"The inclosed to the Gen-1,* contains a proposition, similar to the one I made to you, concerning the house; which, if it does not appear eligible to him, I shall dispose of as soon as possible ;-and, if not able to follow my profession, I shall immediately go abroad.

"God bless you!

"D. J."

"P. S. I trust in God you will exert yourself, in pointing out to Fanny the absolute necessity of her prompt compliance with the proposal; in which case, she shall ever find me her mother and friend."

* General Hawker, her son-in-law.

Sir Jonah Barrington's allusion to a distressing event, which he declines to relate-The person alluded to heard in his own defence.

"The

THE reader will have weighed the reasons in a former chapter why I inclined to question the astonishing profits of Mrs. Jordan, in her profession, during her last year in England. However, Sir Jonah Barrington, estimating them at 7,000l., thus follows up his statement of their amount. malicious representations, therefore, of her having been left straitened in pecuniary circumstances, were literally fabulous; for to the very moment of her death, she remained in full possession of all the means of comfort-nay, if she chose it, of luxury and splendor. Why, therefore, she emigrated, pined away, and expired in a foreign country, (of whose language she was ignorant, and in whose habits she was wholly unversed,) with every appearance of necessity, is also considered a mystery by those unacquainted with the cruel and disastrous

circumstances which caused that unfortunate catastrophe. It is not by my pen that miserable story shall be told. It was a transaction wherein her royal friend had directly or indirectly no concern, nor did it in any way spring out of that connexion. She had, in fact, only to accuse herself of benevolence, confidence, and honour to those demerits, and to the worse than ingratitude of others, she fell a lingering, broken-hearted victim."

It is impossible to make either a truer or more objectionable statement than the preceding. And it resulted from a wish to relieve a most generous and noble mind from the aspersions cast upon it. But Sir Jonah goes further, and in very delicate language, acquits her sons, by the connexion referred to, of any share in the event which he so properly deplores. There is a mode, of which Sir Jonah has availed himself with professional skill, of declining to tell a story, at the very time when you are hinting the whole of it; and revealing the person whom you accuse, without naming him, by describing sufficiently those whom you intend to acquit. He has withdrawn his noble friend and his children-he has told us of " the punctilious honour

and integrity of General Hawker," who had married one of Mrs. Jordan's daughters, by Sir Richard Ford. In 1827, Sir Jonah, and every body else who was at all interested, knew that Mr. Alsop, who married the eldest, or Miss Jordan, had died in India, and that the unfortunate and misled woman herself had perished miserably in America. He, therefore, in fact, most distinctly pointed out the offender, whom he accuses of betraying confidence, forfeiting his honour, and repaying benevolence with ruin.

rather than

and will pro

much of this

The gentleman thus shadowed out, drawn, is unknown personally to me, bably remain so-he must bear as accusation as he cannot throw off. He once made a statement of that miserable story, which Sir Jonah's pen would not tell, and submitted it to a liberal and enlightened friend, in whose opinion he wished to stand clear, at least of every thing but his misfortunes. The reader shall, in a few minutes, have it in substance as I perused it.

Before his explanation is read, I must take the liberty to remark upon the luxury and splendor of

which a picture has been drawn by Sir Jonah Barrington; and which, as far as the royal bounty was or could be made applicable to the dear lady's use, there is not the slightest reason to question. Sir Jonah has told us of 7,000l. made in her last professional tours, a noble addition to the splendid fortune, which almost unexampled success had, we might fancy, been accumulating through her life. But all seems to have been checked and withered away (but the bounty of her illustrious friend) by the conduct of the gentleman once so dear in her esteem. May we venture to inquire what had become of that vast fortune, which we have vainly fancied to be a growing bank and fund of provision for herself and her children? Suppose it could have been established that he had engaged Mrs. Jordan's name and credit to the amount of 5,000l. -what was to hinder her from "

paying the bonds thrice," if once would not have sufficed, rather than becoming a fugitive in a foreign land, and dying of dejection and alarm as much as of disease? But we have, from her own pen, a detail of her circumstances, before she knew any thing of the embarrassments of the person in question, and