our minds; and sa seigneurie confirmed it, by asserting, that la jeune personne est laide à faire peur, and by pitying ce pauvre Annandale.”

I find that Annandale has been a long time known to be a friend, and something more, to the comtesse; and if, as his letter to her implies, he intends to continue his intimacy with her, I foresee much unhappiness, nay, more, danger, to your beautiful, but giddy friend. With Lady Augusta's extreme youth and loveliness, her great susceptibility and inexperience, and with a husband whose overweening vanity, and want of fixed moral principles, render him a most unfit guide for her through the labyrinth of fashionable follies, I tremble for her, in the position which she seems likely to occupy. All that I hear of Annandale renders me more than ever indisposed to this marriage. Would to Heaven there were any means of averting it!

Lady Augusta is, as you, my beloved Mary, told me before I knew her, a being full of generous feelings and fine sympathies with all that is good and noble; but easily excited, with more imagination than reason, — which at her age is natural, and somewhat spoiled by the injudicious indulgence of her parents. She is a creature who, under the guidance of an honest and wise man, who loved her, and whom she loved, might be led to attain as much virtue as ever dignifies human intelligence; but, in the hands of a weak or unprincipled one, may become a source of misery to herself, and to those who are attached to her.

It makes me gloomy to think of what her lot may be; and I,-who know the inestimable happiness of wedded life, when founded on affection, and cemented by similarity of taste, and congeniality of sentiment, — pity, with all my heart, this charming young woman,

who is about to form ties that, I fear, will never be rendered holy or indissoluble by any of the causes I have mentioned. Endeavour, my dear Mary, to impress on her reason, without alarming her innocence, the urgent necessity of a dignified reserve in her manners; and a scrupulous avoidance of all persons of her own sex, whatever may be their rank or other advantages, whose reputations are tarnished. Nothing so much tends to depreciate the respect that virtue ought to inspire, and to lessen the disgust of vice, as seeing those whose own career is irreproachable, live on habits of intimacy with women of whose errors they cannot entertain a doubt. Injurious as are the examples of bad conduct, the impunity which too frequently attends the perpetration is still more fatally pernicious. It is the privilege to do wrong, tacitly yielded to some individuals, in a social

system so partial and capricious as ours, that breaks down the barriers of decorum and morality; for, many a young and thoughtless woman has been led to ruin, by daily witnessing to what an extent imprudence and impropriety may safely be carried, when the pure and impure are received in the same circles, and on the same terms.

But, to quit this painful subject for one far more agreeable. I have been thinking, my sweet wife, that, could we induce your good father to take up his abode with us, we should all be the happier. You would not then have the apprehension of his loneliness, nor he the painful consciousness of having lost you. The more I experience the blessing of your presence, the more am I sensible how deeply he must regret separation from you. He would feel, in living with us, and sharing our domestic felicity, that, instead of losing

a daughter, he had found a son; and I should have the delight of knowing, that, in studying his happiness, I was securing yours. In three days, with the blessing of God, I shall be with you. May good angels guard my love, prays her devoted

DELAWARD.

LADY A. VERNON TO MISS MONTRESSOR.

INDEED, Caroline, your last letter shocked me; it seemed like sacrilege to read it beneath this roof, where every thing breathes of purity and peace. How little you know Lord Delaward, when you can, even in imagination, make him the hero of such a tale! When I have seen the dignified and exemplary Mrs. Ord, and her lovely and virtuous daughters, I have felt as if I had sinned against them in reading,