utmost contempt with great ones. We should neither practise it, nor applaud it in others. Besides that the person mimicked is insulted: and as I have often observed to you before, an insult is never forgiven."

I shall add four lines from CHURCHILL, and then gladly quit this worthless subject.

"Doth a man stutter, look a-squint, or halt?
Mimics draw humour out of Nature's fault,
With personal defects their mirth adorn,

And hang misfortunes out to public scorn.”

June SO.

JAQUES.

ROUSSEAU'S CONFESSIONS.

"What booby in his own disgrace would name

A business which should make him blush for shame?"

Crafty Courtiers, or Reinard the Fox, in Verse. P. 273. 1706;

Few persons have read the Confessions of Jean Jaques Rousseau, without frequent disgust-but who could suspect that he has recourse to falsehood to vilify himself? Incredible as it may ap pear, it is nevertheless true. Many instances may perhaps be shewn. I shall content myself with one.

In the fifth book, he affects the most serious sorrow for the loss of Claude Anet.

66

"Voilà," says he, comme je perdis le plus solide ami que j'eus en toute ma vie, &c.

"Le lendemain j'en parlois avec Maman,* dans l'affliction la plus vive, & la plus sincere, & tout d'un coup au milieu de l'entretien, j'eus la vile et indigne pensée que j'hériterois de ses nipes, et surtout d'un bel habit noir, &c."

Now for the sake of confessing this "vile et indigne pensée," (for such it certainly was) he tells us that he spoke in extreme affliction the next day to Madame de Warens, about the death. of Claude Anet; when the fact is, that the former died two

Jived.

The name by which he called Madame de Warens, with whom Claude Ant

C-YOL. VI.*

years before the latter. "Il survécut de deux ans á sa maltresse."

See the Preface to Mémoires de Mad. de Warens, suivis de ceus de Claude Anet.

JAQUES.

A short but interesting Character of Rousseau, is given by Madam de Warens in the above Memoirs. A translation of it will serve for another paper.

་་་

NANCY *****

OR

THE PENITENT DAUGHTER.

(A Fact.)

MY DEAR SIR,

Ir was on a beautiful day in the latter end of the month of August, that we left London; myself, a friend, and the lovely Nancy *****. The heavens seemed to smile auspiciously upon the purpose of our excursion. Its object was to attempt the restoration to the bosom of her family, of a penitent daughter, an amiable, though erring wanderer. Cast out from her father's house, yet towards that cruel father did her heart yearn continually. I knew her well-you know her too-but you know little more of her than her personal attractions, and the unfortunate situation into which the harsh treatment of a stepmother, the treacherous. assiduities of her seducer, and the inexperience of sixteen, had combined to plunge her. Notwithstanding her degraded and equivocal situation, I have had occasions to admire the propriety of her domestic conduct, and to know and appreciate the warmth with which all the social affections glow in her breast. She was a repentant child, seeking shelter under a paternal roof, and förgiveness of her errors from her sole remaining parent. Let us throw a veil over her faults; yet not too deep a one, for a censorious and hard-judging world would instantly set her down for one of those miserable daughters of infamy, who sell their promiscuous favours to every profligate. No; seduced indeed, and seduced too by a married man, yet to that one man she continued faithful. Calumny itself could not invent a tale by which”

to stigmatize her with a second fall. With him she shared in his prosperity, and with him she bore the deepest adversity. Constant and loving, she doated on the destroyer of her peace, and her divided heart wavered between the affluence of her parental home, and her seducer's now mean abode. Many letters had she written, many overtures made, through a friend of her departed mother's, (her stepmother was dead) but in vain; inexorably had her father forbidden her return. Her mind could not rest satisfied; she would make a personal appeal; she felt that she loved her father with filial affection, and doubted not that her presence would raise a correspondent emotion in his breast. "Could he but once see, he will forgive and receive me." Ah! who would not have thought so? So young! so lovely! His eldest, and heretofore his darling daughter! To proceed, however, with the narrative of our journey.

After we had reached our first resting place, ********** had eleven miles further to go. whilst it is day-light," said she,

་

we

"Do not let us get to *****,

or whilst any one may see us.

I could not bear to be seen by any who knew me. Do not, Í pray. Let us go at night, my father will like it better; he would not choose that his neighbours should see me, or know of my return. O! I am a guilty wretch, and must steal home amidst the darkness of night, and hide my shame from all around me." It was therefore determined, for the sake of privacy, that we should proceed on foot, and so time our arrival as to be at her father's house, about the period of his retiring to bed, which was generally between eleven and twelve o'clock. We walked on; it was a fine moonlight evening: the trembling of her arm, passed through mine, announced the agitation of her mind; her resolution to throw herself upon the mercy of her father, wavered; she remembered his stern and unforgiving temper. She lost much of that conviction, which had before supported her, that he would receive her. We lingered on the road, in order that the moon, then near setting, might not betray the approach of this wailing Magdalen to her prying neighbours. We passed through a town in which a fair had been held that day. All was mirth and hilarity, dancing and joy, save the drooping wanderer, whom we led between us. "No doubt my sister and little brothers have been to the fair, and little do they think who is so near them." She had 2 sister somewhat younger than herself. "She will be my friend,

she will entreat my father for me, when she knows I am at his door." In this, even in this most natural hope, a hope that clung last and strongest, she was disappointed. But let me not anticipate.

Groupes of half-inebriated rustics, soldiers, sailors, and others, passed with licentious revelry. She shuddered to think to what she might have been exposed, had she not been under a sufficient safe-guard. But shortly after we had to encounter what was, perhaps, not an imaginary danger. A dreary road, along which extensive barracks are erected, was our nearest way; the moon had left us, and the place recalled to her memory, various tales of outrage committed in the same dismal hour of night, along that road, by the licentious soldiery. Vain were our efforts to calm her apprehensions. Her fearful glances were directed on all sides, and he imagination shadowed in the dusky outline forms of lurking villains all around. We passed two soldiers; soon after hasty footsteps were heard behind us. "Ah! now, now!" “Be calm, my dear girl, are there not two here to protect you,' and two on whom you have placed sufficient reliance to travel on foot with them, in the dead of the night?" It is true we were not armed; not having intended to journey in darkness, we had omitted that precaution. Necessary precaution, alas! where man prowls after man, in search of prey, like the beasts of the forest, hunting, not for food, but for trash, for lucre, to rob and to destroy; or, if an helpless female fall in his way, for worse, for ravishment and disgrace. Never shall I forget the anxiety and horror with which her head was, in frequent repetition, turned back, as the footsteps approached. The stillness of the night deluded the ear into a belief of a greater proximity in the object of her apprehension. The steps were incessant, sounding on the gravelled road, and yet no form appeared distinctly through the. dark. How close she clung! How rapidly she urged her trembling steps. I felt not the most distant shadow of apprehension: in fact, I had no leisure to entertain a sentiment of fear, my attention was so wholly occupied by endeavours to calm the agitation of the fair partner of our way. My companion, more locally acquainted with the place, and with the depredations and outrages for which the spot was noted, partook in some measure of her alarm, and suddenly turned down a narrow path with her to the left. In the obscurity I scarcely knew what had become of them. The descent of the path was steep; 1 followed them,

but on turning round as I descended, just perceived above me a man with a soldier's cap and feather, who half-turned down the path, stood hesitating a moment, and then returned again into the main road. This only circumstance gave me some suspicion of evil; but as he did not follow us down the path, with which my comrade was well acquainted, all apprehension soon ceased.

Now, however, fears for her immediate personal safety having subsided, again recurred the worse apprehension of rejection at her father's door. It was not long before we approached it. It was past eleven. We took a circuit round the fields in order to avoid a neighbouring public-house, in which the lights and noise announced that the guests had not yet departed. To be less obvious to notice, my companion was to wait for me at the entrance of the village, whilst I accompanied the drooping girl to a field in front of her father's house. A road and hedge were between us and the wicket, which led into a garden before it. “Now, dear girl, go, and Heaven prosper you." Hesitating, trembling, and in tears, she feared, yet longed to go. At length she summoned resolution, and tottered across the road. I watched behind the hedge. All was silent. She knocked. A rough voice from the parlour, which she instantly recognized as her father's, asked, "Who's there?" In accents that seemed to me as if they would have moved a fiend bent on destruction, she replied, “ 'Tis me, father! your daughter Nancy." The churlish answer came, "I don't know you; I don't desire to know you." "Will you not let me in, dear father?" Such plaintive accents sounding through the stillness of the night, never before or after met my ear. "Dear father-father!-will you not have pity on me?" Moanings so sweet and melodious, even in misery, as would make one doat on distress. No answer was returned; but to add to the keenness of obduracy with which admittance was denied, after a little bustle in the house, a maid-servant threw up an upper sash, and enquired "Who's there?" "Tell my father it is I, his daughter, Nancy; where's my sister?" The sash was then shut down, and all was silent again. Now, thought I, now will the door be opened, and this sweet penitent will be again received into the home, which she was born to grace. Minutes elapsed, and no one came.

[To be concluded in our next.]