sake; it is not a very valuable gift, but as the old Greek has written

Δεχου φιλον γε δωρον εκ φιλης χερος.

I have turned down a page which I would have you read: remember the lines which I have underscored. I shall be glad to see you at any time; and now good night."

I opened the volume before I went, and just glanced at the title-page. It was a copy of

Bacon's Essays.

"Perhaps," said I, when I had reached home, "I may find something in this book which will throw a light upon the vagueness of my conjectures, some key which will unlock the blue chamber of this mystery." So I opened the volume, where the page had been inverted, and read the following passage, which was underscored with red-ink.

"Cosmus, Duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if these wrongs were unpardonable. 'You shall read, saith he, 'that we are commanded to forgive our enemies, but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends!""

I went to bed that night as usual, and I dreamt of Cosmus, Duke of Florence.

On the following morning, whilst I was a

breakfast, a note from Delaval was put into my hands :

"My dear Jerningham,

"The excitement of last night was too much for me. The physician tells me that I am in a high fever. Be it so; my hour is come. Haste to my lodgings, or you will be too late! For the last time I sign myself

"DELAVAL."

I was not slow to obey the summons. In halfan-hour's time I was at Delaval's lodgings. The sick man was lying upon a couch; his face was slightly flushed; but the colour was a presage of death more ominous than the ghastliest pallor. A bible was resting on one of the cushions: Delaval put it into my hand; it was a large Family

Bible.

"Ah!" he said, you are just in time. I thought once that I might write my history; but I could not: I raved upon the paper; perhaps I shall rave now; but the presence of another person will, in some measure, restrain me, I think. Solitude is the nurse of delirium. Well, do you see nothing there?" And he pointed to some writing on the fly-leaf of the book, which I held in my hand. "This bible belonged to my father;

it has not seen the daylight for years. I had a reverence for the book, and I liked not to destroy it; but I feared lest it might become a witness against me. What name do you see written there? -not Delaval, methinks; right-Henry Moreton : he was my father! Ah! look you lower down: that is the record of my birth. Well, what is it? you have come at my proper name now."

"Godfray Moreton !"

"Right! and now you shall listen to my history."

CHAPTER IX.

List a brief tale,

And when 'tis told, oh! that my heart would burst.

SHAKSPEARE.

"My name is Godfray Moreton. My father was a man of some eminence in the law, and possessed of considerable property at the period of my unhappy nativity. I was his only child; and my entrance into the world was ushered in by an act of homicide. My mother died in parturition. I never knew what it was to be fostered by maternal affection, -' love foreswore in my mother's womb.' On the threshold of existence, I was greeted with curses and lamentations.

"Jerningham! if you wish to know the source of all my errors and misfortunes, these are mild terms -I ought to say, of my guilt and desolation; I will tell you, without delay, that I owe my fall solely to the unnatural susceptibility of my senses. From my childhood upwards, I have been the victim of passions so easily awakened, of feelings so easily acted upon, - that a word, a look, a circumstance in itself most minute and insignificant, when relating, either directly or indirectly, to me, has ever possessed the power of elevating or depressing my spirits, - of making me an angel, or a monster, in a second. I looked upon every thing, as it were, through a magnifying glass. Nothing whatever escaped me. I had no mean. I was always immoderately wretched, when not immoderately joyous. My days were without twilight; when the splendour of the sun had departed, darkness came suddenly on,-black, thick, and impenetrable. Childhood was not with me a season of thoughtless and unsorrowing innocence: if my stature had kept pace with my passions in their growth, I should have been a giant in the very spring of my boyhood. A word of unkindness from my father cut keener than the lash would upon others. He never smote me, for he was not cruel; peradventure, I should have hated him had he done so. And yet he was not kind; at least not as a parent should be to his child, an only parent to an only child. But I made allowance for the conduct of my father; I felt that my birth