"I am not writing my life; and, but for the wish to appear less criminal in my dear child's eyes, I had not written a word of the foregone pages, but leaped at once to the mere facts that justify poor Alithea, and tell the tragic story of her death. Years have passed, and oblivion has swept away all memory of the events of which I speak. Who recollects the wise, white lady of the secluded cot, and her houri daughter? This heart alone; there they live enshrined. My dreams call up their forms. I visit them in my solitary reveries. I try to forget the ensuing years, and to become the heedless half-savage boy who listened with wonder, yet conviction, to lessons of virtue; and to call back the melting of the heart which the wise lady's words produced, and the bounding, wild joy I felt beside her child. If there is a hell, it need no other torment but memory to call back such scenes as these, and bid me remember the destruction that ensued. "I remained ten years in India, an officer in a regiment of the company's cavalry. I saw a good deal of service; went through much suffering; and doing my duty on the field of battle, or at the hour of attack, I gained that approbation in the field which I lost when in quarters by a sort of systematized insubordination, which was a part of my untameable nature. In action even I went beyond my orders--however, that was forgiven; but when in quarters, I took part with the weak, and showed contempt for the powerful. I was looked upon as dangerous; and the more so, that the violence of my temper often made my manner in a high degree reprehensible. I attached myself to several natives; that was a misdemeanor. I strove to inculcate European tastes and spirit, enlightened views, and liberal policy, to one or two native princes, whom, from some ill luck, the English governors wished to keep in ignorance and darkness. I was for ever entangled in the intimacy, and driven to try to serve the oppressed; while the affection I excited was considered disaffection on my part to the rulers. Sometimes also I met with ingratitude and treachery: my actions were misrepresented, either by prejudice or malice; and my situation, of a subordinate officer, without fortune, gave to the influence I acquired, through learning the language and respecting the habits and feelings of the natives, an air of something so inexplicable, as might, in the dark ages, have been attributed to witchcraft, and in these enlightened times was considered a tendency to the most dangerous intrigues. Having saved an old rajah's life, and having taken great pains to extricate him from a difficulty in which the Europeans had purposely entangled him, it became rumoured that I aspired to succeed to a native principality, and I was peremptorily ordered off to another station. My views were in diametrical opposition to the then Indian government. My conversation was heedless--my youthful imagination exalted by native magnificence; I own I often dreamed of the