from benevolence, and seeks beneficence; so did Hatchway and Pipes, in endeavouring to release Peregrine. He procured the promotion of professional merit, from the same principle that Trunnion purchases a commission for Gauntlet; but the British naval officer of 1789, has an understanding, improved by cultivation and manners, softened by commixture with elegant and enlightened society. In both cases, the picture is just; in the former, it represents an original, namely, a diamond of the first water, rough from the mine; in the second, after undergoing the highest polish.” “Besides,” said young Mortimer, “the seaman of Mrs. Somerive was farther mildened by the tenderest of passions, which sailors certainly feel as strongly as other men; and what man, enamoured of such an object as the Fair Orphan of Pembroke, would not be softened, even if he had been naturally less benignant?” At this remark, Miss Hamilton, who had been by her admirer frequently compared to this very heroine, could not avoid blushing; which Mrs. Somerive perceiving, and struck with a resemblance, easily comprehended the case; and as Hamilton, in many respects, resembled the hero of her work, after a little observation, she was at no loss to account for the peculiar predilection of Maria for that character. Dr. Wentbridge observed, that he was particularly struck with the wise and beneficial tendency of the work. In a noble family, two of the children, a sister and a brother, had received boundless indulgence; which, acting on very different dispositions, the one vain, selfish, and illiberal, the other generous and elevated, produced catastrophes, of the former, disgraceful; the latter, lamentable; but both resulting directly from preposterous education. A third sister participating of the generous and noble spirit of her brother, but having undergone, in her childhood and youth, restraint and direction, improves her talents by instruction, guides benignity of disposition by prudence, and adorns beauty by apposite accomplishments; she is rewarded for her virtues, by the heart and hand of a man of rank, fortune, and merit; and becomes the sole comfort of her father, in his declining years, bent down by affliction, for the fatal effects of his conduct towards his more favoured children. “The character of the father himself,” Hamilton observed, “displays strong discrimination; he is of naturally good intentions, and respectable capacity; but in his counsels and conduct, not possessing that firmness, without which, ability and disposition can, neither in private or public life, regularly and steadily produce beneficial effects. He is governed by talents beneath his own, one of the greatest sources of error and defect in conduct. Wanting stability of principle, he is in a state of oscillation, between the suggestions of his own benignant dispositions, the imperious dictates of a weak and illiberal wife, and the artful insinuations of an attorney without