to another.  At all events, the blow took effect.  Believing her dead, and deeming myself at liberty, I married Lady Emily, after a lapse of six months, exactly as many weeks before the death of my first wife.  Of course you perceive now, my friend, that my last marriage was null and void; and that, hurried on by the eager impulses of love and ambition, I did, without knowing it, an act which has made my children illegitimate.  It is true, my union with Lady Emily was productive to me of great results.  I was created an Irish peer, in consequence of the support I gave to my wife’s connections.  The next step was an earldom, with an English peerage, together with such an accession of property in right of my wife, as made me rich beyond my wishes.  So far, you may say, I was a successful man; but the world cannot judge of the heart, and its recollections.  My second wife was a virtuous woman, high, haughty, and correct; but notwithstanding our early enthusiastic affection, the experiences of domestic life soon taught us to feel, that, after all, our dispositions and tastes were unsuitable.  She was fond of show, of equipage, of fashionable amusements, and that empty dissipation which constitutes, the substance of aristocratic existence.  I, on the contrary, when not engaged in public life, with which I soon grew fatigued, was devoted to retirement, to domestic enjoyment, and to the duties which devolved upon me as a parent.  I loved my children with the greatest tenderness, and applied myself to the cultivation of their principles, and the progress of their education.  All, however, would not do.  I was unhappy; unhappy, not only in my present wife, but in the recollection of the gentle and affectionate Maria.  I now felt the full enormity of my crime against that patient and angelic being.  Her memory began to haunt me—­her virtues were ever in my thoughts; her quiet, uncomplaining submission, her love, devotion, tenderness, all rose up in fearful array against me, until I felt that the abiding principle of my existence was a deep remorse, that ate its way into my happiness day by day, and has never left me through my whole subsequent life.  This, however, was attended with some good, as it recalled me, in an especial manner, to the nobler duties of humanity.  I felt now that truth, and a high sense of honor, could alone enable me to redeem the past, and atone for my conduct with respect to Maria.  But, above all, I felt that independence of mind, self-restraint, and firmness of character, were virtues, principles, what you will, without which man is but a cipher, a tool of others, or the sport of circumstances.

“My second wife died of a cold, caught by going rather thinly dressed to a fashionable party too soon after the birth of Emily; and my son, having become the pet and spoiled child of his mother and her relatives, soon became imbued with fashionable follies, which, despite of all my care and vigilance, I am grieved to say, have degenerated into worse and more indefensible principles.  He had not reached the period of manhood when he altogether threw off all regard for my control over him as a father, and led a life since of which the less that is said the better.