ready," without more delay bade us follow her: | tal of Apollo, whilst Lady Thimble and I took "Come, Sir," says she to me, as I passed the our seats opposite to the reader. great hall with an aching heart and chattering teeth, " you shall now have a treat in your own taste;" and meeting one of the domestics by the way, bade him tell Calliope to come into the Apollo. When I set my foot into the room, I was immediately saluted by something like one of those ungenial breezes which travellers inform us have the faculty of putting an end to life and all its cares at a stroke: a fire indeed had been lighted, which poor Sir Theodore was soliciting | into a blaze, working the bellows with might and main to little purpose; for the billets were so wet that Apollo himself, with all his beams, would have been foiled to set them in a flame: the honest gentleman had taken the precaution of opening all the windows, in spite of which no atom of smoke passed up the chimney, but came curling into the room in columns as thick as if a hecatomb had been offering to the shrine of Delphi; indeed this was not much to be wondered at, for I soon discovered that a board had been fixed across the flue of the chimney, which Sir Theodore, in his attention to the bellows, had neglected to observe; I was again the unhappy cause of that poor gentleman's unmerited rebuke, and in terms much severer than before: it was to no purpose he attempted to bring Susan, the housemaid, in for some share of the blame: his plea was disallowed; and though I must own it was not the most manly defence in the world, yet, considering the unhappy culprit as the son of a tailor, I thought it not entirely inadmissible. When the smoke cleared up I discovered a cast of the Belvidere Apollo on a pedestal in a niche at the upper end of the room; but, if we were to judge by the climate, this chamber must have derived its name from Apollo, by the rule of lucus a non lucendo. As soon as we were seated, and Lady Thimble had in some degree composed her spirits, she began to tell me that the treat she had to give me was the rehearsal of part of an epic poem, written by a young lady of seventeen, who was a miracle of genius, and whose talents for composition were so extraordinary that she had written a treatise on female education, whilst she was at the boarding-school, which all the world allowed to be a wonderful work for one of such an early age. There was no escape, for Calliope herself now entered the room, and dinner was put back a full hour for the luxury of hearing a canto of a boardingschool girl's epic poem read by herself in the presence of Apollo. The Scottish philosopher had prudently kept his post by the parlour fire, and I alone was singled out as the victim; Sir Theodore and his father-in-law being considered only as expletives to fill up the audience. Calliope was enthroned in a chair at the pedes I was now to undergo an explanation of the subject matter of this poem: this was undertaken and performed by Lady Thimble, whilst the young poetess was adjusting her manuscript: the subject was allegorical: the title was The Triumph of Reason, who was the hero of the piece; the inferior characters were the human passions personified; each passion occupied a canto, and the lady had already despatched a long list; if I rightly remember, we were to hear the fourteenth canto; in thirteen actions, the hero Reason had been victorious, but it was exceedingly doubtful how he would come off in this, for the antagonist he had to deal with was no less a personage than almighty Love himself: the metre was heroic, and many of the thoughts displayed a Juvenile fancy and wild originality; the action was not altogether uninteresting, nor illmanaged, and victory for a while was held in suspense by a wound the hero received from an arrow somewhere in the region of the heart; for this wound he could obtain no cure, till an ancient physician, after many experiments for his relief, cut out the part, affected with his scythe: upon the whole, the poem was such that, had it not been allegorical, and had not I been cold and hungry, I could have found much to commend and some things to admire, even though the poetess had been twice as old and not half so handsome, for Calliope was extremely pretty, and I could plainly discover that Nature meant her to be most amiable and modest, if flattery and false education would have suffered her good designs to have taken place; I therefore looked upon her with pity, as I do on all spoiled children; and, when her reading was concluded, did not bestow all that praise which, if I had consulted my own gratification more than her good, I certainly should have bestowed; the only occasion on which I think it a point of conscience to practise the philosophy of the Dampers. At length dinner was announced, and being a part of Lady Thimble's domestic economy, which she had put out of her own hands, as she informed us, and in which I suspect the athletic philosopher had something to say, it was plentifully served. Sir Theodore and my friend the merchant plied him pretty briskly with the bottle; but as a stately first-rate ship does not condescend to open her ports to the petty cruisers that presume to hail her, in like manner this gigantic genius kept the oracle within him muzzled, nor condescended once to draw the tompion of his lips, till it happened, in the course of many topics, that Lady Thimble, speaking of the talents of Calliope, observed that miracles were not ceased: "How should that thing be said to cease," replied the oracle," which never had existence ?" The spring was now touched that put this vast machine in motion; and, C taking infidelity in miracles for his text, he rarried us, in the course of a long uninterrupted harangue, through a series of learned deductions, to what appeared his grand desideratum, viz. "an absolute refutation of the miracles of Christ, by proof logical and historical." Whilst this discourse was going on, I was curious to observe the different effects it had on the company: Lady Thimble received it with evident marks of triumph, so that I could plainly see all was gospel with her, and the only gospel she had faith in ; Sir Theodore wisely fell asleep; the merchant was in his countinghouse ; But all this while, the young unsettled thoughts of Calliope were visibly wavering, sometimes borne away by the ipse dixit of the philosopher and the echo of Lady Thimble's plaudits; sometimes catching hold of Hope, and hanging to the anchor of her salvation, Faith; at other times, without resistance, carried down the tide of declamation, which rolled rapidly along in provincial dialect, like a torrent from his native Highland crags, rough and noisy. I saw her struggles with infinite concern; the savage saw them also, but with triumph; and, turning his discourse upon the breach he had made in her belief, pressed the advantage he had gained with devilish address; in short, a new antagonist had started up, more formidable to Reason than all the fourteen from whose attack she had brought her hero off with victory; and that champion, which had resisted the arrows of all powerful Love, was likely now to fall a victim to the pestilential breath of Infidelity. In this dilemma I was doubtful how to act: I did not decline the combat because I dreaded the strength of this Goliath of the Philistines, for I knew the weapons might be confided in which the great Captain of Salvation had put into my hands; but I disdained to plead before a prejudiced tribunal, in which the mistress of the mansion sat as judge; and, as sleep had secured one of the company out of harm's way, and another was upon an excursion from which I did not wish to bring him home, there remained only Calliope, and I determined within myself to take occasion of discoursing with her apart, before I left the house next morning. ་་་་་་་ ་་་་་་་་་ Calliope after the athletic philosopher's harangue against the evidences of the Christian religion: I was at the pains of putting my thoughts together in writing before I went to bed, for 1 judged it best to give them to Calliope in such a form as she might hereafter at any time refer to and examine. I had the satisfaction of an hour's conversation with that young lady next morning, before the family had assembled for breakfast: I could observe that something dwelt upon her mind, and demanding of her if I was not right in my conjecture, she answered me at once to the point without hesitation-"I confess to you," said she, "that the discourse which Dr. Mac-Infidel yesterday held has made me thoroughly unhappy; things which are above reason I can readily suppose are mysteries, which I ought to admit as matter of faith in religion; but things contrary to reason, and facts which history confutes, how am I to believe? What am I to do in this case? Have you any thing to oppose to his argument? If you have, I should be happy to hear it! if you have not, I pray you let us talk no more upon the subject."—I then gave the paper into her hand, which I had prepared, and, explaining to her the reasons I had for not taking up the dispute before our company yesterday, desired her to give my paper a serious reading; if there was any thing in it that laid out of the course of her studies, I would gladly do my best to expound it, and would show her the authorities to which it referred: she received my paper with the best grace in the world, and promised me that she would consider it with all the attention she was mistress of. In our further discourse, it chanced that I let drop some expressions in commendation of her understanding and talents, upon which I observed she gave me a very expressive look; and when I would have spoken of her poem, she shook her head, and, hastily interrupting me, desired I would spare her on that subject; she did not wish to be any more flattered in a folly she had too much cause to repent of; she had burned the odious poem I was speaking of, and, bursting suddenly into a flood of tears, protested she would never be guilty of writing another line of poetry while she lived. No words of mine can paint the look and action which accompanied these expressions; much less can I describe the stroke of pity and surprise which her emotion gave me. It was evident she alluded to something that had occurred since the reading of the poem; I recollected she was absent all the latter part of the evening, and I felt an irresistible propensity to inquire into the cause of her affliction, though the shortness of our acquaintance gave me no right to be inquisitive; she saw my difficulty, for her intuition is very great; after a short recollection, I HAD resolved to have some conversation with which I did not attempt to interrupt-" I know NUMBER VI. "MY DEAREST NANCY! "I have this instant brought my frigate to an anchor, and seize the first moment that my duty permits, to tell the loveliest of her sex that I have luckily come across a prize that makes a man of me for life: a man did I say? Yes, and the happiest of men, if my dear girl is still true, and will consent to share the fortune of her faithful Henry. "I cannot leave Plymouth this fortnight, therefore pray write to me under cover to my friend the Admiral. Yours, ever, " HENRY CONSTANT." not how it is," said she, "but something tells | the most amiable, the most beloved of men: he me I am speaking to a friend."-Here she was my father's darling, and from a boy was paused, as doubting whether she ought to pro- educated by him in the profession of the sea; he ceed or not, and fixing her eyes upon the floor shared every service with my father except in evident embarrassment: it will readily be the last fatal one, in which your friend unsupposed I seized the opportunity to induce her happily was lost. Providence, that ordained to confide in me, if there was any service I the death of the one, has in the same period could render towards alleviating the distress she enriched the other; he is lately returned from was evidently suffering—“ I have no right to the West Indies, and by his duty has been trouble you," says she, "but that fatal argu- confined to the port he arrived in, so that we ment I heard last night has so weakened the re- have not met since his return to England. source to which my mind in all afflictions would Here is the first letter he wrote to me from else have naturally applied, that I really know Plymouth; read it, I beseech you, and then not how to support myself, nor where to look compare it with the fatal one I received last for comfort, but by throwing myself upon your night." Calliope put a letter into my hands, friendship for advice, as the most unhappy of all and I read as follows:beings. You must know I have the honour to be the daughter of that gallant sea officer Captain Here she named an officer who will be ever dear to his country, ever deplored by it, and whose friendship is at once the joy and the affliction of my life. I started from my seat; the stroke I felt, when she pronounced a name so rooted in my heart, was like the shock of electricity; I clasped her hands in mine, and, pressing them, exclaimed-" You have a father," -here I stopped-the recollection stopped me from proceeding-for it was false." No, no, my child," I said, "you have no father! nor had he a friend who can replace your loss; however, pray proceed."- -"Implicitly," replied Calliope (for by that name I still must beg to call her, though that and poetry are both renounced for ever.) "As you are the friend of my father, you must know that he lost my mother when I was an infant; two years are now passed since he perished; a miserable period it has been to me; I am now under the protection of a distant relation who is an intimate of the lady of this house, and one whose ruinous flattery, jointly with Lady Thimble's, has conspired to turn my wretched head, and blast the only hope of happiness I had in my life. These learned ladies, as they would be thought, put me upon studies I was never fitted to, gave me this silly name Calliope, and never ceased inflaming my vanity till they persuaded me I had a talent for poetry in this they were assisted by Mac-Infidel, who lives in great intimacy with Lady Thimble; the adulation of a learned man (for that he surely is) intoxicated me with self-opinion, and the gravity of his character completed the folly and destruction of mine.". "What do I hear," said I, interrupting her, "the destruction of your character?"-" Have patience," she replied: "when I disclose the sorrows of my heart, you will own that my destruction is complete."-Melancholy as these words were, the deduction, notwithstanding, that I drew from them was a relief compared to what I at first apprehended." Alas! Sir," resumed Calliope, "I have lost the affections of When I had returned this letter to Calliope, she resumed her narrative in the following words:"The joy this letter gave me set my spirits in such a flow that, in the habit I was of writing verses, I could not bring my thoughts to run in humble prose, but, giving the reins to my fancy, filled at least six sides with rhapsodies in verse; and, not content with this, and foolishly conceiving that my poem would appear at least as charming to Henry as the flattery of my own sex had persuaded me it was to them, I enclosed a fair copy and sent it to him in a packet by the stage coach: the next return of the post brought me this fatal letter I received last night. * MADAM, "Though there cannot be in this world a task so painful to me as what I am now about to perform, yet I think it an indispensable point of honour to inform my late most lovely and beloved Nancy, that, if I am to suppose her the author of that enormous bundle of verses I have received from her hand, it is the last favour that hand must bestow upon her unhappy Henry. "My education you know; for it was formed under your most excellent father; I served with him from a child, and he taught me, not indeed the knack of making verses, but what I hope has been as useful to my country, the duties of an officer. Being his daughter, I had flattered clergyman, a friend of her father's, who with an exemplary wife lives upon a small country vicarage in primitive simplicity, where that afflicted young lady took shelter. "SIR, myself you would not like me the less for fol- | letter; it is dated from the house of a worthy lowing his profession, or for being trained to it under his instruction. But, alas! Nancy, all these hopes are gone. My ignorance would only disgrace you, and your wit would make me contemptible; since you are turned poetess, how can my society be agreeable? If those verses you have sent me are all your own making, you "After you left me at Lady Thimble's, I must have done little else since we parted, and if seized the first moment, that the anguish of my such are to be your studies and occupations, mind permitted me to make use of, to put mywhat is to become of all the comforts of a hus-self in readiness for taking my final leave of that band? How are you to fulfil the duties of a mother, or manage the concerns of a family? No, no; may heaven defend me from a learned wife! I am too proud to be the butt of my own table! too accustomed to command, to be easily induced to obey; let me ever live a single man, or let the wife I choose be modest, unpretending, simple, natural in her manners, plain in her understanding: let her be true as the compass I sail by, and (pardon the coarseness of the allusion), obedient to the helm as the ship I steer; then, Nancy, I will stand by my wife, as I will by my ship, to the latest moment I have to breathe. For God's sake, what have women to do with learning? But if they will step out of their own profession and write verses, do not let them step into ours to choose husbands; we shall prove coarse messmates to the muses. family, and, according to the plan we had concerted, came without delay to this place, where, if any thing could have given absolute peace to my mind, the consolation of these excellent people, and the serenity of the scene must have done it. As it was, I felt my afflictions lighten, my self-reproach became less bitter, and, whilst the vanity, which flattery had inspired me with, has been cured by their admonitions, the doubts that infidelity had raised have been totally removed, and truth made clear to my eternal comfort and conviction. Had it not been for this I should have been given up to despair; for as I heard no more from Captain Constant, I was convinced he had renounced me for ever; in the mean time I wrote many letters, but sent none to him; some of these letters were written in a high tone, most of them in an humble one, and expressions little short of phrenzy: all these 1 constantly destroyed; for as I had not the heart to write angrily to him, so I dreaded to appear mean in his eyes, if I was too plaintive; nay, I was not sure, since his fortune had become so superior to mine, but I might lay myself open to a charge of the most despicable nature. "I understand so much of your poetical epis-in one I gave a loose to passion and despair in tle as to perceive that you are in the family of Sir Theodore and Lady Thimble: three days of such society would make me forswear matrimony for ever. To the daughter of my friend I must for ever speak and act as a friend; suffer me then to ask if any man in his senses will choose a wife from such a school? Oh grief to think that one so natural, so sincere and unaffected as was my Nancy, could be the companion of such an ugly petticoated pedant as Lady Thimble, such a tame hen-pecked son of a tailor as Sir Theodore ! "As for the volume of verses you sent me, I dare say it is all very fine, but I really do not comprehend three lines of it; the battles you describe are what I never saw by sea or land, and the people who fight them such as I have never been accustomed to serve with one gentleman I perceive there is, who combats stoutly against love; it is a good moral, and I thank you for it; cost what it may, I will do my best to imitate your hero. "Farewell, "I must be only your most faithful friend, NUMBER VII. "Thus my time passed, till yesterday morning, upon observing the house in one of those bustles which the expectation of a visitor creates in small families, I found my good hostess deeply engaged with her pastry, and having myself become a considerable adept in the art under her tuition, I was putting myself in order to assist her in her preparations, when turning to me with a smile, which seemed to spring from joy as well as benevolence-" Come, my dear child," says she, “I have been at work this hour; and if you had known it was to entertain a friend of your father's, I am persuaded you would not have let me been so long beforehand with you." I asked her who it was she expected-" No matter," she replied, "fall to your work, and do your best, like a good girl, for your mistress's credit as well as your own.' -The significant look with which she accompanied these words set my heart into such a flutter that my hands no longer obeyed me in the task I undertook, till having spilled the milk, overthrown the eggs, and put every thing into the same confusion with myself, I burst into a flood of tears, which CALLIOPE has favoured me with the following ended in a strong hysteric fit. My screams brought the good man of the house and every body in it to my assistance; but judge of my condition, betwixt joy, astonishment, and terror, when the figure of my beloved Constant presented itself to my eyes; my God! he exclaimed, and started back aghast, then sprung to my assistance, and clasping me in his arms, lifted me at once from the floor, and ran with me into the parlour, where there was a couch,-My life! my soul! was all he could say, for he was like a man beside himself with fright and agony, till I recovered; this was at last effected by a plentiful relief of tears, and then I found myself alone with my beloved Henry, my head reclined upon his neck, and him supporting my whole weight in his arms, whilst he knelt on one knee at my feet; no sooner had I recollected myself than the blood,, that had been driven from my cheeks during my fit, rushed back again with violence and covered me with blushes. Henry's transports now became as vehement as his terrors had been, and loosing his hold of me for a moment, whilst he fixed his eyes upon me with an ardour that confounded me so as almost to deprive me of speech or motion, he again caught me in his arms, and pressing me eagerly to his breast almost smothered me with caresses. He then quitted me altogether, and throwing himself on his knees at my feet, entreated me to forgive him, if he had offended me: he had been distracted between joy and terror, and scarce knew what he had done: he proceeded to account for the motives of his conduct towards me, both when he wrote the letter to me from Plymouth, and for every moment of his time since: that he had set off for London the very day he wrote, had sought you out, and conversed fully with you upon the effects his letter had produced; that, hearing I was come to this place, he would have followed me with an immediate explanation, if you had not prevailed with him to the contrary (for which advice I cannot now find in my heart to condemn you): that, however, he had placed himself within two miles of me in a neighbouring village, where he had daily intercourse with the worthy vicar, who gave him punctual intelligence of the state of my mind, and the total revolution effected in it; that what he suffered during the state of trial and suspense no words of his could paint, but the accounts he received of me from this good man, and the benefits he knew I was gaining by his counsel and conversation, kept him from discovering himself, till he had permission for so doing; that he threw himself upon my candour and good sense for justification in the honest artifice he had made use of, and now that I added to my good qualities those religious and domestic virtues which the society of unbelieving pedants had obscured, but not extinguished, he hoped there was no further bar in the way of our mutual happiness: but that I would condescend to accept a man whose heart and soul were devoted to me, and who had one recommendation at least to offer in his own behalf, which he flattered himself no other person could produce, and which he was sure would have some weight with me: so saying, he put a letter into my hands, which I had no sooner glanced my eye upon than, perceiving it was the well known hand-writing of my ever honoured and lamented father, I sunk back upon the couch and dissolved again into tears: even the manly heart of my Henry now gave way, and the sad remembrance of his departed friend melted his brave bosom into all the softness of a woman's. Then, Sir, oh, then indeed I loved him, then he triumphed in my heart; how dear, how noble, how almost divine did he then appear! his eyes, whose ardent raptures had affrighted me, now, when I saw them bathed in tears, inspired me with the purest passion, and contemplating him with the affection of a sister, not as a lover, I cast off all reserve, and following the impulse of the soul, "dearest and best of men, "I cried and sunk into his arms. "Thus, Sir, you have the full and unreserved account to which your friendship is entitled ; still there remains one act of kindness in your power to show me, and which my Henry jointly with myself solicits, which is, that you would stand in the place of your deceased friend upon our marriage, and complete the kind part you have taken in my welfare, by joining my hand with that of the most deserving man on earth. "I had almost forgot to mention to you a circumstance that passed as we were sitting at table after dinner, and by which our good friend the vicar undesignedly threw me into a confusion that was exceedingly distressing, by repeating some verses from Pope's Essay on Man, in which he applied to me to help him out in his quotation: I certainly remembered the passage, and could have supplied his memory with the words; but Henry being present, and the recollection of what had passed on the subject of poetry rushing on my mind, at the same time I thought I saw him glance a significant look at me, threw me into such embarrassment on the sudden that, in vain endeavouring to evade the subject, and being pressed a little unseasonably by the Vicar, my spirits also being greatly fluttered by the events of the morning, I could no longer command myself, but burst into tears, and very narrowly escaped falling into a second hysteric. Nothing ever equalled the tenderness of Henry on this occasion; nay, I thought I could discover that he was secretly pleased with the event, as it betrayed a consciousness of former vanities, and seemed to prove that I repented of them: whatever interpretation he might put upon it, still I could not bring myself |