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clinging to a hen-coop, and a good deal exhausted. I must do the men of Kent the justice to observe, that the shipwrecked individual had no right to complain of want of hospitality. Each of the spectators appeared more anxious than the rest to afford him accommodation; and it was only because I pressed his removal to the vicarage, that they yielded the point to me. post chaise was accordingly prepared, into which we lifted him; and as the distance by the road exceeds not one mile, he was undressed, and laid in our best bed, within half an hour from his landing. Some mulled wine and other cordials being administered to him, he was left to his repose; and it was not till a late hour on the following day, that the ringing of his bell gave testimony that he had awoke from the sleep into which our narcotics had lulled him.

When he joined our family circle next morning, we were all much struck with the appearance and demeanour of the stranger. He was very tall, considerably upwards of six feet-his figure was commanding and noblehis features were fine, but there was an expression of wildness in his dark eye, which could not pass unobserved. His age I should guess to have been about fifty; perhaps it was under that, for black hair soon grows grey; and the lines, which were strongly marked in⚫ his forehead, seemed to be the traces rather of violent passion than of time. With respect to his manner, it is not very easy to describe it. No one could mistake that he was a gentleman; but there was a restlessness and incoherence in his conversation, which produced the reverse of an agreeable sensation upon those around him. It was curious enough that he never once alluded, of his own accord, to the events of yesterday. We, of course, referred to them, and were beginning to congratulate him upon his escape, but he abruptly changed the subject, by asking some trifling questions respecting the surrounding country. Had any person entered the parlour ignorant of the mode of his arrival amongst us, he would have imagined that the stranger had landed the day before, in perfect safety, and in an ordinary way, from a voyage. The effect of all this upon the ladies was to create in them feelings of absolute horror, and they soon began to view him with dismay; for

myself I was astonished, and more than half-suspected that the poor gentleman was not altogether in his sound senses.

The stranger continued an inmate of my house for three whole days, and nothing passed between us all this while beyond the common intercourse of social life. I did not deem it consistent with propriety to demand his name, or to make any inquiry into his condition; and he, as it appeared, felt no inclination voluntarily to offer the information. Only once he observed, casually, that he was afraid he must intrude upon my hospitality till he should receive remittances which might enable him to travel, for that there was no money in his pockets when the ship foundered, and that all his effects had perished. Beyond this, however, he communicated to me nothing, and of his company I enjoyed no more than was absolutely indispensable during meals.

Whilst his sojourn lasted, our mode of living was accordingly this: The stranger rose early and walked out; he returned to breakfast, which he hastily swallowed, and then went forth again; and immediately on the conclusion of dinner, he retired to his apartment, where the remainder of the evening was spent in writing. This I learned from my servant who carried up lights when he rang for them; and because he had requested me to supply him with pens, ink, and paper; but whether they were letters, or what the subject of his writings might be, I of course had no means of ascertaining. On the evening of the third day, however, a slight change occurred in his manner. He sat with me after the dinner had been removed, and made an effort to be sociable, but he drank no wine; and ever and anon, after supporting a common-place conversation for several minutes, he relapsed into silence. The ladies soon left us, and then it was that I determined to sound him as delicately as I could, on the state of his mind.

not what you mean by inflammatory," said he; "there are inflammations of the body, and inflammations of the mind; mine is, I believe, of the latter description. Is it not strange," continued he abruptly, "that the only individual saved out of a whole ship's company, should be one who desired it not? Heavens! if you had heard the lamentations of the poor wretches in that vessel when she struck, if you had seen their wild and despairing looks-strange, strange, that they should perish, and I survive. Are you a fatalist ?"

I must confess, that this commencement of familiarity between us by no means delighted me. I looked at my guest again, and saw with horror a sort of smile or grin upon his countenance, indicative of a feeling such as I could not commend. "I am not a fatalist," answered I; "nor am I able to conceive how any rational being can adopt a creed so absurd. He who regards himself as the mere tool of invincible destiny, must hold his opinion in direct opposition to the surest of all testimony-that of consciousness." "Yet some of the wisest men the world has ever produced, were fatalists," rejoined he. Among the celebrated writers of antiquity, almost all were fatalists. Homer and Hesiod were both fatalists. Socrates and Plato were of the same way of thinking; so were Zeno, Chrysippus, Epicurus, and all the Stoics. So was Herodotus, so was Lucretius. Seneca has declared, that the same chain of necessity constrains both gods and men; and even Cicero shows, in more passages than one, a leaning favourable to a similar view of the subject. In India, fatalism has ever prevailed. Those wise men, for an acquaintance with whose philosophy the sages of Greece scrupled not to undertake long and dangerous journeys, were all believers in irresistible destiny; and the principles which they held, their descendants hold at this present day. Mahommed was a fatalist, and though he played upon the credulity of mankind, who will deny him the praise of transplendent talents? And to come nearer home, has not our own country produced a host of fatalists among her distinguished sons? What was Hobbes, Lord Kames, Hume, Priestly, ay, and greater than all these, what was Locke? A man may well be pardoned who adopts

opinions which can be supported by such names as these."

Though not very anxious to enter into a metaphysical discussion, and though, indeed I had hoped to draw my guest into a conversation on his own situation and circumstances, rather than to follow him through the labyrinth into which I saw we were about to plunge, I considered it due to my character and station to notice this remark :-"With respect to the classical writers you have named,” replied I, "it is very true that the greater number are generally considered to have held the sentiments you attribute to them; my own persuasion, however, is, that the opinion is ill-founded. Whether Socrates was a fatalist or not, we are scarcely competent to judge, inasmuch as none of his own writings have come down to us; but I see no decided proof of the matter in the account given of his philosophy by his pupils. It was surely not consistent with fatalism to look forward, as he undeniably did, to a state of rewards and punishments beyond the present life. Fatalism, properly so called, is directly contrary to a theory, which necessarily depends upon moral responsibility; for moral responsibility cannot exist without perfect freedom of will. Of all the philosophers, therefore, whom you have enumerated, perhaps Lucretius is, in point of fact, the only real fatalist. Seneca speaks indeed, in the sentence referred to, too strongly; but he more than once contradicts himself, whilst his reflections on the approach of death clearly imply, that, in the proper sense of the line, he was no fatalist. The fatalism of Aristotle and Plato, again, extended only to such matters as we should call accidental occurrences; indeed, it may be held as a general truth, that not one among them all, Lucretius only expected, no, not even the Stoics themselves, carried their notions on this head into the region of morals. As a proof of this, you have only to attend to the leading principle of their doctrines. The true Stoics held, that the mind should not depend upon the body at all; that perfection was to be attained only by the absolute subjection of the passions to the understanding. Now, such an opinion cannot surely subsist, with a persuasion, that man is a mere machine, continually guided by the most press

ing motives. For this, I apprehend, is all that can be meant by moral fatalism. That you should have enumerated Cicero among the defenders of fatalism, particularly surprises me. True, he sometimes employs the common language of the day, exactly as I might remark, that the falling of my horse, or the cislocation of my arm, occurred by chance, though quite aware that chance is a nonentity. But when he seriously treats of fate, and its induence, he attributes to it no more power than we should attribute to providence. Lucretius was indeed a fatalist, and to teach fatalism in its true sense, is one object of his writings; but even he contradicts himself more than once, as all men must who support opinions in the face of their own consciousness.

"With respect to the sentiments of the Brahmins and of Mohammed, I scarcely think that they were worth quoting; whilst the contradictions and absurdities into which our own writers fall, have been pointed out too frequently to render it necessary that I should point them out again. Of Locke's fatalism, however, I would observe, that it amounts to nothing more, than a firm persuasion of the necessity which exists, that there should be some invisible power, not corporeal, to guide by fixed laws the corporeal world. Beyond this, I can discover no evidence of his having gone. I esteem it an unfair thing to him, that his name should be held out as giving authority to sentiments so outrageous. But perhaps I am doing you injustice all this while. Your fatalism, probably, goes no farther than my chance; and if so, I freely allow, that, in our progress through life, many events happen for which we find it no easy matter to account."

The stranger was silent for some moments, and so was I; for I was not desirous of continuing the controversy, and yet wished not to appear afraid of it.

"It may be so," he at length said, and his countenance assumed at the same time a cast of deep melancholy, "I may be mistaken. There may be no power superior to us-we may be our own puppets, and not the puppets of fate; but I would give worlds to think otherwise. Do you see this mark?" continued he, at the same time untying his cravat, and exhibiting a broad scar round his throat, as if an

iron collar had cut into the skin for many years, "how came that there?" "How can I tell?” replied I. "Perhaps you were born with it, or—"

Perhaps it was forced upon me," interrupted he, and then laughed hysterically.

I was now quite convinced, that the unfortunate man's reason was unsettled, and began to wish him fairly on his way to some other abode. But he recovered his composure again instantly, and, starting a new subject of conversation, become as rational and collected as possible. I now learned from him, for the first time, that he had taken his passage at Calcutta, having spent several years in India, and was returning to enjoy the fruits of his services at home. When he used the word "enjoy," indeed, I saw the same Satanic curl of the lip which had shocked me before; but it soon passed away, and during the rest of the evening he was more collected and rational than we had seen him. He remained with us till our usual hour of parting; and then, having coldly wished good night to the ladies, and waited till they retired, he addressed himself to me in the following terms:

"I have to thank you, sir, for much kindness and hospitality,- kindness bestowed upon one whom you did not know, and who is far from being worthy of it. I likewise owe to your people my life. It is a poor boon; but it must not go unrequited. Do me the favour to distribute the contents of this purse amongst them. To yourself I can offer no remuneration; but as I see that you feel an interest in me, and that my manner has excited your curiosity, I have determined to gratify it. To enter into the detail of my own history in ordinary conversation is a task too hard for me;-I have not even noted it down upon paper without much suffering. But it is recorded, and the sad record I now commit to you. This night I take my departure. My real name you will, of course, excuse me for concealing, as well as the names of other actors in the eventful drama; but the facts stand as they occurred. Why I have thus made you my confidant I cannot tell. I have never acted so with any one besides; and the fact that I am now intrusting a mere stranger with a secret such as mine, confirms me in my belief, that we are none of us our

own masters.-Farewell; I hear the carriage at the door.

The stranger here put into my hands the produce of his nocturnal labours, in the shape of a bundle of papers closely written; and before I had time to remonstrate with him on the abruptness of his departure, or to press his stay, he had quitted the house ;-the noise of wheels was soon heard, and the stranger was gone. I never saw or heard of him afterwards.

As soon as I had so far recovered my astonishment as to be fully convinced that the stranger was gone, I sat down to peruse the manuscript which he had committed, under cir

cumstances so peculiar, to my care. It was written in a clear, strong, legible hand. Here and there traces of haste might be discovered in it as if the writer had hurried over a passage or two under the influence of excited feelings; but, in general, the person who inspected it would have said, that it had been compiled with perfect composure-even deliberation. Yet the opening was certainly not such as a man in his calm and rational senses would have given. The idea of fatalism seemed to have taken a strong hold upon the individual's mind, and his story accordingly began with the following expressions.

"I AM a fatalist. I am perfectly satisfied, and from the first dawn of reason I have been satisfied, that the things which men call chance and free will, exist only in their own bewildered imaginations. It is very flattering to human pride to suppose, that each man guides himself in all the changes and occurrences of life; that his own will, or his own reason, or something worthy to be called his own, directs his actions, and regulates his thoughts. A slight degree of attention to passing events must, how ever, convince all who reflect, that the human will, even if it be the spring of human actions, is itself no more than part of a complicated machine, which is acted upon, and set in motion by a power which it cannot control. Were it not so, why should instances occur, I say not frequently, but so constantly, of persons ruining their own peace wantonly, with their own eyes open, and with no other discernible purpose in reason? Why should the miser hoard his gold, and starve ? Why should the spendthrift waste his substance, knowing all the while that he must bring himself to poverty? Why should the thousand extravagancies occur, which society daily places before us, were not all men, without excep. tion, mere machines? Nay, nay, read the following narrative, and then determine whether it be possible to conceive that the freedom of will, which all are so anxious to claim, could have ever had existence, at least in me.

"I am the representative of a family, which, from the period of the

Norman Conquest, has held considerable estates in the county of Rutland, and which, by a steady adherence to the custom of entail, has managed to preserve its estates almost in their pristine extent. My mother dying whilst I was an infant, and my father before I reached my tenth year, was left to the care, or rather to the neglect, of certain titled personages, who called themselves my guardians, because they were so called in my father's will; but who conceived that they did enough when they entered me at one of our public schools, and permitted me to spend my vacations wherever and however my own fancy might suggest. Thus were my habits, temper, disposition, and pursuits, allowed to form themselves as chance directed, without any human being giving himself the trouble to advise me to what was good, or to warn me against what might be evil.

"Nature had, however, settled these points so effectually, that I do not believe that care on the part of others would have made me very different from what I am. My earliest recollections represent me as a selfish, violent, capricious, revengeful being; as one who desired a thousand things which he had not, and who no sooner obtained them than he ceased to value them. It strikes me, indeed, that in my younger days I was never wantonly or gratuitously tyrannical. I cannot remember, that whilst at school I oppressed the little boys. I never crouched to the big ones, for I was not mean. But an injury I never for

gave. However apparently slight it might be, were it but a cross word, or look, I never felt at ease till I had taken vengeance for it; nor was any labour too severe, or any plan too complicated, provided I saw the chance of obtaining my end by enduring the one, and acting upon the other.

"I will give but one specimen of myself in my character of a revenger of wrongs, whilst I was at school.— One of my companions, my favourite companion for the time, played off upon me, on a particular occasion, some trifling practical joke. It raised a laugh against me, and I burned to chastise him for it. To beat him was not in my power, for he was older and stronger, and a better master of the pugilistic art than I. To repay him in kind would not satisfy me. I knew that he would not feel as I felt, were he put in ever so ridiculous a light, but would probably laugh at the circumstance as readily as those about him. What I desired was to give him positive pain; and I succeeded. He had a favourite dog, a white terrier, to which he was strongly attached. The animal used to go with us when we were out rabbitshooting; and the boy was naturally proud of its good nose, and great activity. I watched my opportunity one day, and pretending to mistake it for a rabbit, I shot it dead; my revenge was ample.

"In like manner, with respect to caprice, I may observe, that I never loved any of my companions beyond the space of a few weeks, or, at most, a few months. The consequence is, that I never have had, and never expect to have, one friend. Of reptiles who called themselves such, I have known many; but whenever an acquaintance has done me a favour, or exhibited a superiority over me in any respect, I have invariably quarrelled with him. Of all feelings, that of being under an obligation to another man, is to me most insupportable.

"With these dispositions, and in the course of acting which they were calculated to produce, my boyhood and youth were spent. I left school for college, detested by all who knew me, and cordially detesting them in return; and I passed through the usual academical career without forming a single connexion which has survived

it. It was then the fashion to travel. I followed that fashion, and travelled too; but my tutor and I quarrelled before half our tour was completed, and I left him. I returned home, determined to live for myself alone at the family mansion in Rutlandshire.

Having formed this prudent resolution, I endeavoured to acquire a decided taste for field-sports. I kept hounds, and hunted, or affected to hunt them myself. I invited all my neighbours to come and see me; pretended to be pleased when the field was full, and the sportsmen adjourned to my house; but somehow or another, they and I fell out. Our quarrels too were generally about circumstances which no human being would have quarrelled about, except myself. One man, for example, was better mounted than I; I was desirous of purchasing his horse, and he would not sell it. We never spoke again. Another rode better, and took the lead of me. I cursed him cordially, and so our acquaintance ended.— Thus it was, that, at the age of fourand-twenty, and after spending little more than two years at the family mansion, I found my table absolutely deserted, except when the village apothecary found it convenient to eat my venison, and drink my claret. Even the parson was too proud or too rightminded, call it which you will, to put up with my freaks and humours; and he ceased to be my guest, though there was no man in the county with whom I was more desirous of continuing on a friendly footing.

"When I say this, do not suppose for a moment that I courted the rector's society from any feeling of respect either for his character or talents. Both were undoubtedly excellent; indeed, if merit were rewarded as it ought to be, he never would have remained so long as he did upon that living. But what were the man's character and talents to me? Nothing, or worse than nothing; inasmuch, as I never heard him praised without suspecting that the design of his laudator was to pass censure upon my. self. By no means. The chances are, that I should have liked him better had he been a profligate; for in truth, it was on account of his daughter, a lovely and gentle creature. Well, well, let that pass.