tiality for me, may too highly value, believe me, you will find it by much the smallest blessing of

this place.

AMINTOR.

To SYLVIA.

LETTER IX.

FROM the fragrant bowers, the ever-blooming fields, and lightsome regions of the Morning Star, I wish health and every blessing to the charming Sylvia, the blessing of the earth!

I have a secret to reveal to you of greatest importance to your present and future happiness. You are as much a stranger to your own rank and circumstances as I was to mine till I came here, where I met a fair spirit, who informed me, that when she was a mortal I was her son, and not the heir of the Earl of as was supposed; and that the

Lord

is your own brother. It is necessary that you should know and discover this to him, which will prevent that innocent fondness which he now indulges for you from growing into a guilty passion.

You have been educated only as a dependant on the noble family you are in, and as a companion to the young ladies, who are really your sisters. The

al daughters successively by the Countess, your mother, but no lawful heir, which made him fond of a natural son that he had by a mistress: his affecfor him was so extravagant, that he contrived to settle his estate on him: this gave your mother such anxiety, that her jealousy and aversion to the youth put her on this rash design, when she was with child, to exchange it, if it proved a daughter. My mother, who was married out of her service, and in whom she could entirely confide, was with child of me at the same time: their time of delivery was very near together; my mother had a son, and you proved a daughter: the affair was managed with such dexterity, that I was exchanged, and passed without suspicion for the Countess's son, and you was received by my mother, and supposed to be her daughter. Within a year the Countess had really a son; but she dying as soon as she was delivered, the secret was undiscovered.

I lived a guiltless impostor till I was ten years old, when a sudden decay withered my tender bloom; but as I had been bred in the strictest notions of piety and truth, without any childish prejudices, or slavish fears, I expected my approaching end, whilst Death made his advances armed with a golden-headed dart. I had no notions of misery, all my expectations were bright, though imperfect, of some Paradise beyond the grave; and closing my eyes, I fell asleep, and waked to immor

tal life and happiness.

All that was past looked like a dream, like an airy image of I know not what. Some notion I had of a God, and my dependence on him; but how different from the illumination that broke in on my soul the moment that it threw off its mortal veil! it was then I began to live and reflect it was then I found myself a rational being, and looked back with contempt on the insignificant part I had been acting: the memory of my original follies, the childish baubles and toys that had just before been my diversion, would have given me some confusion, if my case had been singular; but I met thousands of gay spirits newly released, who had performed their short task, and finished their trifling farces of life; at the same time transported at their present superior circumstances, they made the most agreeable reflections on their past state. What grandeur, what vivacity, what enlargement of their intellectual powers! how sparkling, how resembling the angels of God, their forms while a perfect consciousness, and exact remembrance of what they were but a few moments past, raised their joy and gratitude to the height, and recommended heaven itself.

There was one circumstance in my early death that makes me look on it as a peculiar favour, in that I was removed by the just dispensation of Heaven from the possession of what is, in the

tion, from a principle of justice and truth, gave me an ineffable satisfaction; since, if I had lived, I had been the unhappy, though innocent, usurper of a rank and inheritance to which I had not the least real title. This, with a thousand other advantages, makes me bless the period that freed me from mortality; that happy moment that delivered me from ignorance and vanity; from the errors, the guilt, the miseries, of human life; of which, though I had but little experience, I am now fully informed of the state of my fellow-creatures, and with what toil and hazard a longer course of years had been attended.

I remember no engagement to the world but my affection for you; nor has Death effaced the tender impression; but what was then a natural sympathy is now a rational esteem. I view with pleasure your growing virtue, and frequent my native world for your sake. There was something perfectly engaging in the guiltless sorrow you expressed in my sickness; and when my eyes were closed in death you would have watched the breathless clay, in hopes to wake me from the fatal slumbers again; nor could the gloomy solemnity of a room of state deter you from paying your visits to the silent reliques. If any thing could have tempted me to wish myself a mortal again, it would have been the tender tears you shed for me. The only intervals of human life I review with pleasure

are the hours I spent with you; this gentle passion was the stamp of Heaven on my soul, the first soft impression it received, and it gains new energy in these happy regions of pure beneficence and love. This gives me a constant solicitude, while I see you on the borders of such a temptation; you are yet perfectly guiltless, and have done nothing unbecoming the sanctity of Nature, and the chaste affection of a sister for a brother, but you are on the very limits of danger; a step farther, the least advance, involves you in sin and destruction. I know this discovery will give you a secret horror, and quench every kindling desire: the purity of your virtue will start at the enchanting error that might have led you on to ceftain perdition; for young as you are, the contagious spark is ready to kindle, and the lovely boy appears more alluring: your mutual conversation, and the early dawning of superior merit in both, endeared you to each other by such sentiments as only noble and virtuous minds. experience but as a more late discovery might have been fatal to your innocence and peace, I impatiently attended an opportunity and method to make you sensible of your danger. I know, though 1 have been dead four years, you still remember me, and I have often heard you name me, and seen you with delight gazing on my picture; this made me resolve to appear to you when I saw you. The