"In all our miseries,” cried I, 'what thanks have we not to return, that one at least of our family is exempted from what we suffer? Heaven be his guard, and keep my boy thus happy, to be the support of his widowed mother, and the father of these two babes, which is all the patrimony I can now bequeath him! May he keep their innocence from the temptations of wart, and be their conductor in the paths of botour!" I had scarce said these words, when a noise like that of a tumult Seed to proceed from the prison below: ited away soon after, and a clanking of fetters was heard along the passage that led to my apartment. The keeper of the prson entered, holding a man all bloody, anded, and fettered with the heaviest in I looked with compassion on the wretch as he approached me, but with burror, when I found it was my own son. My George! my George! and do I bethee thus? Wounded-fettered! Is the thy happiness? is this the manner you return to me? Oh that this sight could brak my heart at once, and let me die!" Where, sir, is your fortitude?" returned Byson, with an intrepid voice. "I must Ser; my life is forfeited, and let them take it."

I tried to restrain my passions for a few tes in silence, but I thought I should have died with the effort.-"Oh, my boy, my heart weeps to behold thee thus, and I ot cannot help it. In the moment I thought thee blest, and prayed for by safety, to behold thee thus again! ned-wounded; and yet the death of youthful is happy. But I am old, a very man, and have lived to see this day! To my children all untimely falling about while I continue a wretched survivor

"Hold, sir!" replied my son, " or I shall blush for thee. How, sir! forgetful of your age, your holy calling, thus to arrogate the justice of Heaven, and fling those curses upward that must soon descend to crush thy own grey head with destruction! No, sir, let it be your care now to fit me for that vile death I must shortly suffer; to arm me with hope and resolution; to give me courage to drink of that bitterness which must shortly be my portion."

"My child, you must not die : I am sure no offence of thine can deserve so vile a punishment. My George could never be guilty of any crime to make his ancestors ashamed of him."

"Mine, sir," returned my son, "is, I fear, an unpardonable one. When I received my mother's letter from home, I immediately came down, determined to punish the betrayer of our honour, and sent him an order to meet me, which he answered, not in person, but by despatching four of his domestics to seize me. I wounded one who first assaulted me, and I fear desperately; but the rest made me their prisoner. The coward is determined to put the law in execution against me; the proofs are undeniable: I have sent a challenge, and as I am the first transgressor upon the statute, I see no hopes of pardon. But you have often charmed me with your lessons of fortitude; let me now, sir, find them in your example."

"And, my son, you shall find them. I am now raised above this world, and all the pleasures it can produce. From this moment I break from my heart all the ties that held it down to earth, and will prepare to fit us both for eternity. Yes, my son, I will point out the way, and my soul shall guide yours in the ascent, for we will take our flight together. I now see, and am convinced, you can expect no pardon here; and I can only exhort you to seek it at that greatest tribunal where we both shall shortly answer. But, let us not be niggardly in our exhortation, but let all our fellow-prisoners have a share :-Good gaoler, let them be permitted to stand here

while I attempt to improve them." Thus saying, I made an effort to rise from my straw, but wanted strength, and was able only to recline against the wall. The prisoners assembled themselves according to my directions, for they loved to hear my counsel: my son and his mother supported me on either side; I looked and saw that none were wanting, and then addressed them with the following exhortation.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The equal dealings of Providence demonstrated with regard to the Happy and the Miserable here below. That, from the nature of Pleasure and Pain, the wretched must be repaid the balance of their sufferings in the life hereafter.

“My friends, my children, and fellowsufferers, when I reflect on the distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been given man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who by suicide show us they have nothing left to hope. In this life, then, it appears that we cannot be entirely blest, but yet we may be completely miserable.

Why man should thus feel pain; why our wretchedness should be requisite in the formation of universal felicity; why, when all other systems are made perfect by the perfection of their subordinate parts, the great system should require for its perfection parts that are not only subordinate to others, but imperfect in themselves-these are questions that never can be explained, and might be useless if known. On this subject, Providence has thought fit to elude our (curiosity, satisfied with granting us motives to consolation.

"In this situation man has called in the friendly assistance of philosophy; and Heaven, seeing the incapacity of that to console him, has given him the aid of religion. The consolations of philosophy are very amusing, but often fallacious: it tells us, that life is filled with comforts, if we will but enjoy them; and, on the other hand, that though we unavoidably have miseries here, life is short and they will soon be over. Thus do these consolations

destroy each other; for, if life is a pla of comfort, its shortness must be mise and if it be long, our griefs are protracte Thus philosophy is weak; but religi comforts in a higher strain. Man is he it tells us, fitting up his mind, and pr paring it for another abode. When t good man leaves the body, and is all glorious mind, he will find he has be making himself a heaven of happine here; while the wretch that has be maimed and contaminated by his vice shrinks from his body with terror, an finds that he has anticipated the vengean of Heaven. To religion, then, we mu hold, in every circumstance of life, for o truest comfort: for if already we are happ it is a pleasure to think that we can mal that happiness unending; and if we a miserable, it is very consoling to thin that there is a place of rest. Thus, to th fortunate, religion holds out a continuan of bliss; to the wretched, a change fro pain.

"But though religion is very kind to a men, it has promised peculiar rewards the unhappy: the sick, the naked, th houseless, the heavy laden, and the pi soner, have ever most frequent promises our sacred law. The Author of our religi everywhere professes himself the wretch friend, and, unlike the false ones of th world, bestows all his caresses upon ti forlorn. The unthinking have censure this as partiality, as a preference witho merit to deserve it. But they never reflec that it is not in the power even of Heav itself to make the offer of unceasing felici as great a gift to the happy as to t miserable. To the first, eternity is bu single blessing, since at most it but i creases what they already possess. the latter, it is a double advantag for it diminishes their pain here, a rewards them with heavenly bliss he after.

"But Providence is in another resp kinder to the poor than to the rich; as it thus makes the life after death me desirable, so it smoothes the passage the The wretched have had a long familiar with every face of terror. The man sorrows lays himself quietly down, with possessions to regret, and but few ties

stop his departure: he feels only nature's pang in the final separation, and this is no way greater than he has often fainted under before; for, after a certain degree of pain, every new breach that death opens in the constitution nature kindly covers with insensibility.

"Thus Providence has given the wretched two advantages over the happy in this life,greater felicity in dying, and heaven all that superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyment. And this superiority, my friends, is no all advantage, and seems to be one of the pleasures of the poor man in the para; for though he was already in heaven, and felt all the raptures it could give, yet it was mentioned as an addition to his happiness, that he had once been wretched, and now was comforted; that he had ow what it was to be miserable, and tow felt what it was to be happy.

Thus, my friends, you see religion does what philosophy could never do: it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy the unhappy, and levels all human yments to nearly the same standard. gives to both rich and poor the same appiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it; but, if the rich have the advantage of enjoying pleasure here, the poor have the endless satisfaction of krowing what it was once to be miserable, when crowned with endless felicity hereafter; and even though this should be called a small advantage, yet, being an eternal one, it must make up by duration what the temporal happiness of the great tay have exceeded by intenseness. 1 These are, therefore, the consolations which the wretched have peculiar to themselves, and in which they are above the Fest of mankind: in other respects, they are below them. They who would know the miseries of the poor, must see life and endure it. To declaim on the temporal advantages they enjoy, is only repeating What none either believe or practise. The en who have the necessaries of living, are not poor; and they who want them, must be miserable. Yes, my friends, we must be miserable. No vain efforts of a refined imagination can soothe the wants of nature, can give elastic sweetness to the

dank vapour of a dungeon, or ease to the throbbings of a broken heart. Let the philosopher from his couch of softness tell us that we can resist all these: alas! the effort by which we resist them is still the greatest pain. Death is slight, and any man may sustain it; but torments are dreadful, and these no man can endure.

"To us then, my friends, the promises of happiness in heaven should be peculiarly dear; for if our reward be in this life alone, we are then, indeed, of all men the most miserable. When I look round these gloomy walls, made to terrify as well as to confine us; this light, that only serves to show the horrors of the place; those shackles, that tyranny has imposed, or crime made necessary; when I survey these emaciated looks, and hear those groans-oh, my friends, what a glorious exchange would heaven be for these! To fly through regions unconfined as air-to bask in the sunshine of eternal bliss-to carol over endless hymns of praise-to have no master to threaten or insult us, but the form of Goodness himself for ever in our eyes!when I think of these things, death becomes the messenger of very glad tidings; when I think of these things, his sharpest arrow becomes the staff of my support; when I think of these things, what is there in life worth having; when I think of these things, what is there that should not be spurned away: kings in their palaces should groan for such advantages; but we, humbled as we are, should yearn for them.

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And shall these things be ours? Ours they will certainly be, if we but try for them; and, what is a comfort, we are shut out from many temptations that would retard our pursuit. Only let us try for them, and they will certainly be ours; and, what is still a comfort, shortly too: for if we look back on a past life, it appears but a very short span, and whatever we may think of the rest of life, it will yet be found of less duration; as we grow older, the days seem to grow shorter, and our intimacy with Time ever lessens the perception of his stay. Then let us take comfort now, for we shall soon be at our journey's end; we shall soon lay down the heavy burden laid by Heaven upon us; and though death, the only friend

of the wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and like his horizon still flies before him; yet the time will certainly and shortly come, when we shall cease from our toil; when the luxuriant great ones of the world shall no more tread us to the earth; when we shall think with pleasure of our sufferings below; when we shall be surrounded with all our friends, or such as deserved our friendship; when our bliss shall be unutterable, and still, to crown all, unending."

CHAPTER XXX.

Happier Prospects begin to appear. Let us be inflexible, and Fortune will at last change in our favour.

WHEN I had thus finished, and my audience was retired, the gaoler, who was one of the most humane of his profession, hoped I would not be displeased, as what he did was but his duty, observing, that he must be obliged to remove my son into a stronger cell, but that he should be permitted to revisit me every morning. I thanked him for his clemency, and grasping my boy's hand, bade him farewell, and be mindful of the great duty that was before him.

I again therefore laid me down, and one of my little ones sat by my bedside reading, when Mr. Jenkinson entering, informed me that there was news of my daughter; for that she was seen by a person about two hours before in a strange gentleman's company, and that they had stopped at a neighbouring village for refreshment, and seemed as if returning to town. He had scarcely delivered this news when the gaoler came, with looks of haste and pleasure, to inform me that my daughter was found. Moses came running in a moment after, crying out that his sister Sophia was below, and coming up with our old friend Mr. Burchell.

Just as he delivered this news, my dearest girl entered, and, with looks almost wild with pleasure, ran to kiss me, in a transport of affection. Her mother's tears and silence also showed her pleasure. "Here, papa," cried the charming girl," here is the brave man to whom I owe my delivery; to this gentleman's intrepidity Í am indebted for my happiness and safety- -"A kiss com Mr. Burchell, whose pleasure seemed

even greater than hers, interrupted what she was going to add.

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Ah! Mr. Burchell," cried I, "this but a wretched habitation you now find s in; and we are now very different fro: what you last saw us. You were ever o friend: we have long discovered our error with regard to you, and repented of ou ingratitude. After the vile usage you

then received at my hands, I am almost ashamed to behold your face; yet I hope you'll forgive me, as I was deceived by a base ungenerous wretch, who, under the mask of friendship, has undone me.'

"It is impossible," cried Mr. Burchell, "that I should forgive you, as you never deserved my resentment. I partly saw your delusion then, and as it was out of my power to restrain, I could only pity it."

"It was ever my conjecture," cried I, that your mind was noble; but now I find it so.-But tell me, my dear child. how thou hast been relieved, or who the ruffians were who carried thee away?"

"Indeed, sir," replied she, “ as to the villain who carried me off, I am yet ignorant. For, as my mamma and I were walking out, he came behind us, and, almost before I could call for help, forced me into the post-chaise, and in an instant the horses drove away. I met several on the road, to whom I cried out for assistance, but they disregarded my entreaties. In the meantime, the ruffian himself used every art to hinder me from crying out: he flattered and threatened by turns, and swore that, i I continued but silent, he intended no harm In the meantime I had broken the canvas that he had drawn up, and whom should I perceive at some distance but your old friend Mr. Burchell, walking along with his usual swiftness, with the great stick fo which we used so much to ridicule him As soon as we came within hearing, I calle out to him by name, and entreated his help I repeated my exclamations several times upon which, with a very loud voice, he bi the postilion stop; but the boy took m notice, but drove on with still greater speed I now thought he could never overtake us when, in less than a minute, I saw Mr. Bur chell come running up by the side of th horses, and, with one blow, knock th postilion to the ground. The horses, whe