FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.

-------- Hotel, London.

I hasten to you, Emily--my own and only love. Your letter has restored
me to life. To-morrow we shall meet.


It was with mingled feelings, alloyed and embittered, in spite of the
burning hope which predominated over all, that Falkland returned to
E------. He knew that he was near the completion of his most ardent
wishes; that he was within the grasp of a prize which included all the
thousand objects of ambition, into which, among other men, the desires
are divided; the only dreams he had ventured to form for years were about
to kindle into life. He had every reason to be happy;--such is the
inconsistency of human nature, that he was almost wretched. The morbid
melancholy, habitual to him, threw its colourings over every emotion and
idea. He knew the character of the woman whose affections he had
seduced; and he trembled to think of the doom to which he was about to
condemn her. With this, there came over his mind a long train of dark
and remorseful recollections. Emily was not the only one whose
destruction he had prepared. All who had loved him, he had repaid with
ruin; and one--the first--the fairest--and the most loved, with death.

That last remembrance, more bitterly than all, possessed him. It will be
recollected that Falkland, in the letters which begin this work, speaking
of the ties he had formed after the loss of his first love, says, that it