-his mouth was convulsed, and his voice was

husky and hoarse.

Oh! could his daughter have seen him in that time of agony, what a punishment for her offence! If she could have got a glimpse of the scene before her elopement, she would have spurned her seducer, even though he combined in himself the fortunes of the Cavendishes-the blood of the Seymoursand the manly beauty of the Stanleys.

His rage

The father sat down exhausted.

collapsed into humiliating agony.

He wept

-the old man's tears coursed down his cheeks. I saw them running down, and was shocked, as he actually clasped my knees, and in a bending posture supplicated me to tell him where my friend I could then have cursed that word friend-had taken his child-his only child!

I will not tell how much pain I suffered.

scene.

My heart would have been that of a stone, if I had not been profoundly touched with that Methinks I still hear his hoarse voice, and his whining-and to hear a father crying for a child is a fearful thing.-Methinks I still see his trembling person--his brokenhearted face his friends leading him from my room, and worse than all, their scornful and indignant look at myself-the friend of the cold-blooded seducer!

It was as I feared. The conquest of Charlotte Thorpe was an easy one to the practised powers of Cumberland. They had left Bath together-nobody knew whither.

CHAPTER X.

STRUGGLE OF OPINION. THE IDEAS OF

THE AGE.

How well do I remember the state of my my mind in those days of which I am now treating. I was then a young man, with all the passions and all the illusions of youth, living under the stimuli of springing ambition, social enjoyment, and a high state of health and spirits. The society at the Temple had

great charms for me. I lived in familiar intercourse with two or three different sets, and mixed freely in all the pleasures of the metropolis.

I was, also, at this time excessively ambitious, and most anxious to make a figure in public life. It was the age of Canning and Brougham, when oratorical genius had for a brief time overleaped the traditionary bounds of politics, and ruled the state with the divinity of mind. Brougham was then the god of all the young Templars, of every unfledged lawyer who mistook garrulity for genius, and crammed his memory with the Penny Magazine, and pewter philosophy of that description, in hopes of being lauded as an omnis homo. What an amount of charlatanism was produced by the ascendancy of Brougham! What numbers of impostors followed in his wake! What crowds of spurious

philanthropists, bellowing out empty generalities at Freemasons' Tavern, about 'spirit of the age' the antelluc of the peeple' (Scotticism for intellect of the people)' useful knowledge." "

The energy of Brougham-his eminence at the bar and in the senate-the vast space he filled in London society-the exaggerated reputation he then possessed-all these were very dazzling to the young Templars of my own. standing, all of whom expected that they also in their turns would be as great as Brougham. Whenever disparaging and morose critics asserted that Brougham's enthusiasm was spurious and got up-that he was a vehement personality, trying to pass for a patriot-that his philosophy was the veriest quackery—and that his writings were mere energetic verbiage, which would pass away with the occasion (unlike the immortal literary efforts of Boling