The LIBERTINE RECLAIMED.

A TALE.

(With an elegant Engraving.),

O fuffer with patience, to rife fuperior to misfortune, and to repay unmerited ill-treatment with benevolence, are virtues which not only promote the happiness of thofe who can exercise them, but frequently recall the licentious to the paths of their duty.

Mr. Fairfax was a man of fashion, vivacity, and diffipation. Endowed by nature with an elegant perfon, and a vigorous understanding, he had added to thefe many pleafing and polite accomplishments. But the warmth of his paffions, which the largeness of his fortune enabled him to indulge, plunged him into the vortex of licentious pleafure; and he ardently purfued the phantom of fenfual gratification, though he ftill grafped only disappointment and languor.

any fingle woman had never vete been everlasting, it was not fo now. His lady brought him a beautiful girl; but, in lefs than two years after he had fubmitted to put on the hymeneal chain, his tatte for difiipation and riet again returned; he neglected his lovely partner, and plunged deeper into debauchery than he had done even before his marriage. In vain did Mrs. Fairfax with tendernets remonftrate; he treated her with contempt, with infult, with brutality; and connect ing himtelf with a diffolute female, fquandered on her his fortune without referve.

A feparation now took place; Mrs. Fairfax retired with her daugh ter to a little neat house, in a romantic part of Derbyshire, where the lived on a fmall annuity he al lowed her; endeavouring to forget her faithlefs husband, in her admiration of the beauties of nature, and her attention to the education of her child.

Mr. Fairfax, on his part, continued his licentious courfe. He took his extravagant mistress to every ft

Marriage was, therefore, now the only remedy; a defperate one, indeed, but indifpenfable. He looked around him among his female acquaintance, and many giddy things food candidates for the valuable prize. His perfon, his pleafing manners, and his good fenfe, which he ftill poffeffed, notwithstanding all his irregularites, enabled him to obtain the approbation of a young lady of confiderable beauty and difcretion, who was heirefs to a large eftate, which, foon after her inarriage with him, came into his poffeffion.

As his attachment, however, to 7

of polite refort; but happiness and real enjoyment fled before him, and inftead of thefe he was obliged to accept of noif and nonienfe: till however he periided, for a kind of ftupor and intoxication feemed to have benumbed his better faculties,

Mrs. Fairfax, meanwhile, by the propriety of her deportment, her good fenfe, and her accomplishments, won the refpect and efteem of all her neighbours. But her story was not known, nor was the illufage of her husband, or her own unmerited fufferings, on any occafion the fubject of her converfation.

Early, one fine fummer-morning, as the was hearing her daughter, the lovely Charlotte, read, in a kind of outer-room adjoining to the garden, she was extremely furprifed by the fudden appearance of a man at

the

the door, with a bloody fword in his hand, who hastily begged affiftance for a wounded gentleman in an adjoining field, and that he might be received into the houfe till a furgeon could be procured to drefs his wound. Mrs. Fairfax, after fome inquiry, found that the gentleman had fallen in a duel, and that the perfon who came for affiftance had been his antagonift. She immediately repaired to the place with her maid and the gardener. But what was her furprife to find the wounded gentleman was no other than her husband, whom she now, for the firft time after an interval of feveral years, beheld weltering in his blood and nearly infenfible!

At this fhocking fight, a mingled fenfation of terror, compaffion, and love, took full poffeffion of her heart. But without losing time in fruitless lamentation, or a wild expreffion of violent feelings, fhe took care that he should be immediately conveyed to her house. A furgeon was procured, who pronounced the wound extremely dangerous, though not fuch as abfolutely to preclude hope. He was conveyed to a bed where he was carefully attended by her he had fo ill treated. Night after night, without once clofing her eyes, fhe waited on him, exerting her utmost efforts to footh his pains, anxious to fupply every want, and anticipate every with. At length by her tender attention, and the judicious treatment of his furgeon, he was fo far recovered, that there feemed no reafon to apprehend any fatal confequences.

But it is time to inform the reader by what means Mr. Fairfax was brought into this dangerous fituation. He had accompanied his miftrefs on an excurfion to Buxton, and at an inn on the road, one of his diffipated companions having in his cups used fome expreffions relative to that lady, which Mr. Fairfax confidered as an infult, a duel was the confequence.

His miftrefs, understanding that his recovery was thought doubtful, and that he had been received into the houfe of his wife, accepted an offer then made her by another gentleman of fashion, to whom the immediately attached herself, leaving her former lover to his fate.

But what were the feelings of Mr. Fairfax when he raised his eyes to the much-injured, but ftill affectionate woman, who attended on him with fuch indefatigable care, fuch tender anxiety; who fcarcely ever left him, and to whofe folicitude and exertions he poffibly owed his life! His heart was penetrated with astonifhment, with gratitude, with returning love. After many ftruggles with the fhame he felt from a fenfe of the injuftice and meannefs of his paft conduct, he thus addreffed her:

"Moft amiable and beft of women, whom Providence feems to have bestowed on me to be my guardian angel, without whofe affifance, and generous, though undeferved affection, my riotous follies had probably whelmed me in death! receive to your arms the returning and truly repentant prodigal. Amid all my wanderings, I never knew delight to compare with what I now feel; you have indeed taught me the charms of virtue. To you I fwear eternal fidelity and love: let the paft be no more remembered: my future conduct shall, could it be poffible, make you amends.',

Nor were these mere words, extorted by a tranfient fenfe of his own danger and her goodnefs; fuch unexampled fidelity and tenderness completely reclaimed him, and he returned to his libertinifm no more.

HIS piece is the production

Tof Mr. O'Keeffe. The scene

lies at a watering place not far from town. Lord Torrendel, a man of gallantry, having formed a tender attachment for, and feduced Emily Woodbine,fhe is difcarded by her father, who adopts her coufin Augufta, to whom he leaves the whole of his fortune, under the guardianship of Sir Hans Burgess, a whimsical knight, who has accumulated his property by trade, and who defigns Augufta and his fortune for his fon George, a kind of penurious philanthropitt.

Lord Torrendel marries, but afterwards, to indulge his libertine defires, impofes on his lady, then at his country feat in Cumberland, by letters, as from Lisbon, inti-, mating his continuance there for the re-establishment of his health.

Sir Hans Burgess, to forward his plan, impofes on Augufta, with a falfe account of a fubfequent will of his uncle's, giving the whole to a ftranger. Thus humbled, the accepts the proffered fituation of governess to Fanny (the girlish daughter of Dickens, a little bufy grocer and country juftice), to whom George Burgefs is ftrongly attached. VOL. XXVI.

Arthur, the fon of lord Torrendel by Emily Woodbine, is treated as an outcast by his lordship, from the idea of his extravagance, &c. as the fums given to Lœillet for his fupport, are appropriated to his own ufe: and, in confequence of his poverty and volatile difpofition, he is in continual fcrapes with the feveral tradesmen who fupply his wants.

After a chance interview with his coufin Augufta, which produces a mutual paffion, on the prefumption of his father advancing a few hundreds (which he dispatched his fervant Timolin to receive) he orders a variety of articles, which being incapable of paying for, he is brought before Dickens, who is on the point of committing him. but is prevented by Sir Hans becoming

bail, who admires his vivacity, and

is in hopes, by his commencing companion to his fon, he will induce George to become the dashing lad he withes him.

In the interim, lady Torrendel arrives, difcovers the duplicity of her lord, and determines, if poffible, to shame and reclaim him : she enters the cattle privately, and difcovers Timolin, who is imprisoned there, for conveying, by his master's order, the picture of his mother Emily from his lordship's gallery, to prevent its being the fubject of vulgar farcafm. She learns from him Torrendel's cruelty to his fon, and the poor youth's fituation, and nobly refolves to become a friend to the friendlefs-fhortly after difpatching her coachman with a note for three hundred pounds, to relieve the lad Arthur.

'Tis impoffible to follow the various incidents which occur: fuffice it to fay, Lord Arthur, from involved circumftances, dreading hourly an arreft, concludes the coachman is a bailiff, and flies from him. Lord Torrendel, having a defign on Augufta, employs his va

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