Hannah Hewit: or, the female Crusoe. Being the history of a woman of uncommon, mental, and personal accomplishments; who, ... was cast away in the Grosvenor East-Indiaman: and became for three years the sole inhabitant of an island, in the South Seas. Supposed to be written by herself. [pt.3]

Table of contents

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- HANNAH HEWIT. BOOK V. THE ADVENTURES OF HANNAH HEWIT FROM HER MIRACULOUS ESCAPE TO THE TIME OF HER ENTERING HER TOMB.

- CHAP. I. HANNAH GETS RID OF ONE TROUBLESOME COM PANION, AND FINDS ANOTHER; SHE IS SHOCKED AT A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY; WHICH, HOWEVER, LEADS TO A PLEASURABLE ONE.

- CHAP II. HANNAH, LIKE PANDORA, EXPLORES THE FATAL CHEST, FROM WHICH ISSUES ALL MANNER OF EVILS; SHE, HOWEVER, FINDS HOPE AT THE BOTTOM.

- CHAP III. LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS WHICH ASTONISHED HANNAH HEWIT, AND WILL, NO DOUBT, ASTONISH THE READER.

- CHAP. IV. LEO BECOMES VERY USFEUL; HANNAH TURNS BUILDER, AND ERECTS THE SHELL OF A VERY ELEGANT STRUCTURE.

- CHAP. V. THE BUILDING GETS INTO A VERY FORWARD STATE, DURING ITS PROGRESS THE READER WILL HAVE REASON TO ADMIRE THE PERSEVERANCE AND IN GENUITY OF HANNAH HEWIT.

- CHAP VI. HANNAH HAVING BUILT A HOUSE WANTS A GAR DEN; SHE ACCOMPLISHES HER WISH, AND GETS VERY FORWARD IN HER DIFFERENT STUDIES.

- CHAP VII. HANNAH CELEBRATES THE ANNIVERSARIES OF ME MORABLE DAYS, STUDIES CHEMISTRY, AND MAKES AN AUTOMATON. THE BIRDS AND THE MONKIES PAY HER ANOTHER VISIT, AT WHICH TIME LEO RESCUES HER FROM A PERILOUS SITUATION.

- CHAP. VIII. HANNAH EXPERIENCING DISAGREEABLE EFFECTS FROM THE RAINY SEASON, GETS FIRST INTO A CONSUMPTION, AND AFTERWARDS INTO THE HORRORS.

- CHAP IX. HANNAH'S DISTRESS BECOMES MORE AND MORE POIGNANT: SHE MEETS WITH A MOST AFFECTING LOSS, AND AFTERWARDS TAKES HER LEAVE OF THE WORLD.

- HANNAH HEWIT. BOOK VI. THE ADVENTURES OF HANNAH HEWIT FROM THE MOMENT SHE HAD A GLIMPSE OF HOPE TO THE COMPLE TION OF HER HAPPINESS.

- CHAP. I. IN WHICH HANNAH HEWIT AND THE READER ARE INTRODUCED TO SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCE.

- CHAP II. HEWIT'S STORY.

- CHAP. III. HEWIT'S STORY CONCLUDED.

- CHAP IV. HANNAH'S STORY.

- CHAP. V. WALMESLEY'S STORY.

- CHAP VI. CONTAINING THE HISTORY OF AN EXEMPLARY YOUNG MAN, SOME PERTINENT OBSERVATIONS, AND A FURTHER DISCOVERY.

- CHAP. VII. THE STORY OF BINNS.

- CHAP VIII. WHICH MIGHT BE CALLED, IF THE TERM COULD BE SO FAR STRAINED, THE LIVING APOTHEOSIS OF HANNAH HEWIT.

- CHAP IX. IN WHICH, HANNAH HAVING BROUGHT UP THE LEE WAY OF HER LIFE, CAPTAIN HIGGINS SAILS, AND THE HISTORY CONCLUDES WITH A MORAL REFLECTION.

THE END.

HANNAH HEWIT.

HANNAH HEWIT; OR, THE FEMALE CRUSOE. BEING THE HISTORY OF A WOMAN OF uncommon, mental, and personal accomplishments; WHO, After a variety of extraordinary and interesting adventures in almost every station of life, from splendid prosperity to abject adversity, WAS CAST AWAY IN THE GROSVENOR EAST-INDIAMAN: And became for three years the sole inhabitant of AN ISLAND, IN THE SOUTH SEAS.

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

THERE IS AN ESPECIAL PROVIDENCE IN THE FALL OF A SPARROW.

VOLUME III.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR C. DIBDIN, AT HIS MUSIC WAREHOUSE, NO. 411, STRAND.

HANNAH HEWIT.
BOOK V. THE ADVENTURES OF HANNAH HEWIT FROM HER MIRACULOUS ESCAPE TO THE TIME OF HER ENTERING HER TOMB.

CHAP. I. HANNAH GETS RID OF ONE TROUBLESOME COMPANION, AND FINDS ANOTHER; SHE IS SHOCKED AT A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY; WHICH, HOWEVER, LEADS TO A PLEASURABLE ONE.

No conception, however, lively, no language, however forcible, no pen, however ingenious, ever yet succeeded in describing the lost, the unhinged state of the human mind, when sudden and dreadful distress brings on a temporary suspension of the mental faculties; much less can the tumultuary throng of broken and incoherent ideas be described, which seem to be precipitated from the overloaded heart to the wandering brain, at the doubtful return of imperfect recollection.

Though I should never forget, we re I to live a thousand years, the freezing horror, the madening agony, I endured when I encountered the murderous glare of the lioness, as her eyes flashed fire in the moment of springing at me, yet I cannot think I was utterly senseless, except for a very short interval. My situation was more like that of a frantic bedlamite in a powerful paroxism. I screamed, I fought, I resisted; and verily believed when, at the moment reason began to dawn, I felt something tug my cloaths, that I was covered with wounds, and at my last gasp.

Judge of my astonishment, reader, when, as my recollection grew more and more perfect, I found myself entirely free from injury, and that it was nothing but the cub that occasioned the tugging which I described before. If I was astonished at this, how was my wonder turned to delight, when looking wildly round me, I beheld the lioness stretched on a pointed prominence of the rock beneath me and weltering in gore.

The truth was, that as I fell at the very instant she sprung at me, she could not resist the force of her own impetuosity; and meeting with nothing to oppose the violence of the effort she made to seize me, she was precipitated over my head into the abyss beneath. Mysterious Providence, thought I, that can'st strengthen the single hair by which our lives are suspended, to mock the force of the tempest, and the ferocity of lions. Oh, what an effusion of gratitude issued from my lips! But not fast enough to relieve my poor loaded heart; I grew dizzy, every artery throbbed, I thought I should again have fainted. At length a flood of thankful tears calmed me into obedient and passive resignation.

And now the poor cub, that seemed delighted at my returning to life, frolicked and played about me like a kitten. I could not help taking pleasure at its awkward antics, and yet it was a pleasure mingled with dread. Who knew if I attempted to protect it, when it grew older, and got strength, but my life would be the forfeit? Was compassion to a brute a sensation to be indulged by me? Had I not, in my own species, experienced the villany of a false friend, the barbarity of an unnatural brother, and even the cruelty of an unkind husband? And could I expect any thing but treachery and destruction from a beast of prey? No; I was determined to rid myself of every fear by destroying the object of my apprehensions.

As I was absorbed in this meditation, the poor thing came about me in so innocent and harmless a manner, that all the world could not have induced me to injure it. I ever held life as so sacred a trust, though Heaven knows, for the benefit's with which it abounds, it is scarcely worth preserving, that I never wantonly, nor perversely destroyed any thing that had animal existence. What new feelings then was I to adopt that could so far make me forget my nature as to kill the thing that flew to me for protection.

Besides, I argued thus: What the mother did was natural. It was in defence of her young, and the mercy of that gracious Providence, who had destroyed her to preserve me, would be ill requited were I to take the life of an innocent and defenceless creature, under a dread of my destruction, which no chance could accomplish without the permission of Providence. The utmost, therefore, I could prevail upon myself to resolve on was, to lose the cub by the way, and trust to chance for the rest.

Thus I reflected and rambled, making a short stay now and then near some plantain tree, where I imperfectly satisfied my hunger, or dipping out withn a shell some water from one of those innumerable rivulets which issued from the cascade, to slake my thirst; and all this during a most debilitated state of body, become almost paralytic with the shocking vicissitudes that had assailed my mind.

I found, however, I had more care upon my hands than for myself. The poor cub was no more proof against hunger than I; and as it would not leave me, I felt it incumbent on me to procure it some food. I mashed the fruit of the plantain into a sort of a paste with water, but he would not touch it. I tried him with berries and other fruit, to no purpose. At last he seemed to entice me to the verge of the lawn on the east side, where I perceived a declining path, which led in a serpentine direction among various shrubs, gradually towards the sea shore.

The farther we went on the more eager the cub seemed; and as I made but a slow progress, and was obliged, out of weakness, several times to sit down, he could scarcely contain his impatience. At length he darted away from me, and presently returned with some sort of flesh in his mouth, which he laid down at my feet; then ran away again, and then again retuned with more flesh, which he began to eat.

A most uncommon gloom came over me at this circumstance. Confused conjecture pointed out every thing dreadful, and nothing conclusive. My mind seemed involved as if shutting out faculty; and under the influence of a horrid gloom that distorted idea, and paralyzed reflection, I hastened to obey an impulfe which I knew would lead me to something dreadful, yet which hurried me on with a force resistless.

Arrived near the bottom, where a skirting of the rock prevented loose objects from being washed into the sea, gracious God what a horrid sight did I behold! Bones, heads, legs, arms, and other fragments of human carcasses lay scattered upon the sand. My poor heart sunk within me. Truly, thought I, did I conjecture that the island had been despoiled of its inhabitants by wild beasts; truly, did I anticipate a fate that too certainly awaits me; and, though I have once miraculously escaped, a fate now inevitable that no shelter can evade, no vigilance elude.

Thus I walked about, uttering distracted and incoherent sentences, when I discerned that, which had I given myself time for reflection, would have considerably relieved my mind; the bodies of the poor wretches which had been thus mangled were those I had buried. I knew their cloaths, and I knew the wrappers in which I had enclosed them, and from which they had been torn; and this proves the common observation, that lions will not prey upon carcases, to be false.

I soon found the mouth of that hollow into which I had plunged the bodies; and, as I knew I was then standing immediately under the wreck, it was my business seriously to take such measures as would be most likely to lead me to my old habitation.

Sunk as I was in despair, never did lightning dart quicker across the atmosphere, than did this ray of hope across my mind; it made in a moment two important discoveries. I found that no injury had been done to the living, and I knew exactly where I was.

Looking about, I observed a perforation in the rock, which seemed to take a horizontal direction. This I determined to explore, taking at the same time, every precaution not to be misled. When I had ventured, as far as I could judge by measuring my steps, about three hundred yards, all the way upon rising ground, the opening took two different roads; one almost sttraight on, and the other to the left. As I thought I discerned a glimmer of light at the end of that which led to the left, I pursued it, knowing, that if I discovered nothing to my satisfaction, I could but on my return take again a direction to the left, and I should then satisfy myself as to where it might lead me.

When I got to the end of this cavern, I found to my great surprize, that it opened upon the lawn, and I began now to see that it must certainly be contiguous to the plain where I had fixed my abode, and that I had only played about it in my ramblings; I therefore determined to return and pursue the straight-forward track which of course I should now find by turning to my left. To be brief, I did so, when finding the cavern take two directions again, I providentially pursued that which led to the right; and, in a few minutes, observed the glimmer of a lamp, which I knew could proceed from no place but my inner apartment which served me for a kitchen, and which lamp I had so constructed, that it would not only burn for five days, but mark the hours by the decrease of the oil.

CHAP II. HANNAH, LIKE PANDORA, EXPLORES THE FATAL CHEST, FROM WHICH ISSUES ALL MANNER OF EVILS; SHE, HOWEVER, FINDS HOPE AT THE BOTTOM.

FATIGUED to such a degree as to be almost berest of all power, I with inconceivable difficulty reached my couch, by the side of which, my knees involuntarily obeyed their accustomed office, while my mind issued from my lips.

After a short time, my prayers and tears having wonderfully relieved me, I began a little to recollect myself and consider what to set about. My first wish was to visit the wreck, and explore the dreadful secret that I had so imperfectly discovered; but finding my mind unequal to so trying a task, and knowing besides that night would come on before I could accomplish it, I adopted what prudence dictated and determined, by refreshment and repose, to strengthen my faculties until they should be able to sustain all consequences, before I sought to know, what I feared would require their united force, to bear up my resolution against what I had to endure.

I instantly made a fire and began to prepare my supper, but when I went to fetch some rice, I found it had been visited by vermin. I had frequently been plundered by a kind of mungoose, and another animal like the kangaroo, which I used to catch in traps; but, by what I could remark, the creature that had been so busy in my absence was of a smaller kind; I was not long, however, in the dark, for the young lion, who had not stirred a moment from my side, as I was laying my cloth, sprung across the cavern, and in a moment returned with a large rat, which he laid at my feet.

Extraordinary occurrences, though of ever so trivial a nature, always made upon my mind a deep impression. In my present lonely situation, my nerves perpetually in a tremulous state, no wonder if this disposition had strengthened. I looked at the creature with pleasure, and, but for apprehension could have caressed it. I recollected my partiaIity for cats, which seemed to have been dictated by something intuitive to inure me to the presence of a species of animal, which, though naturally ferocious, can be tamed and domesticated.

I went a great way into this, I knew not why. The noble nature of the lion, thought I, is almost a proverb, and so many extraordinary circumstances have been well authenticated concerning him, that there can be no doubt but he is capable of feeling, of honour, of generosity, and of gratitude. Why then should we hesitate in cultivating the friendship of a lion, when we cultivate the friendship of men who we know are incapable of all these.

Has any body ever dared to dispute the fact of the gladiator, whose life was saved by the intervention of providence, that sent a lion into the circus, out of whose foot the man had plucked a thorn, when he accidentally met him in a forest? This was more than noble; I know not if it would dishonour the expression, to call it godlike.

Hannon, a general of a Carthaginian army, after rendering some accidental service to a lion, so tamed him, that he followed him to the camp, carried his baggage for him, and became an able and valuable domestic. This was the noble nature of a brute. See what upon this occasion was the mean, the groveling feelings of man. The suspicious Carthaginians, whom Hannon had rendered services of a thousand times greater magnitude than he had rendered the lion, they, pusilanimously fearing that a man who could tame lions, would in the end become a formidable and dangerous enemy, banished him from their country.

The beautiful story of Una in Spencer, and the reverence in which a lion is supposed to hold the softer sex, next came into my mind. In short I went on in such a train of thinking, and so bewildered my imagination on this subject, that at length, recollecting on a sudden, that by the size of the animal it must have been born not far distant from the time of the shipwreck, I exclaimed, if I could prevail upon myself to believe in the doctrine of Pythagoras, I might be tempted to think that the soul of Hewit, when it fled his existence, returned to inhabit this noble beast, that so he might yet be my protector,

During the time these my reflections took place in my mind, I looked at the creature with such complacency that he seemed delighted. I encouraged him, therefore, called him Leo, and enticed him to eat, but though he lapped up the water, in which some rice and plantain had been boiled, which had a soft taste like milk, he seemed to have no relish for any thing to eat but animal food; I, therefore, gave him permission to eat the rat, at which he came purring about me greatly pleased, and then took it into a corner and devoured it.

I now retired to rest; not, however, without apprehension, but not enough to weigh much upon my mind; for after reviving my confidence by a supplication, fatigue lulled me into a most profound sleep.

In the morning I found my lion, who, with cat like watch, as Shakespear calls it, had waited for me to awake. I arose and began to think what I had to do, and to consider whether I had resolution enough to encounter the dreadful task of exploring the chest. I certainly sound myself greatly restored, but I was uncommonly depressed. After breakfast, however, as suspense seemed to me to be worse than the worst certainty, I resolved, let the consequence be what it might, to penetrate the, perhaps, fatal secret.

Fatal it was, for on opening the chest I discovered but too plainly that it belonged to my husband. Oh the horridly cruel feelings that drenched me at every pore as I examined the contents of it! My letters to him, tenderly written, at different times, little presents that I had made him on his birth day, on mine, on the different anniversaries of our marriage, new years' gifts, my own portrait, letters he had intended to send me, all collected, no doubt, to serve him as a consolation in my absence, other letters which I could not then examine, and a variety of articles, all as so many piles of unmerciful proofs that he for whom I had encountered such wretchedness, such peril, was now no more.

Oh God, cried I, this is dreadful! Was it for this I escaped from shipwreck, from savages, from the machinations of a villain, from famine, from the jaws of the lioness? Oh that the sea had swallowed me! That I had been killed and eaten! That I had died in defending my honour! that I had starved! that I had satiated the hunger of a monster! any, any fate rather, Oh infinitely rather, than this! but I have still my remedy in my power, and, surely, when the various, the complicate agravations are considered, if Fate has allotted any particular minister to punish suicide, my unexampled provocation will avert the impending stroke, and admitting the plea of stern necessity, soften crime into virtue, and turn the frown of justice into the smile of mercy.

Consider, continued I, consider, Oh God, my deplorable condition! Let me not live to be a prey to reflection, yet let not madness drive me to self slaughter; rather, if thou shall graciously determine that the measure of my sufferings is complete, stretch forth thy merciful hand and take a life already lost to all the purposes of animation.

It would touch the susceptible reader to the soul, could I find language to picture the forlorn, the fallen, the heart sick situation to which I was reduced. At this moment, at the distance of a year and a half, my tears blot out the words as I write them, and how Divine Providence soothed my mind into, an abandonment, and afterwards into a repentance of my dreadful determination to destroy myself, that power alone knows, that has permitted me to sustain and to survive so many trials, with no comfort but the hope that, my carreer of misery at an end, I shall, in a better world, meet my husband never to part again.

It is astonishing with what avidity the human mind after glutting itself with inordinate distress flies to the other extreme, and deceives itself into consolation. Scarcely had I brought myself into a state far from composure, but something less distracted, but I chid my hasty fears that had driven me to grieve for, perhaps, an imaginary evil. The arguments I had held before occurred to me again. It was true I had ascertained the dreadful fact, but it did not actually follow, though probability seemed to lend it a colour, that Hewit was on board at the time the ship was lost. He might, by accident, have been left behind; the ship might have been driven from her moorings by the storm and he ashore, for the two boats I had seen could not have held any thing like her complement of hands. These and twenty other delusive hopes, gross, absurd, ignorant, nay, all but impossible, did I catch at like so many straws, to save my poor heart from sinking.

At last I was so possessed with this impulse that I determined to examine the ship's books, and every other document that could possibly lead me to the real truth; and, indeed, I was stongly inclined to do this from another reason, which was, that as we were at war with France when the Grosvenot left India, it was possible that Hewit might in some kind of way been captured and his property detained, though he might have been set free.

All these vague and inconclusive conjectures gave way to conviction upon examining the books; for I not only found that he had been a foremastman on board that ship, but by a station book belonging to one of the mates, that he had not left her at the time she was labouring in the storm, consequently he must have been shipwrecked in her.

Nay, at last, I found a signal book in his own hand writing, which informed me that he fired the very gun as a signal of distress, that awaked me in the dreadful condition I formerly described as I lay in the cavern. Nay, heart breaking circumstance, as there was scarcely a memorandum in the whole book that had not some tender allusion, by way of comment, to the violent and unexampled affection he bore me, so opposite this note did he put up a supplication to Heaven, that unworthy as he was of me, through the mediation of those prayers, I might then be putting up for him, and which, Heaven knows, at that very moment I was putting up for him, his impending danger might be averted.

To trouble the reader with the effect this disappointment had on my mind, would be only going over the same ground again. The difference was, that as my grief, in the first instance, was vented in frantic exclamation, so, now, it was saddened into sullen despair,

My investigation of this business was not, however, entirely in vain. I found that the Entrepreneur had shipped a lioness, big with young, as a present for the Queen of France; and by the recollection of the beast that fled from me at the time of the shipwreck, which, doubtless, had buffetted the billows and escaped to shore, and that it could be no other whose fangs I had so miraculously escaped, I had no doubt but that it was the mother of poor Leo, and this relieved my mind from any further apprehension that beasts of prey inhabited the island.

This, though a negative comfort, was yet a comfort; and as a man would forget for a moment the consumption that was wasting him upon being relieved from the tooth ache, so the malady that I felt and hoped would consume me, underwent a transient suspension upon my receiving this assurance that the short life I was fated to linger out would not be tormented with the additional pang of so terrible an apprehension.

CHAP III. LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS WHICH ASTONISHED HANNAH HEWIT, AND WILL, NO DOUBT, ASTONISH THE READER.

AFTER an examination of more than five hours of different documents, which now and then contained passages too powerful for my feelings, I resolved to return home, and, since nothing could flatter me with a reverse of my wretched fate, alas now too certain, explore no more at a time than I had resolution to bear.

This lesson of prudence I not only set myself, but performed. If a heart breaking circumstance overpowered me I took the consolation of reflecting that Providence permitted it, perhaps to prevent something more sinister. Then I would take a short walk, look at the beauties that surrounded me, take some trifling refreshment, pat Leo, and then return, peruse more misery, and take more relief.

Thus for several days I went on. I would kiss John Hewit's hair, enclosed in a trinket, wish myself with him, and then solemnly vow not to hasten my dissolution. Then read a fragment of a repentant letter, on which I could plainly perceive he had shed tears, then drop a tear on it myself, then feel a slight relief, then place it near my heart, and make a solitary dinner.

Then would I peruse, in a pocket bible, where our different ages were written in his own hand, the day of our marriage, the ages of our children, the last of which memorandums he had blotted out, and afterwards restored; then, as in agony, the book was falling from my hand, would accident point me out some sacred sentence, which, admonishing my weakness, inspired me with resolution.

The feeling reader will not only picture this for me, and a great deal more, but will pardon me that I hang upon griefs when it is my duty to relate circumstances.

The particulars which I gathered from those papers connected with a chain of events, relative to this history, were these: My brother, the lawyer, while he lay under sentence of death in Newgate, informed Hewit, that he and Sourby had connived at all the wretchedness he had suffered, that in the last business Mrs. Vint, who was a cast off mistress of Sourby, was an instrument. It was she who enflamed the passions of Hewit, by every art she could devise; and, in particular, by exaggerating every thing relative to the interview with Binns at the play; of bringing proof upon proof, through the medium of engines that were employed, that I had met him repeatedly in private before we went to France.

My brother, the lawyer, however, was very little concerned in this. The whole scheme was concerted between Sourby and that diabolical woman, of whom, though I did not entirely approve, I had the weakness to entertain a good opinion, which, after all, is not wonderful, for I was tired out at last; and, except some material concern of my own obliged me to be on my guard, I chose to silence the dictates of my own sagacity rather than be perpetually suspicious.

These two friends. though they hated each other, joined hand and heart in this infernal plot, his point to gain me, her's to gain Hewit. Our sudden departure for France delayed their measures for a time, our return renewed them. The nicest hints were thrown out, the most subtle arts employed, even my innocent child was an instrument of their infernal infamy, and the reader knows they so far succeeded as to drive a husband with a broken heart from her arms, whom, even while he thought her an adultress, he loved dearer than the whole world.

When Hewit left me it was his firm determination to go to India, and for that purpose he was, as he wrote, under weigh in the Downs in the Vansitart; and, to say the truth, this was a master stroke of Sourby, all whose pleasures were nothing unless the fruit of treachery, for as he hated Mrs. Vint, he wished to deprive her of Hewit, that he might laugh at her, while he had me completely in his power.

But the lady who, in art, was at least a match for the gentleman, chose to expostulate with him upon this; and vowed she would instantly acquaint me with every thing and so disconcert all his scheme, if he did not cause Hewit to be arrested when the ship should arrive at Portsmouth, that she, by stepping in and relieving him, might make such merit of her friendship as should induce him to be grateful.

This was accordingly done. Hewit was arrested at Portsmouth, and detained till the ship had sailed, and now good Mrs. Vint chose very opportunely to happen to be near at hand, and offered either to pay the money or get bail for him. The first offer he did not chose to accept, for, indeed, he did not owe the money, being arrested upon a perjury. the other, however, with some hesitation he did accept, and came to town; but, finding at length, too plainly what return she expected for all this friendship, he not only revolted at the conditions, but began to see a motive for believing that I might have been wronged.

In this situation he fluctuated, and actually made several attempts to find me; till, at length, when he was on the point of surrendering himself to prison in exoneration of his bail, to get rid of the obligation, my brother, the lawyer, sent for him, as I mentioned before, acquainted him with the whole business from first to last, and taught him how to laugh at the action, which was a fraud.

During all this time, by unfortunately taking too much precaution, I missed of my husband, and he of me; nay, the circumstance is a kind of miracle, for among the documents in the fatal chest, I found a duplicate of the very newspaper in which I had, as the reader remembers, read an account of my brother's being condemned, and which contained, though probably from the shock of such dreadful news, I I overlooked it, the following advertisement.

A REPENTANT HUSBAND.

IF Hannah Hewit, wife of John Hewit, who with the most unexampled cruelty left her to wretchedness and distress, without the smallest provocation, but instigated by calumny and treachery, will make known to her miserable and disconsolate husband the place of her abode, she shall be soon convinced that nothing but a train of the most subtle and diabolical art could have been the cause of his unpardonable conduct, and that it shall be the business of his life, by tenderness and contrition, to merit her forgiveness. A line addressed to J. H. Salopian coffee-house, will be remembered with the truest gratitude.

Searching further I found the trials of my brother the lawyer, and Sourby at length, in which every nerve was evidently strained, by the whole gang, to save them. An alibi was set up, swearers on their part came to invalidate the evidence for the crown. Mrs Vint, who was taken up as an accomplice, turned king's evidence to have her full revenge on Sourby; and being severely cross examined by the counsel, grew so exasperated that she threw a candlestick at his head, for the trial lasted from nine o'clock one morning till three the next, for which she was committed for a contempt of court. In short, though I at the time heard not a syllable of it, nor was Mr. Morris acquainted with it, who plodding on minded no business but his own, it was evident the town must have rung of it.

Early in the trial it went hard with my brother; and, indeed, such a catalogue of black deeds came out against him, that the jury very soon made up their minds. This was not exactly the case in relation to Sourby, to whose superior cunning after all my brother had been the dupe. Points of law were artfully thrown in the way of conviction, persons of distinction, particularly a lord, appeared to give him the character of a gentleman, and a man of probity and honour; and though the bench, and, indeed the jury, considered him as the greater villain of the two, yet his crime was so warily committed, and his defence so artfully undertaken, that there was no bringing home to him the crime of forgery with intent to defraud.

Every power, however, in the breast of the judges, was stretched to punish Sourby, and his sentence was to be transported to the coast of Africa for life. Nor did they spare, in the passing this sentence, to mark his attrocity, nay, those fashionable gentlemen, who appeared to gloss over so infamous a character, were severely glanced at; and greatly to the honour of the bench was this conduct. The poor wretch, who breaks a baker's window to steal a loaf, that a starving family may satisfy the cravings of hunger, must be hanged; nor will a single creature appear in his behalf, nor a counsel plead his cause, for he is poor. The fashionable villain, whose study is domestic ruin, shall have the first legal abilities to support his cause, and persons of the first distinction to give him a fair character, because he is rich.

I would ask, does an advocate think he supports the honour of the bar by receiving the brief and fee of a client whose infamous character he, in common with all the world, is acquainted with? Does a lord believe he has not uttered virtual perjury when he has given a man the character of honest and honourable, whom he knows has spent many, many thousands, without ever having received a single shilling in his life that he has either earned or inherited.

To crown this business, I cannot refrain from mentioning a letter of Mrs. Vint to Sourby in answer to one, where he upbraids her for becoming king's evidence. She most triumphantly glories in the prospect she has of seeing him hanged; she ridicules him for one, who in the progress of his nefarious profession, had acted like an idiot and a bungler; upbraids him for not leaving Hewit to her management; telling him that his malignant mind could never bear that any person should receive a satisfaction but himself. She laughs at him for the folly of having so often missed the accomplishment of his designs upon me. She anticipates all the mortification and all the ignominy he is to suffer. She tries him, casts him, condemns him, puts the halter round his neck, draws the cap over his eyes, and at last, with a most solemn asseveration, that the declaration comes from the bottom of her soul, she vows she would give a year of her own life to have the pleasure of assisting the hangman. Then to finish all she adds, 'But what was to be expected of one whose father, an Irish White Boy, was called murdering Murdoch, and whose mother left the more creditable purlieus of Billingsgate to support an infamous life by betraying innocence to prostitution.

Well, said I, upon reading this, did Heaven direct its vengeance. It could no longer wink at such complicate, such monstrous villainy, but sent that shark, at once its minister of justice to punish him, and of mercy to protect me.

CHAP. IV. LEO BECOMES VERY USFEUL; HANNAH TURNS BUILDER, AND ERECTS THE SHELL OF A VERY ELEGANT STRUCTURE.

MANY other documents did I discover, which, however, are of no further moment to the reader, than as serving for a corroboration of all I have related; and now, having let two months elapse with no other employ than feasting my mind with a food it devoured and nauseated, I became collected enough to look round me and see in earnest what plan I had best adopt.

Certainty is so preferable to suspense, that I now began thus to reason with myself: Suppose I had never discovered the fatal chest, how would it have mended my situation? I should have had reason to believe that poor Hewit was yet alive. What then, as to him, but wretchedness of mind, mixed with the pangs of compunction? What, as to me, but solitariness and uncertainty, while he was wandering through the world in search of her he would never find.

But to be so near him and yet lose him! That pang was severe, but it was inevitable. The hand of Fate was in it, we were born to separate never to meet again; and I was in a better situation to taste the misery, bitter as it was, where I could sooth my own sorrows by the sweet recollection that I had not deserved them, than in a vain, idle world, where the trivial and unfeeling would have ridiculed a pious duty to which their pitiable and trifling minds were insensible.

On the the other hand, for such a situation I was not unmindful how many comforts, as far as I was capable of comfort, I possessed; in a desolate island where one would think I should find nothing but danger and famine, I was safe and in the midst of plenty. The riches of the east courted my acceptance, and my faithful lion secured me from every peril.

My poor Leo who, most fortunately for me, became my protector! for I soon began to discover, though I had been pretty secure from annoyance before I emptied the ship of her provisions, that having now such a magazine I should soon have been overrun by depredators. As to the rats which I at first wondered at, for they were European rats, I found upon recollection, they must have come from the ship, and, being few in number, might soon be dispersed, but creatures now came about me of several descriptions; nay, the smaller sort of the monkeys at last scented my store.

Leo, however, soon rooted them all; and, in a fortnight, I was ptetty well convinced I should have no further trouble. At first, I own, I was very much alarmed, lest his preying upon animal food, might one day or other make him forget his duty; but these apprehensions soon ceased. I treated him exactly as I would a favourite cat, made palatable messes for him, and gave him no animal food but what I previously dressed, which no doubt softened his natural ferocity, for no lamb ever was so gentle, no spaniel so obedient.

One circumstance very probably contributed to the attention and fidelity I received from Leo. After I had had him about a fortnight, he pursued a kind of racoon, which turned round and defending itself, Leo soon conquered him; but, exactly as I have known a rat turn in despair against a large dog, so this nasty animal, by way of a desperate effort, flew at Leo's eyes, and fastened its talon so deep into one of them, that I had great fear he would have lost the sight of it. I turned occulist upon this occasion; and, by proper applications, made a perfect cure of him in the course of something more than three weeks, and this the reader will readily grant, insured me his gratitude.

Under all these considerations, having balanced the good and the bad, having seen the folly of despair, the impossibility of radical relief, the certainty of as much comfort as such a situation would admit, I fairly looked my fortune full in the face, and plainly saw, all things considered, that miserable as I was, there were thousands in the world infinitely worse off.

I had now been on this desolate island exactly a year; and, having weathered the first rainy season, and being not yet forty, there was little probability but I might see many more days pass over my head than would be welcome to me. In order to beguile the time, therefore, as much as possible, I was determined to go upon some large plan, that I might fully employ my mind, and give free scope for my ingenuity.

Having made this my object of contemplation for many days, I at at last digested every thing. First of all, I was determined to change my place of abode, for I had no doubt but living within the rock had been in a great measure the cause of the different illnesses I had been afflicted with, besides it was dreary and had a tendency rather to inspire, than dispel gloom. I, therefore, resolved to erect a proper building, calculated for pleasure and convenience, in a situation on the lawn which was sufficiently shaded from the south sun, and sheltered from the north wind, with a large expansion of verdure that terminated, before me, with the promontary that I have already described to extend like a terrace and over look the sea; on the right, with the cascade, and on the left, with those majestic trees, tier upon tier, that made a large segment of that natural amphitheatre into which the whole was so beautifully formed.

I had a great deal to think of. A slight building would have been blown down by the first hurricane, or washed away by the rain; and though I had a variety of materials, it did not appear that they would serve to erect any edifice proof against such accidents. I had an idea of planting trees and interlacing spars, junk, and other things, so as in time to make a firm wall, its foundation fairly rooted in the earth; but this would require time to bring it to perfection, and I wanted a place to reside in immediately, besides, there would be no ingenuity in it.

I must have a place, thought I, in which strength shall vie with symetry; which shall evince taste, elegance, a knowledge of proportion; that shall at once brave the fury of the storm, stem the course of the inundation, and yet be handsome and ornamental.

I resolved to build a wall of an oval form. My roof I was determined should be flat, with a low dome in the center; by this means I knew I should oppose such a body of strength and roundness to the weather as would so completely shelter me, that the wind and rain could find no lodgment from any quarter, and then I should be perfectly secure from all external apprehension.

This shell once completed, I planned to divide it within into a vestibule, a saloon, a storehouse, a kitchen, a chapel, and a dormitory; which several partitions would serve to strengthen it still more, and give me opportunity, with perfect convenience to follow all my occupations, but I shall first describe how I managed to erect the shell,

I could have cast the whole wall in moulds in the nature of London Wall, or any other walls surrounding great cities, but I chose rather to build it with brick and mortar. My brick I formed from that earth which lay about in plenty, and which I have before described as bearing a strong resemblance to the petunse, with which, with the assistance of the kaolin, they in China make porcelaine. The kaolin admitting only of a semivitrification, and the petunse being capable of completely vitrifying. These bricks, I think, I formed upon a better principle than those which are made in England, and this I shall particularly describe, as, perhaps, it may induce an imitation of my plan; and ill as the world deserves at my hands, I am not so churlish as to, withhold any thing that can be of use to my fellow creatures, greatly as they have profited, though I have never done so by my ingenuity.

As to mortar, I had noticed a part of the rock, indeed many parts of it, that had been fairly slaked at the commencement of the rainy reason. This was nothing more than lime rendered quick by the heat of the sun, whose power, the rock containing a quantity of calcareous gas, had opened the pores and expelled it by calcination, exactly as the same operation is performed by fire.

I, therefore, got together a quantity of these lime stones, thus almost ready burnt to my hands; as to the other ingredient, sand, there could be no difficulty of course in finding that; and, with these materials, having first made me a trowel, a level, and every necessary tool for my purpose, I turned bricklayer, and built me an oval brick wall, strengthened, occasionally, with bond timber, fifty-four feet by thirty-six, and thirteen feet high from the surface of the earth, allowing two feet more for the foundation.

Before I could form my roof, it was necessary I should mark out my interior plan. I described in the center, a circle of eighteen feet diameter, I then formed it into an octagon, which I intended to call my saloon, so that there were eighteen feet left, either way towards the ends, and nine feet towards the sides. The space for my door was towards the south, and the space between that and the saloon formed a vestibule. On the other side, behind the saloon, I had a space exactly the size of the vestibule, which I intended to make into a dormitory; and now having drawn these lines, there remained towards each end a space something in the form of the letter D. One of these, that towards the west, I separated exactly in the middle, one part to serve for a kitchen, the other for a store-room, and the remaining D, I intended to use as a chapel, the altar being at the end, and standing north and south.

At the point of every angle given me by these forms, I placed an upright, eleven feet high. I next formed my roof to dovetail into the ends of these uprights, and intermixed it with smaller quartering; and now I had got the complete skeleton of my building. My next business was to raise a dome from the octagon in the center, which I did by forming eight pieces of basket work into gores, leaving four appertures for a skylight. These being placed in their proper situations, and drawn to a point, I laced them together, first with oziers, and then afterwards with small cordage, after this I cut gores of the same size out of sail-cloth; and having sewed them strongly together, they took the form of a cap for the basketing, so that the whole was now a complete dome.

With the flat part of the roof I had very little trouble, for I first nailed sail-cloth over it, tarred, and afterwards copper; and now being covered in, I had nothing to do but to enclose my apartments, and to decorate them.

I began with my dormitory, which I enclosed every where with sail-cloth, and hung afterwards with chintz, next I enclosed my kichen with painted sail-cloth only, and furnished it with utensils made out of the ship's copper; after this I fitted up my store-room, in the same manner, and this was all I was able to do, and to house all my treasure, before the arrival of the birds, a second time, gave me notice that I must make every thing wind and water tight against the approaching rainy season.

The reader will recollect that my wall was thirteen feet high, and that my ceiling was no more than eleven, so that the flat part of the roof was not so high by two feet as the wall, which formed a parapet round it. In order, therefore, to divert the rain, I had at given distances, left perforations in the building of the wall like the scuppers of a ship, which were sure to answer every purpose.

The foundation of the building no weather could injure. I had, therefore, nothing to do but to look to the windows: of these there were two that looked into the vestibule, two into the kitchen, two into the store-room, one into my dormitory, and four into the chapel, besides four others which were framed into the dome to serve as a skylight for the octagons.

Having found several of the cabin windows pretty sound, which were, of course, unshipped early in the storm, to make room for the dead lights, I resolved to use them as far as they would go, knowing that the same dead lights, in the same extremity, would again serve to replace them. As to the skylight, I was not able there to use glass at all, I, therefore, stretched fine calico across the appertures on the inside, having first given it three or four complete coats of gum, so as to render it properly transparent.

I had now my kitchen, my store-room, and my dormitory entirely completed and furnished. I determined, therefore, to employ the short time that remained before the rainy season, in getting eggs, catching young birds, and laying in such stores as might serve to vary my food and eke it out the longer.

I had my annoyance, the monkies to encounter as before, but, indeed, I had seen a great deal more of them since I had changed my situation from the plain to the lawn, on account of the cocoa nuts, which they seemed very fond of, and as they threw them with force upon the rocks to break them, I had nothing to do at any time but to watch and, protected by Leo, to help myself whenever I thought proper.

CHAP. V. THE BUILDING GETS INTO A VERY FORWARD STATE, DURING ITS PROGRESS THE READER WILL HAVE REASON TO ADMIRE THE PERSEVERANCE AND INGENUITY OF HANNAH HEWIT.

THE birds were now gone, and the rainy season began again to set in, I therefore resolved to get ready the inside of my building. I had paved my store-room and kitchen with large grey bricks, or rather tiles, as those were places of common use; but having in my researches found earth of a variety of colours, that would mould into any form, I resolved to floor the rest of the apartments variously, according to the uses to which they were to be appropriated.

My dormitory I raised upon quartering and laid down in it a regular flooring of wood, for I considered that sleeping warm and comfortable would be greatly conducive to the preservation of my health. Over this I laid sail-cloth, and, again over that coarse chintz; so that it formed altogether a beautiful carpet. My bed furniture was made of a fine muslin spread over a bedstead in the form of a canopy, my bed was down, and my coverlid a clear muslin, worked in silks with roses and violets, and extended over a rich straw-coloured taffeta. My toilette was composed of a sprigged muslin, the colours lilac and green, which I stretched over a pink taffeta, and the sides of the room, as I mentioned before, being hung with a fine chintz, it formed upon the whole, an elegant and comfortable bed chamber.

I floored the vestibule alternately with black and white square tiles; and, having taken care properly to vein them in the moulding, it had all the effect of marble, I then hung it with sail-cloth, as I had done the kitchen and store room, and over that pasted India paper.

My saloon, which I meant to appropriate to purposes of amusement, I resolved to decorate as neatly as possible. I therefore formed a fancy floor, something like mosaic work, lined the dome first with sail-cloth, and then India paper cut into fanciful forms, and, afterwards, painted the sides a pearl colour; which, as I intended to decorate it with pictures, I thought would have a still and harmonious effect.

My chapel being an object of more attentive consideration than my other apartments, I resolved to lay it out in a manner proper to inspire devotion. The floor was mosaic, but of a grander and more striking kind than that of my saloon, the sides, formed of sail-cloth, I disposed into compartments with an intention in time to fill them with paintings, the subjects taken from scripture, and between them appeared niches holding urns, on which I meant to place inscriptions, each sacred to the memory of some friend, or descriptive of some event wherein the mercy of Providence had manifested itself in my favour.

At the back I erected a neat altar, and on the table laid the bible I had found in the fatal chest, behind which I placed two skulls and the bones of four arms intesected as closely as poffible as a memento mori. Reader, guess whose skulls and whose bones these were! whose could they be, to revive a wish that I had experienced a similar fate, but those of the husband and wife whom I had found embracing each other, and embraced by death.

I did not inform the reader that a few days after I regained the cavern, I took a whole morning to inter the mangled remains of those poor wretches that the lioness had scattered upon the sand; at which time having found that unhappy couple in a state less mutilated than the rest, I reserved these sad relicts to serve for the solemn use I had now put them to.

All this work, without any of the ornamental part, performed a little at a time, took me the whole of the rainy season, which seemed to be shorter and less violent than the last. During its continuance, though I was, now and then, indisposed and had a kind of aguish fever, I cannot say I had any serious illness; greatly owing, no doubt, to the comfortable manner in which I was housed, and also probably to my keeping my mind in continual occupation.

Lest it should appear extraordinary that in nine months I should have brought a building of such magnitude to this state of forwardness, with no artificer in any one of the branches but myself, I will shew that I found all I did easily practicable.

It must, first of all, be given me that I was perfectly mistress of every mystery in building; which, after what the reader has known of me, will, I think, be very readily admitted. As to all the materials, except the brick and mortar, I was furnished from the wreck with three times as much as I wanted. As to wood work, I had yards, spars, sprits, booms, handspecs, marlinspikes, and many other resources; and if I wanted any thing to bend into particular forms, canes and other acquatic plants in prodigious variety, grew every where around me,

The ship's ropes were of very particular use to me, for with them I interlaced and bound every thing together, particularly about the roof, so as to add considerably to its strength, and then for iron work, I could not possibly want that where there were such a plenty of ring bolts, rag bolts, fender bolts, boot hooks, fish hooks, foot hooks, can hooks, and cat hooks.

The difficulty, if there were any, should seem to proceed from my inability to manage objects of such a massy and ponderous kind; but this objection will be completely done away when it is considered there is not a possible resource against every inconvenience of this nature but is to be found on board a ship; and if five or six men can navigate a vessel of two hundred and fifty tons in all weathers, take in her laden, discharge it, weigh her anchors, cat them, and, in short, find themselves equal to every necessary labour, what difficulty could I possibly find in removing a body of five, or six hundred weight to a short distance.

It is not strength in such a case, it is the multiplication of mechanical power. If I wanted to raise a perpendicular, I have already described, how easily it was to be done by means of a tackle; which by the action and reaction of blocks, may be managed till the purchase shall lighten five hundred weight to a feather.

If I wanted to haul any thing to a given distance, by describing the nature of warping a vessel out of a harbour, or heaving up an anchor, which weighs several tons, exclusive of the pressure of the water, uncalculable as to weight, and which may be done with ease by six or eight men, how very easily must I have been able to accomplish the removal of six hundred weight by means of my capstern.

Besides I had a labourer, and a very able one. Leo, with two paniers upon his back, would carry me three thousand bricks of a day; at last I made a cart for him, and fairly put him in harness; and such was his gratitude to me, that no racer at Newmarket, on whom thousands were betted, or set of ponies in Hyde Park, who paraded with the toast of the day, for Heaven knows every modern toast is almost an ephemeron, could prance along with more pride, or more grace than did this noble creature.

I confess after all that my perseverance was beyond credibility; but without it, nothing is to be accomplished, and with it, almost every thing. My labour solaced me, and it is well it did, for my mind was naturally so active and so continually aspiring, that had I not cheated myfelf of grief, by giving every encouragement to its activity, I should either have saddened into melancholy, or have been exasperated into distraction.

Nor can I charge myself with any thing romantic, extravagant, or unbecoming. Why should I be a churl and refuse to profit of the treasure Fortune had thrown in my way. I don't think that any hermit ever slept upon moss who could get down; and though I believe in my conscience that I should be the being of all others that could sit down easiest contented with the poorest lot; yet, though I have so little of that envy in me, which I formerly described, that the translation would scarcely excite in me a smile, I cannot say I should find any reluctance in exchanging with the richest.

To be plain. Even though obscurity and oblivion were to draw an eternal veil over me and my story, whether my days were to be few or many, still was there nothing reprehensible in my perseverance. A tendency to preserve my health, to glorify him who gave me endowments, by a continual exertion of them, to consider that in a mortal to repine is to rebel, in short, in every moral sense, correctly and conscienceously to do my duty, and to strengthen myself against every trial, could have nothing in it blameable or unworthy, and even if the ambition of making known the merit of my various sufferings, my irreproachable love, or my uncommon fortitude, made a part of that strong desire to display those abilities, such as they were, with which Heaven had endowed me, though such ambition should never be gratified, I had not done the smallest injury to the meanest worm; and, therefore, could find nothing with which I had a right to reproach myself.

Indeed, if my labours were to have excited all the world to visit my island as in admiration of a prodigy, I could not have pursued them with a more unremitted attention, nor could I get rid of the idea, that though so much love, so much fortitude, so much patience, so much resignation, had been manifested in vain, as to the benefit of their possessor, yet these exemplary qualities would not be exercised in vain, as to the benefit of the world.

CHAP VI. HANNAH HAVING BUILT A HOUSE WANTS A GARDEN; SHE ACCOMPLISHES HER WISH, AND GETS VERY FORWARD IN HER DIFFERENT STUDIES.

HAVING so far succeeded in a building calculated so well for use and pleasure, I resolved to relax a little and pursue amusement, and labour, turn by turn. The rainy season being now over, and my habitation having pretty well stood that and the storm that accompanied it, I began again to taste that air in which flitted a thousand perfumes, and to regard those objects, which renovated by nutritious moister, felt additional strength and looked more beautifully verdant.

And now it struck me that having a house I ought to have a garden. To be sure no pleasure ground was ever laid out by capability—Brown with more grandeur, or stocked with more beautiful shrubbery, than the splendid expanse both behind and before my house; but orange trees only bore oranges, citron tree, citrons, and so on. I was determined, by innoculation, grafting and inarching, to make the cassia tree bear olives, the shaddock teem with pomgranates, and the plantain bend with clusters of tamerinds.

Besides I had found in the ship a multiplicity of flower seeds, all classed and named, which were intended for the gardens at Versailles. Then I had bulbes, tuberous, and other roots, and layers, and suckers, and offsets. With these how well I might stock a flower garden? And again I had potatoes, beans, peas, onions, garlick, and a variety of other articles with which the French stuff their soup maigre, and their sauces, and which would, of course, form a very pretty variety for my kitchen garden.

In short I soon made a hoe, a rake, and a spade; and having determined to devote first two hours in a day, and, afterwards, an hour or so occasionally, in the course of a month I began every way to feel the benefit of my labour, for it being the kind of exercise in which I ever took delight, an employ peculiarly calculated to inspire moral ideas, and fit the mind for the purest of contemplation, it gave me bodily and mental health, and agreeably set off the value of my other occupations.

I had certainly now employment enough on my hands. I gardened, I wrote, I painted, I played on the the guittar, or the mandoline, I carved, I modelled, in short I did whatever necessity or inclination induced me to, and it is beyond credibility, solaced by so many amusements, all of them rational; how strongly my mind bore up against its troubles.

I never in my life, as the reader must have seen, could bear to pass an idle moment. If I was in view of nature, I contemplated her beauties. If night hid her from my eyes, still was she in mind, and still was I forming projects to manifest her various perfections. I cannot say I could go so far as Sir John Fielding, who said in my presence, "that he was glad he was blind, because it gave him more perfect opportunity for contemplation." But, I think, were it the pleasure of Providence to afflict me in any way, I should as much as it is in the power of a human being, find some resource to supply the deficiency, like the provident ant, who does not stay to lament that her habitation is destroyed, but who immediately considers through what medium she can form a new one.

Solomon tells the sluggard to go to the ant, miracle certainly of industry! He might have told the ignorant to go the bee, as great a miracle of ingenuity. I have a thousand times thought what an admirable instance of shrewd contrivance it is that the cells of a honeycomb, taking a hexangular form, the whole space is not only occupied in a way the most convenient to its inhabitants, but there is not the smallest room, no not the thickness of a hair lost or confounded. But were I to go on in this strain, I could expatiate for ever, and yet find no observation worthy the wonderful theme. Wonderful indeed! From the very spider, who waves his entrails into a net to catch his prey, to the obliging silkworm, who spins away his substance that the coquette may catch her's

Though I have been betrayed into this rapsody, I mean nothing more by it than that, with ingenuity, method will accomplish any thing. I ever found it so, and it was peculiarly necessary, in my present situation, to put my wits to the test, and thus I was enabled to perfect so many things, which, but for the explanations I have gone into, would have appeared incredible; but, which, thus explained, the reader will allow must have been easily practicable.

I had found aboard the Entrepreneur, as before noticed, a great variety of colours for painting; but, besides this, I had now made from earth, bones, flowers, the blood of the sea snake, and other materials, some admirable colours of my own. Oils, and varnishes, I had brought to such perfection, that I had no doubt but in time I should rival the famous varnish in which the beautiful tone of the cremona fiddle is said to consist.

Thus I was completely stocked with materials for painting. As for music, I had a harp, a guitar, a mandolina, two fiddles, several flutes, and a viol di gamba, besides a very large assortment of strings, both in catgut and wire, and, as I was determined to make a piano-forte for my saloon, I had no doubt in the end of fitting up an organ in my chapel.

As for writing, I had a long time abandoned the plantain leaf, being well supplied with pen, ink, and paper; and thus I was now prepared to write my history, to paint it, and to set it to music, and all this I was determined in some degree to perform even, as I have repeatedly said, though time should bury me and my labours in the same oblivion.

In the first place, as the works of such superior authors as Shakespeare, and Milton, make their way to the public through the medium of paintings and engravings, what chance would a narrative of simple though extraordinary facts stand of being introduced to the world, unassisted by the pencil or the graver. Again, as every thing written by ladies is expected to teem with poetry, particularly sonnets, it struck me that a few stanzas now and then set to music, would throw in a novelty which might give it a fillup and send it more rapidly into circulation. To be sure it is but a sorry mode of recommendation, it is like sweetening with molasses; which, though pleasant to the palate, is loathsome to the stomach and conceals the flavour of the beverage; but as poor Walmesley would have said had he been alive and heard me make the remark, all this we must do to comply with the taste of the town.

At the same time I have not the smallest wish to insinuate any thing against the respective merits of arts, or artists, my quarrel is that nothing stands upon its own foundation The world will not take for granted, the naked beauty of the object that presents itself. It must be dressed, and Heaven knows it is sometimes so dressed, that what was meant to ornament and embellish serves only to caracature and disguise.

A literary production, a painting, or any other work of genuis should make its own appeal to the public. Its merits will manifest themselves without the aid of adventitious assistance; its demerits no adventitious assistance can bolster up. An execrable poem, at which the public has been in raptures, stands a chance of failing through the medium of a print that laughs at any reigning folly, and an admirable play, on the point of being damned; may work out its salvation by the opportune appearance of a ghost, or an elephant.

But I reconcile it this way—Englishmen will have a good deal for their money, and to say truth, how can it be expected that they should purchase a work of literature, be it the history of the bible, of their own country, of the Catabaws, of plants, of the heavenly constellations, of mites, of air, unless circulated through the medium of sixpenny numbers, with the united advantages of being assisted by the whole body of arts, when the quartern loaf is at the enormous expence of sixpence three farthings.

These considerations induced me to enforce the particulars of my history in every possible way that the fertility of my imagination would permit me; and as the fatal chest, which contained so many interesting documents, relative to poor Hewit, had furnished me with sad proof of the most material facts my history contains; so I was determined to deposit my labours there, that the world, if ever they should be discovered, might learn through that medium a story which, though extraordinary enough in itself, might, perhaps, become more worthy of attention when so many fortuitous circumstances should lend it weight and responsibility.

I own I had one objection to cramming every thing into the chest, and it was this. One of those poets who, in my prosperity, I taught to impose upon the public, had made a large sum of money by publishing Fac Similes of writings, drawings, and other documents said to have been found in a trunk, and actually written by the famous Ben Jonson, cotemporary of Shakepeare. Among the rest there was a letter in Queen Elizabeth's own hand writing, commending one of those masques he is well known to have written for her court, and inviting him to attend the performance of it, facetiously calling him, in imitation of Johson's character of Justice Clement, in his speech to Brainworm, "a merry knave."

Out of this chest I also proved that Jonson and Shakespeare were upon the best terms, and so far from Jonson's having ever said that instead of not blotting out a line Shakespeare ought to have blotted out thousands, there is a letter which expressly no•es that if any one could have the temerity to strike a single word out of Shakespeare, or to torture his meaning in any manner, it ought to be deemed literary sacrilege.

What a severe satire, by anticipation, Jonson had here written against Shakespeare's numerous commentators, but I ought not to dwell upon this subject. I only introduced it to shew how very similar, sometimes, invention is to fact, and also, that though every body believed what I insinuated, had they opened their eyes, they would have found that there was not one word of truth in it, for I did nothing more than retail over again the story of Chatterton.

But the best thing in this business, and that which made the greatest noise was a song, with which Ben Jonson was so delighted that he treasured it up as a model for rapturous love, though the intelligent reader will plainly see it was as great an imposition as the rest. I had, indeed, an idea of sporting a play supposed to be sent by Shakespear to Jonson for his opinion, but I saw in a moment that it would only be straining the string until it snapt. A few loose things which bore the genuine marks of having been written by so great a man, might be pretty well managed, as they would naturally pass for what he considered as trifles, and probably intended to burn; but a play! No, no, thought I, the English may be credulous, but their credulity proceeds from the excess of their good nature, their own inherent integrity, and their willingness to admit what is seriously and solemnly averred to be fact, not from their want of understanding, and critical discrimination, upon either of which whoever grossly imposes, may be assured of that resentment his temerity so richly deserves.

The little song in question, which is supposed to be written to Anne Hatheaway, who all the world knows received the addresses and afterwards became the wife of Shakespear, I shall subjoin, just to shew how easily an imposition of this kind gains current belief.

A LOVE DITTIE, Addressed to the idole of mine harte, and the delyghte of mine eyes, the faireste amonge the moste faire, ANNE HATHEAWAYE.

WOULDE ye be taughte ye feathered thronge,

With love's sweete notes to grace your songe,

To pierce the hearte in thrillynge laye,

Listen to my Anne Hatheawaye:

She hathe a waye to singe so cleare,

Phaebus myghte wonderynge stoop and heare:

To melte the sad, make blythe the gaye,

Ande nature charme Anne Hathe a waye:

She hathe a waye,

Anne Hatheawaye,

To breathe delyght Anne Hathe a waye.

II.

When envie's breathe, and rancour's toothe,

Do soil and bite fair worthe and truthe,

And merite to distress betraye,

To soothe the soul Anne Hathe a waye:

She hathe a waye to chase despaire,

To heal all griefe, to cure all care,

Turne fouleste night to faireste day,

Thou know'st fonde harte Anne Hathe a waye,

She hathe a waye,

Anne Hatheawaye,

To make grief bliss Anne Hathe a waye.

III.

Talke not of gemmes the orient list,

The diamond, topaz, amethyste,

The emeralde milde, the rubie gaye,

Talk of mye gemme Anne Hatheawaye:

She hathe a waye, with her bryghte eye,

Their various lustres to defie,

The jewel she, and the foile they,

So sweete to looke Anne Hathe a waye,

She hathe a waye,

Anne Hatheawaye,

To shame bryghte gemmes Anne Hathe a waye.

IV.

But to my fancie were it given,

To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;

For, thoughe a mortal mayde of claye,

Angels might love Anne Hatheawaye:

She hathe a waye so to controule,

To rapture the imprisoned soule.

And sweeteste heaven on earthe display,

That to be heaven Anne Hathe a waye,

She hathe a waye,

Anne Hatheawaye,

To be heaven's self Anne Hathe a waye.

CHAP VII. HANNAH CELEBRATES THE ANNIVERSARIES OF MEMORABLE DAYS, STUDIES CHEMISTRY, AND MAKES AN AUTOMATON. THE BIRDS AND THE MONKIES PAY HER ANOTHER VISIT, AT WHICH TIME LEO RESCUES HER FROM A PERILOUS SITUATION.

I HAD now full employ, all of which I might particularly enumerate were it not that if I did so, my history would appear little better than a journal, and yet it is material to notice how much I gained upon time by keeping, in all I did, to an exact regularity, and how this mode vavaried my pleasures as well as my employments.

In the first place, as there was scarcely a day of the year but marked some extraordinary circumstance of my life, I always commemorated it by a form suitable to the occasion. My prayers, my food, my employments, my very dress, spoke something analagous. Every distressful event was a fast, every providential escape a thanksgiving. Thus my poetry was heroic, pathetic, elegiac, pastoral, serious, or comic; my painting was grand, terrific, affecting, pleasing, familiar, or caracature; my music was majestic, melting, magical insinuating, simple, or grotesque, according to circumstances.

I had so many memorable days to notice, that I divided them into classes. Those of a more interesting description, such as Hewit's birth-day, my own, our marriage, our separation, his shipwreck, mine, the day I landed on my island, my escape from the lioness, and others, which the reader can point out as well as I, and which shew what fragile tenements we inhabit, were among the first class, and were suitably solemnized.

But were I minutely to describe the rotation of my calender, which was as numerously stocked, and I am as sure as honestly as the Pope's, it would be like slyly intimating to the reader a recapitulation of the circumstances of my life, lest through inattention, or indifference, they might any of them have been passed by.

I shall only say, therefore, that having no country but my own island, no world but of my own creating, no communication but with my own ideas, that I might not lose the exercise of that reason by which human creatures are distinguished, some to their honour, some to their execration, beyond all other animals, I made that country, that world, that society, out of what I had known and experienced; which had this advantage beyond living in an actual world, that, like the salutary air of Malta, Ireland, and some other places, where noxious animals are not known to exist, so neither envy. nor slander, nor, indeed, one of the mental evils that issued from Pandora's box dared to draw its poisonous breath in the pure atmosphere of my dominions.

I don't know how far the reader may be pleased with these trifling matters, but to me they made up a delightful, because an inoffensive and rational series of enjoyments. It would have been, indeed, with me, to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow; had I not found some ingenious means of cheating the tedious hours. I had no ambition to gratify that fools might wonder, I had no sum to amass for my heir to squander, I had no domestic happiness for my friends to envy, I did not lead a life, my life was all retrospection; and had I not found employment for my faculties by contemplating as on a dream, or reading as in a book, past occurrences of my extraordinary life, I must have lingered on a vacant useless existence; a living chaos, absorbed in a chasm of time.

Employing myself, however, rather more rationally, as I had nothing to wish for but to join poor Hewit, and dared not accelerate the means; I thought I should render my life more acceptable to him who bestowed it by blending chearfulness with resignation; and, therefore, went on providing for what was to happen on the morrow, though that morrow was, which, by the bye, happens perpetually in the world, only a repetition of what had passed long before.

As in my retrospective almanack two, and sometimes three events would happen on the same day of the year, it generally introduced some extraordinary or whimsical coincidence; for instance, on the very day of the month Sourby had been swallowed by the shark did we thirteen years before receive the news that our fortune had been swallowed up by him and his confederates. The day of the year on which I had put the impudent monkey to death in the cavern, did I give a rude coxcomb, at a masquerade, a slap in the face. I had reason enough to remember it, for Hewit had like to have been involved in a duel.

On the day of the year I saw the Queen of France in all her splendour, was I by accident in a mob, where they were leading a poor wretch with a halter about her neck to be whipt at the cart's tail. The day of the year on which my brother, the lawyer, was hanged for forgery, he had been many years before honourably acquitted of a perjury, of which he was guilty, and Hewit had been falsely punished for the crime of desertion, of which he was innocent.

I shall not dwell upon observations of this kind, I think the reader will be interested in whatever relates to me; and if so, it will not be a matter of indifference to learn that I filled my time by employments worthy a mind made up to every extraordinary and trying occasion.

By the time the birds made their next appearance I had got wonderfully forward in all my undertakings. I had painted and framed twelve pictures for my saloon, all subjects from my own life; four scripture pieces were hung in my chapel, and I had gone into a number of other studies, particularly pneumatic chemistry, in which I had made some wonderful discoveries as to the nature of different gases; and among the rest, I clearly proved by decompounding water, that it is not an element but a composition of two airs; and as a positive demonstration of the truth of this experiment, by uniting these two airs, I recomposed them into water again.

I heartily wish for the sake of my fellows creatures, whose welfare, though I shall never witness, my heart, nevertheless, yearns after, that some ingenious practitioner may have made the same notable discovery; for though simples and natural remedies are fully competent, to cure colds, fevers, and other common complaints, which many an old woman with Culpepper in her hand, has eradicated, as secumden artem, as the whole tribe of Warwick-lane could have done; yet, as luxury is every day adding to the catalogue of natural disorders so many artificial ones; as the muscles; of which medical men know but little, the nervous system, of which they know less, and the spleen, of which they know nothing at all, are now supposed to be the seat of complaints our ancestors never heard of; so it is but fair that galenical pharmacy should give way to chemical, and that vital fire, nearly extinguished by the dinner and the bottle, should receive a prometheon renovation by chemical fire, issuing from the retort, or the crucible.

In particular I would recommend a close attention to this doctrine of air; for as life depends upon respiration, as the man who breathes freest, loudest and longest, is in the best health, as no man can breathe free, loud, or long, who inhales an air that disagrees with his constitution, so we have nothing to do but to pick and chuse till we have found that air most condusive to health, and thus breathe physic instead of taking it in pills or by spoonfulls.

From Levoifier on chemistry, I took most of these hints; which books, together with many others on different subjects, I found on board the Entrepreneur; but what pleased me most, was a work that treated on mechanics, a study I was peculiarly qualified for, and in which I had ever taken delight, and which, indeed, in my situation, was more material to me than any other.

As I was absorbed in study one day on the power of mechanical operations, just after having separated the movements of a time piece, in order to clean it, it struck me that I should find no great difficulty in making an automaton. I had seen the chess player introduced with great success about the year 1774, and knew perfectly upon what principle it acted, but this was not enough for me. To make any object mechanically come and go, and ape common actions like Archytus's flying dove, Regiomontanus's wooden eagle, or his iron fly, was unworthy my genius, it was only the the second edition of Lady Catharina with the magic lantern. I was determined to make an automaton that should speak, and nothing appeared to me more easy.

A common penny toy cries cuckoo as plain as the cuckoo itself; if, therefore, I had chose to content myself with keeping to open words the business would soon have been effected; for instance, an automaton, or rather an autologon, might soon be taught to speak Italian, but I determined my automaton should speak English; nasals, gutterals, and all. How I was charmed at the circumstance! It would be a sort of companion to me! It continually ran in my head, and I was determined to lose no time in bringing it to perfection.

To be brief, having made my figure and tried a variety of movements, I sound, by adding a pair of bellows, I should, in time, in great measure carry my point. The principal I went upon was that of a musical clock, which utters open sounds through the medium of pent air conveyed occasionally into different pipes. Instead, therefore, of a succession of regular sounds forming a musical melody upon the diapason, flute, or other stop producing notes by means of circular perforations, I made the sounds issue from reeds formed as nearly as possible in the shape into which the fauces are pursed or dilated in the act of speaking; and instead of those tubes, from whence issue the mellow even tone of the flute, and diapason, I made all my pipes in imitation of the vox humane, the clarinet, and the bassoon, all which have a sound something resembling the human voice.

As out of the common octave, with the addition of the sharp fourth, and the flat seventh, may be formed a great variety of melody; or to come nearer the matter, as you may count the different changes upon eight bells until you are stunned and tired; so a great deal of conversation may be made out of a very few common place words. I presently taught my figure a variety of interjections. He would cry out Oh, ah, humph, as correctly as a critic who was asked if he recollected a particular beauty in Shakespeare; I made him sigh as naturally as a self approving Adonis who expected you to fall in love with him; he would whistle as vacantly as a dashing fellow who had just received a useless admonition from his injured father; and he would laugh as triumphantly as an impudent rake who had just put modesty to the blush.

When I had brought my contrivance to this I selected a few words, that by transposition and retransposition would form different sentences; and by this method, this kind of anagram in language, I made my figure converse pretty well. At first I was wenderfully pleased with my contrivance, but there was something so hollow and so ghostly in the sound that, after a time, I grew perfectly shocked at it, particularly at night; and having taught it to say 'O ow I luv u Anna;' it spoke, or I fancied it spoke, so much in the tone of John Hewit's voice, who from a natural dialect pronounced with difficulty the aspiration H, that I began to fear it might introduce a melancholy which would trench upon all those laudable resolutions I had so properly and so firmly made.

I, therefore determined, lest my nerves should be affected, for a time at least, to lay by my speaking figure; and as the rainy season was likely to come on soon, which never failed of itself by keeping me within doors, and depressing my spirits, to turn my mind too much to gloomy objects, I placed it in a corner of my dormitory, resolving never to use it unless when I could be sure my resolution would be equal to the trial.

Though these circumstances can afford the reader but little amusement, I trust I shall be excused for having mentioned them. To exercise my mind was my greatest pleasure, and my greatest comfort; and those who have most indulgence will be happiest to find that a lone woman, who had not a single motive for life, should have the fortitude, the prudence, the religion to live miserable and resigned.

I had now been two years and a half without seeing a human face when the birds paid me a third visit. I took this hint to lay in my usual stock, and protected by Leo, who was now grown a most beautiful animal, I set about birds nesting in spight of the monkies. I had been tollerably successful, and had met with little annoyance for some time. I could not help noticing, however, a large baboon that leered at me from behind some rock or stump of a tree, wherever I went. In vain did Leo scamper after him up the rocks, whenever he could he returned to the charge, and it is inconceivable how nauseous and disagreeable his antics were.

One afternoon, having dispatched Leo for a basket of eggs I had left behind me, I was sitting on a cane garden chair before my door when that ugly wretch the baboon surprized me. He caught me in his arms, and it was vain that I endeavoured to disengage myself from his grasp, I screamed and rent the air with my cries, all hope seemed in vain, and what might have been the consequence Heaven knows if my noble protector, on hearing my voice, had not flown to my assistance.

To have seen him was to have seen a guardian angel. His generous tenderness for me, and his ineffable contempt for his foe were in the same moment manifest in his eyes. It was like a gallant Englishman protecting innocence from distress. It was like Binns. He disengaged the horrid wretch from me with the most cautious care; then, seeing I was safe, terrified him with all the apprehension of death, and then, as if thinking him too insignificant for his revenge, spurned at him and permitted him to escape.

CHAP. VIII. HANNAH EXPERIENCING DISAGREEABLE EFFECTS FROM THE RAINY SEASON, GETS FIRST INTO A CONSUMPTION, AND AFTERWARDS INTO THE HORRORS.

THE birds having taken their departure, the rain soon after set in. I, therefore, betook myself to painting and ornamenting, being determined to complete my building in every respect by the time it should be fine weather; after which, if I should want employ, I might build a pleasure house upon the mountain, where, by catching young ones, and breeding them up tame, I might keep deer and buffaloes in a sort of kraal, or enclosure, in the manner they were kept by the Caffres.

I set about my saloon and soon added six or eight pictures to my catalogue with their proper frames carved and gilt; in which last labour it is astonishing what occasion I had to admire the maleability of gold. I beat out a single louis d'ore into as many slips or leaves as, by calculation, had they been paper and converted into notes of only six livres each, would have amounted to seven thousand one hundred and thirty-three livres.

I went on with great alacrity, but the rain being incessant, and attended with a chilling air, I grew, I can't say ill, but impatient and gloomy. In this situation I took a wrong method. I thought, as I had found upon all occasions facing an enemy, to be the surest way of getting rid of him, fancy never failing to magnify fear, so I changed my ground, and in proportion as I grew melancholy, indulged my sadness by working in the chapel; and once or twice I was fool hardy enough to try the experiment of my speaking figure, adding to it a new movement, in the nature of an alarum clock, by which it spoke at any given distance of time.

This last experiment I most heartily repented, for it threw me into such a dejection of spirits, that I greatly feared I should have all the horror of the first rainy season to go over again. I, therefore, determined to put up the autologon for good and all. Nothing, however, could keep me out of the chapel; where, though dreadfully dejected, I was greatly relieved by prayer and the consciousness that the all seeing eye of the Creator was benignly regarding me in a sacred place which I had most uprightly consecrated to his honour.

These considerations at times greatly relieved me, and, in particular gave me some little comfort, by enabling me to argue with myself. Why thought I should any fear, however awful, depress my spirits? Am I now to learn that I am alone in a world which it is not material to myself or to creation whether I leave now or when age and deformity shall have rendered my life still more a burden?

What shall I do when the pangs of death are on me? When I am sinking to that rest which alone can be the oblivion of my cares. Should I not betray a mind grovling and unworthy were I to weep that I have no kind friend to comfort me, no trembling hand to close my dying eyes, no devout priest to administer comfort to my parting soul, or sing a requiem over my grave, no charitable sexton to hide my perishable remains.

Rather let me in this, as in all other exigencies provide for the solemn occasion; and, having to the glory of that Creator, who permitted me to exist, exercised those endowments he mercifully gave me to prolong my existence, so let me meet death with the fortitude that I have endured life.

Let me expect the dreadful and consoling moment when this world and all its glories shall pass away from me. Should it be prompt, it will be but one pang; should it be lingering, let me with piety and resignation endure what cannot be averted; and when at last the icy hand of death shall chill my forehead, let me retire to some modest tomb suited to receive such humble remains.

It is inconceivable how this last idea possessed me. I determined at once to execute the design I had formed; and after a few days, during which space I would sit and muse for six or eight hours at a time indulging my sad, yet pleasing melancholy, I began my work; and, in a week more, had erected a plain, neat tomb, ornamented with suitable decorations, and an impressive inscription referring to the fatal chest for further information.

Into this tomb, which was lined with black, I conveyed a couch with a kind of canopy, ornamented with such artificial leaves and flowers as bespoke my character. Like poor Ophelia, I had pansies for remembrance, and I had rue. The heliotrope bespoke my constancy, a whithered laurel denoted my unavailing desire of fame, an olive described me at peace with all the world, camomile expressed my patient endurance of injury, the ephemeron, my transient hope, and the xeranthemum, my never ending despair.

Here did I determine, if my strength and resolution should permit me, to enclose myself whenever I should find my dissolution approach; after which, whether my retreat were ever to be discovered or to remain a secret from all the world, I should have done a becoming duty towards God and towards man.

I never atchieved any thing of this extraordinary kind but it consoled me. I now begin to think of death as calmly as I had formerly indulged the idea distractedly; and for several days, I was in a temper to resign my life without a sigh. The next thing that struck me was that poor Hewit merited a tribute of respect at my hands; and, as I had placed my tomb on one side of the altar, I resolved to erect one for him on the other. This I also accomplished, but had scarcely done so, before I was well convinced I had better have let it alone.

My mind that I had flattered with false hopes, was not consoled, it was deceived; and while I delusively fancied I had been administering relief to my despair, I was only confirming it. I had not noticed, in the eagerness of my employment, that too great an exertion of resolution impaired my health; that every sigh, as it came from my heart, affected my lungs; in short, under the idea of a cough, I felt, at last, every symptom of an approaching consumption.

I lost strength every day, and by the time the rainy season was over, I was a perfect skeleton. Having now an opportunity of taking the fresh air, with all those beautiful advantages that I have formerly described, though wasting perceptibly, I hoped I might yet recover, still mindful, however desirous of death, it was my duty to prolong my life by every means in my power.

I had an idea that if I could frequently take the air on the mountain, it might lend some help towards restoring me; but how to get there? I could no more have climbed the mountain than have flown to it. At last it struck me that Leo should convey me; for which purpose I mounted a garden chair upon a carriage; and having put him on a beautiful silk harness, the good creature, whose very look conveyed affection and fidelity, drew me with an air so proud and majestic, that I seemed some deity in her car. Alas, it was only in appearance! for had the Deity felt so weak and so emaciated as I did, she would have preferred annihilation to immortality.

Our journies were long or short according to circumstances. Sometimes we merely took an airing, and sometimes we stayed all day, and took provision with us. One day having been on a long tour, as we returned towards the evening, I saw something struggling in a thicket; and alighting, I discovered that it was a young buffalo. It instantly occurred to me that veal broth was a very nourishing thing, and proper for a person in a consumption, and had no doubt, especially as I had tasted nothing of that kind for such a length a time, it might greatly contribute towards my recovery, so flattering is the nature of that complaint, that it catches more at straws than any other.

I disentangled the poor creature and began to deliberate about killing it; but I plainly found I should make but a very indifferent butcher. Leo, indeed, if I had given the word, would have lain him dead in an instant; not else, for I verily believe, unless by my command, which was to him a fiat, he would not, unless pressed by hunger, have killed a fly. At all adventures I thought it was better to postpone so disagreeable a business till we should get home, so I made a halter for the poor trembling thing, and led him on behind my carriage.

It being late I penned my calf up till the morning; when after considering the matter the major part of the night, I was fallying forth to release him and to trust to chance for my cure, uttering as I went along, no; life is as precious in that creature as it is in me, let me preserve his life and trust to Providence to restore mine.

No sooner had these words issued from my mouth, when I heard an uncommon bellowing. It was the mother of the poor creature who had traced his footsteps from the mountain. Oh how did I here exult! How much more nutritious than veal broth was milk, how much more proper for a consumptive complaint, and then I should take away no life, truly here had virtue its reward; I had been merciful to the calf, and Heaven in return had been merciful to me. Well charming Sbakespeare, hast thou sweetly said that 'mercy is twice blest.' I have often considered that passage as one of the most sublime in all the works of our great bard. Nay, I am extremely deceived, if the celebrated Miss Seward is not of the same opinion; for if I recollect right, one of her poems, which describes some character full of benignity, has this line—

"With all the twice blessed Angel in her eye."

After I had permitted the calf to suck its fill, and thus continued to prolong life instead of destroying it, I milked the mother. I then permitted her to graze about the lawn, being under no apprehension of losing her while I confined her young one. Thus, after a short time, she became very tractable, and suffered herself to be milked twice a day as regularly as an Alderney cow.

In the mean time the milk very sensibly gained upon my disorder, and in about six weeks from the time I first drank it, I found myself in a convalescent state, but though I had no doubt with care I should recover, still a nasty hectic fever lurked about me; my flesh perpetually burnt, I had a weak, low, and quick pulse; my sleep was no manner of refreshment, but on the contrary was attended with startings and frightful dreams.

Had I not known that this fever was an attendant on a consumption, and that these dreams were symptoms of it, I should have been tempted to believe some awful event was at hand; for I scarcely ever slept but some mysterious vision appeared to me. Hewit, my brother, Binns, Walmesley, Sourby, were perpetually swimming before me in so many fantastic shapes, that when I awoke I seemed to be on the verge of madness; nay, at last, I began to think very seriously of these extraordinary warnings, and felt a mixed sensation of hope and dread, that my disorder would return, and that the next rainy season, or, perhaps, a shorter period, would find me silently reclined in my tomb.

My consumption certainly went off and with it all the symptoms of the fever except the dreams which increased in a most wonderful manner; willing however, to consult my senses and my reason, and thus attribute these visitations to their natural cause, I concluded that, as in consequence of being convalescent, I had grown more plethoric, from thence had arisen those horrid dreams, which certainly were now become of a more sanguinary kind, and related to nothing but wounds and murder.

Under this idea, I abstained from too much food that had milk in it, or any other ingredient likely to engender blood too fast. This seemed actually to have its effect, and for a fortnight, I slept much less disturbed and found myself in better health.

I had come home one evening pretty tired, and having made rather a heartier meal than usual, I rested the first part of the night very sound. Towards the morning I dreamt I saw poor Leo full of wounds and breathing his last. I was crying for the loss of him when John Hewit knelt by my side, and with a thousand soft and tender expressions, entreated me to go with him to where he said we should both be happy.

There was something so winning, yet so repugnant, as I thought to my wishes, in his solicitations, that I alternately repulsed and carressed him. At last, my mind being wrought up to a violent conflict, I awoke, when, hardly knowing where I was, and doubting whether what I had seen and heard was a dream or reality, a hollow voice, like that I had heard in my dream, cried out—"A ow I luv u Anna!"

Upon hearing these sounds uttered so unexpectedly, I screamed and fell into strong hysterics, which, though I was in my senses the whole time, and knew they had been uttered by the speaking figure, in consequence of my having, by mistake, set the alarum movement the night before instead of taking it off, lasted me a complete hour; and when I recovered, though I found Leo safe, and that the sounds had been caused by my own imprudent negligence, I was so shocked that I continued ill the whole day, and was obliged to muster up all my firmness, and to call to mind how many reiterated resolutions I had made, to rely on the protection of Providence, before I could prevail on myself to go to bed at night.

My spirits were so unsettled that my horrid dreams began to return, I dreamt that the owners of the French East-Indiaman came to strip me of all I had, and told me I must restore my goods to their rightful possessors. In a state of distraction, I thought I flew into the chapel, where the skulls of Monsieur and Madame D'Oliviere spoke to me, crying out, "Listen to us, we are Oracles, you shall be translated to Heaven, and reap a just reward for all your sufferings." Then they thanked me for my pious care of their remains; then flew to kiss me; Oh what a nauseous sensation! It awoke me; I feel the clamy pressure of their hollow jaws at this moment.

From this night I determined to bid adieu to sleep. Yet what was to sustain nature? No matter; the sooner my existence terminated the better! this might be impiety, but I could bear no more than the mind I possessed permitted. I was a mortal, and, therefore, could boast no more than the imbecility of a mortal. The string of my resolution had been wound up until it had cracked, the music of hope was turned to the dissonance of despair.

CHAP IX. HANNAH'S DISTRESS BECOMES MORE AND MORE POIGNANT: SHE MEETS WITH A MOST AFFECTING LOSS, AND AFTERWARDS TAKES HER LEAVE OF THE WORLD.

I HAD continued in this dreadful despondency ten or twelve days; now shivering with apprehension, now wild with terror, now lowered with sullen melancholy, now melted into tears, the whole time not daring to sleep but at fits and starts, when nature oppressed me, and I settled into a kind of serene sadness.

I had taken the matter every way, and nothing could convince me but that my fate was at hand. I, therefore, sat down camly to expect it. Having brought my mind to this, nothing could exceed the tranquility in which I felt myself. I indulged the idea, I feasted on it as on luxury, which received such a zest from reflections on my blameless life, that I chid the tedious hours which stood between me and the moment when I should find Heaven and John Hewit.

I took an examination of my life, from the moment of my birth up to that day, and while I regarded the scenes I had taken from it, which hung round me in my saloon, I had fresh reason for exultation.

Here, as the triumph of my virtue, hung a portrait of the gallant Binns rescuing me from the violent hands of the villain Sourby. There, as an eternal reproach to the world and its follies, were Hewit and I in our new ridiculous dresses gazed at like meteors, as we drove round the Ring in Hyde Park. Further on, as a useful lesson to fallen pride, and a picture of conjugal affection and honest industry, were we sallying forth, he as a razor grinder, and I selling trinkets, and leading an humble ass bearing my two children in paniers.

My receiving the fatal letter from whence originated all my sufferings, the death of my poor suspected infant, my embarking for India, my meeting with my brother, my parting from him, my being shipwrecked, my being torn from my companions, my finding Trout to be Sourby, his just fate, my escape from the lioness, Leo's exulation at having rescued me from the monkey, all gave some proof of tenderness, or resolution, or affection, or fortitude, or some other quality, which taught me I had deserved to live and therefore was prepared to die.

Those merits that had depended on myself, led me into a reflection on the miseries I had been afflicted with, and which had depended on Providence. Not conscious that from my own neglect I had merited affliction, though I did not dare arraign Providence, I modestly took leave to scrutinize its motives; and having fairly weighed every consideration, and reflected that virtue can never be punished by a power all just, all good, all beneficent, but for its own sake, I calmly concluded that Providence had made this world my scourge, my woe, my misery, that I might the better relish those joys which were preparing for me in the next.

Thus deeply reflecting, sedately weighing, and, I am afraid, absurdly judging, what I had shunned in sleep followed me waking. My life was all a dream, or rather madness; for instead of my being shocked at horrid images, the more horrid the image the more I was delighted.

My only disturbance was the parting with Leo. I would look at him, and talk to him as if he had been endowed with reason, and, indeed, if actions are a proof of it, so he was. Never did I trace in the noble creature an unworthy motive, would I could say so much of humanity. Ah my poor Leo! Would I cry—while a flood of tears gushed from my eyes—I shall leave thee in a troublesome world. I was the only inhabitant of this island of my kind, now thou will be the only one of thine. Thou hast followed me, watched me, and protected me. May thy blameless life never know a pang. Alas he is delighted with my carresses! He tries to recall me to life. My good, my worthy, my faithful Leo, it is too late, we shall part, indeed we shall, very, very soon.

Finding in all this time no material alteration in my health, for with the other qualities of madness, I had cunning enough to eat and drink, I grew impatient. Come, said I, Leo, one day, let us go out and seek that fate that will not come home to us. So saying I sallied forth—Oh would I had not—my ever faithful Leo proudly following me.

I had wildly strayed to a considerable distance, when chance led me to the verge of the promontory, where I grew so disordered, that I had almost made up my mind to leap forward. At this instant a hideous baboon rushed from the very brake whence the lioness had formerly flown to seize me. Leo, delighted with being permitted to follow me, was scampering over the lawn. He saw in a moment my danger, and flew like lightening to my assistance. He roared, his eyes flashed fire, his rage was ungovernable, he darted at his prey, which venturing to avoid him, to the very edge of the promontory, they both fell over, and Oh miserable, miserable hour! my poor Leo shared the fate of his mother!

It was a mercy I did not follow him. I ran, I rambled, I ventured into the most imminent danger to lend him assistance, my shrieks and lamentations all the while reverberated by a hundred echos, but in vain, he was dead; on a jet of the rock that no human art could approach, he lay stretched by the side of his mother, whose carcase had been a prey to the birds, and whose skeleton had whitened in the sun.

Now was I completely overcome, the terrible accident happening in my sight, in my behalf, in my defence. Unaccustomed as I was to kindness, and meltingly susceptible of gratitude, my feelings added to the complication of conflicting sensations with which I was before distracted, drove me to something more than madness. As I wandered I scarcely knew where, I screamed, I laughed, I sung, and exhibited every shocking distraction of a miserable lunatic.

All this while, my feet as much misled as my senses, I erred further and further from my home; and, in proportion as I found myself astray, my distraction encreased. My ears were assailed with a thousand noises, the winds seemed to whistle with the harmony of fifty Eolian harps. I heard voices, I answered them, I fancied myself in the company of Angels; till accident having placed me in the path that led to my house, possessed with an idea that the awful hour was approaching, when the mercy of Heaven would snatch me from the miseries of earth, I solemnly walked on, entered my building, bid a formal adieu to every object that had been interesting to me, went into my chapel, knelt at the altar, put up a pathetic prayer, embraced the skulls, kissed the name of John Hewit in the bible, entered my tomb, enclosed myself, reclined upon my couch, and instantly in death, lost the world and all its vanities.

END OF THE FIFTH BOOK.

HANNAH HEWIT.
BOOK VI. THE ADVENTURES OF HANNAH HEWIT FROM THE MOMENT SHE HAD A GLIMPSE OF HOPE TO THE COMPLETION OF HER HAPPINESS.

CHAP. I. IN WHICH HANNAH HEWIT AND THE READER ARE INTRODUCED TO SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCE.

DEATH did I well call the sleep into which I had fallen on my entering my tomb. It lasted me till the next morning, when I was awoke by a confused noise that issued from every apartment. It is astonishing how self preservation actuates the mind. My distraction was gone, my recollection was completely returned; I knew where I was, and knew there was some cause at hand that demanded vigourous resolution.

I thanked fortune that had led me to this tomb, perhaps, to preserve me. I plainly heard human voices, and resolved to remain quiet that I might discover the truth. If those I heard were friends, I had cause to thank Heaven that gave me an assylum to offer them, if enemies, respect for the dead would secure me an assylum in the silent tomb.

I had not long to deliberate before two men entered the chapel. "Why, hollo! Jack," cried one, "we are aboard a church." 'I told you,' said the other, 'we should be brought up at last. You would not believe what I told you yesterday. You thought as I had got too much beer aboard, but the thing was as I said.

'You see I was strolling about to see how the land lay, thinking upon Jen Williams, when I thinks, thinks I, that there before me is either a ghost, or a devil, or a woman in a white gown. Now do you see, except a ship under sail, I does not think that the world can produce you a sight so lovely as a woman in a white gown.

'Well, you see I gave chace, and for a time stood after her pretty well; but she, having a better chart of the course than I, hauled her wind and stood for some new cut, that I had not the skill to to weather; so, being obliged to double a point of land, I made so many trips that at last I found':—

"My eyes," said the other, "what a place this is, well what did you find?" 'Why,' said the first, 'I found that I had lost my prize and was out of my latitude.'

"Well that being the case," said his companion, "you say you can read, tell us what does they cyphers there mean upon that booby hutch in the corner." 'Why its somebody that's buried there,' said the other.' "Read"! 'Yes, I believe I can, or else I should never have been quarter-master.' Stay let me take a little bacco. Now for it: "Sacred, sacred", don't you hear? you see we are in a sacred place, Is your hat off? That's right, but come let us go on. "Sacred to the memory", 'Of Who?' "John Hewit!" 'Whew!' "who was shipwrecked on this coast June 9, 1783.' 'The devil he was! come along messmate.' "Why this is a pretty joke, said the other, "let us find the captain." So without further ceremony they went out of the chapel.

My situation here the reader will easily conceive, I soon found I had no cause of alarm, for this discovery convinced me there must be some English ship upon the coast, and that I could be in no danger from my own countrymen, especially with such a story as I had to tell. I was resolved however to keep concealed till I had heard every thing; and in proportion as this interesting conversation between the sailors advanced, so my anxiety increased, but when I noticed the surprize, and those equivocal expressions of the sailors concerning my husband, I thought my heart would have throbbed through my bosom. Being accustomed, however, to check every thing like Hope, I still had the fortitude to remain silent.

These observations passed over, and this resolution was taken, as transient as a gleam of lightning. I found my whole place taken possession of and voices issuing from every part. "Where! where!" presently cried one, and then, as several persons entered the chapel, one of them came up to my tomb and read, with great eagerness, 'Sacred to the memory of Hannah Hewit,' and was going on, when a voice cried out with great vehemence, "Thou maw detestable gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth;" and then instantly, in a tone of distraction, another voice uttered, 'Oh Heaven have I lived to see this day!'

The first I thought was the voice of Binns, the second of Walmesley, and the last I knew to be that of my husband. I could hold no longer; tearing open the doors of the tomb, and presenting myself to their astonished sight, I flew to his arms, fell upon his neck, and burst into tears of joy and gratitude, while Walmesley flew about the room like a bedlamite, crying out, 'She lives, she breathes, and we shall still be blest; our kind propitious stars overpay us now for all our sorrows past.'

The scene that followed nor tongue, nor pen, nor pencil can describe. Surprize, pleasute, anxiety, curiosity, every body felt, but nobody gratified. One affectionate enquiry was answered by another, all was confusion and incoherence. Binns was delighted, Hewit was entranced, I was silently putting up a prayer to Heaven, and Walmesley, in the language of Shakespeare, Rowe, and Otway, was invoking all the powers that protect virtue, to shower down blessings on our heads; when, to complete the groupe, entered to my unspeakable delight and astonishment, my brother.

What could I think of all this? I knew, my heart knew, by a thousand nameless and consoling pleasures, that I held Hewit in my arms; his heart palpitated in unison with mine; Binns appeared the affectionate friendly creature I had ever known him, poor Walmesley, who knew no pleasure but the happiness of his friends, uttered through his memory the delight which his heart dictated; and my brother's manly soul stood confessed in his eyes, as he beheld his loved his long lost sister.

It was not, however, in the power of our best resolution for a long time, to give us collection enough to elucidate the cause of this extraordinary meeting. Their wonder at finding me upon a desolate island in the midst of plenty; my astonishment at seeing so many friends, some of whom appeared to have arisen from their graves, collected together; seemed such a delusion, that, had we been under the power of enchantment, we could not have exhibited a more striking picture of doubtful certainty.

The questions of how can this be possible? by what accident could this happen? what power could have preserved you? on their side, and how could you escape shipwreck? how did you meet together? what chance brought you here? on mine, being uttered almost all in a breath, each of which required a long and substantial answer; we found, after we had wearied ourselves with inquiries, which it would take so much time to resolve, we should reap very little satisfaction till our prudence had got the better of our wonder.

Certain, therefore, of the fact, thankful to Providence for it, convinced that this was the Heavenly reward for my sufferings, so mysteriously promised me; I proposed that we should for a short time wave all curiosity; and, instead of enquiring how we had become happy, thank that Being in whose presence we stood, and who had deigned to witness our union, that through his gracious goodness, we had thus miraculously met together.

In this proposal every one willingly joined. Hewit clasped me to his heart, my brother said I was still his angel of a sister, Binns lifted his eyes to Heaven, Walmesley vociferated, 'then there are gods, and virtue is their care', and the poor sailors said they did not mind praying for a week together, if they had such a chaplain; and after this, so sweet a calm came across our minds, that we were in a state deliberately to discuss the particulars of all our fortunes.

They agreed very willingly that my anxiety should be gratified first; and as, of course, the adventures of my husband were of the greatest moment to me, I was very eager to hear them, we therefore adjourned from the chapel into the saloon, where after we had taken some refreshment and had exchanged such general intelligence, as that I had been cast away in the Grosvenor, and escaped in an extraordinary manner to that island, where I had not seen a human creature alive for more than three years, and that they had met together in India, were now bound in a Dane to Europe, and had, by accident, put in there for water, Hewit was preparing to gratify my curiosity, when my brother, who had been whispering Binns, said, 'that as there was nothing in Hewit's adventures he was a stranger to, he had better go aboard and see how matters were going on there.'

Binns took the sailors with him, and I was left with my brother, Walmesley, and Hewit; who now, at my earnest desire, proceeded to relate a long train of adventures, having, in answer to my anxious enquiry, first satisfied me that my son was alive and in perfect health.

CHAP II. HEWIT'S STORY.

MY brother asked me if I had any such thing as a pipe, and being answered in the negative, said, no matter he had a sagar in his pocket; which having lighted, and made a bowl of arrack punch, he told Hewit to leave off fondling and begin, desiring Walmesley to pay attention, who answered, that he could sit all night to hear good counsel.

Hewit, who knew exactly how much I had learnt from my brother, said, 'My dear Hannah will recollect in what distraction of mind I wrote that letter to captain Higgins, in which I mentioned that I was fully convinced of her innocence through the information of her wretched brother; who, unnatural as he had been certainly, as his end approached, appeared desirous of attoning for the misery he had brought upon a sister who had no fault but the possession of that honour to which he had ever been a stranger.

'But,' said he, 'let us not dwell on that; whatever might be his crimes, they were expiated by the forfeiture of his life.' "They were", said Walmsley, I saw him die. No action of his life became him like the leaving it."

'It was through him,' continued Hewit, 'that Sourby had, by means of Mrs. Vint, found out the circumstance of your being situated in a lodging near town; and if he had not been taken up, some diabolical scheme would certainly have been set on foot against your honour.

'Having, however, enough to turn his thoughts to, he, of course, desisted; and as that good lady could not, or would not, inform him exactly where you were, because, not to mince the matter, she was determined only to assist his designs against you in proportion, as she succeeded in her designs against me, he never was particularly acquainted with your residence, and, therefore, you may be assured I was not.

'If I could have put on the character of Sourby, I might, perhaps, have made an instrument of Mrs. Vint to have discovered you; but as my return to her fulsome love was invective and contemptuousness, I gained nothing by this half intelligence; and it is probable, that till this moment I should have been utterly in the dark concerning you, had not the strangest accident in the world conducted me, but not till it was too late, to your lodgings.

'Being perpetually upon the look out near town, in hopes that some fortunate accident might guide me to you, I fell in at Strombolo Gardens, near Chelsea, with a surgeon of the name of Greenhead, who sailed aboard your brother. He went afterwards as surgeon to a man of war, and had now a family, and was settled very reputably at Chelsea,

'This gentleman knew me only by the name of Walmesley; and in consequence of the regard he had for your brother, and the many gales we had weathered together, he received me very cordially.' I knew him, said I, he is as good a creature as ever existed. 'I will convince you in a minute,' said Hewit, 'that we mean the same man.

'I called on him one day, and finding him in his study, where he had a kind of museum, I noticed in a frame the figure of a coffin lid. I began to joke the doctor and allude to the servant, who understanding consequences upon being sent for the apothecary brought the surgeon, the physician, the parson, and the the undertaker.'

"If you knew the story of that business," said he, "you would not jest. I would not take an hundred guineas for it. The lady it concerns is now on her way to India, the device was done by her pencil, and the inscription is in her own hand writing. She drew and wrote it as a pattern for the undertaker to make a coffin plate, who buried her child."

'And my child, said I, as I approached it and saw a cypress near an urn, on which there was an inscription in your own hand writing, let me read it!

HANNAH,
the daughter of John and Hannah Hewit,
was born,
August 4, 1776,
and died
December 26, 1780.

"Why you are mad," said my friend, "your child!" 'My child, answered I distractedly, I murdered it. I broke her heart by my infamous suspicions, who was as immaculate as innocence; drove her to penury and want, and then this inoffensive little one, the victim of my folly, became a prey to poverty and disease.'

"No, no," said Greenhead, "that never would have been the case while it had a mother who was one of the most ingenius and industrious woman that ever existed." 'Add, said I, the most amiable, and the most wronged.' "I am afraid so," answered he, "for though her delicacy and prudence prevented her from complaining, it was evident she had a husband who little deserved so much virtue and goodness. But, Mr. Walmesley, said he, I had no idea, when I took you by the hand as an old friend, who I had known to possess all the manly honour of a true tar, that I should be obliged to upbraid you with having, under the feigned name of Hewit, betrayed and abandoned a woman that would have done honour to the first abilities and the first distinction.

'I told him his reproach did him credit and me justice. I accused myself of the most egregious folly and rashness, but assured him, that if he would have the patience to listen to me, he would find there was nothing villainous nor dishonourable in what I had done. I then entered into every thing, told him my real name was Hewit, and my feigned name Walmesley; acquainted with my reasons for my conduct in that business, and this brought out to his astonishment that you were the sister of captain Higgins. In short I concealed nothing from him, not even my being undeceived by your brother, nor my advertisements in the newspapers, and finished by saying that I had been now upon the look out near to •…n for your residence, more than four months, which I should never, perhaps, have discovered, if it had not been for this extraordinary accident.

'He heartily pitied me, said it gave him particular pleasure to find himself so agreeably undeceived, and promised me every friendship and assistance in his power. He lamented very much that he had not discovered your being the sister of captain Higgins, in which case, he said, you should have been in his own house, and he would have acted the part of a brother by you, until he could have given you into the hands of a repentant husband; but added he, she was so reserved and so cautious, that it would have been highly improper and indeed totally useless, to have exacted from her more than she was willing to disclose; so I chose to prove myself a friend by attention and respect, instead of being curious about what I had no right to know, and which I was sure, by the propriety of her conduct, she had both a delicate and an honorable motive for concealing.

'Greenhead and I that very day paid a visit to your lodgings, where the good woman of the house, understanding who I was, gave me a very severe lecture, for which I thanked her most sincerely. She confirmed the intelligence of your being on your way to India, informed me that she herself had seen you aboard, and said God would bless and protect you whereever you went; for that you was a thousand times better than any husband deserved; and as for me, if I was to take a hundred years to repent, I could not be good enough to merit such a wife.

'This good lady conducted us to Mr. Morris's house, where I got another scolding which I not only bore with patience, but received with gratitude. When they found how infamously I had been deceived, and how proper my intentions were, they gave me every intelligence they could respecting you; and really, as I had no doubt of finding you with your brother, who you know I had long persuaded you to join, I began to entertain hopes that a few months would again unite us.

'As soon as the season came round, I made an early application to get out to India, but could not succeed on board any ship bound to Surat. I therefore, was obliged to put up with a birth in the London bound to Madras, where I safely arrived the 4th of August, 1782.' "Then said I, you arrived safely in the London, at Madras, on the very day I was shipwrecked in the Grosvenor, on the coast of Africa.

'My sweet Hannah,' said Hewit, 'what thou hast endured! would I could have added it to the severe hardships which have been my lot since that day. But if a life of love and repentance—' "Avast, avast," said my brother, "keep your love and repentance till you get alone. I suppose you can let us turn in here, Hannah?" 'Oh yes, said I, I have plenty of accommodation for you all;' "and any provisions?" 'Plenty;' "that is enough; Jack go on with your story, I want to hear her's."

'Well,' continued Hewit, 'from the moment I fet my foot ashore in India, I was unlucky in every thing I undertook. As the most rational mode of proceeding, I took a passage in a coaster, and in eleven weeks arrived at Surat. There, by a letter left for me by your brother, with one enclosed from you, I learnt every thing I wanted to know; and as you conjured me to return immediately to England, I, long determined never again to do any thing but obey your wishes, sought for a ship without delay.

'It unluckily happened that the English ships had all returned, which were bound from the Malabar coast; and as we were at war with France, at least the news of the peace had not reached India, I thought I should find it difficult to get a passage in a Frenchman, besides, you know I don't much stomach the people.

'It was, however, no time for me to be nice. Week after week passed away, and I grew at last very impatient, till hearing that the Entrepreneur, a French East-Indiaman from Rajahpore to Bordeaux, was ready to sail from the Dutch port of Cannonore, I signified to an old skipper your brother knew, that I should be glad to work my passage in her. He, who was a linguist and knew the trim of these things, undertook to bring me through the business. I passed among the Dutch for a Frenchman, and among the French for a Dutch man; but finding the matter more difficult than I apprehended, I was upon the point of giving it up when an accident most unexpectedly brought it about for me.

'I met a lady one day whom I thought I had somewhere seen. She stopt under the same idea to look at me.' "Binns in the play-house lobby, said I, but I won't be jealous." 'No, my sweet Hannah,' said he, you have too much good sense to be guilty of any such egregious solly, for egregious it was, as you will find when you know all.

'Well, we soon knew each other. You remember I had the good fortune in Paris, to save the life of a little boy, whom I snatched from under the wheels of a coach, which, a moment later, would have gone over him. His danger was first announced by the screams of his sister. Madmoiselle Dupont, said I, I have thought of it an hundred times, as one of the many providental circumstances that have come to my knowledge.' "Well, it was Madmoiselle Dupont you met; I recollect she went to India." 'She did,' said Hewit,' 'not after an unkind, unworthy husband as you did, but to find a kind and a worthy one, his name was D'Oliviere.

"D'Oliviere, said I, gracious Heaven! Then rising and opening the door that led to the chapel, do you see that altar, those skulls? They are the skulls of that wretched couple." 'The ways of Heaven,' said Walmesley, 'are dark and intricate, puzzled with mazes, and perplexed with errors.' "Why where are we got?" said my brother, "one would think this was Lapland, and that we were among the witches!" 'Well, but,' said Hewit, in astonishment, 'if this is the case—' "Be calm, said I, and go on with your story, I shall astonish you more before I have done."

'Well,' said Hewit, 'this lady introduced me to her husband; who learning the nature of her obligations to me, though only a passenger himself, and of course without power aboard, said he had no doubt but he could prevail upon the captain to take me. This he did; I was to work my passage, and this good lady and gentleman promised to shew me every attention in their power, which promise they faithfully kept.

'And now began my troubles with a witness. We had not two days in succession that we could call good weather, for almost four months. We were for ever scudding just as the wind thought proper to kick us. At last, in the toughest gale I ever saw, or, I hope, ever shall, we got bump ashore—'

"Between those rocks, said I." 'Here!' said Hewit, 'why what a fine reckoning we kept then! To be sure we had not seen fun, nor moon, nor hardly one another, for six or eight days. We all thought we were near the Cape. Oh it was most shocking work! I fired the first signal of distress.' "You did, said I, you noted it in your signal book, and wished that I might be praying for you when at that very moment I was on my knees invoking every power to bless and protect you."

'Divine creature! said Hewit, 'is it possible I could be so near happiness, and yet deprived of every blessing? But I had not suffered enough, my crime was not sufficiently punished. Well, after firing three or four times more, our signals were answered by a blaze of light from the shore,' "which proceeded from a pile of wood that I had set fire to, said I, I felt, I almost knew you were there, and my love for my husband inspired the thought. Go on."

'Finding,' continued Hewit, 'that at every signal the flame increased, we agreed to lay by till day-light and then venture ashore in our boats. In the first that was hoisted out I got a place. It was then scarcely day and with all our skill we could not make the shore; but, being by the surge driven round the point of a rock, we presently found ourselves out at sea.

'There were nineteen in the boat, seven of whom including myself, after beating about at the mercy of the elements for six days, without any provision but which had been snatched up at the moment of leaving the ship, were taken up by the Adventure, a brig bound to the South Seas upon discoveries. Of the remainder some were washed overboard and others died of fatigue or hunger.

'What became, therefore, of the rest of the crew and passengers of the Entrepeneur I knew not.' "They all, said I, perished in my sight, except ten, who remained on board the wreck. Their bodies I afterwards found and consigned to the grave. Among these were Monsieur and Madame D'Oliviere, whose bones and skulls I preserved in sacred remembrance of a husband and wife, who died in each others arms."

CHAP. III. HEWIT'S STORY CONCLUDED.

"I NOW begin," said my brother, "to see how you came by your geer, and all this plenty about you. I did not know what to think of it at first; but pray who built this fine palace of yours?" 'I did, said I.' "Well," said he, "you shall tell us all about it. Upon my soul if I did not know you to be my sister, I should take you to be some Queen of the Fairies in the Arabian Nights Entertainments. This looks more like magic than reality."

'Well,' said I, let Hewit finish his story and then I'll convince you, however wonderful appearances may seem, under the guidance of Providence that has graciously protected me, every thing here has been created by the suggestions of my fancy, and the labour of my hands.' "Where shall my wonder or my praise begin said Walmesley." 'Wet your whistle and go on with your story Jack,' said my brother, Hannah here's God bless thee my girl.'

'The adventure as I told you," said Hewit, was bound on a voyage of discoveries. Her orders were to get if possible eighteen degrees beyond the antartic circle. It seems that some notable discoverer had proved in a long treatise, to the satisfaction of the Royal Society, that there was certainly an untouched continent in the South Sea; which when it should be once taken possession of, would make all those in numerable islands tributary to it, just as almost imperceptible gobules of quicksilver, are swept into one large body. So to find this continent in nubibus they sailed; and, that they might do the thing in a seamanlike manner, they stood away from England for the Azores, and thence directly across the Atlantic to Davis's Straits, upon this principle; that, as Columbus in looking for the East Indies found out the West, so by keeping to the North they should have the whole South before them; or, said I, as dogs get to that hedge opposite to the weather, that they may better snuff up the air of the whole field.

'Our captain lent me the whole treatise, and to be sure it contained some of the most curious reasoning that ever entered the imagination of a bedlamite; and all to prove that this continent was easily discoverable. I must give you one instance of it.

'All the world knows says this reasoner, thanks to Sir Isaac Newton, that the world is not exactly spherical; but I shall hazard a much stronger opinion, which if it prove truth, may, perhaps, take in not only the various errors in relation to the longitude, but all errors and variations of every description, and shew the origin of winds, tides, currents, vortexes, and every other species of natural phenomenae, to be matters as self evident as daylight.

'My conjecture is this. The globe is not only flatted at the poles but regularly all over, like a circular building in cants, making 129,600 square degrees. Thus the French philosophers measured a short degree towards the pole, and a long one at the equator, not, however, because there is any real difference between two given degrees, but because, I beg I may be attended to, they hit at one place upon the two opposite points of a quadrangle, and at the other they measured from parallel to parallel, which is also the boundary of the square. So that Sir Isaac Newton, this admitted, triumphed by accident; for, had the angular measurement been taken at the pole and the parallel at the equator, Cassini would have reaped an honour which chance, at which, out of love to my dear country, I rejoice, conferred on our immortal Englishman.

'Thus like the spiculae in the circulation of mercury, which are as it were so many weapons that enable the quicksilver to fight with its natural enemy the disease, are the points of these angles a well imagined defence to combat with winds, meteors, and other elementary foes; and I should hope no one will be absurd enough to contradict so reasonable a doctrine, since every creature has its means of defence from a gnat to a rhinorceros, and a man must be mad, indeed, to contend that nature, who gave bristles to the hedgehog, and quils to the porcupine, could be so scandalously improvident, as to send the world into such a war of elements unarmed.

'Besides I shall go further. The moon is unquestionably armed in the same manner, and what is called her horns are no other than those very angles. The poets indeed, by this expression have taken leave to say, that the earth and the moon are a lantern to each other, but they have mistaken the truth; they are a mirror to each other, or rather a multitude of square mirrors regularly framed; otherwise how could they convey so strong a light by reflection? a diamond emits the best reflected brilliancy of any object known to us, but even that gem gives it not in perfection, till it has been in the hands of the lapidary; therefore, without any great stretch of probability, it is not hard to believe that an unpolished lump of land and water could convey so cheerful a light, at such an immense distance, and that merely by reflection, had not nature turned lapidary and given it this exquisite polish, which was, perhaps, the change it underwent when it arose out of Chaos. Nay, did not the sun's warmth contradict me, I should say that the difference of his lustre, compared to the lustre of the moon, arose merely from this circumstance, that one was slightly polished in the manner of a table diamond, and the other highly like a brilliant.

'Encouraged by all this fine reasoning to find out a continent in the South Sea, was the Adventure, pelting on, as I said before, towards the antartic circle. For my part I should have been better pleased if she had been bound for England, but it was not my business to start difficulties with people who had just saved my life.

'They were glad enough to get us aboard, being rather barren of hands; three of the crew having died of the scurvy, one having been knocked out the boat by the tail of a grampus, four left upon a desolate island, because they excited a mutiny, and two poor devils having been killed and eaten by savages.

'I don't know what sort of advantage people propose to themselves in these voyages of discovery; I soon, for one thing discovered that we were all a set of fools. At one place where we landed we were pleased enough to scamper back again as hard as we could drive for fear of being knocked in the head; and at other places we were glad to come off without being roasted, or devoured by crocodiles.

'To be sure, as a mighty affair, we did take possession of a barren island; and after having buried with great solemnity a Queen Anne's farthing, an Irish harp, and a Scotch bank note, we set up a post with a writing on it in large characters, just as you put up steel traps and spring guns, to inform all those Phaenecians, Malayans, Japanese, and other inhabitants of that quarter of the globe, who happened to understand English, that this lump of sand, which we had dignified by the title of New Britain, was from that date to be considered as a part of the English territories.

'We penetrated as far as we could southward, and landed at several places, which were certainly islands, or pieces of floating ice. At last, being very short of provisions, and eaten up with the scurvy, we were obliged to return as wise as we went; and having in our way back bought feathers, frogs, and flying cats, which we paid for with tenpenny nails, and having, besides, collected a prodigious number of humming birds, shells, snakes eggs, fish down, crocodiles' teeth; crabs' eyes, together with two and twenty classes of animalculae, and numberless other articles, after being out a year and a half, all which time we were never within sixty degrees of the line, we arrived in a most crazy condition at Manilla.

'I was now in the most curious place I had ever touch at in my life, for the people being of all nations and persuasions, revile, trick, and laugh at one another. the Chinese cheat the Malays, the Malays the Ethiopians, the Pintendos rob the Portugese, while all join together to elude the vigilence of the Spaniards, who, in their turn, laugh at the English for suffering them to sit down quietly in their government, though they never paid more than half their ransom.

'Being refitted and well victualed, for our captain had good credentials to shew, both from government and the Royal Society, we sailed, with a fair wind, to edify the English with the wonderful discoveries we had made; but scarcely had we passed the Gulf of Siam and got into the Straights of Mallacca, when we were captured by a French pirate of considerable force, which was bound to Pekin with a cargo of Jesuits on board.

'These Jesuits having confiscated some religious treasure, had determined to transport themselves from France, to avoid the fury of the government. The government, however, was too cunning for them; for, getting scent of their fraud and not wishing to brand them publickly in France, on account of the veil they think it politic to throw over the peculations of priests, the captain of the vessel which the Jesuits had hired, received a private order from the general of the police, to deprive them of their ill gotten wealth when they should arrive in a certain latitude, to fix a mark of infamy upon their shoulders, and then leave them ashore on the coast of Africa.

'When they came to the place where this scene was to be acted, one of the Jesuits, having overheard a conversation between the captain and his chief mate, saw into the whole business; upon which a private counsel was held among the Jesuits, and a motion was carried to throw the captain and the mate overboard, and seize the ship. This was executed almost as soon as resolved. The captain, the mate, and two or three others, were hustled into the sea, and the rest expeditiously battened down below, where they were told their treatment would depend upon their conduct.

'After a long parly, it was agreed that the sailors should be at liberty to trade upon their own bottoms as pirates, the Jesuits only desiring to be landed safely with their property at China, and it was in their way there they had met with and captured us. We had now our choice either to turn pirates and cruise in company, or to be set ashore on the first desolate island, to become a prey to wild beasts.

'Two of the French men were yet alive who had been saved out of the Entrepreneur. These begged they might accompany the Jesuits, and join in their laudable plan of converting the inhabitants of China to the true faith. This being agreed to, they were decorated with a mock tonsor, and enveloped in a piece of old black baize. In this situation they took an oath to adhere to the interests of the fraternity and to keep its secrets, which the Jesuits swore was the only ceremony of induction they had ever gone through.

'As to the captain, myself and the rest of the crew, by way of choosing the least of two evils, we agreed to join the pirates and thus every body being satisfied, we proceeded towards China with a fair wind.

'Being now all rogues alike, it was agreed that every man should relate his adventures. The sailors had very little more to say than that they had made a number of voyages, the profits of which they had spent as soon as possible after their arrival in port; and that they had been perpetually the dupes of prostitutes and false friends, none of whom would acknowledge them whenever they came home in distress.

'As for the Jesuits their lives were curious enough. If it won't tire you I will repeat some of the particulars. I begged he would. One of them said he was the left-hand son of one nobleman, and had been page to another, from whose family he was driven out for theft. After this, rather than starve, he amused himself with picking pockets in the churches while he was kneeling for a benediction; but being detected one day by a priest who had stood in admiration of his dexterity, he had got him admitted as porter to a convent of Carthusian monks; and having qualified himself in every respect for trading upon his own foundation, he was admitted into the brotherhood; where he had procured as much wealth to be left to the church, that is to say to him and his fraternity, as had occasioned the ruin of forty individuals; he had absolved several sinners of sacrilege, upon condition they gave him back their plunder, he had had thirteen children, though he had taken the vow of celibacy whom he had bred up, the boys being eight in number, till they were of a proper age to send as a venture to the new world, and made the girls nuns in a certain convent, where he had connived at the destruction of their virtue, to enrich himself with the contributions of their seducers.

'He said in the commission of these and innumerable other pranks equally attrocious, he had taken care to lead a life of the most edifying sanctity; till the reputation of his superior cunning had attracted the notice of the Jesuits, who had invited him to become a member of their order, in which situation he had acted to their advantage and his own.

'A second said, that having been a captain of dragoons, and killed a man in a duel, he had fled to the church for sanctuary; where being admitted till the matter could be hushed up, he liked the conversation of the priests so well, that under a pretence of sorrow for having committed murder, he had prevailed upon them to admit him a member of their society.

'He said he had been guilty, with very little variation, of all the crimes related by his holy brother; but having a forwarder, and more open degree of impudence than his companions, one of whom took upon him to be very lavish of his admonitions, he was determined to be revenged; when finding his sanctified preceptor rather too familiar with a certain abbess, of whose favours he himself had been a partaker, he took the liberty of chucking the gentleman out of the window, which was so resented by the order, that the consequence would have been fatal to himself but for the abbess, who would not give him up.

'This spirited conduct of the lady, added he, who they knew if they accused would recriminate, brought about a parley: when it was agreed that under a new appelation I should take the ensigns of another order, and that they would give out that I had been put to death in private for the murder of the friar, by a particular inquisitorial mandate, which they actually obtained for that purpose. The Jesuits, he said, had received him amongst them, and what had passed since was not unknown to the company.

'A third said, he could prove his lineal descent from the very priest who had the immortal honour, or, as some say, execration, of proposing the first expedition to the Holy Land. His own birth was, indeed, rather obscure, being son to a man who got his bread by making crucifixes, and painting flames upon the black baize, used at every auta de fe.

'He said, that being twelve years old, he was made a sort of runner to a prison of the Inquisition; where, being observed to have a particular taste for augmenting the misery of the victims, he was early promoted to be one of the torturers, in which religious practice he would be bold to say, he had introduced more ingenious refinements than one would think the wit of man could invent, or the heart permit him to exercise; and all this, he said, he found the more necessary, because, people under the influence of that holy court, were tortured to confess sins they had never committed. The Jesuits, however, he said cajoled him from this situation, though so extremely pleasant and comfortable, well knowing that a man so brought up would be a considerable acquisition to their community.

'A fourth said, he had been a Jew; but, having ridiculed some of the ceremonies of that religion, and in particular their abstinence from pork, he had been anathematized, and his hair, toe nails, spine, marrow, kidneys, midriff, brains, arteries, skin, lungs, teeth, bowels, muscles, head, heels, and every other part about him, solemnly and formally damned to all eternity.

'Thus deserted by his own religion, he thought he could not do better than place himself under the protection of some other. He, therefore, turned mahometan, and was soon after the principal projector of the largest fire that ever happened among the Jewish inhabitants of Constantinople.

'At this fire, he said, he got pretty warm; but fearing he should be found out as the ringleader of the mischief, he took the earliest opportunity of leaving that part of the world. The riches, however, that he had saved out of the fire, went as merily as they came; for falling in with a rover, he was carried into Algiers and sold for a slave. He, however, contrived, in conjunction with two Roman Catholic priests to raise an insurrection; and having murdered their master and his family, and seized one of his ships, they released the crews of two galleys, and finally arrived at a Spanish in port safety.

'Here he said, being received within the pale of the church of Rome, he was soon after admitted among the Jesuits, of whose holy body he hoped he had not proved an unworthy member.

'A fifth had been one of the people called Quakers; but having been detected in a falsity upon an affirmation, he had been as thoroughly excommunicated, though not so violently as the Jew.

'Knowing it would be to no purpose to seek a reconciliation with the faithful, he turned Methodist; in which situation he had sent seven old women to bedlam, induced one miserable sinner to poison himself that he might have a freer communication with his wife, and made several others become bankrupts to the ruin of their families.

'He was whipt and transported from England, branded in Holland, punished with the single knout in Russia, and banished to the copper mines in Siberia, whence he escaped in company with eight other slaves, namely, a philosopher, a bigot, a priest, a Jew, a French trooper, an Italian singer, a Portugese bravo, and an English traveller; the latter of whom, when their distresses became intollerable, politely hung himself that they might eat him.

'Having travelled, he said, through a prodigious tract of country, during which time they suffered innumerable hardships, they arrived at Eastern Tartary, where, by the priest's advice, they converted a hord of savages, and afterwards plundered them to procure the means of their escape into Europe; where, after a time, having arrived in safety, his friend, the priest, had procured him admission into the community of the Jesuits.

'Having given you, said Hewet, this sample of these holy hypocrites, you will not wonder that the captain of the Adventure and I formed a scheme to get out of their clutches. The pirates had at first put one of their own people to command our ship, and distributed our crew among their own, but after a time they did not think this precaution necessary; for, finding that we met them half way in every thing, and that we were more anxious for plunder when we fell in with a prize than they, all which conduct was put on, as a point of honour and a proof of their confidence, they reinstated the captain in his command and gave the crew precisely their former situations.

'The pirates had formed a design to rob the Jesuits before they should come to port, in which design we pretended to agree, and the Jesuits, on their part, had concerted a plan to give up the pirates to justice, and make the ship and cargo their own. How they managed, however, I neither know nor care. As soon as an opportunity offered we gave them the slip in the night, exactly as Walmesley and I had tricked the attorney and the butcher, and in about a month afterwards, now four months ago, I had the good fortune to join company with captain Higgins, Walmesley, and a few other friends at Bengal.

"With them I embarked in a Dane for Europe; and being for once in my life under the power of a guardian angel, my punishments are past, and I am at last, in your arms, rewarded for my constancy and perseverance. And now, my dear Hannah, so may I prosper as I solemnly and sacredly adhere to every desire of yours.' "Swear," said Walmesley, 'I do,' said Hewit, 'to obey whatever she desires, as I would the command of some superior power, on whose pleasure my life and happiness depended.'

"Well, perhaps, I may put you to the trial, said I." 'Do,' said Hewit, 'never will I indulge an idea, a wish, or a desire, but what shall be dictated by you.' "It is deeply sworn," said Walmesley. 'If he should break it now,' said my brother. "Come, come," cried Hewit, "I cannot bear a jest on this subject; I should be the most infamous of all villains could I do otherwise than implicitly study the wishes of so much goodness and virtue."

CHAP IV. HANNAH'S STORY.

HEWIT having finished his story, I was very solicitous to hear what had happened to the rest, and particularly to Binns, the mystery of whose long absence and various adventures, which, of course, they could unravel, excited in me the highest curiosity. My brother, however, insisted upon having every thing in order, nor could I even prevail on them to tell me how Walmesley came alive, who, as we had been over and over again informed, died in Ireland.

My brother said that Binns would relate his own story, which I should find interesting enough; and as to Walmesley, he should give us his the next morning at Breakfast, for that there would hardly be time enough to hear mine that night, and he was determined not to turn in till he had learnt every particular.

Finding I had nothing else for it, I did as he desired me, taking up my story from the time I sailed in the Grosvenor, every thing that had passed before, being, of course known to them through him, from whom I had concealed no part of my adventures. The dreadful hardships I had with my poor companions sustained on the coast of Africa, excited the tenderest interest in the breast of Hewit and my brother; and as to poor Walmesley, he was every now and then stalking about and uttering, "By day and night but this is wonderous strange," or some other quotation from a play.

But when I came to speak of Sourby and his carrying me off, I thought poor Hewit would have fallen from his seat.' "Oh the villain," said he, "born to thwart my happiness in every part of the world! Tell me, my dear Hannah—" Make yourself easy, said I, my honour was preserved by M'Daniel the carpenter's mate, who you knew brother.

"I did know him," said my brother, "he was always a good lad—What is become of him?" 'He landed with me, said I, on this island, but he did not survive an hour; he had received his death blow from Sourby.' "What an infernal villain!" said my brother. "Well, all the poor lad wished was to provide for his aged mother; I know where to find her, and I'll take care, for his sake, she shall never want."

'But what became of Sourby?' said my husband, hastily. "Are there no bolts in Heaven?" said Walmesley. 'Do tell me,' said my brother, 'that the horrible scoundrel was blasted by a flash of lightning, or that the devil fetched him away alive, or some thing or other, to ease my curiosity.' "He was swallowed in my presence, said I, by a shark."

'That's right! that's right!' said my brother. "Gracious, just, and merciful God," said Hewit, "thy hand was there." 'Well,' but said Walmesley, 'that shark was a cannibal;' 'Owing I suppose,' said my brother, 'to his being bred up upon the coast of Africa. He must have had a delicious meal; it would have given me pleasure to have minced it for him, a little beforehand.'

Well, well, said I, but if you interrupt me in this manner, I shall never get to the end of my story, and you will please to recollect I am anxious to hear yours. "I beg your pardon," said my brother, "it is your fault Jack, you are so cursedly impatient—go on Hannah;" then taking up the bowl, "Here's may the devil be merciful to him, and that's more than he deserves."

I now methodized all I had already told them, and then went regularly on with what I had further to say. They commiserated the fate of poor M'Daniel, wondered at my astonishing perseverence, could scarcely conceive how I had kept my senses in the midst of so many and such extraordinary trials, admired the secundity of my genius in which I had found so many various and comfortable resources, all which they could scarcely have credited, had they not well known my abilities, and the wonderful fortitude with which Heaven had endowed me.

The whole business of the shipwreck, and the ingenious means by which I had supplied myself with whatever I wanted, were next subjects of their admiration. After this I came to my wonderful escape from the lioness, my return to the cavern, the particulars of those documents I had found in Hewit's chest, my domesticating the young lion, which almost excited in Hewit another fit of jealously, for I told him I had had a companion whose worth and fidelity I should ever regret; that he had watched me, valued me, and loved me; that he was my constant companion, my faithful friend, and my generous protector; that at last he lost his life in defence of my honour, and, that no tears were ever more poignant or more sincere, than those I had shed at his death.

He answered generously to this, that he held my honour in so sacred a light that he would answer with his life for the propriety of my conduct, whatever it might turn out upon an explanation. I told him he did me justice, and that he would deplore the loss of the noble creature I had alluded to, as much as I did.

I then explained myself, and they were delighted at the circumstance, which I was charmed to find they did not consider as any thing extraordinary. My brother said that a lascar used to traverse the wilds of Arabia, as a messenger from the different armies with no other guide or protector than a lion, from whose carcase he had plucked a poisoned arrow, and by sucking the wound had cured it; and he might still, said he, have had the generous creature for his guide, but that a certain nabob thought it expedient to hang the lascar to prevent his telling tales. Leo, however, revenged him; for, though he came too late to save his benefactors life, to the astonishment of the populace, he flew at the executioner and tore him to pieces; and, perhaps, he might have done the same by the nabob if he could have got at him, and no harm into the bargain.

Hewit said that Leo's mother was the most harmless creature that ever was seen, for that the officer who had the care of her used to play with her like a cat, and as to Walmesley, he said he would rather trust a lion than a man at any time; for, said he, trust not a man he is by nature false, dissembling, fickle, cruel, and ungrateful; but a lion, Oh the gentle monster! why I once at a country fair put my head into a lion's mouth out of a bit of fun.

Indeed, indeed, said I, Hewit you must forgive me if I think of Leo as long as I live with the greatest tenderness. He was my faithful friend, my kind companion, my willing assistant. He was sent me by providence to lessen my labours, to alleviate my distresses, to preserve my honour, to be my generous guardian, my valiant safeguard, my noble champion, till Heaven should restore my natural protector.

'Laud we the gods,' said Walmesley, 'and let our crooked smoke climb to their nostrils!' "Be quiet, you Walmesley," said my brother, "and let her go on; and, you Hewit, who had tenderly caught me in his arms, and swore that it should be the business of his life to love and oblige me. Can't you have done with your raptures? come, Hannah, let us hear a little more, poor Leo! Well, next to a shark, I shall in future like a lion.'

'Having by their interruptions, obliged me to tell my story in this disjointed way, I was under the necessity of recapitulating many circumstances over and over again. My brother, in particular, made me dwell upon the expedients I had used, and the methods I had pursued to erect, decorate, and furnish such a building, which I explained to him so satisfactorily, that he wondered no longer at any thing but my courage and perseverance.

Having finished all I had to say in the best manner that I could with so many interruptions, we began to think of supper; and while I was bestirring myself for that purpose, Hewit, my brother, and Walmesley, paid a visit to every part of my mansion. As I was cooking I could not avoid hearing their remarks. The cabin is convenient, said Walmesley, there you are Jack, said my brother, razors to grind! scissars to grind! how the jade loves you; well, though she is my sister, I dont think her equal is to be met with upon the face of the earth.

Her equal, said Hewit, see in future whether all the treachery of hell, shall make a fool of me again! See with what pains she has traced her various fortunes with her pencil, all marked with some affectionate proof that though I, idiot as I was, had forsaken her, she had nobly forgiven the wrong and still loved the unworthy author of her sufferings. But her mind was always superior to mine, and by all that's just she shall implicitly guide me to my last gasp.

See, see, said my brother, here is Walmesley at the begging grate of Leicester goal. "Who calls on Achmet," said Walmesley, you may well say that, said my brother, the words are coming out of your mouth.

After these and other remarks in the saloon, they entered the chapel; where the different inscriptions on the urns excited in them the tenderest sensations, nor could they read so many tributes of esteem to their remembrance, so many grateful acknowledgements of the bounty of Providence, so many moral and religious proofs of pious resignation, without being deeply impressed with admiration, at the sacred and holy sense in which I held my duty towards my Creator.

They contemplated the skulls with awful veneration; and, when Hewit took up the bible, I saw him in an agony. The tears wet his manly cheeks, his sighs seemed to rend his very heart, his eyes were lifted to Heaven; till at length in a burst of fervid admiration, he fell on his knees at the altar, and entreated that the heaviest judgment of Heaven might be showered on his head, if he should ever again give me cause to heave a single sigh.

The tombs were next visited. In Hewit's tomb was deposited the chest which contained all those documents I have already mentioned, besides the history of my sad life up to the period of those reflections, just before I lost poor Leo, that induced me to believe my latter end was approaching. These I had carefully arranged in hopes that time might one day bring them to light, for the information, and I flattered myself, edification of the world, little expecting I should have so complete a catastrophe to add to my adventures.

At the end of the inscription on my own tomb, I referred the reader for further information to the chest that thus there might be no mistake. All this method and regularity they very much admired. They then examined the inside of my tomb, and were wonderfully struck with all they saw, but particularly the allegorical allusions contained in the artificial flowers. There is rue for you, Hewit, said Walmesley, well then upon my soul this is too much! said my brother, too much, Sir, said Walmesley, why thought and affiiction, passion, hell itself, she turns to favour and to prettiness.

I now summoned them all to supper, and had the pleasure to receive their compliments on my cookery, which, together with all the rest according to them was admirable, we were very comfortable, my brother in particular; who, at last having drank arrack punch pretty plentifully, grew quite facecious. He told Hewit he was a happy rascal, talked of wedding nights, of making up for lost time, and other inoffensive jokes, kindly meant and kindly taken. At last we prevailed on him to go to bed, Walmesley followed his example, and now, after an absence of five years, I retired to the arms of my husband.

CHAP. V. WALMESLEY'S STORY.

WHILE I prepared breakfast next morning, the three friends walked out to examine the beauties around my dwelling, and when they returned, were of course very lavish in the praises of all they had seen. How should you like to live here? said I. My brother answered that for a life ashore he should like it very well. Walmesley said it was a paradise of never ending sweets, and Hewit said any place would be a paradise with me.

Breakfast being over, I reminded Walmesley that it was now his turn to tell his story, come, said I, Mr. Walmesley, don't you think I am impatient to her how you could make such a blunder as to come here after dying in Ireland? Dying, said Walmesley, Oh, no, no such thing, they buried me to be sure, but I was not dead, I took care of that.

Curious enough, certainly it was—You see there was a poor pains taking fellow with a wife in a consumption, an old mother, and a sick child; so, because he could not pay a debt of thirteen pounds, for no reason upon earth but that he had not a single halfpenny in the world, they took the bed from under these poor devils, for they had but one among them. Did you ever hear of such a set of rascals?

Well thinks I to myself what's to be done now? Suppose thou lettest them have thy bed? said good nature. Hold, said churlishness, what art thou to do thyself? manage in the best manner thou can'st, said generosity; charity begins at home, said prudence; a good deed finds its own reward, said virtue, if you get sick who is to pay the doctor? said illnature.

At last, my conscience hanging about the neck of my heart, ladies or gentlemen, said I, or whatever you are that keep this pother o'er my head, since you are equal in your opinions upon this subject, if you will permit me I will have a casting vote; and as I never valued myself nor ever shall, when I could or can oblige any body else, which by the way is an iriscism, for the true way of valuing oneself is to oblige any body else, that vote shall be that the people have the bed.

Who knows but I may be in the same situation myself? I have taken one step towards it already; I am without a bed. I want nothing now but the wife in a consumption, the old mother, and the sick child.

So I gave them the bed. I lie, I sold it to them, they paid me for it by a smile and a tear, valuable enough to have purchased a whole upholsterer's shop. It must be confessed that I caught a devil of a cold by lying on the ground, and the apothecary advised me to have my bed back again, saying, that if I had not he could not answer for the consequence; "Slave," said I, "I have set my life upon a cast, and I will stand the hazard of the die."

The apothecary said, very truly that he could not answer for the consequence. My cold introduced an old acquaintance to me called the rheumatism. I cod I had it now hip and thigh. The doctor plied me with physic by wholesale; but one day, having informed me that he should send a cordial mixture for me to take, and an embrocation to rub myself with, he made a blunder, which was natural enough, you know, being an Irishman, and labelled the bottles wrong; so that I swallowed the embrocation and rubbed myself with the cordial mixture.

The consequence of all this was, that the embrocation, having in it a plentiful quantity of opium, set me to sleep. This sleep they mistook for death. It is a pity but I had been a Roman Catholic, I should have been waked; and being put into my coffin, and afterwards into my grave, just as the words, "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust," were repeated, and the sexton had thrown a shovel of dirt upon me, whether from the noise, or the cold, or whether the influence of the opiate had ceased, I know not, but I awoke, knocked pretty stoutly, and was let out.

'It turned out a glorious thing. The manager doubled my salary, under an idea that my story would excite curiosity. He had it made into a farce, where I acted a dead man to the life. I got a good benefit, grew quite a favourite; why, Sir, my death immortalized me!

'About this time, one Messink had an offer to manage the Theatre at Calcutta, I fancy this was just about when you returned from France. He made me a very liberal proposal to take me with him as his factotem; and under an idea that I should find captain Higgins there, after maturely weighing all consequences, after considering that I had not a friend, nor an acquaintance upon the face of the earth, except yourselves, that cared three farthings whether I made my exit off the stage, or out of the world, I determined to try my fortune among savages and men of Inde.

'After boxing the compass and buffetting the billows for eight or nine months, I arrived in the kingdom of Bengal. Messink first took possession of the theatre, and I, in quality of treasurer, prompter, property man, and, occasionally, performer. In short, the scrub of the family, according to Dr. Johnson's explanation of factotum, began to enter upon my vocation.

'My next idea was to enquire after captain Higgins. But, Lord, how did I know that Surat was on the other side of the Indian peninsula? I had taken it in my head that it was only a stone's throw from Calcutta. Well, said I, travellers must be content. So on we went astonishing the Nabobs. Well, well, said I, these rupees are no bad things.

'Thus time wore on. There were we lolling in Eastern luxury. Still all I thought of was somehow or other to get at the captain. I ventured two letters, but I found afterwards they never reached him. At last, like Cleopatra on the river Cydnus,

"Her galley down, the silver Cydnus rolled,

"Purple the sails, the streamers waved with gold."

comes the captain, sailing up the Ganges, as stately as a swan upon the Thames. Played Serjeant Kite for my benefit. All the gentlemen used to play at Calcutta. Oh how I have heard them tear a passion to rags! A better thing for me than the blacksmith at Birmingham.

'I never was so rejoiced in my life. Well, we had talk enough about you. This was just after your brother had put you on board the Grosvenor for England. "You see," said my brother, "that I had no intention of going higher on the Coramandal Coast than Madras; but finding I should not be able to get my credentials so properly from the Nabob, and meeting, with an advantageous offer to carry a freight, I was prevailed upon to stand on for Calcutta. It was curious enough, that Jack He wit, should have quitted Madras only a week, by his account, before I arrived at it, not that it would have made any difference, for if I had met with him, instead of his going to Surat, I should have sent him packing after you."

Indeed, said I, it would have made a material difference; for, in that case, I certainly should not have seen him here, nor would any thing, perhaps, have turned out as it has. I have remarked with astonishment, the steps that have led to this wonderful meeting, and my mind is completely made up; the hand of Providence is in it all—but go on Mr. Walmesley.

'Faith Ma'am,' said Walmesley, 'there is not much to say. I could divide and subdivide all the little nonsenses that make up a life so frivolous and insignificant as mine but it would be only to retail the former narrative which made you laugh so at Wolverhampton. Actors, either off or on the stage, like mill horses, go on the same dull round, another and another still succeeds, and the last fool's as stupid as the former.

'Your brother would fain have had me scamper with him over the Red Sea; but hold you, hold you, said I, I cod there may be mischief enough done without I! I am a restless spirit, they may want to lay me. An obvious joke, a foolish figure, but farewell it, for I will be brief.

'Captain Higgins finding I would not accompany him, made me faithfully promise him to wait until his return, telling me that we would then take a trip to England, where he had no doubt but we should find you and Hewit happy and comfortable; and then, said he, we'll lay all our hulks in a convenient birth, where when the voyage of life shall be at an end, we may take a spell of sleep, out of which we shall never wake till the angel Gabriel pipes all hands.

'I was charmed with this, for I love to cope with him in these humours, for then he is full of matter. So being a devil of a fellow at promise, he found me when he came back exactly in the same place where he left me, stuck as fast as if I had been one of the twelve Caesar's done by a sealcutter. I found him exactly the same creature; smoked as many sagars, drank as much grog, cracked as many jokes, and did as many good natured things as ever.

'Away we went to work, sold our ship and cargo, sacked the rupees, and prepared all matters for our return to the land of beef and pudding. Every thing now appeared as if it was coming to a climax; we seemed as if we were all to meet together like players at the end of the last act. One morning as captain Higgins and I were going along, we met captain Higgins—' "Why what a stupid fellow you are, said my brother, how could I meet myself? You mean Hewit."

'No, I don't; we did not meet Hewit till three days afterwards; I mean, Oh Lord, I mean Mr. Binns, that's the gentleman's name, I think. So you see Binns and the young gentleman, that is to say, Hewit, no Higgins.' 'Come, come, said I, Mr. Walmesley, you are going to give us the second edition of the prince and the fisherman.' 'No I en't, said Walmesley, 'there was no fisherman in the case, the gentleman is—but here's Jack Meggot, who does not wish you to know it, will tell you the whole story in two minutes, while I have been half an hour explaining it, and you don't know any thing about it yet.'

"The fact is," said my brother, "we met with Binns, and afterwards with Hewit, and a friend or two more; and having agreed with a Dane to bring us to Europe, here we all are, and I hope you are glad to see us. What do you say to that Hannah?"

Nothing, said I. 'Nothing can come of nothing,' said Walmesley; 'speak again.' If I did, said I, it would answer no purpose; there is certainly some mystery behind; and as I have had enough within these last four and twenty hours to put my resolution to the test, you are right to manage my feelings lest they should be too much overcome. Only, said I, let me know the complexion of what I am yet to hear.

We have nothing to disclose to you, my dear Hannah, said Hewit, but what will give you pleasure, and here comes a proof of it. At these words a most charming young man entered the room, and falling at my feet asked my blessing.

CHAP VI. CONTAINING THE HISTORY OF AN EXEMPLARY YOUNG MAN, SOME PERTINENT OBSERVATIONS, AND A FURTHER DISCOVERY.

No one but a mother can judge of the sensations I felt when I strained in my arms the very pratler, now grown into manhood, who used to delight me on my little island, where, in the midst of prosperity, I would retire to get rid of the world's impertinence.

I had early traced an understanding in this dear boy most uncommonly penetrating for his years, which increased astonishingly as he grew up. His mind pursued every thing with such avidity, that his intelligence was unbounded, and his discrimination was so nice and perspicuous, that in all my observation and my reading I never met such a reasoner.

As a proof of his capacity, he taught himself Arabic, and the language of the Hindoos, on his passage out to India, and it was through these advantages that he was appointed, though little more than a child, to a considerable situation up the country.

In addition to these advantages, his manners were the most winning in the world. To the sweetest and evenest temper, he added the most solicitous and conciliating attention. He was as brave as fortitude without rashness, and as mild as humility without meanness. What joy then to behold after so long an absence such a son, such a treasure! I can only say my joy, unaccustomed as I was to pleasure, was immoderate; and, if in the fullness of my heart, I now recall it upon paper, let no one but a parent comment on it. Those who are not parents may think I have said too much, every parent will wonder I could say so little.

My son at my earnest desire related the particulars of his fortune, which might make a little novel by itself, and be called the Progress of Industry; for never were there talents so worthily employed, pursuits so sensibly planned, so resolutely undertaken, or so laudably pursued. It spoke him the true Englishman of oppulence; with spirit, abilities, and accomplishments, to repel a foe, regulate a counting house, or ornament a senate.

Were the country invaded, he did his duty bravely in the field; were the produce of the East to be wasted across the Pacific Ocean to agrandize his native country, he estimated the honourable average of loss and gain, and and regulated account between merchant and merchant. If the exigencies of the state rendered it necessary to call in superior abilities, his voice was the most eloquent in the counsel. In short he was a pattern for what a young man should be, and what almost any young man tolerably gifted may be, by nothing more than keeping this one simple maxim in view, never to be indolent.

Would not one imagine with such admirable talents, such true rectitude, that this dear youth was not wherever he came an object of esteem and respect! Nothing like it. He was the perpetual object of envy and calumny. Every poltroon envied his bravery, every knave his integrity, and every fool his understanding. He was tracherously stabbed by a cowardly assasin; who, fancying he had killed him, took the honour to himself of a glorious action the sweet youth had nobly performed; false accounts had been surreptiously foisted into some bills of lading, of which he had the regulation, by a swindling adventurer with a view to impeach his honour; and a charge of intention to innovate and new mould the state, had subjected him to a tryal for having uttered an oration, that for eloquence might have honoured Demosthenes, and for wisdom have given reputation to Solon.

Thus, an honour to human nature, human nature did every thing it could to dishonour him. His good sense was shrewdness and a disguise for knavery, his modesty, slyness and cloak for hypocrisy, if he was humble it was dissimulation, if manly it was temerity, in short we were mother and son; and having perhaps our minds a little better stored than our neighbours, they, poor creatures, seemed to have nothing for it but to lower our faculties, to the level of theirs.

The best trait of his mind was that, though a misanthrope, he was not a man hater. He did not dispise his fellow creatures, he pitied them. All which in a young man no more than one and twenty, may be considered as presumption, and perhaps impertinence, but when it is recollected that this young man of one and twenty, had thought more and to better purpose in any given month, than many an old man of sixty does during his whole life, the wonder will be with all the strong affections and antipathies of youth to stimulate his choice, his mind did not harden into hate, rather than soften into pity.

Yet ought not his ill treatment to prevent any young man from aspiring. Knowledge is a most charming companion; and upon the principle which the proverb holds out, that a contented mind is a continual feast, so an accomplished mind is a continual amusement; besides there is a great consolation in not deserving to be ill treated, and the calumny of the world will little affect a man of good sense, while the rectitude of his heart contradicts it.

Besides the consideration reaches farther. Benefits arising from the gifts of nature induce gratitude, gratitude inspires every other virtue, and thus the human mind has a succession of pleasures within itself, and every pleasure the result of reffection. But I entreat the reader to pardon me for this intrusion. I could not avoid recommending this valuable conduct, so exemplified in my own son, and explaining its advantages that young men may see, however, envy may pursue industrious merit, it cannot lesson its sterling value, whereas the vice and folly that springs from indolence; however men of sense may pity, is the but of every fool, and the prey of every knave.

During my son's relation of his story, which he delivered in modest and eloquent language, I could not help noticing that he continually alluded to the obligations he was under to his uncle, notwithstanding my brother was at no part of the time in the way, to do him any personal service. I therefore concluded that he had set agents about him to watch his conduct, and be of occasional assistance to him.

This I hinted, and was very thankful to my brother, for his tender care of his nephew. 'Avast,' said my brother, 'put the saddle upon the right horse, I knew very little about my nephew; nay, to own the truth, as I never love to make the worst of any thing, what I told you at Surat, about his situation at Benares was only hearsay.

'I had many vague and strange conjectures concerning my nephew at that time, but to have tormented you with them would not only have been unnecessary, but cruel; for if he was in a situation to need friends or assistance, your interference could have done him no service, I therefore, amused you with what I thought would most console you, without making you wretched about your son, when you were already sufficiently wretched about your husband.'

'But however,' said he, 'it came upon its legs in the end; for though I did not get the news till my return from the Red Sea, had I staid but a fortnight longer before I sailed on that voyage, I should not only have known that the flying report of his being well situated at Benares was truth, but to what uncle he had been so much obliged.'

What uncle! said I, in astonishment, but bless me here are ladies and with them a gentleman I never saw before. 'Well, said Domine,' said my brother, 'he sticks close to the women.' "Yes," said Walmesley, "but he is honest for all he wears black." 'Give me leave good folks to introduce you,' said my brother. 'This, my dear sister, is the Reverend Mr. Grey, this is, you'll be charmed to know who this is, this is little Britannia; she married a fine fellow one Dick Lovejoy, who sailed with me, and she came over with him as in duty bound to India, where he died and left her to my care. Hewit knew him, and you have heard of him, Hannah, it was the very man who turned amanuensis for Hewit, alias Walmesley, when he sent you an account of the Vigo business; but to proceed. This is your niece, and a sweet girl she is, though I say it; and, though last not least in love, this is Mrs. Higgins.'

Here, my old friend whom I had known by the name of Binns, came up and warmly saluted me, calling me her dear sister. Heavens! said I, what am I to think of this, brother? Are you married? and to my dear old friend too? "And suppose I was," said my brother, "should you be angry Hannah?" No, indeed, said I, I should be delighted.

"Well then I am sorry I cannot obblige you this time," said my brother, "She deserves every thing, she is lovely and she is amiable; but, though the world cannot produce you a fellow that more admires the beauty, or would sooner defend the honour of your sex, I would not marry the person of Venus, with the virtue of Diana tacked to it." 'No that he would not,' said Walmesley, 'though every god did seemed to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a woman.'

"She belongs," added my brother, "to a noble fellow, for whom you have an affection and an esteem; to a man whom all the world must admire, to a man in whose praise, for I love valour and generosity, I could talk for this half hour, but that here he comes and I don't like to praise people to their faces."

"Mr. Binns," said I, "looking round me." 'No Lord,' said Walmesley, 'captain Higgins, the very captain Higgins we met; only you would insist upon his being a prince and a fisherman.' "Nay, nay, said I"—'It is truth,' said Binns, catching me in his arms, 'my dear Hannah I am your brother!"

CHAP. VII. THE STORY OF BINNS.

BEING a little recovered from the astonishment into which I had been thrown, I expressed myself to my friends around me in terms of the warmest gratitude for the thoughtful, the delicate manner, in which they had introduced this succession of discoveries; which, strong as my mind was, had they been more abrupt might have been attended with the worst consequences; and what endeared their conduct doubly to me was, that it could arise from no motive but tender and kind consideration.

What a reverse of fortune did I now experience. I had not only a husband restored to me, who had been the object of all my pain and pleasure during my life, but I had a son that I could proudly own. I had one brother, of whose fraternal affection I had received a thousand proofs, and another who had proved himself every way a brother, at the time I knew him sor no other than a kind and disinterested friend. Besides my tender friend who I had long loved, was now my sister; and no wonder if such unlooked for happiness, required the exertion of my utmost sortitude.

After a peal of congratulations, and many suitable remarks on the wonderful chain of events, that had so miraculously brought us together, my new brother at my particular request, related his story, with which it is now high time I should acquaint the reader.

'You all know," said my brother, 'that a person of the name of Binns, lived in Coalbrook Dale, who though he was himself of an idle and a profligate character, had for a wife a most worthy and amiable woman. I have heard Mr. Williams, when I believed her to have been my mother, speak of her in terms of the highest praise, and well he might, if she bore the slightest resemblance to her daughter, whose virtues, when I thought her my sister, were ever the objects of my admiration, and since she has been my wife, now eighteen years, they have manifested themselves in so many tender and attentive instances of affectionate kindness, which Heaven knows, have been rigourously put to the test, that I must be, which I hope is not in my nature, most dishonourable and ungrateful, if I did not, through life, make her happiness my study.

'You have heard, that in the year 1743, there was an explosion in a coal mine, this unfortunate woman, with several other persons, and particularly a brother of yours called Peter, were killed; but this was not the fact, for it was my wife's brother that was killed, and not yours, I am your brother, and the extraordinary circumstance of my being brought up as the son of Binns, arose from nothing more than that having lost his son, and knowing that the countenance and support of his sister would wholly depend on the chance of her having a male heir to keep up her name, he stole me, who happened to be on the spot, though unhurt, carried me home, passed me for his son, which deceit my age and complexion favoured, and thus accomplished his designs against the purse of his sister.

Good Heaven, said I, what art! "Yes, madam," said Walmesley, "and thus you see the ear of Denmark was abused with a feigned story of his death."

'Mrs. Binns,' continued my brother, 'when she made her will, at which time she fancied I was her nephew, restricted both me and her daughter from assisting her brother to the injury of our own circumstances. This, however, did not prevent his levying contributions on us both; until at last his conduct was so arrogant that had I not supposed him my father, I should have broke up all sort of communication with him, which he saw, and I could plainly perceive he was bent on some sort of revenge.

'About this time a clerk of our worthy brother, the lawyer, called upon me, and said he had something to communicate that nearly concerned me. I was shy of him at first; but finding that the confedracy, for whom he often perjured himself, had marked him for destruction on account of some discoveries he had made, which put them a good deal in his power, I had no farther doubt that he meant to serve me, especially as my own ears were to be witnesses of what he wanted me to believe.

'He told me that the mischief which threatened me was planned by his master, and my reputed father; that he did not know the nature of it, but instructed me where to place myself so as to hear a conversation between them. He said he certainly had an eye to reward but would not accept a halfpenny until I was convinced he deserved it.

'This was so fair that I concealed him until I had satisfied myself, and having done so, I gave him money for the purpose of affecting his escape. What I learnt was the secret of my being your brother, and this consultation, between Binns and the lawyer, was to see how they could make it turn to their mutual account. They had no doubt, when I found that I had no pretension to any part of Mr. Binns's fortune, but I should be glad enough to come into any proposal that they might hold out to me.

'A variety of schemes were hit upon, at last a most fortunate one, as they thought suggested itself, which was that my supposed father should make me acquainted with the truth, and advise me to agree with him in saying that I was not the impostor but that his daughter was; in which case I might insist upon the whole property, half of which he was to receive as a reward for his treachery in my behalf.

'The lawyer was not to appear in it, but he and his friends, with whom Mr. Binns seemed to have been pretty well acquainted, were to have a fellow feeling. Apprized as I was of all that was to follow, I had made up my mind as to how I should act. Having heard the proposal, I begged to consider of it, and after a time appeared reluctantly to yield to it.

'In the mean time it was extremely difficult to say what ought to be my real conduct. I was determined certainly not to conceal a tittle of the truth, but it struck me, that if I managed adroitly, I might get at the knowledge of some of those honourable practices in which my dear brother, the lawyer, and his worthy confederate Sourby, were engaged.

'With this view I played with the business, and it turned out as I expected. Mr. Binns, not being so artful as the rest of the fraternity, soon made me acquainted with a few transactions, which as I had wished for a full revenge on Sourby, gave me a particular pleasure, I promised him mountains, and which was greatly to his taste, that I would conceal a large part of the property, and make it appear less than it was, in order that he might with the greater facility cheat his friends out of their share. In short, said I, one night as I let him out of the garden, succeed in this, meaning a further discovery, and I'll make your fortune.'

'Which mysterious words, said I, my dear siser and I construed into a proof of your guilt.' "I know it," said my brother, "indeed all my conduct must have appeared very strange to you at that time. My turning from the lover to the friend and brother, my solicitude in favour of Hewit, all which, I declare, delighted me more than any satisfaction I had ever felt in my life, and then the prospect I had of exposing, and, perhaps, punishing Sourby; all, filled my mind, even though my whole fortune should have been the sacrifice, with reflections that my honour approved.

'I hope I ever had a pleasure in shewing myself a disinterested character, and, among the rest, it was from this motive that I seized the opportunity with so much alacrity of going to town at the time we received the false intelligence that one of our correspondents had stopt payment, but I little dreamed that from Mr. Binns's tardiness the worthy knot growing suspicious, had not only chose to remove me out of the way, that I might be suspected of having committed the fraud of the notes, which they were then meditating, but their worthy friend also, that, under an idea we were father and son, we might mutually be subject to the same suspicion in Wolverhampton, to exonerate them.

'The remainder of my fortune, which I shall relate in as summary a way as possible, is of another complexion. I had scarcely alighted at an inn in the Borough when I was forced into a house in St. George's Fields, by some kidnappers. I was then, in the night conveyed to Gravesend, put on board an Indiaman, afterwards taken to Portsmouth, and from thence the ship went to sea; nor did I get rid of my handcuffs, which had been put on me under the idea that I was a deserter, till we cleared the channel.

'Being arrived in India I was put into the ranks; and as I had been sent abroad with a bad character, I was pretty handsomely disciplined. I bore it, however, with what fortitude I could, and it was not long before an officer of some consideration, seeing something about me above my condition, payed me attention, and in in a short time got me promoted to a halbert.

'I was now glad that I had an opportunity of serving the poor soldiers; who, having been for the most part kidnapped in the same manner that I had, were exclusive of the inconvenience of struggling with a strange climate, subject to many hardships which they had no right to experience.

'One day I saw two men chained together at a distance; and asking who they were, was informed that they were two notorious rogues whom the soldiers were bringing to me that I might represent their case to the officer. Under the idea that I could serve two fellow creatures, I was charmed at an opportunity of investigating the crime laid to their charge, which I imagined, as usual, was instigated to get smart money from them; but judge my astonishment when I learnt that they were accused of no less than an intention of betraying me, at the head of a serjeant's guard, to the enemy, on the very next morning, when I was to have been on duty on a reconnoitering party, and how that astonishment was increased when I found them to be Binns and Dark.

'My situation, at this moment, was very critical. I had certainly no affection for Dark, but could not bear that one I had so long considered as my father, and who, in reality, was the father of her I had been accustomed to love and esteem as my sister, should suffer at my instance an ignominious death, for it was my duty to become his accuser. I, therefore, ordered that they might be remanded, and said that I should inform the commanding officer of their crime and issue his orders accordingly.

'In the mean time as I had not owned them, and they dared not own me, they thought, in a consultation together, they might turn the tables, and by accusing me, save themselves, which would answer all their original purpose; for the moment they had found I was in the camp, and their superior in rank, thinking, because they would have served me so, that as soon as I discovered them I should take care, right or wrong, to have them punished, they concerted this scheme to get me out of the way.

Little, however, suspecting this, I went to the officer, who had promoted me, and honestly informed him who they were, and my wishes concerning them. I asked his advice as to how I ought to act upon so delicate an occasion, and intreated him as far as he could properly to indulge my feelings, which he himself applauded. He promised to do every thing becoming in the business, and advised me, without reserve, to acquaint the commanding officer with what I had been told concerning them, without introducing any thing relative to myself, or appearing to be in any respect interested.

'I did as I was desired, but the next morning I was surrounded by six men, deprived of my sword, and made a prisoner. I was immediately tried by a court martial; Binns and Dark were my accusers, who swore I had inveigled them to assist in betraying my guard to the enemy, with whom I had concerted a plan to surprize the camp; which, after putting the picquets to the sword, they had no doubt, led on by me, apparently a friend, they should completely rout, and thus, at least, disconcert our measures for the whole campaign.

'This testimony was corroborated by a corporal, a shocking fellow, who I certainly hated, because of his cruelty to the men, and over whose head I had become a serjeant. My patron and benefactor said what he could for me certainly, but, after all, he himself had no positive knowledge of me, and if I had deceived him, it only proved the consummate art I must have been master of. In short, the story was so well told, and so artfully conducted, that I was found guilty of an intention of betraying the English troops to the enemy, and sentenced to be shot the very next morning.

'The awful preparations were making. The coffin was brought into my cell, the flannel waistcoat was prepared, the drums were muffled, and every other ceremony usual upon such occasions, was going forward, when my friend, the officer, rushed in, struck off my fetters, and told me I was pardoned.

'It seems, on the evening of the day I was tried, the officers had met in a counsel of war, when it was reported that the serjeant, who had undertaken the post of honour I was to have commanded in the morning, and which, by the way, was a matter concerted between my patron and I, as a guide to my further promotion, had been surrendered and taken by the enemy, but that a quarter guard coming up they were rescued, and the enemy made prisoners in return. This appeared, at first, to corroborate my guilt; but it was afterwards clearly found that Binns and Dark had concerted the whole business, and had been in the enemy's camp to give them intelligence; and particularly cautioned them not to expect my participation in the plan, for on the contrary, their wisest way would be to execute me immediately, lest something sinister should follow, which I was capable of planning, and bold enough to execute; and in consequence of this they were actually going to hang the poor serjeant, my substitute, when, as I said before, the quarter guard came up and surrounded them.

'Binns and Dark were immediately sent for and told that their iniquity was discovered. My friend, who was now charmed to have an opportunity of investigating whether I deserved his favour or not, upon the faith of my story, acquainted them with all those particulars relative to me which happened at Wolverhampton; when, upon offering to produce evidence to substantiate every tittle of what he alledged, they fell on their knees and implored for mercy. We were, however, in such a situation that no mercy could be granted to such offenders, and they were both condemned to suffer that death to which I had before been unjustly sentenced.

'I was still very wretched. My friend, the officer, saw it, and promised to do what he could to save the life of Binns. This, to be brief, he accomplished. Dark was shot, and Binns drummed out of the regiment. His fate, however, was only postponed, for being afterwards received in a regiment of Seapoys, he was put to death by a faithful Lascar in the moment of attempting for plunder, the life of that very officer who at my solicitation had generously saved his.

'While Binns and Dark were under sentence of death, I learnt from them how they had been served by their kind friends in England. Binns was kidnapped about the time I was, but they continued to make an instrument of Dark till he had written you that letter, in which he told you my father and I were great rogues, and then he was handcuffed and sent to keep company with his friends.

"Why Sir," said Walmesley, "these tools do such rogues most service in the end, for when they have drained what they need, it is but squeezing them and spunge, they are dry again." 'Well said Walmesley,' cried my elder brother. 'From Dark also I learnt,' continued my brother Peter, 'that it was to Sourby he betrayed you in Love-lane; and now having disposed of them, I shall proceed to other matters.

'My conduct was so well approved of during that campaign, that I obtained a pair of colours, and after it was over a lieutenancy, but to my great misfortune I lost my noble friend. He and I, and a few others, were surrounded. I did what I could to defend him, and narrowly escaped death myself, but we were so out-numbered, that though a party came and saved what few the conflict had left alive, he, after performing prodigies of valour, fell covered with wounds and glory.

'During a truce, our regiment happened to be at Calcutta, where being frequently invited to the houses of large factors, and other oppulent settlers, I was told one day I should be introduced to some young ladies who had come over to India to get husbands.' "One of them in particular," said my friend, "would suit you exactly, as you are a soldier of fortune, for she is very rich already, and makes no scruple to declare that she came purposely in search of some person not so fortunately off. Now whether she means any particular person I cannot say, but if she does not, and any handsome young man of address and understanding will serve her turn, I don't see why you should not stand as good a chance as another."

'I thanked him for his compliment, and said, that such disinterestedness was a charming feature in a wife, after which, company coming in, we talked of different matters. My friend was soon after called out, and presently sent a servant for me.' "Zounds," said he, "you are a lucky fellow. I have received a letter from the lady I spoke of, by way of excuse for her not attending us, but it appears to me that you are the cause, for my letter encloses one to you, which she begs I would deliver to you, having heard you were to be here this evening, and not knowing, otherwise, how to direct to you."

'I am then the cause, said I, as I opened the letter, and the happiest man that ever existed. Excuse me to the company, I'll call on you to-morrow. So saying, without further ceremony I left him.

THE LETTER CONTAINED THESE WORDS.

"IF Captain Higgins will have the goodness to call this evening at the house of Messrs. Charteris and Co. he will see an old friend, who wishes particularly to speak with him."

'Who do you think wrote that letter? The dear author of it is by your side; and the motive of that and every other part of her conduct is so flattering, so endearing to me, that no Hewit, dearly Hannah as he may love you, and worthily as you may deserve him, shall ever outdo me in tenderness and attention.

'I knew the hand writing, of course, the moment I saw it; but how she could know me by the name of Higgins I could not conceive; indeed, she little imagined she was writing to me, but having heard from some friends, who were of the party, that one captain Higgins was to be there, she, under an idea that it was my brother Thomas, was impatient to see him, in hopes of gathering some sort of intelligence from him, and feared if she put those questions to him in a mixed company, it might interest her too much.

'This caution happened to be very necessary, for our interview was tender enough, as you may conceive. Her delight at finding that I was not her brother, and my gratitude at hearing that she had left her own country to risk the chance of hearing of me, were of too interesting a nature to be expressed before witnesses. In short, as we had loved one another tenderly as brother and sister, so, every bar being now removed, we vowed a few days afterwards at the altar, to love one another tenderly as man and wife.

'We were soon torne, however, from each others arms. My honour, as a soldier, raised as I was from the ranks, and respect to his memory, to whom my promotion was owing, would not suffer me to sell out, I served several campaigns with the usual success of others.' "Who," said Walmesley, "such the bubble reputation in the cannon's mouth." 'Exactly,' said my brother, 'and many a bitter pang, while I have been on this endless search, has my absence caused her whose tenderness deserved more attention. At length, for a service I was fortunate enough to perform, I was sent express to England, where, by a most extraordinary accident, I saw you sister, and by another as extraordinary, lost an opportunity of explaining what would have prevented every trouble you have since experienced,

'My stay in England was only three weeks; where, with the approbation of the East-India Company, I resigned my military employ, and accepted a civil one in the residency of Benares, for which place, on my arrival in India, I set out with my wife and daughter.

'I had been at Benares three years, when I heard of the great merit of a young man at Oude, whose name was Hewit, and with what address he had defended himself against his enemies, who, jealous of such abilities in such a youth, had often attempted his overthrow. I had also heard of some brave actions that he had performed in the field, but as I knew several of the same name, as I had never heard that you had a son, nor could conceive, if you had, through what channel he could be in India; though pleased with what I had heard in his praise, as I should be to hear the commendation of any other extraordinary young man, I did not attempt at any communication with him, and to prove that this is natural, he had heard and thought of me in the same manner.

'I had been at Benares about two years. After this when, in common with others, I had heard of a most serious charge that was about to be exhibited against this young man, who was represented as so enterprizing as to have formed a plan of giving up a part of the country to the ravages of a certain adjacent Rajah, the circumstance struck me as a matter of so extraordinary a nature, that I interested myself, I knew not why, in the business, and fortunately came at the whole diabolical plot, which, had it succeeded, would have crushed him. I set out to Oude with my documents, and just as his enemies were on the point of prevailing against him, begged leave to be heard. My defence of him was so sound, so complete, that he was honourably acquitted, and those who had planned his destruction were attached.

'He considered me as a guardian angel sent to save him; and in the course of his modest acknowledgments for the service I had rendered him, we discovered we were uncle and nephew. Finding that nothing could induce him to have any thing further to do with public affairs, and, indeed, being heartily tired myself of mixing with people who were not contented without multiplying their fortune through the medium of rapine and plunder, which neither he nor I ever practised, I invited him to Benares, where he resided with me the last three years; when, having some time giving up my employ, at the earnest solicitation of my wife, I agreed to leave India with a view to pass the remainder of our lives in England.

'Being arrived at Calcutta, we called on our friend Charteris, of whom enquiring for a ship for England, we had the good fortune to be introduced to my brother Thomas.' "And now, my dear sister," said my elder brother, "you really have heard all our budget of news." To every word I have heard, said I, I have something to reply; but let us devote this day to enjoyment. To-morrow you shall fully become acquainted with my opinion, and my resolution.

CHAP VIII. WHICH MIGHT BE CALLED, IF THE TERM COULD BE SO FAR STRAINED, THE LIVING APOTHEOSIS OF HANNAH HEWIT.

As soon as we had breakfasted, and were seated on the lawn before my door, in view of all those beautiful and picturesque objects which I have so frequently described, my company manifested some impatience to hear those remarks on their various fortunes which I told them I had to make, and for which I had severally prepared them, as far as it was necessary on the preceding day.

The position, on which I meant to animadvert, and which I begged to be allowed, was that so many extraordinary and unheard of circumstances could not have combined in so remote a part of the world, to bring a number of friends together, friends so dear to each other, friends who, out of that small circle, had nothing upon earth of value, without the express intervention of providence.

If am answered, said I, that nothing is more common than for natives of England to go to India, and that many friendships have been formed there, which afterwards grew and improved at home, I shall answer that it does not apply in the present case. We none of us voluntarily went to India. We were impelled, beckoned there, and by an irresistable impulse; but, said I, what brought us here? A miracle! Performed, if we are wise, to complete our happiness.

The labrynth of our lives has been so impervious, and the clue so difficult to find, that if the whole had been invented and written down, it could not have been managed with more art. Is it not wonderful that my brother Peter no farther explained himself in the lobby of the playhouse, and that all further explanation was prevented by our setting out the next morning to France?

Again, notwithstanding, my wretched brother, in acquainting my husband of Sourby's detestable plot against our peace, must have mentioned, over and over again, that the person called Binns was my brother, is it not astonishing, that all the documents, in the chest, speak of every thing in such general terms, that I did not become acquainted with the circumstance until it was related yesterday by my brother himself? No; the ecclairissement was to take place here; here we were to meet; here we were to compare notes; here we were to consult upon what footing to ensure our future happiness.

Take up any one of our stories, in almost any part of it, and you will find it a kind of index pointing to this day. Whenever we have been within a hair's breadth of individual happiness, some singular event has prevented it; Why? That we might now be happy together. Nor could this happiness be accomplished till the malignant fiends that were perpetually thwarting our hopes and refining our virtue, like gold in the fire, were no more.

When this event was confirmed, though at so many distant parts of the world, Fate called us together as a shepherd calls his sheep into the fold. Will you say this was chance? Was it chance that I have been three years on this desolate island, as it were to expect you? Was it chance that my husband was hurried to different parts of the world for the same three years to touch at Calcutta? Was it chance that Mr. Walmesley should be the same three years resident there? Was it chance that my brother Peter, after he had found my son and saved his reputation, should reside the same three years at Benares, and then bring him to the same spot? Was it chance that brought so many friends to the same place in one mind, with one determination, though no one of them individually knew of another's intention? And lastly; when this band of friends were all met together, was it chance that sent them to discover in so remote, so desolate a spot, the only object that would complete their happiness?

Was this chance? Miracles do not happen by chance. No; we are a set whose uncommon trials have never warped us from our moral duties. Our lives have been watched by that eye that regards virtue with benignity, and this happy meeting is the reward of our truth and fidelity.

Let us now see how to be thankful for this blessing. I have contemplated, I have weighed, I have considered, and I think, indeed, I know there is but one way. Nor let my observation be disregarded; contemplation is more nearly allied to prophecy than is generally imagined. Beings, estranged from a converse with the world, if they cherish virtue almost commune with the Deity, and conclusions beam across such minds, as rational as truth, and as certain as fate.

I never yet mistook the salutary warnings conveyed in such sensations, nor can I those which earnestly assail me at this moment. Dear friends, so long lost, so lately found, so necessary to one another's happiness, do not cast from you the certain, the valuable treasure you possess. I conjure you to seize the only opportunity you have ever had in your power of securing permanent bliss.

Would you be completely blest, would ye never know care, nor anxiety, nor sorrow. Would ye escape the viles of treachery, the practice of villany, the malignity of envy, and all the accumulated miseries and misfortunes certain to attend a communication with society, tempt not the world again. Let us enjoy a happiness which our first parents sorfeited by indulging a fatal curiosity. We have here an Eden, it will be our own faults if we do not make it a Paradise.

"Why, ay," said Walmesley, "a man may rot even here." And why not, said I, Mr. Walmesley? Have you found any thing in the world so very grateful, so very thankful, in return for all your labour in vain, goodness and generosity, that should induce you to run the risk of getting into gaol again, or being buried alive for those who did not care if you were buried in good earnest? "Oh, no," said Walmesley, "you misunderstand me, I think with you. 'In such a shabby, ragged, rascally world, the post of honour is a private station.'

'Well, but Hannah,' said my brother Thomas, 'though certainly your harrangue is full of eloquence, and happens to be every word truth, you don't seriously, I hope, think of giving up the world.'

Can you tell me brother, said I, in what station happiness is to be found? Is it in the cottage? No; the poor peasant shall toil out a laborious and wearisome life in penury and want, a stranger even to that plenty lavished on his master's hounds. Is it on the throne? No; the King shall be a pattern of goodness and virtue, shall love his subjects like his children, shall stimulate them to honour by his example, shall watch their interest, study their welfare, conciliate and cherish their affections, and by gracious, great, and godlike qualities, manifest himself as the vicegerent of the Deity; yet shall some diabolical fiend, some lurking traytor, some dark assasin, some malignant foe to order, morality, and every social virtue, be continually disturbing his repose, and cowardly terrifying his amiable consort, and his lovely progeny, with the perpetual glare of a dagger.

Is this a world then in which a reasonable being should covet a residence? Where envy and her malignant train are perpetually upon the watch to blast every bud of virtue? In such a world to be accused is to be condemned; and but for conscious rectitude, which, to the world, carries no letter of recommendation, a man may as well be hanged at Tyburn as be honourably acquitted at the Old Bailey.

Let us then not sully our happiness by mixing with a world where virtue itself can find no safety. We are all mortals, and, here at least, are sure that no temptation can corrupt us; for the human mind is mutable, and, like wax, is capable of receiving various impressions; and my reflections have convinced me that perfection will continue so long as it is secluded from the world, but too often, when it is mixed with the world, like a drop of milk in a sink, it will be lost and confounded, partaking of the colour, stench, and quality, of that loathsome filth in which it is absorbed.

'For my own part,' said my brother Thomas, 'I certainly shall not take your advice, but we are pretty nearly of a mind for all that; you chuse your world in one spot, I find mine wherever I go. Those, you know, you wish to consider as friends, I only want acquaintance, though, I believe, you will all do me the justice to say, my heart is pretty warm too. but I'll tell you one reason for this whim of mine; I don't like any thing to touch me too nearly, it would make me a milksop; therefore, while you refine on pleasures, I take mine as they come; and this will be the consequence; your enjoyments will be more perfect than mine, but you will find a bitterer pang than I shall at parting from them.'

Heaven forbid, said I, my dear brother, that I should use any arguments to induce you to do that of which you would repent, or wish that any fears with which I may be possessed, should shake whatever resolution you may have made. That would be to arraign the very Providence in which I so implicitly put my trust. Should I tell you that I have been once shipwrecked, and, therefore, dare not venture in a ship again, you would laugh at my womanish apprehensions.

'Indeed I should,' said my brother, 'if you are afraid for me on that account, I thank you for your love, but give yourself no concern. I am none of your unfortunate adventurers, who, like Dutchmen, are always ashore some where or other; my way is to arrive safe ship and cargo. No, no, Old Boreas has too great a regard for me to do me any harm.'

At this instant, I know not why, I burst into a flood of tears. 'Nay, nay,' said my brother, 'my dear Hannah, but you know this is—'I beg your pardon, said I, the sensation was involuntary, I assure you I would not give you a moment's uneasiness—'Well, well,' said he, taking me tenderly by the hand, 'don't let your concern for me afflict you; I shall arrive safe in Old England never fear, and so, I hope, will you for all your apprehensions.'

As for me, said I, I solemnly vow to end my days in this place; my dear husband has promised to stay with me, And now, though I have thought it a duty, a most tender, a most necessary, a most sacred duty, to offer what I have said to all your reflections, I will not utter another word to influence any of your determinations, not even that of my son. A choice of so serious a nature should be made from conviction, not from persuasion.

"For me," said my brother Peter, "to my mind conviction has followed every word you have uttered. Sacred truth has fallen from your tongue, and I have felt the force of your arguments like inspiration. Certainly every part of the world is new to us; and without your society, we could be no where perfectly happy. I, therefore, most solemnly declare that if upon reflection my wife and daughter find nothing in it repugnant to their inclinations, I shall consent to your proposal upon your own principle of chusing rational happiness."

'As to me my love,' said my sister, 'my first happiness in life, from the moment I could remember, was yourself; to this moment I have not altered my opinion; and, therefore, as there can be no world for me but where you are, so that part of the world must be most agreeable to me where I have most of your company, and particularly in the society of a sister I have ever tenderly loved.

My niece was now consulted, who sweetly answered that she should be implicitly guided by her father and mother. "Well, then," said my brother Thomas, "If that's the case, my nephew Jack will stay of course." At these words, my son and my niece blushed and looked confounded. "That's right," faid my brother, "don't be ashamed of that, Old Diogenes said, 'that a blush was the colour of virtue.' The fact is, and I suppose you have all seen it, that they love each other." 'We do,' said my son, 'with the most tender, the most honourable affection.' "That," said my brother, "is what I call honesty. Well, since that's the case, let Domine tack them together. There is another stroke of Providence for you, sister, he came here on purpose." My dear brother, said I—"I beg your pardon," said he, "you know I must have my joke if the ship was sinking.

"Well, Walmesley," continued my brother, "what say you? You won't stay I am sure." 'Yes, but I will, though,' said Walmesley, 'my fate cries out, "why, Lord, if I don't stay they will have nothing to laugh at." Then turning to me, 'go on, I'll follow thee.' "I'll be even with you then," said my brother, "Britannia shall go with me I am determined." 'And would you,' said Walmesley, 'leave me all alone like a turtle to bemoan the absence of my mate! a single stocking, half a pair of sheers.'

"No, no," said my brother, "you shall stay and study philosophy." 'Hang up philosophy,' said Walmesley, 'unless philosophy could make a Juliet!' And so you are in love, said I, Mr. Walmesley. 'Yes, madam, a thing of my own; a poor humour of mine, to take that which no man else will. "Trip Audrey, where is Sir Oliver Martext?"

"Well," said my brother, "to use your own manner, I don't like my favours to come hard from me. Britannia has made me her guardian, and I consent to your marrying her, and so, you see, it all falls right. Since you are determined to have a little England of your own, you ought to have a Britannia among you; and if the lion had lived, the resemblance would have been perfect."

Ah my poor Leo! said I. "Well, well," said my brother, "Jack Hewit will protect you from the monkies better than he did; and now, since it mun be so, as the mayor's son said at Nottingham, let Domine do his duty, and then people your island as fast as possible."

That, said I, shall go as chance may direct it. "Oh Lord!" said my brother, "chance will direct it very well. It will be very hard, indeed, if you can't people this island, when the same number of persons once peopled the whole world."

CHAP IX. IN WHICH, HANNAH HAVING BROUGHT UP THE LEE WAY OF HER LIFE, CAPTAIN HIGGINS SAILS, AND THE HISTORY CONCLUDES WITH A MORAL REFLECTION.

IT was not long before I found that every argument I used might have been spared; for as it is unconceivable what a heavenly place we were in, so the propriety of making it a medium of never ending happiness became more apparent to every mind, in proportion as their ideas were expanded by its beauty. I own this delighted me. To owe their pleasure to their own election, not tomy persuasion, was a satisfaction to me doubly and trebly welcome, for I should have been miserable, indeed, had there been a chance of a single sigh among my friends at the expence of their forced consent in complaisance to me.

I, nevertheless, went over the whole ground again; and finding them firmly attached to their resolution, I from that moment considered every thing like common business, My brother Thomas consented to stay a fortnight to celebrate the double wedding of my son and my niece, and of Walmesley and Britannia.—This interval it was agreed I should employ in finishing my history, which he faithfully promised to get published, telling me that as he did not much understand those matters, Domine should stand by and see fair play and take care, being a man of letters, to correct the press.

Finding that nothing would shake our determination, he now bent his whole attention to make us comfortable. He landed from the Dane some fine Arabian horses, a mare with foal, three goats, two kids, and several Chinese pigs; all which kindness, however, he would very often interlard with observations of how rueful we should look when we once lost sight of him, and what a glorious laugh he should have against us when we got tired and sought our fortune in a skiff of our own building.

I let him jest while I wrote; mean while my husband, my brother, my son and Walmesley, were all cutting out business, and planning pleasure for us all; while my sister, my niece, and Britannia were delighted to see their husbands so rationally employed, and studying what way they could make their persons and their conduct most agreeable to them. In short, we began already to find our place a little heaven upon earth, and I could plainly see the only emulation among us would be who should most endeavour to realize that idea.

In the evenings I used to read to them what I had written in the course of the day; in which they all agreed I had given a faithful representation of their characters, and their fortunes. The comments arising from what they heard were expressions of wonder, and confirmations of their resolution, which, as usual, produced a new effort to ensnare my brother into our plan, to which we generally received some satirical compliment on our having minds superior to the rest of our fellow creatures, and some such arch remark, as that he should try what he could to establish a commercial treaty between Great Britain and her New Colony. "But," added he, "I don't see any thing at present you have to export but monkies, and we have plenty of those already."

We, on our side, did not fail to rally him. When he asked us what he should do with our money? 'Take it,' said Walmesley, 'we have sold you poison, you have sold us none.' Hewit told him, that by the time he had emptied his purse in satisfying those sharks the landlords, laying to for painted galleys, and relieving the distresses of honest fellows, he would begin to think of his friends in the South Seas. "Well," said my brother, "if it should be so, I have made a good observation, I know where to find you, and I am sure you will give me a snug birth. In that case too, I shall not only be able to bring Hannah an account of her life in print, but shall be able to tell her how many converts her pains to reform the world will have produced, though between ourselves, Jack, I think, without any of her prophetic pretensions, I could tell her that now. No, no, she has a strong mind, but I don't think it Herculean enough to cleanse that augean stable the world."

I told him that I had no hope of accomplishing any such impossible task. If the vice I had painted appeared ugly, and the virtue beautiful, it was all I had a right to expect; that done, men must think for themselves. There is no telling mankind, said I, how to be right, nor how to be happy, that knowledge is born with us, and we feel insulted at hearing an explanation of what we already know. But it is not simply to be happy, it is to be happy by rule, by mode, by taste; thus pleasure leads to folly, folly to vice, and vice to misfortune, yet nothing is so easy as to avoid the evil and chuse the good, but it all arises from the perverseness of human nature; and if Jupiter's tubs were promiscuously presented to mortals for sale, I know not whether the plagues would not turn out more marketable than the pleasures.

But my history is arrived at the very moment in which I am writing; I must, therefore, arrange it, and deposit it, with every necessary document, in Hewit's chest, that my brother may have every possible proof, on his publishing it, that all the particulars it contains are true and genuine.

To-morrow we shall all have the painful task of parting with that dear, that valuable relation. The ship will then be underweigh, Heaven send that it may arriver at its destined port. Many a tear will witness our separation, many a wish will be wafted in a sigh that the gale may be propitious; of what my feelings will be at parting, the reader must form an idea, just as a painter conceals a face his pencil cannot express, and leaves that description of the torne heart it ought to convey to the imagination of the spectator.

And now, gentle reader, if I pant for peace, for ease, for tranquility, after so much turbulence and trouble; if I prefer content and retirement to restleness and bustle; a quiet spot to a busy world; an unknown obscure corner, to my own magnificent and flourishing country; think me not lost to ambition, to pride, to curiosity, to popularity, I am a mortal and possess them all.

Rather commend me, that made up of passions in common with my fellow creatures, I am content to wage no future war with destiny. Look at my fortune and confess me born, not for myself, but for an example to others. Blame me not if I have learnt to know, that, in the world, friendship is a name, fame a bubble, honour a jest, merit a but for envy, beauty the ridicule of impudence, and virtue the prey of slander. Be not hard with me if I grieve, that from the moment of my obscure birth to the moment of my sequestration from the world, I never found, except in my dear brother, and those who retire with me, a single disinterested friend.

Let unprecedented considerations excuse unprecedented conduct; and if, at last, I err, and in my error embrace my fate, let it induce, for my consolation, and for your pity, a recollection of his Divine words, who has benificently taught us, that‘"THERE IS AN ESPECIAL PROVIDENCE IN THE FALL OF A SPARROW."’

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Title statement

Hannah Hewit: or, the female Crusoe. Being the history of a woman of uncommon, mental, and personal accomplishments; who, ... was cast away in the Grosvenor East-Indiaman: and became for three years the sole inhabitant of an island, in the South Seas. Supposed to be written by herself. [pt.3]

Dibdin, Charles, 1745-1814.

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http://ota.ox.ac.uk/id/4894

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1106018931

ID [isbn13]

9781106018939

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K085958.003

ID [BIBNO]

CW3310965759

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0247300203

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— Hannah Hewit: or, the female Crusoe. Being the history of a woman of uncommon, mental, and personal accomplishments; who, ... was cast away in the Grosvenor East-Indiaman: and became for three years the sole inhabitant of an island, in the South Seas. Supposed to be written by herself., Dibdin, Charles, 1745-1814.. 3v. ; 8⁰. London :: printed for C. Dibdin,. [1792]. [In fact written by Charles Dibdin.] [Reproduction of original from the British Library.] [English Short Title Catalog, ESTCT107055.] [Electronic data. Farmington Hills, Mich. : Thomson Gale, 2003. Page image (PNG). Digitized image of the microfilm version produced in Woodbridge, CT by Research Publications, 1982-2002 (later known as Primary Source Microfilm, an imprint of the Gale Group).]

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