from the path of wisdom and rectitude which you had pointed out, I know not: had I followed that, I might have made a reputable stand in life-at any rate, moving in a circle more honoured than that into which I have thrown myself. But it is not for me to aggravate my misfortunes; my task should rather be to reconcile them. If I succeed in removing any portion of your anger, I more than repay myself—if not, it is at least a trifling evidence of my affection, though repaying not a thousandth part of what I am indebted to you. Mitigate, I pray you, your resentment. My most sanguine hopes do not hint at sudden, or perhaps at any period, entire forgiveness. Suffer me to write to you now and then-to feel that I am addressing you to relieve my aching heart, by assuring you how I love and honour you. May I entreat, too, you will not let my mother participate with me your anger. I declare to you she is blameless in respect of this step I have taken. Imperfectly as I may have written, I still venture to send you this sincere confession; but no attempt at extenuation of my conduct. Your justice I must ever fear-in your mercy I may have hope. "Your affectionate "York, April 6th, 1792." and contrite nephew, RM Elliston INCREASING DESPONDENCY. 47 The very despatch of this letter brought relief to his heart, which he fain would have mistaken for pardon already received-a delusion not very dissimilar to that in after life, when, on giving a bill at six months to his timber merchant, he exclaimed, "Thank God, that fellow's paid?" The sincerity, however, which dictated the above epistle we do not for a moment question; and his very sanguine temper came not inopportunely to his aid. Elliston returned to his duties, a new man. What the Bath waters could never have effected, his own prescription had readily accomplished. His health was restored-and thus his first engagement at York was brought to the pleasing termination of pecuniary profit and editorial approbation. But alas! nothing was responded from Cambridge -no reply reached him from his uncle. This continued silence reduced him again to a state of great mental suffering. Till now he had not felt himself disowned :-any reproaches had relieved him any sentence had been milder. This was the more distressing as it was about the period of his making a first appearance on the Hull Theatre. His fame had long preceded him in that quarter; and on the following week he was to justify his credit. He felt he should fail, and became indeed almost indifferent to the result. The night arrived; and in the most flattering manner he was received in the part of Young Marlow. But his forebodings were no less true. He did fail-his acting was languid or unnaturally forced; and although the press appeared to acknowledge all that had been hitherto reported of his quality, yet he well knew his effort on that night dropped short of the goal. A second hollow triumph like the first he was persuaded would undo him. Determined to recover all, he repeated the character in such good heart, that his spirit was rekindled, and the flame he watchfully fed with unabating industry. After eight months, however, from the date of his first epistle, he contemplated a second. But as most penitential compositions, like love-letters and sea-fights, are pretty much alike, we shall forbear serving up any further entertainment of the sort, and merely offer our guests a broken corner-this is given from "Hull, Dec. 25th, -92, "At Mr. Thompson's, Black Fryar's Gate. . Do not mistake me, sir; my supplication is not prompted by any hardships which I have suffered, for I am receiving a competencyam respected as an actor, and welcomed as a friend. These sighs arise from the degrading position in which I stand before you. With respect to the profession I have chosen, I know public impression. is unfriendly to it. Some of its members may be profligate and immoral; but the state of an actor is that of being almost as much before the public GOOD RESOLUTIONS OF A TRUANT. 49 when off the stage, as on it. His errors and indiscretions are presently abroad, and the world therefore may too hastily be led to imagine that the life of an actor is inseparable from shame. But, sir, this is not true; or if it be true, I have indeed been singularly fortunate in being placed amongst so many worthy exceptions. Believe me, sir, it shall at least be my endeavour to carry into this profession, and to maintain throughout my career, whether it be brief or extended, the principles and conduct of a man of honour and morality." Well said, resolution !—and nothing, we can assure our readers, will give us greater pleasure than in finding ourselves enabled, as we proceed, to prove how satisfactorily our young moralist redeemed those weighty pledges, for we are quite sure that trials will await his fortitude. Having despatched this second letter, he was fully resolved to arm himself for the worst; and as he was daily adding to the stock of his professional renown, he had reason to believe that public favour might in some degree compensate the loss of parental regard. Amongst other subjects of meditation, let it not be supposed the gentle Alice was forgotten. "When the heart of a man's oppressed with care," nothing could have come kindlier to his relief. He steeped his thoughts in the recollection of her beauty, as a kind of anodyne to his aching uncertainty; and E 50 A JOYFUL SURPRISE. cajoled himself into love to supply the void of a sequestered home. He even went so far as to compose eight lines towards a sonnet; but as the second decade of Livy is not more irretrievably lost, we can give no copy of the impassioned fragment. It was early in the next year, February, —93, and on a certain morning about as forbidding as that on which he "left his father's house," when in the act of raising the street latch of his lodging, to proceed to rehearsal, Elliston was startled by a double rap at the entrance, which set his very pulse into a gallop. It was the postman-a letter!-not for his own landlady, though she was still indebted in her Christmas rent, and held under a hard landlord, nor for the medical student in the second floor, who had really a great frailty for corresponding, but for himself—" Mr. Robert W. Elliston". the post mark "Cambridge," and the hand-writing, that of his uncle, the Master! He The contents might have been the bursting of overcharged anger, and a sentence of final abandonment-but never, surely, had slighted lover been thrown into such ecstatic joy by the impression of a seal as our dramatic truant at this moment. kissed it-pressed it to his bosom, and played about as many antics as Tom Jones, on discovering Miss Western's pocket-book on his road from Upton; and a very simpleton, indeed, were any stander-by who could have been persuaded that the specimen in |