be, or whom I ought to have chosen ; and as to her cousins and dear friends, they remind me of Penelope's suitors. But her ladyship, unfortunately, is no more Penelope than I Ulysses.'

"Meantime,' added he,' I have not a friend in the world to open myself to but you, and I hailed your arrival as that of an ally, who would at least give me good counsel, if he could not actually deliver me.'

"It were easier,' I replied, seeing him pause, 'to give advice, than to take it. And I could and would give it but for one objection, strong, perhaps insuperable.'

"At least let me know it.'

"Yourself. For with Lady Macbeth of her husband, I

may say,

'I fear thy nature;

It is too full of the milk of human kindness,
To take the nearest way.'

"And what is that way?' asked he.

666

Discharge these saucy menials, whether your own or Lady Cherubina's. I would almost say discharge Lady Cherubina herself, rather than live in such disgraceful thraldom.'

"This, and the warmth with which I said it, had an effect not unexpected on my too easy friend. He started, turned pale, and exclaimed, 'You are too bold; you know not what you say.'

"I know it so perfectly,' said I,' that nothing short of being prepared and ready to go the whole length of it will ever release you from your chains.'

"Perhaps,' rejoined he-' perhaps (I am not sure) I might screw myself up to the dismissal of servants, who think they have only a mistress, not a master. Perhaps I might even be able to close my doors on these suitors, as I call them, who presume to despise me-but Lady Cherubina! Impossible! Nay, I know not what you mean by the rash word you have used.'

"You may suppose,' replied I, 'that by discharging (begging her's and your pardon for the phrase), I could not intend the same thing as in regard to your other tormentors; but I did mean that you ought to be prepared to meet and

brave the utmost resentment she could show, if, after an appeal to her reason, she is so much devoted to family consequence, and so little to duty, as to deny you your just rights. I suppose,' added 1, 'it is her pride only you have to contend with, not her tenderness. No tears; no faintings; no complaints of tyranny on your part.'

"Little chance of it,' said he, smiling rather bitterly at the thought.

"Then, if necessary, be as proud as herself. Nature and the law place the staff in your hands; do not throw it away.' "What if she should leave me?' asked he.

"Let her! She will soon return. At any rate it is better than to live with her and be trampled upon by the suitors. By the way, an excellent comparison that of yours.'

"He was silent, as if revolving what I had advised, and at last said he would think of it; but added, shaking his head,

"Periculosæ plenum opus aleæ tractas."*

"I agreed, and only repeated,' be firm and all will be well.'

"God send it,' said he, and unlocking the door, we concluded our conference.

"The picture I have given of the first day I passed with poor Bostock was so exact a prototype of all the rest, that I need not describe another. We had a few more consultatious, but without coming to any determination, and he always pleaded, not unreasonably, that while the cousins were on the spot, there was no possibility of beginning the reform. Meantime the slight went on; lady Cherubina was occupied by any thing but her husband; the guests had it all their own way; and, seeing little opportunity of my doing any good to my friend, who seemed more and more a cypher in his own house, I gladly shortened my stay at Beaumanoir to visit Sedley, as I had promised."

CHAPTER XXV.

OF ANOTHER SPECIES OF MESALLIANCE.-STORY OF MR.

SEDLEY.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.-SHAKSPEARE: Othello.

"I HAVE already," continued Fothergill's M.S., " in what I have said of my accomplished friend Sedley, given some insight into his character, which in fact, when I first knew him, and for some time after he quitted me, was one entirely of refinement. He cultivated elegance in every shape, whether in literature or works of art; of which his library, his house, furniture, and household, and particularly his gardens, for which he had a great taste, gave proof. He was always full of animation; had much romance, and a thorough disinterestedness. He was at the same time fastidious to a fault, particularly in regard to women, and from a disgust at what he called the heartless elegance of higher people (a great mistake), thought he had the best chance of finding the companion he wanted in the simplicities which he expected to meet with in a lower station.

"True to this principle, he married a young person of neither birth nor fortune; on the contrary, an absolute dependant, but whom he described to me as of exquisite beauty, modesty, and feeling. She was in fact the humble friend of one of his high relations, who needed her as a companion, and with whom he often saw her.

"She is not so cultivated,' said he to me, as I could wish, but no matter; she loves me, and will love me the better for making her so. There is a natural and simple elegance about her, with which a husband may do any thing. Her family are, I am afraid, very low. But qu'importe ? I marry her, not her family.'

"I had nothing to answer to all this, but sincerely to wish him happy.

"For four years I heard very little of Sedley; and having been often invited, resolved, on leaving Beaumanoir, to pass a few days with him at Sedley House. There at least I should be sure of not encountering the humiliating exhibition of a man of worth and opulence, like Bostock, succumbing to mere pride and fashion, and afraid to consider himself the master of his own house. Accordingly, I took rather an anxious leave of Bostock,-who, however, was hopeful enough of himself to promise to write to me the result of his resolutions, and I crossed the country to take Sedley by surprise.

"On driving up to the door I was surprised myself; for I was struck with the air of discomfort which every thing seemed to exhibit. The court-yard was full of nettles; the steps of an otherwise handsome portico were disjointed; and some of the windows broken. At the latter, too, I observed at least half-a-dozen heads, some of children, some adults, male and female, but all staring with vulgar curiosity, as if they had never seen the arival of a visitor before.

"The door was opened, not by a footman (though Sedley had always been remarkable for clean, good-looking men servants), but by an absolute draggled, dirty maid.

"But what surprised me still more, when I alighted and got within the passage, was to hear a voice, attempting certainly to whisper, but naturally too coarse to succeed desiring Hannah (whoever she was) to pull the duster out of the window.

"This was explained to me on entering the room, by perceiving that a duster or napkin, had been thrust into the fissure of one of the panes of glass which had been broken. The voice it seems had proceeded from a tall, fat, massivelooking dame, with a red face, between forty and fifty years old. She was in a dingy gown and coarse apron, apparently the mother of five or six young people in the room with her, one of them a baby in her arms; two of them grown-up girls, not over clean; the others, children, who retreating round her, and laying hold of her gown, stared at me with their fingers in their mouths, shewing little modesty, but much mauvaise honte.

"Seeing no signs of either my friend or his pretty wife, I set down the portly female for the housekeeper, and the children as her's, though how they all came to be the inhabi

tants of a handsome reception-room, I could not make out. I was soon satisfied on that head; for the supposed housekeeper, advancing to do the honours of the room, told me at once that she was Mrs. Snagg's; that she was Mrs. Sedley's mother, and that she was sorry Mr. and Mrs. Sedley were not at home, for they had gone out to take a hairing in their little chay.'

"I bowed my thanks for the information, to which she immediately added, "All these here children are my daughter's, for she has one every year, and this baby (dancing it till she grew very hot) is the youngest.' She then added, but these two tall girls be my own.'

"She then made many excuses for the door being opened, as she said, 'by one of the low maids of the house, not even by the lady's maid, which would have been better, but that both she and the butler and footman had been sent out on some business, and as for the boy, who was under the footman, he was never to be found, as indeed was always the case with them boys.'

"I again bowed my compliments for all this intelligence, but, in truth, could say little in commendation of what I saw, whether of my friend's, or her own progeny, from the specimen exhibited by their manners or appearance; nor was I profoundly struck by Mrs. Snaggs herself. I was rather, therefore, relieved when she said to the children, 'Come, dears, it is your dinner-time, and the gentleman will excuse us; then, asking me if I would not have a bit of summut for lunch, which I declined, she left me, very little offended at her want of ceremony, as she called it, in leaving me by myself.

66

My astonishment at all this may be imagined, as Sedley, I recollected, in announcing his marriage, had told me his wife amply made up for being only in what he called a middling condition of life, by great softness of manners, excellent understanding, and elegance of person. She could not at least, I supposed, resemble her family in any of these respects. This was to be decided hereafter, and to amuse myself till my friend should return from his hairing, I wandered out of doors.

"What I saw there did not give me much notion of his taste for elegant gardening, about which I knew he had formerly been enthusiastic; forming himself upon Walpole and