"What have I done," said he, "to be forgiven by Bertha and Albany, who ought rather to ask forgiveness of me? and as to heaven, thwarted as I have been in everything in this world, what can I expect in the next? Do not torment me,

father, but let me die in quiet."

I own this account overwhelmed me, and I thought with distress of Fothergill's prediction.

With regard to the other proud man (Lord Albany), on the strength of the message of inquiry sent by him to Foljambe, I had some hope of him, and asked Mr. Sandford whether any thing like contrition or forgiveness had been expressed on his part. Sandford, who had been an army surgeon, said, that could hardly be expected, and in fact had not probably been the motive. That Lord Albany should be anxious that his antagonist should not die, was natural on more accounts than one: "but we are to recollect," said Sandford, "that Mr. Hastings was the challenger, and received the fortune of war. Albany, moreover, is himself by no means safe; his life even now hangs upon a thread; fever would kill him directly."

All this did not make me happier; and under such feelings I felt all the desolation of being left alone for the night, friendless, and seemingly abandoned in a strange laud, the scene of so much misery.

The next morning I was consoled by learning that Granville had returned. Both he and Colonel Sackville had changed their intentions of retiring. As there was no witness to the duel but themselves and the valets, who had gone out of the way, nothing could be brought home to them; and their withdrawal, which would be construed into absconding, could only excite suspicion; they therefore both returned.

Granville's feelings may be conceived. He was alive to the dreadful blow the family had sustained, made worse by, the total absence of a sufficient cause for the unhappy measure that had occasioned it. On this, grieved as he was, he did not conceal his opinion, or that it had taken its rise solely from the headlong violence and overbearing pride of the sufferer. His removal, however, he said, might perhaps after all be better for himself, as well as those who now wept him—so dangerous and so uncertain are the ways of the proud and selfwilled.

Upon this I told him how little Foljambe had been pitied at Oxford; when he observed, it was to be expected, and, could he have known it, it would have been his severest mortification.

I had, however, other matter to communicate, in the changed, and, to me, surprising behaviour of Mr. Hastings.

"Why," said Granville, when I mentioned it, "though one of the proudest as to birth and all aristocratic prejudices, his pride was always, and sometimes successfully, encountered by his piety; for as far as sentiment and a sense of dependence upon heaven go, he is most sincerely and naturally pious; so that his prejudices, which are those merely of education, are often, even in ordinary matters, at variance with his religious feelings, which are those of the heart. At the present moment, the latter have obtained complete ascendancy; for he thinks he is deservedly under the hand of Heaven, chastising him for his good. Indeed, I have often known him presage that his pride would be one day severely visited by providence; and he supposes the blow he has deserved by way of punishment is now struck. Hence his change from loftiness to humility and resignation, and his softness to you.

"It would be now, indeed, no time to shew pride, if he had it even in a greater degree; but his pride, at any rate, is very different from poor Foljambe's, which arose out of an impetuous and even tyrannous disposition, unchecked by religion, and wholly different from that of his father, who is a just man. The one was an imperious disdain of every thing that did not yield to him; the other, the innocuous prejudices of a goodnatured, well-born gentleman, merely conscious and fond of a long pedigree."

I own I had a secret pleasure in hearing these nice distinctions in the pride of father and son, which never struck me before, but which, thus pointed out, seemed no more than just. Yet even this, I thought, did not account for the unusual kindness of manner shewn by Mr. Hastings, and I expressed to Granville my wonder how it arose.

Clearly," said he, "from the justice I have mentioned as a part of his character. He thought, what was true, that you had been ill-treated by his son, at whose change towards you, without any cause, he was highly disgusted. Bertha, too, though I am more than ever afraid to mention her to you,

shared this feeling, and both paid due respect to your ancient descent, to which Mr. Hastings himself always attached no small importance."

At the name of Bertha I started, but could not help asking Granville why he was more than ever affraid of mentioning her?

66

Why, see you not," said he, "that her position is greatly changed by what has happened, and that she is no longer in the ordinary condition of a young woman with a fixed portion, but has become a great heiress ?"

The thought struck me profoundly, and the more from its having never occurred to me before.

"To be sure," continued Granville, "West-India property, which forms the bulk of their fortune, is uncertain, and there are sometimes strange revolutions among these plantation grandees; nevertheless, the domain of Foljambe alone, though not considerable, would render her a far more weighty match than she was before. I speak in a worldly point of view." "Worldly, indeed," said I, and I gave a sigh, not unobserved by Granville.

"I know," said he, "what that sigh implies; and I agree with you in thinking that Bertha is such a fortuue in herself, that he must be a worldly-minded wretch that could think of pelf when thinking of her. To seek fortune with her would begilding refined gold.' Nevertheless, we must open our eyes, and confess that the sphere of her attraction is enlarged by this event. Your sigh, too, has also another meaning." I asked what?

"Why, I have by my expression set before you more than ever all that, in the view of the world, interposes between you and your ambition. But is not this the truth, and ought you not to be told it by a friend, if it does not occur to yourself? Can I shew myself this friend better than by setting before you the still greater necessity than ever of abandoning what, if pursued, will inevitably destroy you?"

CHAPTER XXX.

RESIGNATION AND

DANGER OF MR. HASTINGS.-FIRMNESS

OF HIS

DAUGHTER.

Lear," To deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is.

*

Do not laugh at me,

*

For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia."

Cordelia. "I am, I am."

SHAKSPEARE.-King Lear.

THE Concluding observation of Granville, though no more than just, and no more than what I should have made myself, was bitter to my feelings. I resolved, however, for the twentieth time, to take his advice, and return immediately to Oxford, without trusting myself to seek another interview with Mr. Hastings.

This resolution, firm as it was, was overthrown in a moment, by that gentleman's sending a servant to beg I would call upon him. To refuse, I thought, would not only be ungrateful, but the height of incivility, and, in his situation, unfeeling and barbarous. I went, therefore, and with a hurried step. I found him collected and resigned, but his bodily feelings much worn. He had been exceedingly agitated by an inquest that had been held on his dead son, though as there was no positive evidence either of the duel or the cause of quarrel, many of the distressing particulars were avoided: there was no manner of doubt that the death was occasioned by Lord Albany's hand; yet, as Mr. Hastings was most scrupulous in refusing to prosecute, and even in withholding all information which he could keep back, the verdict was general, namely, death by a pistol shot, but by whom fired did not appear.

This being over, there remained the question of the funeral, which Granville had exerted his utmost to persuade Mr.

Hastings to leave to him, and himself to retire to Foljambe. But the father asserted himself, and refused to be spared the melancholy task. He held it a duty, he said, which he owed to the God who had only properly struck him, to shew his resignation to his will, by bowing over the grave of the son who had been taken from him.

He had desired Granville to attend him in this last office; and it was to ask me, as one who had shewn such attachment to the lost Foljambe (spite of ill usage) to join him in the same attention, that he had sent for me. "It will be a consolation to me," said the afflicted old man, to shew how little I thought you deserved the unjust treatment you received; and if such a supposition may be indulged, I pleased myself in thinking, that the unhappy boy himself may know and approve it"

I was greatly affected, and felt that what Granville had represented to me of the real piety of his uncle, was no more than true. It may be supposed that my return to Oxford was

postponed.

I will not re-open the affliction I underwent at the cere mony, by touching upon its details further than to say, that the firmness and resignation, mingled with deep sorrow, shewn by this wounded father, commanded the admiration of all. His bearing, naturally so lofty, seemed indeed bowed to the earth, but in a manner still comparatively dignified, and evidently evincing, that he succumbed to a being who he felt, if He afflicted him, had done so in mercy. In short, he was an example of the resigned confidence of the Psalmist " It is good for me to have been in trouble, that I may learn thy statutes,"

Nevertheless his misery was abundant, and at last alarming; for on his return to the hotel, he remained long on his couch, in a fixed stupor, without uttering a word, though we all tried to obtain his notice, in order to divert him from himself.

Sandford watched for tears, and endeavoured to excite them, as the best chance of restoring him, by talking of his son, but in vain; his state continued unaltered, and Sandford began to be seriously uneasy. "If we can produce no vent for his grief," said he, "I will not answer for the consequen It is a pity his daughter is not here, if indeed he could know her."

ces.