fir-grove.

Mr. Bertills is retired to rest. – May his slumbers be sweet and undisturbed! But from me every invocation to Morpheus would be in vain till I have disburdened my mind by communicating to you the intelligence I heard at Leeds./

Poor Wilkins, who married Fanny Elwood, and who was generally supposed rich, is now in a situation which has stripped off the mask and convinced the world that he married her with a view to make his affairs easy, by means of the thousand pounds it was thought she possessed; but which, on his enquiring for it a few days after their marriage, she, with all the rage of a disappointed woman, and all the effrontery of hardened impudence, avowed having lost the whole of one night at a gaming table in London. Thus, disappointed of his dernier resource, he was, in a very few days afterwards, obliged to become a bankrupt, and his wife has, it seems, decamped no one knows whither. The sale of his effects commenced yesterday. Mrs. Clements had accompanied some ladies to it; where being tempted by the sight of a very curious little India cabinet, she became the purchaser, and it was brought home while Mr. Bertills and I were there. It was immediately opened; and, in examining it closely, we found one of the drawers obstructed in its passage by something. I presently discovered that the obstruction proceeded/from some papers that had been left in the inside; and, on taking them out, they proved to be two letters addressed to Mrs. Wilkins. The signatures struck me. I had often heard her mention the names of the writers as her intimate friends, and was therefore curious to know what was the subject of their correspondence. I was looking over them when Mr. Bertills cried out,

‘Charles, you have got something that seems to engage your attention closely; of course, it must be very pleasing. – Be so obliging as to read aloud, that we may be all equally entertained.’