Here fever and depression threw me on the couch of sickness, and I raved and relapsed alternately, until at length insensibility seized possession of my parched and soddened brain. On returning to recollection, I found myself in the house of General, whither Sholto had conveyed me. Olivia's letter was gone; but its impression remained, and began to produce reanimating effects. I conceived that by watching closely the fancy-shop, I might yet trace her abode. When sufficiently recovered, I repaired thither, and saw many specimens of her well-known hand. I purchased them all, and obtained a promise from this forestalled agent of the intriguing Sholto, that he would endeavour to learn the retreat of the artist. This only produced new obstacles to my search. The fiduciary never more exhibited any of Olivia's drawings in his window, and said, that she had ceased dealing with him. I have since learnt, that he suppressed some comforting letters from her to me: iu brief, the combined junto managed us both in such a way, that Olivia's fate and silence became unaccountable to me, and my disregard of her letters, suspect to her. I was restored to the good graces of all my kindred, and they sought, in their perverse way, to crush my sorrow in the tumults of gay dissipation. Sholto, above all, laid traps. for inveigling my gratitude, by nursing and trying to divert me. Villain! he was at this time making wary approaches to Olivia's confidence, by gratifying the longings of her affectionate solicitude, with news of my state. He was putting himself slowly on that footing with her, in which his suggestions of my incontinency, might pave the way to infamous overtures of his own. Some months passed on in this wearing state of suspense, and almost stagnating feeling, before I had begun to yield to the artificial exhilaration daily presented to me. At length I became sensible of the pleasure of stupifying my senses in wine; and in that state, exposing my heated passions to the allurements of fashionable demireps. This accorded well with the moral system of my relatives; and, as a counteracting remedy, with Lord -'s notions of “decorum, propriety, and virtue." One night, Sholto drew me from the table in an excited state, and proposed a look-in at the Opera. As we sallied from the door-it was past nine o'clock-I observed a poor creature, with a child in her arms, sitting on the steps; her head hent down as if in the act of suckling her child. I desired the servant to give her a shilling, and I would repay him. We then went on. In the pit of the King's Theatre, we fell in, as if by accident, with two courtezans of our acquaintance, who proposed retiring immediately after the ballet. Sholto offered to walk home with them, and I—aceeded. On getting out, I saw again, a poor creature folding an infant in her arms, and leaning against one of the pillars of the piazza. Her face was hid in her bonnet, and sunk over her baby. Sholto had left us, to look for a coach, and we halted opposite the poor woman. uttered some expression of pity, and putting my hand in my pocket, drew out several pieces of silver, and tendered them to her, desiring her to take her baby home out of the night-chill. At that moment her icy fingers touched mine, and the little darling uttered a faint cry. The touch went through every vein of my heart. I saw its mother's bosom heave convulsively, as she endeavoured mutely to hush her infant, and to stagger "Poor thing!" exclaimed I, "to be wandering at this hour of the night, in search of support for thy babe, whom its unnatural father

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has perhaps forsaken!" She stopped-my eyes followed her intently ; and, as she again moved on, some perplexing associations of a wellknown gait and figure came across my half-stupid memory. Sholto by this returned, and saying it would be an hour before we could get a coach to draw up, proposed to walk to some place, where we might sup, and do as we liked afterwards. I moved on passively, my thoughts occupied with the figure of the woman. Our party stopped at the door of a house, and I then again observed the poor creature, who must have followed us closely, pausing a few moments, as if adjusting the position of her burden. Before the door could close upon us, a piercing shriek was heard from outside. It was then that the full tide of recollection burst upon me like a revelation. I struck my forehead with my clenched fist, and fell with the violence of the blow against the wall, wildly ejaculating, "It is Olivia and my child!" I then made a rush to the door. Sholto and his infamous colleagues attempted to detain me, but I felled him, with the strength of a maniac, to the ground, and made my way out, uncovered as I was. I saw a female before me, and I hurried towards her: it was not she. I then turned in the other direction, but all trace of the one I sought had vanished. I ran back to the house which I had left, in hopes that Sholto might be able to give some account of her. Oh! the agony of my mind on more narrowly inspecting the door and premises. It was the same infamous abode where the persecution of Olivia was carried to its highest pitchwhere her first offspring had perished. The cause of her cry was now clear;-she had then tracked me from the step of my relation's door to the Opera-house, and waited with her charge in the raw night-air, to steal a look at the father of her child-her cold hand had come in contact with mine-and it was the wail of my own, my own little darling, that I had pitied so! and its little infantile cry was all that I knew of my child! Its mother-oh! how I hated myself for having failed to recognise her!-had followed me to the haunts of abandonment, had seen me enter in the company of worthless women, and had uttered a scream of despair, and fied......Sholto was not there, or was denied to me. I know not what bewilderment seized me, but I walked deliberately down to Westminster-bridge, as if I expected to find the corses of my infant and its mother there. I listened from one of the parapetted works, and thought I heard again a wild scream, and a faint infant-cry. To what horrid suggestions my phrenzy might have led, is uncertain, had not the watchman suspected, from my hatless state, the yet unformed design. He roused me to myself, and I mechanically resumed a composed demeanour. I inquired minutely from him if a woman, such as I described, had passed that way, and paid him bounteously for assuring me that she had not. It is not my object to relate the extravagancies of my grief. After wandering some time, I returned home. A gleam of hope here darted through my fiery brain, and I hastened to perform its suggestion. I drew up several copies of advertisements to this effect,-that if the woman who had last night received money, under the piazza of the Opera-house, from a gentleman, R. T. would apply at, (giving an address,) she would hear that her suspicions were unfounded, and be the means of saving an unhappy man from deep affliction. I then hurried off to the offices of different papers, and by much intercession and pecuniary in

ducements, procured their insertion that night. I also got handbills stuck up to the same purpose. These measures kept me from sinking under hopeless woe.

A few days after, I received a letter to the above address, of which the following are the leading passages:

"Dear Richard,—It is vain to entice me to return. Could I believe in your sincere affliction, that consideration might weigh with me, against the dictates of religion and virtue: but your long neglect, the scenes of revelry in which you have lived, convince me that you can find consolations for my loss. I believed you faultless, and I owed to you my virtue. You saved me from the courses of the prostitute, and granted me, as I thought, your esteem. Oh! what delusion in me, to imagine that you could esteem a polluted being, flung upon your protection fresh from the haunts of vice, and whose love originated in an act of forward impurity! It was a libel upon morality to miscal it esteem. Had it been such, had your love for me been cemented by esteem, you could never have fallen into the snares of the profligate. Oh! that house! a second time the scene of my ruin ;-but forgive me ; you were misled, I know, by a treacherous companion; and I have evidence of your uncorrupted heart. Oh, Richard! that thrill! those words of pity poured over your unknown child, your boy! they would efface a thousand wrongs and neglects! he shall early be taught to venerate his father's humanity. My beloved Richard, I acquit you in my heart. I see it is not your infidelity, but the inflexible maxims of religion and the world that disjoin us for ever. I could not live with you again on the same terms, for my conscience has been enlightened, and would make such an unhallowed state miserable to us both; and to lead you into a marriage with a! Oh! remember always what I have been, and recover from any portion of infatuation that may remain for so frail, so impure a creature! Console yourself with the thoughts that your attachment, though criminal, was the means of restoring her to virtue; and let the thought of that, my preserver! defend you from those scenes of depravity, which are alien and disgusting to your nature! Your boy! there may be a day, Richard, when you can claim him as your own; but now, he must remain the object of a mother's care. I must break off, my love; it is too trying to my fortitude when I think of him; I would throw myself again at his father's feet, and brave the chidings of my own heart, but your esteem would not be gained, but rather be abated by such a step. No! if there is a chance of my retrieval, of our ultimate union here or hereafter, it must be purchased by a stern penance, and a long trial of both our hearts. I have removed out of the road of all search, and it is vain to resort to any step to discover my concealment; but be assured, that if emergency should compel me, I will give you the opportunity of again showing kindness to that little innocent, whom neither the commands of God, nor the morals of the world, can alienate from your fostering support. Farewell."

I will not disparage this letter by any heightening terms of its affecting power over me; I felt admiration for her principle of self-sacrifice, erroneous as it appeared to me. The charge of neglect was inexplicable; and the intimation of acquaintance with my disorderly life, and apparent suspicion of infidelities, which I had not been guilty

of, was severely corroding to me. I misdoubted some treacherous suborner, and fixed upon my connexions as her deceivers, but with no clear idea of the deception practised upon her. Through the same channel as before, I endeavoured to convey to her my sense of this treachery, and supplicated her to return to one who would be an affectionate husband to her, in defiance of his relatives; but the advertisements were never answered, and I was left to unavailing regrets that I had not made her mine by the indissoluble bonds of marriage. I avoided all my connexions, and cursed Sholto out of my presence, when he came to complain of my violence to him. I knew not, as yet, how richly he deserved it. He was the suggester, and had, just before that horrid night, exposed his abominable designs to my love. When I saw her muffled in disguise on the steps of Gen. - she had just fled from a protection become odious to her from a discovery of its motive. The lady in black had given her an asylum of which Sholto had defrayed the expences up to the day when he revealed himself. How they worked upon her is evident from her letter. They were instilling poison under the name of religion; but her affection proved an antidote to their attempts.

Two months passed on in expectation of receiving the hoped-for communication which her letter promised. At length, having called one day at Lord's, where I had long been a stranger, two letters were handed to me by a servant. They were both from Olivia, within a fortnight's date of each other. The first contained a request for a supply, giving me an address whence letters would be conveyed confidentially to her. Thus, by accident, and by her not seeing my advertisements, I failed to receive this letter until it was too late. The other was a heart-breaking one, which I shall transcribe: it had only just arrived.

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"Dearest Richard-It is now too late to observe the cold maxims of a morality unfounded in the heart. I have laboured under a delusion which I mistook for piety, when it was but observance of the forms and opinions of society. Mistake me not, Richard; I am dying now, and may never see you more-and why should I inculcate tenets that would but dishonour my memory. I venerate more than ever the holy ordinance of matrimony, and would not now repurchase life, even for my baby's sake, at the expense of living in adultery with you. It is my self-depreciation alone that I now lament and renounce. became worthy to be your wife, and should not have listened to the mercenary and wicked suggestions of those who persuaded me to the contrary. I was reclaimed; and if there be any truth in a religion which their profession dishonours, I was in the sight of God as worthy of His benign goodness as they, and why not of the world's respect? Your affection I have long ceased to doubt; for you have been a guardian angel to me; my heart's evidence to your worth is superior to the testimony of malignant defamers, and even of appearances. My letters have been all suppressed from you-come, my beloved, and receive my last sigh, and take your child from my arms, comforting his mother's spirit with the assurance of your protection! Come, or I shall make one desperate effort to drag myself to Lord

-'s door, and to seek you out. After this they will not dare to withhold my letter from you.-Olivia.”

This letter was unsealed, and meant to intimidate my relations into compliance, with a prayer dictated by the fear of approaching dissolution. I am unequal to the task of relating succinctly the few remaining details. I found her in a miserable room-the unfinished productions of her pencil first caught my eye-and then the emaciated form of my more than wife my child was presented to my embrace, and bore round its little neck a satin bag, containing the sacred present of its father, which even want could not induce its mother to trench upon. She just lived long enough to unfold the tale of treachery, and to implore my forgiveness of her deluders-her dying sigh was breathed in my arms, and her last look spoke thanks to me for the affection which 1 vowed to her cherub, and the forgiveness which my hand's pressure intimated for her abandonment of me. Oh! my Olivia! that I had but valued thee in the days of my joy, and made thee my wife! My sorrow for thy loss would have been deprived of its greatest poignancy-the assurance of the share which my indecision had in thy premature death!

SCENES AND SKETCHES OF A SOLDIER'S LIFE IN IRELAND.*

THE death of the Duke of York has caused the public to review the history of the army, during the long series of years that its concerns have been under his management, with more than ordinary attention. The condition, both civil and moral, as well as military, of so large and important a body, is a matter of the deepest concern to the state; and the individual to whom it may be indebted for improvement of any kind, is undoubtedly entitled to the warmest gratitude. The progress of reform is most singular: opposed and reprobated at every step, the moment the last step which completes it is effected, opposition and reprobation are instantly converted into loud praise and universal congratulation. Every thing that is, is lauded in its day; but the instant it ceases to be, the note is changed. This ought to be a lesson to the weary and disgusted reformer, whom the execrations of the most powerful classes of society may induce to pause in his labour, at the horrid sounds and dire denunciations which assault him in the midst of his Augæan task. During the last fifty years, abuses in every department of state, both civil and military, have been disappearing from the face of things; abuses of the most flagrant and infamous nature, while they were in being, custom, and interest, and power, upheld, defended, and honoured: they have fallen beneath the fell arm of the reformer, from the time of the eloquent Burke to that of the indefatigable Hume; and the very voices which are loudest in their exaltation of things exactly as they are, are loudest in eulogizing the reform. Sir Walter Scott, in a memoir he has lately published in the newspapers, of the late Commander in Chief, goes into a detail of shameless practices in the former management of the army, and makes it a topic of honour to the memory of the Duke of York that it was he who destroyed them. No rational

Ssenes and Sketches of a Soldier's Life in Ireland. By the Author of Recollections of an Eventful Life, &c. Edinburgh, 1826. 12mo.