principle; and the Legion Club, and the numberless brutalities against Tighe and Bettesworth, of the latter. Every body is now satisfied of the perfect harmlessness, and indeed of the great utility of Wood's scheme for a new copper coinage; and the only pretexts for the other scurrilities to which we have alluded were, that the Parliament had shown a disposition, to interfere for the alleviation, in some inconsiderable particulars, of the intolerable oppression of the tithe system, --to the detriment, as Swift imagined, of the order to which he himself belonged; and that Mr. Tighe had obtained for a friend of his own, a living which Swift had wished to secure for one of his dependants.

even the inconsistencies of honest minds, we hope we shall always be sufficiently indulgent; and especially to such errors in practical life as are incident to literary and ingenious men. For Swift, however, there is no such apology. His profession, through life, was much more that of a politician than of a clergyman or an author. He was not led away in any degree by heated fancy, or partial affection-by deluding visions of impossible improvements, or excessive indignation at incurable vices. He followed, from first to last, the eager, but steady impulse of personal ambition and personal animosity; and in the dirty and devious career into which they impelled him, he never spared the character or the feelings of a single individual who appeared to stand in his way. In no respect, therefore, can he have any claim to lenity;-and now, when his faults are of importance only as they may serve the purpose of warning or misleading to others, we consider it as our indispensable duty to point them out in their true colours; and to show that, even when united to talents as distinguished as his, political profligacy and political rancour must lead to universal distrust and avoidance during the life of the individual, and to contempt and infamy thereafter.

His main object in all this, we make no doubt, was personal pique and vengeance; yet it is probable, that there was occasionally, or throughout, an expectation of being again brought into the paths of power and preferment, by the notoriety which these publications enabled him to maintain, and by the motives which they held out to each successive ministry, to secure so efficient a pen in their favour. That he was willing to have made his peace with Walpole, even during the reign of George I., is admitted by Mr. Scott, though he discredits the details which Lord Chesterfield and others have given, ap- Of Swift's personal character, his ingenious parently from very direct authority, of the biographer has given almost as partial a rephumiliating terms upon which he was willing resentation, as of his political conduct;-a to accede to the alliance;-and it is certain, great part of it indeed has been anticipated, that he paid his court most assiduously to the in tracing the principles of that conduct;successor of that Prince, both while he was the same arrogance and disdain of mankind, Prince of Wales, and after his accession to leading to profligate ambition and scurrility in the throne. The manner in which he paid public life, and to domineering and selfish his court, too, was truly debasing, and espe- habits in private. His character seems to have cially unworthy of a High-Churchman and a been radically overbearing and tyrannicalpublic satirist. It was chiefly by flatteries for though, like other tyrants, he could stoop and assiduity to his mistress, Mrs. Howard! | low enough where his interests required it, it with whom he maintained a close correspond- was his delight to exact an implicit complience, and upon whom he always professed mainly to rely for advancement. When George I. died, Swift was among the first to kiss the hands of the new sovereign, and indulged anew in the golden dreams of preferment. Walpole's recal to power, however, soon overcast those visions; and he then wrote to the mistress, humbly and earnestly entreating her, to tell him sincerely what were his chances of success. She flattered him for a while with hopes; but at last he discovered that the prejudice against him was too strong to be overcome; and ran back in terrible humour to Ireland, where he railed ever after with his usual vehemence against the King, the Queen, and the concubine. The truth, it seems, was, that the latter was disposed to favour him; but that her influence with the King was subordinate to that of the Queen, who made it a principle to thwart all applications which were made through that channel.

Such, we think, is a faithful sketch of the political career of this celebrated person; and if it be correct in the main, or even in any material particulars, we humbly conceive that a more unprincipled and base course of proceeding never was held up to the scorn and ridicule of mankind. To the errors and

ance with his humours and fancies, and to impose upon all around him the task of observing and accommodating themselves to his habits, without the slightest regard to their convenience or comfort. Wherever he came, the ordinary forms of society were to give way to his pleasure; and every thing, even to the domestic arrangements of a family, to be suspended for his caprice. If he was to be introduced to a person of rank, he insisted that the first advances and the first visit should be made to him. If he went to see a friend in the country, he would order an old tree to be cut down, if it obstructed the view from his window-and was never at his ease unless he was allowed to give nicknames to the lady of the house, and make lampoons upon her acquaintance. On going for the first time into any family, he frequently prescribed beforehand the hours for their meals, sleep, and exercise: and insisted rigorously upon the literal fulfilment of the capitulation. From his intimates he uniformly exacted the most implicit submission to all his whims and absurdities; and carried his prerogative so far, that he sometimes used to chase the Grattans and other accommodating friends, through the apartments of the Deanery, and up and down stairs, driving them like

to your honour's mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself any farther than for infirmities.

under circumstances of life not worth your regard. "This is all I dare beg at present from your honour, what is left me to wish (next to the health and prosperity of your honour and family), is, that Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgments at your feet for so many fayours I have received; which, whatever effect they the greatest upon my mind, in approving myself, have had upon my fortune, shall never fail to have upon all occasions, your honour's most obedient and most dutiful servant."-Vol. xv. pp. 230, 231.

horses, with a large whip, till he thought he | excuse my many weaknesses and oversights, much had enough of exercise. All his jests have more to say any thing to my advantage. The parthe same character of insolence and coarseticulars expected of me are what relate to morals ness. When he first came to his curate's honour's family, that is, whether the last was ocand learning, and the reasons of quitting your house, he announced himself as "his mas-casioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely ter-took possession of the fireside, and ordered his wife to take charge of his shirts and stockings. When a young clergyman was introduced to him, he offered him the dregs of a bottle of wine, and said, he always kept a poor parson about him to drink up his dregs. Even in hiring servants, he always chose to insult them, by inquiring into their qualifications for some filthy and degrading office. And though it may be true, that his after conduct was not exactly of a piece with those preliminaries, it is obvious, that as no man of proper feelings could submit to such impertiBy far the most characteristic, and at the nence, so no man could have a right to indulge same time most discreditable and most interin it. Even considered merely as a manner assumed to try the character of those with which relates to his connection with the three esting part of Swift's history, however, is that whom he lived, it was a test which no one unfortunate women, whose happiness he rubut a tyrant could imagine himself entitled to ined, and whose reputation he did what was apply; and Swift's practical conclusion from in him to destroy. We say, the three women it was just the reverse of what might be ex--for though Varina was cast off before he pected. He attached himself to those only had fame or practice enough in composition who were mean enough to bear this usage, to celebrate her in song, like Stella or Vanessa, and broke with all who resented it. While her injuries seem to have been nearly as great, he had something to gain or to hope from the and altogether as unpardonable as those of the world, he seems to have been occasionally other two. Soon after leaving college, he less imperious; but, after he retired to Ireland, he gave way without restraint to the native appears to have formed, or at best professed, arrogance of his character; and, accordingly, sister of a fellow-student, to whom his assiduan attachment to a Miss Jane Waryng, the confined himself almost entirely to the society ities seemed to have rendered him acceptable, of a few easy-tempered persons, who had no and with whom he corresponded for a series talents or pretensions to come in competition of years, under the preposterous name of Vawith his; and who, for the honour of his ac-rina. There appear to be but two letters of this quaintance, were willing to submit to the dominion he usurped.

A singular contrast to the rudeness and arrogance of this behaviour to his friends and dependants, is afforded by the instances of extravagant adulation and base humility, which occur in his addresses to those upon whom his fortune depended. After he gets into the society of Bolingbroke and Oxford, and up to the age of forty, these are composed in something of a better taste; but the true models are to be found in his addresses to Sir

correspondence preserved, both written by the other in its decline-and both extremely Swift, one in the height of his passion, and characteristic and curious. The first is dated in 1696, and is chiefly remarkable for its extreme badness and stupidity; though it is full enough of love and lamentation. The lady, it seems, had long before confessed a mutual her averse to an immediate union,-upon flame; but prudential considerations made which the lover raves and complains in the will be observed, when he was on the borders following deplorable sentences,-written, it of thirty, and proving, along with his early poems, how very late he came to the use of

his faculties.

William Temple, the first and most honoured of his patrons, upon whose sickness and recovery he has indited a heroic epistle and a Pindaric ode, more fulsome and extravagant than any thing that had then proceeded from the pen even of a poet-laureate; and to whom, quality of a lover, and indeed of every person who 'Madam-Impatience is the most inseparable after he had left his family in bad humour, is in pursuit of a design whereon he conceives his he sends a miserable epistle, entreating a cer- greatest happiness or misery to depend. It is the tificate of character, in terms which are scarce- same thing in war, in courts, and in common busi. ly consistent with the consciousness of de-ness. Every one who hunts after pleasure, or fame, serving it; and are, at all events, infinitely or fortune, is still restless and uneasy till he has hunted down his game; and all this is not only inconsistent with the proud and peremptory very natural, but something reasonable too: for a tone which he assumed to those who would violent desire is little better than a distemper, and bear with it. A few lines may be worth therefore men are not to blame in looking after quoting. He was then full twenty-seven years a cure. I find myself hugely infected with this of age, and a candidate for ordination. After malady, and am easily vain enough to believe it explaining this, he addshas some very good reasons to excuse it. For indeed, in my case, there are some circumstances which will admit pardon for more than ordinary disquiets. That dearest object upon which all my prospect of happiness entirely depends, is in perpetual danger to be removed for ever from my

"I entreat that your honour will consider this, and will please to send me some certificate of my behaviour during almost three years in your family; wherein I shall stand in need of all your goodness to

sight. Varina's life is daily wasting; and though one just and honourable action would furnish health to her, and unspeakable happiness to us both, yet some power that repines at human felicity has that influence to hold her continually doating upon her cruelty, and me on the cause of it.

"Would to Heaven you were but a while sensible of the thoughts into which my present distractions plunge me; they hale me a thousand ways, and I not able to bear them. It is so, by Heaven: The love of Varina is of more tragical consequence than her cruelty. Would to God you had treated and scorned me from the beginning. It was your pity opened the first way to my misfortune; and now your love is finishing my ruin: and is it so then? In one fortnight I must take eternal farewell of Varina: and (I wonder) will she weep at parting, a little to justify her poor pretences of some affection to me?

"Surely, Varina, you have but a very mean opinion of the joys that accompany a true, honourable, unlimited love; yet either nature and our ancestors have highly deceived us, or else all other sublunary things are dross in comparison. Is it possible you can be yet insensible to the prospect of a rapture and delight so innocent and so exalted? By Heaven, Varina, you are more experienced and have less virgin innocence than I. Would not your conduct make one think you were hugely skilled in all the little politic methods of intrigue? Love, with the gall of too much discretion, is a thousand times worse than with none at all. It is a peculiar part of nature which art debauches, but cannot

Farewell, madam; and may love make you a while forget your temper to do me justice. Only remember, that if you still refuse to be mine, you will quickly lose, for ever lose, him that has resolved to die as he has lived, all yours, JON. SWIFT."Vol. xv. pp. 232-237.

your health be otherwise than it was when you told me the doctors advised you against marriage, as what would certainly hazard your life. Are they or you grown of another opinion in this partic ular? are you in a condition to manage domestic affairs, with an income of less (perhaps) than 3001. a-year? (it must have been near 5001.) have you such an inclination to my person and humour, as to comply with my desires and way of living, and endeavour to make us both as happy as you can? can you bend your love and esteem and indifference to others the same way as I do mine? shall I have so much power in your heart, or you so much gov. ernment of your passions, as to grow in good humour upon my approach, though provoked by a ? have you so much good nature as to endeavour by soft words to smooth any rugged humour occasioned by the cross accidents of life? shall the place wherever your husband is thrown be more welcome than courts or cities without him? In short, these are some of the necessary methods to please men, who, like me, are deep read in the world; and to a person thus made, I should be proud in giving all due returns towards making her happy."-Vol. xv. pp. 247, 248.

He then tells her, that if every thing else were suitable, he should not care whether her person were beautiful, or her fortune large.

"Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the other, is all I look for. I desire, indeed, a plentiful revenue, but would rather it should be of my own; though I should bear from a wife to be reproached for the greatest."—Vol. xv. pp. 248.

To complete the picture of his indifference, or rather his ill-disguised disinclination, he adds

"The dismal account you say I have given you of my livings I can assure you to be a true one; and, since it is a dismal one even in your own opinion, you can best draw consequences from it. The place where Dr. Bolton lived is upon a living which he keeps with the deanery; but the place of residence for that they have given me is within a mile of a town called Trim, twenty miles from hence; and there is no other way but 10 hire a house at Trim, or build one on the spot: the first is hardly to be done, and the other I am too poor to perform at present."—Vol. xv. p. 246.

Notwithstanding these tragic denunciations, he neither died-nor married-nor broke off the connection, for four years thereafter; in the latter part of which, having been at last presented to two livings in Ireland, worth near 4001. a year, the lady seems to have been reduced to remind him of his former impatience, and fairly to ask him, whether his affections had suffered any alteration. His answer to this appeal is contained in the The lady, as was to be expected, broke off second letter;-and is, we think, one of the all correspondence after this letter-and so most complete patterns of meanness, selfish-ended Swift's first matrimonial engagement, ness, and brutality, we have ever met with. and first eternal passion!-What became of The truth undoubtedly was, that his affections the unhappy person, whom he thus heartlessly were estranged, and had probably settled by abandoned, with impaired health, and morti this time on the unfortunate Stella: but in-fied affections, after a seven-years' courtship, stead of either fairly avowing this inconstancy, is nowhere explained. The fate of his next or honourably fulfilling engagements, from victim is at least more notorious. which inconstancy perhaps could not release him, he thinks fit to write, in the most frigid, insolent, and hypocritical terms, undervaluing her fortune and person, and finding fault with her humour-and yet pretending, that if she would only comply with certain conditions which he specifies, he might still be persuaded to venture himself with her into the perils of matrimony. It will be recollected, that when he urged immediate marriage so passionately in 1696, he had no provision in the world, and must have intended to live on her fortune, which yielded about 100l. a year, and that he thought her health as well as happiness would be saved by the match. In 1700, when he had got two livings, he addresses her as fol

lows

"I desire, therefore, you will let me know if

Esther Johnson, better known to the reader of Swift's works by the name of Stella, was the child of a London merchant, who died ir. her infancy; when she went with her mother, who was a friend of Sir W. Temple's sister, to reside at Moorpark, where Swift was then domesticated. Some part of the charge of her education devolved upon him;-and though he was twenty years her senior, the interest with which he regarded her, appears to have ripened into something as much like affection as could find a place in his selfish bosom. Soon after Sir William's death, he got his Irish livings, besides a considerable legacy;— and as she had a small independence of her own, it is obvious that there was nothing to prevent their honourable and immediate union. Some cold-blooded vanity or ambition, how

Stella was then twenty-six,

and he near forty-five; and both had hitherto lived very far within an income that was now more than doubled. That she now expected to be made his wife, appears from the pains he takes in the Journal indirectly to destroy that expectation; and though the awe in which he habitually kept her, probably pre

quiring into the cause, it is now certain that a new attachment, as heartless, as unprincipled, and as fatal in its consequences as either of the others, was at the bottom of this cruel and unpardonable proceeding.

During his residence in London, from 1710 to 1712, he had leisure, in the intervals of his political labours, to form the acquaintance of Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, whose unfortunate love he has recorded, with no great delicacy, under the name of Vanessa. This young lady, then only in her twentieth year, joined to all the attractions of youth, fashion, and elegance, the still more dangerous gifts of a lively imagination, a confiding temper, and a capacity of strong and permanent affectionSwift, regardless of the ties which bound him to Stella, allowed himself to be engaged by those qualities; and, without explaining the nature of those ties to his new idol, strove by his assiduities to obtain a return of affectionwhile he studiously concealed from the unhappy Stella the wrong he was conscious of doing her. We willingly borrow the words of his partial biographer, to tell the rest of a story, which, we are afraid, we should tell with little temper ourselves.

ever, or some politic anticipation of his own | sense to pretend that it was the want of mopossible inconstancy, deterred him from this ney that prevented him from fulfilling his onward and open course; and led him to an engagements. arrangement which was dishonourable and absurd in the beginning, and in the end productive of the most accumulated misery. He prevailed upon her to remove her residence from the bosom of her own family in England, to his immediate neighbourhood in Ireland, where she took lodgings with an elderly companion, of the name of Mrs. Dingley-vented her either from complaining, or inavowedly for the sake of his society and protection, and on a footing of intimacy so very strange and unprecedented, that whenever he left his parsonage house for England or Dublin, these ladies immediately took possession, and occupied it till he came back.-A situation so extraordinary and undefined, was liable of course to a thousand misconstructions; and must have been felt as degrading by any woman of spirit and delicacy and accordingly, though the master of this Platonic seraglio seems to have used all manner of paltry and insulting practices, to protect a reputation which he had no right to bring into question, -by never seeing her except in the presence of Mrs. Dingley, and never sleeping under the same roof with her, it is certain both that the connection was regarded as indecorous by persons of her own sex, and that she herself felt it to be humiliating and improper. Accordingly, within two years after her settlement in Ireland, it appears that she encouraged the addresses of a clergyman of the Lame of Tisdall, between whom and Swift there was a considerable intimacy; and that she would have married him, and thus sacrificed her earliest attachment to her freedom and her honour, had she not been prevented by the private dissuasions of that false friend, who did not choose to give up his own claims to her, although he had not the heart or the nonour to make her lawfully his own. She was then a blooming beauty, of little more than twenty, with fine black hair, delicate features, and a playful and affectionate charIt seems doubtful to us, whether she originally felt for Swift any thing that could properly be called love-and her willingness to marry another in the first days of their connection, seems almost decisive on the subject: but the ascendancy he had acquired over her mind, and her long habit of submitting her own judgment and inclinations to his, gave him at least an equal power over her, and moulded her pliant affections into tion, and whose attentions, in the course of their mutual studies, had, by degrees, gained her affectoo deep and exclusive a devotion. Even tions, and seemed to warrant his own. The friends before his appointment to the Deanery of St. continued to use the language of friendship, but Patrick's, it is utterly impossible to devise with the assiduity and earnestness of a warmer any apology for his not marrying her, or allow-passion, until Vanessa rent asunder the veil, by in ing her to marry another; the only one that timating to Swift the state of her affections; and in he ever appears to have stated himself, viz. this, as she conceived, she was justified by his own favourite, though dangerous maxim, of doing that the want of a sufficient fortune to sustain the which seems in itself right, without respect to the expenses of matrimony, being palpably absurd common opinion of the world. We cannot doubt in the mouth of a man born to nothing, and that he actually felt the shame, disappointment, already more wealthy than nine-tenths of his guilt, surprise, expressed in his celebrated poem, order: but, after he obtained that additional though he had not courage to take the open and preferment, and was thus ranked among the manly course of avowing those engagements with Stella, or other impediments which prevented him well beneficed dignitaries of the establish- from accepting the hand and fortune of her rival.— inent, it was plainly an insult upon common | Without, therefore, making this painful but just

acter.

"While Vanessa was occupying much of his time, and much doubtless of his thoughts, she is never once mentioned in the Journal directly by name, and is only twice casually indicated by the title of Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter. There was, therefore, a consciousness on Swift's part, that his attachment to his younger pupil was of a nature which could not be gratifying to her predecessor, although he probably shut his own eyes to une consequences of an intimacy which he wished to conceal from those of Stella. Miss Vanhomrigh, in the mean while, conscious of the pleasure which Swift received from her society, and of the advanand ignorant of the peculiar circumstances in which tages of youth and fortune which she possessed, he stood with respect to another, naturally, and surely without offence either to reason or virtue, gave way to the hope of forming an union with a

man whose talents had first attracted her admira

confession, he answered the avowal of Vanessa's | possible, Swift resolved to temporise, in hopes

passion, at first in raillery, and afterwards by an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem. Vanessa seems neither to have been contented nor silenced by the result of her declaration; but to the very close of her life persisted in endeavouring, by entreaties and arguments, to extort a more lively return to her passion, than this cold proffer was calculated to afford.

66

probably, that time, accident, the mutability incident to violent affections, might extricate himself and Vanessa from the snare in which his own culpable imprudence had involved them. Mean while, he continued to bestow on her those marks of regard which it was impossible to refuse to her feelings towards him, even if they had not been reciprocal. But the conduct which he adopted as kindest to Miss Vanhomrigh, was likely to prove The effect of his increasing intimacy with the fatal to Stella. His fears and affections were next fascinating Vanessa, may be plainly traced in the awakened for that early favourite, whose suppress. Journal to Stella, which, in the course of its pro-ed grief and jealousy, acting upon a frame naturally gress, becomes more and more cold and indiffer- delicate, menaced her health in an alarming manent, breathes fewer of those aspirations after the ner. The feelings with which Swift beheld the quiet felicity of a life devoted to M. D. and the wreck which his conduct had occasioned, will not willows at Laracor,-uses less frequently the affec- bear description. Mrs. Johnson had forsaken her tionate jargon, called the little language,' in which country, and clouded even her reputation, to behis fondness at first displays itself,-and, in short, come the sharer of his fortunes, when at their exhibits all the symptoms of waning affection. lowest; and the implied ties by which he was bound Stella was neither blind to the altered style of his to make her compensation, were as strong as the correspondence, nor deaf to the rumours which most solemn promise, if indeed even promises of were wafted to Ireland. Her letters are not pre- future marriage had not been actually exchanged served; but, from several passages of the Journal, between them. He employed Dr. St. George it appears that they intimated displeasure and jea- Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, his tutor and early friend, lousy, which Swift endeavours to appease. to request the cause of her melancholy; and he "Upon Swift's return to Ireland, we may guess received the answer which his conscience must at the disturbed state of his feelings, wounded at have anticipated-it was her sensibility to his recent once by ungratified ambition, and harassed by his indifference, and to the discredit which her own affection being divided between two objects, each character sustained from the long subsistence of worthy of his attachment, and each having great the dubious and mysterious connection between claims upon him, while neither was likely to remain them. To convince her of the constancy of his contented with the limited return of friendship in affection, and to remove her beyond the reach of exchange for love, and that friendship too divided calumny, there was but one remedy. To this comwith a rival. The claims of Stella were preferable munication Swift replied, that he had formed two in point of date; and, to a man of honour and good resolutions concerning matrimony:-one, that he faith, in every respect irresistible. She had resigned would not marry till possessed of a competent forher country, her friends, and even hazarded her tune; the other, that the event should take place character, in hopes of one day being united to at a time of life which gave him a reasonable prosSwift. But if Stella had made the greatest sacri-pect to see his children settled in the world. The fice, Vanessa was the more important victim. She independence proposed, he said, he had not yet had youth, fortune, fashion; all the acquired ac- achieved, being still embarrassed by debt; and, on complishments and information in which Stella was the other hand, he was past that term of life after deficient; possessed at least as much wit, and cer- which he had determined never to marry. Yet he tainly higher powers of imagination. That he had was ready to go through the ceremony for the ease no intention to marry Vanessa, is evident from pas- of Mrs. Johnson's mind, providing it should resages in his letters, which are inconsistent with main a strict secret from the public, and that they such an arrangement; as, on the other hand, their should continue to live separately, and in the same whole tenor excludes that of guilty intimacy. On guarded manner as formerly. To these hard terms the other hand, his conduct, with respect to Stella, Stella subscribed; they relieved her own mind at was equally dubious. So soon as he was settled in least from all scruples on the impropriety of their the Deanery-house, his first care was to secure connection; and they soothed her jealousy, by lodgings for Mrs. Dingley and Stella, upon Or- rendering it impossible that Swift should ever give mond's Quay, on the other side of the Liffy; and his hand to her rival. They were married in the to resume, with the same guarded caution, the in- garden of the Deanery, by the Bishop of Clogher, tercourse which had formerly existed between them. in the year 1716."-Vol. i. pp. 229–238. But circumstances soon compelled him to give that connection a more definite character.

"Mrs. Vanhomrigh was now dead. Her two here suggested, it is plain that Swift's conduct Even admitting all the palliations that are sons survived her but a short time; and the cir- is utterly indefensible and that his ingenious cumstances of the young ladies were so far embarrassed by inconsiderate expences, as gave them biographer thinks nearly as ill of it as we do. a handsome excuse for retiring to Ireland, where Supposing it possible that a man of his penetheir father had left a small property near Celbridge. tration should have inspired an innocent young The arrival of Vanessa in Dublin excited the ap-girl with a violent passion, without being at prehensions of Swift, and the jealousy of Stella. all aware of it, what possible apology can However imprudently the Dean might have indulged himself and the unfortunate young lady, by there be for his not disclosing his engagefrequenting her society during his residence in Eng ments with Mrs. Johnson, and peremptorily land, there is no doubt that he was alive to all the breaking off all intercourse with her rejected hazards that might accrue to the reputation and rival?-He was bound to her by ties even peace of both, by continuing the same intimacy in more sacred than those of actual marriageDublin. But the means of avoiding it were no and was no more at liberty, under such cirlonger in his power, although his reiterated remonstrances assumed even the character of unkind- cumstances, to disguise that connection than ness. She importuned him with complaints of ne- the other:-or if he had himself unconsciously glect and cruelty; and it was obvious, that any imbibed an irresistible passion for his younger decisive measure to break their correspondence, admirer, it would have been far less guilty or would be attended with some such tragic conse- dishonourable to have avowed this to Stella, quence, as, though late, at length concluded their story. Thus engaged in a labyrinth, where perse- and followed the impulse of such a fatal atverance was wrong, and retreat seemed almost im-tachment. In either of these ways, he would