These were Henry and Samuel Wentworth, the maternal
uncles of the Author, both perished before they had attained
the age of 20. The first, on a northern voyage of curiosity
and improvement, was entangled amid floating masses of ice,
and in that situation expired along with the whole ship's
company, passengers and seamen.
His young brother, Samuel Wentworth, having been invited
to England by his noble relatives, was under the patronage
of those, admitted as student at the Temple; at which period
he first met Miss Lane, the object of his honourable passion,
and the cause of his fatal misfortunes, the daughter of a great
commercial house of that period. Her large inheritance, by
her father's will, made dependent on the pleasure of her
mercantile brother, to the aristocracy of whose wealth,
young Wentworth could only oppose nobility of birth, accomplishment
of mind and beauty of person, possessions which the
man of commerce held as nothing, compared with the superior
treasures of monied interest.
Consequently the love was prohibited, and the lover banished
from his mistress; who though closely imprisoned in
her own apartment, found means to preserve an epistolary
connection. The correspondence encreasing the enthusiasm
of restricted passion, until every possible hope of their union
being extinguished, a deadly vial was obtained, and the contents,
equally divided, were at one desperate moment swallowed
by both. Their last desire, of being buried in the
same grave, was denied.
These frantic and too affectionate lovers, finished the short
career of their miseries on the birth day of Wentworth, being
that which completed the nineteeth year of his age. And
it is not irrelevant to add, that the brother of the lady lived
to lose his immense possessions, and died desolate and distressed;
at which period, we trust, repentance came, and forgiveness
was awarded.
come,
