"how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties; in action how like an angel!" once enchafed, how instantly overthrown! transformed by rage, unmoulding reason's mintages,

"Into the inglorious likeness of a beast."

The effect of this news upon me may be conceived. My regard for Foljambe, never thoroughly extinguished, seemed to revive with his threatened fate. I wished to go to York to attend his bedside; I thought I could comfort him. Alas! I did not recollect that he could derive comfort from any one sooner than me; that in his mad passion, he in some measure might look upon me as the cause of his catastrophe, and that though dying he might spurn me from him.

I thought still more of the lovely sufferer at the Park. Oh! had my lot permitted me to have shared and assuaged her sorrows! but I could do nothing. I was powerless, hopeless, and therefore more miserable.

I sought Fothergill, but found no comfort in him. He was in his dryest and stiffest vein, and scarcely, except as a Christian, commiserated these unhappy youths, as I called them.

"Unhappy!" cried he, sternly. "Who made them so? Not their Creator, whom they have braved, but themselves. Did they not court, nay, force on their fate, not as many honourable madmen do, for honour's sake, but from mere unbridled, ruffian passion? Do they even now repent?"

66

Surely, Sir," said I, "we ought to think they

do; at least, it is uncharitable without proof to suppose they do not."

"When the proof comes," he replied, "I will believe it, and pity them; meantime, pray God to forgive them, which they probably do not do by one another."

"Indeed, Sir," said I, "this is too shocking."

"You think so," answered he, " and it may appear so to your inexperience. But they are both the children of pride, and never did I know a really proud man but thought himself too good to submit to forgiveness, whatever his wrong.

'Think'st thou I mean to live? To be forgiven?"

was the insolent taunt of Calista to her own father, spurning at penitence; and Rowe knew human nature when he put it in her mouth.

"What was it but pride that sunk the evil one himself to perdition, and made him as far from begging' as he thought the God he had offended was from granting peace?' Hence the fool who thought in his heart there was no God, was less guilty than the proud man who acknowledges, only to defy him. For the fool was only a fool, and, unhappily for himself ignorant of God. The proud man admits his existence, but cares not for him.

"I know not," continued Fothergill, "if you are as fond of Spencer as you are of Shakspeare; if you are, perhaps you may remember that terrible description of the house of pride, and the procession of its queen, so poetic and so revolting ?"

I told him I knew it not.

"Then read it," said he, "when you go home, and mark the beings that draw and drive her chariot. They are all the worst vices-idleness, gluttony, lechery, avarice, envy, and wrath. These are her cattle, and the driver Satan.* Fit equipage, you will say, for pride."

I shuddered at the description, and not less when he went on

“ The proud man's heart is always hard; but these men, in addition to pride, were 'minions of splendour,' and what do such minions ever know of humanity? How can they pray, who know not their Maker? Plunged in reckless, as well as endless dissipation, they have not God in all their thoughts. Self-absorbing self—is their sole Deity. To think of having sinned, still more of asking pardon for sin, is as strange and novel to them as it would be degrading. No! these insolent men, who trampled upon every thing and everybody about them, and would not humble themselves to one another though death was at their door, will never humble themselves before a God, their duty to whom, if they ever knew it, they have wilfully renounced."

He said this with a sternness which shewed how sincere he was in the sentiment, and in a manner so beyond his wont, that I confess I was awed, and did not reply. What struck me was, that in other colleges, and even in the streets (not the same language indeed, but), the same sort of opinion was expressed * Faery Queen. B. 1, Cant. 4.

by the gownsmen at large, among whom the news had by this time spread.

Neither Albany nor Hastings had borne their faculties meekly, and their disdain of all below them had made them not merely unpopular, but hated; a circumstance in which, in the true spirit of Renowners, far from regretting it, they had seemed to glory. I heard, therefore, no pitying voice at the catastrophe; on the contrary, all pity was denied to those who, it was said, had never shewn it to others.

Their fall was almost talked of with a satisfaction which made me shudder, and had they known it, would have been deplored by themselves. For men who are supported by vanity, even upon a scaffold, lose at least the courage which vanity inspires when deprived of applause. How much more if they sink detested!

The whole impressed me with feelings as to human nature which I never knew before.

Yet, slighted as they were, these youths were struck down in the flower of their age; both of them noble, accomplished, talented, and seemingly made for better things.

How such advantages could be so thrown away, and of what little consequence were the highest gifts of fortune without personal merit, was a problem I could scarcely solve; yet the conviction of it sank deeper with me every hour.

The effect was indelible, and the adventitious superiorities of condition among men, once so lamented by me, now dwindled to nothing.

Fothergill saw this, and asked whether, if even the

two young men recovered, I would exchange situations with either? "Had they been struck in battle,” said he, "how different their fate! how honourably would they be mourned! But to fall by each other's hands! converted in an hour from apparent, though evidently hollow friends, into savage enemies, and all from ungovernable rage and empty vanity!

“Of what avail are all their dazzling advantages? The poorest peasant, the lowest artisan, if honest and simple in mind, is far above them in estimation, even in this world; what must it be in the next?”

It was impossible not to assent to the truth of these sentiments; yet I was so struck by his earnestness, and . seeming hostility to the unfortunate objects of his attack, that I could not help asking him whether they did not engage more of his interest, from their very faultiness, and whether he would not pray for them?

"I would," said he, " as I would, and do, for Jews, Turks, and Infidels, but with full as little hope."

Fothergill was so emphatic in his tone when he uttered this, that I desisted from the subject. In fact, although paying deferential respect to the real ornaments of the aristocracy, which he said were more numerous in proportion than in other divisions of society, it is not easy to describe the compound of aversion and contempt with which he regarded what he called the trifling, or vulgar great, who had nothing intrinsic in their natures or manners to make them valuable.

"Pride and emptiness," said he, "in whatever rank, but more especially in the upper, I always con