, as a matter of mere worldly consideration, their folly is when they yield to the persuasions of men, who cannot be supposed to love those whom they wantonly reduce to shame.

While the rapture of passion remains, they may perhaps be treated with kindness; but when that has cooled, the same contempt which they have met with from the world, will be shewn by their sated paramours: and unless the stroke of death release them early, as it did Mrs. Auburn, from the wretchedness which must attend their future life, they have no resource but in continued crime.

They may perhaps drag on a few years in the same guilty splendour, but the end of their career will generally be in the purlieus of public shame: and riot and disease will bring to premature dissolution, the shattered frame of former loveliness: and those who were once the boast and pride of their families, will die in loathsome penury, the degraded and despised scorn of their betrayers.