convince me that I was still in the body. They succeeded, but not without first spending a world of eloquence on me. My joy and that of my antagonist at learning I was still living, and likely to live, were about equally great.

It was now that my opponent and self learnt for the first time, that our seconds had arranged betwixt themselves to load the pistols with powder only; so that we might endure all the horrors of going through a duel without receiving any injury.

My antagonist and I shook hands in token of reconciliation, and all of us returned to our respective homes. The first thing I heard on entering my lodgings was, that Letitia and Braemar had that morning eloped together.

THE RIVALS;

OR, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FRiend.

DURING the last three years I spent at school, two of my class-fellows and I cherished a very warm attachment to each other. In almost all our hours of relaxation from study, we contrived to associate together; and always regretted the existence of those circumstances which imposed on us the necessity of even the most temporary separation. It was so ordered, however, in the mysterious appointments of Providence, that I was to be at last parted from my two young friends, for a long period,—it might be for ever. By this time I had received all the education which the comparatively limited finances of my parents could afford to give me, and an excellent situation being offered me in a foreign clime, I at once accepted it; and, after doing the utmost

violence to all the feelings and susceptibilities of my heart, I tore myself from the clinging embraces of friends; abandoned the endeared scenes of my earlier years and all my past happiness; and repaired to a distant land where I knew no individual, and was known to no one.

At this eventful and trying period of my life, I was in my eighteenth year; and even so early as this I was not altogether unacquainted with the workings of what is emphatically designated the tender passion. There was one of the other sex-a young girl, whose personal attractions were only rivalled by her intellectual accomplishments and virtuous disposition, who had made a deep and abiding impression on my heart. She was the daughter of a respectable farmer in the neighbourhood of the village of Ardmore, in the west of Scotland; the place in which my parents and those of my two schoolfellows already referred to, resided. The latter were as intimately acquainted with Matilda Gordon (such was her name) as myself; but I had not the remotest idea at that time—would that I had never been apprized of the fact!

that either of them had ever felt towards her any other emotion than that of esteem; an emotion with which all must have regarded her who had an opportunity of observing the amiable qualities she possessed.

Such was the sincerity and ardency of my affection for this interesting young girl, that but for the dependent nature of the situation for which I was about to depart, I would, even at that early period of my life, have made proposals of marriage to her. As it would, however, in all the circumstances of the case, have been a matter of imprudence in me to have proposed immediate marriage, or to have solicited her hand against any future period, when the distance of space and time by which we were to be separated from each other, placed us both within the probable influence of numerous important contingencies which neither of us could control, I deemed it the wisest course for me to pursue, not to divulge even to herself or to any other individual under heaven, that I rcgarded her with any other feelings than those of common friendship.

It was in the month of June, 1810, that I set out for Kintray, a small town in one of the States of North America. In the course of my voyage nothing of a striking or extraordinary character occurred; and in something less than seven weeks from the day on which I left my native village, I safely reached the place of my destination.

As there are no incidents of a romantic nature associated with my residence on the other side of the Atlantic, it will not be necessary to detain the reader with an account of it. It may be sufficient to mention, that, during the eight years I was absent from my native country, the image of Matilda was frequently before my mind's eye amid the ordinary occupations of the day; and was often present to my imagination, beaming in all its unrivalled loveliness, when fast locked in the embraces of Morpheus during the silence of the night. Still, however, although I had frequent correspondence with the two young friends to whom I have already more than once referred, I carefully abstained from making any inquiries of them cr of anyone else, respect