he was aware of; he may have regretted them as soon as spoken. Accustom yourself to such reflections as these. You see or are told of an action you disapprove perhaps there was some reason for it no one knows; some temptation that at least extenuates it; some mistake that led to it. Try to believe so. You are shocked by defects and vices of character in others say to yourself ere you condemn, some neglect of education, some bad example, some physical disorder or mental imbecility may have caused all this-you will be in no hurry to speak the worst while you are thus endeavouring to think the best; and it will beside keep you in better humour with your fellow-creatures, and consequently more amiable in your deportment towards them. The next thing is to accustom yourself to watch your own actions, and the secret movements of your own heart, and to lay by the account of them. Then when you are disposed to censure, there will come the thought, I once felt that evil passion too; I remember when I committed that same fault; I have not that wrong propensity, but then I have this other which is as bad. This habit will make you humble; and whatever makes you humble, will make you lenient. Another preventative is to store your mind with other matters, and provide yourself with better things to talk about: for it is the want of mental occupation that makes us so busy with other men's matters, and the want of something to say that makes us speak so much evil of each other. This is the reason women are more disposed to it than men; and would be a reason if there were no other, for the solid and extensive cultivation of their minds beyond what their immediate duties may seem to require; and it is a reason why religious young women must not neglect their talents and give up their literary pursuits. And lastly-let those who would resist this habit, consider the difficulties, the dangers, the sorrows, that lie on the path of all to their eternal home-the secret pangs, the untold agonies, the hidden wrongs-thus the heart will grow soft with pity towards our kind. How can I tell what that person suffers ? That fault will cost them dear enough without my aid. Thus you will fear by a hard word to add to that which is too much already, as we shrink from putting the finger on a sore. And lastly, accustom yourselves to intreat Heaven for your fellow-creatures, asking pardon and forbearance of God towards what is wrong in them-then I am sure you will not be eager to expose and hasty to condemn them. Strenuously accustom yourself to all these things from your childhood upward, and it may be that the disgraceful Thistle will not grow. No. XIV. PEGGY LUM. ...... There are some Who look for nothing in the time to come, Leave her, and let us her distress explore, CRABBE. My young readers have often complained to me that I tell no stories. They might as well complain that the baker sells no sugar-plums, and the draper deals not in trinkets-all very good things in themselves— but of that of which there is enough, we have somewhere made bold to say too much, there needs no supply of ours. Yet, lest my young friends should believe I think it wrong to write a story, or that I cannot write one, I intend, for once, to conciliate their favour, and compound a story, which, contrary to the ordinary practice of story-tellers, I beg to assure them is not true. This is a bold assertion. Am I going to lay aside my office, and ceasing to listen to the realities of life, take an imaginary flight among things that neither are nor can be? Most surely not. The skilful lapidary finds his jewels in the mine, shapes them and sets them, and the work is his; but still the stones are real, and on their reality depends the value of his work. So have I sought in nature the materials of my fiction: it is made up of truth, though in itself not true-I tell nothing that I have not heard and seen, though not in the form in which I give it. I listened for my materials before I wove my tale. One of the hottest days of an English July, about the hour at which it is usual to set out for a summer-evening's walk; when the soil had been pulverized by sixteen hours of sun-shine, and the light breeze departing with the sun, had left the atmosphere more suffocating than by day-excepting so far as a sensation of dampness might persuade one it was cool-I too went out to walk, because others did; though I could not but observe in the dusty hue and dragging gait of all I met, an intimation that all would rather be at home, if they knew what to do with themselves there. The grass was damp, and the paths were dusty; and I was obliged at last to betake myself to the sea-beach, which, as all men know, is not the most easy walking in the world-so that I was just beginning to consider how far it was really agreeable to walk on a summer evening, when my attention was withdrawn from myself by the appearance of a filthy, squalid child at my side. It is impossible to imagine an object more uninteresting and loathsome. The vulgar ugliness of her features seemed rather the result of misery, starvation, and ill-humour, than of natural deformity: her originally fair skin was burned and freckled into fiery redness, and her once pale hair clotted into unequal shades of darkness by filth and exposure; her size bespoke her about seven years old; but her shrivelled form and the worn expression of her countenance gave to her person an unnatural appearance of age. I looked at her a few moments; she seemed to be doing nothing, thinking nothing, and feeling nothing; and questioning within myself what might be the use, or aim, or object of existence in such a brute-like form, I addressed her with the usual question of what was her name. She deigned me no reply, but sufficiently intimated by her looks that she took it to be no business of mine. I tried again, by asking where she lived. At this she impertinently laughed, but still returned no answer; and carelessly throwing a stone or two into the water, turned her back and walked off. My curiosity was now excited, and I determined to follow her. This was no easy matter to my patience, for she clung round every post she came too, paused to throw the gravel, or make faces at every dirty child she met; and put her fist through the railing of every garden, to tear away the flowers which she immediately scattered. At last she stopped at much such a dwelling as I might have expected—a miserable hovel close to the high |