my poor son made but an ill return, I fear, for your attachment; but I trust you will forgive him, for he has dearly paid for that, and all his other deficiencies."

He could go no further, and I was too affected to reply. He then made me sit down by him, but placing his finger on his lips, told me we must not talk, for Charles lay in the next room, and if there was a spark of hope, it could only be through the most absolute quiet. In fact, he had been only kept alive up to this time by laudanum.

Never before had I been so affected by another person's distress; for, though evidently acute, there was now a resignation and calm about Mr. Hastings that seemed to throw a dignity around his sorrow which only made it more impressive. At length he dismissed me, whispering me to come again, though despairing of my ever seeing his son alive.

It may be supposed that I thought of Bertha, but, for obvious reasons, I dared not mention her name; and so ended this first visit.

The second (the next day morning) was still more overwhelming, for the crisis approached, and called still more for exertion. One of the surgeons and Mr. Hastings had watched all night, to observe the least possible change for good or for bad; the former being absolutely necessary to enable them once more to attempt to extract the ball, upon which the only chance of life depended. There was no such change; and if there had been, probably it would have been without avail, for the sinking patient, when able to speak, only shewed himself so, by begging that no more attempts

might be made, and that he might be allowed to die in peace.

The weeping father, assured by the surgeon that he would sink at once under such an attempt, promised that he should suffer no more, and waited the event with a submission which engaged all my reverence. He stirred not from the bed-side, but, with the sufferer's hand in his, watched the parting spirit.

In this crisis a message of inquiry was delivered from Lord Albany, and Mr. Hastings with agony mentioned this, and Bertha's and my name, to him; but life was ebbing fast; nor was there strength left to ascertain whether he had any, or what feeling towards any of us, still less whether he thought "of heaven's bliss."

A momentary convulsion of doubtful import then seized his cheek, and he opened his eyes; but having fixed a vacant look upon his father, closed them again for ever!

The news of this, communicated to me by the surgeon at the door of the apartment, where I had passed two hours, changed the anxieties I had undergone into a stupor from which I was not easily recovered; and to my astonishment, when I awoke, I found myself on a couch in Mr. Hastings' sitting-room. He had retained all his self-possession; and on being informed of my condition, had even come out to see me, and gave orders for my being attended. How differently may we judge of persons from their deserts!

After coming to myself I was conveyed to my inn, and saw him not again that day; but Mr. Sandford,

the surgeon, by his desire, came to see me in the evening. Recovered from the attack, and encouraged by Mr. Sandford's assiduity, I asked him as a favour to tell me any particulars he knew of poor Foljambe's demeanour or conversation during his sufferings, particularly as to any religious impressions he might have shewn; for I own Fothergill's presages had never quitted me, and they had shocked me so much, not more on Foljambe's account than on that of human nature at large, that I was anxious and hopeful that they should be disproved.

Sandford gave me no comfort; quite the contrary. When his father, whose whole conduct, he said, was admirable, intreated Foljambe to think of what might be impending, and ask and send forgiveness to his sister and Lord Albany, but still more to submit himself to, and ask pardon of heaven-all which he did with most pious earnestness-he could get no answer but a solemn demur to the proposal.

"What have I done," said he, "to be forgiven by Bertha and Albany, who ought rather to ask forgiveness of me? and as to heaven, thwarted as I have been in every thing in this world, what can I expect in the next? Do not torment me, father, but let me die in quiet."

I own this account overwhelmed me, and I thought with distress of Fothergill's prediction.

With regard to the other proud man (Lord Albany), on the strength of the message of inquiry sent by him to Foljambe, I had some hope of him, and asked Mr. Sandford whether any thing like contri

tion or forgiveness had been expressed on his part. Sandford, who had been an army surgeon, said, that could hardly be expected, and in fact had not probably been the motive. That Lord Albany should be anxious that his antagonist should not die, was natural on more accounts than one: "but we are to recollect," said Sandford, "that Mr. Hastings was the challenger, and received the fortune of war. Albany, moreover, is himself by no means safe; his life even now hangs upon a thread; fever would kill him directly."

All this did not make me happier; and under such feelings I felt all the desolation of being left alone for the night, friendless, and seemingly abandoned in a strange land, the scene of so much misery.

The next morning I was consoled by learning that Granville had returned. Both he and Colonel Sackville had changed their intentions of retiring. As there was no witness to the duel but themselves and the valets, who had gone out of the way, nothing could be brought home to them; and their withdrawal, which would be construed into absconding, could only excite suspicion; they therefore both returned.

Granville's feelings may be conceived. He was alive to the dreadful blow the family had sustained, made worse by the total absence of a sufficient cause for the unhappy measure that had occasioned it. On this, grieved as he was, he did not conceal his opinion, or that it had taken its rise solely from the headlong violence and overbearing pride of the sufferer. His removal, however, he said, might perhaps after all be better for himself, as well as those who now wept him—

so dangerous and so uncertain are the ways of the proud and self-willed.

Upon this I told him how little Foljambe had been pitied at Oxford; when he observed, it was to be expected, and, could he have known it, it would have been his severest mortification.

I had, however, other matter to communicate, in the changed, and, to me, surprising behaviour of Mr. Hastings.

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"Why," said Granville, when I mentioned it, "though one of the proudest as to birth and all aristocratic prejudices, his pride was always, and sometimes successfully, encountered by his piety; for as far as sentiment and a sense of dependence upon heaven go, he is most sincerely and naturally pious; so that his prejudices, which are those merely of education, are often, even in ordinary matters, at variance with his religious feelings, which are those of the heart. At the present moment, the latter have obtained complete ascendancy; for he thinks he is deservedly under the hand of Heaven, chastising him for his good. Indeed, I have often known him presage that his pride would be one day severely visited by providence; and he supposes the blow he has deserved by way of punishment is now struck. Hence his change from loftiness to humility and resignation, and his softness to you.

"It would be now, indeed, no time to shew pride, if he had it even in a greater degree; but his pride, at any rate, is very different from poor Foljambe's, which arose out of an impetuous and even tyrannous dispo