said she;" and I am no scholar. Will you be so good as to see what they are, and whether they are worth any thing?”

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They are honestly mine, be they what they may," exclaimed the old man; for my master bought those very drawers at Ashen Hall; and when he went away, he said I might have them; and nothing's freer than a gift.”

Mr. Drummond glanced his eye over the papers, and after performing his professional duty, put them into his pocket; and sped him home to the parsonage, where, for several evenings, the attention of the family was engaged by listening to the following narrative.

CHAPTER I.

THE changing scenes of life are over; my sun is declining,-soon it will cease to illumine the hills and vales which have been traversed by my weary steps. I will take a last survey; and, by the aid of its departing rays, endeavour to retrace all my wanderings. Ah! its soft beams still gild the safe and straight road which lay before me! Now I see it distinctly; and I can perceive, too, the crooked paths and labyrinths into which I deviated. There I was bewildered,and thence an unseen hand brought me, at length, as a strayed sheep into the fold.

Though parentage, noble or obscure, may entail honour or the reverse on an individual, I am happily exempted from either extreme; having been born in that intermediate class of society generally

esteemed the most favourable to virtue and to happiness. My father was a solicitor in a populous town, and derived considerable emolument from his profession. My acquaintance with him, during my earlier years, was certainly not very familiar; for his exclusive application to business was incompatible with domestic habits. His father having dissipated a moderate fortune in desultory pursuits, and thereby lost some favourable opportunities of providing for his family, determined him to an opposite line of conduct. Keeping one object constantly in view, he exerted all his energies to repair the injury his fortunes had sustained; and he suffered few matters, either within doors or without, to interrupt his favourite concerns.

Of my mother, during this early period of my life, my recollections are of a more endearing description. Her natural temper, frank, ardent, and affectionate, had been chastened by protracted

:

bodily afflictions. I had heard it distantly hinted, that my father was not the object of her choice, but that she was forced into the connexion by her family on this subject, however, she herself was silent. Yet although, in her general deportment, there might be a something indicative of a mind not entirely at ease, there was nothing in her conduct, as a wife, from which such a circumstance could have been inferred; but the degree in which she was impeded by sickness, in the discharge of those domestic duties for which she was, in other respects, so eminently qualified, preyed upon her spirits, and aggravated her malady.

Surely, there is no female who would express surprise at this statement,-none who, having assumed so important a station as that of the mistress of a family, would feel the performance of her various duties more burdensome than the unavoidable suspension of them. "A good

wife is from the Lord;" but she only merits that honourable title, who acquits herself with alacrity and zeal.

I had a brother too,

yes, I had a brother; and we together engrossed all our mother's solicitude. Her anxious wish to recover health, for our sakes, aggravated every pain, and rendered more formidable every unpropitious symptom of her disorder. Richard was two years older than myself; and he inherited all his mother's engaging qualities. The turbulence of the boy was so blended with genuine good-nature and the kindest affections of the heart, that they more frequently cheered and enlivened his invalid parent, than disturbed or oppressed her.

When his schooling was completed, he was taken into his father's office, with the view of being brought up to the same profession; but all who knew him thought, and his mother feared, that he would never submit to the restraints it imposed. My father, however, be