able. At last, finding her resolutely determined to risk her life, rather than hazard the displeasure of a fond parent, he informed her, that as she had brought herself into that perilous situation on his account, he thought it incumbent on him, as a man of honour, to share it with her, Accordingly, when he had with difficulty prevailed on some watermen to undertake the passage, they both stepped into the boat.

Just as they put off, Mr. Marvell threw his goldheaded cane to some of his friends on shore, telling them, that as he could not permit the young lady to cross the river alone, and as he was apprehensive that the passage would be fatal, he desired them to give it to his son, bidding him at the same time to remember his father. The boat then bore away, but had not proceeded far before it was overset, and the whole party drowned.

The lady, whose excessive fondness had plunged her daughter and her friend into this terrible situation, went the same afternoon into her garden, and seated herself in an arbour, from whence she could view the water. While she was looking at the sea with a considerable deal of anxiety, as it was in a very tempestuous state, she saw, or rather thought she saw, a most lovely boy, with flaxen hair, come into the garden, and heard him, or rather thought she heard him, address her on his approaching her directly in the following words: "Your daughter is safely arrived, madam." Surprised at such an address, the lady replied, "My pretty dear, how didst thou know any thing of my daughter, or that she was in danger?" Then bidding him stay, she

rose, and went into the house to look for a piece of new money as a reward for his care and diligence. When she returned to the garden, the child was gone; and, upon making inquiries in her family about him, she found that nobody except herself had seen him, and that there was no child in the neighbourhood that answered her description. She now began to entertain some suspicions of her calamity, and they were soon afterwards but too fatally confirmed. In the deep sorrow which she felt for the loss of her daughter, she did not, however, forget the still greater calamity which had befallen the family of her respected friend, in being deprived of their head and protector. Justly conceiving that she was bound by the strongest ties to make every kind of reparation in her power, she sent for young Marvell, took upon herself the charge of his education, and left him her fortune at her death.

MRS. ROWE.

The celebrated writer of the "Letters from the Dead to the Living," is said to have possessed a command over her passions, and a constant serenity and sweetness of temper, which neither age nor misfortune could sour or ruffle. It is questioned whether she had ever been angry in her life. On all occasions she expressed an aversion to satire, so rarely free from malice or personality, and fortified her resolution against it by particular and solemn vows. "I can appeal to you," said she, in a letter to an old and intimate friend, "whether you ever knew ine make an envious or ill-natured reflection on any

person upon earth? Indeed, the follies of mankind would afford a wide and various scene, but charity would draw a veil of darkness here, and choose to be for ever silent rather than expatiate upon the melancholy theme.”

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Her

Detraction appeared to her an inhuman vice, for which no wit could atone. She loved to praise, and took a pleasure, on all occasions, in doing justice to merit. She was ever the advocate for the absent, and extenuated where she could not excuse. compelled to reprove, gentleness and delicacy softened her reprehension. She never dictated to others, or arrogated to her own sentiments any deference or respect. Indifferent to fame, ad fond of solitude, she shunned rather than sought applause. modesty followed her to the tomb, and even appeared afterwards, in the order she left respecting her interment. Having desired that her funeral might be by night, and attended only by a small number of friends, she added, "charge Mr. Bowden not to say one word of me in the sermon. I would lie in my father's grave, and have no stone or inscription over my dust, which I gladly leave to corruption and oblivion till it rise to a glorious immortality." Her charities, considering the mediocrity of her fortune, bordered on excess; she consecrated, by a solemn vow, the half of her income to benevolent purposes. To enable herself to fulfil this engagement, she retrenched all superfluous expenses, and practised a rigid economy. The first time she accepted any acknowledgment from her bookseller, for her writtings, she bestowed the whole sum on a distressed family; another time, on a similar occasion, she sold

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a piece of plate to relieve an exigency for which she was not sufficiently provided. It was her custom, on going out, to furnish herself with pieces of money of different value, to relieve such objects of compassion as might fall in her way. Her munificence was not confined to the place in which she lived, nor to any sect or party. "I never," said she, "grudge any money but when it is laid out upon myself, for I consider how much it would buy for the poor." Nor did she confine her charities to money; she gave to the distressed her time, her labour, her sympathy, often of infinitely greater value. She caused the children of the neighbouring poor to be instructed, and herself assisted in framing their minds and principles. Nor was her beneficence limited to the lower ranks. "It was one of the greatest benefits," she was accustomed to say, "that could be done to mankind, to free them from the cares and anxieties that attend a narrow fortune."

MADEMOISELLE SOMBREUIL.

On the 2nd of September, 1792, when the general massacre of the prisoners took place at Paris, M. Sombreuil was on the point of being sacrificed, when he was rescued from the hands of the assassins by the heroic conduct of his daughter, though on the dreadful condition that she would drink success to the republic in a goblet of blood! Earnestly did she implore to be allowed to remain by the side of the parent, whose life she had thus saved; but this favour was denied her. The father and daughter were consigned to separate prisons, and saw each

other no more. In the interval between their separation and M. Sombreuil's being brought to trial, not an hour of the day passed, in which his daughter did not dispatch messenger after messenger, to be informed of his health and situation; and while it was possible to admit the least ray of hope that he might be saved, she continued to flatter herself with again seeing him. But when his execution had really taken place, and the arrival of the police officers to take possession, according to their usual mode, of the effects of the deceased, but too well assured her of it, she fell into a state of stupefaction, dead, as it were, to every feeling of nature. In this condition did she remain for the space of three days, refusing every kind of comfort and sustenance; and when she at length recovered from it, and was once more brought back to a sense of her misfortunes, her grief became so violent, that it seized upon her intellects, and it was generally apprehended that she would never regain them. One starlight evening, when she was taking the air on the promenade, in common with the rest of the prisoners, she made a sudden stop, and fixing her eye on a star of peculiar brilliancy, said aloud, who knows, but the soul of my departed father is at present in that star? from that height he is now perhaps looking down on his unfortunate daughter."

By the death of her father, she was plunged from a state of affluence into distress and poverty; as, by a decree of the Convention, the property of those who were executed reverted to the republic; and it was thus, to make use of Barriere's inhuman expression, that the National Assembly coined money in