always fo endeared them to my heart, that I have thought, if I could lay down my life for them, it would be too little for all their goodness to me.'

"How unworthy of the enlightened mind of Julia is fuch a fentiment !" exclaimed Vallaton. "But I hope you will foon get the better of these remains of prejudice, and in ardent defire for the general good, lose this confined individuality of affection."

< Indeed I fhall never lofe my affection for my parents,' returned Julia; ‹ I fhould hate myself if I did.'

Mr. Vallaton, afraid of pufhing the matter too far, changed the discourse; but in every fubject that was introduced, artfully contrived to bring in fuch allufions to the purpose of his argument, as he thought beft calculated to work on the ardent imagination of his fair and unfufpecting pupil.

CHAP. VIII.

"But fome there are who deem themselves moft free, "When they, within this grofs and visible sphere,

Chain down the winged thought; fcoffing afcent, "Proud in their meannefs; and themselves they cheat "With noify emptiness of learned phrase."

SOUTHZY.

IN the sketch we presented to our readers, of the principal incidents which marked the life of Mr. Myope, we entered into a fort of promife to furnish a fimilar degree of information concerning his friend and affociate, Mr. Vallaton.

As we hold every engagement of this nature facred, and as it is probable that a more convenient opportunity than the present may not occur for discharging our obligation, we fhall, without further lofs

of

of time, proceed to gratify the curiofity, which we make no doubt we have excited.

Who were the parents of this illuftrious hero, it is probable the most accurate research could not have afcertained; not that we fhall take upon us to affirm that fuch research was ever made; it is more probable, that the difcovery was left to that chance which is fo obliging to the foundling hero of every novel. Similar as were the circumftances of Mr. Vallaton's birth, in point of obfcurity, to that of the great men, whofe lives and adventures have employed the pens of fo many eminent writers, philofophers, and fempftreffes, authors by profeffion, ladies of quality, and milliners at their leisure hours; it was attended by fome peculiarities, a relation of which will fufficiently exculpate us from the charge of plagiarism.

A woman who lodged in one of the fubterraneous abodes, vulgarly denominated cellars, in a little alley of St. Giles's, was called

called his mammy; and to her, upon pain of whipping, he delivered all the halfpence which his infant importunity had extorted from the paffengers in the street; but this woman, even at the foot of the gallows, denied being the mother of the funny vagabond, as her little charge was commonly called. To her inftructions, however, was he indebted for the first rudiments of his education; and it is but justice to his early genius to obferve, that

there never was an apter scholar.

At fix years old he could, with wonderful adroitness, adapt his tale, fo as best to work upon the feelings of his auditors.Sometimes, in a pitiful and whining tone, he would beg, for God's fake a fingle halfpenny to buy a bit of bread for fix of them, who have not broke their fast today.'

One paffenger he would follow with clamorous importunity for the length of a ftreet. Another, from whose aspect he expected better things, he would attack with

a tale

a tale of forrow; his father had then a broken leg, and his mother was just that, morning brought to-bed of twins; a story which he told fo well, and with such apparent fimplicity, that it more than once produced a fixpence. In this way were the talents of our hero employed till his ninth year, when the fatal exit of his mammy left him at his own disposal.

During the last weeks of the life of his benefactress, he fo improved by the converfation of her fellow-prifoners, that there were few of the choiceft fecrets in the science of pilfering, of which he did not acquire fome idea; of all the more common modes of exercising the profeffion he became perfect mafter. Being thus initiated in the theory, we make no doubt that he would foon have become an adept in the practice, had not the last moments of his mammy produced a certain feeling of terror, which fo forcibly operated upon his mind, as to deter him from accepting the overtures of a gang

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