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ROBERT HARRISON, Esq.

FRIEND HARRISON,

I FEEL more honoured in linking your name, as a Gentleman and a Merchant, with this Volume, than I can find words to express in this sincere and honest Dedication. Better the book might have been, had I paid more regard to your suggestions. But you know my headstrong infirmity; and greatly as I respect my Monitor, I have ever insisted upon having my own way. Your firm friendship and unceasing kindness are other matters, which I cannot pass in silence, although the world can never know all the patience and endurance which you have shown to

THE AUTHOR OF GODFREY MALVERN.

TO THE READER.

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"To draw only Virtuous characters in this age, is to write unnaturally, to be classed -to be classed among the many good-meaning, milk-and-water Authors, who, like the aforesaid beverage, do neither good nor harm. To take up a strong pen, and paint only vice, in all its dark and hideous colours, is to add our name to the great Muster-roll of Crime to be branded as an associate of thieves, blackguards, and blacklegs, and become a byword among all sects of the saintly and the sanctified. One course only remains open, to take the mingled colours of good and evil,' and to portray human nature as it exists—to respect and reverence Virtue, even when found in the haunts of beggars-and to attack, without fear, the Vice, Cant, and Humbug, which too often, under the Mask of Virtue, seek to undermine and destroy everything good, honest, upright, manly, and English. This is the course we have attempted to pursue, unchecked by either the frowns of friends or the threats of enemies."-GODFREY MALVERN, p. 255.

OF THE

THEW YORK

GODFREY MALVERN.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER THE FIRST INTRODUCES OUR HERO TO THE READER, AND OPENS WITH A VERY HOMELY BUT VERY NECESSARY DIALOGUE.

WITHIN a country churchyard, which stood upon the gentle slope of a green hill-side, its summit crowned with a grey, old, and weatherbeaten church,-stood a young man dressed in deep mourning; his forehead half buried in the palm of his hand, while his elbow rested on the top of a tall gravestone. The tombstone was partly covered with a rich, short, orange-coloured lichen, such as is often seen on old ruins, or giving an additional beauty to the picturesque in landscape scenery. In the present instance, however, it was fast obliterating the workmanship of some forgotten village-sculpture, and already half concealed a very plump cherub, who with wings placed cross wise on his breast, and huge swollen cheeks, seemed endeavouring in vain to blow away the destructive creepers which were rapidly overgrowing both himself and his stony trumpet. As for the "poor inhabitant below," not a letter was visible to tell of either his name or his age; and a grim death's-head, that stood grinning from a neighbouring gravestone—as if it had long watched the slow working of decay,-now seemed to gaze in triumph at the victory which Time had once more obtained over Human Vanity.

The young stranger who occupied the centre of this little city of the dead, might, at a distance, have passed for some gloomy statue of Grief, so fixed and motionless did he remain. The grey-headed sexton, was busied in smoothing the little summit of a newly-made grave, which had but a short hour before received its cold inhabitant, and paused from time to time, as he rested upon his spade, to gaze upon that

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