The HISTORY of Mrs. MORDAUNT.
[WRITTEN BY HERSELF.]
(Continued from our last.)
In a ramble one evening with her and her parents through a beautiful valley, our admiration was excited by a cottage extremely small, but exquisitely neat, which lay on the sloping bank of a meandering river, shaded by old luxuriant trees---a bridge composed of planks formed a passage from the vale to the cottage, we crost it in order to have a better opportunity of gratifying our curiosity. We now saw a venerable looking man who had before escaped our notice, sitting in a little sunny glade, we stopt for fear of intruding on his solitude, but perceiving us he instantly approached, and with a pleasing politeness requested we would enter his humble abode. Harley with emotion exclaimed---“Good God! surely that voice is not unknown to me.” “I am certain,” said the stranger, “I have seen you before, though where I cannot immediately recollect.” “If I am not mistaken,” cried Harley, “You are the worthy Hume who was chaplain to the regiment in which I served.” “The same, the same indeed,” replied he, returning his embrace---“the same unfortunate man, whose setting life has been attended with a train of the severest calamities.” The big tear stood trembling on Harley’s cheek---“Friend of my youth,” said he---his voice faultered, but betrayed the sensibility of his feelings. We accompanied Mr. Hume into his cottage, Harley and he appeared delighted with this unexpected interview, both appeared anxious to learn the occurrences which had past, during the long interval of a separation. Harley’s delicacy prevented his enquiring too minutely into those misfortunes Hume hinted at, which he, perceiving with a candour that seemed genuine to his nature, declared he would inform us of those events he had experienced, “a tale,” said he, “adapted for youth---they will find the consequences of illicit passions, and how easily credulity can be imposed on.
“The events of my life are uncommonly calamitous, misfortune has persued me with unremitting vigour, I have lost the sweetest ties of life, I have seen the form of loveliness mouldering away, the shroud of darkness encompassing a mind replete with gentleness and pity, I have beheld the inexorable ruffian rob innocence of its boast and the blossom of beauty withering beneath the blast of affliction. Oh Harley, I have endured all this, and yet I live---live to draw the tear of sympathy by the recital of my fate.”
HISTORY OF HUME.
“Hope, sweetest child of fancy born,
Tho’ transient as the dew of morn;—
Thou who canst charm with sound and light,