sent itself. But a warmer, if not a more
tender sentiment than compassion soon made
itself known in his breast. If it is not always,
that men who live retired are not so sensible
of the approaches of age as those who are
constantly seeing their own and their friends'
children grow up about them, it is at least
certain that the hearts of the recluse and the
man of the world count after a different
chronology. My father offered his hand and
was accepted. Mr. Grayson died happy in
the conviction that his daughter would
henceforth live happily—his misfortunes, perhaps,
having taught him (with whatever degree of
wisdom), that happiness is only to be found
with competence. Possibly his daughter
married in the same conviction, founded on a like
belief. Her adversity, though of short duration,
had sorely tried her. I must add, in
justice to her, that she was impressed with
a due sense of the noble qualities of the man
whose name had been given to her at the
altar.

My father was not one of those men whose
strength of will is chiefly discernible in the
resolute determination with which they carry out
the promptings of their own selfishness. He
saw at once that the course of life to which
he had been so long accustomed must, for the
sake of the change he had taken upon
himself, undergo a very material alteration. His
wife was gentle, and of a yielding and an
obliging disposition; but she was young, and
fond of those pleasures from the indulgence
of which the aged seldom withdraw
themselves. She liked society, and could bring
her share of innocent vivacity into it. It
was well that a predilection so natural and
reasonable should be gratified. Accordingly,
theirs was a gay life both in town and country
for several years, the last two of which I can
very well remember. I was eight years of
age when my father died.

This was an event for which my mother
was quite unprepared; although her husband's
health had been ever variable, and his death
was not altogether sudden. She could scarcely
withstand the first shock of her bereavement.
To whom could she now look for
counsel in difficulty, or consolation in trouble?
She remembered that, during his life, she had
known neither; that his tenderness had
rendered consolation needless; and that his
indulgence would have made his counsel an
implied reproach. She was thankful for
this last suggestion; it reminded her that
she had never given him cause for
displeasure.

That was clearly proved by the will which,
in terms animated by the most entire confidence
and affection, left a considerable
portion of the testator's property at his widow's
absolute disposal. A solicitor of Battenham,
named Meredith, a friend of my late father,
was sole executor, and had been appointed my
guardian. At this gentleman's instance, I
was sent to Exeter a few months after my
father's death, to be educated privately by a
clergyman of that city, and my mother
departed for the metropolis; where her earlier
life had been passed. She went there (so she
persuaded herself ), to escape from her
sorrows: possibly, there was a latent wish to
re-enter the world, and once more to partake
its pleasures

I had been about a twelvemonth under
the care of Mr. Oatway, my tutor, when
he informed me that my return home for the
ensuing vacation, to which I had been looking
forward with boyish eagerness, was now
out of the question; for that my mother had
married a second time, and that she and her
husband had gone on a continental tour,
the duration of which was uncertain. He
added that I was to remain with him until
he received further instructions respecting
me.

Young as I was, and well knowing
Mr. Oatway's kindness of heart and his
affection for me, I could, nevertheless, detect
in his face, whilst he was making this
communication to me, a seriousness far more
grave than any sympathy which my childish
disappointment could have wrought upon it.
He disapproved this marriage. I learned
afterwards from my guardian, and as soon as
that plain-spoken man imagined I could
heartily respond to his own feelings on the
matter, that it had been universally
disapproved.

"Your mother made a sad fool of herself,
Arthur," said he, " by exchanging the
honoured name of Westwood for that of Garston.
She lost caste in the county by it, my boy,
and almost character. A woman of
seven-and-thirty, to throw herself away upon a
young fellow of five-and-twenty, because he
happened to be the nephew of a peer, and like
Pope's Curio, to have a taste for pictures,
statues, and the ruins of the past! It's
inexcusable—it's monstrous!"

I was disposed to encourage a like opinion.
I well recollect the grief which renewed
the anguish I had felt at my father's death,
and heightened it by the suspicion that my
mother's sorrow had been feigned. This
suspicion did her injustice; and I believe that
although she had found a congenial spirit
in the dilettante Mr. Garston, it was a
fear of encountering the friends and neighbours
of her late husband, at least as strong
as any love of the monuments of art and
genius to be seen there, that detained her
so many years in Italy.

I was in my eighteenth year, and still an
inmate of Mr. Oatway's house at Exeter,
when I received a letter from my mother,
enclosed in one from my guardian, which
informed me that she had at length
returned to England, and that she was
now with Mr. Garston at Westwood House,
She had been long in very bad health,
she told me, and had come back to the
home she had ever loved so well—most