life by the remembrance of their purity, and be solaced in death,
that by her it was unsullied!"

Such was the secret prayer with which the only survivor of the
Beverley family quitted the abode of her youth, and residence of her
forefathers; while tears of recollecting sorrow filled her eyes, and
obstructed the last view of her native town which had excited them.

Cecilia, this fair traveller, had lately entered into the one-and-
twentieth year of her age. Her ancestors had been rich farmers in
the county of Suffolk, though her father, in whom a spirit of
elegance had supplanted the rapacity of wealth, had spent his time
as a private country gentleman, satisfied, without increasing his
store, to live upon what he inherited from the labours of his
predecessors. She had lost him in her early youth, and her mother had
not long survived him. They had bequeathed to her 10,000 pounds, and
consigned her to the care of the Dean of ------, her uncle. With this
gentleman, in whom, by various contingencies, the accumulated
possessions of a rising and prosperous family were centred, she had
passed the last four years of her life; and a few weeks only had yet
elapsed since his death, which, by depriving her of her last
relation, made her heiress to an estate of 3000 pounds per annum;
with no other restriction than that of annexing her name, if she
married, to the disposal of her hand and her riches.

But though thus largely indebted to fortune, to nature she had yet
greater obligations: her form was elegant, her heart was liberal;
her countenance announced the intelligence of her mind, her
complexion varied with every emotion of her soul, and her eyes, the
heralds of her speech, now beamed with understanding and now