confidered as the immediate intervention of Providence. I put up my piftol, turned about, and fhould (I moft firmly believe) have gone out the other way, and have laid aside my horrid refolution, had I not looked round and seen Mr. M. (whom I immediately construed into the favoured lover defcribed by G.) offer her a hand, which I thought was received with particular pleasure. The ftream of my paffions, which had been stopped, now overwhelmed me with redoubled violence. It hurried me after them. Jealoufy fuggested a new crime; and nerved anew the arm of despair. I overtook them at the carriage, and and, at about the time I am now writing this, felt more than all the tortures of all the damned together. What shall I not feel at the neceffary recital of the tragedy, at my trial! LETTER LXI. To Mr. in Newgate. 17 April, 79. I wishes to If the murderer of Mifs live, the man he has most injured will use all his intereft to procure his life. The Condemned-cell, in Newgate, 17 April, 1779. The murderer of her whom he preferred, far preferred, to life, fufpects the hand from which he has just received fuch an offer as he neither defires nor deferves. His wishes are for death, not for life. One with he has. Could he be pardoned in this world by the man he has most injured-Oh, my lord, when I meet her in another world, enable me to tell her (if departed fpirits are ignorant of earthly things) that you forgive us both, that you will be a father to her dear infants! LETTER TO CHARLES J. H. LXIII. - Efq. What follows, in small type, was written upon different papers which he fealed up for his friend on the fatal morning. Th dates are preferved, but the contents of the papers are here put together as one letter. Newgate, My dear Charles! Newgate, Saturday Night, 17 April, 1779. The clock has juft ftruck eleven. All has, for fome time, been quiet within this fad abode. Would that all were fo within my fadder breast! That gloominess of my favourite Young's Night Thoughts, which was always fo congenial to my foul, would have been still heightened, had he ever been wretched enough to hear St. Paul's clock thunder through the ftill ear of night, in the condemned walls of Newgate. The found is truly folemn-it seems the found of death. O that it were death's found! How greedily would my impatient ears devour it! And yet but one day more. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit, till then. My God, my creator, my firft father! Thou who madeft me as I am; with thefe feelings, these paffions, this heart! —Thou, who art all might, and all mercy!—Well thou knoweft I did not, like too many of thy creatures, perfuade myself there was no God, before I perfuaded myself I had a right over my life.-O then, my father, put me not eternally from thy paternal prefence! It is not punishments, nor pains, nor hell, I fear: what man can bear, I can. My fear is to be deemed ungrateful to thy goodness, to be thought unworthy thy prefence, to be driven from the light of thy countenance. Well thou knoweft I could not brook the thoughts of wanting gratitude to things beneath me in they creation; to a dog, a horse: almoft to things inanimate; a tree, a book. And thinkeft thou that I could bear the charge of want of gratitude to thee! And, might-O might I refign the joys of the other world, which neither eye can see, nor tongue can speak, nor imagination dream, for an eternal exiftence of love and blifs with her, whom Prefumptuous murderer! The bliss you ask were para dife. My father, who art in heaven, I bow before thy mercy; and patiently abide my fentence. Thefe papers which will be delivered to you after my death, my dear friend, are not letters. Nor know I what to call them. They will exhibit, however, the picture of a heart which has ever been your's more than any other man's. How have I seen the poor foul affected at that recitative of Iphis in her favourite Jephtha! "Ye facred priests, whofe hands ne'er yet were stained "With human blood!" To think that I should be her prieft, her murderer! In one of her letters fhe tells me, I recollect, that she could die with pleasure by my hand, fhe is fure fhe could. Poor foul! Little did fhe think It It is odd, but I know for a certainty that this recitative and the air which follows it, "Farewel, &c." were the last words fhe ever fung. Now I must fay, and may fay, expes rimentally "Farewell, thou bufy world, where reign ઃઃ Brighter fcenes I seek above, Love!-gracious God, this word in this place, at this time! Oh! Newgate, Sunday, 18 April, 79, 4 in the morning. O, Charles, Charles-torments, tortures! Hell, and worfe than hell! When I had finished my last scrap of paper, I thought felt myfelf compofed, refigned. Indeed, I was foI am fo now. I threw my wearied body-wearied, Heaven knows, more than any labourer's, with the workings of my mind-upon the floor of my dungeon. Sleep came uncalled, but only came to make me more completely curfed. This world was paft, the next was come; but, after that, no other world. All was revealed to me. My eternal fentence of mental mifery (from which there was no flight) Bb 3 of |