In this most awful uncertainty, with the letter in his hand, he continued till he arrived at his father’s gate. From a servant who came to open the carriage he learned the fatal tidings, that his father had been buried several days, and that his mother was now exceedingly ill. This was too much for endurance,—the dreaded letter fell from his paralysed hand, and he sunk down overwhelmed by racking remorse. The servants conveyed him to his chamber, where he lay some hours in a state of stupor, which was succeeded by a fever, or some disease that entirely deprived him of sense for upwards of three weeks. The journal, however, was discontinued for as many months. The following is the first paragraph written after his recovery. “My dear mother and the angelic E. visited me this morning, and neither of them upbraided me! Their forgiveness and pity were in effect refined cruelty. I was prepared to hear their keenest reproach,—but their kindness took me by surprise, and wounded me to the soul. My mother wished to amuse me and attempted to be gay, while tears insensibly rolled down her cheeks. She said I must now look upon E. as my own, for her father had bequeathed her to me, and appointed me sole executor of his will. She was going to say something of a last wish of my father’s, when she fainted away. “Miserable, infatuated wretch that I am! not all the guilty pleasures of a thousand years could compensate for the torture my soul endured at that moment.—Sainted father! methinks I hear thee in the clouds thundering thy abhorrence of my ungrateful and impious neglect, and threatening me with the vengeance of indignant Heaven. With what crimes am I not debased?—Innocence murdered—human happiness wantonly sacrificed in every spot I could meet with it—my family dishonoured and my life defiled by every species of hellish debauchery—the end of my being perverted—the intention of my Creator defeated by my own monstrous deeds—Alas! alas! I see nothing but an interminable gulf before me—God frowning from above—and the jaws of death and hell extended wide, ready to receive me—and close upon me for ever!” Who, after reading this soliloquy, would expect to find the author of it again resuming those vicious practices which had occasioned him such intense misery? How humiliating to a proud but virtuous mind is the contemplation of human nature and reason so degraded and debased!