Halden addressed himself to me, as having been the means of making his lord, and his whole house-hold, happy. Let the joy be moderate, Halden, said I: the poor woman might, possibly, have num-bered among her well-wishers (she could not have disobliged every body) some of those, who now will be most forward to load her with obloquy. You must not make her too considerable: it is best for my lord, as well as for those who loved her not, to forget there ever was such a woman; except to avoid her faults, and to imitate her in what was commendable. She boasts of her honesty and management: my lord charges her not with infidelity of any kind.

Halden bowed, and withdrew.

My lord swore, by his soul, that I had not my good name for nothing. Blessed, said he, be the name of the Grandisons! This last plaudit gratified my pride [I need not tell my Dr. Bartlett, that I have pride]; the more gratified it, as Lord W.‘s animosity to my father made him not pleased with his name.

I did not think, when my lord began his story to me, that I should so soon have brought about a sepa-ration of guilt from guilt: but their mutual disgusts had prepared the way; resentment and pride, min-gled with avarice on one side, and self-interested — ness, founded (reasonably) on a stipulation made, and not complied with, on the other; were all that hindered it from taking place as from themselves. A mediator had nothing then to do, but to advise an act of justice, and so to gild it by a precedent of disinterestedness in himself, as should excite an emulation in a proud spirit, which, if not then, must, when passion had subsided, tiave arisen, to make all end as it ought.

When I found my lord’s joy a little moderated, I drew my chair near him. Well, my lord, and now as to your hints of marriage

Blessed God! Why, nephew, you overUtrn me with your generosity. Are you not my next of kin? And can you give your consent, were I to ask it, that I should marry?

I give you not only my consent, as you conde-scendingly phrase it, but my advice, to marry.

Good God! I could not in the like case, do thus. But, nephiew, I am not a young man.

The more need of a prudent, a discreet, a tender assistant. Your lordship hinted, that you liked not men-servants about your person, in your illness. You are often indisposed with the gout: servants will not always be servants, when they find themselves of use. Infirmity requires indulgence: in the very nature of the word and thing, indulgence cannot exist with servility, between man and wife it may: the same interest unites them. Mutual confidence! who can enough value the joy, the tranquillity at least, that results from mutual confidence? A man gives his own consequence to the woman he marries; i2