Five human figures stood close together on the prow. A. young man, with two children, one in each hand; another man, elderly and respectable-looking; and a woman, of nearly middle age. Must their names be told? Did Laura require the explanation? Did the waving hats, the extended arms, the cheering calls of all that was most dear to her, speak to the inmost depths of her heart? And when he springs far across the surf upon the beach, and clasps her in his arms-when the little innocents wade through the water, and grasp their mother's knees-when the warmsouled Hannah and the faithful O'Brien join the group-has that heart broken with excess of joy?-No! It has sunk, but to rise again. The spring of being has relaxed, but to regain new force. The film flies from before her sight; the weight is removed from her brain, and the beams of pleasure struggling through the mist of wo, bathe all around them in a radiant flood. A joyous discharge of artillery, and a cheer of honest Irish delight, came across the waves, and the rocks rung with the sound, as Laura flung herself into the new earl's open arms, for the father of Lord L was dead. His mortal career closed before he could learn the misery of her, whose sacrifice was meant to secure his peace of mind, if not to save his life. Hannah, with the faithful energy of her nation, lost not one hour when she knew the baseness that entrapped her mistress; but fled with the children to the coast. The servants and tenants, who adored Lord Land Laura, aided her flight with means of every kind; and she reached London the day after the old earl was laid in his tomb. His son started from his trance of filial grief, spurned all the spurious offerings to his new honours, and with Hannah, and O'Brien, and the children, he hastened to a sea-port where his yacht was lying ready, at a minute's notice, for sea, with others of the club of which he was a leading member.

He was, within an hour, upon the waves; and all that skill and vigilance could do was exerted to hasten his voyage to Sicily.

As soon as their minds became composed enough to allow of aught but bursts of unreasoning rapture, the hands of the lovers were joined together, and their hearts legitimately bound, by Laura's brother, in the monastery chapel. But to make this union legal as well as legitimate, still more was to be done. They set out immediately for Rome, where

all forms were in due course gone through; and Laura Pemegia became the unquestionable sharer of the title, fortune, and honours of him, who could not by any ritual have given or gained another grain of heart. If the spirit of the former earl looks down on the scenes of earth, and is conscious of this world's felicities, it may be satisfied with the son who made the generous, the just, the only amends in the power of man, to the being who trusted and sacrificed all, in him and for him.

From the year of their marriage until this they have lived abroad; both of them the charm and grace of some of the best society of the continent. The earl is afraid to return to England, not for his own sake, but for hers. For he dreads lest some exclusive clique, that gives the tone to fashion and apes the mockery of morals, might refuse to his always innocent, though long deluded Laura, the fiat of admission to those circles, where many a heartless guilty one takes place not far from the highest.

Another bar exists to the earl's return, and joins in depriving Ireland of his personal support, at all times wanting, but most of all in times like these. His eldest boy is illegitimate, without rank, or title, or patrimony; while a brother, born several years later, is the lucky, legal, “true inheritor" of all. The earl has, like his helpmate, ever doated on Frederick. The boy had nothing left but to make himself a name-a fortune, his father's affection has secured him. And, even while I write, I see that name among the very first of those who, as volunteers in the Russian ranks, struck the earliest blows on the Turkish soil, against the pest of humanity, the butchers of Greece, the race, whose expulsion from the civilized world would sanctify excess itself, and form a grand exception to general rules of politics, expediency, and international law.

The unfortunate mother of Laura, conscience-maddened, was at the time of my visit wandering about, watched by the care of her son. She obeyed him, as has been seen, but still believed him dead; as well as Laura, whose spectre seemed to haunt her. This last idea was perfectly strengthened by seeing so constantly near her, the marble statue in the wood, which had been executed at Rome, under the earl's inspection, and sent by him to Sicily, to be placed in the very spot where he first met its beautiful original. To general observers it was a monument of loveliness. To the

guilty mother a record of crime, and a signal for remorse and misery.

Hannah and old O'Brien retain their places, not only in the service and the regard, but the former more especially -in the hearts of their master and mistress; and fidelity, sown on a generous soil, has produced a full harvest of gratitude.

Father Anselm still lives in his cloister, in the mild enjoyment of a virtuous mind. His written communications with his sister are frequent, and, as I have reason to believe, among her truest gratifications. Little Laurette is by this time a full grown girl; and may soon, as I understand, be in a fair way to give some future writer occasion to say as much for a daughter of hers. For a treaty is even now going on for her union with a young German of noble family; and consequently Laura Pemegia, who was introduced to the reader as a child of fourteen, has a chance of becoming a grandmother before four and thirty.

VOL. I.-P

THE

CONFESSIONS

OF

AN ENGLISH GLUTTON.

Paisque les choses sont ainsi, je prétends aussi avoir mon franc-parler.

D'ALEMBERT.

THIS is confessedly the age of confession-the era of individuality--the triumphant reign of the first person singular. Writers no longer talk in generals. All their observations are bounded in the narrow compass of self. They think only of number one. Homo sum is on the tip of every tongue and the nib of every pen, but the remainder of the sentence is unuttered and unwritten. The rest of his species is now nothing to any one individual. There are no longer any idiosyncrasies in the understanding of our essayists, for one common characteristic runs through the whole range. Egotism has become as endemical to English literature as the plague to Egypt, or the scurvy to the northern climes. Every thing is involved in the simple possessives me and mine-and we all cry out in common chorus,

Since, then, the whole tribe of which I am an unworthy member, have one by one poured out their souls into the confiding and capacious bosom of the public; since the list of scribblers, great and small, from the author of Eloise to the inventor of Vortigern-since the Wine-drinker, the Opium-eater, the Hypochondriac, and the Hypercritic, have in due succession "told their fatal stories out," I cannot, in justice to my importance, or honesty to the world, leave the

blank unfilled, which stands gaping to receive the Confessions of a Glutton, and thus put the last leaf on this branch of periodical personality.

I have one appalling disadvantage beside my contemporaries, in that want of sympathy which I am sure to experience from readers in general. Many a man will be too happy to acknowledge himself hypochondriacal-it is the fashion. Others are to be found in great abundance who will bravely boast of their spongy intemperance, and be proud of their brotherhood with the drunkard. Even opium-eating, like snuff-taking, may come into vogue, and find unblushing proselytes-but who will profess himself a slave to gluttony-the commonest failing of all? Nevertheless, with all the chances of public odium and private reprobation impending over me, I hasten to the performance of my duty, and I am proud to consider myself a kind of literary Curtius, leaping willingly into the gulf, to save my fellow citizens by my own sacrifice.

The earliest date which I am able to affix to the developement of my propensity, is the month of August, 1764, at which period, being then precisely two years and two months old, I remember well my aunt Griselda having surprised me in infantine but desperate excess, for which she punished me with a very laudable severity. This circumstance made a great impression on me; and without at all lessening my propensity, added considerably to my prudence. My vora city was infinite, and my cunning ran quite in a parallel line. I was

"Fox in stealth, wolf in greediness."

I certainly eat more than any six children, yet I was the very picture of starvation. Lank, sallow, and sorrow-stricken, I seemed the butt against which stinginess had been shooting its shafts. I attacked every one I met with the most clamorous cries for cakes or bread. I watched for visiters, and thrust my hands into their pockets with most piteous solicitings; while aunt Griselda bit her lips for anger, and my poor mother, who was a different sort of person, used to blush to the eyes for shame, or sit silently weeping, as she contemplated the symptoms of my disgraceful and incurable disease. In the mean time every thing was essayed, every effort had recourse to, to soften down the savageness of my