combinations and occurrences of this senseless mode of intercourse were maddening to him.  Yet he would not propose the separation.  He was haunted by the fear of causing the death of one or other of the beings implicated in these events; and he could not persuade himself to undertake to direct the course of events, lest, ignorant of the land he traversed, he should lead those attached to the car into irremediable ruin.

After a discussion on this subject, which lasted for several hours, he took leave of his friends, and returned to town, unwilling to meet Perdita before us, conscious, as we all must be, of the thoughts uppermost in the minds of both.  Perdita prepared to follow him with her child.  Idris endeavoured to persuade her to remain.  My poor sister looked at the counsellor with affright.  She knew that Raymond had conversed with her; had he instigated this request?—­was this to be the prelude to their eternal separation?—­I have said, that the defects of her character awoke and acquired vigour from her unnatural position.  She regarded with suspicion the invitation of Idris; she embraced me, as if she were about to be deprived of my affection also:  calling me her more than brother, her only friend, her last hope, she pathetically conjured me not to cease to love her; and with encreased anxiety she departed for London, the scene and cause of all her misery.

The scenes that followed, convinced her that she had not yet fathomed the obscure gulph into which she had plunged.  Her unhappiness assumed every day a new shape; every day some unexpected event seemed to close, while in fact it led onward, the train of calamities which now befell her.

The selected passion of the soul of Raymond was ambition.  Readiness of talent, a capacity of entering into, and leading the dispositions of men; earnest desire of distinction were the awakeners and nurses of his ambition.  But other ingredients mingled with these, and prevented him from becoming the calculating, determined character, which alone forms a successful hero.  He was obstinate, but not firm; benevolent in his first movements; harsh and reckless when provoked.  Above all, he was remorseless and unyielding in the pursuit of any object of desire, however lawless.  Love of pleasure, and the softer sensibilities of our nature, made a prominent part of his character, conquering the conqueror; holding him in at the moment of acquisition; sweeping away ambition’s web; making him forget the toil of weeks, for the sake of one moment’s indulgence of the new and actual object of his wishes.  Obeying these impulses, he had become the husband of Perdita:  egged on by them, he found himself the lover of Evadne.  He had now lost both.  He had neither the ennobling self-gratulation, which constancy inspires, to console him, nor the voluptuous sense of abandonment to a forbidden, but intoxicating passion.  His heart was exhausted by the recent events; his enjoyment of life was destroyed by the