into a sort of cap, or caul, which served to keep it together. Her eyes were deep sunk in their sockets, and her cheeks were miserably fallen in. Her neck was bent forwards, and bowed with wretchedness; and her looks expressed that frantic gloom, that keen sort of melancholy, and that eating care, which consume with perpetual anguish, and allow no comforting thought, not even in the prospect of death.

"As we entered the room, we awakened not the smallest curiosity in her mind. Her chin fell on the palm of her hand, while her elbow rested on her knee; and pointing to a spot in the floor, she drew forth a sigh so hollow, and so sad, that my whole frame underwent an agitation almost too much to support. In a moment she sprang violently from her bed, and rushing to the spot at which she had pointed with her finger, fell prone with her face upon it, crying, "Ah! my little, little babes, will you knit for ever those innocent brows on your poor wicked mother?" Then looking at us with a countenance full of the most intense feelings, she cried, "Hush, hush, I conjure you! My little ones, my murdered little ones, will speak to me, if you will but keep silence!" She continued after this prostrate on the floor, and talking indistinctly. In this situation we left her.

"I could not rest till the keeper consented to give me, in a few words, the history of this afflicted person, which he did, to this effect:- This poor woman, said he, was once the ornament of her family, and the delight of all who knew her. I remember her, about twenty years ago, with a little cherub-like face, sparkling with pleasure and with innocence. She married the youngest son of a Baronet, who had taken orders, and held a living in the neighbourhood

of her father's residence. He was a youth of rare talents and exemplary worth; and they lived together in domestic happiness, and unassuming plenty, a few short years, till ill health, and a fair opportunity, induced the husband to try the benefit of sea air, in a voyage to the Mediterranean, when she was persuaded to accept an invitation to spend the winter in town, at the house of a female relation. This lady had neither honour nor conscience remaining, and had long, unknown to her country connections, kept a kind of decoy in square, where, under the notion of routs, the young and the simple were allured, to the ruin of their fortunes and their principles.

"In this vortex of villainy, where vice appeared to her in a kind of masquerade, and tempted her with the show of elegance, and the authority of fashion, was this poor creature abused, seduced, and vitiated. After an absence of three quarters of a year, her husband returned, and fled to her with that ardour and anxiety with which a husband approaches a wife whom he tenderly loves, and who, for reasons unknown, has ceased to correspond with him for many months. He fled to her, to chide her for her neglect, and to seal their reconciliation with kisses so long untasted,-when, instead of that elegant, affectionate, and artless character, which had drawn from him so many tears at parting, he found her transformed into the cold and fantastic creature of fashion, and stripped of all the virtues and the graces that belonged to her native simplicity.

666

Being acquainted, however, with the whole of her unworthiness, and the full extent of her profligacy, he lived with her for two years, on an income much abridged by her losses at play, and a mind

penetrated with sorrow and despondency at the hourly proofs of her degeneracy. His spirits were so affected, and his fortune so sunk, that both his health and pocket united to persuade him to accept the place of chaplain to a man of war, which was just on the point of sailing to convoy a fleet of merchantmen. Here his tender constitution and his aching heart so ill agreed with the rough situation to which he consigned himself, that he fell into a lingering illness, and returned in a few months, to die of what is usually called a broken heart. His wife, who had long ago laid down all the noble feelings of nature at the gaming-table, and had to reckon her virtue and her faith among the losses she had there incurred, beheld without remorse his pining condition, and saw his head bent down upon his bosom with little selfaccusation or sorrow.

"One night a sudden indisposition brought her home earlier than usual, from the lady's house where her ruin had begun. She came, as if led by the hand of Providence, to receive her husband's last sigh, and to behold the completion of her work. It seemed as if her spirits had been borne up till this moment, only to experience a more sudden fall, and to feel the piercing remorse that followed with greater bitterness and anguish. A sudden recollection seized her, attended with such horror and such agony of grief, that her faculties were overborne, and her reason, her health, and her beauty, were the sudden forfeits of her crimes. It was not long before she gave the severest proof of her insanity which it was in her power to afford, by mixing up deliberately a quantity of poison, of which she took a part herself, and found means to administer the rest to her two little children and her maid servant: the

mixture, however, was so inefficacious, that it produced only a temporary illness in those on whom it was tried.

"It was immediately judged necessary to put her under strict confinement, and she has now been five years a lodger in my house. She will wear no dress but the one she has now on, and chooses that little remote chamber in preference to any other. But the circumstance most to be admired is, that nothing can persuade her that her children are alive; she persists in declaring, that their spirits are constantly in the room, and continues to converse with them the whole day, as if they were actually present. If, at those moments when she seems to be a little more composed, we venture to place her children before her, she immediately falls into a fit of raving, and cries out that they are multiplied into four, and are come with scorpions to torment her.'

Here my friend finished his sad account, and I took my leave, impressed with more horror than any spectacle has ever yet created in my mind. If Mr. Simon Olive-branch can make any use of this story, which I send in this naked and simple form, he is at liberty to employ it, as he has done others, in the cause of virtue and humanity.

66 Yours, &c."

No 22. TUESDAY, MAY 22.

Nec tu sperne piis venientia somnia portis;
Cum pia venerunt somnia, pondus habent.

PROPERTIUS.

When serious dreams the door of fancy gain,
Think not these serious dreams were sent in vain.

Sir,

To the Rev. Simon Olive-branch.

"ALL those who have marched before you with the greatest dignity in the speculative office of reforming the town, have been so remarkable for the faculty of dreaming, that it is now indispensably requisite for a periodical writer to devote his slum bers, as well as his waking meditations, to the entertainment of his readers. Nor is it without reason that this faculty is held in so great esteem; for, if dreams have any thing of inspiration in them, those whom they most frequently visit must be allowed to be fittest for the task of instruction. Nor can advice ever come more modestly disguised, than when cloaked under the emblematical covering of this mystical morality.

"It was with real satisfaction, therefore, that I perceived in your second paper such unquestionable marks of your being possessed of this valuable faculty, which I look upon as a genuine voucher of your true descent from the dreamers of former times, and a proof that you are not unworthy to sit in the Spectator's chair. For I consider the most respectable part of the periodical writers to be all of one literary family; and that, like the Incas of Peru