moments, he replied,
“Of sinful avarice and the spirit’s pride; —
While yet untempted, I was safe and well;
Temptation came; I reason’d, and I fell: 
To be man’s guide and glory I design’d,
A rare example for our sinful kind;
But now my weakness and my guilt I see,
And am a warning—­man, be warn’d by me!”
   He said, and saw no more the human face;
To a lone loft he went, his dying place,
And, as the vicar of his state inquired,
Turn’d to the wall and silently expired!

LETTER XX.

THE POOR OF THE BOROUGH.

Patience and sorrow strove
Who should express her goodliest. 
                      Shakespeare.

“No charms she now can boast,”—­’tis true,
But other charmers wither too: 
“And she is old,”—­the fact I know,
And old will other heroines grow;
But not like them has she been laid,
In ruin’d castle sore dismay’d;
Where naughty man and ghostly spright
Fill’d her pure mind with awe and dread,
Stalk’d round the room, put out the light,
And shook the curtains round her bed. 
No cruel uncle kept her land,
No tyrant father forced her hand;
She had no vixen virgin-aunt,
Without whose aid she could not eat,
And yet who poison’d all her meat,
With gibe and sneer and taunt. 
Yet of the heroine she’d a share, —
She saved a lover from despair,
And granted all his wish in spite
Of what she knew and felt was right: 
But, heroine then no more,
She own’d the fault, and wept and pray’d
And humbly took the parish aid,
And dwelt among the poor.

------------------

Ellen Orford. {11}

The Widow’s Cottage—­Blind Ellen one—­Hers not the Sorrows or Adventures of Heroines—­What these are, first described—­Deserted Wives; rash Lovers; courageous Damsels:  in desolated Mansions; in grievous Perplexity—­These Evils, however severe, of short Duration--Ellen’s Story—­Her Employment in Childhood—­First Love; first Adventure; its miserable Termination—­An Idiot Daughter—­A Husband—­ Care in Business without Success—­The Man’s Despondency and its Effect—­Their Children:  how disposed of—­One particularly unfortunate—­Fate of the Daughter - Ellen keeps a School and is happy—­becomes Blind; loses her School—­Her Consolations.

Observe yon tenement, apart and small,
Where the wet pebbles shine upon the wall;
Where the low benches lean beside the door,
And the red paling bounds the space before;
Where thrift and lavender, and lad’s-love bloom, —
That humble dwelling is the widow’s home;
There live a pair, for various fortunes known,
But the blind EUen will relate her own; —
Yet ere we hear the story she can tell,
On prouder sorrows let us briefly dwell. 
   I’ve often marvell’d, when, by night, by day,
I’ve mark’d the manners moving in my way,