These anecdotes we have selected from innumerable others as exhibiting the striking features of the disposition and tastes of Materialism during his infancy, his childhood, and his youth; and we now hasten to the last grand feature of his life-it is the only event of his manhood that remains on record.

When Materialism had attained to the age of about two and twenty, he found himself in the possession of a new idea, from the apprehension of which he had previously been delivered by the extreme seclusion of the place in which Mr. John Locke resided, the extraordinary ugliness of their neighbours, and his own absolute want of imagination. A lady of reduced fortunes, the widow of an officer who had died in the service of his country, came with her only daughter to reside in a cottage at a short distance from the philosopher's abode. The mother was such a woman as poets might have feigned the mother of uncorrupted senators and untainted heroes: she was of noble birth and rare accomplishments; of deep feeling and elevated principle. Ellen was beautiful and gentle, and worthy of the parent to whom she was the consolation and the pride; they were never separate; Mr. Locke used very frequently to say, that Ellen leaning on her mother's arm reminded him of the wall flower that grew on the tower of the village church; she gave a sweetness and a beauty to an object that in itself was venerable and sacred. They had been rich, and they were now poor; they had been happy, and now they were in sorrow; but their poverty received a dignity from their virtues, and their sorrows assumed a grandeur from the constancy with which they were sustained. Mr. Locke called at the cottage to pay his respects on the arrival of such inestimable neighbours; and, as soon as Ellen entered the apartment, young Materialism,

who had accompanied the philosopher on his visit, suddenly perceived himself to be affected by a new species of sensation. He left his accustomed station by the side of Mr. Locke, and placed his chair near that of the beautiful daughter of the widow. He expressed himself to be under the influence of a propensity to approximation.

Unable to comprehend this novel direction of his ideas, he consulted with Mr. Locke upon the subject. It was, indeed, his constant practice to inform his guardian of the successive phenomena and operations of his intellect, unless some peculiar motives of self-interest counselled the concealment of them. When the young man mentioned his present experience, the great metaphysician was inexpressibly delighted. Such an intimation had been anxiously expected: Mr. Locke had long been desirous of this final testimony to his pupil's being in perfect possession of all the properties and attributes of human nature. It was at length evident that Materialism loved. The passion had appeared late-very late, but still he loved. The young man's description of his sensations fulfilled the very letter of his tutor's definition. Materialism was in love; "for he reflected upon the thought of the delight which a present or absent thing is apt to produce." This was a point too important to be admitted without more minute investigation; and, in the following dialogue, the philosopher endeavoured to excite the answers which might tend to the conclusive establishment of a fact in every way so important to the confirmation of his metaphysical speculations. "Materialism, my own child, you are in love."-" Oh! that's it then what course would you advise me to adopt?""I cannot but regret your melancholy destiny, my boy; Ellen loves another."-" Indeed! well; I don't under

stand: what is there melancholy in that?"-"Why, don't you feel your soul stirred within you at the bare possibility of such an event? Are you not stung with jealousy? Can you tolerate that the affections of the girl you love should be divided with another ?-that to yourself, perhaps, they may be everlastingly denied?"—"Oh! I assure you its perfectly indifferent to me whom she loves, or whom she does not love.'" It is even reported that she will speedily be married to your rival.”—“ She may marry a dozen of my rivals for any thing I care, provided they don't carry her out of the parish."-" Pshaw! But it delights me to find that your temper is so philosophically disposed in this affair. However, the fact is, that I have only imagined this impediment to your happiness, to try the strength and violence of your passion. Her affections are not engaged; there is no probability of your failing to succeed.-Would you wish to become her husband?"-" I should not have the least objection in the world."-"It is a thing of considerable expense and trouble, remember, to be a married man."-" As for that, the difficulties would be very inconsiderable; Ellen, of course, bringing no fortune, could never expect to participate in my resources; the additional expenses which her residing with me must necessarily entail, would be more than counterbalanced by her attention to my wardrobe and my kitchen, and by my saving in the article of a servant's wages, whose place I should expect Ellen to supply. In common justice, I should relinquish to her, for the purchase of her dress and ornaments, the larger proportion of those sums which she might procure, in the intervals of domestic occupation, by the exercise of her talents for music and design. It could not possibly be any punishment to her to be refused a share in my more affluent indulgencies; and, as she has long been accus

tomed to the restrictions of poverty, she would scarcely be conscious of the privation."

Though these were Materialism's warmest feelings of affection, he still found himself involuntarily attracted towards the society of Ellen. He was received at the cottage with the kindest hospitality. When there, the youth affected the most ardent and the most exalted sentiments. He, perhaps, spoke of them the better, because he repeated, with the greatest fluency, all the choicest and most favourite passages which he had either read or heard upon the subject of devoted love; and was not therefore embarrassed by any of that bashfulness and hesitation with which the natural timidity of true affection is seen to blush and tremble, at every effort to escape from its concealment. Materialism talked to Ellen of his passion and his despair, till she believed, and pitied, and, at last, loved him.

The unhappy fate of the widow and her daughter was now aggravated by accessions of unexpected adversity. They became reduced to the last degree of poverty and wretchedness. Half-starving, for her mother's sake Ellen applied to Materialism for relief. With feigned compassion, he proposed his conditional assistance. The conditions were rejected with disdain; and the assistance was in consequence denied.

The oppression of infirmity and disease was now added to the burthen of the widow's sorrows. She was starving. Without a friend to aid her in supporting the age and distresses of her mother, Ellen's virtue yielded. Materialism bought it, as he would purchase any other sensual gratification, and his love was cured.

In due time Ellen became pregnant; her disgrace was publicly blazoned over the country. It afforded a holiday for the envious, and a triumph for the malignant.

All who had before been bitterly constrained to acknowledge her superiority, now pointed at her the finger of derision and of scorn. Her mother became acquainted with her shame. Age, disease, poverty, her child's dishonour, were more than she could bear, supported as she was, with all the energy of natural fortitude, and with all the grace of religious resignation. The sudden intelligence fell like a thunder-bolt upon her: and where she heard it there she fell; and her noble, and her wounded heart was broken; and she never again awoke to the consciousness of earthly existence. She was buried in a long deal-box, without a pall to cover her, at the parish expense. Ellen followed her to the grave, weeping bitterly, as if nature ineffectually strove, to drown in tears the sense of its affliction. Her garments of rusty black were not sufficient to protect her from the bleak air, of a cold, raw, misty, November morning; and she was hooted and pelted by the mob on her return. Materialism passed at the time; but her distress, perhaps, escaped his observation, as, at the moment, a man was going by with an enormous turtle towards the residence of Mr. Locke.

Ellen had disappeared on the day of her mother's funeral. Two or three months after that event, as they were sitting together tête-à-téte after supper, Mr. Locke asked Materialism if he had heard any intelligence of Ellen?

"Oh! certainly, I know the whole of the affair from beginning to end.

"What then has become of the unfortunate girl?" "You'll keep the secret?

"Of course, if you require it."

"You promise ?"