denying than by indulging ourselves. He knows, that when the balance comes to be struck, when profit and loss shall be summed up, and the final account adjusted, that whatever easc, prosperity and delight we had in this world, yet if we have lost our souls in the end, we cannot reckon that we have made a good bargain. We cannot pretend that a few items of present pleasure make any great figure, set over against the sum total of eternal misery. So you see it is only for want of a good head at calculation, that men prefer time to eternity, pleasure to holiness, earth to heaven. You see if we get our neighbour's money at the price of our own integrity; hurt his good name, but destroy our own souls; raise our outward character, out wound our inward conscience; when we come to the last reckoning, we shall find that we were only knaves in the second instance, but fools in the first. In short, we shall find that whatever other wisdom we possessed, we were utterly ignorant of the skill of true calculation.

Notwithstanding this rebuff, Mr. Bragwell got home in high spirits, for no arguments could hinder him from feeling that he had the fifty guineas in his purse.

There is to a worldly man something so irresistible in the actual possession of present, and visible, and palpable pleasure, that he considers it as a proof of his wisdom to set them in decided opposition to the invisible realities of eternity.

As soon as Bragwell came in, he gaily threw the money he had received on the table, and desired his wife to lock it up. Instead of receiving it with her usual satisfaction, she burst into a violent fit of passion, and threw it back to him. "You may keep your cash yourself," said she. "It is all over we want no more money. You are a ruined man! A wicked creature! scraping and working as we have done for her!" Bragwell trembled, but durst not ask what he dreaded to hear. His wife spared him the trouble, by crying out, as soon as her rage permitted, "The girl is ruined; Polly is gone off!" Poor Bragwell's heart sunk within him; he grew sick and giddy; and as his wife's rage swallowed up her grief, so in his grief he almost forgot his anger. The purse fell from his hand, and he cast a look of anguish upon it, finding, for the first time, that money could not relieve his misery.

Mr. Worthy, who, though much concerned, was less discomposed, now called to mind, that the young lady had not returned with her mother and sister the night before: he begged Mrs. Bragwell to explain this sad story. She, instead of soothing her husband, fell to reproaching him. "It is all your fault," said she, "you were a fool for your pains. If I had had my way, the girls would never have kept company with any but men of substance, and then they could not have been ruined." "Mrs. Bragwell,” said Worthy, "if she has chosen a bad man, it would be still a misfortune, even though he had been rich." "Oh, that would alter the case," said she, "a fat sorrow is better than a lean one. But to marry a beggar! there is no sin like that." Here Miss Betsey, who stood sullenly by, put in a word, and said, her sister, however, had not disgraced herself by having married a farmer or a tradesman; she had, at least, made choice of a gentleman. "What marriage? what gentleman?" cried the afflicted father. "Tell me the worst!" He was now informed that his darling daughter was gone off with a strolling player, who had been acting in the neighbouring villages

lately. Miss Betsey again put in, saying, he was no stroller, but a gentleman in disguise, who only acted for his own diversion. "Does he so," said the now furious Bragwell," then he shall be transported for mine."

At this moment a letter was brought him from his new son-in-law, who desired his leave to wait upon him, and implore his forgiveness. He owned he had been shopman to a haberdasher; but, thinking his person and talents ought not to be thrown away upon trade, and being also a little behindhand, he had taken to the stage, with a view of making his fortune; that he had married Miss Bragwell entirely for love, and was sorry to mention so paltry a thing as money, which he despised, but that his wants were pressing; his landlord, to whom he was in debt, having been so vulgar as to threaten to send him to prison. He ended with saying, "I have been obliged to shock your daughter's delicacy, by confessing my unlucky real name; I believe I owe part of my success with her to my having assumed that of Augustus Frederick Theodosius. She is inconsolable at this confession, which, as you are now my father, I must also make to you, and subscribe myself, with many blushes, by the vulgar name of your dutiful son, TIMOTHY INCLE."

"Miss

"Why,

"Oh!" cried the afflicted father, as he tore the letter in a rage, Bragwell married to a strolling actor! How shall I bear it?"` I would not bear it at all," cried the enraged mother; "I would never see her; I would never forgive her; I would let her starve at one corner of the barn, while that rascal, with all those pagan, popish names, was ranting away at the other." "Nay," said Miss Betsey, "if he is only a shopman, and if his name be really Timothy Incle, I would never forgive her, neither. But who would have thought it by his looks, and by his monstrous genteel behaviour? no, he never can have so vulgar a name."

"Come, come," said Mr. Worthy, "were he really an honest haberdasher, I should think there was no other harm done, except the disobedience of the thing. Mr. Bragwell, this is no time to blame you, or hardly to reason with you. I feel for you sincerely. I ought not, perhaps, just at present, to reproach you for the mistaken manner in which you have bred up your daughters, as your error has brought its punishment along with it. You now see, because you now feel, the evil of a false education. It has ruined your daughter; your whole plan unavoidably led to some such end. The large sums you spent to qualify them, as you thought, for a high station, only served to make them despise their own, and could do them nothing but harm, while your habits of life properly confined them. to company of a lower class. While they were better drest than the daughters of the first gentry, they were worse taught, as to real knowledge, than the daughters of your ploughmen. Their vanity has been raised by excessive finery, and kept alive by excessive flattery. Every evil temper has been fostered by indulgence. Their pride has never been controlled, their self-will has never been subdued; their idleness has laid them open to every temptation, and their abundance has enabled them to gratify every desire; their time, that precious talent, has been entirely wasted. Everything they have been taught to do is of no use, while they are utterly unacquainted with all which they ought to have known. I deplore Miss Polly's false step. That she should have married a run-away shopman,

turned stroller, I truly lament. But for what better husband was she qualified? For the wife of a farmer, she was too idle for the wife of a tradesman, she was too expensive: for the wife of a gentleman, she was too ignorant. You, yourself, were most to blame. You expected her to act wisely, though you never taught her that fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom.' I owe it to you, as a friend, and to myself, as a Christian, to declare, that your practices in the common transactions of life, as well as your present misfortune, are almost the natural consequences of those false principles which I protested against when you were at my house *.”

Mrs. Bragwell attempted several times to interrupt Mr. Worthy, but her husband would not permit it. He felt the force of all his friend said, and encouraged him to proceed. Mr. Worthy thus went on: "It grieves me to say how much your own indiscretion has contributed even to bring on your present misfortune. You gave your countenance to this very company of strollers, though you knew they are acting in defiance to the laws of the land, to say no worse. They go from town to town, and from barn to barn, stripping the poor of their money, the young of their innocence, and all of their time. Do you remember with how much pride you told me that you had bespoke The Bold Stroke for a Wife, for the benefit of this very Mr. Frederick Theodosius? To this pernicious ribaldry you not only carried your own family, but wasted I know not how much money in treating your workmen's wives and children, in these hard times, too, when they have scarcely bread to eat, or a shoe on their feet; and all this only that you might have the absurd pleasure of seeing those flattering words, By Desire of Mr. Bragwell, stuck up in print at the public-house, on the blacksmith's shed, at the turnpike-gate, and on the barn-door."

Mr. Bragwell acknowledged that his friend's rebuke was but too just, and he looked so very contrite as to raise the pity of Mr. Worthy, who, in a mild voice, thus went on: "What I have said is not so much to reproach you with the ruin of one daughter, as from a desire to save the other. Let Miss Betsey go home with me. I do not undertake to be her gaoler, but I will be her friend. She will find in my daughters kind companions, and in my wife a prudent guide. I know she will dislike us at first, but I do not despair in time of convincing her that a sober, humble, useful, pious life, is as necessary to make us happy on earth, as it is to fit us for heaven."

Poor Miss Betsey, though she declared it would be frightful dull, and monstrous vulgar, and dismal melancholy, yet was she so terrified at the discontent and grumbling which she would have to endure at home, that she sullenly consented. She had none of that filial tenderness which led her to wish to stay and soothe and comfort her afflicted father. All she thought about was, to get out of the way of her mother's ill humour, and to carry so much finery with her as to fill the Miss Worthys with envy and respect. Poor girl! She did not know that envy was a feeling they never indulged; and that fine clothes were the last thing to draw their respect.

Mr. Worthy took her home next day. When they reached his house,

See Part II,

they found there young Wilson, Miss Betsey's old admirer. She was much pleased at this, and resolved to treat him well. But her good or ill treatment now signified but little. This young grazier reverenced Mr. Worthy's character, and ever since he had met him at the Lion, had been thinking what a happiness it would be to marry a young woman bred up by such a father. He had heard much of the modesty and discretion of both the daughters, but his inclination now determined him in favour of the elder.

Mr. Worthy, who knew him to be a young man of good sense and sound principles, allowed him to become a visitor at his house, but deferred his consent to the marriage till he knew him more thoroughly. Mr. Wilson, from what he saw of the domestic piety of this family, improved daily, both in the knowledge and practice of religion; and Mr. Worthy soon formed him into a most valuable character. During this time, Miss Bragwell's hopes had revived; but though she appeared in a new dress almost every day, she had the mortification of being beheld with great indifference by one whom she had always secretly liked. Mr. Wilson married before her face a girl who was greatly her inferior in fortune, person, and appearance; but who was humble, frugal, meek, and pious. Miss Bragwell now strongly felt the truth of what Mr. Wilson had once told her, that a woman may make an excellent partner for a dance, who would make a very bad companion for life.

Hitherto Mr. Bragwell and his daughters had only learnt to regret their folly and vanity, as it had produced them mortification in this life; whether they were ever brought to a more serious sense of their errors, may be seen in a future part of this history.

PART VI.GOOD RESOLUTIONS.

MR. BRAGWELL was so much afflicted at the disgraceful marriage of his daughter, who ran off with Timothy Incle, the strolling player, that he never fully recovered his spirits. His cheerfulness, which had arisen from a high opinion of himself, had been confirmed by a constant flow of uninterrupted success; and that is a sort of cheerfulness which is very liable to be impaired, because it lies at the mercy of every accident and cross event in life. But though his pride was now disappointed, his misfortunes. had not taught him any humility, because he had not discovered that they were caused by his own fault; nor had he acquired any patience or submission, because he had not learnt that all afflictions come from the hand of God, to awaken us to a deep sense of our sins, and to draw off our hearts from the perishing vanities of this life. Besides, Mr. Bragwell was one of those people, who, even if they would be thought to bear with tolerable submission such trials as appear to be sent more immediately from Providence, yet think they have a sort of right to rebel at every misfortune which befals them through the fault of a fellow-creature; as if our fellow-creatures were not the agents and instruments by which Providence often sees fit to try or to punish us.

In answer to his heavy complaints, Mr. Worthy wrote him a letter, in which he expatiated on the injustice of our impatience, and on the folly

of our vindicating ourselves from guilt in the distinctions we make between those trials which seem to come more immediately from God, and those which proceed directly from the faults of our fellow-creatures. "Sickness, losses, and death, we think," continued he, "we dare not openly rebel against; while we fancy we are quite justified in giving a loose to our violence when we suffer by the hand of the oppressor, the unkindness of the friend, or the disobedience of the child. But this is one of the delusions of our blinded hearts. Ingratitude, unkindness, calumny, are permitted to assail us, by the same power who cuts off the desire of our eyes at a stroke.' The friend who betrays us, and the daughter who deceives us, are instruments for our chastisement, sent by the same purifying hand who orders a fit of sickness to weaken our bodies, or a storm to destroy our crop, or a fire to burn down our house. And we must look for the same remedy in the one case as in the other; I mean prayer, and a deep submission to the will of God. We must leave off looking at second causes, and look more at Him who sets them in action. We must try to find out the meaning of the providence; and hardly dare pray to be delivered from it till it has accomplished in us the end for which it was sent."

His imprudent daughter Bragwell would not be brought to see or forgive, nor was the degrading name of Mrs. Incle ever allowed to be pronounced in his hearing. He had loved her with an excessive and undue affection; and while she gratified his vanity by her beauty and finery, he deemed her faults of little consequence; but when she disappointed his ambition by a disgraceful marriage, all his natural affection only served to increase his resentment. Yet, though he regretted her crime less than his own mortification, he never ceased in secret to lament her loss. She soon found out she was undone, and wrote in a strain of bitter repentance to ask his forgiveness. She owned that her husband, whom she had supposed to be a man of fashion in disguise, was a low person in distressed circumstances. She implored that her father, though he refused to give her husband that fortune for which alone it was now too plain he had married her, would at least allow her some subsistence; for that Mr. Incle was much in debt, and, she feared, in danger of a gaol.

The father's heart was half melted at this account, and his affection was for a time awakened. But Mrs. Bragwell opposed his sending her any assistance. She always made it a point of duty never to forgive; for she said it only encouraged those who had done wrong once, to do worse next time. For her part, she had never yet been guilty of so mean and pitiful a weakness as to forgive any one; for to pardon an injury always showed either want of spirit to feel it, or want of power to resent it. She was resolved she would never squander the money for which she had worked early and late, on a baggage who had thrown herself away on a beggar, while she had a daughter single, who might yet raise her family by a great match. I am sorry to say, that Mrs. Bragwell's anger was not owing to the undutifulness of the daughter, or the worthlessness of the husband; poverty was, in her eyes, the grand crime. The doctrine of forgiveness, as a religious principle, made no more a part of Mr. Bragwell's system than of his wife's; but in natural feeling, particularly for this offending daughter, he much exceeded her.