6.47 Narrative, FOUNDED ON RECENT AND INTERESTING FACTS. "Le vrai n'est pas toujours vraisemblable." "These familiar histories may, perhaps, be made of greater Second Edition. VOLUME II. London: PRINTED FOR FRANCIS WESTLEY, 10, STATIONER'S COURT, AND NO FICTION. 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 I-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 gonethey are gone! They live only in re 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! 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 |