tinguish the partizans of the opposing candidates, and the dæmons of drunkenness, profusion, and debauchery, already publicly paraded through the streets of the town.

This uproar and confusion made a very visible impression on the mind of Denterville. He was now observed to be continually thoughtful and meditative, like a person, whose mind is agitated by some vast and secret design; and, in truth, these appearances were not belied by the event.

The borough to which his estate lay contingent was one of those which are distingnished by the appellation of "Rotten," both on account of the smallness of the town, and the paucity of the electors. It was, he thought, a matter of no great difficulty or expence, to be elected for such a trifling place; he had already gained the estimation of the inhabitants, by some inconsiderable privileges he had lately granted them; and, after a little rumination, he was resolutely determined to endeavour to become one of the national representatives in the House of Commons. There were a number of patriotic gentlemen, whose names he recollected, and whose speeches he had always read with delight in the newspapers; and all of whom he esteemed as so many pillars, that served to support the tottering constitution of their country. He had heard of their being drawn triumphantly, in their carriages, through the streets, by the ungovernable mobs of London, and, with such a flattering distinction, he thought he must be unquestionably happy. He had frequent conferences with his steward, who in no wise dissuaded him from the resolution he had taken; his jovial companions readily offered the whole of their considerable interest; and, to the astonishment and dismay of the contending candidates, he accordingly presented himself as a member for the borough. His great liberality quickly gained him a number of votes; his greater promises produced him more; the tenants of his estate all immediately flocked to his standard; and he already had a good prospect of the victory, when his most formidable competitor suddenly dying, by his exertions and intemperance during the poll, it put the matter out of dispute, and Denterville, with his remaining opponent, was duly elected member of parliament.

After the accustomed number of entertainments and acknowledgments for favours received on the one side, and as many compliments and congratulations on the other, he, with the impatience so characteristic of him, immediately departed for London, leaving the superintendance of the castle to his amiable wife, whom, notwithstanding her most urgent entreaties, he peremptorily refused to accompany him. And, as in the course of a busy narrative, the fate of Caroline may perhaps be hereafter passed by unrelated, let it suffice now to say, that the depression of her spirits was considerably augmented after the departure of her husband. This last mark of his unkindness towards her served to complete the measure both of his disaffection and of her misery. From this time she spoke but little; she did not even sigh; a kind of lethargy stole insensibly upon her, and pervaded, with its baneful effects, her delicate frame. Her eye became vacant, her countenance discoloured and pale, and, in a short time, so far had she lost the use of her recollection, that she could with difficulty recognize the well-known features of her most intimate friends. She would frequently sit in the same place, in the same position, for the long space of a day and a night; and, rejecting the consolation, and even the medicines of the physicians who attended her, she would remain sullen and immovable, pathetically declaring, that life itself she only considered as an intolerable burden. At length the anguish of her mind affected her body; she was reduced to the wretched appearance of a skeleton; and Denterville had not been arrived in London above a quarter of a year, before he received, by a letter from his steward, the unexpected, and, too probably, the pleasing intelligence, of the departure of his wife to the region of spirits.

He wrote immediately to his steward, to desire him to conduct the funeral ceremonies in a manner suitable to the condition of the deceased; urgent and indispensable business would, he said, unavoidably detain him a reluctant prisoner in London; but, at the same time, that he might not appear wholly deficient in the respect that was due, he dispatched a celebrated undertaker, with all the gloomy paraphernalia of his office, to attend the the corpse of his wife from the castle to her grave.

W

Thus, as it is too frequently the case, the object of detestation whilst alive, was loaded with all the usual marks of pomp and affection when no more; the guilty offender seemed solicitous to expiate, by the magnificence of the burial, the unpardonable behaviour he had formerly used; and a costly monument, that was shortly after erected, by his own direction, over her bones, told to posterity, that there reposed the ashes of the young, the beauteous, Caroline Denterville, "the best of wives-to the best of husbands."

(To be continued >

BIOGRAPHICAL.

MEMOIRS OF MRS. CHARLOTTE SMITH.

THERE is a pleasure of a very pure and elevated kind in paying a tribute to the memory of departed genius. But there are characters which it requires a venturous spirit to touch; the nice shades of intellectual eminence, the evanescent movements of a trembling heart, demands no common pen to delineate them.

Mrs. Charlotte Smith was the daughter of Nicholas Turner, Esq. a gentleman of Sussex, whose seat at Stoke, near Guilford, was afterwards owned by Mr. Dyson. But her father possessed another house, as it seems, at Bignor Park, on the banks of the Arun, where she passed many of her earliest years of which she speaks in the following beautiful stanza :—

"Then, from thy wild-wood banks, Aruna, roving,
Thy thymy downs with sportive steps I sought,
And nature's charms with artless transport loving,

Sung like the birds unheeded and untaught.

How enchanting must have been the day-dreams of a mind thus endowed, in the early season of youth and hope! Amid sce

The name of Jeremiah Dyson is well known, as the friend and patron of Akenside.

nery which had nurtured the fancies of Otway and of Collins, she trod on sacred ground: every charm of Nature seems to have made the most lively and distinct impression on her very vivid mind; and her rich imagination must have peopled it with beings of another world. She has often addressed the river Arun. The following is her

XXXTH SONNET.

Be the proud Thames, of trade the busy mart!
Arun to thee will other praise belong;
Dear to the lover's and the mourner's heart,
And ever sacred to the sons of song g!
Thy banks romantick hopeless love shall seek
Where o'er the rock's the mantling bindwith flaunts;
And sorrow's drooping form and faded cheek,
Choose on thy willow'd shore her lonely haunts!
Banks! which inspir'd thy Otway's plaintive strain!
Wilds! whose lorn echoes learn'd the deeper tone
Of Collins' powerful shell! yet once again
Another poet-Haley is thine own!

Thy classic streams anew still hear a lay,
Bright as its waves, and various as its way.

Again she thus speaks of her early propensities in her

XLVTH SONNET.

Farewell Aruna! on whose varied shore,

My early vows were paid to virtue's shrine,

When thoughtless joy, and infant hope were mine,
And whose lone stream has heard me since deplore
Too many sorrows! sighing I resign

Thy solitary beauties; and no more

Or on thy rocks, or in thy woods recline;
Or on the heath, by moonlight lingering, pore
On air-drawn phantoms! while in Fancy's ear
The enthusiast of the lyre,* who wander'd here,

• Collins.

Seems yet to strike his visionary shell,

Of power to call forth Pity's tenderest tear;
Or wake wild frenzy from her hideous cell.

In her 5th Sonnet she addresses the South Downs, with her usual pathos,

Ah! hills belov'd, where once an happy child,

Your beechen shades, your turf, your flowers among

I wove your blue-bells into garlands wild,

And woke your echoes with my artless song;

Ah, hills belov'd, your turf, your flowers remain ;
But can they peace to this sad breast restore,
For one poor moment sooth the sense of pain,

And teach a breaking heart to throb no more?

Mrs. Smith discovered from a very early age, like all minds of active and expanded curiosity, an insatiable thirst for reading, which yet was checked by her aunt who had the care of her education; for she had lost her mother almost in her infancy. She did not read as a task; nor according to any regular system, which may be more proper for common faculties, but devoured with eager eyes, every book which fell in her way; an indulgence that enlarged the sphere of her observation, and extended her powers. It did not tend to make her, in the pedantic sense, a learned woman; but surely it tended to make her something much better, it gave impulse to her powers of inquiry and of thinking; and mingled itself with the original observations of a vigorous and penetrating understanding.

From her twelfth to her fifteenth year her father resided occasionally in London, and she was introduced into frequent and various society. It would be curious to have a picture of her feelings and her remarks at that critical period. With that live. liness of perception and that eloquent simplicicity of language, which women of sensibility and talents possess, more especially at an early age, in a degree so superior to the other sex, she must not only have been highly attractive, but have exhibited such a brilliancy of imagination, and of sentiment, yet unsub