too for the first time! and from the lips of one whom my imagination, more powerful to exalt than any paternal affection, had made a very deity in my thoughts' eyes!

I felt that I should render myself ridiculous, were the scene prolonged another minute. Accordingly, I withdrew with Edward to the cabin; whither Juan needed not be told he must not follow us, waiting till he should be sent for to take his part in the happy meeting,—a delicacy that in a gentleman would have been considered to mark his breeding.

I •will not detail what passed between me and my son, this first, truly joyful day, either in the ship's cabin, or afterwards, when I had taken him to my home, since all the information that could interest the Reader, relative to the boy himself, or to other personages, connected with him, that figure on these pages, has been already given. If, however, I must play the guide to the aforesaid reader's fancy, and set it in the way to see the author make his d4but as a parent, thus it may be done in few words. I interrogated Edward about his friends, his teachers, his studies, himself, and, before he could form an answer to any of the thousand questions, which trod on each other's heels with a closeness of'pursuit the veriest little magpie of a woman would have envied, I interrupted him by caresses, as fond, as frequent, and as foolish, as a lover bestows upon his mistress at their first familiar interview, or a young girl upon her newly-purchased doll, then repeated the questions, or commenced afresh with others, and again prevented reply by my testimonies of affection, and by expressions of admiration so unguarded and unqualified, as to make the brow and cheeks of the flattered boy redden with confusion.

Indiscreet this admiration was at best; but the object, in himself, was worthy of it.—It is seldom we see a man truly proportioned. If the upper part of his person be well made, the limbs are found to be deficient; or, if the latter be as they should be, the former suffers in the comparison. Edward, however, was indebted to nature figure the nearest to perfection I have ever be! Though in age he had not yet numbered fifteen yi his form was as fully developed as an ordinary lad eighteen, without the weakness usually attendant u such precociousness. The shoulders neither so fal as to be effeminate, nor so square as to be vulgar; arm straight and muscular, and terminated by a ham which the long thin fingers reminded me of his grandai Lady Maitland's, and were almost too delicate for ami the chest nobly expanded; the waist small, and round a woman's; the hips tight, and remarkably graceful; lia that might serve as model for a Mercury's; and feet smi well-proportioned, and springy, and of a rare perfect! about the ankle and in the lope of the instep;—the excellencies, with the advantage of uncommon heig! constituted, doubtless, a form of no ordinary eleganci and when I add, that the head, if not so nearly perfect the rest of the person, was strikingly noble, having a for head, nose, mouth, and chin, that were sufficiently reg| lar as mere features, and were very manly in their charai ter,—the most beautifully shaped, and most powerful expressive dark gray eyes it is possible to conceive,anda profusion of light-brown hair, stiaight, but of peci liar fineness, and easy to be adjusted into any fashion—a most by a single touch of the fingers,—I have describe! I think, a person that promised to become, when th lapse of a few years should have matured the body to il full size and vigour, a splendid specimen of masculin beauty,—one indeed of which, with little exaggeratioi we might use the language of Hamlet—

A combination, and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.

Adorned with these external graces, and, what is singn lar enough, gifted with a mind that matched his figure ir its almost perfect symmetry, (ut ita dicam,) and far ex.

a ed it in vigour and activity,—or, rather, (if I may "ve more force the language to be most expressive,) in lhttjMr and agility,—and that promised, under careful iuar^ ire to yield at no distant day fruits that would not :eDa ne its present precociousness, is it wonderful, conier."lring the circumstances under which we met, that Edid should appear to me—I had almost said a more mortal! and that, as I whispered to myself, "It is spirit flashes in those eyes! It is my blood that gives colour to those cheeks! That beautiful and active me, those well-knit limbs, are, joint and nerve and scle, branches of my own stock, bone of my bone and i of my flesh!"—is it wonderful that I should fling reins upon my feelings, and, carried thus beyond the •ch of prudence, should speak and look the love and miration which I felt! the love and admiration that their birth, (though not conception,) their growth, r full maturity, in a single hour! '•• Thus the poor Hindoo prostrates himself upon the pound before the senseless deity his own hands have uhioned and erected. The car is set in motion, the onderous wheels revolve, and grind with the dust the ly of the frenzied wretch, who glories in his immola.—Ah, well!

du Japon jusqu '& Rome,

La plus sot animal, ^ moa avis, c. est 1. homme—

tad I cannot see that the bells on the cap of one folly jingle more musically than those which decorate the top. knots of its cousins.

CHAPTER II.

If then thou be son to me, here lies the point;—Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at?

1 Ft. Hen. IV.

Exi, inquam, age exi; cxeundum hercle tibi hinc esto foraf-
Phut.—Ami.

Is the Reader so far advanced in life as to have already acted in the two distinct characters of child and parent? If he be, he will, perhaps, find .much in the present chapter to remind him of himself and his own follies; if, however, he have yet to learn the vast difference between parental authority when exercised by us and the same authority when exercised upon us, the present chapter will teach him a lesson that may prove serviceable, as warning him from a line of conduct in which most men deliberately walk with their eyes open, while, like myself, they very charitably caution their fellow-travellers against a like stupidity,—it being one of the distinguished prerogatives of our race to play the finger-post to others, if we cannot post upon the road ourselves.

I have said that Edward, both in mental and bodily powers, was considerably in advance of his years. Of course, the passions were not backward in their developement; and I soon discovered that my only son was a decided rake at the very early age of fourteen. The Reader is astonished, seeing that up to this period the boy had been under the guardianship of a man like Sir James Maitland, and that the latter had uniformly expressed himself delighted, in every respect, with the behaviour of his young ward,—considering him the fittest companion his own son could have selected: but the spe

cies of licentiousness here alluded to is one of those secret vices, which, while they work mischief to the health and happiness of millions, very generally escape detection, and in extreme youth, as they may then exist without that destruction of honourable principle which is the almost certain consequence of their long continued indulgence, seldom fail to elude the watchful eye of parents, and other guardians of the morals of the young.

The existence of this sensual propensity in Edward, (and it was the only one that could be laid to his charge,) I at once suspected from the over susceptibility he showed to any thing like beauty in woman,— a susceptibility he could not conceal. It burned in the sudden flushing of his cheek, blazed in the momentary flashing of his eye — or floated there in liquid lustre, and spoke in the seducing softness of his voice: the creaking of shoes, the rustling of silks, against whose witchery mad Tom so reasonably warns us*, was a music that at any time would call him from his studies, and, every duty neglected, would draw him to the windows or the door to gaze. And when I frequently detected him putting in practice, against his fair friends, (he would have half-a-dozen at a time,) arts of 'seduction that might rival the most finished coquetry of the most refmed coquette,—arts which his graceful person and expressive features made so easy to him,— I judged that he indulged this propensity at a sacrifice of moral right that stamped it as vicious.— Thus far, however, it was mere surmise on my part. But in a very few months, the matter was put beyond doubt by the discovery of two intrigues, which no less excited my astonishment by the thorough knowledge of the sex which they displayed in their design, and by the boldness of their execution, than they shocked me by their licentiousness.

* .• Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the nulling of silks, betray toy poor heart to women." K. Lear, A. Hi, Sc. 4,

Vol. II. 30