Wakefield, and the splendid domains of Delaval Park. The person to whom the care of a lovely and helpless female infant was thus unhappily confided, had passed the first half of his life in the pleasures of unbridled dissipation, and now proceeded to devote the remainder as exclusively to the toils of political ambition. He had just succeeded in ruining the best of constitutions in his early pursuits, when the change in his situation, produced by the death of his brother, enabled him to squander a princely fortune in attaining the objects of his later life; and the period when Matilda entered her eighteenth year found her guardian with one foot in the grave, and the gouty hose, the legacy of his youth, appropriately adorned with the glittering garter-the reward of his declining years.

Matilda's father had passed the whole of his married life abroad. Of her mother, little was known, nothing was ever said by her uncle. It was thought in the family, that she had been a foreigner of distinction; and this supposition seemed in some measure confirmed by the peculiar character of Matilda's beauty; for in her was presented a rare union of those distinguished traits which we are accustomed to call purely national—a truly insular delicacy of complexion, shaded by locks of raven black; an eye of Italian fire, quenched only when the ready tear followed an appeal to the feelings of the kindest heart that ever beat in female breast. That she could be

the offspring of no mésalliance, was marked by her possessing, in perfection, that indescribable air, the effect of which we all feel, though we are at a loss to give it a name. We are, I am aware, accustomed to consider what the French call "l'air noble," as inseparable from great descent and high birth; and this opinion we involuntarily maintain, in spite of Bourbon brows, Austrian lips, and all the difficulties one encounters in attempting to recognize this mark of illustrious ancestry in the royal representatives of the houses of Nassau and Hapsburg, and the legitimate descendants of Charlemagne. But certain it is, that though in some, the highest born, the want of this may be peculiarly striking, it never graces those who come not of gentle blood; and as certain it is, that there never was so striking a specimen of its matchless charm as was felt by all who saw Matilda Delaval.

It was not in the every-day development of her talents, or the exercise of her feelings, that the singular disadvantages of her education were observable; for she outstripped her instructors in the usual routine of accomplishments, and she had a hand open as day to melting charity."

But no mother's watchful care had destroyed the latent seeds of error in her guileless heart, and proportioned in her youth the strength of her principles to the warmth of her feelings. No example of domestic happiness had told her, with the resistless

power of habit, that woman's proper sphere is home. In the succession of governesses whom Lord Wakefield had chosen for her, she was satisfied provided they knew their métier, and were neither vulgar nor frightful. And when he (as he called it) retired into the country, from the time that Matilda left the nursery, it was by every variety of needy flattery, and frivolous admiration, that she was surrounded.

At one period, indeed, better prospects seemed opening upon her. Ormsby Castle was in the immediate vicinity of Delaval Park; and Lady Ormsby, who resided here during the minority of her sons, was one of the most unaffectedly good women that ever existed. From her mild and affectionate precepts, Matilda could learn nothing but good; from the society of her daughter Emily, who was about her own age, she could derive nothing but advantage. It was here, during the occasional visits of the sons to their mother, that the acquaintance between our heroine and Augustus Arlingford, which we have taken up at a later period, commenced. That this was not the least attractive part of the intimacy to Matilda, may be imagined; but that it was the most beneficial, may likewise be doubted.

But be this as it may, Lord Wakefield, who was never suspected of blindness to his own interest, or that of any one connected with him, marked the progress of the connexion, and did not appear to disapprove of it. To this line of conduct he was not

induced merely by the possession, on the part of Augustus, of a small collateral property which had descended to him as the second son, but by the contingency which seemed probable, from the state of health of his elder brother, then Lord Ormsby, that the marriage of Augustus and Matilda would bring about a very desirable union of the contiguous property of Delaval and Ormsby: for this elder brother had, from a puny child, grown to a sickly man, as weak in mind as in body; which, added to his extreme shyness and dislike to society, rendered his ever marrying extremely unlikely.

But there was a description of female society in which, as the shyness was not mutual, he found he got on very well; and he ended with making his own legally, a lady, the right to whom had previously been disputed among many: an act which, like other acts for the enclosure of common land, does not always answer to the new proprietor. The immediate effect, however, was a change in the disposition of Lord Wakefield towards our hero. His lordship had previously become rather averse to the connexion, from political differences. This new event very much altered the ultimate prospects of the younger brother; and not anticipating that the happy bridegroom would, as afterwards happened, die within two years without children, he determined that all intercourse between Matilda and her youthful lover should be at an end.

About this time the temporary embarrassments of Augustus, (who had been left with that unfortunate modicum of younger brother's fortune, which is too much for a profession, and too little for independence,) materially assisted Lord Wakefield's views: for an absence on the Continent being indispensable to the arrangement of Mr. Arlingford's affairs, he left England, after taking that tender farewell of Matilda at the gate of Delaval Park, which has been before referred to.

It is necessary here to state, in explanation of what afterwards happened, that though Lord Wakefield was certainly a corrupt politician, (if that term implies that self was the governing motive of his political conduct;) yet had he been by no means successful in feathering his nest, having been as prodigal and wasteful in his own affairs, as in those of the nation. Twice had he been at the whole expense of unsuccessfully contesting the county, by starting Sir Simon Tooley as a candidate for that honour, having no relative of his own to put forward.

When, therefore, the bad times came, he found himself almost inextricably involved; suffering most severely at home from that agricultural distress, which he spoke, for two hours in the House of Lords, to prove did not exist.

Mortgages, bonds, annuities, and every possible species of pecuniary obligation, had been accumulated by him; and it so happened that one of the