fhall not drop, faid my uncle Toby, firmly.A-wello'day,do what we can for him, faid Trim, maintaining his point, -The poor foul will die :--He fhall not die, by G-, cried my uncle Toby.

-The Accufing Spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blush'd as he gave it in▬▬ and the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropp'd a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.

-My uncle Toby went to his bureau,-put his purse into his breeches pocket, and having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a physician,— he went to bed and fell asleep.

The fun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but Le Fevre's and his afflicted fon's; the hand of death preffed heavy upon his eye-lids,and hardly could the wheel at the ciftern turn round its circle,when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant's room, and, without preface or apology, fat himself down upon the chair by the bed-fide, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did,-how he had rested in the night,-what was his complaint,- where was his pain, and what he could do to help him ;-and, without giving him time to answer any one of his enquiries, went on, and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal the night before for him.

-You fhall go home directly, Le Fevre, faid my uncle Toby, to my house, and we'll fend for a doctor to fee what's the matter,- -and we'll have an apothecary, and the corporal fhall be your nurse,and I'll be your fervant, Le Fevre.

There was a franknefs in my uncle Toby,-not the effect of familiarity,-but the cause of it,-which let you at once into his foul, and fhewed you the goodness of his nature; to this, there was fomething in his looks and voice, and manner, fuperadded, which eternally beckoned

I 3

beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take fhelter under him; fo that before my uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the fon infenfibly preffed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breaft of his coat, and was pulling it towards him. The blood and fpirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and flow within him, and were retreating to their laft citadel, the heartrallied back, the film forfook his eyes for a moment, -he looked up wifhfully in my uncle Toby's face, -then caft a look upon his boy, and that liga ment, fine as it was, was never broken..

Nature inftantly ebb'd again, the film returned to its place--the pulfe flutter'd-stopp'dwent on-throbb'd-topp'd again--mov'd-ftopp'd --fhall I go on?-No.

N treating of the moral duties which apply to different relations of life, men of humanity and feeling have not omitted thofe which are due from mafters to fervants. Nothing, indeed, can be more natural than the attachment and regard to which the faithful fervices of our domeftics are entitled; the connection grows up, like all the other family charities, in early life, and is only extinguished by thofe corruptions which blunt the others, by pride, by folly, by diffipation, or by vice.

I hold it indeed as the fure fign of a mind not poised as it ought to be, if it be infenfible to the pleafures of home, to the little joys and endearments of a family, to the affections of relations, to the fidelity of domestics. Next to being well with his own confcience, the friendfhip and attachment of a man's family and dependents

feems

feems to me one of the most comfortable circumftances in his lot.

It appears to me a very pernicious miftake, which I have fometimes feen parents guilty of in the education of their children, to encourage and incite in them a haughty and defpotic behaviour to their fervants; to teach them an early conceit of the difference of their conditions; to accuftom them to confider the fervices of their attendants as perfectly compenfated by the wages they receive, and as unworthy of any return of kindness, attention, or complacency.

I was last autumn at my friend Colonel Cauftic's in Scotland, and saw there, on a visit to Miss Caustic, a young gentleman and his fifter, children of a neighbour of the Colonel's, with whofe appearance and manner I was particularly pleafed.-"The history of their parents," faid my friend, "is fomewhat fingular, and I love to tell it, as I do every thing that is to the honour of our nature. Man is fo poor a thing taken in the grofs, that when I meet with an instance of nobleness in detail, I am glad to reft upon it long, and to recall it often.

The father of those young folks, whofe looks you were struck with, was a gentleman of confiderable domains and extenfive influence on the northern frontier of our county. In his youth he lived, as it was then more the fashion than it is now, at the feat of his anceftors, furrounded with Gothic grandeur, and compaffed with feudal followers and dependents, all of whom could trace their connection, at a period more or lefs remote, with the family of their chief. Every domestic in his house bore the family name, and looked on himself as in a certain degree partaking its dignity, and fharing its fortune. Of thefe, one was in a particular manner the favourite of his master. Albert Bane had been his companion from his infancy. Of an age fo much more advanced as to enable him to be a fort of tutor to his youthful Lord, Albert had early taught

him

him the rural exercifes and rural amufements, in which he was eminently skilful; he had attended him in the courfe of his education at home, of his travels abroad, and was ftill the conftant companion of his excurfions, and the affociate of his sports.

"On one of these occafions, a favourite dog of Albert's, which he had trained himself, and of whose qualities he was proud, happened to mar the fport which his master expected, who, irritated at the difappointment, and having his gun ready cocked in his hand, fired at the animal, which, however, in the violence of his resentment, he miffed. Albert, to whom the dog (Ofcar) was as a child, remonftrated against the rafhnefs of the deed, in a manner rather too warm for his master, ruffled as he was with the accident, and confcious of being in the wrong, to bear. In his paffion he ftruck his faithful attendant; who fuffered the indignity in filence, and retiring, rather in grief than in anger, left his native country that very night; and when he reached the nearest town, enlifted with a recruiting party of a regiment then on foreign fervice. It was in the beginning of the war with France which broke out in 1744, rendered remarkable for the rebellion which the policy of the French court excited, in which fome of the firft families in the Highlands were unfortunately engaged. Among those who joined the ftandard of Charles, was the master of Albert.

After the battle of Culloden, fo fatal to that party, this gentleman, along with others who had escaped the flaughter of the field, fheltered himself from the rage of the unfparing foldiery, among the diftant receffes of their country. To him his native mountains offered an afylum; and thither he naturally fled for protection. Acquainted, in the pursuits of the chace, with every fecret path and unworn track, he lived for a confiderable time, like the deer of his foreft, clofe hid all day, and only venturing down at the fall of evening, to obtain from fome of his cottagers, whose fidelity he

could