let them reflect a moment, and say, (granting that the combination of circumstances may be different,) which of the causes that led to the event described, could not be paralleled in the life of some one of their own female acquaintances.

(Hard, indeed, is the fate of many who annually throng the matrimonial market, as, at the regular return of Spring, young ladies come into season with the green peas, and go out with the strawberries. That the matronly merchants who, at this yearly fair, come to barter their fresh commodities of beauty and accomplishments, in exchange for situation and a settlement, should refuse to treat with those who can offer no other security than that doubtful bond -love in a cottage-does not seem unreasonable. But that they should measure, with such accuracy, the different sizes of property, and weight of worldly dignities, so that "if the scales do turn, but in the estimation of a hair," their judgment is influenced by it, while manners, person, and character, go for nothing in the balance, does seem rather hard upon those whose interests, after all, must be what they have at heart.

Nor is this all; for the favourable testimony of a certain set being necessary to the fashionable reputation of a new beauty, the daughters are, upon first coming out, by their mothers' own hand, inoculated with a fancy for "Detrimentals"--perhaps to prevent their catching it naturally; and thus they be

come acquainted with the value of those agreeable qualities which are to have no weight with them one way or other in their decision for life. Nor are the truly unexceptionable young men, the objects of the unwearied pursuit of these maternal managers, entirely without just ground of complaint; for such is the anxious precipitancy of the latter, that before, by dancing half a dozen times, with a young lady, the former have satisfied themselves as to her merits in the varied figures of the ball-room, they are expected to have made up their minds as to her qualifications for the somewhat more complicated mazes of matrimony; and, accordingly, they are peremptorily asked whether their intentions are serious, whilst they are yet occupied in rounding off their first well-turned compliment.

It is, indeed, wonderful, that connexions so inauspiciously contracted, should so often lead to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. Perhaps it might be possible to afford a plausible solution of this difficulty; but I have already broken my antidigressive compact with my reader; and therefore hasten to resume the thread of my story.

The day of the marriage was, indeed, a happy one for Lord Wakefield. Sir James, in consideration of the large fortune which Matilda brought him at once, and of the residue of her uncle's property, which must come to her at his death, had cancelled all the pecuniary obligations which existed between

them; and, as Lord Wakefield left the party he had assembled at the marriage feast, where, in honour of the occasion, he had broken the forced habits of temperance to which he was now reduced, a new world of ambition seemed opening to him, by the revival of his financial resources. It was but two hours after these delightful visions were dancing before his eyes, when the party below were alarmed by a violent ringing at his bell, and he was found suffering agonies with the gout in his stomach, which increased in violence, in spite of all the skill of his physician. On the table at which he had just been sitting, was a paper, apparently in his hand writing, which, as it might be of importance, was examined. It proved to be an unfinished letter to the Minister, which began-

"My dear Lord,

"Hearing from very good authority, that the precarious state of poor Lord Snugborough's health renders his life very”—uncertain, he would have added in all the presumptuous confidence of frail mortality;-but it was a sentence he was doomed never to finish ;-the very post which was to have conveyed the expression of his reversionary hopes, informed the Minister that the Noble Earl's own honours were at his disposal, for some equally greedy expectant; and poor Lord Snugborough continues, to this day, in the undisturbed possession of many well-earned dignities and emoluments.

To Matilda's feeling heart, the sudden loss of her only near relation, though he had never been a kind one, was nevertheless a great shock. As for Sir James, he vented his grief at his accession to thirty thousand a year, by announcing the fact to all his connexions, on paper with a black border of a most preposterous breadth.

The principal effect of this change in their situation certainly was, the new-married couple saw considerably less of each other than they would otherwise have done. During their stay at Delaval, Lady Matilda was generally employed in little charitable details for improving the comfort of those whom she considered as now dependent on her. Sir James, on the other hand, was occupied with many wholesome schemes for the improvement of the property to his own advantage.

At length, the first levee of the year found them in town, where Sir James was presented to his Sovereign, with weepers on his hands, and the George and other insignia of the Orders of the late Lord Wakefield in them; and was received with that well-known graciousness, which, whenever the illustrious Individual pleases, is personal, but which is purely official when lavished on a man like Sir James Dornton-a ministerial member, with six seats at his command.

From that time forward, Sir James was regular in his Parliamentary duty, of sleeping six hours

every night at the House, till wanted to vote on questions which he would not have understood if he had heard; whilst Lady Matilda, with a face and figure which commanded universal admiration, and a manner which checked individual impertinence, shone fourth the glass of fashion, and the mould of form-The observed of all observers."

CHAPTER III.

AT the breaking up of Lord Eatington's dinnerparty, Lord Ormsby was tempted by the fineness of the night, (the rarest of all temptations in England,) to wander about the streets, occupied by his own reflections; when his desultory course was for a moment impeded by a brilliant equipage, which, after swinging against the curbstone, past several doors, stopped with a sudden jerk at that of a splendid mansion, just before he arrived at the same point. The foot pavement was immediately fully occupied by the two footmen, who proceeded with much needless bustle to the ceremony of unloading. He was involuntarily stopped therefore, whilst this was effected; and, as he stood on one side, completely veiled in that obscurity in which the capricious eco