It was

has no cause to murmur at the sacrifice I make: I owe it to the generous sentiments of this virtuous family; but my heart remains thine for ever. I go to endeavour to make them happy without any hope of being myself so.' not without some sort of violence they forced her from the place; but she insisted that they should erect a monument here to the memory of her husband; and that the hut of her old master and mistress, who followed her to Turin, should be converted into a country house, as plain as it was solitary, where she proposed to come sometimes to mourn the errors and misfortunes of her youth. Time, the assiduities of Fonrose, the fruits of her second marriage, have since opened her soul to the impressions of a new affection; and they cite her as an example of a woman, remarkable and respectable even in her infidelity.

JOHN HAWKESWORTH.

DR HAWKESWORTH holds a respectable rank among English miscellaneous writers, and none of his works are more valued than the few Eastern tales and domestic stories he has left behind him. Next to Almoran and Hamet,' the history of AMURATH, which we here give, is one of his most reputed tales. "The fable," says an eminent writer, "is very simple, and resembles much the style of the Arabian Nights. The fiction of the ring is pleasing, and its powers are judiciously called into action. The gradations by which Amurath advances from a state of comparative innocence into that vice which finally degrades him from manhood, and sends him as a monster into the desert, are perhaps too abrupt; but the tale is, on the other hand, too compressed to allow room for any more detailed exhibition of the gradual fall of nature from virtue into the most abandoned profligacy. Too much is not to be expected in these abridged moral portraitures. The displeasure of the sultan at the vizier, who being commanded to lay aside all ceremony, and imagine his sovereign his equal, literally obeyed the command, and indulged in the full liberty of friendship, is well imagined and well represented. The disgust which Amurath at length conceives at his ring, and his anxiety rather to be rid of his monitor than, by correcting his irregularities, to render it harmless, are equally natural, and contain an equally good moral. It is another stroke of nature in this tale, that the resentment of the sultan against Alibeg is but more violent in proportion to its injustice, and the bitterness of his reflections upon treating a faithful servant so unjustly only further exasperates him,

and renders him more precipitate against his object. This is nature and the human mind. The manner in which Amurath finally throws away the admonitory ring, his soliloquy which accompanies this action, the appearance and the address of the Genius, and finally the transformation of Amurath into a Satyr, in all these circumstances DR HAWKESWORTH seems so far to exceed himself, that we find it almost difficult to persuade ourselves that this tale was the production of his own unassisted powers."

There are, however, many indecencies of conception in the tales of Hawkesworth, that have never been adverted to, because of the manner, we suppose, in which they are hedged round by moral and biblical apothegms. We do not pretend to more delicacy of feeling than our neighbours, nor do we wish to join a cant nauseously prevalent at this time, but we must say, that, in looking over the stories of Hawkesworth, we were a good deal surprised at the filthy groundwork upon which almost the whole of them are constructed. It may be enough to remark, that the scene of all his tales in The Adventurer is either an Eastern seraglio or a London brothel; but this is nothing compared to the gross conceits that pervade them. What can be more vile, for instance, than the conception of a virtuous wife personifying a strumpet, for the purpose of detecting her husband's infidelity ?* Or what more loathsome than the story of Agamus, an old debauchee, who is brought to the brink of committing incest with his own daughter, and who, breaking down the sacred delicacy of relationship, is made to send the Adventurer a minute history of her prostitution, as narrated to him by her? It is very well to tag a moral to such things; but we need not feel grateful to him who gives an antidote to his own poison; and although it may gain Dr

* See the story of Desdemona, in The Adventurer, Nos. 117 and 118. + See Adventurer, Nos. 86 and 134-36.

Hawkesworth the praise of good intention, it cannot prevent the purity of his taste from being questioned.*

We make these remarks unwillingly; but we should like to see some of our modern sticklers for decency brought to a consistency of conduct, and not exercising their severity upon the authors only who have the misfortune to publish in these days. There are parts even in the British Moralists' much more objectionable than any part of Adam Blair,' and there are passages in many of our Standard Poets-in Dryden, Swift, Pope, Prior—a thousand times more gross than any thing in Don Juan.' Let him who will not admit the one into his library turn out the others; and he can console himself for his empty shelves by the reflection that he has acted consistently.

AMURATH.

AMURATH, Sultan of the East, the judge of nations, the disciple of adversity, records the wonders of his life: let those who presumptuously question the ways of Providence, blush in silence and be wise; let the proud be humble and obtain honour; and let the sensual reform and be happy.

The Angel of Death closed the eyes of the Sultan Abradin my father, and his empire descended to me in the eighteenth year of my age. At first my mind was awed to humility, and softened with grief; I was insensible to the splendour of dominion, I heard the addresses of flattery with disgust, and received the homage of dependent greatness with indifference. I had always regarded my father not only with love but reverence; and I was now perpetually recollecting instances of his tenderness, and reviewing the solemn scene, in which he recommended me to heaven in imperfect language, and grasped my hand in the agonies of death.

One evening, after having concealed myself all day in his chamber, I visited his grave: I prostrated myself on his

* In the Account of Voyages undertaken for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere,' drawn up by Dr Hawkesworth, he discovered his real character much more than in The Adventurer-to a degree, in. deed, that brought upon him universal censure, and sent him, it is said, broken hearted to the grave.

tomb: sorrow overflowed my eyes, and devotion kindled in my bosom. I felt myself suddenly smitten on the shoulder as with a rod; and looking up, I perceived a man whose eyes were piercing as light, and his beard whiter than snow. I am,' said he, the Genius Syndarac, the friend of thy father Abradin, who was the fear of his enemies, and the desire of his people; whose smile diffused gladness like the lustre of the morning, and whose frown was dreadful as the gathering of a tempest: resign thyself to my influence, and thou shalt be like him.' I bowed myself to the earth in token of gratitude and obedience, and he put a ring on the middle finger of my left hand, in which I perceived a ruby of a deep colour and uncommon brightness. . This ring, said he, shall mark out to thee the boundaries of good and evil; that without weighing remote consequences, thou mayest know the nature and tendency of every action. Be attentive, therefore, to the silent admonition; and when the circle of gold shall by a sudden contraction press thy finger, and the ruby shall grow pale, desist immediately from what thou shalt be doing, and mark down that action in thy memory as a transgression of the rule of right: keep my gift as a pledge of happiness and honour, and take it not off for a moment.' I received the ring with a sense of obligation which I strove to express, and an astonishment that compelled me to be silent. The Genius perceived my confusion, and turning from me with a smile of complacency, immediately disappeared.

During the first moon I was so cautious and circumspect, that the pleasure of reflecting that my ring had not once indicated a fault, was lessened by a doubt of its virtue. I applied myself to public business; my melancholy decreased as my mind was diverted to other objects; and lest the youth of my court should think that recreation was too long suspended, I appointed to hunt the lion. But though I went out to the sport rather to gratify others than myself, yet my usual ardour returned in the field; I grew warm in the pursuit, I continued the chase, which was unsuccessful too long, and returned fatigued and disappointed.

As I entered the seraglio, I was met by a little dog that had been my father's, who expressed his joy at my return by jumping round me, and endeavouring to reach my hand: but as I was not disposed to receive his caresses, I struck him in the fretfulness of my displeasure so severe a blow with my foot, that it left him scarce power to crawl