weeping girl to her heart." But it was all of a piece; all treachery and insincerity, from the beginning to the end. However, I am undeceived before it was too late." She then disclosed to the detected family her generous motive for the unexpected visit; and declared her thankfulness for what had taken place, as far as she was herself concerned; though she could not but deplore, as a christian, the discovered turpitude of those whom she had fondly loved.

"I have now," she continued, "to make amends to one whom I have hitherto not treated kindly; but I have at length been enabled to discover an undeserved friend, amidst undeserved foes. . . . My dear child," added she, parting Fanny's dark ringlets, and gazing fearfully in her face, "I must have been blind as well as blinded, not to see your likeness to your dear mother.-Will you live with me, Fanny, and be unto me as a DAUGHTER ?"— "Oh, most gladly!" was the eager and agitated reply. "You artful creature 1" exclaimed Cecilia, pale with rage and mortification, "You knew very well that she was behind the skreen."

"I know that she could not know it," replied the old lady; "and you, Miss Livingstone, assert what you do not yourself believe. But come, Fanny, let us go and meet my carriage; for, no doubt your presence here is now as unwelcome as mine." But Fanny lingered, as if reluctant to depart. She could not bear to leave the Livingstones in anger. They had been kind to her; and she would fain have parted with them affectionately; but they all preserved a sullen indignant silence, and scornfully repelled her advances.-" You see that you must not tarry here, my good girl," observed the old lady, smiling;

"so let us depart." They did so; leaving the Livingstones and the lover, not deploring their fault, but lamenting their detection ;-lamenting also the hour when they added the lies of CONVENIENCE to their other deceptions, and had thereby enabled their unsuspecting dupe to detect those falsehoods, the result of their avaricious fears, which may be justly entitled the LIES OF INTEREST.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIES OF FIRST-RATE MALIGNITY.

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LIES OF FIRST-RATE MALIGNITY come next to be considered and I think that I am right in asserting that such lies, lies intended wilfully to destroy the reputation of men and women, to injure their characters in public or private estimation, and for ever cloud over their prospects in life, are less frequent than falsehoods of any other description.

Not that malignity is an unfrequent feeling ;not that dislike or envy, or jealousy, would not gladly vent itself in many a malignant falsehood, or other efforts of the same kind, against the peace and fame of its often innocent and unconscious objects;-but that the arm of the law, in some measure at least, defends reputations and if it should not have been able to deter the slanderer from his purpose, it can at least avenge the slandered.

Still, such is the prevailing tendency, in society, to prey on the reputations of others (especially of

those who are at all distinguished, either in public or private life;) such the propensity to impute BAD MOTIVES to GOOD ACTIONS: so common the fiend-like pleasure of finding or imagining blemishes in beings on whom even a motive judging world in general gazes with respectful admiration and bestows the sacred tribute of well-earned praise; that I am convinced there are many persons, worn both in mind and body by the consciousness of being the objects of calumnies and suspicions which they have it not in their power to combat, who steal broken-hearted to their graves, thankful for the summons of death, and hoping to find refuge from the injustice of their fellow-creatures in the bosom of their God and Saviour.

With the following illustration of the LIE OF FIRST-RATE MALIGNITY I shall conclude my observations on this subject.

THE ORPHAN.

THERE are persons in the world whom circumstances have so entirely preserved from intercourse with the base and the malignant, and whose dispositions are so free from bitterness, that they can scarcely believe in the existence of baseness and malignity. Such persons, when they hear of injuries committed, and wrongs done, at the instigation of the most trivial and apparently worthless motives, are apt to exclaim, "You have been imposed upon. No one could be so wicked as to act

thus upon such slight grounds; and you are not relating as a sober observer of human nature and human action, but with the exaggerated view of a dealer in fiction and romance!" Happy, and privileged beyond the ordinary charter of human beings, are those who can thus exclaim;-but the inhabitants of the tropics might, with equal justice, refuse to believe in the existence of that thing called snow, as these unbelievers in the moral turpitude in question refuse their credence to anecdotes which disclose it. All they can with pro priety assert is, that such instances have not come under their cognizance. Yet, even to these favoured few, I would put the following questions: -Have you never experienced feelings of selfishness, anger, jealousy, or envy, which, though habits of religious and moral restraint taught you easily to subdue them, had yet troubled you long enough to make you fully sensible of their existence and their power? If so, is it not easy to believe that such feelings, when excited in the minds of those not under religious and moral guidance, may grow to such an unrestrained excess as to lead to actions and lies of terrible malignity?

I cannot but think that even the purest and best of my friends must answer in the affirmative. Still, they have reason to return thanks to their Creator, that their lot has been cast amongst such pleasant places ;" and that it is theirs to breathe an atmosphere impregnated only with airs from

heaven.

My lot, from a peculiar train of circumstances, has been somewhat differently cast; and when I give the following story, to illustrate a lie of FIRSTRATE MALIGNITY, I do so with the certain knowledge that its foundation is truth.

CONSTANTIA GORDON was the only child of a professional man, of great eminence, in a provincial town. Her mother was taken from her before she had attained the age of womanhood, but not before the wise and pious precepts which she gave her had taken deep root, and had therefore counteracted the otherwise pernicions effects of a showy and elaborate education. Constantia's talents were considerable; and as her application was equal to them, she was at an early age, distinguished in her native place for her learning and accomplishments.

Among the most intimate associates of her father, was a gentleman of the name of Overton; a man of some talent, and some acquirement; but, as his pretensions to eminence were not as universally allowed as he thought that they ought to have been, he was extremely tenacious of his own consequence, excessively envious of the slightest successes of others, while any dissent from his dogmas was an offence which his mean soul was incapable of forgiving.

It was only too natural that Constantia, as she was the petted, though not spoiled, child of a fond father, and the little sun of the circle in which she moved, was, perbaps, only too forward in giving her opinion on literature, and on some other subjects, which are not usually discussed by women at all, and still less by girls at her time of life; and she had sometimes ventured to disagree in opinion with Oracle Overton—the nickname by which this man was known. But he commonly took refuge in sarcastic observations on the ignorance and presumption of women in general, and of blue-stocking girls in particular, while on his