B3B^o IBBO ^^ 4^ '%■ ^ V ^' -'-i M /^Maj^ -iJtA -WJ^Un ? OXONIAK8; K. CJLANCE AT SOCIETY. BY THE AUTHOR OF " THE EOUE." n'y a point d'annies que les folies des hommes ue puissent fournir uii voloiae. La Bruytrei. — For I am— look to't — An Oxford scholar, and can do 't. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW-YORK. PRINTED BY J. <$- /. HARPER, 82 CLIFF-STREET. SOIB BY COLLINS AND HANNAT, COLLINS AND CO., G. AND C. AND H. CARVILt, O. fi. ROORBACH, WHITE, GALLAHER, AND WHITE, A. T. GOODRICH, W. B. GILLEV, K BLISS, C. S. FRANCIS, G. C. MORGAN, M. BANCROFT, W. BURGESS, M. «. ■•LMBS, M'KLRAXn AND BANGS. E. B. CLA?TON,>ND J. P. HAVEN;— ALSAMT, O. STEKLB, ASS >.lTTtB AND CUMMINOS. 1830. INTRODUCTION. fNC Cest un metier que de fairc un livrc comijie dc faiie une pendule. La Bruyere, And a precious metier it is indeed in these days to make a book ! To run the gauntlet of the critics who do read and the critics who do not read ; to be identified in the columns of a review with all the bad characters that figure in one's pages, and to gain no credit for any resemblance to those who may have a few virtuous propensities ; to be blamed on the score of morality, for a too correct representation of nature, and to be castigated on the ground of insipidity s^ for any tame departure from its truth. Such are the risks, " ^ and such too often the fate of those who are tempted by the liberality of a publisher into the " metier de faire un livre," And what could make one bear the " whips and scorns" of critics, but that liberality which sweetens the ., labour of the author and alleviates the pains of critical "^^castigation. His bookseller's drafts seem to be imbued -^ with the power attributed to those of Lethe, and make him oblivious of the " critic's contumely and the reviewer's wrong." The reader must pardon the spelling and the pun. both of which, perhaps, demand an apology. ^ The author" is tempted into these preHminary observa- ^ tions by the fate of the " Roue," which was cried up by some critics as an important lesson to the libertine, and ^ .abused by^ others for its immoral tendency ; while even .5 those who praised it most, could not let the poor author es- ^ cape w ithout a pretty broad hint that experience alone could have dictated its pages. ^ An author's own opinion of his work can, of course, r have very little influence ; but his avowal of his meaning ought to have some weight: and if the author of the ' Roue" has himself any knowledge of the intentions .V INTRODUCTIOX. with which that work was written, they were decxledly such as would have helped that great cause, which a man who writes at all ought never to neglect even an humble endeavour to advance. An author can as little hope to reform a vice without an exposition of the scenes and circumstances con- nected with its indulgence, as a surgeon can expect to cure a wound from the disgusting appearance of which he may shrink with a sensation of false delicacy. If a Rou6 had been depicted without his vices, he would no longer have been a Roue ; and if his character had been palliated by any redeeming virtues, that could have ex- cited an interest in his fate, the moral lesson would liavr been lost. The two following facts will perhaps show the differ- ence of opinion with regard to the moral tendency of the Roue, more even than the opposite criticisms with which the work was assailed and honoured at the time ot its publication. A Baronet, rather celebrated for the care with which he educates his children, who are now rising to matu- rity, went into his school-room, and asked the governess if she had read the Roue ; to which she replied, as many other ladies have done, " Certainly not !" with a toss of the head, and in a tone which seemed to add the words " of couise" to the denial. The Baronet, lay- ing the book upon the table, desired her to read it instantly : saying that " he would have the governess of his daughters read the Roue." A lady, whose opinion of the work was a little differ- ent to that entertained by the Baronet, absolutely rushed into a bookseller's shop, with the work in her hand, and placing the volumes upon the counter, expressed hei anger to the librarian for having sent it ; impugned its morality, declaimed against its vicious tendency, and de sired that it might be taken back. This lady was a mar- ried woman, with a large family of children, not one ol which could claim the husband of their mother as its fa- ther ; or ever even considered him in that light. So much for opposite opmioD ! What would this lady nave said to the Esthetic school INTRODUCTlfW. V of Germany, which openly professes that " pleasure, not instruction, is the legitimate business of the Muses ;" and how would she have declaimed against Karoline Von Woltmann, for saying in a preface, " The following tale was not intended as a poetical attempt to inculcate a moral example !" If the author may be allowed an opinion on the sub- ject, the Roue was as much over-praised by some critics, as it M'as over-abused by others ; and he derives some comfort from the certainty that The Oxonians cannot at any rate be mistaken on the score of its moral tendency. Voltaire said, " Le succes du livre d'Helvetius n' est pas etonnant: c'est un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde :*' and he was right. The author who developes in his pages those sentiments w^hich live in the minds and hearts of every thinking being, is sure to be successful. The reader delights to peruse the expression of sentiments which he feels to be his own, though he has never perhaps dared to give them utterance ; he turns his thoughts from the page he is reading to his own heart and he there either finds the same feelings existing, or is taught the meaning of those sensations which he has hitherto but imperfectly understood. The philosophy of human nature is the history of the passions ; a novel should be the liistory of the actions inspired by, and of the consequences resulting from them ; and one of the grand criterions of a good novel is, when the generality of readers can exclaim, " So should I have acted ;" " So should I have thought ;" and " So do I feel." The Oxonians is written upon this principle ; there are no immaculate heroes, no angelic heroines. It is a simple picture of every-day existence ; and its dramatis personae are characters that may be recognised in any extensive circle of acquaintance in an every-day world. It is a his- tory of those passions and follies that fill up and give their colour to the scenes of life ; with an attempt to give those passions and follies their true names, and to strip them of that false varnish with which a youthful imagination and the sophistry of the times are too apt to conceal their "ten- dency and to gloss over their dcformitv. 1* VI INTRODUCTION. These may be beaten tracks, but it may be truly said with our titlepage, that " II n'y a point d'annees que leit folies des hommes ne puissent foumir un volume ;" and with Voltaire, that these passions and follies are " Le secrer de toot le monde^'' THE OXONIANIS. CHAPTER I. aUITTING COLLEGE. Who wouldn't send a son to college, To gather there all kinds of knowledge To etufFhis head with Greek and Latin, Till the classics he is pat in ; To hunt, to swear, to drink, and dine And fit him for a grave divine. — Anon •'One, two, three — hip, hip, hip — hurrah ! hurrah ! hui rah !" was vociferated by some six or seven voices in tones which indicated very little sense as to the immediate occasion of their hilarity, or much knowledge of the toast which had called for the honour of the libation and the cheer which fol- lowed it. Hurrah ! was again hiccupped, once or twice, like shots fired after a volley by muskets which had hung fire through not being properly primed and loaded. These sounds issued from an apartment in one of the minor inns in Oxford, in which six or eight Gentlemen Commoners were assembled for the purpose of taking leave of two of their companions who were on the point of quitting the University. These were the Honourable Henry Lascelles and Frank Hartley, cousins of nearly the same age and standing ; but as different in character as light from darkness : the first de- lighting in slang, the latter in sentiment ; the first all noise, bustle, and boisterous gayety, the best driver of a tandem, the boldest rider, and the most expert rower in Oxford ; the latter pursuing all these avocations in turn, according to the whim ol the moment or the example of his companions, but mingling them with reading; — mixing up all the few realities of his gay life with the poetry of his own imagination, and giving that dash of the romantic, which is the general accompani 3 THE 0XOMA\5, ment of an amiable mind, to any common circumstance that occurred. The above words, slang and sentiment, however, sum up the essential of their difference of character. The time was come when their education was considered as completed. Hartley had taken his first degrees. Lascelles had attempted no such thing. He could drive, ride, and box ; he knew the anatomy and points of a horse ; the odds on the Darby, and was already initiated into making a prospective book for the St. Leger. He was deep in the science of pu- gilism ; on shake-hand terms with its professors ; he could work the mail ; and he considered himself sufficiently know- ing to enter the world, sit for his hereditary borough, legislate for the country, and spend his own income ! and having now neither parents nor guardians, but inheriting his fortune from an uncle, being completely his own master, he determined to try the experiment : and who with such a mind, such accom- plishments, and seven thousand a-year, would not have done the same ? To celebrate their departure he had persuaded Hartley to join him in asking some fellow collegians to sup at the inn at which the mail stopped as it passed through the town. This it had been already agreed between himself and the guard, that he was to" work" up to London ; and Hartley had consented to trust his neck for this once to the custody of his friend and cousin. " Ncc tenierd, ncc timide," as Harry Vaux, one of the party, said ; and who, not being very rich, was reading for the sake of takincr orders, and becoming a tutor to his more fortunate companions ; but the love of good fellowship, with his own good-humour and oddities, making him a desirable acquisition to some of the bons vivans of rank, he paid more attention to the bottle than to his book. Feeling, however, the necessity of, at least, appearing to have studied, he stored his mind with & number of Latin and Greek phrases to impose upon his friends during the vacation : and he had got so completely into the habit of utterinir them, that, whenever he was a little " in the wind" through his potations, every sound that bore a resem- blance to any one of the words of the numerous sentences of the Classics with which his memory was crammed, that struck upon his ear, was sure to bring out a quotation from Vaux, whojncver considered its aptness or applicability. These quo- tations were generally uttered without moving a muscle, and appeared to issue from his lips almost without his own knov/- ledge, while there was still a kind of consciousness that h^ was displaying his learning. THE OXONIANS. if T^e rest were the general run of young collegians, making Ihe most of an escapade from their rooms ; and laying up a three days' headache, by what they called enjoyment, in drink- ing bad wine, which the worthy host had dignified with some of the most aristocratic names in the vinous nomenclature. " Here, landlord 1" called out Lascelles, screwing up his face ; " What the devil wine is this ?" " Burgundy, sir, Bur- gundy, I assure you." " Burgundy ! why, 'tis as sour as war- juice," as Liston says ; Burgundy! nonsense, taste it ;" and Boniface was compelled, most unwillingly, to swallow a bumper of his own wine ; but being unable to conceal the contortion of his countenance, as the sour beverage forced its way into his capacious stomach, warmed as it was with stronger liquors, he acknowledged that though it was Bur- gundy, true Chambertin, upon his honour (the honour of a land- lord), the voyage across the sea had not agreed with it ; " had made it sick." •' Sic transit," said Vaux, and the landlord was despatched for another bottle, to be accompanied by a correction of brandy, with a threat, that if it did not turn out better he should be made to swallow the whole of it. " Now, my boys," said Lascelles, " push the bottle about, and charge your glasses. Why, Harry Vane, what's the matter ? Why, Vane, you're asleep, my boy. " ^gri somnia Vana — Horace," mumbled Vaux. " Hold your Latin tongue, Vaux, and give us plain English. I never wish to hear a word of Latin or Greek again as long as I live. Come, Gentlemen, we have drank confusion to ou» tutors ; to Homer, Virgil, Tacitus, and the whole host of old classic bores ; so now, Dorville, give us a modern toast." A pale-faced young man, already emaciated by early dis- sipation, beyond his years and strength, immediately said? " Gen— rgen— tlemen, I'll give you — Confusion, — confusion to —the Muses." " Egad, Dorville," exclaimed one of the party, a little so= berer than the rest, " I think you'd give confusion to any thing just now." This sally, weak as it was, occasioned a roar ; for the loaded claret and heavy port, sour hock and deleterious spirits, with which these young students had filled their brains, made them apt to laugh at any thing. " Here's ditto to the Graces," bawled out another. ■ Oh ! d— n dittos. It makes one think of one's tradesmen's 10 THE OXONIANS. bills. Ditto, ditto, ditto, till it comes to a confounded sunr total at the botom" exclaimed, the president. "Ay! no di — t — tos," drawled out the pale-faced Dor- ville, with an expression of countenance that seemed to indi- cate that the claret he had swallowed was in danger of fol- lowing the (liw words he had uttered. " I — ha — ate dittos, and duns — and tradesmen." " Aye, it is these d — d sum-totals that send many a fine fel- low to quod," cried out one who looked older in the world as well as in years than the rest. " Sum quod eris, fui quod es," said Vaux. " Here's confusion to ail rascally tradesmen," roared out another. This toast was j^reeted with immense applause : when the proposer stood up, if it could be called standing up. to support himself between the chfiir and the table, and to in- cline first one way towards the company, as if he were making them a profound salaam, and the other way towards the back of the chair, as thouch he were tioins to fall prostrate on the floor : at lengtli, after two or tliree vibrations, he succeeded in steadying himself, and the party immediately become ten times noisier, by bawling "silence,'' in the anticipation of a speech. " Silence ! Neville on his legs ; silence ! go it Neville — no\^ for it ;" and other elegant little encourasements were uttereH by the whole party ; at len^ith, after various gurglings in the throat, and one or two stifled hiccups, Mr. Neville began. " Gentlemen — I believe you are all pretty well " " To be sure we are, never better,'' said Dorville. " Pretty well aware of the occasion on which we are as- sembled," continued Neville, " tho' upon my soul we have till this moment forgotten it. It is, gentlemen, to take leave of our worthy friends Lascelles and Hartley ; Lascelles in the chair, and Hartley " here he looked round, " why, where the devil's Hartley ?" and for the first time it was observed that Hartley bad quitted the party. " Stole away ! stole away !" was hooted in a huntsman-like style ; "gone! run to cover!" was hiccupped out by another. " The milksop's ofl','' cried a third. " Hartley's a safe one," said a fourth. " Cavendo tutus," hiccupped Vaux. "Goon, Neville ; never mind Hart ley," roared a fifth ; " his liunks of a tutor has put a veto upon his staying." / " Hunc tu, Romane, cavcto — Horace," said Vaux. " What a quiz !" called out Dorville. " Egregio, quis, qais, and vir bonus est qui*,'' reiterated V^aux. THE OXONIAKS. 1 1 << Go OD, Neville.'" *' Well, gentlemen, as I said before," proceeded Neville, *' you know — you know — you know" — and he seemed quite to have lost the thread of his speech, if he ever had one, and to be quite content with his companions knowing, without having any knowledge himself; " you know," said he for the fourth time " Ab uno disce omnes, as Virgil says," muttered Vaux. " Curse your Latin, I say ; you know, my boys, that in losing Lascelles we are losing the ornament of our College. Who can drive the mail like Lascelles ?" " Male notus eques," said Vaux. " And then for boxing, Belcher himself had not a quicker hit, and Mendoza never had a nicer eye." " Nisi mendosum — Horace." " Confound your quotations ; if you will stop one's mouth with Horace and Virgil, why I may as well be dumb on Las- celles' qualifications." " Dum tacent, clamant — Cicero," muttered out the incor- rigible Vaux. " Here's Lascelles with three times three," roared out Dor- ville. " Nothing but a bumper will stop Vaux's mouth." xVnd " hip, hip, hip, hurrah I" went round, to the utter demo- lition of Neville's speech, and to the temporary derangement of Vaux's quotations. Lascelles returned thanks as well as he could, enumerating, as virtues, accomplishments which trod very closely upon the heels of vices, and boldly disclainiing pretensions to any thing like learning. Leaving Lntin and Greek, as he said, to the quizzes who liked them, and who not understanding life might be contented with dead languages, he promised he would very soon show how he understood it, by spending an unencum- bered estate of seven thousand a-year, like a fighting cock, and agentleman ; by voting for the Game Laws, and by giving Vaux a living. This speech was received of course with hurrahs. " A song, a song !" was now called for, and one of the party attempted to sing, or rather to roar out some Baccha- nalian ditty, till he was interrupted by Dorville's putting his fin- ders in his ears, and requesting that he would stop that " be^ 'owing." " Bellowing !" cried the singer. •' Flagrante bello — Virgil,^' murmured Vaux. IS XH£ OXOKIANS. At this moment the horn was heard sounding faintly in tbe distance. " HarkT' exclaimed all ; " The mail ! hark !" and all lent a listening ear. *' Arcum intenssiu frangit," cried Vaui. " Give me my toggray," said Lascelles ; " curse my lacquey. I suspect he has played me some trick." *' Suspector laqueos — Horace." " This is no more my last Nugee. " Nug(B(\ue canorae," muttered Vaux. " Oh here it is ! now, my boys, good-bye 1" exclaimed Las cBlles, as he buttoned one coat over the other, till he had all the appearance of what he called " a Swell Dragsman." The cry of " gentlemen for the mail," was answered by an elderly looking man running into the room, still half undressed and half asleep, with his night-cap on his head, having been tempted into three shillings' worth of bed for the first half of the night. He was followed by a pert looking girl, with, *' Chamber- maid, if you please, sir ; remember the bed." " Remember it," growled out the traveller ; " I shall never forget it ; why I'm flea-bitten from top to toe." " Flebit et insignis tot acantabitur urbe — Horace," said Vaux. The guard now came in, and made his bow to Lascelles^ who hailed the landlord for a glass of his best brandy. The landlord brought in the bottle, gave a large glass to the guard, and pouring out the amber-coloured liquor, accompa- nied the potation with, '* There it is ; mark, Joey, right Nantz, [ assure you ; right Nantz, neat as imported, and a rare glass of it." " Rari nantes in gurgitevasto — Virgil," hiccupped Vaux. " Give me my toast and lea," bawled the fleabitten travel- ler. " Here it is, sir," said the waiter. "Zounds," exclaimed the angry passenger, holding up a bit of toast from which the grease was literally pouring ; " do you think I can eat all the fat of an Oxford sausage on my toast?" " Mors soldi fatetur — Virgil," rejoined Vaux. "Too-wool too-woo! too-woo !" went the horn. '• Lon- don mail !" cried the waiters. Away bundled the passengers with coats half on, toast half ewallowed, and throats quite scalded. THE OXONIANS. IS "Good-bye! good-bye!" was echoed and re-echoed by the tJollegians, as they followed Lascelles to the street, where he mounted the box in the true knowing style ; and handling the ribands with the dexterity of a professor, might really flatter himself with being taken for the real coachman. " Hollo ! Lascelles," called out Dorville ; " why you've forgotten your cigar; who'd sit on a coach box without a cigar ?" " Quid sit pulchrum," bawled Vaux, lighting and handing Lascelles a cigar. . "Sit fast," cried Lascelles," I wont forget the living.'' Crack went the whip, and off went the mail. CHAPTER IL FIRST LOVE. Ah 1 qu'un premier amour a d'empire sur nous I — Gresset, In the midst of their bustle and wine. Hartley had been en Urely forgotten by his companions. From the commencement of their festivity he had been but a silent participator in their drinking and their gayety ; and when the deep-toned bell of St. Mary's chimed the hour of eleven, he had silently " stolen away," as the fox-hunting collegian had truly said, and wend- ing his way down the High-street, turned off to the right, and was soon out of hearing of his boisterous companions. He pursued his course till the cross street he had entered finished in a few straggling houses, nor stopped till he had reached a small picket gate, which formed the entrance to a neat though humble mansion in the suburbs. He cast his eyes anxiously towards a window that looked into the front court, and in which the undisturbed and steady burning light? gleaming through the dimity curtains, plainly spoke that the inmate had retired to rest. This was the signal. All then was safe, and he took a circuitous route to arrive at the back of the house, whei'e, climbinaf over the decayed wall, he found himself in one of those gardens with which our ancestors some centuries since always decorated their houses in towns and their environs, and Vol. L— 2 14e THE OXONIANS. silently stole up a green walk towards a summer-house iu which he had spent many happy hours. The moon shone so brii^htly as to make him keep within the shadow of the trees, lest its light might betray him to the pry- ing eye of some of the neighbours, whose windows overlook- ed the garden. His foot- fall was so silent on the greensward, that nothing but the e ir of anxious expectation could have distinguished it. But that ear was alive to the slightest noise, and had he come with the lightness and silence of a lly, Caroline Dormer would have distinguished his footstep ; her heart would have felt his approach. Who is there that has ever waited for a beloved object — all anxiety — all expectation — that has not felt the increased acuteness of the sense of hearing ; that has not experienced the painful sensation of misinterpreting every noise into the wished-for footstep, and the heart-sickening disappointment a= the sound died away upon the ear, or as the proof of being mistaken has been unwillingly admitted. In this state of suspense stood Caroline Dormer. Too anx- ious to sit patiently, she half leaned on a rustic seat in the front of the old-fashioned summer-house, with her head bent forward in the act of listening, and trembling at every falling leaf, startir)g at every breeze thit waved the boughs, and at every bird that winged its way near her, scarcely daring to breathe lest her respiration should prevent her hearing the very first symptom of his approach. Many times had she already been disappointed ; for, although Hartley was not five mi- nutes after his time, Caroline seemed to have felt with Shak- speare, that "^ He that will divide a minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the thousandth part of a mi- nute in the affairs of love, it may be said of him, that Cupid hath clapp'd him o' the shoulder, but 1 warrant him heart- whole." She now, however, palpably heard the noise he made iu descending from the wall ; cautiously as he trod, her anxious ear yet caught the sound of his footsteps on the grass, and her heart beat more tranquilly ; and who has not felt that delight- ful tranquillity of soul, which the certainty of the coming of a beloved object inspires ? Another instarit, and they were to- gether, gazing on each other by the liuht of the moon, their bands clasped, both feeling the pleasure of the meeting, yet both also feeling that they were about to part — meeting only to bid farewell, and that, fer the lirst time since Frank Hartley THE OXONIANS. 15 had told Caroline Dormer he loved her, and since she had felt how much she loved him. Caroline s father was a curate of one of the churches in the neighbourhood of Oxford, and having been under great obliga- tions to Hartley's father in early life, he had been engaged by him to superintend the reading of his son during his stay al college. But as Hartley was only studious by fits and starts, his attendance in the good curate's study was rather irrregular. Very much under the influence of his companions of the mo- ment, Hartley was by turns a lounger on the pave of^^the High- street, an ardent follower of the harriers on some wretched hackney, or with some book-worm friend an industrious student of the classics. With such a malleable character it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Dormer found him but an inattentive scholar. Latterly, however, he had been very con- stant in his application. Every leisure moment was spent at the curate's ; his love for classic lore seemed suddenly to have prodigiously increased ; and he now frequently took his tea and spent whole evenings with the worthy curate, to the old gentleman's great delight ; nor did he, in the simplicity of his mind, observe that all this had occurred only since the arrival of his lovely daughter ; or that he had invariably declined taking tea until he found it made by her, and the bread and butter handed by the soft white hand of Caroline. The good old man rejoiced in the improvement and industryof his pupil, which he attributed entirely to his own influence, and to the love which he was gradually imbibing for the classics, and he wrote to his friend, Hartley's father, accordingly. In the mean time Hartley was trying to read some sentiment corresponding with his own in Caroline's eyes, while the old gentleman construed Homer ; and had much more inclination to explain some of the mysteries of Ovid to his daughter, than to attend to his explanations of some of the dry passages of Xenophon or Thucydides. The young people, however, soon understood each other much better than the good old curate understood his pupil. The living language of the eyes, the language universally un- derstood, of the heart, soon superseded all the dead lan- guages to which he attempted to direct the attention of the student, and there wanted but the opportunity to bring about an iclaircissement. The old gentleman's propensity to napping over his pipe after tea soon afforded this opportunity. A glance of the eye, a touch of the hand, a few sentences murmured in an under JG THE OXONIANS. tone, expressed Hartley's sensations ; while a lilush, a aigh, a downcast look, and a trernour that thrilled and vibrated through her whole frame, proved that he had found a heart which sym pathized with his own, in the bosom of Caroline. Had Hart- ley been aware of the mischief lie was doing, of the miser} he was laying up for the poor girl, and could he have taken a complete view oi the bearings of the whole case, of tiie ine- quality of their condition, of the impossibility of any happy and honourable conclusion to their loves, without the great dis- pleasure of his parents, he would have paused ; and the innate goodness of his heart would have taught him to deiiV himself the indulgence of feelings, which, however delightful at the moment, could present no prospect but that of unhappiness. Thoughtless, however, of the future, the present w as all that struck his imagination. He saw before h:ni a beautiful girl, in the first brilliancy of youth, with black eyes, raven tresses. and a complexion in which hei eloquent blood sfioke the leel- ings of her heart. He saw a finely rounded form, a heaving bosom, and a trembling hand ; and he knew that ihe bosom heaved, the heart beat, and the hand trembled for him. It was not in human nature to resist this, at least in the human nature of twenty-two. It requires time, and experience, and disap- pointment, and the sight and feeling of misery, to lower the blood, and to quell the passions, and to give reflection fair play, and when bus this ever happened at twenty-two '? How seldom at double that age I So Hartley went on and on, in- dulging his feelings, without permitting judgment or reason to give them the '■'qui va la''' that might have stopped them in their progress. In the first instance, Caroline, young as she was, had some thoughts of the difference of their lank, and of the inequality of their circumstances ; and in the absence of her lover these thoughts would come on her with a sickening sensation that made her heart sink within her ; and she determined to act dif- ferently, and not to be present at Hartley's visits. But he came, and she was still there ; and as he never seemed to feel this difference, and as her own affection increased, she too forgot it, and gave herself up to all the dear delirium of a first love ; a love as pure as could glow in the bosom of a virtuous girl of eighteen without any knowledge of the world, and as ardent as could be felt by a person who thought its object perfection, and who had certainly never seen any thing superior to him for whom those feelings were excited. Thus wrapped up in each other, nelthor of them had ye* THE OXONIAKS, 17 iooked beyond the present moment. Wliat tliey were to do iiad never entered the thoughts of either of them. If the future would intrude on the mind of Hartley, he banished the thought it suggested, as an unwelcome guest, by the enjoy- ment of the moment, an enjoyment as pure and innocent as that of Caroline herself; for no sentiment that could stain the purity of her honour had ever entered his imagination. All they seemed determined to do was to love (that was enough for the present), and to leave the rest to time and circum- stances. Thus months rolled on ; Caroline's heart became more and more absorbed in her feelings, and Hartley was as much de- voted as ever, till the commands of his father that he should quit College, and pass a winter in London, and then travel pre- paratory to his entering on the course of public life for which he was intended, as the representative of an ancient and re- spectable house, and as one who might some day inherit the title to which his father was presumptive heir, and which was now borne by a widowed Lord who had resided abroad for many years. This letter awoke them both from their dream of bliss. In Caroline's agony Hartley began to perceive some of the mis- chief of which he had inadvertently been guilty, and in his own anticipation of parting he also felt the future pangs he iiad laid up for his own heart. He now took his conduct se- verely to task, and questioned himself as to his intentions ; but when he came to analyse his own mind he found that he had formed none. If there was no definite determination to make Caroline his wife, there was certainly not even the re- motest thought of making her his mistress ; and when, as he saw the difficulty of an honourable conclusion to his attach- ment in the elaborately detailed claim of his rank and family, set forth in his father's letter, this thought did pass across his .mind like a cloud upon the purity of his passion ; it was ba- ished with horror, as his imagination pictured the gray hairs of the good old curate descending to the grave with sorrovjr and disgrace, and the now cheerful face of Caroline shrinking from the scornful finger of a pitiless world, as one of the cast-out of her sex. Whether as wife or mistress, therefore, equal difficulties seemed to present themselves, and he still determined to go on as he had done, and leave things to time and circum- stances, as heretofore. He therefore encouraged Caroline with renewed assurances \8 THE OXONIABS. of his love, and with promises of unchangeable fidelity ; anu she buoyed herself up with the hope that, beinjj: the daughter of a gentleman, time would induce the consent of his parents- to their union ; many more unlikely thinirs had happened, many more unequal matches were taking place every day, and why should not this be the case in her instance as well as in that ol others. These ideas and hopes tranquillized her mind, and she thought of nothing but her love, and the pain of parting from her lover. This was the first assignation they had ever made. The many opportunities which the habits of the good curate afforded them in his study, in the garden, and in the walks, had precluded the painful necessity of making absolute appoint- ments, and the delicacy of Caroline's mind would instinctively have shrunk from such an idea. None of the usual opportu- nities, however, were sutFicient for either of them at a parting like this. The pressure of the hand, warm as it was, the glance, all speaking of the feelings within, were nothing when given and exchanged in the presence of a third person. Both their hearts lonoed for something more, and it was agreed that Caroline should be in the summer-house at eleven, by which time her father and their old housekeeper were generally asleep. Those who have felt the pangs of separating from a beloved object, and know how much those pangs are assuaged by u free interchange of affectionate assurances ; and those also who know the comfort which is derived during absence from the recollection of such an intfrview, will readily find an apology for Caroline ; and let those who are more rigid recol- lect that she was only eighteen, in love for the first time, not as young ladies love generally, but with her whole soul ; that she was going to part from the object of this love, and, above ■all, that she had the most implicit confidence in her lover. Nor was her confidence misplaced ; for, in asking this inter- view. Hartley's mind was as free from guile as her own in granting it. When they met she was pale and trembling, an innate sense of doing sometiiing that was not quite right mingled with the pain of separation ; this one idea, however, soon absorbed every other, and her tears flowed fast as she recollected how long it might be ere they met again. Overcome by her sor- row, all caution on the part of Hartley gave way, and hf TUE OXONIANS. 19 poured forth his tale of tenderness in her ear, accompanied by such protestations of fidelity, and with 30 many insinuations that the indulgent love of his parents would overlook every obstacle to their union when they found how much his happi- ness depended upon it, that the poor believing girl was com- forted, smiled through her tears at the prospects which his san- guine anticipations pictured, and mingled her vows with his own. Who in the midst of such an interview has ever counted minutes ? What lover ever thinks of the lapse of time. It was thus with Caroline and Hartley ; they talked on and on, repeated the same thing over and over again without tiring of the eternal theme, till the first streaks of the morning surprised them. The lovers would scarcely believe their eyes as the dawning light stole through the leaves which clustered, even at this early period of the year, over tiie windows of the sum- mer-house, and were tempted to exclaim with Juliet : " Yon light is not the day light, I know it, I It is some meteor tliat the sun exhales, To be to thee this night a torch-bearer. Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not to be gone.'' A hurried repetition of the method of their correspondence, a kiss half snatched half granted, a warm pressui'e of the hand, and Hartley leaped over the wall, while Caroline stole silently and sorrowfully to her apartment. Why are such feelings as these so seldom, so very seldom, consistent with duty ? or why is not man born with those me- chanical powers for their regulation, which creates the per- fection and the utility of works of mere human ingenuity ! :fO rnE OXONIANS, CHAPTER in liUITTING HOME. Home, sweet home 1 — ballad. It was on a beautiliil morning in the sprinc ol tiie sajiir year, that Emily Hartley awoke from a thousand of those dc licious dreams which render the state of the innocent even more delightful than its calm repose. Her wandering imagination had imbodied all her waking thoughts ; had gone back to the past, and combined the present with tlie future : picturing all the delightful anticipations which the young, innocent, and inexperienced indulge in the views they take of life, wliether in their waking fancies or their sleeping dreams. As her eyes gradually opened upon the bright and cheerful gleam which the sun shot into her apartment, she collected her scattered thoughts, recovered from the delicious illusion of her " golden dreams," and recollected that it was the morning on which she was to set off on her first visit to London. Tiiis was a circumstance that led to a thousand brilliant anticipa- tions of gayety and splendour : of crowded drawing-rooms and fascinating assemblies ; of gay society, and of all those varie- ties in pleasure with which the fashionable part of mankind contrive to kill that time, which, during the progress of their lives they find too long, and, at its close, too short for them. The anticipation of this journfy had given its colouring to her dreams ; and highly indeed had they been tinted by her sleep- ing fancies. As she turned round, however, in her bed, and beheld all the objects in her beautiful little apartment : the white muslin window curtains, lined with rose-coloured Persian : the painted blinds ; the flowers cultivated by her own hand, and the pictures, the produce of her own talent and industry, and most of them portraits of those scenes in ilie neighbourhood in which she had known the first enjoyments of her existence, and, unhappily for human nature, tlie first are generally the sweetest, a tender melancholy stole over her mind at the idea of quitting them. THIS 0X0NIA2!S. 2i Then came the thought of parting from her parents ; from the father, whose lips had first taught her lessons of youthful wisdom ; from the mother, whose tenderness had reared her in health and innocence, and from whose care she had never yet been absent even for a day ; and then the old servants oi the mansion house, most of whom had been there at the period of her l)irth, and had reckoned it a treat to be allowed by " nurse" to dandle Miss Emily in their arms, and present her with fruit and flowers. Oppressed for a moment by these thoughts, and by one other, of which she was either unconscious or was ashamed to own it to herself, namely, the separiition from one, whom of late she had been wont to look upon and feel for, with a tenderness surpassing that of friendship, she started from the bed, and throwing her dressing wrapper over her beautiful shoulders, and thrusting her lillipiitian feet into her fur-lined silk slippers, she passed into her bi^udoir. Here was her private practising piano and her guitar, neither of them objects likely to divert her mind from the scenes and circumstances she was quitting She threw up the sash, and the mild spring air thai rushed into the apartment revived her drooping spirits. It was one of those mornings which at this time of the year come as harbingers of summer. S«> mild that the flowers opnn their closed buds to its influence, and summer insects quit their winter embryo, only to find in the *^vening a blast which withers them for thus havnig been prematurely tempted into existence. The trees and shrubs displaved the beautiful briaht green which is the characteristic of that early season of (he year, which belongs to the poets from its freshness and youth, but from which the painter derives so little assistance. Her boudoir opened into a vrrandah overlooking her flower- garden. The earliest flowers were in blossom ; and on every blade of grass, there hung bright drops of dew that sparkled like diamonds in the morning sun-beam. There was a cheer- fulness of look, a healthiness of feeling, which imparted its influence to all around ; and the birds sang lustily as they shook the morning dew from the different branches which they had chosen for their perch. Every thing without spoke of youth, health, and beauty ; and as Emily put aside the jessamine that hung over the window of the boudoir, and gazed upon the morning, she looked, with her own youth, health, and loveli- ness, her bright blue eye and clear complexion, the fit inhabit- ant of the scene before her. The birds themselves seemed to welcome her with a louder 22 THE OXONIANS. chorus, for there was not one of them that had not been hei pensioner during the winter ; and the opening of her window had been the signal of her morning's beneficence. Her eye first rested on the flowers she had planted, and which were now opening in their budding beauty to reward the pains she had bestowed upon them. This garden, con- nected with her own apartment, had been her sanctum sancto- rum, her refuge from disagreeable and annoying visiters, the scene of her early studies, the place where she had first under- stood and enjoyed that poetry which had been hitherto the delight of her existence, and from which she had at present derived her only ideas of life. Over the little sweet-brier hedge which divided this garden from the other part of the don.ain were seen the towering oaks and elms, the rich chest- nuts, and vigorous sycamores of the park. Trees which had been on the estate for ages, and many of which were coeval with the first Hartley who had won an estate with his name. Through these in the blue distance were seen the Wye rolling its eddying wateis in a serpentine line along the country ; and beyond it, the distant mountains of VVales, in this early part of the morning, mingling with, and scarcely discernible from, the horizon. Emily gazed upon the scene with delight. She felt the in- spiration it was calculated to impart. Her heart literally thrillfid with the beauty she contemplated ; she could have sung her joyfulness with the birds, and she forgot for a moment that she was about to quit these beauties, in the contemplation of which she had derived so much pleasure. Suddenly her attention was attracted by the unusual move- iTipnt of a thick cluster of shrubs, and she perceived for the first time that she was not nlone in the contemplation of the scene before her. Half hidden by a large laurestinus stood Edward Forrester, whose in'age had mingled with her nightly dreams, and who had not been quite absent from her morning thoughts and regrets. The other beauties of the scene ap- peared to have no attraction for him ; his eyes were riveted upon her with an earr)e?t gaze, which softened into a melan- choly smile as he perceived himself discovered. To kiss her hand with an aflectionate nod, vhich bade him not begone, and to retreat from the window in confusion as she recollected her dishabille, was the operation of a moment : but ten minutes more saw her at the side of one who had been the earliest companion of her youth, out of her own family ; and of the first person who had ever breathed in her ear the feelings THE OXOIflANS. 63 created by sympathies warmer than those of friendship. They shook hands in silence ; both knew they were going to part, and neither of them knew how to alleviate the pain which their separation created. Emily spoke first, for she felt the least ; with her it was friendship ripening to a warmer feeling from the continued observation of an admirable and manly character entirely and exclusively devoted to herself; with him it was an ardent passion which formed the very principle of his existence. There was no anticipation of his future life in which her form was not interwoven as the prmcipal object ; no dread, no hope, no look for happiness, no fear of misery, that was unconnected with her ; and yet he was not blinded to the risk he ran in thus confiding his happiness to the keeping of one so young and inexperienced. But he had done it ; in forming her mind, for her intercourse with him had formed it more than almost any other circuustance in her life, he had, like Pygmalion, become enamoured of his own work ; but that work was any thing rather than a statue ; and Edward Forrester's was a heart, that, admitting the passion of love once, felt it for ever. " What a beautiful morning ! how fresh and delightful every thing appears : the very plants and flowei-s seem to enjoy it," exclaimed Emily ; " and how lovely this prospect appears!" " And you are going to leave it; going to give up the vernal freshness of the spring for the smoky atmosphere of a city ; this bright and boundless prospect, these beautiful flowers, for the circumscribed view and stunted vegetation of a London square ;" answered he, despondingly. " Well, my dear friend, am I accountable for the caprice of that fashion which makes the winter season begin with the spring and end with the autumn ? Is it my fault that a more enlarged knowledge of life than I can obtain here is consi- dered necessary for me, or that the kindness of my friends will imagine pleasures for me in society, of the want of which I have been hitherto unconscious ?" were the naive questions of Emily, in reply to the almost reproachful tone in which For- rester had spoken. " Forgive me, dear Miss Hartley." Emily shook her head " Well then, Emily, since you have condescendingly allowed me to address you so familiarly, forgive me if I appear queru- lous at the idea of losing that which has been the principal pleasure of my existence." "Of losing !" exclaimed Emily ; " nay, we are only parting 24 THE OXONIAIVS. for a time. The next three months will pass rapidly away, and the summer and autumn will witness the renewal of our walks and readmgs." "To you they may pass rapidly," replied Forrester, "because they will be marked by new pleasures, by new scenes ; because they will be passed in a new world. To me they must banc heavily, as my hours will only be counted by my fears and my regrets." He paused, and painful thoughts seemed to oppress him. " And will you," resumed he, " after the more exciting pleasures of society and the metropolis, after the gayety, the flattery, that will surround you there, return with the same zest for the simple delights of study and the country ?" " With a greater, believe me," said Emily ; " but if you arc afraid of the evil influence of the scenes to which I am going, why not come with me ? why not aid me with your experience, and guide my steps by your judgment, there as well as here ? Why should not my Mentor of the country follow his pupil to town ? why permit your Telemachus to tread the danirerous shores of the island of Calypso alone ?" playfully asked Emily. " No, no. I should be as much out of my element there, as yonder rugged pollard would be if placed in the midst of this beautiful flower-garden ;" and a painful sense of his inferiority in the little agremens, and in the manners of society, oppressed him ; a p mg rendered perhaps much greater by the conscious- ness of his real superinrity in the more solid accomplishments of the understanding'. For a moment he appeared buried in thought ; then suddenly exclaiming, " Hut you iHll return the same Emily that you lenve me ; tlie heartless world will have no power over the innocence of such a mind as yours ; you will only learn to prize the tranquil pleasures of the country the more, and T will learn only to rejoice in the pleasures which you will enjoy. Only promise me that amid the splendour and gayety of the scenes you are soing to witness, amid the wit and accomplishments of the persona with whom you are about to associate, you will sometimes cast a thought upon me in my solitude, and I shall be happy." " Oh believe me, many and many will be the hours devoted to such remembrances," said the artless girl, to whom hiflicrto her evening rambles and morning readings with Forrester had been the sources of her greatest pleasures ; and with this as- surance they sought the house, which was now in all the bustle of preparation. Tn the break fast- room thev were met by Mr. and Lady TUB OXONIANS. 25 Emily Hartley. The countenance of the latter betokened that anxiety which is the natural result of parting for the first time with a beloved child ; for this was indeed the first time that Emily had ever quitted the paternal roof, and the immediate protection of her parents. It had been originally intended that they should have accom- panied her in her first excursion to London, and that an esta- blishment should have been formed for the purpose of bringing out Emily, and of launching her brother, on his quitting college, into something like public life ; but the lingering illness of a younger sister rendering the air of the metropolis dangerous, and requiring, in the eyes of Lady Emily, the tender cares of a mother, had determined them- to defer the establishment for another year, while the pressing entreaties of a relative, whose Christmas had for many years been passed amid^the festivities of Hartley Grove, had at length induced them to allow Emily to make her first appearance in the fash- ionable world under her auspices. It was at this festive period of the year that the quiet of the domestic circle of the Hartleys was alone broken in upon by a round of fashionable visiters, who were happy thus annually to continue their acquaintance with Lady Emily Hartley, who had herself up to the period of her marriage, and for a few years afterward, been one of the principal leaders in the fashionable world. Some melancholy circumstances, however, connected with the fate of an early and dear friend of her youth, had disgusted her for the moment with society, and she complied with the wish of her husband, whose domestic habits ill accorded with the gayeties of fashionable life, by retiring to his estate, of which, from the moment of her residence, she had been the presiding and beneficent genius. Here Mr. Hartley had lived in the true style of an English country gentleman, in the midst of and looking after the in- terests of his tenants. By this conduct he had at the same time attended to the truest interests of his own property, which had greatly increased under his superintendence. Courted and respected by the whole county, the proprietor of Hartley Grove kept up his establishment in the style of old English hospitality ; and at Christmas both the married and bachelor apartments of the mansion were filled for about three months by a succession of visiters, among whom might be reckoned some of the families the most distinguished for rank, fashion, and importance in the kingdom. Lady }Emily's connexions among the nobility were extcn- VoL. I.— 3 26 THE OXOMAKS. sive, and though retired herself from the business of fasrnona' ble life, and fashionable life is no easy business, until her daughter was old enough to tempt her again within its vortex, she had not been sorry thus annually to refresh her early remi- niscences by the company of those among whom she had once been the gayest of tlie gay. One son and two daughters had blessed her union with Mr. Hartley, whom she had married more from her knowlediie of the sterling worth of his character than for the brilliancy of his wit, the extent of his accomplishments, or the elegance of his person ; and his conduct and affection from the period of their marriage had never for an instant caused her to regret a step by which she had crushed the hopes and disappointed the expectations of many candidates for her hand, who had de- spised his humble pretensions while he was their rival. Dr. Johnson has said that we become wise by the experience of others as well as by our own ; and Lady Emily had profited by the experience of the early and dear friend before alluded to, and wiio iiad been won by the most accomplished man of the day, to the utter destruction of the happiness of her future life, which was one of bitter repentance from the period of her marriage to its melancholy termination. CHAPTER IV. TUE FAREWELL. Though distant from the shady grove And all the sylvan scenes I love, I travel novi' — Believe me yet, I never can their claims forget. Ballad. Tjie carriage waited for Emily. There was yet a spot to be visited ; some flower or shrub to be once more gazed at and recommended to the gardener's especial care ; another look at her boudoir, her piano, her harp and books, t!ie friends of her childhood, the companions of her solitude, the cheerers of her youthful melancholy (for youtii, where there is sensibility, is not always exempt from its morbid iuliuence), was necessary to her heart. She again threw herself into the arms of her parents, and almost hesitated whether, after all, she could go THE OXOMA>S. t>r not ; at length, blushing for her weakness, she summoned her resolution, and, entering the hall, passed through the line of servants who were waiting to receive the farewell of iheir beloved young mistress. Here was the old nurse of the family, who had been the first to receive her at her birth ; she sobbed audibly as Emily kissed her wrinkled cheek, and recom- mended her birds to her especial attention. Every servant in turn received a kind farewell, or some commission to execute during her absence. The groom was recommended to exer- cise her favourite pony ; her two spaniels. Slap and Dash, the constant companions of her rides and walks, were placed under the superintendence of the game-keeper, with strict injunction that they were not to be punished, even if they did now and then infringe a little on tlie "game laws," and hunt for them- selves. Every one had his connnission, and received it as a legacy, the evidence of the kindness of their young mistress- Forrester presented his hand, and placed her in the carriage, with a gentle pressure and a melancholy look which seemed to say, " Do not quite forget me ;" and Lady Orville, to whose fashionable notions all this scene was perfectly incomprehen- sible, shook her hand according to the most orthodox adieu, and impatiently desired the servants to proceed. " Forward," was the word ; smack went the whip, round ivent the wheels, and off flew the horses at the rate of twelve miles an hour. Emily had scarcely time to give one more glance at the group on the hall steps ere a turn in the road shut the house altogether from her sight. Her parents, with Forrester, still lingered in the portico ; their eyes fixed on the tracks of the wheels which had borne away one so dear to them ; at length they returned to the library, and the household resumed their accustomed avoca- tions ; yet there was that melancholy listlessness, that inatten- tion to common pursuits, that vacancy of heart which always characterizes the separation from a beloved object. To her parents the house appeared deserted ; and Forrester seemed to have lost every thing v^hich had hitherto made his Country life desirable. Emily sunk back in the carriage, and cove/ing her fact with her handkerchief, hid those expressions of ^rie^ which s!ie was sensible excited no sympathy in her -^■^mpanion, and of which she herself was almost ashamed. — She raised her eyes to take one more look at the house as it appeared in the distance, and gazed with affection on the B-veme of lofty trees which led to the park gates, and which sno w;.s now quitting fox the first time. 28 THE OXONIANS. Every tree, as she rapidly passed it, derived additional in- terest in her eyes ; the green leaves of spring had never, ir; her sight, appeared so beautiful and fresh ; and as her eye caught distant glimpses of the park, with its waters and plant- ations, she again felt as though she was parting with a friend in every feature of the scenery. Such are always the sensations with which we quit the scenes of our early youth, and used indeed must that mind be in the world, and to worldly thoughts, from which these impressions are entirely effaced. The aged couple at the Lodge, old dependants of the fa- mily, who lifted up their hands in a parting benediction as their young mistress passed, aoain renewed her grief; but the rapid motion of the carriage, the variety of scenery which attracted her attention, and the anticipated novelties of her situation, soon enabled her mind to resume something of its natural tone. Memory still lingered with regret among the scenes she was quitting ; but the poignancy of her regret was soothed by the anticipation of those to which she was going. To a young mind with somewhat of a romantic imagination, and with a taste for literature, the world and society present many anti- pated pleasures. She had read and heard of artists, of poets, of statesmen, of wits and of philosophers, and now she was to see them, to enjoy the conversation of those men at whose works she had wept or smiled ; she was about to associate with those heroes whose deeds in the field she had admired, at the account of whose bravery her heart had beat high, and at whose dangers she had trembled. She was, in fact, going, as she thought, to realize all those imaginings which character- ize the years of our inexperience ; and no wonder that the brilliant picture which fancy painted, soon obliterated, or at least softened, the regrets which had hitherto oppressed her heart. Lady Orville, who could not even imagine feelings of sor- row, and much less of acute regret, at quitting the dulne^a of a country residence, could easily sympathize with I'cr in her anticipations ; and as her own spirits rose in proportion to hef approximation to the only scenes in which she was calcviate^l to shine, she painted society in coloui-s quite as briWant -xs those which had been conjured up in the imagination of Emilj She spoke of routs, soirees, quadrilles, conversazione-S operas, and fancy balls, but she never mentioned the insipidity of the one, or the scandal that gave poignancy to others ; no' tud her tongue indulge in any description of that species of *'^' THE oxo^-IA^■s. 29 citcment ^?hich is produced by ecarte, though her own heart beat as she recollected her own losses and her own hopes of retrieval. Her auditor listened attentively, and her young imagination immediately pictured these assemblies, as the resort of wit, gavety, and talent ; she saw, in imagination, genius protected by wealth, and taking its rank among the more adventitious situations in society ; her mind was yet untainted by the vices which poison those meetings for pleasure ; she was not aware of the intrigues and " tracaseries"' which made such reunions palatable to those who frequented them, or of the ennui which rendered them so necessary to such a great portion of what is called society. She, like others of her age, looked only at the bright side of the picture ; memory had as yet no power to present any other, and youthful anticipation is not very likely to picture scenes that are productive of pain. Alas ! why is it that the mind and the heart must grow old as well as the person, and still more, alas ! why must they grow old through a series of scenes, each one of which strips from them our ideas of the excellence of onr kind, and adds another blot upon the es- cutcheon of human nature ! Yet so it is, so it has ever been, and so will it ever be till the end of time. Man seems born to anticipate and to be disappointed. The future years of life are spent in unlearning the little good opinion we have im- bibed of mankind in our early anticipations. We look at life as we do upon the beautiful landscape reflected upon the soft and clear bosom of the lake ; we plunge into the waves, and the picture vanishes, leaving us nothing but the darkness of the water below, or the quicksands of tlie bottom, in lieu of the brilliant colouring which had delighted us at its surface. But a truce with reflection. It was made for more philoso- phical and for graver pages than these are intended to be ; and yet what pages are in reality more philosophical, or what pages can be graver than those which are devoted to the illustration of life as it is. Why cannot we adopt and act upon the French motto, of " Vive la Bagatelle !" Why should we not. 'ike a clown in the pantomime, laugh at every thing ; think of virtue, friendship, gratitude, and the long list of excellent at- tributes wliic^a are said to belong to mankind but as shadows ; never expect them, and never be disappointed. 3* THE OIOMANiv CHAPTER V. KETROSPECTIVE. Look back 1 and why ? at what ? upon a scene Of mingled joy and sorrow, both of which Have left behind but melancholy thoughts ; The one by all the anguish it has given, The other, that it never can return. Traveller. In life retrospection is seldom of service, unless it is to call into action that experience which the past may have been given us to guide us in some future event. To those to whom life has been unfortunate, retrospection is melancholy, as orriy serving to renew our sufferings by a recollection of them ; and to those who have passed a life of pleasure, it but too often brings regret that those pleasures are passed, of which, age creeping upon the strength of our youth, is quickly ren- dering a recurrence impossible. But in a novel, retrospection is absolutely necessary. To create an interest in their Aite, an autiior is obliged to plunge his readers at once into the midst of those personages with whom he is to travel through the two volumes ; and it becomes necessary for him afterward to give a slight glance at their families and connexions, to show that he has not been introduced to improper characters. Having, therefore, like a careful guardian, launched some of our young people fairly into the world, we must leave Las- celles to work his mail coach ; Frank Hartley to his solitary dreams of Caroline Dormer, in his post-chaise ; and Emily to her bright anticipations in Lady Orville's carriage ; all rolling towards that great mart of commerce and activity, of wisdom and folly, of learning and ignorance, and of virtue and ini- quity — London — while we take a cursory glance at Hartley Grove and the good family who dwell in it. Mr. Hartley was one of those country gentlemen who arc an honour and an ornament, and, what is perhaps better, of THE OXONIANS. 31 infinite utility to England, and of whom, alas ! in later days we have had but few. He lived on his estate, and his utmost ambition was gratified by its improvement, and by the good he could do to his tenantry, who were not only numerous but respectable ; metropolitan extravagance had not compelled their landlord to raise his rents beyond their means of pay- ment ; the Grove itself consumed a great portion of their pro- duce ; rents were paid, in many instances, in kind ; and Mr. Hartley's ten thousand a-year was not merely nominal, since the tenants, feeling the benefit of living under such a landlord, were as solicitous for the payment of their rent as on many other estates they were anxious to avoid and to postpone it. Mr. Hartley himself looked after his tenants ; he did not trust to any mercenary steward, but was generally present on the quarter day, inquired into their means, and their welfare ; and remitted the payment, or diminished it, where crops had f|allen short, or where sickness or misfortune had rendered raising the rent money a difiiculty. He had likewise, without regard to leases, granted under extraordinary circumstances, made the amount of his rents keep pace with the times, and regulated them according to the rise or diminution of the agricultural interests of the country. By living greatly within his real income, instead of keeping an establishment greatly beyond iiis nominal one, he was not only an unencumbered landed proprietor, a rare thing in these days, but a man of considerable funded property, and one who had been of infinite assistance to several of the neighbouring proprietors in the county, to the great annoyance of mer- cenary stewards, and of pettifogging agents, who would otherwise have made their market of them, and to whom they would have been an easy prey. By this means, Mr. Hartley, of Hartley Grove, was beloved by the rich as well as the poor. As he was no public man, there w^as no political rivalry to create him enemies among the men ; and as Lady Emily's drawing-room was open to every body in the country whose character was fair, and never displayed pretensions, even equal to her rank, she was a general favourite among the ladies, so that the only wonder was, that, with her husband's income, her own accomplishments, and her immense connex- ions in the great world, she was content to vegetate in the country, instead of figuring away, as she might have done, as one of the distinguished leaders of the ton during the Lon- don season. S2 THE OXOMANS. ''I am quite astonished,"' hSdy Pentweasle would exclaim, *< that Lady Emily Hartley can hury herself amid these old- fashioned groves of chestnuts, and be bored to death with the cawings of the rooks, when she might have a house in Gros- venor-square, a box at the opera, and a command from Wind- sor, were she to pass the season in town." " And then her daughter," cried Mrs. D'Arcy Wentland ; " to sacrifice her daughter I to out off her prospects of a bril- liant establishment, by confining her to the country, when by a judicious display of her person and accomplishments, she might do so well in London." " Hum 1" ejaculated Lady Amelia Scraglands, " I am not quite so certain of that. Miss Emily Hartley is very well in the country ; and my own opinion is, though that is quite between ourselves, that Lady Emily thinks that the country is her proper sphere — hum." VVell, for my part," said the Dowager Countess of Top- pleton, whose jointure just enabled her to keep up her caste, " I think Lady Emily is playing a game ; she means her daughter to burst at once upon the town with all her charms, and to carry some rich noble heir by storm ; she sees the folly of exposing young ladies too early, till they become common and the talk of the town, and arc set down as passies before they are out of their teens." " Carry by storm, indeed !" ciied the Hon. Miss Shatterham : ■' very likely, with that placid face, and blue eye, and fair hair ; why, there is no character, no expression, no sensibility in the beauty of IMiss Hartley. No, no ; I quite agree with Lady Amelia ; she may do very well for the country, but for London, oh, dear, I assure you it is quite a diflerent thing." Lady Amelia Scraglands bowed. " Pray, do dark beauties go off partictilarly quickly in town ?" asked Miss Fairlawn, vvith her usual simpering naive voice, and a kind of half suiile, which showed very well that she knew she was addressing a lady who had carried an olive complexion, black eyes, and raven tresses into the matri- monial market some five years ago, and that tlicse dark charrns. as though there had been a spell upon them, had still remained on hand. It is thus that persons arc generally too apt to give reasons for the conduct of others, and never, with all their sagacity, Jiit upon the right one. Lady Emily well knew, and properly appreciated, the attrac- tions of her daughter ; she knew also the rank of her own and THE OXONIANS. 33 of Mr. Hartley's family ; nor was she insensible to the dis- tinction which rank confers ; but she felt also that happiness was preferable to every thing, and she knew that rank alone could not confer it ; yet both Mr. Hartley and herself were quite sufficiently imbued with the pride of family to make a certain portion of rank indispensable in the person who married either of their children. Lady Emily had herself been educated at a fashionable boarding school, had gone through the modish regulation of coming out, being presented, and had passed the routine of several London seasons. During this period she had made up her mind as to the evil tendency of such a method of educa- tion ; she had seen the heart schooled into heartlessness ; she had seen form take the place of feeling ; tournure more the object both of pupil and mistress than the mind or morals ; and the dancing-master and the lady's maid of more conse- quence than all the other instructors who were employed upon the establishment. She had seen all this, and she had deter- mined never to subject her own daughters to the dangers of a dashing establishment of the same kind. At this school too, she had formed a friendship which had, in some measure given a colour to the whole of her future life ; and in the early and unfortunate fate of her beloved Agnes she had learned a deep and ineffaceable lesson, from which she was determined to profit in the education and esta- blishment of her own daughter. Lady Emily's affection for this early friend had been strengthened by its object having first married her own brother, and thus added the ties of rela- tionship to those of friendship. This marriage had been rendered unhappy by the conduct of Lady Emily's brother, and was at length dissolved by his violent death in a duel, the result of some gambling transac- tion. During the continuance of this connexion the various accomplishments and character of Agnes had inspired the bo- som of Lord Arlington, a first cousin of Mr. Hartley, with a passion so ardent, that, forgetting all his vows against marriage, and all the satires against the sex which a too successful life of libertinism had induced him to indulge, he proposed himself as her second husband ; and she, too apt to believe in his ex- pression of repentaiice for his former life, too good herself to imagine depravity so deeply seated, and led away by the ex- traordinary accomplishhients and great power of pleasing ex- hibited by Lord Arlington, consented to be led a second time to the altar, in spite of several mysterious warnings which 34 THE OXONIANS. would have prevented this sacrifice of one of the loveliest as well as one of the most amiable of human beings. Lady Emily married Mr. Hartley on the same day that her friend Agnes united her fate with that of his cousin Lord Arlintr. ton ; and for two seasons the friends were at the head of every thing that was gay and fashionable in town ; and what was far better, these fashionable pursuits did not mar their domestic hap- piness. During this period Agnes had given birth to a daughter, and she was revelling in all the delights of a young mother, when a discovery took place that, by proving the father of her child to be a villain, blighted all her happiness in the bud. A ladv, an Italian by birth, arrived in London, and set up a public and prior claim to Lord Arlington as her husband, by a previous marriage on the Continent. Her claim was but too well founded. Agnes was in her own eyes a disgraced woman, and her child blasted with the stain of illegitimacy. Shrinking from the world, as though she were herself the criminal instead of the victim, as though she were the guilty cause instead of the innocent suflerer, she fled with her child, without even communicating to her earliest friend the place of her retreat. Her libertine husband also quitted a country where not all his rank and influence could have saved him from the effects of its ofl^ended laws, or from the execrations of those who pitied his victim and abhorred her destroyer. Lady Emily, overcome by the fate of her friend, imbibed a distaste for the scenes of their mutual enjoyment, and retire^l with her husband from the great world to Hartley House, where they had lived happy, blessed and respected for a period of twenty years, during which time she had never ceased to lament the fate of her early friend, to whose memory she gave a sigh even in'the midst of her own most exquisite enjoyment, as a mother. During tliis period no certain tidings had ever been heard of the absent Agnes ; and Lord Arlinirton was only known to be alive through the medium of his banker and confidential agent, who had never communicated, even if he knew it, the name under which he travelled. Rumours had brotight intelligence of a duel in some ob- scure corner of Italy, the result of some other flagrant breach of moral principle, and these rumours were coupled with ac- counts of the deaths both of Agnes and Lord Arlington. But nothing farther was known excepting vhe falsehood of the re- port of Lord Arlington's death. He was still living, though ;vherc was only known to his agent, by whom the greater part THE OXONIANS, 35 of his princely income Avas paid in to bankers in different parts of the Continent, so as to meet his exigencies whenever and wherever he might require his funds. Mr. Hartley, though but a distant one, Avas yet his nearest relative, and being lineally connected with Lord Arlington, and of course presumptive heiv to his title and estate, the agent thought it necessary to give him periodical intelligence of the existence of that nobleman : excepting upon these oc- casions the name of Arlington was never mentioned. It was coupled with too many painful recollections in the mind of Lady Emily, who dreaded the necessity of one day being obliged to assume the title by which her early fiiend had been so signally disgraced. Many and anxious had been her at- tempts, for the first few years of her absence, to discover the retreat of Agnes, and to ascertain the fate of her child ; but year after year rolling on without any intelligence, she had gradually admitted the idea that they were both no more, and her inquiries ceased. At the period at which our history commences. Hartley and Lady Emily had began to feel the necessity of once more en- tering the world for the sake of their children. Their son had been of age nearly two years, and as v/e have seen was on the point of leaving college ; and the fashionable friends, who formed their Christmas circle at the Grove, hahions, revolving around him as their orbit, and, like his satellites, borrowing all the lustre of which they can boast from his reflection. He is not only a fine gentleman, but a good fellow ; we are very in- 46 THE OXONIANS. timale, and he has promised to initiate me into all the best thinps in town. Indeed it is, 1 beheve, to his influence that i may mainly attribute my easy entrance info the clubs. Lady Orville herself is a perlecl woman of fashion, and I suspect of the world ; very kind and patronizing to me, and lier good word goes a greiJt way in society. There are two daughters, one married and the other single ; of them I can say little, but that they are kind in the extreme, and overwiiclni me with attention. In short, the whole world seems to vie who shall mak( themselves most agreeable to me ; and I again say it is a beautiful world, and you shall not gainsay it. At Orville House 1 met with many of our old Oxonians, and amoiiff the rest Langley, whom you must recollect, varying his pursuits with every man of the day ; here he is the life of every party, and [)reserving his usual flow of spirits in spite of the late decree by winch he has been deprived of so great a portion of his fortune. He, with a hundred other pleasant fellows, makes time pass merrily ; and then they have all such good hearts- that 1 litid myself daily increasing the number of friends, th' I igh never to the exclusion of you, my dear fel- low. B\ tlie-by, you will so'^n be a Fellow in reality; so adieu. V\ ite me a dull line from your dull College, and be- lieve me, Sincerely yours, Fkank Hartley. To this vivid epistlo a few posts broutrht the following reply : " Were 1, my dear Hartley, to enter life, the heir of fifteen thousand a year, with an t iirldom in ex|)ectancy, I dare say I should find every thing " Couleiir de rose,'''' as you do. As this, however, is not the case, 1 must content myself with dreaniinj; of lawn sleeves, pushing my night c;i|) into the shape of a mitre in ihy sleep, and devntitig myself to divinity, but shall always reiuiiin your attached triend, Charles Sprictland." As Hartley read this laconic epistle, which seemed to cast a doubt upon the motives of the attentions he received, and the pleasures which were procured for liim, he crumbled it in liis hand with a momentary start of anger, and exclaiming, "A very Diogenes!" threw it into the fire. Before, however, it was consumed, both the anger, and the momentary reflection which it had excited had vanished ; and THE OSO^'IANS. 47 Orville being announced, away they went in their daily pursuits, and Strictland with his strictures were forgotten. The epistle of Lascelles was rather of a different species from that of Hartley, yet it showed him quite as well pleased with his first start into life. It began : Dear Jack, Why the devil do you stay moping at College when there is so much to be done here. Depend upon it, it is all lost time : for old Homer or Horace will never give you an idea of who will win the St. Leger or the Derby ; Cicero knew nothing of cockfighting ; and Thucydides and Xenophon have not a sentence to warn you against those modern " Greeks" which I am told to be aware of here. The old Romans might know something of gymnastics ; but they were totally ignorant of the pugilistic science, as we learn it at the Tennis Court. Take the reins from Tom Trot, and drive yourself up to this glorious place. I have a prime set of fellows about me, and am already initiated into all the mysteries of Doncaster and Newmarket. There is Tattersal's to study horse flesh and make your bets at ; Rotten-row to take your morning's canter ; the Shooting Gallery and Jackson's to exercise yourself in the fine arts ; the One Tun to dine at, and a set of prime spirits to entertain you. What is the best of all is, that there is not one who does not try to make me as wise as himself; so that I shall be quite knowing v.'ithout the trouble of experience. As to Hartley, he is a milksop, quite a ladies' man, dangles after women of fashion, hands them to their carriages at the Opera, picks up their fans at a quadrille, and dines at d — d dull parties where they talk politics ; not but what I have what Hartley calls my female society too ; for what is the world without women, and mine are fine women too, not formal or ceremo- nious : they drink champagne, ride full gallop, and drive four in-hand ; like a party to Richmond, or the races, and do not faint, at the sound of a boxing match or the pedigree of a hoi'se. Harvey and Crokely have introduced me, and I will introduce you, and a mighty pleasant time you will have of it ; therefore come directly. I've no more to say, only that my warming- pan accepts the Chiltern Hundreds next week, therefore your next may be addressed M.P. The only comfort of the House of Commons is, that you may sit with your hat on, so shall go down to vote for all the great questions, provided they don't come on when the St. Leger is being run for, a match to be fought, or when I am encased at the One Tun. 18 THE OXOKIANS. Tell Han7 Vaux that 1 have a shake-down and a seat in Ji tilbury for him whenever he can come up for a month, but he must for^'et his Latin. He won't be sorry to Jiear that the old parson in Wiltshire has had onot))er fit, by which his re- version to the living is worth half a dozen more years' purchase. So good bye. Yours, &.c. H. Lascelles. Emily's letter was still in a different strain, though one of equal delight at the new life into which she had just been in- itiated ; and ran as follows : EMILY HAKTLEY TO SALLY EMILY HARTLEY. I am afraid my dearest mama will begin to think her Emily neglectful, for having passed so many days without writing : hut really I should be afraid you would scold nie, were 1 to enumerate all the variety of engagements, with their gayety, that have occupied every moment of my days, and rendered me too much fatiirued to devote any part of my nights to any thing else but sleep. Yet you must not scold neither, for every body is here so kind to me. Lady Orville is such a charming woman. Lady Sophia such a delightful companion, and the whole family so empressc to procure me pleasure, and to do honour to their little guest, that I should be the most ungrateful puss in the world, did I not show myself sensible of their kindness, by making the best use of the enjoyments they cater for me. There is Clara Eranklcy, a cousin of the family too : she is a ward of liady Orville's ; and though she leads a retired life, yet she makes herself very agreeable, and seems to have conceived a real friendship for me, though it isnotof so warm a character as that of Lady Sophia. I am almost afraid to tell you that we have generally been to two or three assemblies of a night, that we never miss an opera, and that there are already cards to convey us in the same career through the whole season. Oh dear, oh dear ! it is almost enough to put my poor little head in a whirl : yet Lady Sophia says I have seen nothing, and that these are mere do- mestic " retinions^^ to what will come after I am fairly out at a party of their own. There certainly are many who undergo twice as much, and who assert that I shall soon consider it as a matter of course, and mind it no more than they do. But I am sure this will never be the case. I feel that I am not THE OXONIANS. 49 formed to be the ornament of a brilliant society like that in which I am now moving. How Lady Orville goes through so much fatigue, and how Lady Sopliia preserves her charming spirits in the midst of it all, I cannot conceive. For my own part, I must Succumb, and have positively refused two assem- blies in next week, on which nights I am determined to be content with the opera, and get to bed early. I wish, though, that my dear mamma could wing her way, like some sylph of fairy tale, and hear all the civil things that are said to her little Emily. Lady Orville is quite delighted, she says, with her new protegee ; Lady Sophia puff's me, as she calls it, in every society ; and Lord Orville, who is con- sidered one of the finest gentlemen of the age, pays me so many delicate attentions, and compliments me on my few at- tainments, in language so devoid of flattery, that I really sometimes do begin to think that I am something, and some- body. But they shan't make me vain, nor make me love Hartley Grove, and its quiet shades, the less. No, no : my heart is still there ; and I shall still exclaim with Cunningham : My native vale, my native vale, In visions and in dreams I see your towers and trees, and hear The music of your streams. Of Lady Olivia Tressel, Lady Orville's eldest daughter, we see but little ; I am afraid she does not treat her mother quite with jthat degree of filial respect which Lady Orville expects ; and is said not to be sufficiently grateful for the care with which her mother sought for and procured her establish- ment. These are, however, mere "on dits," though it is certain that they very seldom meet, excepting in public, and that Lady Olivia never comes to Orville House except on party niijhts, when there are five hundred other people. But l liear Lady Sophia on the stairs : so I must quickly say fare- well. Pray tell Mr. Forrester that I do not forget his grave lec- tures amid my present gayety. Desire Thomas to be carefu 1 of my pony, and the gardener not to let my favourite flower? droop for the want of their mistress. Kiss my dear papa for me, and believe me, my dearest mamma. Your affectionate and happy Emily. Vol. L— 5 p 50 THE OXONIANS. Such is tlie usual buoyancy of spirit with which short- sighted mortals enter existence. But how soon is that spirit broken ! How soon do we find the fallacy of these early im- pressions I We must now take a slight view of apart of that society into which our dramatis personae have been initiated. CHAPTER Vni. A ROUT. , Wide pour'd abroad, behold the giddy crew ; See how they dash along from wall to wall I At every door, hark ! how they thund'ring call I Good Lord I what can this giddy rout excite ? Why, on each other with fell tooth to fall ; A neighbour's fortune, fame, or peace to blight, And make new tiresome parties for the coming night. Thomson. " Sir Harry Winslow's carriage stops the way.'" " Lady Winslow coming down." " The iMarchioness of Tourville's carriage." " Lady Harriet Buckley's carriage." " The Marchioness of Tourville coming down." "Lady Harriet Buckley coming down" — were the sounds that thundered through the spacious hall and splendid staircase of one of the aristocratic mansions of Cavendish-square ; while guest after guest, elegantly attired, the females sparkling with gold and jewels, and enveloped in shawls of cachemire and cloaks of ermine, glided through a long lane of liveried lackeys to their carraiges, without casting a thought upon the crowd of houseless wretches who pressed round the door with a curiosity to see these better-fated mortals, which even poverty, starvation, and coldness could not repress. The words '^ Delightftil assembly !" " Splendid supper !" " Your arm, Marquis ?" " Tourville, your hand ?" " Dutchess, here is your cachemire;" "Allow me;" and all the ct ceteras of polite attention, mingled with the cries of "Home," uttered by the sleepy footmen to the willing coachmen, who, plying the lash to their cattle, threaded the maze of the still numerous THE OXONIANS. 51 crowd of carriages with a boldness and dexterity almost un- known to any but to an English coachman. Away rolled one votary of fashion after another, looking, to the wondering eyes of the gaping crowd, whom even the ex- treme lateness of the hour could not drive to their homes (perhaps they had no homes to go to), like beings of a dififer- ent sphere ; and, as the cold and careless eye of these pleasure- seekers rested for a moment on these shivering wretciies, per- haps they thought themselves really of a different mould, and formed of difi'erent materials from those of which such misera- ble-looking creatures were constituted. And yet — but I will not moralize. It is. not the province of an author to become a bore till his second volume is nearly completed ; and therefore I refrain from any observations that might make these chosen of the world, in their silk gauzes, diamond tiaras, golden mus- lins, and sparkling jewels, recollect or reflect that they are made of the same clay as the ragged beggar, who, with torn and naked feet, and squalid skeleton frame, entreats a misera- ble alms at their carriage door. Fortune in man has this small difference made, One flaunts in rags — one flutters in brocade. " Mr. Owen Pursley's carriage," was bellowed out by the stentorian lungs of a footman. " Ready," was the reply, in a voice equally loud ; and a coach covered with arms and brass ornaments, drawn by two sleek long-tailed horses, with harness likewise covered with brass decorations, and driven by a coach- man, the colour of whose coat could scarcely be distinguished for the profusion of lace with which it was covered, drove up to the door. " Mr. Owen Pursley and the Miss Pursleys coming down," was uttered by the servant on the landing, as a fat and rather sleepy-looking man, with bushy eyebrows, deep set eyes, a rubicund nose, and a ;vig a la Brutus, wrapped up in an opera pelisse lined with fur, came slowly down the stairs, assisting himself now and then by the balustrade, which almost trembled with his weight. Behind him followed Miss Pursley, and Miss Rebecca Pursley, richly dressed in the extreme of the last fashion, each hanging on the arm of a fashionable exquisite of the first water, who seemed amazingly assiduous to worm themselves into the good graces of the daughters of the rich financier. Two footmen, with a quantity of lace corresponding with that of the coachman, stood at the carriage door. The j« nr lU t iPi THE OXONIANS. financier, with a due sense of liis own importance, entered first, and occupied the whole of one side of the carriage, care- fully placing himself with his face to the horses. The daugh- ters tripped lightly in after their rich papa ; the heads of the Obcorting beaux inclined about an inch and a half out of the }»erpendicular, and the tips of the ladies kid gloves were kissed by way of adieu, when Mr. Ow,en Pursley drew up the glass to shut out the fresh air. " Home," cried the footman, and away whirled the voluptuous equipage. " Great bore I but d — d rich," uttered one, as he mounted Ins cabriolet. •' Whoy, ye-es, a twaddle veritable, but quoite a millionaire, and cursed good dinners," drawled out the other, as he placed fiis foot upon the carpetted step of a plain but elegant vis-a-vis. A loud burstof laughter was now heard issuing from a party of young men who were descending the staircase together. Cries of " Capital ; capital, by Jove ;" " Never heard any thing so good," were repeated and addressed to a young man who, as he was the centre, so he seemed the life and soul of the parly who were now quitting the house. Cabriolets and the few remaining carriages made their way up to the door, and were one by one entered by these late 'oungers. " Who is for C d's ? His supper will scarcely be over yet, and the crowd here was so cursed hungry that I could not impound a sandwich. Langley, will you go ?" ad- dressing the wit at whose sally they had just laughed so im- moderately. No, thank ye." • Can I set you down, Langley ?" ' No, thank ye ;" and had the light of the lamp then glanced ■»n j.aneiey's face, it would have shown a transient blush, as his memory reverted to the home at which the speaker wished to set him down. '' Well, Langley, you were in high feather to-day, upon lionoi. Don't forget you dine with me at seven to-morrow," said one, as he drove off. " Don't forget me for Thursday at eight," said another, and off darted his spirited horse. " Nor my dinner, Langley, on Friday," cried a third, as he drew up the glasses of his chariot. "• And mind," said Lascelles, whom the great assembly at »>rville House had attracted from his set,, ♦' mind you remem- lier my feed on Sunday, where we expect you will come in your best spirits, for we shall have some jolly dogs, and there THE OXONIANS. 53 are no d — d parties to interrupt a jovial evening ;" and away drove the different inviters in their different vehicles to their various destinations of clubs, mistresses, and h — lis, leaving only some half-dozen carriages belonging to those whose ecarte tables were not yet broken up, or whose flirtations remained unfinished. The forced smile passed away from Langley's face ; the last laugh which he gave to his departing companions almost assumed the sound of a convulsive sob ; external excitation was past, and his mind turned to its own interior and bitter reflections, as he wended his way on foot through the spacious squares to an humble street that I should be ashamed to name as the residence of any one who was occasionally, nay, continually, admitted, if not courted, in so many circles of the first fashion ; yet in this street lived Lang- ley. A small key of one of Bramah's patent locks, procured him entrance to the humble house vvhich formed his home ; and in that house was a listening ear and a beating heart, that anxiously waited his return, and to whom the sound of the key that admitted him was sweeter than the most celebrated air of the most celebrated composer. " He is here 1" said she, and her heart became tranquil. " He is returned!" and her anxiety ceased, and her flurried pulse beat evenly. Before he could reach the second floor, for Langley could aflbrd to lodge no lower, the door was opened to receive him, a finger on the lips, and a sagacious look towards the cradle, told him that their child slept, and warned him to silence. A pang shot across his heart as Langley contemplated the humble scene before him, and contrasted it with the splendour which he had just quitted ; and something like a feeling of shame came across him as he thought how different had been the occupations of himself and those of his wife (for it was his wife, reader) on that evening. His hours had been passed in fashionable society, in the enjoyment of luxuries to which his fortune no longer entitled him, in the midst of gayeties to which his own wit had given the principal zest. Hers, in the performance of the humblest of her domestic duties, in nursing their child, in reflecting upon the fallen fortunes of her hus- band, and in thinking upon him in his absence. These thoughts wrung an involuntary sigh from his bosom ; but a confiding and affectionate kiss, a smile of welcome, such as nothing but the affection of a woman, of a wife, can give, and the blush of pleasure that mantled in her cheek at his re- turn, tranquillized his feehngs. 6* 54 THE OXONIAN*. Langley, in the plenitude of prosperity, had been at Oxford, and it was at College, that fii-st meeting with Lord Orville, tlieir friendship had continued, if that kind of intercourse which consist in associations and visiting may be called friendship. All the world had known Langley as the expectant heir of a prmcely fortune, and had participated in the elegancies and splendour of his hospitable mansion. All the world knew of the wreck of his hopes, of the blight of his early prospects, of Ms present poverty ; but how poor he was, no one knew. He .stil! kept up his subscription to his club, where all letters were :uiuressed to him ; and his humble home was therefore a .secret, as well as his marriage. He was still not only tolerated ill the society in which he had been born, but courted for the wit with which he could entertain, and of which his fallen for- tunes had not deprived him. His friends were, in outward appearance, still the same, but he had not tried them. He V as known to be poor, but he had never yet had recourse to (lie purses of his more fortunate companions ; his poverty had never yet rendered him troublesome to his friends, and their friendship, therefore, appeared to be undiminished. lianirley's was a melancholy, and, I fear, not an uncommon gtor\ . From infancy he was nursed in the lap of luxury, the f>et of a doting mother, the pride of an affectionate, father ; his natural talents had been cultivated by the best education w Inch the country could afford ; his boyhood was spent at Kton, the commencement of his manhood was passed at Ox- ford Possessed of unbounded wealth, his father made him so Tiberal an allowance that his purse was always at the service of hii companions, and Langley was voted the best fellow in the world. His wit and conversational talents rendered his society an acquisition, and his company was accordingly courted by young men of the higiiest rank, till no college-feast was the thing unless Langley was one of the party. D\iring a shooting excursion, the first year after his departure from Oxford, accident introduced him to Miss Fanny Palmer, the daughter of a man with whom his father liad quarrelled early in life. A mutual attachment was the consequence of their meeting. During this period, the failure of some great Indian establishment ruined IMr. Palmer, whose constitution sunk under the shock, and he died, leaving his daughter Fanny pcnnyless and friendless, with no hope of protection, excepting from a maternal uncle, who was in India, and who had never forgiven his sister for connecting herself with a man engaged m commerce. THE OXONIANS. 56 The friendless situation of Fanny only served to increase the passion of Langley ; and he generously though imprudently determined to rescue her from her present friendless position by making her his wife. Unhappily, he determined upon, this step without the consent of his father. Unprotected and un- advised, she consented to a private marriage, and became the wife of the man whom her heart preferred beyond all others. The generous allowance of Langley's father prevented all difficulties of supplying his wife's very moderate desires. Her only want was his society, of which, situated as they were, she could of course enjoy very little ; and it was this, more than any other advantage which she might derive from its disclo- sure, that made her urge the publication of their marriage, now- rendered more necessary by the certainty of her speedy con- finement. His mother's death had prevented Langley making this disclosure so soon as he had at first intended. Determined at length at all events to unfold the truth, he was diligently looking out for a favourable opportunity, when his father was seized with apoplexy, and, after hngering a few days, expired without recovering his senses, or giving any signs of recognition. On the death of the old gentleman, every body treated Lang- ley as the heir to his wealth, while dihgent search was made among his papers for a will. When the fact of his having died intestate became known, the steward, who had acted as gene- ral agent for the late Mr. Langley, to the surprise of every body, put his seal upon the diiierent papers, and peremptorily ordered that nothing should be disturbed till the heir, or his legitimate agent, should inspect them. Langley was himself too much absorbed in the event, to know of this till the funeral was over ; when Mr. Turner, whom he could never bear, from the cringing hypocrisy with which he had always treated his father, demanded an interview. On Langley's declining to see him, Turner insisted, and at length almost forcing himself into the library, he stood before his young master, without any of that cringing servility which had always hitherto distinguished him in his intercourse both with his old master and his son. Langley, surprised at the unwelcome intrusion, demanded the reason for his thus insisting upon an interview. " I wish to know, sir," replied Turner, " whether you are aware of any will left by the late Mr. Langley." " You, I understand. Turner, have searched all my father's papers, and have found none," replied Langley. " I am sorry for it," said Turner, while a mahcious glance 56 THE 0X0MAN3. interpreted his protended sorrow into triumph ; " for I much tear that you will have little to expect from his heir at law." '' Heir at law ! Why the man is mad,'' exclaimed Langley ; and, for the moment, he thought as he said. " Not so mad as you may imagine, sir ; but pray sit down, and tranquillize yourself; all may yet be well, if you will act wisely," said Turner, as he drew a chair familiarly, and seated himself, " and if you will follow my advice — " " When it is requisite, sir, it will be souglit," said Langley, who still continued standing ; '■ at present, I have no need of it, and would be left to mysclt'." "■ More need of it, jMr. George, than you may imagine," continued the wily steward, in the same familiar tone. " Once for all, Turner, I am in no mood for business now, and you must be either drunk or mad to force it upon me at this moment," reiterated Langley. " I am neither drunk nor mad, Mr. George ; but, in spite of the galling pride with which you have ever treated me, am come now to olfer to do you a service ; to save you from a perilous position." " What do you mean ? what peril can threaten me ?" " Your father's relations" Langley interrupted him, " Do not imagine, Mr. Turner, that I have forgotten them. One of my first duties will be, and in that, it is true you may assist mc ; to seek them out, and make such provision for them out of my father's wealth, as he himself would have done, had he not have been cut off so sud- deidy." " Think of yourself, Mr. George, rather than of them," said 'J'urner ; " It is time enough to think of them when you are yourself secure." " Secure !" " Aye, Mr. George, secure ; and know that your security depends upon me ;" and this Turner repeated twice, with a sinister expression of countenance, which denoted tiie delight he anticipated in the effect of the intelligence he was about to communicate. '■' My security depend u^on you ! upon you ! Mr. Turner. I do not understand you ; you bewilder me. Pray explain yourself more clearly ; and if you have anything of import- ance to communicate, let it be presently done," said Langley, with as much temper as the insolent air of the other would allow him to command. " Not so fast, Mr. George, not so fast ; first sign these two THE OXONIANS. 57 papers, and I am silenced for ever, and the secret shall remain buried in my own breast," " What secret ?" asked Langley, as he mechanically cast his eyes over the two papers ; the one of which was a full rati- fication of Turner's accounts up to that period ; and the other a bond for ten thousand pounds. " A secret which involves your future fate," said Turner. By this time Langley had perused the two papers, and turn- ing calmly round to the steward, who was still seated, he quietly said, " Mr. Turner, the first of these papers only serves to confirm me in what you know I have long suspected ; namely, that you have not been the honest agent to my father which he supposed you to be ; for the second, I am at a loss to know the grounds on which you can make so inordinate a demand. — Be silent for a kw moments ; and now, Mr. Turner, once for all, since you have forced me into business, for which I am yet unfit, as well as unprepared, I request you will make up your accounts without delay, that I may judge from them whether my suspicions are correct ; and that I may do you justice, if they should prove erroneous." " Mr. George, Mr. George, don't provoke me ; you know not what you do. I am in possession of a secret, upon which your whole welfare depends ; and, by signing these papers, you will bury the secret for ever in my breast," said the steward. "What is your secret?" firmly asked Langley ; "what is your secret ?" The steward looked cautiously round ; opened the door, to see that no one was listening, and then closing it carefully, and approaching Langley, he said, in a hoarse loud whisper, "You are an illegitimate child ; you have no claim to your father's fortune ; the hneal heir is a pettifogging attorney ; and a word from me puts him into possession of this mansion and your father's estates, and sends you forth a houseless and a penny- less beggar." The first sentence of this tirade came like a thunderbolt upon Langley ; he heard no other part of the steward's speech ; all his faculties seemed absorbed in the one great affront which its commencement put upon himself and his parents. Its consequences never occurred to him. " Villain !" he exclaimed ; and with his right hand he seized the steward by the throat ; " 'Tis a lie ! an infernal lie ! Ob, mother ! Oh, mother I and am I doomed to hear your beloved name traduced, and by the viper which ray father nourished 53 THE OXONIANS. into existence. Villuin, unsay your words, or by heavens'' here his feelings overcame him, his hand relaxed its hold, and the trembling steward, escaping from his grasp, hurried out of the room, muttering something, in which '• madman'^' and "bastard" were the only words that struck upon his ear. Langley's faculties were stunned ; he remembered some history of his father having eloped with his mother, and of their having been subsequently forgiven. Could it be possible ? had the steward spoken truth ? he would not, could not, be- lieve it. In case he should have died before his father, he had effected an insurance on his life in favour of his wife ; and to do this he remembered having obtained a certificate of his birth. That of his father's marriage had been discovered in the general search after the will. He hastened to the drawer which con- tained these papers, compared their dates, and to his horror discovered that the certificate of the marriage was dated one month later than that of his birth. This was, indeed, a confirmation of the truth of the steward's assertion. Nor was he long before he felt the activity of this man's revenge. A few days brought him accompanied by the heir at law. The facts were too stubborn, even for the law- yers to advise his contesting the claim which was set up to his father's estate ; but this his respect for the name of his mother would have prevented, unless it was certain of clearing her fame from the attainder. There was no proof to be ob- tained of any previous marriage ; although some old nurse said she tliought that a secret union must have taken place. Adver- tisement after advertisement was inserted, offering large rewards for any information that could elucidate the mystery, w'ithout producing any effect. In the mean time, the heir at law, aided by the steward, took such efl'ectual measures to make good his claim, that he was soon in possession of all that wealth to which Langley thought himself the legitimate heir ; and he found himself the master only of a small pittance, which his mother had left him as a last instance of her affection ; little thinking of the immense consequence this trifle was to become to her beloved son. The heir at law entered upon the enjoyment of his immense fortune without casting a thought upon the unfor- tunate Langley ; or, if he did think of him, it was only with that vulgar triumph which a low mind enjoys over its superior m intellect and ac(juirement. One thing he did, which, while it displayed his own meanness, did poetical justice on the ste- ward. With his knowledge of attorneyship, we will not call THE OXONIANS. 59 it law, he had contrived by some quibble to invalidate the bond for ten thousand pounds ; and leaving Turner his ill-gotten gains, dismissed him from his service without the promised re- ward. Langley lost the severity of his disappointment in the bosom of his v/ife, who bore it with a fortitude which nothing but af- fection can bestow. Her husband was all to her, and though mortified at the necessity for the concealment of their mar- riage, which Langley still urged, until he had obtained some employment that would enable them to appear with respecta- bility, she acquiesced without a murmur. However modestly or meritoriously he may have used pros- perity, the man who suddenly meets a reverse is sure to find many who rejoice in his fall ; why, we will not pretend to say ; perhaps it is human nature, and we are sorry for it. Langley was, however, so much liked that he was generally pitied ; and his fate was the more lamented, as it was well known that the man who had come into possession of his for- tune, was one not at all likely to give the dinners, and keep the hospitable house that Langley would have done. This was therefore a fortune lost to the eating public, or diners-out at large, to be centred in one individual. If words and professions could give consolation, Langley would have been amply consoled. Having a buoyant spirit, however, it rose above his fortune ; he had talents, and he de- termined to employ them ; a large and powerful connexion, and he resolved to avail himself of it. Alas ! how little did he think that those, so profuse of their offers of service when he did not want it, would be among the first to refuse their assist- ance now that he required it. Both himself and his wife felt the necessity for his keeping up his standing in the society in which he had been used to move ; as this seemed to be the only chance of getting, through the influence of friends, an ap- pointment of some sort or other ; for the education afforded by Eton and Oxford had rather unfitted, than fitted him, for the real business of life. Should any parent read this who has placed his child in the predicament of Langley, let him read Dr. Kitchener's essay on the pleasure of making a will, and reflect upon the injustice of dying without one. 60 THE OXONIANS. CHAPTER IX. EEMANETS. Tho' daylight thro' the window breaking, Proclaims the busy world awaking ; Lovers and gamesters still will stay, To cut and shuffle — flirt and play — Another sigh — another deal — Proclaim the pleasures that they feel, — The Rout. While Langley sought his humble abode, and in the en- dearing caresses of his wife found some compensation for the ills of fortune, a scene of a very difterent description was passing in the drawing-rooms he had just quitted Guest after guest had retired ; the major-domo had dis- missed the musicians ; the servants were lounging about over- come with fatigue ; the younger inmates of the mansion, with the few persons still remaining, were talking over the occur- rences of the evening, or reclining upon the no longer crowded sofas of the saloon finishing their flirtations ; while in an inner drawing-room, there still sat one parti quarre^ engaged at ecart^ ; your gamblers and flirtcrs are generally the reman ets of an assembly. This party consisted of the mistress of the mansion. Lady Orvilie, celebrated, as we have seen, alike for her talent, her beauty, her dissipation, and her extravagance ; of Sir Henry Warrington, notorious only for the largeness of his fortune, and for the selfish and sensual pursuits in which it was e.\- pended ; of old Lord Lexington, who, passing every day in bed and every night at the card table, was a determined gambler, without experiencing the excitement usually at- tendant upon the character ; since playing the same game and the same stakes every night, the variableness of fortune had never atfected him. The pursuit which he followed at first for amusement, he continued from habit, and at the age of seventy was shuffling to the grave with the ace of trumps in his hand. The fourth, who completed the party was the young and lovely Mrs. Woodville, who both before and since her marriage, which had now occurred nearly two years, had been THE OXONIANS. 61 the idol of all who knew her. Young, artless, and inexpe- rienced, she had speedily attracted the attention and won the heart of the elegant and honourable Henry Woodville, for whom many a spinster had sighed, and for whom many a dowager had cast her nets. He had been notorious as a man of gallantry, and his marriage and appropriation to one woman exclusively was considered a public loss, and treated by the women in general as a crime against their sex as a body. Attracted by his elegant manners ; dazzled by the admira- tion he excited, and the position he occupied in society; she mistook admiration for affection ; and in wedding the honour- able Mr. Woodville, entailed upon herself the envy and hatred of many of her sex, which was not allayed by seeing her at twenty-one at the head of a splendid establishment, giving mag- nificent parties ; outvying her superiors in rank, in the style and splendour of her equipages, and in the number of her servants. When Louisa first came out, she eclipsed all her competitors by her beauty and talents. Before she had passed through one season, the coronets of two earls had been laid at her feet and refused ; and report spoke pretty confidently that a ducal tiara had shared the same fate. But Louisa was not a woman to marry, unless she loved ; or, at any rate, unless she thought she loved ; she therefore resisted all the entreaties, com- mands, and anger of her friends, and determined to follow jier own inclinations in the choice of a companion for life. The honourable Henry Woodville was at this period in the zenith of his attraction. A character for gallantry, both in the field as well as in society, had given him an cclat, which iias unfortunately but too much sway with the young and weak of the other sex. To this he united much pleasant conversa- tion, had seen a great deal of the world, and could tell what he had seen well. He could imitate, if he could not feel, pas- sion. He was still, however, at the bottom, a very selfish person ; and the continual habit of self-indulgence had ren- e ;" the latter word again emphasized in the same manner. Woodville was glad to have this interview past ; and, although he had rather that his wife should not have kept up such an intimate acquaintance with Lady Orville, yet, situated as she was in society, he felt he could not break off the ac- quaintance without an eclat that would have done neither of tbem any good ; and the carelessness which quickly succeeded his marriage made him less solicitous upon this subject than he otherwise would have been. From the time of iVlrs. Woodville's marriage, though not particularly intimate before, Lady Orville had courted her so- ciety, made her quite une amie de la maison^ and got up parties expressly for her ; using at the same time every means in her power to detach her from her home ; means which the in- creasing carelessness of Woodville, who left his wife too much to her own resources, rendered doubly effective. An attractive wife, neglected by her husband, is not long in modern society without having in her train a certain set of danglers, who, without daring to hope for success, are willing to give the world an idea that they have a chance of it. Among these, there are some with sufficient attractions, both of person and talent, to muke any husband tremble for the re- sult of their particular attentions ; and it seemed to be the purpose of Lady Orville to collect the society of these men whenever Mrs. Woodville was her guest. She soon, how- ever, discovered that this lady had a mind too pure fo admit a THE OXONIAN9. Gd thought contrary to propriety, and that her heart was not to be won by the common attentions of the men by whom she was surrounded ; still she succeeded in her wish to create a mistrust in the rnind of her husband ; and so far her purpose was ac- complished. Such a mind and heart as Mrs Woodville possessed, could not exist without excitement of some sort ; she was disap- pointed where she looked for happiness ; she had seen high play at Lady Orville's, had become interested as a spectator, ventured her little bets of rings, gloves, fcc, upon the event of a game, and was at length induced to play herself. Cards adopted as an excitement are very different things to cards adopted merely for amusement. Mrs. Woodville gradually began to find in them a stimulus that weaned her from the contemplation of her blighted hopes of happiness in other quarters ; aud as opium eaters are obliged to increase the quantity to keep up the same effects, so was Mrs. Woodville compelled to increase her stakes to keep up the excitement she experienced at play, till she was fast degenerating into a female gamester. Among the danglers who had been attracted by her peculiar position, and whose attention had been encouraged by Lady Orville, was Sir Henry Warrington, a baronet of about thirty- five. Upon this man's heart, if heart that could be called which had not one generous propensity, and every feeling of which was centred in self and sensual gratification, the charms of Mrs. Woodville had made a strong impression. He had never felt so much for any other woman ; and founding his hopes upon the negligence with which she was so evidently treated by her husband, he determined to attempt the con- quest. To this determination he was led by the covert hints of Lady Orville, who took every opportunity of giving little histo- riettes of Woodville's neglect and infidelities, and of pitying her poor friend ; while to Mrs. Woodville herself, she would lament that such a heart and mind had not met with one capa- ble of appreciating her feelings and her merits. This was, however, very delicate ground with such a mind as that of Mrs. Woodville, who, in spite of all her follies, and o{ her husband's neglect, determined to preserve, in appearance at least, that respect for him which she had lost in reality. Lady Orville, however, knew her sex's nature well, aud by degrees wormed herself so much into the confidence of Mrs. Woodville, who was perhaps only too glad to find some crea- G4 TnE oxoMAJsa. ture that would sympathize with her, that her husband's treat- ment was no longer a secret between them. From the period of the commencement of this confidence they were nearly inseparable, and Lady Orville contrived, as though by mere accident, that Sir Henry Warrington should always be of their parties ; more particularly those of which play was the object. The countess had early discovered the ease with which Mrs. Woodville lent herself to an occupation that created so much excitement ; and greatly indebted as she was herself to the resources of the gaming-table, she not only found a convenience in meeting with an inexperienced player possessed of such liberal means as Mrs. Woodville, but hinted to the baronet, himself one of the first players in Europe, that this predilection might perhaps be rendered subservient to his unworthy purposes. Nightly, as the excitement passed away, did Mrs. Woodville tremble at the extent of her lo.sses ; yet nightly did she again yield to the temptress, who lured her on and on with the hope of recovering them, before there became any necessity for ex- plaining them to Mr. Woodville. On the night in question she had been engaged with the party described, from an early period of the evening, in the small drawing-room of Orville House. A more than usual run of ill-luck had attended her efforts to redeem a part of her losses, to which she had this night added so considerably, that she continued, in recklessness and despair, to play for larger and larger stakes. To win small ones was now of no use to her ; they could not redeem the sums she had lust ; and she grasped eagerly at a proposition made by Lady ( /rville that she and Sir Henry Warrington should give her a chance of re- venge, by playing one game for a stake nearly equal to her whole losses of the night. To Sir Henry Warrington, who guessed the sinister motive of the countess, and who was conscious of the excellence of her play, as well as of his own ; the proposition was equally acceptable. As to Lord Lexington, the automaton chess player was not more insensible to the amount of the stakes than he was. He took his pinch of snuff" during the shuffling of the cards, with his usual nonchalance. A glance of con- cealed triumph shot from the black eyes of the countess, while a smile, such as few men wear, played on the lips of the Baronet. Neither of the latter, however, dared to look at Mrs. Woodville ; and it was well for her that the table was no longer surrounded, as in the former part of the evening, by a crowd of spectators, THE OXOIflAPfSr. 65 who had, naturally enough, watched that game which the high play rendered the most interesting. She sat with her eyes fixed so steadfastly, that the cards seemed to have been en- dowed with that property of the rattlesnake, which is said to fascinate the gaze of its intended victim. Her face was pale, her cheek sunk, her lips compressed, her eyes half closed, as though she was fearful that too much miglit be read in them. Every power of muscle was put in requisition to prevent that convulsive motion which is the general result of extreme agi- tation. Her dark locks were shaken back, displaying a brow, once lovely and open, but now crowded with care and anxiety. The first deal presented her with cards so favourable that a sudden gleam of sunshine passed over her features, and dis- pelled for a moment the darkness that had gathered there. A start of surprise and vexation betrayed Lady Orville's feelings at the result of this deal, which was only observed by Sir Henry ; and noticed by him with a hasty glance of dissatisfac- tion. In a moment, however, her presence of mind was re- covered, and all was smooth again. To the evident surprise of two of the party, the game ran pretty equally till the deal came by which it must be decided. There was a slight appearance of uneasiness in the counte- nances of Lady Orville and the baronet ; and, to a close ob- server, much more real feeling in the event, than they would permit their countenances to display. Lexington's face was immoveable ; but Mrs. VVoodville was for once too anxious even to attempt the concealment of her anxiety. She awaited the deal with a breathless impatience, and snatched at her cards with a nervous trepidation, that betrayed how much she hoped and dreaded from the result. Who that had seen the gay, the careless, and animated Louisa Carlton, could at this moment have recognised the same being in tiie pale, anxious., and breathless Mrs. VVoodville ; still lovely, but oh, how changed in her lovehness ! Who would ever have thought that her generous soul could have set its happiness on the issue of a card ; could have delivered itself up to the sordid vice of the gamester ? Yet so it was ! The cards were dealt. As each individual sorted their hand a sudden transition came over the faces of the players ; a smile of triumph gleamed on the features of the countess and Sir Henry Warrington. Lord Lexington's wore their usual apa- thetic expression ; while the countenance of Mrs. Woodville became paler than before. She saw in the cards she held that tlie fate of the a tradesman ! impossible ! Then her imagination painted the change of manner in Mr. Garnett, from the obsequious rvender into the bargaining purchaser, the moment she disclosed her real business ; and even his respect appeared to be of con- sequence at this moment. She remembered, too, how Lady B 's having once pledged her jewels had been spoken of; the pitying glances which had been cast at her plain headdress, after the report had got wind ; and this remembrance was not a little imbittered by the additional one, that she had joined others in blaming the indelicacy of the circumstance. Yet, what was to be done ? The money must be paid, or she must consent to lie under an obligation to sir Henry Warrington, and place herself in a certain degree in the power of Lady Orville ; both of which she was determined at all events to avoid. " Mr. Garnett, I sent for you" — Mr. Garnett was all atten- tion. " I sent for you on some particular business." The jeweller appeared still more attentive, and Mrs. Woodville found it still more difficult to proceed. " Particular business, Mr. Garnett" — she hesitated, and the eyes of the diamond merchant began to open with something like surprise. " Of a confidential nature." The jeweller's eyes opened still wider. Mrs. Woodville's ideas became confused, she feared she might be committing herself with a man who was in the habit of in- tercourse with many of her acquaintance. How could she be certain of the safety of her secret, even if the absence of her jewels from her dress did not discover it ; the delicacy of lier mind shrunk from thus exposing her necessities to the knowledge of a common tradesman. These ideas crowding at once upon her mind made her hesitate. Yet her necessities pressed her forwards. "Mr. Garnett " " Madam !" A pause ensued, during which the jeweller appeared still more astonished. " You are, I believe, confidentially employed by many of your customers, Mr. Garnett ?" " Yes ma'am, by many, very confidentially. To such a 'IAK9. hope that he might derive some good from preserving his high connexions, gave him a very reasonable excuse for con- tinuing to cultivate them. As we announced this chapter by the trite observation that one half of mankind does not know how the other half lives ; I think we may justly add, that nei- ther does it care ; as long as the misery and poverty of the unhappy moiety is never intruded upon the comforts and splendour of the more fortunate half. We do not care how poor the man is who makes himself agreeable at our table, while he keeps his poverty to himself and does not trouble us with it. We care not how empty a man's purse is, provided he does not ask us to replenish it ; or how severe the wants of our companions may be, so long as we are not asked to relieve them. This appears to be but a sorry picture of human nature ; but it will be found in most instances a true one. Each of us expects in his own particular case, to find it otherwise ; and experience is the only touchstone that discovers the truth. Langley had not yet made this experiment. In spite of his ofi'-hand manner, a great portion of self-possession, and many of those qualities which make what is called a " dashing cha- racter," he had a fund of innate modesty, as well as of deep and sensitive feeling, which made him shrink from asking a favour ; yet it was with this view only that he concealed his marriage, and kept in society. His Oxford education had fitted him for no particular pursuit, and he found himself thrown upon the world, fortuneless, and useless ; whereas, had he possessed the accomplishments of a common schoolboy, in book-keeping and arithmetic ; or any useful knowledge of the commerce of his country ; a hundred situations might have been open to him through the commercial connexions of his late father. But with them Latin and Greek were useless ; and the Italian method of book-keeping was more valued, than all the Italian literature, from Dante down to Sis- mondi. Langley had depended much upon his literary talents, but they were of too light a nature to rank his name in the abstruser pursuits of literature ; and there was then no Col- burn to cater with a liberal hand for the mere entertainment of the *•' reading public." He attempted a tragedy ; but one manager dismissed him with many thanks for its perusal, saying, " That it was — really — a very good play — much effect — great talent — would not suit his house ; but the very thing for the other." THE OXONIANS. 81 To the other manager he applied : but here tragedy was out of fashion. In despair, and building his hopes on the opinion of the first manager ; he ventured to plead ; and in pleading, detailed the past misfortunes and the present misery which drove him to the drama as a resource. The manager eyed him with a glance of pity. " You'd better write a farce, sir, and I'll act it ;" said he, and dis- missed the petitioner. " Write a farce," thought Langley, as he wended his dis- consolate steps homeward ; " write a farce ; with poverty staring me in the face ; my wife's cheeks growing paler and thinner every day ; my child half-starved ; my whole circle surrounded by misery, and write a farce." The thing seemed impossible ; but Langley was wrong. Most farces have been written under similar circumstances. The jokes that have appeared the spontaneous result of wit, have been the coinage of sheer necessity. The scenes that had convulsed an audience with laughter have been penned amid the convulsions of disease and poverty. Puns have been the offspring of a prison, and the jocund song or buoyant scene have been invented in the midst of ruined hopes and overwhelming misfortunes. Langley's spirit was, however, of that elastic kind, that, like Jndian-riibber, it rose again in spite of all the rubs it re- ceived ; and one scheme only failed, to be succeeded by an- other. Mrs. Langley, who, to a very fine mind, united a great portion of the much more useful quality— common sense ; of which, by-the-by, one ounce is of far more utility than all the genius that ever blazed in the page of poetry, or lay buried in that of science ; saw with sorrow this tendency of her hus- band to pursue splendid phantoms instead of humble realities. She wished much to detach him from the scenes of gay life, which only rendered their own more wretched by the contrast ; although she too saw the advantage which might be made by his connexions, provided Langley would try them, and they should prove willing to assist him. Their morning's conversation was generally turned either upon some disappointed scheme of the yesterday, or some pro- jected one of the morrow ; occasionally interspersed with anecdotes of the party of the preceding evening by Langley, and urgent entreaties on the part of his wife to make some use of those great friends who composed them. On the morn- ing in question, over their humble muffin and souchong, un« IB THE OXONIANS. accompanied by the varied et ceteraa which coTcr a modern breakfast-table, their colloquy took the usual turn. " Why, as you say, my love," said Langley, in reply to some observation of his wife, " it does seem a little too bad, that I should figure away at gay parties, and keep you cooped up here in a second floor, under a false name ; but you know it 19 all for our good, and the moment success crowns any of my schemes you shall be repaid for all." "Ah! my dear Charles, do not think I complain of your pleasures, or that I covet any other than those I find in your society, and in the smiles of our dear infant. They are suffi- cient to satisfy the heart of a loving wife and an affectionate mother. But — " " Ay," interrupted Langley ; " now there is one of your killing ' buts.' You go on, n)y love, in the smoothest way in the world ; saying the kindest, the sweetest, and the most cheering things ; and then comes that odious monosyllable which I hate. 'But!' the word ought to be expunged from our language.— ' But !' 'tis such an inelegant word too. I wonder my darling Fanny can use it." Mrs. Langley sighed; and Langley continued, *•' Come, come ; don't be low spirited : I see a thousand hopes for the future." " But what use is it, my dear Charles," asked Mrs. Langley, " to look to the future when the present almost overwhelms us?" " Why, to be sure, I must confess, my dear Fanny, that the present is not very alluring. A portion of our chairs and tables has moved off, as though they were animal instead of vegetable quadrupeds. Our equipage is such as nature has provided for us with the rest of mankind ; water is our com- mon beverage ; and tea serves us for champagne. Yet, de- pend on it, something will turn up yet ; some of my plans must succeed at last." " Oh, as to your plans, my dearest Charles, I have no longer any hope from them. Remember your play from which you were to make a fortune." " True, the manager would not act it." "Then your poem, which was to provide for me and my child for life ?" " Ay," added Langley, '* and procure me a lodging in Poet's corner after my death." " Why, the bookseller would not even read it." «' There, my Fanny, was the misfortune : had he read it, he would have published it ; and it would have done all I pre- dicted from it." THE OXONIANS. 8S " Oh Charles, Charles ! with your education what might you not do ; what might it not fit you for ?" " There, my love, you are mistaken. The fact is, my edu- cation has unfitted me for every thing. A college is well enough to enable a man to dawdle through existence, and to colour his conversation with quotations from the classics. I certainly am a most unlucky wight. If I were at the bar, I dare say there would not be a soul litigious enough to give me a brief, if I turned tradesman, the article I dealt in would no doubt go out of fashion ; and I verily believe the greatest good I could do my country would be to set up physician ; since, you may depend upon it, all the world would be healthy, to prevent me getting into practice." " But these powerful friends," said Mrs. Langley, " who invite you so often. Surely, if you were to tell them lliat you were a husband, a father, and in want, they would do something for you." " The very thing, my love, to prevent them. It is only for those who want nothing that they are willing to do every thing. And did they know how very poor I am, and that I lived perched up in a second floor, it is ten to one if they would speak to me." " Oh Charles, Charles ! this false pride will be your ruin. Oh ! by all the affection which my heart feels for you, and which you profess for me ; by the smiles of our innocent babe ; by the remembrance of that kindness to my ruined parents, which first won my love ; let me conjure you to overcome this false delicacy, and to make some struggle to rescue us from the poverty which threatens us." " But then, Fanny, to tell them I am so very poor ; that the lesult of my father's dying intestate has quite ruined me ; to tell them that the wit which has set their tables in a roar ema- nates from a broken heart — " " Nay, Charles, poverty is only a disgrace, when it is the consequence of neglect or crime. Not when it is produced by misfortune, and supported with resignation : surely none can be so cold-hearted as to bask in the sunshine of wit, and neglect the necessities of him who exerts it for their en- tertainment." " It is too generally the case though. Man is a selfish aRimal, contented with the surface, — but Fanny you have in- spired me. I will this very day summon courage and remind a noble peer, who has treated me with distinguished kind- ness, of his promise to befriend me." 84 THE OXONIANI. ♦' Now that's my dear Charles." " Yes, I will ; so wipe away your tears, and recall one of those captivating smiles which first bewitched me into becom- ing your husband before I was certain of the stability of my fortunes. And yet I thought I was certain ; for I never would have asked my Fanny to partake of the miseries of my po- verty, although 1 should have been proud to have shared the luxuries of my wealth with her." " But in case you fail, may I not try to soften the heart of my uncle ? I see by the papers he is arrived in town." " No, Fanny. I could not bear you to ask assistance from that hard-hearted relation, whose name you have ever forborne to mention tome, on account of my indignation at his total de- sertion of your angelic mother. Besides, what affection can he have for one whom he has never seen ? I want to be dependent upon nothing but my own exertions. I do not wish to be a drone in the busy hive of society, and should blush to ask for a place where the labour was not adequate to the emolument. Come, Fanny, give me a kiss : I will be off to the clubs : I shall meet there with many a man in power, and will watch a favourable opportunity of preferring my suit." So saying, away went Langley to his morning's lounge at the clubs, or his stroll up Bond Street and St. James's ; where he never wanted a companion to laugh at his jokes or enjoy his conversation ; but as to friends — c'est toute autre chose. His wife turned with a sigh to her domestic occupations, fully aware of the difficulties which pride threw in the way of her husband's making any application to his friends, and of appearing a petitioner where he had always hitherto been an equal. Yet she did not blame him. She knew his good qualities ; she knew how difficult a task it is for the pride of human nature to bend to solicitation, after it has once been used to command ; and these thoughts, helped by her extreme affection, formed excuses for the culpable delay of Lanfflcy. Much, however, as she dreaded giving her husband offence, she still revolved in her own mind the possibility of an appli- cation to her uncle Admiral Frankley. Her mother had been his favourite sister, and though she had excited his anger by marrying Mr. Palmer against the consent of her family, yet his affection for her had been so great in her earlier life, that Mrs. Langley thought it nearly impossible for him entirely to discard her datighter. The papers had an* nounced Admiral Frankley's return from India, and Mrs. Langley determined to find some opportunity of addressing THE OXONIAKS. 85 him, either personally or by letter ; but she knew that this must be done secretly, and without the knowledge of her husband ; and though upon any other subject she would have shuddered at acting contrary to his wishes, yet on the present occasion she felt it to be her duty to attempt the reparation of her husband's fortunes, even by means which he would disapprove. She had herself too great an idea of the miseries of depend- ence not to make some allowance for the pride of her hus- band ; and she felt by anticipation the pleasure that would be hers, should her assistance ever help to relieve their present difficulties. But we must leave Mrs. Langley to her ruminations, and Langley to his clubs, to turn our attention to some of the more active personages of our drama. CHAPTER XII. lOiSDON LIFE. Steicard. — Be patient, madam, you may have your pleasure. Aretina. — 'Tis that I came to town for. Barnwell. — Have I not obey'd — changed a calm and retired life For this wild town, composed of noise and change." Shirley Lady Orville was not a woman to undertake the charge of bringing out a young lady without some ulterior views ; for her house was always too attractive to the world at large to re- (juire the additional motive of a new person, or a great heiress as an inmate. Orville House was conducted upon too extensive a scale to exhibit in the morning any traces of the numerous assembly which had graced its saloons the previous evening. Every servant was at his post; every room in the same order ; all the nick-knackeries of fashion and virtue arranged precisely in their ordinary places ; and long before the inmates had quitted their beds, the mansion had resumed its usual appearance. One of these inmates was the only person who exhibited in her languid countenance, the absence of sleep, and the ennui, that perpetual accompaniment of sub- siding excitement ; and this was Emily Hartley. Unused to Vol. 1-8 86 THE OXOMANS. scenes of such gayety and bustle ; unaccustomed to any thing but the domestic hours and occupations of Hartley Grove ; her little head had been bewildered by the numbers, and almost turned by the flattering attention she had received. During the continuance of the party, she almost imagined herself in fairy land ; the brilliance of the lights, the splendour of the apartments, the excellence of the music, of which she was passionately fond, together with the admiration she had evi- dently excited, had altogether bewildered her young imagina- tion, and made her for the moment think that ail her anticipa- tions of delight had been realized. Her hand had been sought for quadrilles by all the men of fashion who condescended to dance ; and in high society, as well as that of a more humble cast, this is a matter of more concern to them, than ladies are generally willing to admit. Between the dances, she had rested herself in the music-room, listening to the best airs of Mozart and Rossini, sung by the most celebrated singers of the day. What a contrast between the tranquil evenings of Hartley Grove ; the disquisitions of Forrester and her father ; the quiet conversation of her mother ; and the saloons of Orville House, filled with all the rank, fashion, and talent in the country. Lord Orville too, the gay, the elegant, the fascinating Orville, had also paid her the most sedulous attention ; had not only actually danced with her twice, a most uncommon circum- stance with him, but had acted as her Asmodeus of the evening, and pointed out every body who was worth knowing in the rooms : and modern history has been so replete with wonderful events in which our contemporaries have been actors, that one scarcely enters an assembly, in which there arc not many who have been celebrated by their actions, and whose names will not shine in the page of the history of our own times. Orville, however, did not confine his observations and anecdotes to mere public men ; he pointed out those who derived their celebrity for the lesser attributes of beauty, fashion, or folly ; and judging of Emily's mind by that of the many females whom he knew, he seasoned his anecdotes with just enoujrh scandal and satire to give them that piquancy, without which the most brilliant conversation is ennuyant to the class and tastes of many a modern historian and reader. Such particular attention from a man like Orville was quite sufficient to bring Emily into notice ; and, added to the at- traction of a very beautiful person, and an entirely new face, THE OXONIANS. 87 it was no wonder that she became " the sensation" of the evening. The men inquired, " Who the lovely girl was to whom Or- ville was so devoted ?" while the women wondered " what Orville could see in such a country- looking person, to pay her so much attention." The gentlemen declared her hair auburn : the ladies, that it was more inclining to red. Her blue eyes were declared quite the ne plus ultra by the former ; by the latter to be insipid ; the men swore her fair complexion was lovely ; while the women declared, there was too much of the *' milk and water" of human nature in it to permit expression. But whatever might be the secret opinions upon Emily's pretensions to beauty, all the men wished to dance with her, and all the women envied her : nor were these feelings dimi- nished when it was known that she was the daughter of one of the oldest and most respectable families in the country, and the certain possessor of a very large fortune. Seeing only the admiration slie excited, and dazzled by the attention she received, no wonder that the young and unso- phisticated mind of Emily should be delighted. She saw the world merely on its surface, and it was all smiles and sunshine. She saw many eyes fixed upon her, and she perceived only the admiration they expressed, and was totally unconscious of the envy which she elicited, and though this in many instances forms more than half of the pleasure of being admired, Emily was not yet sufficiently refined to mingle it in her draught of pleasure. Indeed, we are not certain whether at this period, Emily would not have been gothic enough to have permitted such an idea to have considerably allayed the delight she experienced. Although Emily had been taken to several minor parties, this had been the first grand assembly at which she had been present ; and the comparison rendered all the others insipid. This perhaps had arisen more from the consequence which had been given to herself by all the attention paid her, than from any real difference. For in the main, all parties are alike, and we derive more or less pleasure from them, accord- ingly as we feel our own consequence more or less diminished or increased by the ocurrences of the evening. Such crea- tures of self are we all ! The delight which Emily experienced, made her watch the movements of the large French clock, which graced the chimney-piece of the saloon, with regret. The minutes and 8u THE OXONIANS . hours had never passed so rapidly ; she could scarcely believe that some other hand tlian that of time liad not moved the dial plate. But tumultuous pleasures are great killers of time, as well as of every thing else ; and what had appeared as minutes to Emily, had actually been so many hours abstracted from the short span of her existence. It was with a feeling of sorrow that she saw the party dimi- nish in number, and guest after guest depart, till the firial break- up of the assembly, by the unexpected appearance and quick departure of Mr. Woodville, as seen in a former chapter. She then sought her dressing-room, where her maid, quite as unaccustomed as herself to the bustle of a town life, was wrapped in such a profound sleep on the sofa, that she could scarcely rouse herself to give the necessary attention to her young mistress. The really country wide-mouthed gapes with which the Abigail entertained her, during the time of her making her " toilette de nuit," communicated to Emily the first disposi- tion for, and thoughts of sleep which she had experienced during the whole evening ; although she had seen with sur- prise many a gay personage, in the midst of an apparently animated conversation, conceal an incipient yawn. She was not then aware how soon such scenes pall upon the senses ; how soon the heart gets used to their insipidity ; and that they are only sought by the many, merely to kill the time which they have not sufficient resources in themselves to pass more profit- ably and more pleasantly. Oil tiioughtless time killers! how little do you know the va- lue of the hours you are throwing away ! how little do you anticipate the day which comes too soon for all of us, when we would sacrifice our whole fortunes to the power of recall- ing even a few of those moments which in their progress have appeared so tedious. Emily, while in the ball-room, had thought sleep impossible ; she imagined that her limbs would never tire in the quadrille ; her mind never become satiated with the scene ; and as she first pressed her pillow, she thought she had enough to recollect, and to lay up in her memory, to keep her awake. With the excitement, however, her strength also passed away. It was in vain that she pictured to herself the gay scene ; the lights would burn dim, and the dancers become shadowy before her closing eyes, till she sunk into a deep though feverish slumber, with one of Orville's insidious com- pliments half finished in her failing memory. THE OXOMANS. 89 The next morning found her unrefreshed, and quite oppressed by that lassitude, the never-failing consequence of over-excite- ment. Her mind had lost its elasticity ; she no longer dwelt upon the occurrences of the evening with the pleasure that she had anticipated in her remembrances of them, and she involun- tarily drew a comparison between her waking hours here at mid-day, and the healthful hilarity which had attended her morning rising at Hartley Grove. There the lark was not blither, and not very often earlier than herself; there she was welcomed by the feathered choristers of her garden, by the opening buds of flowers planted by her own hands, and by the smiles of protegees owing their existence and their happiness to herself and her family. Now the only person she had been accus- tomed to see, brought her coffee, with a face pale from nightly watching. Poor Mrs. Tomkins sunk much sooner under the effect of the London hours than her mistress, and, begin- ning by observing that Miss Emily " was not at all the moral of what she was in the country," indulged herself in a long tirade against London dissipation and London servants ; in- deed the poor girl, with her primitive notions, had been such a capital butt for the exercise of the wit at the second table, that she had enjoyed no peace since her arrival ; and nothing but her love for her young lady would have tempted her to stay a moment longer in a house where much more of the real " goings on," as Mrs. Tomkins called them, was known to herself than to her mistress. As Emily, however, became refreshed by her coffee, the elasticity of her mind returned, and the pleasures of a gay life again assumed their ascendency over her imagination. The plans which will be developed as our history proceeds, had no chance for success, while Emily's mind still remained attached to the pursuits of the country, and to the species of life she had quitted. The whole powers of Lady Orville, her son and daughter, were therefore dovoted to wean her from her early predilections, to cast a shade of ridicule over her early pursuits, and to bestow upon the pleasures of a town life such a blazonry as would give all the former enjoyments of her existence no character but that of insipidity. Mrs. Tomkins, in her rustic blunt way, had detailed that Lord Orville's servant had sworn to her that his master was alreday madly in love with her young mistress. '* To be sure," added she, " there is no wonder in that ; for I myself should be in love with you if I were a man, which Heaven forbid should ever be the case, for they have a world of sin, the very 8* 90 THE OXONLVNS. best of them, to carry to their graves. But though Lord Or- ville is called the finest man of the day, I think him no more to compare to Mr. Forrester, than Mounseer Tripon, my lord's French varlet, is to my Thomas, your sweetheart's hunts- man. Oh how I wish I could hear his dear horn, and bis so- ho, so-ho, again." Emily stopped the prating of her waiting-maid by dismis- sing her suddenly with a sharp reprimand for having made her the subject of conversation in the steward's room ; and poor Mrs. Tomkins retired, surprised at seeing, for the first time in her life, that her young mistress was seriously dis- pleased. " Ah ! it is all along of this smoky London air," said she, as she shut the door, and cast an angry glance at the foggy'at- mosphere without. Her words, however, had made a deeper impression than Emily herself was willing to allow. The contrast between the acquired elegance of Lord Orville and the rustic ease though good manners of Forrester, had more than once forced themselves upon her imagination ; and she had several times detected herself in drawing a comparison between the fash- ionable and sprightly, and sometimes brilliant conversation of the tov/n-bred peer, and the more solid, though less striking observations of a country gentleman. " The finest man of the day!" True, thought she, Lord Orville does indeed bear that character. " In love with me !" and her vanity, at least for a moment, was pleased with the idea. And what woman, perfect as ever human nature will permit her to be, is without a share of vanity ? " No — no, no, it cannot be ;" and she paused, even in her thoughts, to debate upon the possibility of such an event ; and again, as s!ie drew a comparison between her own rusticity and the manners of the fashionable women to whose society he had been used, and by whom he was surrounded, her humility set it down as an impossibility. Still, however, she could not drive the idea from her mind, and she w^as obliged to recall to her memory that it had only been engendered by the prattle of a servant, before she could banish it entirely. At this moment Clara Dallas, a cousin of the Orville family, and a ward of the late Earl's, entered the dressing-room ; she had retired from the party of the preceding evening much earlier than Emily, and had therefore not broken so much in upon her day to recover from its fiitigues. Clara Dallas was one of those few young ladies in whose THE OXOKIANS. 91 minds and imagination romance had no place. Ungifted by nature with any extraordinary beauty of person, she was liked by her companions, because she never outshone them in that upon which women are too apt to pride themselves ; and they thought little of that superior good sense which she possessed, because it seldom intruded itself upon their notice ; or, if ob- serve d, only excited their ridicule. Clara had no imagination, but she had a fund of good sense. She looked upon life as a reality, and indulged herself in no dreams of pleasure which did not exist ; but this way of looking at society had given a matter-of-fact frankness to her conversation, which sometimes destroyed the fine flourishing tirades of more brilliant colloquists. She had often been a guest at Hartley Grove, had conceived a great affection for Emily, and had become interested in the character of Mr. Forrester, which she saw in all its excellence, and knew well how to appreciate. Yet, with' all this she some- times feared that his influence over so gay a mind as Emily's might not be sufficient to counteract the flattery by which she was surrounded in the great world to which she had so sud- denly been introduced. Entering the room in her own quiet way" (for Clara never did any thing in a hurry or bustle, and never acted under ex- citement), Emily did not at first perceive her ; and Clara ac- cordingly had an opportunity of witnessing the abstraction of countenance with which her previous thoughts had beeen ac- companied. " What, Emily !" she at length exclaimed, and Emily started, blushing, as though her thoughts had been words, and had been overheard. " What, musing ! That looks rather suspicious. Take care, my dear, lest the influence of our friend Forrester should be shaken by the sight of our more fashionable, but less praiseworthy beaux of St. James's." " Oh 1 have still the same friendship for Mr. Forrester, I assure you," slowly andblushingly answered Emily, internally astonished at this coincidence between the observation of Clara and her own thoughts. " Friendship !" repeated Clara, thoughtfully, and looking so intently in Emily's face that she turned her eyes away from her gaze. " Ah, Emily, beware how you suffer the tinsel glitter of brilliant talents and polished manners to outshine the more solid, though more modest, virtues of a good heart and sound understanding." . " Nay now, my dear Clara," replied Emily, " you are too- 92 THE OXOKIANS. severe. Brilliant talents are not incompatible with virtue, nor does wit betray the want of understanding ; neither are po- lished manners necessarily accompanied by hypocrisy. And you must certainly acknowledge, my dear matter-of-fact Clara, that Mr. Forrester's manners and accomplishments, excellent as they are, can scarcely be put in competition with the wit and elegance by which I am now surrounded." " I will not acknowledge any such thing," rejoined Clara. " Edward Forrester's modesty has little chance, it is true, amid the blaze of impertinence which modern judgment has dignified with the title of wit ; his talents may not be able to cope with success in fashionable conversations, but they will shine in rational ones ; and that is of much more consequence to domestic happiness." " But yet you must allow," argued Emily, " how very many are his superiors in manners ; and manner?, you know, Clara, give a polish even to trifles. Now when Lord Orville enters a room, or pays a compliment, or utters a sentence, there is a grace which which " and Emily hesitated at finding that she was actually imbodying those thoughts which she had been just now so anxious to conceal — '* which " — she again re- peated " Which can so dazzle us by its varnish that we do not per- ceive the worthlessness of what it covers," continued Clara, finishing the sentence for her friend. " Your candour betrays you ; but beware how you suffer yourself to be misled by the glitter of an ignis fatuus, in the pursuit of which many have lost their happiness, and more than one their honour." " You almost alarm me. Yet I do not quite understand you," exclaimed Emily, looking anxiously for an explanation. ;<■ "I wish to do so ; I am myself alarmed, both for Forrester and yourself, at the evident attentions which are paid you in a certain quarter. My long friendship induces this anxiety for your happiness ; and your hitherto total exclusion from the world authorizes me to tell you, that Lord Orville, under the brilliant talents and the most fascinating manners con- ceals — " " Hush," exclaimed Emily ; and they both became silent as the door opened, and Lady Sophia, his lordship's unmarried sister, entered the room. " Oh, my darling Emily," exclaimed she ; but stopped short in her address, on perceiving Clara's and Emily's anxious countenances. " Why, Clara," continued she, " what are you doing with my sweet pupil ? I sha'n't suffer any of your gra- THE OXONIANS. 93 vities to cloud her mind, and deaden the enjoyment of her en- trance into gay life. Why, you've made her pout already, I declare." " No, Sophia ; but I have been trying, I own, to enable her inexperience to distinguish truth from the quantity of fiction by which she is surrounded," answered Clara ; "however, I now leave her in the hands of her more lively chaperone. But, my dear Emily, amid the brilliancy of her sallies, do not quite forget the word of advice that I have given you ; and which, if not very palatable, has at least the merit of being well in- tended." And so saying, she left the room. Lady Sopliia accompanied her good morning with a haughty toss of the head, which was unperceived by Emily. She saw in a minute, by the countenance of the latter, that Clara had been counteracting some of her brother's plots, and that she had most probably been warning her against his character. Imagining this, she determined to eradicate any impression Emily might have imbibed, before it should obtain a deeper hold upon her mind. " Poor Clara," said she, with a sigh : " I really pity her from my soul ; but then, you know, young women should not sur- render their hearts before they are solicited. I dare say now she has been complaining to you of the cruelty of my brother. — But it is all pique — " " Pique!" exclaimed Emily. " Oh yes. Didn't you know that she took it into her head to think of Orville ; but finding him insensible, has almost hated him ever since ?" " Hated him !" again exclaimed Emily, as her knowledge of Clara's meek and placid character rose to her imagination. " Yes," reiterated Lady Sophia ; " and you know Zara says, 'Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd ;' and you know poets always tell truth." " This, then," thought Emily, " accounts for her advice ; and I need not alarm myself." " But away with the splenetic lessons of Clara," continued Lady Sophia, " which always fall like a lump of lead upon the quicksilver of my spirits. What think you of our party last night ?" ' "Oh, delightful!" ** Such a squeeze ; wasn't it ? Sir Scamper Tandem swore he could get no farther than the first landing ; my poor beau 94 THE OXOJIIANS. Shatterham absolutely stuck in the hall ; young Twiselton was cooled after the first quadrille by a pine-apple ice that was tossed into his cambric-covered bosom by the old Lord Adling- ton ; and the Duichess of Crambo's magnificent brocade, just imported from Genoa, was entirely spoiled by a glass of cham- paigne which Sir Peter Dashley poured over her instead of into his own capacious stomach. — But here — here's a list of engagements for you — " "For me I" exclaimed Emily. " Oh yes ; a whole pack of cards, I declare. Why, my dear, you're a novelty, and have absolutely created a sensation. I quite envy you (and here Lady Sophia spoke truth), Wherever you go, ' Who is she ?' will be buzzed in your ears from a thousand different quarters ; and you will have the pleasure of hearing yourself described as a most intimate acquaintance by a thousaad puppies, who never set eyes on you before." " But from whom are these cards ?" inquired Emily. *' Oh from a hundred kind friends who never saw you before in their lives. Here's Lady Altingham's routs for Mondays ; the Comtessa Paulina's opera suppers for Tuesdays ; the Ho- nourable Mrs. Dashwood's concerts for Wednesdays ; the old Marquis of Eatington's dinners for Thursdays ; the Dutchess of Langton's quadrilles for Fridays ; Mrs. Von Brummel's early at homes for Saturdays ; and the Countess of Chatterton's conversazioni for Sundays ; that being a day on which it is deemed that all innocent amusements shall cease, excepting cards and scandal." " Bless me, my dear Lady Sophia ! why I shall be killed — " " Killed ?" repeated Lady Sophia. " Oh no, my dear. It takes a great deal of dissipation to kill a woman : at least if one may judge from the manner in which it agrees with so many of our dowagers, who have not only served an apprenticeship, but devoted a whole life to its pursuit. But these are only the regulars ; we have fifty supernumerary parties on the list. To-day, for instance, we have a dinner at the Honourable Mr. Rattall's, M.P. and reformist ; who, during the war, railed at our enemies in the Senate, while he added to their revenue by getting tipsy with t'.ieir wines in his dining-parlour ; who ap- peared a patriot in his eloquence abroad, while he was any thing but patriotic in his pursuits at home. There, the wines of our foes sparkled upon his table, while those of our allies were banished to his sideboard and his steward's room ; and the humble, though hearty beverage of old England was con- fined to the kitchen and the cellar. He is perpetually roar- THE OXONIANS. 95 ing out for liberty abroad, while poor Mrs. Rattall and her family are never permitted to enjoy a particle of it at home." " Upon my word, I begin to think Clara right in warning me against your powers of invention," said Emily, laughing at her spirits and volubility. " Not at all, my dear Emily. But you will judge for your- self. There will be our host, supported on either side by peers, peeresses, and messieurs, and mesdames, M.P.'s — for I assure you, the wives seem to think themselves quite as much in Par- liament as their husbands. There, all swallow the good things presented to their lips without paying much attention to those that are intended for their ears. You will hear Mr. Rattall one moment say, ' Liberty of speech is every thing ;' while the next moment he cuts his wife short with, ' Really, Mrs. Rattall, I must insist on your keeping your arguments upon this sub- ject to yourself,' and so on. Well then, to-morrow, old Lady Vizard sees her friends in pasteboard." "In pasteboard ?" exclaimed Emily, with surprise, and with an inquiring look. *' Yes," replied Sophia. *' In other words, she sees masks for the benefit of many of her friends who are ashamed to show their faces." "I shall then, indeed, be pleased," said Emily ; '« for I have always wished to see a masquerade, and shall be delighted to see the characters well supported." " Oh ! my dear innocent, you were never more mistaken in your life than in such an expectation. It is too much trouble for many of them to support their own characters, and they seldom meddle with those of other people, excepting to take them away. A modern masquerade is merely a squeeze of dominos that mean nothing, and characters that don't know what they mean ; such a crowd of harlequins without agility, nuns without devotion, Minervas without wisdom, and Venuses devoid of beauty, that you will be quite delighted, and have the pleasure of teazing your dearest friends and nearest relations with the chance of remaining undiscovered." " Very delightful, truly," observed Emily. •' But fancy balls are the rage now, and masquerades are ex- ploded ; none but such an old dowager as Lady Vizard would think of giving one. The poor old lady remembers what they were twenty years ago, when, it is said but I will not be scandalous, at any rate upon people whose age leaves them no chance for any thing but repentance. Emily shrank like a sensitive leaf from this last observation 96 THE OXO>TASS. of her lively companion, but hesitatingly said, " Well, then, I think I shall like the conversazioni best after all. There, at any rate, amusement will be blended with instruction." " Instruction ! Oh, you delicious novice ; instruction ! Truo, you may hear from tlic men a discussion of tlie chances for the next St. Leger or Derby ; and from the women, the compara- tive merits of an imbecille and sedulsante ; or which of these abominable excrescences is the fittest for the morning or the evening. Old Lord Lumber-Court will tell you the precise way to curry a lobster, and Charles Huntley the best method of currying a horse. If any body speaks of wit, criticism, or literature. Sir Frederic Tandem interrupts him with an essay on horsemanship, and speaks of his whlppery, as he calls it, as u natural historian would of his zoological or mineralogical col- lection : while Lady Trippington indulges herself with a dis- sertation on quadrilles, lauds Collinet's 10 1st set to the skies, and praises ihepas de chasse and pa* de zephyr, without shrink- ing from the faux pas which certain little inuendosand initials in the newspapers attributed to her last season. But come, you look grave, tired, I dare say, with my rattle ; so go to your toilet. The horses will be here in half an hour ; and with Orville and myself you shall gallop away the blue devils in the Park." And away ran the rattling Lady Sophia, leaving Emily bewildered by her volubility, and scarcely knowing whet her to laugh or look grave at what certainly contained much amusement, though mingled with sentiments and allu- sions, from which the innate delicacy of Emily's mind shrank with a feeling of disgust. She could join Lady Sophia in her laugh at the follies of the world of both sexes ; but to hear any deviations from the right path by her own, treated with levity, and made the subject of amusement by a young lady, filled her with astonishment ; and it required all the goodness of Emily's nature to find an apology for this in the violent animal spirits of Lady Sophia Orville. Lady So])hia was one of those young women who has early given unbridled license to conversation : cried up on her coming out as a wit, she frightened the men from proposals which might otherwise have been made for her ; till disap- pointed at seeing companions with less pretensions forming splendid establishments, while she remained Lady Sophia Orville, the bitterness of her nature gave its predominance to her character, and she became the satirist of vice and folly, without imbibing a just contempt for the odc, or a proper horror of the other. ItlE OXONIANS. \)1 Vice and folly, however, were not the only objects of her satire The virtues of domestic life were quite as much subjects fov her ridicule as the profligacy which destroyed them ; and she looked upon the woman who devoted herself to what she de- nominated the domestic drudgery of the "household gods," merely as the slave of her husband and of prejudice. Edu- cated without the benefit of example as well as precept ; thrown very early into one of those fashionable establishments then in vogue for the tuition of young women ; a young and strong mind had been suffered to form itself ; and a variety of desultory reading, without the power to discriminate, had pro- duced the effect of giving her great ideas of her own judg- ment, and great contempt for the opinions of others. When, therefore, she had no game to play, and gave way to the natural bent of her disposition, she became the disputatious dasher, dictating laws to her little circle, astonishing every one with the boldness of her remarks, and frequently disgusting the most sensible of her hearers by sentiments in morals and reli- gion, that were any thing rather than those which should have emanated from a young female. Lady Sophia loved to astonish, and cared very little how much she displeased, unless she had an object in view ; and then Lady Sophia could veil her real character with the success of the most experienced hypocrisy. She could be in ap pearance as exclusive and feminine, as she was in reality masculine and familiar, could freeze by her silence as well as* astonish by her effrontery ; and when she wished it, could gairt lier object as well by insinuation, as on ether occasions she could take it by storm. With all this she was greatly the fashion ; those who did not admire her feared her ; to be ranked among her intimates was the desire of most of those who frequented Orville House. Every man was delighted to dance with her, to flirt with her, to ^>and her to her carriage, to do every thing, but — marry her Vol. l.—d 98 THE OXONIANS. CHAPTER XITI. A CHABACTEK. — — She that had renounced Her sex's honour, was herself renounced By all that prizd it ; not for prudery's sake, But dignity's, resentful of the wrong. COWPER. The Countess of Orville, whenever she found those high passions which had been the bane of her life breaking through the bounds within which she had generally the power to pre- serve them in public ; retired to the solitude of her own boudoir, until she could smooth her ruffled brow, and redress her face, in those bland smiles which gave such youthful grace to her matronly beauty, and which persuaded indifferent be- holders that she was one of the best tempered, as well as one of the happiest women in the world. And who that saw her bright eyes sparkling with pleasure, her face clothed in smiles, and heard the softness of her voice uttering the best sentiments of human nature in the most elegant language, would have ima- gined Lady Orville to be the woman she really was ; or have thought that such a woman could realize Voltaire's descrip- tion of " Le ciel est dans ses yeux ; I'enfer est dans son coeur.' It was nevertheless but too true. In the solitude of this boudoir she revolved all those schemes and plans of which her life had been one continued series. Love, ambition, hatred, and revenge had all by turns swayed the soul of this violent women by their influence ; and they were all equally fatal to the peace of the object by whom they were excited, or by wliom they were to be gratified. As a wife, she had been paramount over the weak Earl whom her ambitiutt had selected for her husband ; as a mother, 3he only looked to the increase of her own power by the splendid establishment of her children ; and as a woman, she gave unbridled license and indulgence to any and to every passion by which she was by turns influenced. THE OXOWIANS. 99 Lady Olivia Tressel, her youngest daughter, had been sacrificed at the shrine of the immense wealth of a dilapidated Nabob, who brought over millions of rupees from Calcutta, to render his jaundiced countenance and broken constitution more palatable to any woman who might be purchased to share his fortune and his bed : and Lady Olivia had been lite- rally purchased, since a portion of the gold for which she bad been sacrificed was devoted to the payment of certain heavy mortgages which had for a long period of years weighed down the Orville estates. It itquired, however, all the arts of Lady Orville as a woman, and all her influence as a mother, to ac- complish this sacrifice. Tears, threats, entreaties, represen- tations, and misrepresentations were pressed into the service by mother, brother, and sister, till at length, hopeless of ever marrying the only man she loved, who had no other recom« mendation than an elegant person and fascinating manners, Lady Olivia gave a sullen consent, and became the unwilling and discontented bride of the tropical Mr. Tressel. The other children had imbibed too much of the mother's character to be so easil\ led from their inclinations ; but as there was no lack of ambition in either of them, and a plentiful sprinkling of pride in both their dispositions, it was not likely that either the one or the other would form establishments which would be displeasing to her. Much, however, as Lady Orville was devoted to, and much as she seemed to court, the world, she internally despised that public opinion by which she regulated her outward conduct ; and detested those trammels of society which condemned her to keep her fiery passions within the limits of apparent pro- priety, or to sacrifice the privileges of her rank and station. These had, more than once during her career, been in imminent dancrer of being forfeited ; and had only been pre- served by consummate art and unabashed effrontery. While mat y a more innocent woman than Lady Orville had been " whistled down the wind" by the scorn of a misjudging and unfeeling world, for a single fault (the result, perhaps, of man's perfidy and woman's credulity). Lady Orville, with a hundred more flagrant sins upon her conscience, still main- tained her st'ition, still joined the crowd in its contempt for the fallen of her sex, while the only circumstance that rendered them the object either of her anger or her pity, was their being "found out." Concealment was the only virtue she acknowledged ; pas- sions might be indulged, and inclinations gratified so long as 100 THE 0X05IAXS. the world knew nothing of the matter. Her code morale con sisted in their not being discovered ; and I am afiaid to think in how many minds it is not the fear of the sin, but of its con- sequences, that preserves from its commission. Lady OrvilleV life was, therefore, one continued masquerade, one perpetual system of self-indulgence, and of schemes for its concealment. There was but one person in the world to whom she ever threw away the mask, and gave a loose to the real sentiments of her soul. This was the xMarchesa di Vil- lanai, an English divorcee, married to a Florentine nobleman. Caroline Delmar and the Countess had been school-fellows., and a congeniality of disposition had made tliem friends. They had both been married at the same time to men they neither of them loved. In the fulness of feniiile confidence this natural disinclination to their husbands did not long remain aeecret, any more than the results, which were the too natural consequence of passions so ill regulated as theirs ; and to minds in wijicl- there had been no pains to instil those prin- ciples of rectitude which can only exist upon a sure basis, when Ihey are founded upon the sentiments of religion. Her friend, however, cither did not possess the art of the Countess, or despised the concealment which was the preser- vation of Lady Orville. She set the world at defiance by eloping with her paramour ; a divorce was the consequence ; but flying to the shelter of the more lenient morals of the Con- tinent, she contrived to get into good society, and, deserted by the min for whom she had sacrificed her good name, her for- tune, which was in her own right, tempted a needy Italian Marquis to give her irregularities the countenance of bis name- and to the cast ofT-mistress, the title of his wife. Lady Orville, the moment that intrigue became public, of which she had long been the confidant in private, was among the first and most vehement of the many declaimers against {he unfortunate and guilty culprit, whose only difference from the Countess was, the being a more honest sinner than herself. But though she blamed her in the world for the crime, she upbraided her in private only for the expose, which might so easily have been avoided by the exertion of a little prudence. With these sentiments, although she could not publicly ac- knowledge Caroline still as a friend, she yet saw her in secret, while she remained in England, and kept up an occasional and not ujifrequent correspondence with her on the Continent. It was in these letters only that Lady Orville ventured to be her- self, and at this mpineut she found a relief from her present THE OXONIANS. 101 t'eelings, by unbosoming herself to her friend in the following letter : THE COUNTESS OP OiwVILLE TO THE MARCHESA M VILLANAI. Once more, Caroline, do T take up my pen to address you, OT rather to reheve myself, by throwing off the mask which all these little trammels of society compel me to wear, and once more at least to be myself Oh, how tedious, how heart- wearing is this thraldom of life ! what misery to be always thus a hypocrite. I really am half inclmed to envy you that daring spirit which enabled you to burst these chains asunder^ and fly to the enjoyment of your own opinions and freedom, in the more lenif nt and less fastidious circles of your dear Italy. And after all what did you give up ? merely an endless routine of chilling forms and ceremonies, at which we laughed in private, although we pretended to respect them in public ; merely that friendship and opinion of the " thousand and one,'* whose imbecility we despised ; and that caste in society here, which good fortune, your superior genius, and a convenient husband has procured for you elsewhere. It was certainly a fiery ordeal to pass through at first, but by one great sacrifice you have purchased freedom. What could a Roman do more ? To be sure, the man for whom you made this sacrifice of name and character, and all that to which the fiat of the silly world has given but a false estimation, deserted you ; first tempted and then quitted you ; vowed endless love and perpetul fidelity, and finished his eternity in a month. Oh ? these men, respected amid the indulgence of their unruly pas- sions, they call ours into play by their sweet words "false as dicer's oaths,"and then desert and despise us for the very creduli- ty which has given them their power. Ought we to be blamed for deceiving them ? Husbands, brothers, fathers, where is there one of them that has not been a betrayer in his time ? Yet they move on unblushingly ! and win their way in the world with hon- our through a thousand acts, each one of which would cast a poor woman out of the pale of society for ever. And are we to be blamed for deceiving them ? for deceiving those whose greatest triumph is our fall ; whose lists of conquests are made up of our shame ; and who build their celebrity upon our weak- ness ? No, no, no ; early circumstances, as you are aware, gave me a long and bitter account against them ; and the longesl life bestowed upon a woman would not enable me to balance it by the infliction of the half that I have endured. 9* 1Q2 THE OXONIANS. Oh, Arlington, what a different existence might I have passed, had I never known you ! or had you been faithful to those early vows which first called my heart and paissions into existence ! Yet, what am I saying ? had that been the case, I might have turned into one of those very dull domestic drudges of their husbands' wills, who are now the subjects of our ridi- cule : what a crowd of ideas has not the mention of that name recalled ! our school-days, our vacations, our coming out, and ill the thousand circumstances of childhood, rise to my imagi- nation. Oh, those days of innocence ! yet were they happy ? But I have been revenged — if not upon him. upon the rest of his perfidious sex, for his sake ; and he, you know, is self-banished from the influence of my power. It is strange you should never have crossed him in Italy ; for there they say he lives under some assumed name — but to my plans, in which his name, if not himself, is involved. You know how many years an old school-fellow, Lady Emily Hartley, has been immured in the country. Well, like myself, ahe is now the mother of children grown into man and womanhood. It is really frightful, my dear, to think how time passes, and what events it brings about. I have always kept up my connexion with her by an annual visit to the Grove ai Christmas : at first, I confess with a little malice in my inten- tion, for I found it difficult to bear the sight of her continued happiness ; and thinkrng perhaps the draught of life might prove too sweet for her, I confess to having tried to squeeze a tittle acid into it, by attempting to get up a flirtation with her ♦lusband, who is really a very sensible creature, and was ren- dered quite piquant by the novelty of his honesty and straight- forwardness. But, would you believe it, I found the dolt as insensible to my coquetry, as I did his wife free from the slightest particle of jealousy. I hardly dare acknowledge to you that an almost involuntary feeling of respect stole over me 13 I found myself forced to give up my little innocent scheme ; from which, however, I promised myself nothing more than a month's amusement, and the hope of a periodical annual flir- tation '^pour passer le temps''^ in the dull Christmas holy- days. Yet, as I have looked upon the quiet happiness of our old school-fellow, and found the idea of wedded comfort to be not <|uite chimerical ; I have been sometimes tempted to feel with Hume, and to wish that *' I too had never doubted." But this is folly. The smooth and quiet tenor of her life would never have suited such souls as ours. To spend one's days in on** THE OXONIANS. i«^, dull routine of rustic employments ; to doze through ten months of the year without seeing a presentable person — no, no — As Shirley says, I would not again endure the country conversation To be the Lady of six shires ! The men, So near the primitive making, they retain A sense of nothing but the earth; their brains And barren heads standing as much in want Of ploughing as their ground. Yet with such a circle has Lady Emily Hartley continued t© pass through existence ; to be spoken of highly in all circlet^ and under all circumstances : and to preserve all the influence which her rank in society ought to command. Failing in my flirtation scheme, 1 have formed others more consequential, and perhaps more legitimate ; and these are to unite my children with theirs. Their son has just quitted college. He is heir to fifteen thousand per annum from hie father, and is, you know, also presumptive successor to the title and estates of Arlington. I will not conceal from you that there is a feeling of revenge upon that heartless man mingled in my desire for this match ; for I know nothing would give Lord Arlington a more bitter feeling than that a child of mine should bear the title which he once led her mother to expecf was to be heis ; and that my daughter should reign in those halls of \\ hich he once pledged himself that her mother should be the mistress. Their daughter T intend for Orville. She will have an im- mense fortune, and the influence of the Hartley family once under my guidance, may raise him to the first offices of the state. Such are my present schemes, of which none are of course, aware, excepting Orville and Sophia ; but I have so far suc- ceeded as to have brought Emily Hartley up to pass her first winter in London with me, when I trust Orville, with a little of my assistance, will soon eradicate the evils of her country education, and efiace an impression which a very good sort of man, of the name of Forrester, has contrived to make upoB her young heart. Young Hartley I have turned entirely over to Orville and his sister. When I first saw him I had some intentions of trying if I could prove more successful with the son than with the father. There is a manliness in his character, and a naivete about the nature of the creature, that would have given 104 THE OXONIANS. an affair with hira, at any rate, the zest of novelty ; lor one it really fatigued with the use hearts one generally meets with in society, and tired of those who pursue the mere turnpike roads of pleasure exactly according to the regular rules of passion- less intrigue, and never venture oui of the beaten track. — Fearful, however, if once in my thraldom, his future conquest by Sophia might not be so easy, 1 generously gave up the scheme. Olivia gets on pretty well with her nabob. She married for riches, and she has them ; and those who marry merely for happiness can seldom say they have attained it ; she therefore has the advantage. She rattles her chains ratlier too vehe- mently ; but I hope her husband will not trouble her long, and she will then be the richest widow in town, with the liberty of pleasing herself. Money, Caroline, is a positive good. It purchases every thing we want ; and if it did not always pro- cure the reality, why the counterfeit is so good that it is no( easily detected. Ha[)piness may vanish ; love may wear ou< without any fault of ours ; but money remains so long as there are funds, strong boxes, and prudence. W hy do we not think all this when we are young ; why wait till we have wasted or thrown away that which is both freedom and power ? It is this which has induced my inviting our cousin Admiral Frank- ley, whom you used to denominate a sea monster, a caliban. He is one of those " wise men come from the Kast" with a prodigious fortune ; and should he not discover the child of a beloved sister, who married against his consent, and who, now that she is dead, he would willingly forgive (how like a. man), I trust that a great portion of this will alight among us. You now know all my principal schemes. As to the hun- dred little collateral ones, which must occupy a busy woman in this busy world, they are too numerous to detail. Many of them make me wish you were once more among us ; for a coadjutor is one of the essentials in society. Sometimes I think I shall follow your example, and set up my standard where one is not crossed at every turn by some silly regulation of affected fastidiousness ; but my duty as a mother stands in the way of this desirable project, and keeps me here, where 1 ^hall ever be my dear Caroline's sincere friend, Cecilia. TBE OXONINH. lOf CHAPTER XIV. TOWN AND COUNTRY. God made the Country — Man the Town. COWPER. Such was the style of society into which our young Oxonian Frank Hartley, with his sister, was thrown ; and it may easily be imagined tliat it required more strength of mind and gre-^ter experience in the world than either of them possessed, totally to withstand the influence of the various seductive circum- stances by which they were surrounded. Both of them, un- fortunately for themselves, were peculiarly alive to ridicule. This was easily discovered by Lord Orville and by Lady So- phia ; and became an almost never-fading weapon to mould them to their various purposes. Sophia, however, could as yet make no impression upon Hartley. In spite of the dissi- pation into which he had plunged, and of the variety and ele- gance of the women whom he had seeti, the remembrance of the Curate's daughter at Oxford was not entirely erased ; and nothing but the fear of that ridicule which he knew would be the inevitable consequence of such a communication, could have prevented his confiding the tale of his early love to Or- ville, in reply to his repeated banterings on the subject of his insensibility. It was almost a passion of Lord Orville to lead young men into every kind of excess, and to render them as dissipated as himself; and more than one father had to curse the influence of this young nobleman for the subversion of their son's morals, if not of the destruction of their constitutions. This seductive influence was greatly assisted by the brilliancy of his talents, and by that fascination of manner, which, added to. his rank, inspired many young men with a wish of imitation which often led to their ruin. An experienced gambler, he generally played high, and was successful. A great admirer of beauty, and a libertine in his opinions with regard to women ; it was 106 THE OXONIAKS. whispered that more than one bad been already sacrificed to his wishes, and betrayed by hie falsehood. Yet he carried his sins upon him so lightly and so gracefully, and had such a flow of wit and animal spirits, that the world was ever more ready to blame his victims than himself; and when the facts were too broad for denial or concealment, people were always more willing to sui'piise him to have been seduced by the lures which had been spread for him, than that he had himself been the cold-hearted ruin-seeker. Indeed he had so much the art to " Make the worse appe&r the better reason," that, whatever happened, he generally contrived to have the argument and the world in his own favour. This was a person peculiarly dangerous to a man of such a wavering character as that of Hartley, who had been at Col- letre " every thing by turns, and nothing long ;" led away by every new pursuit ; now a huntsman, now a student, now a lover, and now a stoic ; according to the influence of the mo- ment ; yet he possesseii a fund of good feeling and of sound principle. He would have started with horror at the idea of seduction ; have des[)ised himself if he could have been guilty of falsehood, even to a woman ; and hr.v«^ shrunk with dismay fronn any thing like a determined propensity to the gaming table. ^ He escaped easily from the set by which his friend Lascelles was surrounfied, because their pursuits were not of a charac- ter to interest him ; and because there is a vulgarity insepa- rably connected with boxinusted him. But with Orville it was widely different. Vice in his hands w::s clothed with an elegance which hid its deformity ; sensuality assumed the trrace and name of senti- ment ; seduction soujrht its apology in the uncontrollable influ- ence of passion : while his more common intrigues were pur- sued with the fastidious particularity of a sybarite. There was nothing to disgust the eye or the ear. What Orville wanted in princiitle he made up in taste, and was as perfect an epicure in his pleasures, as A[icius was in his table ; while the pursuit of thetn was conducted with an elegance and re- finement in which Petronius himself could have found nothing wanting. This was a dangerous character to be the constant compa- nion of a young man just entering life ; and the knowledge that it was Lady Orville's intention to make him his brother THE OXONIANS. 107 in-law, did not exempt Hartley from Lord Orville's propensity to make others as bad and as vicious as himself. Nay, in the present instance, he argued that he should be doing his sister a service by giving her husband that experience before marriage •which it might be very uncomfortable to her for him to have to gain afterward ; and by initiating him into that knowledge of the world, which he asserted it was necessary for every man to possess. And too generally, indeed, is this pursuit of vice de- nominated knowledge of the world ; as though that knowledge only consisted in those things which should be known only to be avoided. A certain knowledge of the world is no doubt necessary ; but he who acquires his knowledge at the expense of his morals, is the worse for his education. Almost the constant companion of Lord Orville, Hartley could not avoid frequently joining in pursuits and parties at which he would rather not have been present ; but as he be- came more accustomed to them, the effect they at first pro- duced gradually wore off, and from being a passive spectator he at length became occasionally a participator of scenes and pleasures in the evening, which at first invariably produced repentance in the morning. If ever we suffer the rigidity of our principles to give way in the pursuit of pleasure, it is astonishing how quickly those principles become totally undermined. One step leads to another, till, being accustomed to that which we once considered vice, the frequency of its recurrence takes from it that character. We then follow it as a matter of course, and consider it among the common circumstances of life. Hartley's principles did not rapidly give way ; but still he was seduced by the influence of Orville into many scenes at which he blushed, Avhen their real character forced itself on his mind ; nor could all tlie elegance tliat accompanied these pursuits, nor all the ingenious sophistry of Orville, entirely prevent his shrinking from the remembrance of them with bitter feelings of repentance. Young, handsome, and rich as he was, he soon also found himself courted by a class of females of a certain age, whose conduct had been just sufficiently scrupulous to keep them within the pale of society, and who do more towards under- mining a young man's principles with regard to women, and towards lessening his respect for them, than all the ebullition of youthful passion, or any success that may crown the pursuits to which they excite him. By this class of females, many a man who would otherwise have pursued his way quietly and 108 THE OXOMANS. harmlessly through the world, has been transformed into a libertine and a coxcomb ; and there is, unfortunately, scarcely any circle of society in which these dangerous Circes are not to be found. Hartley was, however, far from falling mto all the tempta- tions by which he was surrounded ; but by giving himself up totally to scenes of dissipation and gayety, and occupying him- self by no useful or solid pursuits, the power of resistance he- came gradually weakened ; and when, in his fits of right reason- ing, he would have withdrawn from some party projected by Lord Orville, he was assailed by such a volley of ridicule from that nobleman and his companions, that he was generally obliged to resign himself to their influence. Lady Orville saw that reflection would not aid her scheme?, and she therefore added her exertions towards keeping his mind perpetually occupied by pleasure ; leaving no time either for his mind or that of Emily to reflect, she calculated that they would soon lose the power as well as the inchnation ; and that their present life of excitement would soon obliterate all wish to return to their former tranquil existence. In the mean time, poor Emily's mind became sadly bewil dered by the round of pleasure to which she had so suddenly been introduced. Plied by the flattery of Lord Orville on one side, and perpetually subject to the insidious persuasions and examples of Lady Orville and Sophia on the other ; she already began to look upon her past existence as time that had been lost ; and at the thoughts and feelings that then gave her pleasure, as the mere result of her childhood and inexperience. The perpetual state of excitement in which she was kepi perverted her imagination, and gave her no time to form a correct judgment of the scenes in which her time was spent, or the characters by which she was surrounded. Sometimes, with her waking thoughts would come a recol- lection of the tranquil pleasures of Hartley Grove, and with it all the accompanying remembrances of Edward Forrester and his attentions, and of her mother's kindness and example ; but before they could have sufficient influence to unwarp her mind Irom its present thraldom, the tempters were at her side- new scenes of pleasure were presented, and the same giddy whirl continued. If reflection intruded for a moment, it was banished by some new pursuit ; and if she even ventured to allude to her country life, a torrent of ridicule was sure to silence her re- marks, and made her ashamed of owning that she had ever THE oxol;IA^'s. 109 derived any enjoyment from it. We are sorry also to add, that the elegance of Lord Orville had often made iier draw com- parisons between that young nobleman and Edv/ard Forrester, not quite. in favour of the latter. " Come now, Emily," said Lady Sophia to her one evening, ns they sat down after the fatigues of a quadrille, " you must certainly acknowledge this to be a little better than vegetating like a cabbage-rose in the country, with no other beau than the prosing Mr. Forrester. Come, confess, is not your new mode of life delightful to you ?" " I do confess," replied Emily, " that I, indeed, find it de- lightful ; but I have so long been taught to dread the thorns, that I scarcely dare enjoy the flowers," "What!" exclaimed Lord Orville, who had caught this sentence en passant ; " is it our charming rustic who is moraliz- ing so poetically about thorns and flowers ? and is Miss Hart- ley weak enough to follow the musty maxims of those dull cynics, who, because they have been once stung by a bee, and once wounded by a thorn, would have us forswear honey and roses to the end of our lives ? We modern philosophers knov/ better ; we enjoy all the pleasures of the bee with no more toil than the butterfly." " Ay, but remember," said Emily, " that gay and volatile insect perishes with the summer, in whose sun it has idly basked ; whfle the industrious bee — " " Is blown up by gunpowder for the sake of the honey which his labour has accumulated," interrupted Lord Orville. " This is the reward of his industry ; and surely you must allow that it is better to exnire amid the sweets of flowers, on whose leaves you have led a life of delight, than live to be suflbcated amid the stores, which v/e have collected through hours of toil and pain." " Well argued, Frederick," exclaimed Sophia ; " the butter- fly has it all to nothiiig." " Hitherto, Miss Emily, believe me, you have only vegetated. Here you will begin to live. — Begin to feel the power of your charms ; and," lowering his voice into a sound of modulated tenderness, '' to make others feel it." Emily felt agitated, she scarcely knew why ; for compli- ments were now familiar to her ear. " Oh yes," cried Lady Sophia ; " London, dear London, is the place after all. As to the country, I never could endure it. There every day in the week passes in the same dull mo- notony. For want of better society, one is obliged to take the Vol. L— 10 110 THE OXOMANS. village apothecary by way of a sleeping potion ; or to keep ones self awake by quarrelling, at litigious whist, with the attorney — " " While the only amusement on a wet Sunday," continued Lord Orville, " is a shivering visit to a cold country church, which, from its damps, as regularly transfers its inmates to the churchyard, as a physician consigns his patients to the under- taker ; and where one is condemned to hear a fat vicar snore through the litany — " "Or a half-starved curate," continued Lady Sophia, " ex- tend his sermon to the gaping congregation for the length of an hour ; for fear of losing his Sunday's dinner by waking his patron before he had finished his nap." " Nay," said Emily, pleadingly, " but you know that at Christmas, Hartley Grove was filled by transplantations from your own circles." "Oh! ril allow," replied Sophia, " that we did all of u^ come for one month in the year, out of pity; but that very circumstance must have made the other eleven ten times more dull by the contrast." " Ay ; but then the rest of the year we had assemblies, you know," argued Emily, unwilling to hear a country life cried down quite so furiously. "Assemblies!" repeated Lady Sophia. "True, with all the dull dowagers to play sixpenny whist ; a half-pay captain with a wooden leg the Master of the Ceremonies ; a few old bachelors to hobble through dances in the time of the Dead March in Saul ; and the prudent Edward Forrester to prose to you between the sets." " But we had many settlers from the metropolis in our neighbourhood," again urged Emily. " True," cried Lord Orville ; " tradesmen and attorneys be- come rich by their villanous occupation, and retired to the country because a little too modest to spend their customer.^' and clients' money before their faces. But come, the next quadrille is forming ; and, if disengaged, I trust Miss Emily will not refuse to dance with me. Here, Hartley, vis-a-vis us, with my sister ;" and they joined the circle of dancers. Lord Orville taking every opportunity, of which the convenient quadrille affords so many, to delight Emily with that conversa- tion, of which he was a perfect master. If there is any thing a man is to be envied for, it is the possession of that tact and talent, which can carry him through such a conversation upon THE OXOKIAXS. 1 1 1 trifles, as can render them interesting. How many moments of tedium does tiiis faculty save the fortunate possessor. How miserably awkward have we seen a man, standing by the side of his partner, during the passive part of a quadrille, without exchanging a word Avith her ; or, if she has courage enough to make an attempt at conversation, only answering her with a monosyllable. What a relief to such a man must be the word " L'ete," or even " Pastourelle," since it takes from the awkwardness of his silence by setting him in motion ; and with what delight must hej hear Challoner or Collinet's command for the " grand rond," which puts him so nearly out of his jeopardy. What a pity that the dancing-master does not exercise the tongue, as well as the feet, of the pupil ; or that Hart, or Collinct, or Wieppert, or Musard, do not accompany the pub- lication of their quadrilles by some little entertaining collo- quies that might relieve young ladies and gentlemen from the awkwardness of that total silence, which so often gives to an English dance the solemnity of some religious ceremony, in- stead of the appearance of hilarity. Were we dancers, we would, rather than remain silent, get up a conversation ; and taking care not to dance with the same partner twice, and to avoid sisters, make it last us throusrh the whole evcninsr. CHAPTER XV. SPORTIXG. And when their reasoning power's spent Resort to bets for argument. — Hudibras. " Six to four on Podargus for the Derby." " Done," said Lascelles. " Five to two on Fatima for the Oaks." "Done," said Lascelles. " I'll take two to one on the Lady of the Lake for the Ascot Cup." " Done," said Lascelles. " Hero's six to three on Matilda for the St. Leger." 112 THE OXO^"IA^i " Done," said Lascelles, and the champagne was so rapidir taking effect upon the brain of our quondam mail-coach stu- dent, that he would have said " done" to any bet that was proposed, however preposterous the chances might be against him. This betting occurred at a dinner, after one of the settling days for a previous race. For a wonder, Lascelles had found himself a winner ; whether by accident, or that it was so per- mitted, purposely to lead him on to farther bets, was not quite decided m the minds of those who were more knowing than Lascelles ; though much less so than those with whom lie generally associated on the turf. This trifiino; turn in his luck, in the midst of a series of losses almost unexampled in the annals of betting, had put Lascelles in spirits ; he began to re- gain that opinion of his own judgment which repeated disap- pointments were beginning to shake, and he once more betted with confidence. Those by whom he was surrounded fore- saw that this would be the case, and therefore eagerly accepted his invitation to a dinner, at which they knew a great deal of business was to be done, LascelleH always gave what his slang companions, in their vulgar phraseology, called "a good feed," or a "capitalspread." As he kept a good cook, and was a little better connoisseur of wines than when drinking his landlord's burgundy at Ox- ford, there was many a gourmand who courted the luxuries of his table. Indeed, among the set with whom Lascelles chose to associate, there is no want of guests ; and a man with seven thousand a year, who seems willing to live at the rate of twico his income, can always find plenty to help him in its expen- diture. The first course was scarcely removed ere the betting on prospective races commenced, and Lascelles did not disap- point his customers ; for, having received a little intelligence from a knowing one, to whom he had that morning lent a sum of money, and upon whom he thought he might depend, he betted even more freely than usual, and was booked for several very heavy sums, which were already considered as won, by those with whom the bets were made. One would imagine that during the exercise of his hospi- tality a man would be protected from temptation, by any of his guests, into a bet which was known to be a certain loss. But it is no such thing : any time and place are fit to make a good bet in ; and the man on the turf, who, at your table, is in the full enjoyment of the kindness of your welcome, will THE OXOMANS. 113 just as re.ulily book you for a bet which he knows may entail ruin on the family by which he is surrounded, and break up the establishment by which lie is entertained, as he would enter the most trifling bet of the commonest bidder at Tat- tersal's. '' Here's three to two, you don't name the winner." " Done," again said Lascelles. "Thousands?" asked the proposer, with his book open in his hand. "Thousands!" repeated Lascelles, " if you please; and some champagne with you, Crawley." And down went the bets, and down went the champagne. The boldness of this bet staggered the most daring of those who had for some time been preying upon the credulity of Lascelles. His eyes were not even opened by the fact of their always winning, and his always losing ; or by the repeated hints which some of the honourable men on the turf were re- peatedly giving him, not to bet so indiscriminately, and to be more careful of his associates. Puffed up, however, by enco- miums on his judgment in horse-flesh, and seeing these very men book the bets of his companions, he attributed their warnings to some sinister motive, and took no notice of them , or at least did not profit by the kind intentions of his advisers, but went on in the same career. The conversation now turned on driving, and the relative merits of their horses ; and, as usual, in the absence of all other arguments, bets were adopted as the speediest and surest method of deciding which was right. " My pair of curricle-horses will beat any pair with the same weight behind them in the kingdom," cried Lascelles. '• Yoa remember my curricle at college, Harry Vaux, don't you ?" " Sunt quos curricula pulvere Olympicum collegisse ']uvs.t — Horace," replied Vaux ; who had come up to spend a few weeks with his patron, and upon whose brain the champagne was just beginning to take its usual effect. "Oh d n your Latin. Why you're in London, man, where they understand nothing but English." " In the vulgar tongue," said a dry, sarcastic voice at the end of the table. " Well, Mr. Lascelles, I will drive my tandem against your curricle when and where you please, and we won't quarrel about place, distance, or money," said an amphibious person, between a coachman and a gentleman. '^ Desine mollium, tande^n querellarum — Horace again." 10* 114 THE OXOMA?:s. Li.^celles was so eager in taking his bet, that he had not time to give Vaux his usual reproof for his Latin. ''A thou- sand, then ; will that do?" '' Very well," cried the other, cliuckling at a bet which he considered already in his pocket ; since his tandem-horses were known to be the fastest in England ; and by luck, in betting, he had himself risen from the honourable office of fctage-coachman to the rank of a crentleman ; 1 mean, of course, a " gentleman of the turf;"' by which is meant, a pe- culiar kind of person bearing that denomination ; so that the chances were in favour of his being the best driver of the two. '• Lascelles," cried a gourmand, " pray who's your cook ? This celery sauce is not fit to be eaten by an African slave." " Et malus celcri saucius Africo Antemnjeque gcmant." " For God's sake stop your mouth with some burgundy, Vaux, or we'll put it to the vote, whether that Latin tongue of vour's shall not be cut out. For God's sake, man, humanize, and taiii about horses, and dogs, and women, as other gentle- men do." " Lascelles, they say your filly is to win the cup,'" said one Avho wanted (o urge another bet. ^'- Filimn dicunt Thetides," " English, Vaux — English," cried Lascelles ; then turning to the other, " I'll back her to any amount ;" and a new bet was made. Tiie business of the day seemed to be now pretty nearly done, and the party began to give way to their inclination for burgundy and champagne, from which they liad carefully abstained, while they were making their previous bets ; al- though they had one and all encouraged Lascelles in a pretty free use of them. The conversation therefore took a more general turn, if that could be dignified by the name of conver- satioM w])ich consisted of a melange, in v,i)icii the pedigree of a liorse was mixed up with the qualities of an opera- dancer; and the excellence of a man's pointer canvassed with the merits of his mistress. There were, among the guests of Lascelles, young men, who prided themselves upon intrigues v.itii the subordinate "ar^is^e*" of the opera and French play; and to whom it v.as a boast, to treat another man's mistress to a box at the theatre, or to a party to Salt-liill, the Talbot, or the Star and Garter. To such men as these, the attraction of a woman consists in the familiarity of her conversation, and the freedom of her manners. That which, in a better tone of society, would have THE OXONIANS. 115 been designated vulgarity, they called style ; coarse effrontery, they termed fashionable ease ; and an unblushing avowal of unfeminine pursuits, they denominated open-heartedness. The hatred of Lascelles to any thing like the ceremonies of the drawing-room, unfortunately rendered females of this stamp much more to his inchnation than any with whom he would have met in his own rank in life. Nothing was more contrary to his nature than dancing that attendance upon women which is expected in all cultivated society. The common attentions of politeness he thought a great '* bore," and was never so happy as when he could escape altogether from the trammels of that circle in which he was born ; and to which, with his mind properly regulated, he might have been an orna- ment. This perverted taste had been acquired by his early acquaintance with " the Fancy," made during his escapades from Oxford ; and as his initiation into the manners of this class unfitted him for his own ; it was no wonder that he shrunk from the one where he felt himself nobody ; and gave himself up freely to those whose interest it was to make him feel the king of his party. How many good qualities have been sacrificed to this mean ambition ! Lascelles was in reality a fine-spirited, good-natured fellow, with his heart, his hand, and liis purse open to his friends ; and believing every body to be as honest as liimself, would have thought it as impossible for any of those he designated by this title, to be guilty of a mean action, as he felt incapable of committing one himself. Such a man as this, with sporting inclinations, was precisely the person to fall a prey to those who are always lingering about the outskirts of good society. He soon became acquainted with a set, denominated by him- self hearty fellows ; vv^ho very cheerfully partook of his dinners, borrowed his money, and introduced him to a female circle of acquaintance, quite as willing as themselves to help in the plucking of so well-fledged a pigeon. Lascelles was a man of higher rank than it generally fell to the lot of these gentry to get into their association. The sons of rich citizens, the heirs of wealthy country squires, and tradesmen aping the habits and occupations of gentlemen, had been the acme of their hopes ; but Lascelles was a man of family, and there- fore so much the more worthy of the attention of these spe- culators. By this set was the table of Lascelles now surrounded, and we have seen that they made pretty good use of their time at the commencement of the dinner. Conversation now, how- 116 THE OXONIANS. ever, changed into tliat coarse flattery which was unfortunately peculiarly palatable to Lascelles. "Ah, Lascelles," said one; "So I see you have cut out Lord B — . I saw La Paulina in your vis-a-vis, you sly rogue. Why, you won't leave a nymph of the coryphee for any other harem than your own." *^'- Nympharum(\uQ leves cum satyrist chori — Horace," mut- tered Vaux. " Pshaw, youVe mistaken," cried Lascelles ; evidently pleased at the insinuation. "Upon my soul, Lascelles," cried another, "you are too bad ; what will j)Oor Clara do ? Clara's a fine girl — " " Laudabunt alii chwa Ilhodon — " " Curse your Latin, Vaux; will you never have done ?" " And the little Mary, too. Lascelles, you certainly are a devil of a fellow — " " Oh no ; there you do accuse me wrongfully. Mary was too deep forme, I confess," replied Lascelles. " Profundo 7narc,'' whispered ^'aux. "Ah ! Lascelles, it was a critical moment for poor I\Iary — "In marc Crcficum — " " Vaux, you'll drive me mad. — No ; the utmost peccadillo I could ever persuade her to commit, was to meet me under the arcade, or to take a jelly at that king of confectioners, Granges — " '' Quis sub arcto Rex gelidse metuatur orae," hiccuped Vaux, half asleep. . " If you utter another word of Latin, you shall never have the living. Do you think \ want a ])aslor to bore me to death with the classics ?" "Pastor cum — " The cork of a bottle of soda-water flew out at this minute into Vaux's face, and stopped his ^. perhaps unnecessarily ; but he found it impossible to rijuiain passively in the country while Emily was '^itnei ill, or exposed to dangers which she might not have sufficient experience to encounter with safety. His iinaijmation pictured her as subject to the insidious at- tentions of Lord Orville, and beset by the persuasions of his mother ani sister. Then arose the tormentin'jf comparison between himself nVLiiiei't as he acknowledt/ed to himself it would be, to enjoy suchafoiiuneas thai which Miss Ilar'ley would probably p(>f;sess, together with tiie iiifluein-e of her fauiily ; yet matrimony was too bitter a pi!' to be gil 'ed over by these advantages, to one who had so little rCijarit to its sacred institution as Orville. He valued his freedom too bin-hly to sacrifice it easily ; and though marriei! life, in a certain class of society, can scarcely be said to bring that thraldom upon a husband which it does in the inferior orders, or indeed to impose any very great re- striction upon their conduct ; yet there is a certain sen^e of placing one's honour in the keeping of another, which renders it nearly impossible for a husband to be guilty of any derelic- tion, without having a natural fear that perhaps bis conduct to others may be returned in kind. Attracted, however, by the beauty of Emily, he could not resist paying her the attentions which his mother prescribed ; but these were accompanied by no fixed motives. Sometimes he canvassed the propriety of making her his wife ; and some THE OXONIANS. 131 times, as his knowledge of woman's nature made him see how agreeable his attentions were, and how excitable was every emotion of her susceptible heart, he almost conceived hopes of another nature. In this undecided state of mind, uncertain of his own purpose, he pursued the course of ajiche'ing his atten- tions ; and succeeded in the unworthy motive of making the world suppose that they were agreeable to Emily, and that he was the happy object of her affections. What a strange feeling is this vanity, which is so predomi- nant in mankind ! and what infinite mischief does it entail on one sex, while it renders the other so contemptible ! Yet one can hardly tell which is the most blameable ; the man who pays unmeaning attentions, or the woman who encourages them for the vanity which they gratify ; and we fear that the one is quite as often the case as the other. On this, night Lord Orville had been more particular than ever in his attentions to Emily. Some of his companions had ralHed him as a lost man, others had congratulated him as a happy one. Some swore that he was going into the leading strings of matrimony, while those who knew him better, trem- bled for the happiness of the object of such marked attentions from such a man. , Emily had scarcely danced with any one else the whole eve- ning. She had received all the compliments with which the dazzling beauty of her appearance had been greeted, with in- difference ; but she lent an attentive ear to the insidious, the brilUant conversation of Orville. The Continent, its manners, and its literature had been the principal subject on which they had conversed. Its freedom had been extolled, and all the worst sentiments of Rousseau, Voltaire, the Crebillons, and the whole set of those who have devoted so much wit to un- dermine principle, had been pressed into the conversation of Lord Orville, as though they were his own. Dazzled by the brilliancy of his arguments, she did not perceive their sophis- try ; and entertained by the novelty of his propositions and assertions, she did not take time to ascertain their correctness, or to detect their falsehood. In the midst of one of their conversations, a lady, who was leaning over the back of the sofa, exclaimed, " Bless me, Miss Hartley, who is that grave-looking gentleman, watching you with such anxious looks ?" Emily and Lord Orville both looked up at the same moment, and both started at perceiving Forrester standing a very few paces from them, and watching them with evident anxiety. 132 THK OXOXIAN9. Emily blushed as she saw him, and though the full tide oi tlie remembrance of home rushed upon her heart, at the siglit of one so nearly connected with all tlie scenes of her earU years; yet these feelings experienced a total revulsion as she recollected Lord Orvilie's presence. 'Ihe moment that he saw himself perceived, Forrester advanced. His heart leaped with joy as he caught the glance of recognition and pleasure with which her countenance beamed at the first sight of him ; but was repressed with agony at the cold reception which he met with on his advance. The fact w.is, that at the very mo- ment she was holding out her hand in the full remembrance of her home, and pf her former sentiments for Forrester, Emily caught Lord Orville's eye fixed upon her, with a scrulinizin" glance, in which a satiric smile was mingled with an appear- ance of mtense anxiety. This, in a moment, prevented any exhibition of natural feeling ; and Forrester's first geeting with the woman in whose hands he had placed the whole hap- ]»iness of his life, was passed in a few formal inquiries about her family and the Grove. Directly that Orville saw he had sufllcient influence ovci Emily thus to regulate her reception of Forrester within the bounds of mere polite recognition, he greeted him warmly as an old Oxonian. " What, my old friend Forrester ?" said he ; " I am de- lighted to see you among us again ; why, man, I was afraid you had buried yourself amid the groves of your estate ; and really never cx[)ected to hear of you again, excepting through the medium of an epitaph. But what in the name of wonder has brought you here, while I thought you were as deeply rooted at Forrester Lodge as one of its old and respectable oaks." *' And I am afraid. Lord Orville, that I shall bear trans- ])lanting quite as badly as one of those very oaks you speak , of, for I feel that they would not be much more misplaced here, j than their master," replied Forrerter. " Quite as modest as ever — I see. But, my dear Forrester, liow will the country get on without you ? Surely, the Bench of Country Justices will s'op in their progress for want of their oracle ! and we shall have nothing but appeals agaiii>t their convictions and commitments at all the Sessions in the country." ' *' Your Lordship is either pleased lobe satirical, or to over- rate my humble cxertiohs among the Magistracy," replied Forrester, irravolv. THE OXONIAKS. 133 '' Nay, my dear Forrester ; I see you are as matter-of-fact As ever, and cannot, for the life you, understand a little rail- lery. But come, here are plenty of our old Christ-church fel- lows, who will be delighted to see you in London." So saying, and feeling the necessity of getting him away from Emily while the feelings of his first appearance were still fresh, and before the dormant sentiments of her heart were awakened by his presence, he led Forrester away to Jjangley, who stood surrounded by a host of old Oxonians, who, leaving some dozens of young ladies to sit as wall-flowers, and sigh, in vain, for partners, were enjoying the brilliancy of iiis conversation. Forrester was received with hearty greetings by all his old companions ; but nothing gave him more plea- sure than the renewal of his acquaintance with Langley. He was quite aware of the change in his prospects, and the mo- ment he had heard of it, had invited him to the Lodge ; in the hope of his being able to hit upon some plan, which might relieve the bitterness of his disappointment. Langley, on his part, returned the warm pressure of his friend's hand ; and, though a slight blush rose upon his coun- tenance, as he remembered how differently he "was circum- stanced when they last met, the feeling soon passed away in the gratitude with which he recollected Forrester's kind in- vitation on the occasion, and which his marriage had been the sole reason of his declining. " Why, Langley, your wit seems to possess the power of Orpheus," exclaimed Orville, " for you have literally given animation to Forrester ; who, till he heard your voice, was as silent as one of his own trees ; or, perhaps like the statue of Memnon, he requires the sun of wit to shine upon him before he condescends to utter a sound. However, we are really glad to see you here, Forrester, once more in civilized so- ciety." " You do me honour," said Forrester, to whom this raillery gave absolute pain ; " but I fear I shall make but a con- temptible addition toasociety where gayety and wit preside ;" and he recollected with agony that it was only love and fear that drove him into its vortex. " Why, Forrester, you look melancholy ; what, already re- gretting your shady groves ! or, perhaps, some rustic love left behind in the country. Some intended Mrs. Forrester, the future Lady Bountiful of your estate ? The prospective maker of potions, and distributer of coals, soup, and blankets to your tenantry, eh ?" Vol. L— 12 134 THE OXOMANS. " No ; I have left none behind me to regret," said For raster, laying almost unconsciously a peculiar emphasis on the word " behind," and he internally breathed a heartfelt wish that he had done so. *' Ah, Forrester, you are a sly fellow : no wonder nature had such delights for you, while she displayed herself in such charms as Miss Emily Hartley possesses." The name grated on his ear when pronounced by Orville ; and his heart shrunk from an allusion which seemed to hint that his passion was not unknou'n to the gay peer. He. however, rallied himself sufficiently to say, " Miss Hartley is, indeed, one of the fairest specimens of nature's workmanship, both in person and mind." " Why, you praise her with the cold science of a connoisseur, and the frigidity of a stoical philosopher," said Orville ; " we. in our regions, are not content with such frozen praise of a beauty, who has created the greatest sensation of the season. She is our reigning toast ; isn't she ?" and the circle nodded assent. " There is not a heart left among us since her ap- pearance — is there ?" and again a general assent was given. " She is, indeed, charming. Her eyes are of the celestial blue, ■which Michael Aiigelo has chosen for his Madonna, while her form might have served for the model which has enabled Ca- nova to emulate the sculptor of the Medician Venus." The heart of Forrester sickened as he heard these praises of Emily from the lips of Orville. His own sensitive passion was of too delicate a nature to indulge in the praise of its object to indifferent persons ; and he considered Emily as a subject too sacred for such a public discussion of her merits. He shrunk from her beauties being thus canvassed by a set of young men who, perhaps, only looked upon her charms with the eyes of libertines ; and, alarmed and disgusted, he retired from the circle, thinking to seek a temporary retirement, and to lose a sense of his pain in the thickest of the crowd. This was unlike Orville's general conduct ; but he knew the sensitive disposition of Forrester well, and was aware that nothing was so likely to drive him back again into the country as a perpetual system of badinage. He was perfectly aware that family's heart had not yet been so entirely deadened to her former predilections, but that the sight of Forrester might revive the tenderness of their remem- brance. These feelings were as yet only stifled, not eradicated, by the bustle and excitement in which she lived. He determined, therefore, to drive him from the field by ridi- THE OXONIANS. 135 €ule, which should lower him in the estimation of Emily, and alarm him by the display of the power of her charms and the number of rivals with whom he would have to contend. Orville likewise derived an additional zest to his pursuit in the idea of successfully rivalling one whose conduct and philosophy was such a complete satire upon his own system. Forrester watched Emily at a distance the whole evening, and saw, with a pain which he vainly attempted to banish from his heart, that her hand was sought for every dance by the gayest and highest persons in the room ; and between these and himself he could not refrain from drawing comparisons by no means favourable to his own pretensions. Tired of a scene, the gayety of which was such a contrast to his own thoughts and feelings, and in the midst of which he felt like some wandering and uneasy spirit, he quitted the rooms in disi^ust ; but not without having been subjected to the blandishment of the elegant hostess, who only added to his pain by the display of her irresistible manners. Forrester drove to his hotel more than half confirmed in the truth of his fears, and throwmg himself dressed upon his bed, he gave way to the agonies of his soul at the idea of losing one whom he had hitherto looked upon as his own. He recol- lected, however, that he had, as yet, seen her only in the midst of a gay and giddy crowd, where the perpetual attentions she received made her no longer mistress of her own actions. He hoped therefore that in the quiet of the morning he might find her still the same unsophisticated girl she had quitted the country ; he began to blame himself for judging too hastily, and reflected that a crowded party was not the place for him to have sought a first interview, or a proper opportunity for Emily to have displayed her real pleasure at his presence. With reflections such as these he contrived at length to quiet his mind and heart ; although he envied the glee with which Thomas boasted of the little success of his French rival, and of the complete " set down" which he had given Mounseer. In the mean time, every attempt was made on the part of Lord Orville and his family to prevent any effect being pro- duced upon their plans by the sudden appearance of For- rester. His mauvaise honte was descanted upon ; the country determined as his proper sphere, and his quick disappearance from the party made use of as an argument against him ; till, half forgetting all her former ideas of his excellence, Emily became ashamed of defending her old friend, and partly influ enced by the opinions of those about her. Lady Orville was, however, alarmed lest the visit of For 136 THE 0X0MAI7S. rester should throw difficulties in the way of the accomplish- ment of her plans. She dreaded his strong common sense, and the representations he might make of what he might ob- serve as to t/ie dissipations of Orville House, which were of a character quite sufficient to alarm a less tender and tenacious mother than Lady Emily Hartley ; while she doubted whether either Emily or Hartley were sufficiently impressed with the opinions she wished them to entertain of Lord Orville and his sister, to make them for a moment hesitate in obeying the slightest of her wishes. There was also something about For- rester himself, that in spite of her ridicule, inspired her with a degree of respect that she very seldom felt for any of his sex ; and she was not quite so given up to the follies and vices of those among whom she had so long existed, as to be insensible to the power such a man might have over a wnman's heart. Divested of the tinsel of brilliant manners, outward ac- complishments, and fashionable coxcombry, she couid not but acknowledge the inferiority of the generality of those men by whoiij her parties were filled, to the unassuming Forrester ; and felt, in the sentiments which he had inspired in her own breast, a much more formidable rival to her son, than that young p» er, in his own self-sufficiency, would acknowledge in a mere worthy country gentleman. Anxious upon this point, she took the opportunity of the close of the party o* urging the point with Lord Orville ; and taking his arm to her dressing-room, " Orville," said she, " I am anxious to know how you succeed with Emily." " Admirably ! I think we have quite annihilated any little chance that Forrester might have had of remaining in possession of her heart;" replied Orville. in that tone of careless cox- combry with which he generally addressed a mother who had inspired him with so little respect. Lady Orville shook her head, then musing for a moment, ■' But your marriage with her ?" '♦ That, madam, is not quite resolved on." ** I know very well, Orville, that you have not absolutely asked the question — But then — " " O, pardon me, madam, I do not apprehend any objection on her part ;" interrupted he, with self-sufficiency. " What then ? my son." " Why I have not at all made up my mind on the subject o^ uiarriage." " How ? — why, Orville — you wouldn't '* «« That I don't know, ma'am." I THE OXOMANS. 137 " But what can you want in a wife that Miss Emily Hartley does not possess ?" asked Lady Orville. '* Her beauty '* "Is exquisite, I allow," said Orville; "enough so for a mistress, too much so perhaps for a wife ;" interrupted Or ville, as he took a pinch of snuff. " What," asked Lady Orville, " is not beauty one of youi requisites in a wife ?" " In a neighbour's — a friend's — yes, ma'am ; in one's own — 'tis a difficult matter to solve, and I have not quite made up my miud ;" replied Orville, with that appearance of insuf- ferable coxcombry which he so well knew how to assume. " But then, her immense fortune — the influence of her family — and my wishes ?" pursued Lady Orville. " These are certainly arguments in her favour — particularly the latter." This was said with a drawling and rather a sati- rical tone, at which Lady Orville bit her lip. " But you know I am somewhat of a roving disposition, and I am not quite certain that I should flirt with so much freedom with other men's wives abroad, while I thought there was one with whom my friaids might think proper to return the compliment at home." Lady Orville again bit her lip, indignantly. There was a Avant of filial respect in the expression of such sentiments which she felt bitterly, and yet dared not reprove, lest the altercation might produce observations that she dared not court, and could meet only with anger. With a forced smile, therefore, she faintly said, " Orville, you are incorrigible ; but do not throw away the golden harvest I. have prepared for you, and pray let it be a double marriage. Good-night!" and she hastily retreated into her dressing- room to hide the bitter and indignant feelings excited by his disrespect. Feelings doubly painful from the conviction that her conduct had afforded but too much apology for such treat- ment. Orville bowed lowly as the dressing-room door shut him from her sight ; and as he crossed the vestibule, he half thought and half soliloquized ; " A double marriage, my Lady mother seems to be of the same opinion with he, who thought it some consolation to be hanged in company." Then hum- ming an Italian air, he entered the private unblazoned carriage in which his secret expeditions were generally undertaken, and drove to Square, the worthy son of such a mother ! 12* rS3 TAB OXOJflAW?. CHAPTER XVIII CONTRASTS. Thou art all a lie. Lady Orville had truly described herself as a busy womaii. in the midst of a busy world — for her plots and intrigues were so numerous, embraced so many objects, and diverged into so many ramifications, that her active mind was for ever on the stretch of full employment. With that influence, however, which she derived from the adventitious circumstances of rank and fortune, what a vast deal of real good might not have emanated from a mind possessed of so much energy ; but the irratification of one early bias — the being overpowered by onr youthful passion, occasioning a first dereliction from moral principle, turned her from good to evil. Instead of retracing l»er steps — instead of regaining the position she had lost in her own opinion, she thought only of the preservation of that of others ; certain, that as long as she succeeded in this ob- ject, in a worldly sense, she was secure. Lady Orville hacl early loved with that passionate fondness which women of hci temperament only know. This feeling had been excited by r man well calculated to give an ingenuous woman a notion of the perfection of human nature, as far as person and accom plishments were concerned. He had been struck by her pe culiar style of beauty — her raven tresses — her dark eye, changing in its colour and brightness with the varying senti- ments of her soul — her form, growing, with her mind, into premature and precocious womanhood, were all calculated (<» ignite the uncontrolled passions of a libertine ; and such, in deed, in the full extent of the word, was the man upon whom Lady Cecilia Devereux had fixed the first passionate feelings of her young heart. Almost domesticated together, from the near connexion ex- isting between their different families ; every opportunity was afforded to Arlington to cultivate and increase the growing passion, of which, young as he was, his experience in woman soon made him strongly sensible. Deluded by bis attentions. THE OXONIANS. 139 Cecilia, on her part, never avoided him : she was too proud to imagine for a moment that any man could have other in- tentions towards a woman of her rank than those of mar- riage ; she felt that she loved him with her whole soul, and, unused to curb her inclinations, or to restrain her caprice, she gave herself up to the society of one, who, to use her own words, had first called her heart and its feelings into existence. Lady Cecilia had heard and read of seduction and de- sertion ; and, with the rest of her sex, hiad shuddered at and vituperated the villanies of men. But she thought these cir- cumstances only took place with inferior orders of women, and never imagined any man, however presumptuous, would for a moment contemplate, or ever be guilty of, such conduct towards herself. Her insidious love encouraged this self-security, at the same time that Arlington fed the high passions which endangered it by every means in his power. Delicate sentiments, subversive of moral principles, were inculcated ; a style of reading which eifectually, though gradually, undermines a strict sense and respect for virtue, was introduced ; and Lady Cecilia only awakened from her delirium to find herself one of those se- duced and deserted beings which she supposed to belong only to a different order of society ; and the victim of one of those men whose conduct she had vituperated, and whose power she had despised. When she first discovered that Arlington never intended to make her his wife, or at least had changed his purpose, her proud heart could scarcely restrain from taking such a vengeance upon her betrayer, as would have exposed herself and ruined her name for ever. Her only confidant, however, had suf- ficient prudence to regulate the violence of her passions, so as to secure the preservation of her fame. This lady, en- treating, and succeeding in procuring, Arlington's temporary absence ; urged the immediate acceptance of the old Earl of Orville, who had long been a suitor to Lady Cecilia, as a hus- band. Smothering all the indignation to which Arlington had transformed her love, and determining still on some future and signal revenge, she saw, as the violence of her feeling sub- sided, the necessity as well as the prudence of silencing any thing like an invidious report. The old Earl was therefore ac- cepted, the marriage hastened, and the remembrance, or at least the effects, of Cecilia's early crime, concealed beneath the blazonry of a coronet. Her mind, however, had been essentially perverted. Her 140 THE OXONIANS. naturally violent passions, once let loose, burst through the floodgates of reason and restraint, and carried her impe- tuously along in their wild career. She soon heartily despised a husband who submitted to all her dictates with the obedience of a dotard ; she considered his name the only valuable ap- pendage of her marriage, and used his authority only as a cloak to cover her excesses, and to preserve her caste in that society, where she was still received and courted, from the convenient opinion of " a blot being no blot till it is hit." Her beauty made her attractive to the men, and her wit ren- dered her formidable to the women ; so that, through admi- ration on the one side, and fear on the other, the Countess of Orville had led a splendid career ; till time, lowering the in- fluence of some passions, and heightening that of others, had made her as ambitious of power as she had formerly been ot pleasure. In several instances Lady Orville had so far overstepped the prescribed bounds, that none other but herself would probably have been able to have preserved her station ; but she knew the world well, and the effect of these instances wa.s immediately obliterated by some splendid fete, more brilliant than that which had gone before. Orville House was a de- lightful mansion for the dissipated, and the many shut their eyes, or closed their ears to the rumours of frailties, ol which there were no flagrant proofs to substantiate the cor- rectness, rather than debar themselves from the convenience and pleasure of visiting Orville House. There was a certain set, however, whom Lady Orville, with all her arts, could never tempt within her doors ; and into whose circles she could never, with all her talents and brilliant powers of entertainment, gain admittance with any degree ol intimacy. These were not those who deemed themselves ex- clusives, merely from the circumstance of elevated rank and fashion ; but who set a higher value on an untarnished name, than upon either of these adventitious claims to distinction ; and who would not permit their daughters to visit or to be seen in any mansion where scandal had been busy with the name of its mistress ; and thank heaven that the circle of those of our aristocracy, who act upon these sentiments, is yet suffi- ciently large to redeem the character of that elevated class from the conduct of those icw individuals who area blotupon the escutcheon of fashionable society. In spite of the sway and influence she held in the fashionable world, and which .•nadcher the envy of two- thirds of her numerous acfjuaintance.. THE OXONIANS. 141 this exclusion from the most select, though perhaps not the highest in rank, imbittered many hours of Lady Orville's ex- istence : for, with all the bravado with which, in her letters to her divorcee friend, she treated the opinions and ceremonies of the world, and oP society ; and in spite of the contempt with which she chose tq treat them in her correspondence, or in the immediate circle of her intimates, where a mask was no longer necessary ; there was no person more sensitive to, or who shrunk with more horror and dismay from the effects of any rumour that would have imparted to herself the slightest dereliction from the established rules of propriety. Neither was there any person who vi«ited the discovered derelictions of her friends with more severity than Lady Orville. This anxiety on the part of the vicious to avoid the stigma attached to their pursuits, is one of the greatest triumphs of virtue over vice ; and the care with which the semblance of virtrue is presprved, by those whose actions and habits are devoid of its reality, proves their consciousness of the value of that which thev are deserting, and the worthlessness of the pursuits in which they are engaged. It has been often observed that people take much more pains to become thieves, than would be necessary to make them ho- nest men ; that more time has been spent in learning to effect a burglarious entry to a house, or to pick a pocket scientifically, than would have been necess;»ry to have acquired some repu- table trade, that would have procured for the possessor the power of gaining a respectable livelihood to the end of their days. It is the same with reyarl tf» the virtues and vices of society. Few peo[;le can imagine the labour of that life which is nothing but one continued lie. The exertion to be virtuous must be nothing in the comparison with that which is neces- sary, first, in the career of vice, and secondly, in its conceal- ment. We are again moralizing, though our second volume is not begun ; and when we ought to be proceeding with our tale. Lady Orville has already mentioned her intention of inviting to Orville House, on bis arrival from India, her cousin. Admiral Frankley, who was immensely rich, and whose wealth the Countess had determined should be distributed in her family. To ensure this, it was necessarv to keep from him a niece, the daughter of a beloved sister whom he had treated harshly on account of her marriage, and to whom, from sheer repentHnce, he was very likely to leave the whole of his fortune. A long and arduous professional life at sea had only per- 142 THE OXOMAKS. mitt^d Admiral Frankley to see his cousin, the Countess, oc- casionally when on shore, and during these visits he had been charmed by the open, hearty manner in which he had been greeted, and by the welcome with which he had been received. Now, therefore, that he had retired from active service, he gladly embraced the proposition of remaining at Orville House until he had completed an establishment of his own. The previous visits, however, of the gallant admiral had never been made during the height of the London season ; and arriving before Lady Orville expected, or was jjrepared for him, he had no idea of the life into which he was so suddenly in- troduced, and by which his head was literally bewildered. 'I'he perpt.tual parties, the incessant occupation of the knocker, and the continued hurry of party after party, made him think every boily mad, and he began to fear they would drive hun so likewise. As to the routs ; he woidd rather have fought an enemy's seventy-four, or sailed through the Darda- nelles, under the lire of the batteries, than have encountered the noise and confusion which attended them ; and it was with some difficulty that by closing his doors he excluded the noise attendant upon them. Warm in his temper, as the climate in which he had passed so great a portion of his life, he was as umble to control the passion into which lie was thrown by what he called the d d follies of the people around him, as he was to get rid of his sea habits, and assimilate his pursuits to those of Lady Orville and her family. But if there was the violence, there was also the generosity of the sailor. If there was the roughness of the element on which he had passed his life, there was an ex- cellence of heart that compensated for all his foibles. Brave as a lion, he was gentle as a lamb to the leadings of affection ; and the only thing which he swore be never could nor would forgive was that want of sincerity, which he technically called fighting under false colours. One may easily imagine such a character very much mis- placed in an establishment where the whole system was one universal deception, where all was one scene of social fraud, from the blandishments of the mistress down to the civility of the servants. But that whi«h annoyed him more than any thing was his being denied to his friends by tl.e porter. Some short time after his arrival he burst into the boudoir of the Countess, quite in a phrensy of passion, and indulged himself in a pretty round oath or two against the porter of tho establishment. THE OXONIANS. 143 " Come, my dear Admiral," exclaimed the Countess, who was determined to humanize him, as she called it, if possible ; you know you have promised me to give up this odious sea habit of swearing." " D it, my lady coUsin, a'n't I breaking myself of it as fast as I can," retorted the Admiral ; " and if your ladyship, and your people, would break yourselves of your odious land habit of lying, I should not have so much occasion for my sea habit of swearing." " Lying, my dear Admiral ?" *' Lying, yes lying, my lady cousin. Have not I just heard that my old messmate, Jack Martin, hoisted the lion's head signal at your door for me yesterday, and that your jackanapes of a porter told him ' not at home.' D , well I wont swear, but I really believe that fellow is wound up by your ladyship in the morning, and lies by clock-work all the rest of the day." "Nay, my dear Admiral, that is no lie," replied her lady- ship. " No lie — but it isn't the truth tho', and , no I wont swear ; but curse me if I know any thing so like a lie as that which is just the contrary to the truth," retorted the Admiral. *' But, my dear Admiral, this is one of the white lies which is rendered necessary by the present state of society," said Lady Orville. " Then society must be in a well, well, in a very bad state, to require such a system," reiterated the Admiral. " But, after all, what does it signify, my dear Admiral, Avhether you saw the poor Lieutenant or not ?" asked Lady Orville. " D it, madam, I beg your pardon for swearing, but that Admiral ought to be " here Lady Orville made a sign, '* well, well, I wont swear, but that Admiral ought to be , you know what I mean, who could bear to shut the port-hole of his house in the face of that messmate on shore, who had boldly stood the brunt of an enemy's fire at his port-holes at sea." " Well, well, Admiral, only favour me with a list of the per- sons to whom you wish to be at home." " At home !" exclaimed the Admiral, interrupting her, " I am at home to the whole world. As I have faced my enemies abroad, I can face my friends at home. I never make promises 1 don't mean to fulfil, nor contract debts I don't mean to pay. 144 THE OXONIANS. Nor is there a face I'm ashamed to see in the world, excepting the unblushing one of a modern fine lady, or the effeminate one of what you call an exquisite." " But then you know," said Lady Orville, in her sweetesl voice, " to persons of our rank, there are so many application? for charity, relief, and one nonsense or another." " Then the least we can do," again interrupted the Admiral. " is to see the applicants ourselves, that if we can't relieve their wants, the kindness of our refusal may soften their disap- pointment, and not leave them to suppose our hearts as hard as our door, from the surliness of the porter who shuts it in their face." " But, my dear Admiral, there are some troublesome visiters, who, without such a regulation as this, would be always intru- ding themselves into our drawing-rooms." " I know there are," rejoined the Admiral ; *' there arc your young puppies with their waspish waists and empty pates, who set themselves up for men, while the razor makes voyage? of discovery on their chin, without being able to find a hair. These I would bow out of the door, and send back to their boarding-schools. Then there are your mustached and whis- kered foreigners, who, with their tweedle dum and tweedle dee, give themselves the airs of princes, set young women mad, and ruin our native fiddlers. These I would kick out of the window." " Well, but my dear Admiral — " *' And well, but my dear lady cousin ; who knows, I say, but that my poor lost niece may find out her hard-hearted uncle, and one day knock at the door, and be turned adrift upon tiie wide and pitiless ocean of life, without a pilot or a rudder, through one of these cursed white lies of * not at home.' " " Ah, Admiral," said Lady Orville, with a sigh, " I am afraid your hopes of discovering your niece are futile. It is now two years since her father failed." " Ha — that rascal to marry my poor sister under false colours, and against my father's consent, and then to hide her and her child from me in their poverty." " Ay, ay, I always predicted how it would end; merchants' wives, indeed, setting up to vie with their betters," exclaimed Lady Orville. " Betters, Lady Orville ! the wife of a British merchant has no betters ; she sits like the figure oi Britannia in the corner of a seactiart, witti tne horn of plenty in her hand, and the four quarters of the globe pouring out their riches ai her feeJ. THE OXONIANS. 145 Nor is there any one more entitled to the enjoyment of luxu- ries himself, than the merchant, who risks his fortune to pro- cure them for others." " Excepting the sailor, who fights for their preservation, my dear Admiral," interrupted Lady Orville, in her most insinuat- ing tones of flattery ; " I think you will allow that." " Eh, what ? Egad, you are right," chuckled the Admiral. " Yes, certainly, the sailor — Egad, my lady cousin, you are a very sensible woman, when you suffer your heart to speak in- stead of your education — yes, yes, those who fight for them, indeed ; d it, that's a good speech, cousin Orville — and one may swear at what one hears so seldom." Lady Orville smiled at the effect of a little flattery, even upon the rude nature of the rough and honest seaman : and the idea passed through her mind, that human nature was the same in every class of society ; and that flattery, properly ad- ministered, was a dose suited to every palate. It is the dif- ference of the seasoning, thought she, and its influence is the same over all mankind. " But, my lady, this niece of mine ; have you yet learned any intelligence of her ?" anxiously asked the Admiral. Lady Orville thought tliis a good opportunity to strike a blow, which she had long meditated, at the claims of this niece, whom she considered the only obstacle to her certainty of the Admiral's fortune. " Why, Admiral," said she, musing, and speaking with ap- parent unwillingness, "to be candid with you but now it will give you pain." " Speak out, my lady, speak out, never mince the matter; if you have got any thing to say, say it." " But really, my dear Admiral, it grieves me to utter any thing that may give you pain ;" and Lady Orville again hesi- tated. " Fire away, my lady — speak — never mind me." " Why then. Admiral," continued the Countess, " you know in our inquiries about your sisters's child, we traced her and her father to Devonshire." " Well, I know it," said the Admiral, anxiously. " On his death (this is the painful part of the intelligence) we could hear nothing farther of your niece, than that she had suddenly quitted the place, in company with a young gentle- man, nearly a stranger, but who had been very assiduous in his attention to her for some few weeks previous to the old gentleman's death ; and they do say, but the world is always Vol. L— 13 146 THE OXONIANS. very scandalous, that her conduct witli regard to this youn^ gentleman liastcned that melancholy event. " It's a lie. It's a , but I won't swear — but I'm sure it's a lie. What, the daughter of my sister Fanny. , I won't believe it." " I would not give credence to it at first. Indeed, I am very unwilling to believe it now ; but there was. I am afraid, intelligence too positive to be doubted," continued Lady Orville ; " and it has been this that has made us all so backward in talk- ing on the subject." "I'm thunderstruck!" exclaimed the Admiral, who, inde- pendently of the impossibility of his suspecting Lady Orville of any other falsehood than one of her harmless white lies, was always too ready to give credence to every thing he heard ; *' I'm thunderstruck ! a daughter of my sister Fanny ! But who is the villain ? I'll hunt him through the world ! I'll have him hanged at the yard-arm ; I'll blow him to atoms at the muzzle of a four-and-twenty pounder. I'll — oh, my poor sister ! I am glad she did not live to see it. But, niy lady, are you sure : are you certain ?" " We will send for those from whom we have gained out information," my dear Admiral, " and you shall judge for your- self ; perhaps you may detect something that may throw a doubt upon our surmises." "I'm sure I shall. Send directly," exclaimed the agitated Admiral ; " send for them directly, my Lady ; and I'll cut their tongues out, if I find they have lied," "Nay, nay, my dear Admiral, calm yourself; and I will, in the mean time, send after the difierent people from whom this information has been obtained." At this moment Langley was announced, as being in the drawing-room. He having promised to convoy the Admiral. as he called it, through the new streets of the metropolis. " Hush, my Lady ; not a word before him. Though 1 like this fellow too, for he rescued me from those racketty young fellows ; but he always appears to me scudding under false co- lours ; hanging out smiles, and having nothing but sighs and tears abroad. Well, well, you've shocked me. I'll be , well, I won't swear — no, I v/on't — I'll forget the unworthy slut. No, I can't. When she'd such an uncle too ! But she did not know that ; however, never mind. My Lady, your hand ;" and he handed Lady Orville from her boudoir to the drawing- room, with all the punctilio of the old school. Lady Orville congratulated herself on the success of this THE 0X0]SIAK3. 147 hint, upon which she built her hopes of driving his niece entirely from his mind. The great difficulty was, what to do with the Admiral, so as to blind him to all her other intrigues and manoeuvrings ; and being afraid to leave him much to his own observation, all she could do was to find employment and amusement for him. '' To expect more than common attention to the old gentle- man, from a son and daughter, who, with no very great degree of filial respect for their mother, had all their own schemes of pleasure to attend to, she knew was useless ; she had thercibre pressed two or three of the young danglers about Orville House into the service, and who were only too happy to oblige the gay Countess, to act as cicisboes to the old Admiral, who could do very well as long as he was not left alone. Among these Langley was the foremost, and generally the most constant. He had first met the old Admiral at the opera, where he had inadvertently wandered into the coulisses ; but, astounded and bewildered by the exhibition he there witnessed, he thought Bedlam had been let loose, and not being able to find his way back to the front of the house, had been misdirected by some roguish sparks, into a passage which led him under the stage, where Langley, attracted by his lusty " yeo-ho's," and " avasts," found him in the dark, grappling, as he called it, with a trap- door, not knowing which way to turn himself; and half-frightened out of his senses at the hubbub of the machinery, which he said, " made such an infernal noise down in that d — d cockpit." They afterward met at} Orville House, and it being among Langley's numerous plans, to make some use of the interest of that family, which had been most profusely promised by the young Earl, he did every thing to keep in favour with the Countess. Finding, therefore, that paying court to the old Admiral was a very acceptable, as well as not an unpleasant mode of accomplishing his end, an intimacy was established between them, which proved agreeable to both. The Adiniral thought him a good fellow, and hearing from the Countess of his misfortunes, he wished that he had been brought up to the navy, that he might have got him promoted, and have taken him in the service. This Langley set down to the score of his usual ill-luck ; here'he'had made a friend, and a powerful one, but unfortunately his power and influence lay in a direction where it could be of no utility to him. He could be of no use at the Admiralty ; he was too old to commence the service as a mid.; he had done nothing to entitle him to the consideration of the Govern- 148 THE OXONIANS. mcnt. In short, he had nothing to recommend him but his misfortunes and his classical education ; the first of which the Admiral pronounced the worst introduction in the world, and the latter to be " d — d nonsense." Admiral Frankley had been so long used to command, and to be implicitly obeyed at sea, that he could not help exerting the same authority on shore. Like many others, he had his hobby-horse or mania. It was, however, an amiable one, since it consisted in an attempt at mak- ing people happy. It is true that, like many others, he wished to accomplish his end in his own way rather than in theirs. Al- though unmarried, and generally railing against the holy estate of matrimony, no old maid had a greater inclination to match- making than himself ; he delighted in discovering an attachment, and prided himself in accelerating an eclaircissement. In this pursuit, however, he was far from being very successful ; for, once imbibing a notion that two people were attached to each other, it was with great difficulty that he could believe himself mistaken ; and thus he often produced extraordinary scenes, and placed persons in very awkward situations by attempting the denouement of an attachment which had existed only in liis ovs^n imagination. On these occasions the poor admiral was a complete marplot, and the moment he took it into his head that any one in whom he was interested had taken a •' cargo of love aboard," he watched both parties with a jea- lousy equal to that of the lovers themselves ; interfered in every stage of the business ; took upon himself to do quite as much as though he w'ere the father or guardian of one or both of them ; and above all, never permitted what he called " false colours" to be hung out, by either one or the other, without doing his utmost to expose their hypocrisy. It may easily be supposed that this was rather an awkward character to be placed in the midst of such a manoeuvring family as that of the Orvilles ; and, more particularly, from the Hartley family, as well as the father of Forrester having been old and valued friends of the admiral, he thought himself authorized to interfere in all their plans. He had heard of Forrester's attachment, and had been led to understand that it was returned by Emily : thus Lady Orville had the greatest difliculty in preventing his promoting their union so contrary to her wishes and projects. At the same time she sought to take advantage of this disposition, by attempting to persuade him that Emily was attached to her son ; being fully aware that, if he once imbibed this idea, ho THE oxoMANS. 149 woulJ do every thing to bring about the match, and perhaps influence Orville to determine on the marriage by some de- cisive promise Avith regard to the disposition of his own pro- perty ; for she saw that his attachment to the Hartleys was such, that they would certainly share his fortune with her own children, should the admiral die without discovering his niece. Thus the double marriage of the children became doubly de- sirable. Here was a web which it took all Lady Orville's abilities to weave successfully ; and a series of plans, which were every moment in danger of derangement by the open-hearted honesty of the straight-forward admiral. He, however, seeing various couples proceeding in the path to matrimony, was delighted at promoting what he conceived to be the wishes of all par- ties, and soon became as busy as Lady Orville herself in the politics of the various mai-iiages which he imagined to be on the tapis. CHAPTER XIX. DREAMS A^D REALITIES. In my mind's eye, Horatio. — Shakspeare. TuERE is hardly a more dangerous character in the world to its possessor, or a more useless one to others, than the man who' lives on his own imagination — the day dreamer, who exists in an imaginary state of activity, while lazily lolling in his easy chair, or idly sauntering in a walk, and who has no other end in view than the indulgence of that habit of lancying scenes and circumstances which have no other foundation than the chimera of his own brain. It is thus, that some spend years in picturing to the mind's eye the circumstances which produce wealth — imagine them- selves its possessor ; and anticipate the uses or abuses they will make of it. Fancy paints them in their splendid equipage ; pictures them surrounded by attendants, and dining from ser- vices of plate : till old age suprises them still in tlieir original poverty, when it is too late to realize the dreams of a diseased imagination. Others, whose minds, or rather whose fancies dwell on glory 13* )50 THE 0X0MAN3. — imagine battles, and think of guns and trumpets, and gun- powder and slaughter, without ever having heard a shot fired, or a sword drawn, excepting in Hyde Park, or on Hounslow Heath — ride tlirough fields of slain as triumphant conquerors imagine the cries of victory, and the records of their own proud deeds, and finish the airy romance w hich their mind has conjured up, by picturing themselves the hero of the Court, their button-holes graced by orders, and their brows decorated "With a coronet ; received with a gracious smile by their mo- narch ; greeted with the acclamations of the multitude ; wel- comed by the waving handkerchiefs and bright eyes of the fair sex, and viewed with envy by the other. Some, whose minds and dispositions have a bias to the ten- derer passions, and the softer deliglits of existence, give them- selves up to dreams of love ; whisper iho soft tale of their affections in imagination, picture its favourable reception, think on all the ceremonies of their marriage, and wake from their dream only, when they read in the Morning Post, that their mis- tress has been married at St. George's church to another. Such a character was Langley. In the midst of his pros- perity these day dreams had no influence on his circumstances, and perhaps added to his happiness. He could then aflbrd to dream, and might, perhaps, have had the power frequently to realize the dreams in which he could spend so many hours of bis existence. But in his poverty it was different. Hours were spent in unprofitable scheming, which ought to have been devoted to active exertion. Petitions and solicitations were dreamed of, and their success anticipated, but never acted upon. No project was planned, either by himself or his wife, that Langley did not resolve to adopt ; but these resolutions were never put into effect. From the moment any project was conceived, his active and sanguine mind began to imagine the result ; and he would walk for hours ruminating upon the events that might accrue, imagining the whole history of his future life to which the pursuit of this plan was to give a new colouring ; and would return home without having taken one step towards its accom- plishment. His wife saw this failing Avith regret; lamented it with bitterness, and became almost hopeless of any change in a disposition which, from habit, was become almost a disease. As poverty, however, pressed more closely ; as the bitterness of his fate daily increased ; as every hope which, almost un- acknowledged by himself, he had cherished, that the justice of the heir at lav/ would at last make some provision, out of the THE OXONIANS. 151 immense wealth which he had derived so unexpectedly, for one whom his prosperity had rendered pennyless, faded away ; he at length became roused by the absolute necessity of effecting something. Lord Orville had been profuse in his promises ; Langley felt himself to be well received by the family ; he was always a welcome guest at the table ; was never •' de trop" in Lady Orville's carriage or Opera box ; and was frequently the young Peer's companion in his St. James's morning stroll, or in his cabriolet promenade in the Park. These noble people like- wise frequently condescended to make use of him in various ways. His talents were such as rendered him an agreeable companion ; there was no way in which his presence could cross any of their various schemes ; and Langley was pro- nounced by all to be a particular favourite at Orville House. All these circumstances had been revolved in his own mind, and elaborately detailed to his wife by Langley, when he de- termined on making the application alluded to in a foregoing chapter : and the knowledge of the actual power which the Orvilles possessed by their influence in various quarters, really afforded them very rational grounds for his hope of success. Still, however, day after day passed without the experiment having been made. Langley would remain for hours picturing to himself the reception which would be given to his petition, and imagining a long train of results which promoted him from the humble secretai-yship, he hoped at first to attain, to some prominent and important appointment. Yet this, alas, was only in his imagination ; and he returned home daily to his wife in the same state of poverty, without having advanced one step, or made one exertion. At length, on the morning after the last party described at Orville House, Langley really determined to make his long- projected application to Lord Orville, who had, during the dinner of the preceding day, been more than usually kind and familiar, and more than commonly profuse in his oflers of service. On all other occasions, Langley had approached Orville House, if not with a light heart, with a confident step. Cer- tain of his welcome, with no other motive than that of adding to the circle within, and suiting his morning arrangements with theirs, the knocker was applied with as much ease by Lang- ley, as by the most independent of the frequenters of the gay mansipn. This morning, however, he approached with a slow and hesitating step, v;hich became slower as he approached 152 THE OX0>LVN3. the house ; twice he entered the portico, anJ twice letieatctl without knocking at the door. At length, taking a turn round the square (there is nothing like action to restring the relaxed nerves), he summoned courage, and gave his usual rap, which was alertly attended to by tlie fat porter, who appeared an enviable being at this moment to Langley, since he had his place, and had no favours to ask. Lord Orville was with Forrester, who, having called to pay his respects to Miss Hartley, had been purposely shown into the library, where Orville had detained him until he heard the carriage roll away that was to carry his mother and Emily upon a long round of morning visits, and upon a pilgrimage to all the lace venders in St. James's. Emily had naturally expected such a visit, yet had internally felt it a relief that it had not been paid : though she agreed with Lady Orville in an observation, that it was certainly very remiss in ."Mr. Forrestet to pass the first morning of his arrival in London without paying his respects, and bringing news of her dear Lady Emily. Forrester, during his detention by Lord Orville, was upon thorns ; for he felt that the result of his morning's interview with Emily might either confirm his fears, or remove his doubts for ever : yet Lord Orville was so diffuse in his conversation ; entered upon such various subjects ; and discussed so many matters, with such an appearance of interest to himself, that poor Forrester found it impossible to escape. At length, being aware that the carriage was gone, Orville suddenly finished a sentence with, " But I beg your pardon ; I am detaining you from Miss Hartley, who is doubtless anxious to see you, and to hear news from the Grove." Ho irang the bell, and desired the servant to show Mr. Forrester up to Jliss Hartley. " Miss Hartley has been gone out with my Lady some time, my Lord," said the servant ; to the evident mortification of Forrester, and to the apparent surprise of Lord Orville. To Forrester, su?[)ense was worse liian certainty ; and it was thus continued for an indefinite period, at a time when every moment appeared an age. At this instant Monsieur Fripon announced Langley, as de- siring to speak with Lord Orville alone. Forrester, whose heart was ever alive to the distress of his fellow-creatures in a moment banished the effects of his own disappointment, to inquire of Orville if he knew any thing THE OXONIANS. 163 of Langley's affairs ; and if he had yet succeeded in doing any thing to redeem his fortunes. " Faith, no !" replied Lord Orville, coldly — " He is a very clever fellow — a genius — quite the fashion with a certain set — entertaining beyond any thing ; like Yorick, ' a fellow of infi- nite jest.' He is good enough to amuse my friends : it was all I wanted ; I inquired no farther — Ah ! my dear Langley, how do you do ? I am delighted to see you ;" greeting the en- trance of Langley with a hearty shake of the hand. "• Quite well, I thank your lordship ;" answered Langley, with an embarrassed air ; for Langley was not the man to prefer a petition either with grace or confidence. " Langley," said Forrester, also shaking him heartily by the hand, " I am glad to renew my acquaintance with you ; and whenever you can quit the gay metropolis for a few weeks, remember Forrester Lodge will be open to receive you, and you will delight me by becoming my guest. — Lord Orville, I leave you to your business with Langley, and must charge you with my respects, and the expression of my disappoint- ment to Miss Hartley ;" and so saying he quitted the room. Langley now felt his embarrassment redouble : instead of his usual ease of manner, he could neither sit nor stand stilL He felt a blush stealing over his face, and his confusion of mind increased, until he was in some measure relieved by Lord Orville saying — " Why, my dear Langley, what made you leave us so early last night ? we had never found you more entertaining — but, I suppose, some amour ; some love in the case. You poets are devils among the women." " Oh no, my Lord ; no amour," replied Langley ; *' no love in the case ;" and his mind reverted to his wife and the second floor. " I retired gratified beyond measure at having had the honour to contribute to the pleasure of your Lordship's party." " Oh, I never saw you in finer feather ; you were the zest of the evening. I don't know what we should have done without you." " Oh !" thought Langley, " tis done ; I am a made man, I am a fool not to strike while the iron is hot." " But you requested to see me alone ?" continued Orville. " True, my Lord, I did take that liberty," replied Langley, hesitating — " Liberty ! Langley. Nay, among friends, these things are no liberties." All this encouraged Langley to throw ofi"some 154 THE 0X0>1AXS. portion of his Jiffidcnce, and urged by his necessities, and en- courajred by Orville's kindness, he proceeded — " The fact is — I mean — Sir — that is — I have presumed that our acquaintance has not endured so long without my pretend- ing to some portion of your Lordship's confidence and iViend- siiip — " Here he came to a full stop ; but was again encou- raged by Lord Orville's replying : " Certainly. I know none of my acquaintance I esteem so much ; none so well entitled to my esteem." " My Lord, you do me honour. It is therefore that I pre- sume to remind your Lordship — of Iha kind offers of service you have made me at various periods — and of a promise — " " A promise !" exclaimed Lord Orville. " Yes : one day, after dinner, your Lordship did me the honour to promise to use your influence with his grace of ; and 1 now presume to remind you of my necessities, and to request its performance." The petition was now fairly out ; and Langley, with downcast eye, awaited the result ; but was im- mediately reheved by the kindness of Lord Orville's, reply. " My dear Langley," said he, "this frankness delights me. Believe mc, nothing will give me greater pleasure than to be of service to one I esteem so much." " Oh, my Lord, I knew it ; I knew I was not wrong in cal- culating on your Lordship's kindness," said Langley. "Indeed you were not, Langley," said Lord Orville, in a tone of sympathy, calculated to remove Langley's embarrass- ment. *' Depend upon it, I will take the first opportunity of seeing my noble friend. 1 will lay your whole case before him. and, backed by my recommendation, have very little doubt of success." " My Lord, you overpower me with gratitude. I cannot express the fulness of those thanks with which my heart is overflowing ;" exclaimed Langley, nearly overpowered by his feelings. '< Never mention it, my dear fellow," replied Orville. " The only use of power is to serve our friends ; and you will never want one while I am here ; and though at present I must wish you a good morning, command me on all occasions, I be- seech you." Langley, in this dismissal, saw only the delicacy which would not prolong the embarrassment of his situation, or put liiin to the trouble of returning his thanks ; and saying, " My Lord, you confound me by your goodness," pressed Lord Orville's THE OXONIANS. 165' offered hand. " I take my leave with a deep sense of the gra- titude I owe your Lordship." " Depend upon my exertions. I trust soon to give you a good account of my mission : and to congratulate you on its success. Adieu, mon ami. Au revoir." Langley could scarcely refrain from tears of joy and grati- tude. His eyes were suffused and his utterance choked with the fulness of his heart, as he hastily quitted the room, inter- nally blessing his patron for his kindness ; and all anxiety to impart to his wife the good tidings of his success. Lord Or- ville rang the bell, which was immediately answered by his valet ; and coolly taking a pinch of snuff, he deliberately said : " Fripon, tell the porter to say ' Not at home' to Mr. Lang- ley for the future." ' , CHAPTER XX. A MEETING. 'Twas she to whom in former days Had been inspi-ibed his earliest lays ; She to whom his earliest vow Was given — tho' broken now, — Anon. What in the name of wonder would or could become of a woman of fashion in the course of a long morning (when she happens to make one by rising before two, and is disinclined for visiting), if it were not for shopping ? If it were not for the delight of spending their fathers', their husbands', or their own money, on the thousand little et ceteras which the Lon- don shops present to tempt the money from their purses, or their names into the legers of those traders in women's vani- ties with which the metropolis abounds, and who are so obse- quious and obliging till about two months after theyjiave sent in their bills. The moniing toilet finished ; the maid worried out of her life ; the chocolate despatched ; the scandalous chronicles of the daily papers discussed ; the initial of the heroes and he- roines of some adventure just budding into notoriety guessed at, to the destruction of the fair fame of some dear friend ; the party of the evening before canvassed, and that of the ensuing 156 THE OXONIANS. one anticipated ; \vhat could a woman of fashion do with her time for the rest of the morning, when not inclined for visits, but for the dear delights of shopping ? Luckily for mortals under these circumstances, there are such places as Harding's in Pall-Mali, Howel and James's in Regent-::treet, as a pis dller^ the bazaars : and do not let little people fancy tliat the bazaars are despised by the great ones ; for if they do they are very much mistaken. We have our- selves seen one or two of the exclusives among marchionesse- and countesses lounging their half hour away upon a bazaar counter, giving the little vendeuses behind it ten times more trouble than was experienced from a plebeian, and thinking them fully repaid by the honour of speaking to a peeress. Well, byt' to shopping. Shopping we know to be the de- light of females in every situation in life ; from the peeress at the head of society to the laundress at the tail of it ; from the lady who is ushered into some fashionable Magazin des Modes and with bows and smirks conducted through ranges of Mech- lin and Brussels, Indian crapes and Cachemire shawls, and satins and silks in the regions of St. James's ; to the humble artisans wife, who, in spite of the fatigue of a hard day's work, on a Saturday night roves through the linen drapers' reposi- tories in High Holborn ; examines printed cottons warranted fast colours, and cheapens Gros de Naples at two shillings per yard ; in order to buy a little finery for a Sunday jaunt to Hishbury or Richmond-hill. The love of shopping seems to be an innate sentiment of the female bosom ; the delight of spending money ; the pleasure of purchasing things which Are bought because they may be wanted Wanted because they may be bought ; is a characteristic of the sex all over the world. A'^ery few ol them are sensible of the value of money by any other means than those of spending it ; they never know the trouble of getting it. They look to their quarterly allowance from their husbands as though it grew spontaneously for their use ; and never think or dream of the deficiencies of tenants, of the ces- sation of remittances, of the stoppage of bankers, or of any of those variety of disappointments which continually occur be- tween the expectation and the purse. How many matrimonial fracas have been boxed up in the neat pasteboard cases which are hourly transferred from these THE OXONIANS. 557 shops to the toilets of the fair purchasers. How many papas have greeted, with lengthened visage and rising sigh, the pro- fusion of feathers and furs with which some "exquisite" young lady has loaded her footman, with the intention of striking fop's alley with astonishment from her box at the opera. But what are the triflmg circumstances of a husband's ruin or a father's heartache, compared with the hope of a new conquest, or the gratification of eclipsing a rival ? On the morning in question, Lady Orville, not being at all inclined for visits, proposed a shopping morning's lounge, and took Emily with her. The moment that Orville bad got rid of Forrester and dis- missed Langley, he mounted his horse ; and, calling for Hart- ley, away they galloped, and catching sight of the carriage as it dashed down Regent-street (for at that moment there was situated the grand emporium of female finery), they joined it in time to hand Lady Orville and Emily into the shop ; or, as it is now more politely called, a " depot." There were dis- played the productions of France and India, to tempt theEng- Jish guineas from English pockets. Lady Orville was too well known not to meet with immediate attention ; and lounging through the rooms with Emily on her arm, they were obsequi- ously followed by the stiff-cravatted shopman, who beladyshipped them both to a great extent ; and calling for one tempting article after another, displayed all the new importations which had been the result of Mr. H.'s last visit to Paris : while Lord Orville poured his insidious compliments into Emily's ear, and Hartley rattled away with the Countess, To enumerate the variety of merchandise which here met the apathetic glances of Lady Orville, whose senses were far too use to be gratified or surprised by any thing of the kind, and the astonished gaze of the less experienced Emily, would require volumes. Cachemires were unfolded, jewel cases opened, porcelain vases, and bronzes, and marbles displayed to the admiring eyes of the beholders, and a variety of things were ordered. At length Lady Orville said, " By-the-by, my dear Emily, we shall want some costume for the Marchioness of Tourville's fancy ball ;" and immediately led the way to the dress-room, telling the attendant that the gentlemen must be admitted. Lady Orville's wishes were paramount with the civil shopkeepers. Doors, which had hitherto been concealed by the shelves which contained a variety of articles in front of them, were im- mediately thrown open, and the party entered a long room, in Vol. L— 14 158 THE OXONIANS. which were several groups of worrif n at work, under various superintendents. Almost the whole of these little sempstresses were young women, and some of them exceejhnjrly [)rt'i!y. The entrance of two such tashioriahle men as Lord Orville and Frank Hart- ley was the sijjnal for a number of little espici^leries, and a hundred significant glances exch.inged between each other, "a Z'inju," as the French say, of their task-mistresses. That some of these glances were directed towards the gen- tlemen themselves we do not deny ; nor did the presence of Lady Orville and Emily prevent their being returned in kind ; or impede a lew whispered compliments, as they took up and admired the various articles which were displayed. These little whispers were received with affected blushes, and a giggle of delight, which was communicated to their companions, by one of the aforesaid significant glances from the distinguished fair one. While Emily was trying on a tarban. Lord Orville discerned, for the first time, a young female, at some distance from her companions, anxiously and industriously engaged upon some tambour work. This young person, unlike the rest, had con- tinued to ply her needle without taking any apparent notice of the party. She was dressed in deep, though humble, mourn- ing ; and contrived so to conceal her face by the attitude in which she worked, and by a profusion of fine black hair, that Orville could not, with all his manoeuvring, discover whether she was handsome or ugly. Withdrawing Hartley from a flirtation with two or three young women, who seemed but too ready to give both him and his friend encouragement, by the forwardness of their manners, he directed his attention to this newly-discovered beauty, by saying : " Egad, Hartley, we have missed the finest woman in the room, after all, if we may juilge by her figure." Hartley turned his eyes in the direction pointed out by Or- ville, and saw a person, rather above the middle height, bend- ing over a tambour frame. She still continued in that position, in which it was impossible to see her face ; but her figure seemed to be of exquisite proportions. Her head nearly rested on the frame, so that her work was nearly covered with a pro- fusion of large glossy ringlets. Two delicate hands were also perceptible, plying the tambour needle with apparently un- wearied industry ; while a foot, corresponding in proportion and beauty with the hands, peeped from beneath the black THE OXONIANS. 159 crape dress in which she was so completely enveloped, that nothing but the white throat was visible above it. " What an attitude and figure for a picture of Penelope,'* exclaimed Orville, in an under-tone to Hartley ; " we must see her nearer." With w," and tearing a leaf from his pocket-book, he apparently wrote an atldr^-ss. Then, ahowjna the paper, instead of an address. Hartley read the words, "I must see you ; meet me this evening at at eight ; pray do not fail." " Is that right ?" and he folded it up in as small a compass as possible, and gave it to Hartley. Then, walking up again in the direction of Carolirie's place, he engaged the women who were nearest to her in conversa- tion. During this period Hartley approached Caroline, as though with the intention of uierely asking if she had recovered from her fright, and dropped the paper upon the work before her. A blusii (jverspread her features, a slight sensation of repugnance appeared to agitate her frame ; then, seizing the paper, and hastily hiding it in her bosom, that universal pocket of a woman, she cast one glance of mingled tenderne-ss and reproach at Hartley, ami resumed her work . tlioui:h with such trembling hands, that there is little doubt but every stitch was obliged to be unpicked, and that the day in question proved a ^^ dies non" as far as it regarded Caroline's labour in the ser- vice of the Regent-street emporium. By this time Lady Orville had expended her whole stock of curiosity, and became herself tired of tiring the patience of her shopKceping attendants ; this was the only circumstance that ever induced her to relieve them from the trouble she gave them. In her eyes, such people were made for no other pur- poses than to wait upon the pleasures, and to serve the caprices. of the great ; and the most elaborate trouble she could pos .libly occasion them wasj in her mind, more than repaid, by a THE OXONL\NS. 161 tondescending nod of "good morning," as she resumed her "vis-a-vig, and drove away to the park. As for Hartley, he had been startled into himself again by the unexpected sight of Caroline. A few months of London dissipation, under the auspices of such a man as Orville, had not deadened, though it might have repressed, those generous feelings of youth, which were the principal characteristics of his heart, when we first saw him stealing from his noisy com- panions to the garden of the poor curate at Oxford. For the first few weeks, thoughts of Caroline were per- petually in his mind, and he wrote two or three letters, filled with protestations of the same warmth of affection as that which had characterized his conversation at their parting inter- view. During this short period the post time that had brought him a letter from her was anxiously looked for, and considered the brightest hour of the day. A series, however, of dissi- pated pleasures ; a constant succession of female society ; two or three liaisons, partly platonic and partly of a different cha- racter ; soon relaxed the nerves of his attachment (if we may use the expression) to Caroline, as well as the purity of his mind ; and his own neglect of their correspondence soon made the appearance of her letters a reproach, rather than a pleasure to him. He suflfered them to lay unopened for a day on his dressing-table ; and we are ashamed to say, that they at length remained unanswered, if not unperused. There is nothing so subversive of that generous and virtuous attach- ment which the youthful heart feels towards a woman as the kind of life into which Lord Orville introduced Hartley. It was not, like that of Lascelles, suflSciently broad to make his heart turn with disgust from the vice, or laxity of morals, which it exhibited ; but was so disguised with the affectation of delicacy, or rather with that substitution of elegance which so often passes for delicacy, that there was every thing to allure, and nothing to disgust. There was sufficient refine- ment to banish all idea of that grossierte which would hare driven Hartley at once from the pursuit of pleasure that par- took of this character ; and so much excitement of the pas- sions, kept up by the aid of music and conversation, that half the minds in the world would have denominated these pursuits merely elegant enjoyments, which were in fact the mere sen- sual indulgence of vicious propensities. In the midst of such a career as this, no wonder that Care-, line was forgotten j or, if some recoUectiona of her intruded 14* 163 THE OXONlATiS. at dressing time, or in the first waking raoments of the mom ing ; no wonder that they were soon banished by those thick • coming engagements which now filled the visiting-book ol Hartley. Although, however, his heart might not be influenced by the mere remembrance of all that had passed between them, it could not withstand her personal appearance. 'I"he unex- pected apparition in the work-room had recalled him to all that he had so long forgotten ; the study of the old curate — the little garden behind the parsonage — the arbour in the green walk— all rushed at once into his memory, and called up the long buried, though not yet dead, afiections of his heart, " hke spirits from the vasty deep ;" and they were accompanied with many a bitter pang for the undeserved neglect with which he had treated Caroline. Her pale face too, and dim eye, so un- like the buoyant health in which he had left her, did not fail to add to the impression he had received. As they rode to the park, Hartley was two or three times on the point of making Lord Orville the confidant of his early affection ; but Orville, who ridiculed the idea of a serious at- tachment for a milliner, rallied him so unmercifully on his wan countenance, and on the evident efiect which the unexpected meeting had produced, that Hartley shrunk instinctively fron> making the communication ; wiiile his heart turned sick at tht libertine allusions, and the laughing congratulations, with which Orville spoke of tlie "sentimental sempstress," and anticipated the result of Hartley's expected interview. In agreeing to the solicitation for a meeting, Hartley, ii, spite of his new mode of life, had not harboured a thought derogatory to the honour of Caroline. The revival of all hi? old feelings of affection, mingled with a strong curiosity ti» ■know how she could come into such a situation, were the principal incentives to the wish ; no evil intention, no insi dious motive, as yet mingled with his intentions or his ideas ; nor could the raillery of Orville induce him to think more lightly of her, because he found her in such a situation as that in which he had discovered her. As for Caroline, she could not recover from the effects oi this first meeting with Hartley. Although it was natural that she should expect to meet him in London ; and thought that her heart was prepared to encounter him with the indifference which his neglect of her had deserved ; yet she bad calculated wrongly on her strength ; and, under such circumstance?, what woman could calculate rightJv ? There was no occasion THE OXONIANS. 163 for a sight of Hartley to recall all the scenes of their former intimacy to Iwr recollection ; the study, tht garden, the arbour, were all too strongly impressed upon her memory to require any adventitious aid to recall them. A woman's heart does not so easily forget these things as that of a man. Such feel- ings are all in all to a woman ; while to a man they are in general the mere episodes to greater, though not sweeter ex- citement. To a man, they are reliefs from the severer labours, the more important duties, or rather pursuits of life ; to a woman, they are life itself, Carohne could scarcely breathe from agitation when she placed Hartley's note in her bosom ; yet, though her heart beat against it most tumultuously, she could not but acknowledge that it beat less unhappily. She hurried away, the first opportunity that her task allowed her j and luckily the pencil, and the hurried manner with which it had been written, did not permit her to discover that it was not Hartley's own hand-writing. At first, the idea of again seeing him to whom she had de- voted her earliest and warmest affection, in mutual confidence ; and the hope that the interview might produce some explana- tion of Hartley's neglect that would prove it not to have been culpable ; gave to CaroUne the only feeling of pleasure her poor heart had experienced for months. But these hopes, faint as they were, were soon blighted at the recollection, that, since their parting, circumstances had rendered the distance that existed between their situation still greater than it was be- fore. She was then, as now, the daughter of a gentleman, though a poor one ; but she was then hving under his roof, respectably if not splendidly ; and mixing in the society of that caste in which she had been born : now, she was, in her own eyes, deemed a menial ; earning her daily bread, the com- panion of beings of an inferior order, whose vulgarity and dif- ference of manners forced themselves unpleasantly, even on the patient and forbearing mind of Caroline. If Hartley's family would have shrunk from the thoughts of uniting their son with the daughter of a poor clergyman ; with how much more indignation would they discard the idea of re- ceiving a hired sempstress as his wife — one who laboured for a weekly pittance on that finery which they were born to wear. Poor Caroline felt all this, and her heart swelled with grief almost to bursting. Though reason told her there could be no hope ; and that it was better she should continue to think Hartley cruel and neglectful, than hare her tender feelings 164 THE OXONIANS. again roused by being undeceived in a supposition which at least called her pride in to her support, if it did not conquer her feelings of affection ; yet she still clung to the idea ol" proving him not to be unworthy of the love with which he had inspired her ; and with this hope she at length determined upon granting the solicited interview — and, when has woman deter- mined otherwise, than to act upon the strong impulses of the heart, rather than upon the less vivid arguments of reason. CHAPTER XXI. THE INTERVIEW. They met — as lovers meet — with faltering tongues — With glistening eyes — and trembling hands — and lips That quivered with the greeting that they gave ; — He half shame — half rapture — she but half reproach — For pleasure killed her anger. Brooes, Rated, as we have been, by the fastidiousness of those critics who think a page sullied by naming the possibility of a vice ; and who seem to suppose no book fit to be read that is not a mere history of the virtues of mankind ; we confess ourselves rather at a loss, when the true system of that human nature, which it is our attempt to delineate, will force into our scenes those vices which form, alas ! the aggregate of the human drama. Had it been our lot to have been born in some Utopia, from which vice had been excluded, in which human passions led alone to the accomplishment of virtuous ends, our pages might have been mere transcripts of the purity of human na> ture ; but in any true picture of a society constituted as ours is, vice must mingle in the dance of the passions, and become in its turn a prominent feature in the scene. It is the fault ol the nature that is to be delineated, and not of the delineator ; we write things as they are, and not things as they ought to be, and as we would wish they should be. Yet, perhaps our readers, nay, even these fastidious critics themselves, would find any delineation of society but a dull THE OXONIANS. 165 piece of business, were all the women who constitute it Pamelas, and all the men Sir Charles Grandisons. A history of society must be a melange ; a general mixture of virtues and vices, by turns predominant, according to the temptations and impulses by which the actions of men are guided. There are few " faultless monsters" in the world ; and they are less likely to be found in that class of society where there is so much to tempt the will, and to excite the passions, as that which we are attempting to delineate. We scarcely know why we have been led into this kind of apologetic digression ; for a novelist has no right to make an apology when merely describing people and passions that exist, and things that are ; but as our thoughts were fixed upon Caroline Dormer, and on the dangerous position in which circumstances had placed her, they were naturally led to diverge for a moment to a class of females who are lost by the flattery of the one sex, and by the heartlessness of the other. For, alas I how many, who have been led for a moment astray by the former, would have re- deemed their own good opinion and that of others, had it not been for the perdition that is entailed upon them by the con- tempt and reproaches of the latter. We question much, whetiier more women have not been lost by the conduct of their own sex tha;i by that of ours ; and whether the cruel heartless fastidiousness of those females who are out of the reach of temptation from circumstances, or remain untempted from their inability to tempt, has not more to answer for, in the loss of female repnidtion, and in that degradation of female character which society so frequently exhibits, than all those arts of rnen to which they are generally attributed. It excites our indignation to see the cold scorn with which a fallen woman is spoken of, and the heartless ple&sure with which her errors are blazoned ; by those who, for the credit of their s^ex, should ron^eal them ; and who, for the honour of humfm nature, should attempt to redeem the victims from their consequences. Yet, how is this lapse of virtue overlooked, where the frail one can contribute to the eclat or the entertainment of a partv. Nay, with what avidity have we seen women, whose laxity of morals has been as notorious as noonday, courted by the first and the most fastidious in society, merely from the circumstance of their musical acquirement. Look at the foreigners, who grace, or rather disgrace, the saloons of so many of our fashionable mansions ; are their Jiaisons unknown ? is the general tenor of their lives a se- 16G THE OXONIAKS. cret ? is not the profligacy of their conduct as notorious as though it has been ajicheed with the government proclama- tions at the Horse Guards ? Yet, look at them, received and treated as the stars of a brilliant assembly. See the mothers and daughters of our aristocracy crowding round the harps and pianos, to hear these wantons sinji, and s«jliciting presentations, and engaging them for their next concert, to seat them at the same table with the most virtuous and exalted of the land ; while there is scarcely a husband, or brother, that is not planning, by every means in his power, to obtain an introduction of a diflferent nature. Does the atmosphere of Paris, or the blue skies of Italy, ren- der vice less vicious, or its examples less contagious ? does the being a foreigner give the p'ivilege of profligacy ? or does the shameless publicity with which a career of licentiousness is pursued, take from its moral turpitude ? In our opinion, this very publicity is an aggravation of the oflfence. Let vice hide its head in those recesses of society where it will not call a blush into the face of the virtuous. Let it shrink into those places where its exaniple can do no harm ; let it show its own sense of its own hideousness by its fears of publicity ; and it is not then calculated to do the same mischief as when it is seen to show its face with impunity, and stands, unblushing and unshrinking, side by side with virtue, to show the world how little difference there is, between the consideration paid to one and to the other. These, too, are generally women acquiring ample means of independence from the immense encourag< ment w hich is given to their talent ; and who have' therefore no oiher apology for their profligacy than their depraved inclinations. Auumg these, as in all other classes, there are certainly exceptions ; and one splendid one If we may credit her own confession, as well as public rumour, she has been tempted by alniost every crowned bead in Europe ; and is in possession of presents from most of them, without a blot having been cast upon the escutcheon of her (air fame. We think we see the smile of contempt which curls upon the lips of the exquisite and the exclusive, as they recollect that all this is called forth by such a contemptible persorage as a little milliner ; by one of those who, by a certain class, are considered to he endowed with beauty for no other purpose than to add to their own unworthy conquests and pleasures. Caroline Dormer was, however, far superior to the situation in which we last saw her ; her education had fitted her (ox THE OXONIANS. 167 other and better things, and her mind had not been reduced with her circumstances. She had loved Hartley with all the energy and devotedness of which her young he irt was capa- ble. She had wept with agony over his undeserved neglect ; but she had suffered in silence. She had passively permitted the march "of circuuistances, which had reduced her to her present situation, without a struggle to avoid it. Hopeless of him, she had become hopeless of every thing else ; hfe had become distasteful, and her heart sickened under the burden of her disappointment. Pleasure, pain, labour, and ease were alike indifferent ; or rather every other feeling and idea was absorded in that one great sensation which occupied every thought and feeUng of her soul. Whatever might be her occupation. Hartley, his attachment, and his neglect were the subject of her meditations and regret. His figure haunted her in her sleep ; and her waking dreams always pictured him to her imagination, and recalled his broken vows and vio- lated promises to her recollection. Her mind thus occupied by his image, no wonder at the agitation she experienced at the sight of him, nor of that which his brief note produced. At first, she determined to avoid him : she had, during her short residence in London, learned enough to know the light in which some one or two of her companions were looked upon by men their superiors in rank ; and thous^h she did not place herself upon a level with these light-minded and vain creatures, yet she dreaded Hart- ley's partaking of the same sentiments as the men with whom he associated. She saw how different the world was in reality to that which they had both pictured it in their earliest days ; yet was there still that tinge of romance in her disposition, which, almost unknown to herself, whispered a hope that the difference of their rank might not prove an insuperable barrier to their union. She felt her superiority to her companions, and therefore never sunk herself to a level with them in her own opinion, and she trusted this superiority would be ac- knowledged by others as well as by herself ; by her com- panions themselves it was felt, but only to generate their envy, and to tempt their vulgar ridicule. Caroline had imagined that she had resigned herself entirely to her fate, and that she had made up her mind to the com- plete loss of Hartley ; his api)earance, however, soon con- vinced her to the contrary ; and that tinge of the romantic in her disposition, in spite of her better reason, soon induced her fo determine upon granting the desired interview. This de- 168 THE OXOMANS. termination, however, was not adopted without a great deal of hesitation : though her heart throbbed with affection for Hartley, it was not free from indignation at his neglect ; and though her feelings in his favour hurried her into hopes that this might be satisfactorily explained, yet her better judgment whispered that she had better remain in her present misery, than run the risk of having it removed by temporary happiness, and renewed by future disappointments. It is scarcely neces- sary to say, that womanhood got the "better of reason ; for. where there is real affection in the case, when was it ever other- wise ? As the hour approached, her agitation increased ; and* at the last moment she was on the point of relinquishing her determination, when all their former meetings rushing at once upon her memory, she threw on her shawl, and hurried to the place of appointment. Hartley was already there ; so that she had neither the bit- terness of that moment of anxious suspense, which a want of implicit punctuality in such appointments occasions ; nor the opportunity which such a moment might have afforded for re- flection, and for a change in her resolution. Her agitation pre vented her meeting the animated greeting of Hartley with an thing but a faint smile. He drew her arm silently within his, and, avoiding the crowd that was passing through that part of the Park where they had met ; they sauntered into the more solitary walks, to impart to each other all that had passed since they had met in the garden of the good curate at Oxford. Caroline's simple story was soon told ; she had no succes- sion of passions to tinge the intervening months with variety : her whole soul had been occupied by her love for Hartley, and her grief at his desertion, and for the death of her father. The poor curate had been snatched suddenly from the world while in the performance of his clerical duties ; and Caroline found herself left alone, utterly unprovided for, with all tli ideas and feelings of a gentlewoman, without the slightr means for her support. Her father's successor desired possr sion of the house as soon as decency permitted him to turn ii mourning occupant out ; for church preferment is as eagerly and rapaciously grasped by the teachers of meekness and Christianity, as that of a less sacred nature by less sacred cha- racters ; and Caroline found herself obliged to seek an asylum in the house of an humble and poor relative in London. Too proud, as well as too just, to owe her maintenance to those who could ill afford to support the expense ; the moment of her arrival, she urged her relative to look out in every THE OXONIANS. 169 direction for some means by which she might prevent her being a burthen to any one. Caroline was well educated, and ac- complished beyond what might have been expected from the limited income of her father. Her accomplishments had been derived from her mother, who had been a very superior wo- man ; and who had imparted all to her daughter that she had derived from a very excellent education. It was her wish, therefore, to turn these talents to account, and to engage her- self as governess in some seminary, or family. Unhappily, however, the little interest her relative possessed, did not lie in the direction by which this desirable end could be ac- complished ; and the want of some high recommendation, ren- dered her applications after advertised situations abortive. Tired of maintaining her, this person, having at length heard of a vacancy in the establishment in Regent-street ; and knowing Caroline's ingenuity and taste in embroidery ; she urged her acceptance of it with so much pertinacity, that re- pugnant as it was to her pi-ide, Caroline became an inmate and a sempstress in this emporium of female finery. These artless annals of her life were soon recapitulated by Caroline to her lover, with a truth and ingenuousness which Hartley dared not imitate in his recital to her. How different, indeed, had been his life ! what a detail of infidelities to his vows ! what an exhibition of heartless inconstancy ! how many scenes bordering upon libertinisrfi must he not have represented, had he given any true narrative of the life he had led since their last meeting, when he had declared that he loved her, and only her ; and that he should love her, and only her, for ever. The sight of Caroline ; the renewal of their intercourse ; the artless recital of her melancholy adventures ; recalled, however, all his former love ; while the sufferings she had un- dergone ; the patient resignation with which his neglect of her had been borne : gave an additional tenderness to all his feel- ings, that rendered the renewal of this intimacy delightful. Hours flew on, while they were thus indulging in recollections of their life in Oxford ; and it was not till the chimes sounded the three quarters past ten, that Caroline recalled to mind the regulation which compelled her to return to Regent-street by eleven. With this thought, too, came that of the imprudence of remaining so late, and alone, with Hartley ; and what he himself might think of such an imprudence, formed not the least part of her distress. As she detailed this to him. Hartley silently cursed Regent- street, the tambour frame, and the Horse-guards, that so imperti- VoL. I.— 15 170 THE OXOMANS, nently put them in mind of the hour. He had not tasted any plea- sure duriiii^ his career of dissipation that had equalled his con- versation, and the renewal of his intercourse, with Caroline. There was a freshness about his feelings ; a renovation of youth in their enjoyment ; a nature about the delight he had ex- perienced, so difterent from the '•'■fade " pleasures, derived from the artificial women with whom he had lately associated, that, in spite of her humble situation, forced a comparison on his mind not at all unfavourable to Caroline. During their short and hurried return to Regent-street, she had promised to meet him again ; though she now persisted in her determi- Hation to bring a companion in whom she could confide : nor could all Hartley's entreaties to the contrary, make her change this resolution. The moment, therefore, that Caroline should have determined on this companion, she was to inform Hartley by letter, when he Avas to make his own appointment for another interview. With this agreement they parted : Caroline to return to her solitary bed, with the recollections of the evening for her only companions ; and to think on all that her lover had said in ex- tenuation of his late conduct, and on all the promises, which his manner, rather than his words, had given her for the future : — Hartley, to hurry through a late dinner in his dressing- room, and to pursue his nightly career of splendid parties, which left little room for recollections of Caroline, till his carriage set him down in the Albany, where he had now taken up his residence, exhausted by excitement and fatigue. Here, however, the question of his intentions with regard to Caroline forced itself upon his mind ; buthe fell asleep before he could contrive to answer it satisfactorily. THE OXONIANS. 171 CHAPTER XXII. RENCOUNTERS. Sir Harry. Why, you seem playing at cross purposes. Lord W. He who crosses my purpose, shall find it no play ; that I'll assure him. False Weddino. On quitting Lord Orvillo, Langley flew home to delight his wife with the news of his successful application ; for suc- cessful in the fullest meaning of the word did his sanguine mind consider it. To his surprise, however, he learned that Mrs. Langley was not within ; a circumstance which the more surprised him, since, as the concealment of their marriage did not permit him to accompany her, she very seldom left their humble domicile, excepting in the evening with her child. Burthened with his good news, Langley was half angry that his wife was not at home to share it with him ; but giving way to his natural inclination for day dreams, he sauntered towards the Park, to enjoy, in imagination, all the anticipated results of the kind promises of Lord Orville ; promises which we have seen were very likely to be forgotten, and certain to be broken, by that honourable peer. In the mean time, his wife, who had very little dependence upon the performance of her husband's promise of an appli- cation ; and almost as little upon the result of it, even were it made ; had quitted home, with the determination of seeking out the maternal uncle before alluded to. A morning paper had announced his arrival in town, and his domicile at the house of a titled relation ; and it was towards this mansion that Mrs. Langley directed her steps. Certain that this attempt would never receive the sanction of her husband, who, from her uncle's conduct to her mother at her marriage, had set him dewn as an unfeeling tyrant ; she had taken advantage of his absence, which generally lasted the whole morning, to make this attempt without his knowledge. During her walk, she summoned all the recollections of her mother's description of the early affection of her brother, to give her courage to persevere in the attempt ; and arranged, 172 THE OXOMAK8. as well as she could, her short story in her mind so as to pro- duce the best effect. Her heart beat quickly as she approached the door, but sunk, almost to sickening, as she lifted the knocker. The recollection, however of the duty she had to perform, the hope of the benefit which might result to her hus- band and child, and the knowledge that it was her nearest relation that she was seeking, gave her courage, and the pon- derous knocker dropped from her hand in one of those equi- vocal raps, which may be interpreted either double or single, according to circumstances. The door flew open in a second in the hands of the fat porter, while three or four lacquies were on the alert to escort any "admitted" visiter to the morning saloon. On the appearance, however, of one, not on the list, they lounged back to their newspapers, or their fireside gossip, which the knock at the door for a moment had interrupted. The porter's jolly countenance at once lost its good-natured expression on the sight of a pelisse and bonnet rather i'aded, and a lady who knocked at the door for herself. To her faul- tering question, which she could scarcely breathe audibly from her pale lips, if the object of her visit was within ; was re- turned a monotonous " not at home," pronounced in a tone which made it appear as though the surly porter uttered it mechanically. To those who have made a great exertion to bring their mind to solicit an interview of importance, and vvho have looked forward to the result of it as forming an epocha in their lives ; who have accomplished the courage necessary for the operation, through many hours of pain and indecision ; the mortification arising from this hackneyed refusal to be seen, will be easily felt ; rendered more keen too by the notion that one has, of its not being true. Mrs. Langley looked wistfully in the face of the porter, as she faintly requested to know " if he was sure he was right ?" " Not at home," asrain reiterated the porter. Mrs. Langley tottered down the steps, and the door closed with a sound that seemed to shut out from her heart all future hope ; sucli an effect have even trifling circumstances, when the heart has been wrought up to a certain pitch of misery and excitement. She felt that the difficulty which this " Not at home" barrier placed in the way of gaining an interview with her uncle, was really as formidable as though he had been shut up in some imprac- ticable fortress ; and she dreaded that a letter could never pro- duce the dosircd effect. Determined, however, to persevere, and to leave nothing THE OXONIANS. 173 neglected on her part to redeem the fortunes of her husband ; she set this down merely as a single disappointment, and her spirits were reviving, when she perceived herself the object of attention to a gentleman in a very elegant cabriolet, which was proceeding at a pace a very little quicker than her own, close to the pavement. Blushing at the observation she had attracted, she drew her veil close over her face, and turned down another street ; in the hope of avoiding a gaze which, even in the short moment that she had seen it, she could not but perceive was intently fixed upon herself. It was in vain, however, that she turned down street after street, the eternal cabriolet seemed to be every where, and to cross her at every movement ; nor could she fail, now and then, to meet the glance of the driver, who distressed her by the freedom of his evident admiration. Perceiving that he was determined to follow her, and dreading lest he might discover her residence ; in attempting to mislead him she bewildered herself, and, becoming confused, she found herself unex- pectedly at the entrance to the Park, when she imagined herself far distant from it. The Park, however, presented a refuge from what she now began to deem actual persecution, and she entered it at Harrington gate. To her surprise, however, the carriage also passed into the Park, thus designating the elevated rank of the driver. '' As she crossed the avenues, he jumped out of his cabriolet and followed her on foot. Twice he attempted to address her, and twice was he repressed, with a dignity which awed even his assurance into respect. A nearer view of the face which had attracted him at a distance ; and the novelty of the intrinsic modesty with which she repelled his attempt to address her, seemed only to add strength to his determination to discover who she was ; but, fearing her resolution never to take the di- rection of her own residence while he continued his pursuit, he became angry with himself that he had not relinquished the task of the discovery to his servant whom he had left in charge of his cabriolet ; and, fearing to lose all chance of knowing where his incognita lived, he was looking anxiously out for some acquaintance, to whom he might depute this honourable office. In the mean time, however, he did not relax in his endeavours to change her determination ; till, roused at last into an exhi- bition of indignation, she exclaimed — " Sir, your perseverance becomes insulting." 15* 174 TUE OXOMAKS. " Let that perseverance plead for me," retorted her indefa- tigable persecutor. Finding ail attempts to get rid of his intrusion vain, she sud- denly siojtped, and assuming as much dignity as her agitation would |)erniit, she said calmly — " Tell me, sir, is there any thing in my appearance ; was there any thing in my manners, to authorize this intrusion ? or to induce you tiius to follow me, when you perceive your attentions to be oliensive ?'" " So Air from it," replied the unabashed intruder, " it was the perfect modesty of your demeanour, added to an appearance of grief, which I thought perhaps I might alleviate, that at- tracted my notice." ' You appear, sir," said Mrs. Langley, still retaining her composure, " to be a gentleman ; and yet own, that the very circumstances, which ought to have protected me from your addresses, are the very reasons you allege for insulting me. Let that modesty you pretend to admire, sir, be the best as- surance of the uselessness of solicitation ; and let me pass on. I entreat — nay, sir, I insist on the free liberty of passing unfollowed and without molestation ;" and, seeing him still determined to persevere, she added, " otherwise you will compel me to appeal to the first stranger I meet, for protection against your insults." Mrs. Langley's agitation had increased during this appeal j and the last words were uttered in so loud a tone of voice, that the words " insults," and '• protection," awoke Langley from the day-dream which he was indulging on one of the benches near the spot on which this conversation had taken place. Too short-sighted to distinguish the parties by whom his at- tention had been attracted, he turned towards the spot, ex- claiming, " Eh, who calls for protection ?" Langley was recognized in a moment by both parties ; and Mrs. Langley, dreading a thousand disagreeable circum- stances in the event of the recognition being mutual, t"irned short round, and walked swiftly away in an opposite direction. ''Protection! Nonsense! Laniriey," exclaimed Orville, he it was who had thus persecuted Mrs. Langley. "• You have spoiled the prettiest tete-a-tete in the world, and have ac- tually friiihtened away the prettiest woman I haveseen these si.\ months." " I spoil a tete-6-tete," stammered Langley, who saw his hopes fading in the idea of ofi'cnding Lord Orville. " Yes, and the only reparation you can make me, is to undo THE OXOMAKS. 175 the mischief you have occasioned, by following that little wo- man in the blue pelisse and cottage-bonnet, and discovering her residence." " 1 — my — Lord ; I am so short-sighted." "jNot a word, or you will miss her — and I would not lose her for a thousand. Nay fly, my dear Langley, and when you bring me the intelligence of her residence 1 shall have news for you from his Grace of ." And so saying, without waiting for a reply, Lord Orville jumped into his cabriolet, whlie Langley, confused, and scarcely knowing what he was doing, mechanically walked on in the direction pointed out by Orville. " What can he take me for," thought Langley, almost aloud, as an indignant feeling at the unworthiness of his employment arose in his mind. " 1 follow a woman for him ! A good appointment may be a very good thing, but I should not enjoy the best place in the world if I had to reflect on having per- formed one dirty action to procure it." Such were the re- flections which arose in his mind ; yet still he walked on, in the direction which Mrs. Langley had taken, though his in- firmity did not permit him to distinguish the object of his pur- suit. He saw he might ofiend Lord Orville, and crush the hopes upon which he had been building. He did not like thus to kick his basket of eggs into the street at once, and mar the fortune he had been enjoying in anticipation ; neither did he like the positive manner, in which he liad been despatched on his unworthy errand by Lord Orville, who seemed to expect that his patronage was to be purchased by any services which he might require, from those who enjoyed it. Yet how to extricate himself from this dilemma ? At this moment he was joined by Mr. Versatile Tadpole. Tadpole was a young man of obscure birth, with means suf- ficient to enal)lehim to live without the drudgery of office or business. His sole ambition in life was to be thought inti- mate with persons of fashion. He was the veriest lord-hunter in the creation ; and would do any thing, however mean or contemptible, to curry favour with a Countess, or to secure a nod at the Opera from a Peer. By these mrans, he contrived to linger in the outskirts of fashionable society ; tolerated, in some houses from the use they made of him, and, getting into others, under the protecting wing of some old college ac- quaintance, or of some man of fashion who had condescended to make him his jackal. He knew the whole peerage by sight ; could discover the coronet on a carriage in the densest fog in 176 THE OXONIANS. November ; had made himself acquainted with the topograplv ical situation of every person's opera box, and would have made the best walking Court Guide in the world ; since, if he did not claim acquaintance with the inmates, he knew the knocker and brass plate on the door of every fashionable man- sion in town. In this pursuit. Tadpole had cut his connection with the class of society in which he was born ; witjiout having been able to graft himself upon that to which he aspired ; so that he was laughed at by tlie sensible persons of the one, and de- spised by nearly the whole of the other ; who seldom conde- scended to notice him, unless it was to borrow his money, or send him on an errand. Indeed, Tadpole might not unaptly have been designated the " errand boy" of fashion. He had been uniformly black-balled at every club in London in which he could prevail upon any proposer and secon(!er to inscribe his name among the candidates ; but yet he persisted in his pursuit, and the labour of a whole morning's walk or ride in the Park, was amply repaid by a nod from any one of the heads in the window at White's, or a " How d' ye do. Tad- pole ?" from the supercilious voice of some galloping ex- quisite in the Park. Langley's loss of fortune had at first lowered him consi- derably in the eyes of Mr. Tadpole ; but, when he saw him still on the same familiar terms with his former associates, and still read his name in the morning papers among the fash- ionables who attended such and such an assembly, his whole importance was restored. Langley, who knew Tadpole's character and failings, looked upon the present rencounter as a most fortunate circumstance. Here was a way to escape from a disagreeable office, and yet run no risk of offending his patron. Telling Tadpole, therefore, the story — pointing out the obligation Lord Orville would be under to him — complaining of his own want of vision, as incapacitating himself, for performing the service ; he secured in a moment a most willing proxy ; to whom the idea of obliging a lord would have rendered a much more degrading task palatable. " But shall I convey the intelligence myself to Orville House ?" asked Tadpole, eagerly. " Certainly," replied Langley. " You won't forestall me ?" ** No, no ! but you will certainly miss her," said Langley. *' Blue pelisse and cottage bonnet, you say ?" THE OXONIANS. 177 " Yes, yes !" and away flew Tadpole in the direction Mrs. Langley had taken ; while Langley, intending the infirmity of his sight to form an apology to Orville ; like many others, blinded himself into a species of consolation at doing his dirty work by deputy. CHAPTER XXIII. LOVERS. "Why, thank her then, not weep, or moan { Let others guard their careless heart, And praise the day that thus made known The faithless hold on woman's art. HARRiNeroN. Scarcely any situation can be Imagined more painful than that of poor Forrester. Loving Emily with his whole soul, conscious that none around her appreciated her value, nor bore her the same degree of real affection as himself ; he was yet condemned to see her perpetually sub^'ect to the attention of others, and to follow her from party to' party, without being able to gain one confidential communication. It was in vain that he watched for an opportunity ; if chance presented one, it was sure to be disappointed by some intrusion on the part of one or the other of the Orville family. He saw too, with fear, the change in her habits — mourned over the dissipation of the life she led — and dreaded lest the effect of the examples by which she was surrounded, should influence her future existence. Knowing, as he had done, the excellence of her heart and principles, and sensible of the foun- dation upon which those principles were built, he felt secure that they could never be eradicated. Yet he trembled to think of the consequences of such a perpetual round of gayety upon a heart and mind so young ; he dreaded its unfitting her for a more domestic life, and that the excitement under which she now lived might by long continuance become necessary to her existence. It was impossible, however, for Forrester to go on long without perceiving the change in Emily's manner towards him- self. At first, he attributed it to the natural objection that 178 THE OXONIANS. every woman of delicacy feels towards making the sentiments or attentions of any man public ; but at length her coldness, and the pleasure she seemed to enjoy in escaping from his at- tentions to those of Lord Orville, or, indeed, to those of any other of the gay beings, by whom she was now perpetually surrounded, almost confirmed his worst fears. Open, too, as Orville House was to him at all hours, he began to think it strange, that she herself did not make some opportunity for him to see her alone ; and, at length, the unpleasant truth forced itself upon his observation, that, on the contrary, she herself sedulously avoided any thing like confidential communication. This certainty was a sad blow to poor Forrester ; it deprived him of his last remaining hope ; he saw all the prospects he had formed fade before him ; and, what rendered it worse, he saw no hope'that this destruction of his happiness would ensure that of Emily. Such was the nature of his love, that, could he have seen any reasonable prospect of her happiness being increased by the change, he would have tried to support his disappointment with fortitude. As it was, he gave himself up to despair, on her account as well as his own. It was in vain he called in the aid of philosophy — in vain he appealed to reason— in vain exerted all his common sense ; all their powers faded before his intense feeling : and Forrester became as great a victim to disappointed love, as though he had not possessed a grain of philosophy, common sense, or reason. It was in vain he argued, that, if she was so changed, he ought rather to rejoice, instead of lament that she was not to be his wife ; he found love and nature stronger than all argu- ments. He could not follow the advice of the old English poet in the " Nugae Antiquae," given under similar circum- stances : •' Give o'er thy plaint, the danger's o'er ; She might have poisoned all thy life ; Such wayward mind had bred thee more Of sorrow had she prov'd thy wife : ' Leave her to meet all hapless meed. And bless thyself that thou art freed." Forrester would have sucked in the poison of matrimony- have endured all the sorrow of making Emily his wife ; and was more inclined to curse, than to bless the freedom, to which this dereliction from her early attachment gave him. Once admitting the idea of a change in her sentiments, it THE OXONIANS. 179 was astonishing how many proofs of the truth of this surmise forced themselves upon his mind. Doubt soon grew into cer- tainty, and he determined to seek an interview ; throw all upon the hazard of a last appeal ; and, if unsuccessful, caution her against the insidious arts of Orville, and bid her farewell for ever. An opportunity for this appeal at length presented itself, when it was least expected. Entering the library at Orville House, he perceived Emily alone, evidently in deep thought. Once or twice she appeared agitated by some internal emotion : then, sighing, she exclaimed unconsciously, " i almost wish I were back again in the country i" forgetting every thing but the impulse of the moment. Forrester approached her hastily, and asked : " Can such a wish emanate from Miss Emily's heart ?" Emily started at the sight of him ; looked as though she wished to escape ; but, perceiving no hope of avoiding the in- terview, she merely exclaimed, " Bless me, Mr. Forrester !" " Mr. Forrester ! You were not wont to be so formal ! it used to be Forrester — or Edward." '' Yes !" replied Emily. " I remember, Mr. Forrester, to have been sufficiently rude to have' used your name too fa- miliarly." " Nay," said Forrester, mournfully, •' Miss Hartley never could be rude ; and the delicacies of her familiarity rendered its favour so great, that I must ever regret its loss." " Mr. Forrester chooses to be complimentary," said Emily, rather satirically, and taking up the tone in which she had lat- terly often spoken of Forrester. " It is unfortunately not in my power to be so," quietly re- plied Forrester : •' and I remember the time, when sincerity possessed a greater influence than compliments, over your heart. I have long sought this opportunity of speaking with you alone : but, of late, you have been so surrounded by an idolizing multitude, that there has not been a moment to spare to him, who was once happy enough to consider his society as one of the pleasures of your former life." *' Why, I begin to find," said Emily, "that my former life, a? you call it, was no life at all — that it was a mere dream." " It is but too true," replied Forrester ; " and I am at length awakened to the dreadful certainty that it was indeed some il- lusion of the brain." "You are quite metaphorical, Mr. Forrester," coldly observed Emily, who assumed an indifference she was far from feeling, 180 TUB oxONiAdre. hopins; that it might the sooner end an interview which was painful to both. "Oh Emily, Emily!" exclaimed Forrester, " this coldness, this indifference destroys me. But I come not to complain — I know my doom — yet hear me — hear me, Emily, if it be only for the last time." " I am all attention, Mr. Forrester." " Alas! Miss Hartley — I had much— much to say; and thought that I had summoned sufficient courage, as well as sufficiently tranquillized my feelings, to have iziven utterance to my sentiments, without discovering the bursting agonies of a disappointed heart." "Agonies!" exclaimed Emily. "The prudent Mr. For- rester talk of agonies?" j " Ay, and feel them too — more, perhaps, than those who make a superior display of their sentiments," replied Forrester ; " but no matter — I am but too sensible of the difl^erence you must find in my plain, and perhaps homely expressions of affec- tion, when compared with the elegance of those compliments which are now crowding daily upon your ear. I perceive, too, how my plain manners must sink in your estimation, when put in competition with those of a fashionable man — I feel all this — deeply, severely feel it — and deeply do I regret the folly that led me to hope so humble a being as myself could ever retain an interest in the heart of one, so capable of attracting to her feet even the most brilliant of these competitors." Emily felt more than she dared acknowledge, even to her- self; and in a softened tone, replied, " Indeed, Mr. Forrester, these circumstances exist only in your own imagination." " No, no," said Forrester, mournfully ; " they exist in sad reality. I am quite aware of it — I feel my inferiority — I can- not dress up my sentiments in that glowing language which gives plausibility to sophistry, and which would render truth irresistible." " Nay, nay," said Emily, in a still softer voice ; such virtues and good sense as Mr. Forrester possesses, will always ensure the esteem they merit, would he but exert them in a direction where they could be properly appreciated." " There is butonedirection. Miss Hartley," replied Forrester, " in which I ever wished the very few qualifications I possess, to gain an ascendancy — but one object in the world, to whom I can truly and sincerely devote them. That object is lost to me ; and all my hopes of happiness are blasted for ever." THE OXONIANS. 181 *' Nay, nay, Mr. Forrester," exclaimed Emily, in a tone almost of tenderness — " Hold !" interrupted Forrester ; " revive not the glimpse of a hope, which I know must be immediately extinguished. I see it in your altered manners — I read it in your frigid look — -I understand and feel it, from a thousand circumstances that speak the truth of my surmises. Oh, Emily ! when memory paints thee as thou once wert — kind — obliging — may I say af- fectionate ? — When imagination pictures the smile with wliich you greeted me in the morning ; the gentle sigh wliich the evening witnessed at our parting — when I retrace the circum- stances of that evening, when 1 first dared to whisper in your ear a feeling warmer than that of fraternal love — it is then, Emily, that in these retrospections, I experience sensations nearly allied to plirensy — " and Forrester, betrayed by his feelings out of his usually calm exterior, actually sobbed with agony. Emily, overcome by her own feelings, and giving way to a momentary burst of tenderness, exclaimed, " Oh Edward ! dear Edward ! spare me ! spare me ! — " " Edward ! dear Edward !" repeated Forrester, with delight ; " and do I hear that name again from the lips oC Emily ? Oh repeat it, and I am your slave for ever." " Oh Edward !— I know — I feel — I am wrong," said Emily. " Wrong ! — impossible. Nothing can be wrong when Emily's heart and understanding direct her actions." " Pardon me the torture I have given to a sensible heart — a heart of which I feel myself unworthy ; and the happiness of which I can never form — " " What do I hear ? what says my EmJ'y ?" exclaimed For- rester. " In the country," pursued Emily, " my natural disposition was repressed. The world, unhappily for me, has shown me what I am — our dispositions, Forrester, are dissimilar." " No, no," interrupted Forrester. " In the country, my Emily was herself: here only, is she the creature of circum- stance. Can you remember, in anticipating our future lives, how exactly our sentiments accorded ? Do you remember in our studies, how perfectly our opinions coincided ? Can you recollect our evening walks and conversations, and say that our hearts are dissimilar ? True, I cannot display a blaze of wit that excites the admiration of my auditors — I have no personal ac- ■ complishments to dazzle the beholders, and make my wife the Vol. I.— 16 182 THE OXONIANS. envy of her neighbours — I cannot dress up my affection in the fastidious terms of modern sentiment ; but J can profler you the unalterable love of a manly heart, that will devote itself to your happiness ; and, that happiness accomplished, will be the greatest I can possess." During this passionate appeal, rendered more forcible by the general quietude of the character of him by whom it was made, Emily had been surprised by the return of so much of her former tenderness for Forrester. Her heart seemed to have wandered back into the track it had so grievously de- serted. Former scenes rushed upon her remembrance ; for- mer feelings forced themselves upon iier mind ; and, in a voice, in which she seemed to resign herself to their influence, she exclaimed : " Oh Forrester, I know the goodness of your heart ; I feel the strength of its affection ; I remember well our early life, and remember it with regret, even amid — " Emily was gradually giving way to her feelings. Forrester seemed to hang upon every word she uttered ; her former affections and sentiments were evidently returning with their full force, and the counte- nance of Forrester was once more glowing with hope ; — when Lord Orville suddenly entered the apartment, and started with surprise at seeing Emily and Forrester together. The moment Emily saw him, she became confused, she repeated the words " even amid, even amid/' once or twice, and then, shrinking from Orville's glance, she finished by saying, " Ah, you here, my Lord ?" Forrester started, for so intent was he on Emily's words, that he had not perceived Orville's entrance. His counte- nance assumed its former expression of despair, and he inter- nally exclaimed, " Il«; here ! then I am lost." " You seem surprised at my presence, Miss Hartley," said Lord Orville, advancing towards them. '* But, can you won- der, that the attraction which is suthciently powerful to in- fluence the grave, the wise, the prudent Edward Forrester, should draw within its vortex, the weak and volatile, though devoted Orville." *' You honour me too much," replied Forrester, endeavour- ing to regain some degree of composure, " by including one of such humble pretensions, with an individual, whose sphere of attraction is so extended as your Lordship's." " Why, Miss Hartley," exclaimed Lord Orville, in a tone of affected surprise, " with what wand have you touched For- rester ? I protest, Chesterfield himself could never have dressed up a compliment in better style ; and, as we generally THE OXOKIANS. 183 value things by their scarcity, more than from their intrinsic worth, why, I think I must inscribe a compliment from For- rester as a rarity in my commonplace book." '* I believe, my Lord," said Emily, trying to rally herself, and to appear unconcerned, " that compliments in general de- serve a commonplace reception." Forrester had in vain struggled to resume his composure, and finding it utterly impossible to reduce the tone of his feel- ings so suddenly, he hastily took his leave ; though not without betraying his agitation, and almost rushing out of the room. Emily herself could not quite conquer her feelings, though afraid of betraying them before Lord Orville, whose eye was fixed upon her varying countenance." " You seem agitated. Miss Hartley," observed he ; then, in a bantering tone, he proceeded : " What, I dare swear, Forrester has been recalling to your memory those halcyon days, when, like shepherds and shepherdesses of Arcadia, you wandered through dasied meadows and shady groves. I can easily ima- gine Forrester to play a sighing shepherd remarkably well, and to prove an excellent lover, for the country. I can readily be- lieve now, that every tree in the neighbourhood has bled with the characters of your name, which has regularly undergone a " course of bark," as Hood punningly calls it. I suppose the echoes have forgotten to respond to any other name than that of Emily ; and that the murmuring streams have rolled their limpid waves but as an accompaniment to sapphic lays, chaunted in a voice, so musical and melancholy, that nightin- gales have left their native groves, and joined chorus." " A truce, a truce, my Lord," said Emily, with a languid smile ; while she inwardly shrunk from Orville's badinage ; — who at once relinquishing his lighter tones, continued more earnestly : " And was such a mind and form as Miss Hartley's created only to be seen and enjoyed by rustics and nightingales ? Was she blest with talents, that make her the delight of the gayest circles, only to display them where they can never be properly appreciated ? or was the poignancy of her wit, given her but to satirize a few dowdy country neighbours ; and fill up the scandalous chronicle of a country tea-table ? No, no, I will not do the world so much injustice as to place so fair a flower among those, which were born ' To blush unseen And waste their sweetness on the desert air.' " 184 THE OXONIANS. " Oh, my Lord, you overpower me," exclaimed Emily, in- deed you do. The country, I feel, was my proper sphere. I possess none of those elegant arts of society." " Where nature has done so much," interrupted Lord Or- villc, " art is but an intruder ; a little light reading under my direction, will soon brush. off the prejudices of your country })receptress ; who, unused to the world, is insensible to the burden which such sentiments are in society." " Yes, my Lord, but these sentiments are for the well-being of society," said Emily. "So, those who are prejudiced by them will tell you," re- plied Lord Orville. " So, the ill-natured cynic lays down the law ; while the cold philosopher, devoid of passion and sen- sibility himself, preaches from the narrow precincts of his tub against their indulgence in others, with the calmness of a stoic ; and calculates upon success, as a cabinet minister at home reckons upon an easy victory abroad ; because he does not see the dangers and difficulties of the battle. The gods gave us our passions ; men have had the presumption to impose cus- toms which would violate the first principles of our nature. — Which ought we to obey ? Here," continued he, taking up an open volume, " see what Pope says on the master passion of our natures : ' Love, free as air, at sight of human ties Spreads^his light wings ' " " Oh, my Lord, forbear your arguments, lest you should dazzle me by their brilliancy, into a premature belief of their trudi." Lord Orville saw the power he possessed, at least over her imagination, if he had yet attained none over her heart or judgment ; and, uncertain yet in his own mind, as to his inten- tions, he pursued his advantage recklessly, without giving it a thought, that if he ultimately fell into the plans of his mother, he was undermining the principles of his future wife. Orville, liowever, derived a pleasure in overturning established opinions, and in the subversion of received rules, even when he had no end to accomplish. There was a kind of recklessness in his philosophy, and of carelessness, with which he threw his pow- ers of ridicule, even into the most sacred subjects, that de- lighted him, because it astonished others : and, with regard to women, he derived a selfish pleasure from winning aflections vhich he had no intention of returning, and by which he had \ THE OXOMANS. 186 no hope of profiting. He could not, however, behold one so lovely and innocent as the girl who stood before him, without feeling something more than he had for most women; and ideas, beyond mere v.ords, for a moment crossed his mind as he pur- sued his theme. " Nay, Miss Hartley, I wish to owe your conversion to our modern tenets to conviction alone, and, where can you find greater conviction, than in your own feelings. Suppose that you, all trembling sensibility as you are, should find a conge- nial sou! ; and, that soul, inspired by affection, by passion, should pour forth its raptures at your feet ; should seize your trembling hand thus and lay it to a heart whose pulsations beat for you alone" — and here, having taken Emily by the hand, he appeared to be the impassioned lover he represented, when the door vras suddenly opened, and, before either of them were aware of his presence, the Admiral stood before them. Emily started, blushed, and was almost overcome by her emotion. The Admiral was as much startled as herself; and ex- claiming, "Avast there," and, stuttering out an excuse about sorrow and interruption, was retiring, when Lord Orville open- ing his box, coolly said : " Oh ! not at all. Admiral ; I was only giving Miss Hartley some idea of natural philosophy." " Experimental philosophy, you mean," said the Admiral, chuckling at his own joke ; and then, recollecting his informa- tion, that an attachment existed between Emily and Forrester, he executed a loud whistle, and continued : " But, Miss Emily, since the wind lays in this quarter — " " For heaven's sake, sir," interrupted Emily, almost over- come by her agitation. But the Admiral was on his usual tack of sincerity, and was not to be stopped ; and continued : " No, no, we must not have Forrester deceived any longer. He is a worthy fellow ; though he is, perhaps, alittle too moral and sentimental." Emily was overcome with confusion at this plain sailing speech of the Admiral ; and was attempting some stammer- ing explanation, when Mr. Tadpole was announced : who, scarcely noticing Emily or the Admiral, in his haste to please Lord Orville, drew him aside, and in a half whisper, said, " Well, my Lord, I followed her home." Lord Orville looked surprised. '* Oh, Langley, you know, told me — blue pelisse, cottage bonnet — " and shaking his head significantly, he proceeded ; 16* 186 THE OXO>IAKS. " no fear from me. It was in vain she twitched round the corners, and bobbed up the alleys — determined to oblige your Lordship, I traced her to a house in " here his whispering became very low ; " and, as I came away, who should I see enter, but Forrester — there's a sly dog for you !" Lord Orville now comprehended, that Mr. Tadpole had per- formed the office which he had required at the hands of Lang- ley ; though how he became so commissioned, he was at a loss to conceive ; but was delighted, by any means, to learn intelli- gence cf his incognita of the morning. Emily, who could not help hearing some part of what Mr. Tadpole said, started with a feeling almost akin to jealousy, as, from the little she gathered, she found the communication related to some female ; and she inwardly asked herself, "Can he deceive me ?" The Admiral, who did not at all like the unceremonious manner in which he had been treated by the intruder ; and catching, here and there, a word or two of the communication, without hearing the truth, sharply exclaimed : " Eh, what's that about twitching and bobbing, and For- rester ?" " Oh, nothing, Admiral," coolly answered Lord Orville ; " but that Tadpole was telling me that Forrester — didn't you say Forrester ?" " Oh yes, Forrester," replied the civil Mr. Tadpole, delighted at the familiar manner in which Lord Orville had mentioned his name. " That Foirester desired him to follow some pretty woman home." " Eh ; how, my Lord ?" cx'claimed Tadpole : but was im- mediately silenced by a look from Orville, who proceeded : " And he says he left Forrester there just now : was not that it. Tadpole ?" " Oh yes ; just so ; exactly so ; just as your Lordship says ; your Lordship is always in the right ;" hastily said Tadpole, without knowing what he was asserting, only that he was agreeing with a Lord. "What!" exclaimed the Admiral, "Forrester, a gay de- ceiver ? the specious fellow — the demure scoundrel ; he, of all people, to be running riot !" Emily had a mixed feeling at intelligence so unexpected ; at this instant it would have pained her more to have disco- vered that Orville had deceived her, than to think that Forres- ter had been guilty of any dereliction ; and, almost wanting TUE OXOMAKS. 187 an excuse for her own versatility, slie experienced something like a pleasure in finding that apology for her own conduct in Forrester's change, which would have been denied her by his constancy. Happy, at any rate, to escape from the observa- tion of the Admiral, she quitted the room, and hurried away to Clara, for the purpose of using this apology for the varia- tion in her opinions with regard to Edward Forrester. "D — n the fellow ! One may swear at deception," said the Admiral. Then approaching Lord Orville, ♦' Orville, my boy, give me your hand, for I love an open-hearted rake, as much as I despise a hypocritical libertine." " Ay, Admiral," replied Orville, "you see it is not always the moral outside that hides the best heart." *' But ril be about his ears — I wont let the son of my old friend turn out a scoundrel without telling him of it." And away bounced the Admiral in search of Forrester. Mr. Tadpole, who had stood silent during the latter part of this scene,^taken quite by surprise, looked at Orville for an ex- planation. " Nothing but a hoax. Tadpole, a mere hoax, a joke upon "Forrester's morality," said Orville. " But come, my dear fellow, we will take a stroll, and you shall tell me all the parti- culars." And away they Avent, the civil Mr. Tadpole well re- warded for the dirtiest action of which a man can be guilty, by walking down St. James's Street, arm in arm, with a peer. CHAPTER XXIV. THE MILLINER. Is there a heart that never lov'd, Nor felt soft woman's sigh ? Is there a man can mark unmov'd Dear woman's tearful eye ? Devil's Bridqe. We must not, however, in our history of Emily and her suitors, forget the hunable Caroline and her lover ; for milliners have hearts as well as their betters, and they break sometimes. Caroline'.s story forms only an episode in our general history ; and, perhaps some of my readers will recollect, that it is not the 188 THE OXONIANS. first time a pretty milliner has formed an episode in a man's life. "■ Where there is a will there is a way," is one of tiiose j)roverb?, that, like most of the old adages, is a true one ; and, however wayward the will may be, there arc generally means, if industriously soufrht, sufficient to gratify it. Caroline Dor- mer had felt too much delight in the renewal of her intercourse with Hartley, to give up the continuance of it ; and she was not long, therefore, before she found a person to whom she confided her secret, and who agreed to accompany her in her future interviews. This was the daughter of the humble and distant relative, who had received her on her arrival in town ; and who had procured for her the situation in which Hartley had discovered her. The confidante was several years older than herself; and this was some salvo to the conscience of Caroline, and, in her eyes, made her presence a more proper sanction for her meetings with Hartley, than if she had merely been of her own age. Fanny Thompson, however, though older, had not bought prudence, either with her years, or her experience ; and could not but wonder at the folly of Caroline, in wishing her interviews with her lover thus to be intruded on by a third person, who, according to her notions (I must not dignify them by the title of ideas) must spoil all the pleasure of the meeting. At any rate, this would liave been her opi- nion of any third person who had been present at such inter- views, when she too had lovers. At first, therefore, she at- tempted to argue Caroline out of the intention of being always accompanied, and to persuade her that it was but quite " right, natural, and proper," to use her own words, " to give the gen- tleman the meeting by herself." When, however, she found, that, by accompanying her friend, she received sundry valuable presents ; and becaine the partaker of many pleasures, of the enjoyment of which, she had no chance by any other means ; she soon become content with the rule of confidante, and con- trived every means in her power to be as little " de trop" as possible. Intimation that the " convenient friend" was found was soon therefore conveyed to Hartley ; who was noi long in availing himself of the opportunities which this aflbrded him of seeing Caroline. From the moment he had discovered her, his heart had revolted at the idea of her menial situation, for in no other light could he consider it. He could not bear the idea of the woman he loved, working for her daily bread ; and he used every argument in his power to induce her to quit it, and to accept the means of existence from himself, until some change, THE OXOKIANS. 189 that might place them in a different position v/ith regard to each other, should take place. To this proposal, however, Caroline would not listen for a moment : circumstances, he had candidly told her, prevented his yet daring to propose their marriage to his family ; and, till such a certainty as that occurred, she determined to accept nothing from him, and prided herself on her humble independ- ence. Not even a present beyond a plain locket with his hair, could he prevail upon her to accept, nor would she permit him to do any thing that could add to the comfort, or ameliorate the disagreeableness, of her situation. The circumstances to which Hartley alluded, were, in fact, precisely the same as they were when they last parted ; but the additional knowledge of the world, which he had acquired since his entrance into life, and in the various scenes through which he had passed in his short career, had made the possibility of their marriage very debateable ground in his own mind. He had lived with a set o[ young men, who treated the marriage tie as a jest ; to whom many a husband was only an object of pity or of ridicule ; and who only looked upon matrimony as a method of extending their connexion, power, or fortune. Nothing unhinges the morals of a young and inexperienced heart so much as this light conversation on serious subjects. Nothing loosens the influence of morality and religion in a mind, unused to think for itself, and to draw and act upon its own conclusions, more, than to hear sacred subjects treated jestingly and with levity. The mind is shocked by open blasphemy, and shrinks from broad indelicacy ; but the perpetual light shafts that are launched against serious subjects and institutions, in the com- mon intercourse of conversation, soon undermines the respect which those feel for them, whose reverence is not founded on something stronger than that of mere habit or imitation. Mortified, as Hartley was at this determination of Caroline to owe him nothing but the pleasure derived from his society, it yet, almost unknown to himself, raised her in his estimation. " The presents were therefore all transferred to Miss Fanny Thompson the confidante, who treated them, as Fatima's father does the camels in Colman's drama of Blue Beard, and seemed " to whip them in with their own tails," by the readiness with which she accepted them. Caroline's hours of business — do not let polite ears be shocked, that one of our heroines is obliged to number such hours — occupied her from eight in the morning till eight in the 190 THE 0X0N1AK9. evening, and those regulations which ordained this as the time to be devoted to labour, as avcU as the time at which she was expected to rejoin her companions at home, were both rigidly adhered to by Caroline, in spite of all the remonstrances, and sometimes anger of Hartley. Her labour, however, now no longer hung heavy on her hands ; she had recollections and anticipations to lighten their burden ; her life was a life of hope again, and as she counted the tedious hours as they passed, she had something to look forward to at the end of them, which promised her pleasure — and what a pleasure too ! the society of the man she loved. Those women who have loved truly, will well know how much of pain such a pleasure will repay ; and Hartley's passions, if noi his affec- tions, were sufficiently engaged, scarcely to let an evening elapse that he did not pass in the society of Caroline from eight till eleven. She was devotedly fond of music, he was careful, therefore, to secure a secluded box in one of the higher tiers for every opera night, where he was delighted at the pleasure she experienced, and surprised at the superior knowledge of the science which she evinced. On these nights, the confidante, whom he had supplied with a capital glass by Dollond, for that purpose, amused herself by admiring the dresses in the boxes, and counting the bald heads in the pit ; and though she was insensible to the music of Mozart or Ros- sini, she was by no means ijidifferent to the dancing, which excited in her various inclinations to giggle, and exclamations of '' Oh, my !" at the tremendous expose of limbs in " Pirou- ettes renversecs,^^ &c. She was, however, perpetually interrupt- ing the tete-a-tete of the lovers, by inquiries as to who were the different occupiers of the boxes ; a curiosity, which Hartley was perfectly capable ofgratifying, from his extensive intercourse in fashionable society. Fanny Thompson at length, however, became tired of the opera. It was a mighty dull piece of busi- ness ; nothing but a parcel of music, which gave her no plea- sure, and all in a language which she did not understand ; she therefore, at length, generally sought a refuge from ennui in sleep ; a circumstance, upon which Hartley congratulated himself aloud ; and which, we must own, did not create any thing like sorrow in Caroline. On other evenings, when some performance at the English theatres promised greater entertainment than usual, a private box was provided ; and here the confidante was much more at home. She could Aveep with Juliet or Bclvidera, and laugh with Listen or Harley ; enter into the drollery and pathos of THE OXONIANS. 191 Mathews, whose delineations of human nature come home to every man's bosom ; and enjoy the vivacity of Yates ; and drew comparisons between Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and the King's Theatre, not at all to the advantage of the latter. On fine nights, when the moon was bright and the air not too cold, the carriage would drive them to the gate of Hyde-park, or a mile or two into the country ; where the few hours of Caroline's liberty were spent in walking with her lover by moonlight, and in the interchange of sentiments, which on these occasions was more delightful, and frequently more dan- gerous, than in the midst of a crowded theatre, with other ob- jects to distract her attention. Sometimes, but very seldom, and not till her confidence in Hartley had been fully esta- blished ; would she accompany Fanny to his rooms in the Albany, where a petit souper (his dinner) was provided in his library ; and here, perhaps, that domestic intercourse which was the consequence of evenings spent thus, tended, as much as any thing, to rivet her affections still more closely. On these occasions, the hours were passed in conversation and reading ; and by this interchange of their opinions, they thought they discovered a similarity of sentiment and feeling, which fitted them for each other. I say, thought ; because when persons have an inclination for each otlier, they are too apt to imagine a congeniality, which, in after times, they are surprised to find never existed in reality. Few people deceive themselves or each other so much as lovers do. Thinking and wishing alike in one great point, they are too apt to take it for granted that their thoughts and wishes are the same upon all others ; and the desire to please, while they are lovers, not only helps the deception, but frequently induces the adoption of each other's opinions as their own. It was in these visits, that Caroline frequently surprised Hartley by the powers of her conversation, and by the extent of her acquirements, as well as pleased him, by her proficiency at the piano. She might not execute with the precision of a professed player, or of one of those amateurs who fall little short of the excellence of professors ; but she played with a feeling which proved how much of her soul was in the occu- pation ; and sang the plaintive ballads, with which our native music abounds, in a style calculated to produce an effect, with which Miss Stephens herself might have been gratified. Her reading had been desultory, and the rudiments of that education instilled by her mother had not been regularly acted upon, after that lady's decease. Historical reading had been mixed with 192 THE OXONIANS. romance ; didactic studies had been mingled with poetry , and natural inclination leading lier much more into the world of fiction, than the dry j)ath3 of dull truth, Caroline had formed her ideas of life, more from romance, than reality. Her father, whose sole ideas of education were bounded, like a true old Oxonian, by the classics, had indulged his own inclinations by giving her an insight into the literature of the ancients ; so that, perhaps, though inferior to other women in some points, she was their superior in those which do not generally form portions of female acquirement. This kind of mixed education, and living mucli with her father, who was a man of profound erudition, had given her a strength of mind beyond her years ; but the indulgence of her poetical inclinations had added to the tenderness of her disposition, and created a heart peculiarly formed to love, and to love devotedly. These evenings were perhaps among the most pleasant, not only of those which Hartley passed with Caroline, but of those which he passed any where. It is true that eleven o'clock was too early an hour for such interviews to interfere materially, with his evening engagements ; buthe always found the mostsplendid party insipid after quitting Caroline, whom he generally set down with her friend, in his way to his routs or quadrilles. Their evening interviews were of course limited to the usual three hours ; but on Sundays they spent the whole day together. On these mornings, a carriage generally waited to receive Caroline and her friend in St. James's Square, in which Hartley accompanied them to some one of those many pleasant places within a drive from the metropolis ; always taking care to choose those, where they were not likely to encounter the pleasure-seeking cocknies. Here, they enjoyed each other's society, admired the beauties of nature ; and the only alloy to the pleasures of the day was the anticipation of parting in the evening. It was on these days that Caroline sometimes gave herself up to the full delight of her enjoyment of her lover's society ; here she reposed in full security u]ion his arm, listened to his conversation, and, if her lips did not utter the fulness of her love, Hartley delighted to read it in her looks. There were but two drawbacks upon the pleasures Hartley experienced in these interviews ; the one arising from the un- certainty of his own meaning, motives, and intentions ; and the other, from the intei-rupting presence of the eternal Fanny Thompson. She seemed to sit, with her quiet face, like an incubus upon his pleasures ; and it required all his innate po- liteness, and all his consideration for Caroline, to treat her with THE 0X0NIAK3. 198 the civility which always characterized his behaviour to her ; for he was civil to her, even at the moment that he could have thrown her out of the opera box into the pit, or out of the win- dows of his chambers into the area, for the purpose of gettincr a few moments with Caroline alone. Yet, the poor woman did her best to make herself agreeable ; she slept over a book in the Albany ; shut her eyes, if she did not sleep, in the corner of the carriage, and kept her attention perpetually fixed upon the stage at the theatres : still, there she was, and Monsieur Tonson was never a greater plague to the poor Frenchman in the Seven Dials, than his female namesake was to Hartley. It was in vain that he pleaded for her absence : in spite of the perfect confidence which she placed in the honour of her lover, Caroline was determined upon this point ; it was the salvo to her conscience ; the appui upon which she supported the apology for her interviews ; and she would not give wtty to him in this instance. It is almost impossible to describe how much these repeated meetings increased the love of Caroline for Hartley. His undi- minished and perpetual attentions ; the delicacy with which he sought to give her pleasure ; the respect which he paid her person ; and the superior conversation, and the intellectual delight which she enjoyed in her interviews with him ; all tended to render her heart more devoted than ever, to the only man in whose favour it had experienced a feeling. Tlie contrast of these hours with those spent in her unin- teresting labours, increased their effect upon her imagination ; and although their enjoyment did not diminish her industry, they certainly sometimes rendered the time devoted to her daily occupation, a little more tedious. The history of Caroline and Hartley is by no means an un- common one in this metropolis ; as, if walls had tongues as well as ears, might be pretty well substantiated by the evidence of those of the Albany, Carlton Chambers, the Temple, and other domiciles appropriated to single gentlemen. Luckily, however, or perhaps unluckily, these mural evidences are silent ; and there is no Paul Pry of an Asmodeus to lay open the various scenes which take place within their precincts ; as a warning to deter future victims from that iate to which they have been witnesses. This " luite''^ between the virtue of a milliner, and the tempta^ lions which a gentleman has it in his power to offer her, we have always considered but a very unfair contest. It is a hawk pursuing a butterfly. A woman, with but little education, and Vol. I.— 17 194 THE 0X0KIAK9. condemned by the poverty of the situation in which she is born^ to earn her bread by a laborious employment, unfortunately attracts by her beauty the attention of some sensualist of fashion. His rank in life, in his own opinion, gives him a right to make any attempt he pleases ; and he is generally secure from the resentment of brothers and cousins, even should he excite that of the object of his pursuit. Let us imagine, however, what is very natural, and perhaps too generally the case ; that the attentions of one of superior rank are not dis- agreeable ; and that a person in this situation is imprudent enough to permit their being paid ; and, in time, to grant interviews, that are solicited under professions of the heart- lessness of which the poor girl is not aware. Pleasures are procured for her, of the existence of which she was till ihis time ignorant ; presents are made ; and enjoyments offered, of a nature that her own situation in life must have for ever precluded ; her leisure moments are spent in drives, thea- tres, and various pursuits, which disgust her with her ordinary oc- cupations ; and in society which makes her look with contempt i\pon the evcry-day companions of her labour. Her ideas rise above her circumstances ; no time is left for reflection ; every thing that can gratify the senses, or accelerate the plea- sures of the passing moment are presented to her inexperience ; and she falls a prey to the designing sensualist who has marked her for his own, and hunted her over paths of flowers till his succeeding indiflerence withers them up, and leaves his victim nothing before her, but to retrace her steps through pain, humi- liation, and repentance ; or to pursue a career which must ultimately end in destruction. It is surprising, what pains are taken by a certain set of men in the seduction of women of this class of society. During the pursuit, nothing is spared ; splendid promises are made, and believed ; money is lavished in presents ; like a victim destined to be immolated upon the altar, every wish, however capricious, is gratified. But these efforts once crowned with success, how the scene changes ! There is such a run at the Opera, that there is no box to be procured — carriage horses are lame, or the cab under repair — a family is come to town, and a father may be offended at his absence — young men become suddenly filial who never thought of their parents before in their lives. In short, there is never wanting an excuse to avoid the performance of those promises which had misled ; or to realize the anticipations, which had misguided the unfor- tunate girl. If she have a virtuous mind, and a sensitive heart, THE OXONIANS. 195 the disappointment ruins her health and spirits ; and bitterness, and remorse are her portion. If, on the contrary, all virtuous dispositions have been eradicated, and it has been her vanity and levity, rather than her affections, by which she has been deluded, she vents her spleen in reproaches, and pursues the same course with others. Look into the lives of nine-tenths of those unfortunates who form decidedly the most pitiable class of society in the world ; and you may trace a history similar to that which we have attempted above. Caroline Dormer was, however, superior to any such tempta- tions as these ; and Hartley certainly was not guilty in his intentions towards her. They both felt the delight of being together, and Caroline derived her ideas of security, or rather never thought herself in danger, from the perfect confidence she placed in her lover. There was one thing neither of them ven- tured ; they never anticipated ; they reversed the Scripture phrase, and seemed to think that " sufhcient for the day was the good thereof." In this instance, at any rate, they thought with Seneca, that it was wise " to enjoy the present without any anxious dependence for the future." Hartley never thought of the future at all ; or, if he did, was totally unconscious of what it might produce ; and, when it would force itself upon Caroline's mind, it was always sweetened by some romantic hope, that circumstances would, at length, favour their union. In the mean time, their meetings became still more frequent. No opportunity of seeing each other was lost ; till poor Fanny Thompson began herself to be almost tired of her part ; and proffered a silent wish, that Mr. Hartley had some kind friend, who would take upon himself to relieve her from the todiura of the many hours she was compelled to pass with the lovers. Sometimes, the total neglect of the Sabbath duties, which this kind of life induced, gave a pang of momentary repentance to Caroline, as she recollected how differently that day was wont to be passed ; but this was banished, the lifioment she saw Hartley's beaming eye and happy coun- tenance, smiling his welcome, and his approbation at her punctuality, out of the carriage windov/ ; and was never re- membered, till the Sunday was over, and she was in bed, trying to recall every word that he uttered, and attempting to live over again the events and conversations of the day. These meetings were, however, now to be interrupted by the illness of Fanny Thompson ; who, having no ardour to defend 198 THE OXOXIANS. her from damp evenings, caught cold from a wafer excursion with the lovers, and became so ill as to be confined to her bed with a rheumatic fever. Night after night did Caroline attend her three hours by her bedside ; and physician after physician was sent by Hartley, in the hopes of effecting a speedy cure ; still Fanny's " recreant limbs" refused their of- fice. Flower of mustard, warm baths, flesh brushes, and Caroline's attentions, were useless; the obstinate fever still maintained its ground : and during this period, Caroline was resolute in her determination not to see Hartley. It was in vain he pleaded ; in vain he wrote ; in vain he waylaid her in her nightly visits to her friend ; he could obtain nothing but the privilege of a hurried walk with her fi'om Kcgrnt- street to Fanny's lodging, which was situated in some golhic street in Holborn. The many, many times that Hartley had wished the con- fidant, or, as he designated her, the duenna, at the bottom of the sea ; or seized with the gout, or the cramp, or any thing that would have prevented her from forming a trio with him- self and Caroline, now occurred to his memory by way of punishment. He had little anticipated the possibility of the time arriving, when he should devoutly pray for the health and presence of the eternal Fanny Thompson. No bulletin, how- ever, of a prince was more anxiously expected by a minister he patronised, and whose office depended upon the master's convalescence ; than the nightly and raatinal report of the progress of Fanny Thompson's disorder. As for her mother, she was quite astonished at the constant inquiries of a dashing livery servant after the health of her daughter, and almost began to suspect that all was not quite right, and to question Fanny more particularly. In the exjiectation that a few days would terminate her friend's illness, Caroline waited with patience, and adhered, without much difhcully, to her resolution to forego the plea- sure of Hartley's society, and to deny him the usual inter- views. But, as week after week passed on, without any ame- lioration of Fanny's complaint, the privation became almost too great for her to bear. She became irritable and impatient : memory painted the happy hours she had spent, and her feel- ings contrasted them wof^ully with the present. She became angry with herself — with Fanny — with the rlionmatic fever — with the whole world. In the mean time. Hartley wrote to her daily ; and in every letter became more and more urgent for a renewal of their intercourse. He recalled to her mind THE OXONIANS. 197 its innocence ; he pictured to her the past prudence of his conduct ; and was sometimes so hurried away by the impe- tuosity of his feelings, that none could have read his letters, and doubted his intentions of making Caroline his wife, although there was no explicit declaration of the kind. The hurried interviews, which he contrived in the street, only added to the irritation of both parties ; since they were passed in violent pleadings and reproaches on his part, and forced denials on hers ; till, at length, they were both worked up to such a state of mutual excitement, that they were each of them almost in as great a fever as poor Fanny Thompson herself. Caroline found her daily occupation more distasteful than ever. She became restless and uneasy ; the days seemed in- terminable, and her nights were in reality sleepless ; and Hartley's daily threatening and half-angry letters preyed upon her mind. As to Hartley, he alternately cursed the eternal fever of Fanny, and prayed for her recovery : then entreated, and then scolded Caroline ; accused|her of want of affection, of want of confidence, and scarcely ever quitted her, in their now short interviews, without leaving her in tears. At length his perseverance began to prevail. Caroline recollected the reasons she had for confidence in him — her own heart sickened at the total absence of that intercourse, which had been so delicious, and from w hich she had derived so much pleasure, and pleaded for a partial revival of it. Fanny's recovery seemed farther removed than ever, and her delicacy prevented her venturing to make another confidant. Under all these circumstances, and unable herself to bear, with any degree of equanimity, the almost total absence which she had of Late compelled herself to endure, she began to re- lent ; and at length agreed to meet her lover once more, upon the first Sunday ; upon the express stipulation, however, that it was only to be for a morning drive in his cabriolet. Some may imagine, by the difficulty that Caroline made in granting this meeting, or, indeed, at any time, in meeting Hartley alone, that she doubted either herself or her lover. But this was not the case. Caroline always looked forward, at some period or other, to be his wife ; and, should that ever be the case, she knew that prudence, under the present cir- ^ % ^W i^^.