He was the first male offspring, and perhaps an undue partiality fell upon him his father rejoiced at having a boy, his mother actually doated on him; the former would have been strict in his bringing up, but the affection of the latter was such that she over-indulged him, making his comforts, his pleasures, and amusements, overbalance his learning and employment; whilst the love which she bore him induced her to screen his faults and palliate his errors. On the score of education, a little ambition, for the first time, found a place in his parents' minds, and they decided on making him a better scholar than themselves; "For," said they, "however humble his station, learning can do him no harm." He was therefore sent to school, and, being rather a bright boy, was taken notice of, and taught not only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but mathematics, history, and extensive reading: he was bright, but idle, so that the part of instruction which amused him most was the most attended to: from history he drew revolutionary conclusions -from the Bible, interpreted his own way, innumerable doubts and latitudinarian principles. It was now time that he should provide for himself: manual labour was odious and insupportable to him; and having picked up the notion that wisdom is power, and learning a source of wealth, he felt indignant at being reduced to the level of his unlettered father, and even spurned at a mechanic's occupation: to be bred up as a schoolmaster was his first inclination, but it furnished not bread to him; moreover his want of application, and love for what is vulgarly called company, unfitted him for his vocation: apprentice to an apothecary next struck his fancy, and was violently opposed by his father; his mother, however, prevailed: he tried it, and was dismissed for some neglect of duty: then he wished to travel with a gentleman, but was obliged to travel otherwise; for having been guilty of an amatory aberration, he was sent to sea, under which circumstances he consoled himself from the hope of being thus enabled to see the world. Very soon, however, the fatigue and MARCH, 1832.

discipline of a sailor's life made him take a dislike to this employment, and he was very near being punished for instilling mutinous principles into his messmates, amongst whom he was very popular, being what his companions styled a good fellow, and nothing loth to read story-books to them, and to write their letters for them. His captain thought differently of him, and experiencing that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" in a ship's crew, was very glad to get rid of him on the first favourable opportunity. He had long drawn resources from his mother's slender store, and she, now distressed herself, patched up the scrape into which he got, and prepared a welcome for him at home. Jack was now still more attractive than when he left home, having read a great deal, and picked up a little more knowledge of mankind than a home-life could afford: he had also been in foreign parts, and drew round as many hearers in the churchyard and village taproom as ever a Greek philosopher did in his portico. He scraped acquaintance with all his neighbours far and near, and could, at the same time, scrape them a tune upon the fiddle, and dance a hornpipe in prime style, to the great admiration of the maidservants and girls of the working classes: he became now the object of the highest interest to them; whilst his kind, weak mother, instead of discouraging his love for pleasure, was flattered at the admiration bestowed upon him. What was his disposition? kind and good-natured, light-hearted, and equally light-headed, so far as regarded worldly prudence. For a time he had no employment; nor was during that period, drunken, discontented, nor dishonest-a taste for amusement, and an equally strangely pronounced distaste for industry, formed the leading and most prominent features of his character. He was neither cruel nor selfish, mean nor mercenary, but instable in mind and principle, and set far above himself.

Man was not made for solitude; nor was Jack by any means a being of solitary or saturnine habits, and feeling a transitory repentance (as many men do,) for the follies and frolics of

his life, he resolved to take a wife and to live soberly and decently, as becomes the wedded state. In his choice of a partner he was not difficult, dubious, nor long in making a selection; but, off hand, married the prettiest girl that came in his way, and took his chance for the future; luckily for him he met with a good girl, and one who was thrifty, but this thrift placed a constraint over his expensive inclinations, and soon became a source of domestic jars, and drove him to seek his amusements abroad. As handicraft and manual labour were his aversion, he took a small shop, the management of which he left to his better half, engrossing to himself the care of the cash, and the making out the accounts. Amongst other of his drinking companions, he associated himself with the upper servants of some of the nobility in the neighbourhood; those pampered, amphibious beings, half mercenary, and half men of pleasure, who retain lower slaves to do their work, waste their master's property, and imitate the vices and extravagances of their betters. His pretty wife now gave him a son, and was grieved to see that with an increase of family there was a decrease of means to support them, and that the hymneneal lamp grew weaker by time, and that variety of faces wore out the favourable impression which she thought her features had made upon his heart. He was very fond of her when first she became a mother, but the frequent repetition of appearing in that cha racter made it lose all its effect, and, like many in humble life, he regretted having given up his liberty, and having brought so many candidates for parochial assistance; this being what he saw in perspective.

After a few years of wedded bliss and family quarrels, he was advised by the valet de chambre of a right honourable roué, to go to London in order to better himself: he communicated this project to his wife, who, with tears and prayers, and with one child in her arms and another at her foot, besought him not to desert her: this he promised not to do; but booked himself for an outside place for town. The giddy conduct of him, who became a

convict in a comparatively short period of time, had already estranged his father from him, and he, on the other hand, began to hold the old man cheap in consideration of his own superior education and intercourse with the world; his mother was still dear to him, and it cost him a tear to part with her this second time, for the first had almost broken her heart; this second trial, however, he persuaded her would be for his good, and her partiality inclined her to think so.

The rich and great, the scholar and man of science, women of rank, and men of refined education, must not imagine that all delicate feelings, tender sympathies, and warm effusions of the heart, belong to them alone: the peasant's breast is wrung with the purer workings of nature. The private soldier suffers a pang equal to the most exquisite sensibility when parting with his home and parents; and the rough-handed tar wipes a tear off with as much heartfelt sincerity, when leaving the wife of his bosom, as him who wears the royal purple and ermined robe. The man, unsullied, up to this moment, with crime, had conflicting passions now warring in his mind: the ties of blood drawing him one way, and a love for change inviting him another. His wife hung on his neck and unmanned him, if such can be called the giving way to the recollections of former love; his mother took his spirits a-back as his thoughts returned to all that she had done and suffered for him, to how much she had loved him, and how he had wandered from the path of prudence; but a cheerful glass stolen by the valet de chambre from his lord's cellar, and given to his friend, brought his courage up; so off he set, with all the ready money that his distressed wife and poor mother could collect together in his pocket, and a cigar in his mouth, thus trusting to chance for future provision, and puffing sorrow away.

Arrived in town, he wrote home affectionately to all hauds, as the sailors say: his hopes were high, and be failed not to draw upon the inven tive to elevate those of his wife and mother. Jack was good-looking, and

good-humoured, and he seemed to make friends every where at first sight, for he spent his little cash freely, and this got him a good name. He was now looking out for a situation, but none turned up, and at last the purse and box of clothes shrunk into a small compass. He had been recommended to a publican, and to some gentlemen's servants, to a lawyer's clerk, and, moreover, met some old messmates in town: they all contributed to pass away his time, and some of them to share the contents of his pocket; nor did he fail to gain approving glances from bright female eyes. He danced, sung, made great progress in gaming, and now was styled a swell in low life, and a trump amongst dissolute companions, educated paupers, young tradesmen out of employment, and characters who lived by ways and means as secret as scandalous. The heart was not yet gangrened: he continued to write home, but made no remittances, and had recourse to falsehoods to calm the sufferings of a wife in poverty and a mother in despair. He was now himself reduced to distress, and made different pretences to induce his deserted partner to give up her last shilling, and to relinquish the shop, pro mising, at different times, to send for her to town: this he never did, and, from writing less frequently, dropped all correspondence with her; she not knowing where to address him, or what he had become. We will not weary our reader with the progress of his life in town, with the variety of his disappointments, or the greater variety of his vicissitudes, but take him up where we saw him, in a convict ship, bound for his exile, and branded with the indelible name of felon!

- Time, which passes away like a shadow, takes with it past scenes of good and evil, blunts the feelings of the delinquent, and brushes off the first impressions of our nature. The convict was living a most uncertain life, and running a most unsafe career; whilst his ruined wife, following the paths of industry and rectitude, contrived to earn an honest bit of bread; his father and his mother were devoted to grief, but stedfastly carrying on a laborious life, even in their old age; the father, outraged at his child's

conduct, and dreading every day that he should hear of his coming to an untimely end; his mother still fixing her affections on him, and praying rather for his death than his disgrace.

The convict's race of liberty was now run; cajoled into evil habits first, soon after associated with crime, led on by successful evil, and identified with criminal companions, the lawless man was at length arrested in his progress by the strong arm of the law, and doomed to pay the forfeit of his liberty for fourteen years-huge proportion of a life at its meridian! hopeless sentence! for how and where to return? how resume a situation in honest society? what path to choose for decent existence? thus stamped with infamy! thus cut off from home and family!

thus expatriated and lost! It is worthy of remark that this habitual violator of the laws, though reckless, was not become shamelessly so-that, in the latter part of his course, he had assumed a feigned name, under which he was sentenced to punishment: this took from him one pang, and he was afterwards heard to say, with tears in his eyes, that this was the only mitigation of suffering, namely, the having spared disgrace and agony of mind to his honest parents and virtuous wife, and thus to have kept this blot from a family from which he had made himself an outcast. His repentance was anguishing and sincere; his was a living death; his reflections drove sleep from his eyelids and peace from every hour: he left his country under the impression that he should never see it again: he blessed his parents, his wife and children, with the same breath that he cursed the hour of his birth-he was like a second Cain. Much was he, at one time, inclined to write a farewell letter to his parents and wretched partner, claiming their pardon, and pouring out his broken heart before them; this might, for the moment, have given him ease-it might, also, have stood as a frightful lesson to his children, to deter them from idle and vicious courses, but then it would be loading the innocent with a guilty name, reviving past sorrows now, perchance, slumbering in half forgetfulness, lastly, shortening the existence of