ABSTRACT
THE re-union of the members of a family long separated and tenderly attached to each other, is one of the most pleasing and affecting spectacles that society presents. Colonel Cecil, in seeing the favourable change that had taken place in the mind and manners of his daughter, found his heart overflow with tender gratitude towards his sister; and the regret he had been once so acutely conscious of, for the loss of a wife whom he had loved but too much for his happiness, and indulged too much for her own, was every hour less sensibly felt. For however his blind affection for her, and the strong influence she had obtained over his mind, had prevented him from seeing her errors while she lived, he now internally acknowledged those failings, which he could not yet have borne that any other person should even hint at; till these keen sensations subsiding by degrees, he thought of the death of his wife as of an event that had at once pained and relieved him.
