hough he attained no commanding height in any
pursuit, he knew enough of many studies, literary and scientific, to
fill up his time, and divert from temptation a head, which was none of
the strongest in point of resistance.

Miss Augusta Bidmore, his lordship's only other child, received also the
instructions of Cargill in such branches of science as her father chose
she should acquire, and her tutor was capable to teach. But her progress
was as different from that of her brother, as the fire of heaven differs
from that grosser element which the peasant piles upon his smouldering
hearth. Her acquirements in Italian and Spanish literature, in history,
in drawing, and in all elegant learning, were such as to enchant her
teacher, while at the same time it kept him on the stretch, lest, in her
successful career, the scholar should outstrip the master.

Alas! such intercourse, fraught as it is with dangers arising out of the
best and kindest, as well as the most natural feelings on either side,
proved in the present, as in many other instances, fatal to the peace of
the preceptor. Every feeling heart will excuse a weakness, which we
shall presently find carried with it its own severe punishment. Cadenus,
indeed, believe him who will, has assured us, that, in such a perilous
intercourse, he himself preserved the limits which were unhappily
transgressed by the unfortunate Vanessa, his more impassioned pupil:--

"The innocent delight he took
To see the virgin mind her book,
Was but the master's secret joy,
In school to hear the finest boy."

But Josiah Cargill was less fortunate, or less cautious. He suffered his
fair pupil to become inexpressibly dear to him, before he discovered the
precipice towards which he was moving under the direction of a blind and
misplaced passion. He was indeed utterly incapable of availing himself
of the opportunities afforded by his situation, to involve his pupil in
the toils of a mutual passion. Honour and gratitude alike forbade such a
line of conduct, even had it been consistent with the natural
bashfulness, simplicity, and innocence of his disposition. To sigh and
suffer in secret, to form resolutions of separating himself from a
situation so fraught with danger, and to postpone from day to day the
accomplishment of a resolution so prudent, was all to which the tutor
found himself equal; and it is not improbable, that the veneration with
which he regarded his patron's daugh