tion to his lady's memory. Her funeral was conducted in the highest ftyle of pageant decoration; and he wearied himfelf with examining defigns for a monument, which he proposed to have executed in Parian marble, and that its magnificence fhould rival the proudest ftructures which forrow, tafte, or vanity have erected over "fallen mortalitv." He teazed his children with his frantic careffes; vowed that he only exifted for their fakes; determined never to be feparated from them; and traced, with mingled ecftafy and anguish, the various resemblances which they bore to their mother. My little Geraldine," he would fay," is her perfect image. Just fuch "a fmile as that of my beloved, before "I knew that accurfed Fitzofborne. Lucy has her beautiful hair, and Arabella her melodious voice. Poor "James "James too-but I have never seen. " him fince he was three months old. "They will all forgether, except Ara"bella. Yet the murderer ftill lives. "But may I perish, Fitzofborne, if I "do not pursue thee to the remotest "corners of the globe !" While the heart glows with fentiments of juft indignation, it is natural to inquire the fate of the author of thefe calamitous fcenes. The laft hours of Fitzofborne's life were not fufficiently fplendid to allure inexperience to defert the plain path of rectitude, from the hope of acquiring fame or fortune by indirect means. He had indeed plucked the forbidden fruit, but he had found it, like the bitter apples of Sodom, dif tasteful and delufive, the origin of mifery and regret. Disdainfully rejected by the victim of his artifices; compelled to fly his na R 6 tive tive country, or to languifh in hople's captivity; abandoned even by the licentious part of the world, who, though they enthusiastically applaud triumphant vice, are ever firft to fhun indigent guilt; Fitzofborne was now left to meditate on the abuse of diftinguished talents, the wafte of perverted industry, and the folly, as well as the wickedness, of that knowledge which only afpires to organize depravity. These insupportable reflections were, however, foon interrupted; and his miferable existence brought to a period by other means than the fword of an injured hufband and betrayed friend. Retributive juftice not only willed his fall in that country where he had imbibed his peftilent notions; it alfo decreed, that those very opinions should be the immediate occafion of his death. It is well known that the merciless tyranny ranny which Robefpierre erected on the tomb of the murdered Louis fpared neither friends nor enemies. Fitzofborne, as an Englishman and a gentleman, became an object of suspicion. In vain did he plead that he had disgraced his ancestors, and abjured his country; in vain boast his contempt of fuperftition and abhorrence of prescribed forms; in vain bend with mock adoration at the idol fhrine of liberty, or with fervile adulation load the new Romans with the falfified epithets of magnanimous and illuftrious: they, who fpared not a Roland or a Condorcet, could not be expected to regard fanguinary principles, unless attefted by the repeated perpetration of fanguinary deeds. In the gloom of the Abbaye prison, exposed to all the various wretchedness of want, difturbed by the groans of fellow-fufferers, and furrounded by the inftruments of defpotifm, the wretched Fitzofborne might have feen the refutation of that falfe philofophy which, founded upon the vifionary perfectability of the human fpecies, rejects the wife reftrictions which Infinite Wifdom has 'contrived as a barrier against the extreme atrocity of a fallible creature. But Fitzofborne could neither commune with his own heart, nor feek forgiveness at that throne of mercy which he had often presumptuously blafphemed. Amongst the effects of thefe alarming doctrines, it is not the least lamentable that they fteel the heart against contrition. The unhappy finner, whom paffion betrays into guilt, trembles at the recollection of thofe crimes which the fyftematic villain juftifies. But the forrows of penitence lead to hope, while the pangs of impiety end in despair. Shrinking |