"That new

Mrs. Atherling so easily!" cried Cecilia. girl seems apt. Some servants deny one so as to show one is at home."-" I should like them the better for it," said Fanny. "I hate to see any one ready at telling a falsehood."-"Poor little conscientious dear!" said the lover, mimicking her, “one would think the dressed-up saint had made you as methodistical as herself." "What, I suppose, Miss Fanny, you would have had us let the old quiz in.”—-“ To be sure I would; and I wonder you could be denied to so kind a friend.---Poor dear Mrs. Atherling! how hurt she would be, if she knew you were at home!" ---" Poor dear, indeed ! Do not be so affected, Fanny. How should you care for Mis Atherling, when you know that she dislikes you !"—" Dislikes me! Oh yes; I fear she does!"--" I am sure she does," replied Cecilia; " for you are downright rude to her. Did you not say, only the day before yesterday, when she said, There, Miss Barnwell, I hope I have at last gotten a cap which you like,--No; I am sorry to say you have not ?"" To be sure I did ---I could not tell a falsehood, even to please Mrs. Atherling, though she was my own dear mother's dearest friend."" Your mother's friend, Fanny? I never heard that before;" said the lover. "Did you not know that, Alfred!" said Cerilia; eagerly adding, "but Mrs. Atherling does not know it;" giving him a meaning look, as if to say, "and do not you tell her."-" Would she did know it!" said Fanny mournfully, “ for though I dare not tell her so, lest she should abuse my poor mother, as you say she would, Cecilia, because she was so angry at her marriage with my misguided father, still, I think she would look kindly on her once dear friend's orphan child, and like me, in spite of my honesty."--" No, no, silly girl; honesty is usually its own reward. Alfred, what do you think? Our old friend, who is not very penetrating, said one day to her, I suppose you think my caps to young for me and that the young person replied, Yes, madam, I do."" And would do so again, Cecilia ;---and it was far more friendly and kind to say so than flatter her on her dress as you do, and then laugh at her when her back is turned. I hate to hear any one mimicked and laughed at; and more especially my mamma's old friend."-"There, there,

.

child! your sentimentality makes me sick. But come; let us begin.""Yes," cried Alfred, "let us rehearse a little, before the rest of the party come. I should like to hear Mrs. Atherling's exclamations, if she knew what we were loing. She would say thus:"" Here he gave a most accurate representation of the poor old lady's voice and manner, and her fancied abuse of private theatricals, while Cecilia cried, "bravo! bravo!" and Fanny, "shame! shame!" till the other Livingstones, and the rest of the company, who now entered, drowned her cry in their loud applauses and louder laughter.

The old lady, whom surprise, anger, and wounded sensibility, had hitherto kept silent and still in her involuntary hiding-place, now rose up, and mounting on the sofa, looked over the top of the skreen, full of reproachful meaning, on the conscious offenders!

What a moment, to them, of overwhelming surprise and consternation! The cheeks, flushed with malicious triumph and satirical pleasure, became covered with the deeper blush of detected treachery, or pale with fear of its conse quences; and the eyes, so lately beaming with ungenerous, injurious satisfaction, were now cast, with painful shame, upon the ground, unable to meet the justly indig nant glance of her, whose kindness they had repaid with such palpable and base ingratitude!" An admirable likeness indeed, Alfred Lawrie," said their undeceived dupe, breaking her perturbed silence, and coming down from her elevation; "but it will cost you more than you are at present aware of.-But who at thou?" she added, addressing Fanny (who, though it might have been a moment of triumph to her, felt and looked as if she had been a sharer in the guilt,) "Who art thou, my honourable, kind girl? And who was your mother?"-" Your Fanny Beaumont," re"Fanplied the quick-feeling orphan, bursting into tears. ny Beaumont's child! and it was concealed from me!" "But it said she, folding the weeping girl to her heart. was all of a piece;-all treachery and insincerity, from the beginning to the end. However, I am undeceived before was to late." She then disclosed to the detected family her generous motive for the unexpected visit; and declared her thankfulness for what had taken place, as far as she was

herself concerned; though she could not but deplore, as a christian, the discovered turpitude of those whom she had fondly loved.

"You

"I have now," she continued, " to make amends to one whom I have hitherto not treated kindly; but I have at length been enabled to discover an undeserved friend, amidst undeserved foes. My dear child," added she, parting Fanny's dark ringlets, and gazing fearfully in her face, I must have been blind, as well as blinded, not to see your likeness to your dear mother.-Will live with you me, Fanny, and be unto me as a DAUGHTER?"-" Oh, most gladly!" was the eager and agitated reply. artful creature!" exclaimed Cecilia, pale with rage and mortification, "You knew very well that she was behind the skreen.""I know that she could not know it," replied the old lady; "and you, Miss Livingstone, assert what you do not yourself believe. But come, Fanny, let us go and meet my carriage; for, no doubt your presence here is now as unwelcome as mine." But Fanny lingered, as if reluctant to depart. She could not bear to leave the Livingstones in anger. They had been kind to her; and she would fain have parted with them affectionately; but they all preserved a sullen indignant silence, and scornfully repelled her advances.--" You see that you must not tarry here, my good girl," observed the old lady smiling; "so let us depart." They did so; leaving the Livingstones and the lover, not deploring their fault, but lamenting their detection ;-lamenting also the hour when they added the lies of CONVENIENCE to their other deceptions, and had thereby enabled their unsuspecting dupe to detect those falsehoods, the result of their avaricious fears, which may be justly entitled the LIES OF INTEREST.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIES OF FIRST-RATE MALIGNITY.

LIES OF FIRST-RATE MALIGNITY come next to be considered and I think that I am right in asserting that such lies, lies intended wilfully to destroy the reputation of men and women, to injure their characters in public or private estimation, and for ever cloud over their prospects in life,--are less frequent than falsehoods of any other description.

Not that malignity is an unfrequent feeling ;--not that dislike, or envy, or jealousy, would not gladly vent itself in many a malignant falsehood, or other efforts of the same kind, against the peace and fame of its often innocent and unconscious objects ;--but that the arm of the law, in some measure at least, defends reputations and if it should not have been able to deter the slanderer from his purpose, it can at least avenge the slandered.

Still, such is the prevailing tendency, in society, to prey on the reputations of others (especially of those who are * at all distinguished, either in public or private life ;) such the propensity to impute BAD MOTIVES to GOOD ACTIONS: So common the fiendlike pleasure of finding or imagining blemishes in beings on whom even a motive-judging world in general gazes with respectful admiration, and bestows the sacred tribute of well-earned praise; that I am convinced there are many persons, worn both in mind and body by the consciousness of being the objects of calumnies and suspicions which they have it not in their power to combat, who steal broken-hearted to their graves, thankful for the summons of death, and hoping to find refuge from the injustice of their fellow-creatures in the bosom of their God and Saviour.

With the following illustration of the LIE OF FIRST RATE MALIGNITY I shall conclude my observations on this subject.

THE ORPHAN.

THERE are persons in the world whom circumstances have so entirely preserved from intercourse with the base and the malignant, and whose dispositions are so free from bitterness, that they can scarcely believe in the existence of baseness and malignity. Such persons, when they hear of injuries committed, and wrongs done, at the instigation of the most trivial and apparently worthless motives, are apt to exclaim, "You have been imposed upon. No one could be so wicked as to act thus upon such slight grounds; and you are not relating as a sober observer of human nature and human action, but with the exaggerated view of a dealer in fiction and romance!" Happy, and privileged beyond the ordinary charter of human beings, are those who can thus exclaim;--but the inhabitants of the tropics might, with equal justice, refuse to believe in the existence of that thing called snow, as these unbelievers in the moral turpitude in question refuse their credence to anecdotes which disclose it. All they can with propriety asserts, that such instances have not come under their cognizance. Yet, even to those favoured few, I would put the following questions:-Have you never experienced feelings of selfishness, anger, jealousy, or envy, which, though habits of religious and moral restraint taught you easily to subdue them, had yet troubled you long enough to make you fully sensible of their existence and their power? If so, is it not easy to believe that such feelings, when excited in the minds of those not under religious and moral guidance may grow to such an unrestrained excess as to lead to actions and lies of terrible malignity?

I cannot but think that even the purest and best of my friends must answer in the affirmative. Still, they have reason to return thanks to their Creator, that their lot has been cast amongst such "pleasant places ;" and that it is theirs to breath an atmosphere impregnated only with airs from heaven.

My lot, from a peculiar train of circumstances, has been