on his countenance, and he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice, as his looks returned once more to his wife,—"I owe these to thee!"
One trait of mind especially characterised Clifford,—indulgence to the faults of others! "Circumstances make guilt," he was wont to say: "let us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the guilt!" His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable path that he trod himself. Happy was considered that family which had the hope to ally itself with his.
Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy. Who will condemn us for preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted from the gibbet and the hulks?—which makes scarecrows, not beacons, terrifies our weakness, not warns our reason? Who does not allow that it is better to repair than to perish,—better, too, to atone as the citizen than to repent as the hermit? O John Wilkes! Alderman of London, and Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too perfect,—your patriotism might have been infinitely purer,—your morals
