NO FICTION. PR5219 R18 N6 1820 V.2 CHAPTER XIX. WHILE Lefevre was thus drinking the sour draughts of regret and disappointment, which the world ever imposes on such as are credulous enough to listen to her flattering speeches, he received the following letter from his deserted, but steady friend, Douglas. Mr. Douglas to Mr. Lefevre. "MY DEAR CHARLES, "It is now six months since I have seen or heard from you; and it is three times that period, since you have informed me of any thing belonging to your affairs! Who would have thought it!-Would not you-should not 1-six years ago have pronounced such an event in the history of our friendship impossible? But it has occurred! If you chose to avoid personal intercourse, was it not due to a friend, who has so much interest in your welfare, to give him some account of your situation? But I forbear-This is my consolation, if our friendship is at an end, I have not been accessary to its dissolution. "I assure you I have need of this consolation. No loss in life appears to me worthy of comparison with the loss of friendship-And I have lost a friend! The companion of my youth, the sharer and heightener of my joys, has left me; he who nobly strove to outstep me in climbing the elevations of christian knowledge, and in exemplifying the devotedness of the christian character, has halted in the race. O Charles! what pleasures have been ours. What sympathy of sentiment-what a mixture of souls!-what serene peace what heavenly raptures! They are gone they are gone! They live only in res membrance!-a remembrance so bitter and yet so dear, that I would part with it one moment, and the next I cannot let it go! t Forgive me this allusion to the past. I did not mean it, but my emotion encreases as I proceed. I thought I had prepared myself for the event, and find I have not. I knew that our friendship was founded on the love of religion and literature; and, when I saw the foundation affected, I had reason to anticipate the consequence to the superstructure. Yet my anticipations have not availed me. I seem like the sorrowing parent, who, through months of hopeless suffering, had endeavoured to reconcile herself to the departure of her child; and, after all, when the event arrives, it finds her unprepared for the awful stroke. "I have reason to fear, from some hints I casually received a day or two since, that you have once more sacrificed your good intentions; and have given yourself up to the most unlicensed indulgence of the passions. I would most willingly have disbelieved this intelligence, but it 1 was too correctly made, and you know not what distress it has given me. Much as I feel your loss, it is nothing to the idea of being lost to yourself-lost to God! Oh! Charles, my dear Charles, once more I beg you to reconsider your course. Will you suffer yourself to be subjected again by lavish expences, to those embarrassments and insults, from which you have suffered so much? Will you dissolve the pearl of health and peace in the cup of intemperance? Will you regard the deceitful voice of those whose 'paths lay hold on hell'-who are the handmaids of destruction? Will you throw up your interests in both worlds; and bring on yourself at once, the reprehension of man, and the wrath of the great Judge, to gratify a viceto pursue mere vanity? One, "What is the world that thus ensnares and enslaves you? What is the testimony of those who have seen most of it? a prince and a warrior, whose course had been attended by victory and honour, finishes it in anguish, saying, I have had a fine dream.' Another, a senator and |