I was forced to retire into the country quite alone, being reduced to the state of Cardinal Wolsey when he said “ That, if he had served his Maker as faithfully and warmly as he had served his prince, he would not have forsaken him in that extremity;" and so will every one find when union and friendship are not founded on solid virtue, and in conformity with, the divine order, but in sensual pleasures and mere jollity. I retired (I say) into the country, into a fine air, and lived low. While I was thus forsaken by my holiday friends, and my body was, as it were, melting away like a snowball in summer, being dejected, melancholy, and much confined at home by my course of mineral medicines and country retirement, I had a long season for undisturbed meditation and reflection (my fa. culties being as clear and quick as ever), which I was more readily led into, as that I concluded myself infallibly entering into an unknown state of things. Having had a liberal and regular education, with the instruction and example of pious parents, I had preserved a firm persuasion of the great and fundamental principle of all virtue and morality viz. the existence of a supreme, infinite, and perfect Being, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the spirit, and the certainty of future rewards and punishments. And I had then the

consolation to reflect, that in my loosest days I had never pimped to the vices or infidelity of any, but was always a determined adversary to both. F then called to mind who it was of my acquaintances who constantly lived up to their convictions under the commonly received principles and plain consequences of Christianity: in a word, who it was I could remember to have had received, and lived up to, the plain truths and precepts contained in the Gospel, and more particularly in our Saviour's sermon on the mount. I fixed on a worthy and learned clergyman of the Church of England to settle my mind and quiet my conscience; I resolved to purchase, study, and examine carefully, such spiritual authors as I knew this venerable man did most approve and delight in. In this manner I collected a set of books and writers of most of the first ages since Christianity, and the more spiritual of the moderns, which have been my study and delight in my retirements ever since; and on these I have formed my ideas, principles, and sentiments: I never found any sensible tranquillity and amendment till I came to this firm and settled resolution in the main; viz. "To neglect nothing to secure my eternal peace, more than if I had been certified I should die within the day; nor to inind any thing that my secular obligations and duties demanded

of me less than if I had been insured to life fifty years more." This, though with infinite weakness and imperfection, has been made my settled intention in the main there.

God grant, reader, that it may be yours and mine! then God shall bless us with his peace, which passeth all understanding, and ere long bring us to that blessed world where sorrow and sighing shall be done away. For the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall lead us to living fountains

of water; and God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes.'

CHAP. X.

ULTIMATUM OF DEPRAVITY, AND POWER OF
RELIGION.

'Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulged crime,

Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand!
Thou perjured'.

Gradations of Depravity and Atrocity-Williams, the Murderer of Marr and Williamson, and their Families, thrown into Coldbath Fields' Prison, and murders himself—Judas his own Executioner-Thompson's Poem on Williams's Atrocities-Standley murders Dale, in December, 1821, and becomes his own Executioner in Southwell Prison-Infidelity grand Cause of Suicide-Power of Religion in staying the uplifted Dagger-Poetical and historical Illustrations from Dale-The Caliph of Egypt, from the 'Adventurer.'

DEPRAVITY has its gradations: the heart once tender and impressible may, by a course of sinning, become callous to all remorse, till it commits all iniquity with greediness, and rushes onward into the most detestable excesses. It may be seared as with a red-hot iron till it perpetrates the most savage atrocities.

Oh! how will sin

Engender sin! Throw guilt upon the soul,
And, like a rock dashed in the troubled lake,
"Twill form its circles, round succeeding round,
Each wider than the former.'

COLMAN.

We should never believe the capabilities of evil existing in the heart of man, were they not exhibited to us by atrocities which astonish the mind and shock all the feelings of the soul. 'The heart of man is desperately wicked! who can know it ?' The suicide of Williams in Coldbath Fields' prison does not surprise us, after the tale of bloody deeds with which his name has stained the page of historic facts. Through a vile thirst of gold, as the means of sensual gratification without labour, this sanguinary wretch murdered four persons oue evening-one an infant in the cradle! On the 17th December, 1811, about twelve o'clock at night, Mr. Marr, a respectable tradesman in Ratcliffe Highway, sent out his female servant for some oysters. On her return she was unable to obtain admission. A neighbour, whom she alarmed, entering the back way, beheld the dreadful spectacle of the whole family, consisting of Mr. Marr, his wife, a shop-boy, and an infant of four mouths old, weltering in their blood, and maugled in a manner almost too shock.