Dorriforth, the pious, the good, the tender Dorriforth, is become a hard-hearted tyrant. The compassionate, the feeling, the just Lord Elmwood, an example of implacable rigour and injustice. Miss Woodley is grown old, but less with years than grief. The boy, Rushbrook, is become a man, and the apparent heir of Lord Elmwood’s fortune; while his own daughter, his only child by his once adored Miss Milner, he refuses ever to see again, in vengeance to her mother’s crimes. The least wonderful change, is, the death of Mrs. Horton. Except Sandford, who remains much the same as heretofore. We left Lady Elmwood in the last volume at the summit of human happiness; a loving and beloved bride. We begin this volume, and find her upon her death-bed. At thirty-five, her “Course was run”—a course full of perils, of hopes, of fears, of joys, and at the end, of sorrows; all exquisite of their kind, for exquisite were the feelings of her susceptible heart. At the commencement of this story, her father is described in the last moments of his life, with all his cares fixed upon her, his only child—how vain these cares! how vain every precaution that was taken for her welfare! She knows, she reflects upon this; and yet, impelled by that instinctive power which actuates a parent, Lady Elmwood on _her_ dying day has no worldly thoughts, but that of the future happiness of an only child. To every other prospect in her view, “Thy will be done” is her continual exclamation; but where the misery of her daughter presents itself, the expiring penitent would there combat the will of Heaven. To detail the progression by which vice gains a predominancy in the heart, may be a useful lesson; but it is one so little to the satisfaction of most readers, that the degrees of misconduct by which Lady Elmwood fell, are not meant to be related here; but instead of picturing every occasion of her fall, to come briefly to the events that followed. There are, nevertheless, some articles under the former class, which ought not to be entirely omitted. Lord Elmwood, after four years enjoyment of the most perfect happiness that marriage could give, after becoming the father of a beautiful daughter, whom he loved with a tenderness almost equal to his love of her mother, was under the indispensable necessity of leaving them both for a time, in order to rescue from the depredation of his own steward, his very large estates in the West Indies. His voyage was tedious; his residence there, from various accidents, prolonged from time to time, till near three years had at length passed away. Lady Elmwood, at first only unhappy, became at last provoked; and giving way to that irritable disposition which she had so seldom governed, resolved, in spite of his injunctions, to divert the melancholy hours caused by his absence, by mixing in the gay circles of London.