my young lady's favorite lap-dog. I drew near unperceived, and pinched its ears in the bitterness of my soul; the creature howled, and ran to its mistress. She did not suspect the author of its misfortune, but she bewailed it in the most pathetic terms; and, kissing its lips, laid it gently on her lap, and covered it with a cambric handkerchief. I sat in my old friend's seat; I heard the roar of mirth and gaiety around me; poor Ben Silton; I gave thee a tear then; accept of one cordial drop that falls to thy memory now. "Let them rub it off by travel."-Why, it is true, said I, that will go far; but then it will often happen, that in the velocity of a modern tour, and amidst the materials through which it is commonly made, the friction is so violent, that not only the rust, but the metal too, will be lost in the progress. Give me leave to correct the expression of your metaphor said Mr. Silton. That is not always rust which is acquired by the inactivity of the body on which it preys; such, perhaps, is the case with me, though indeed I was never cleared from my youth; but (taking it in its first stage) it is rather an incrustation, which Nature has given for purposes of the greatest wisdom. You are right, I returned; and sometimes, like certain precious fossils, there may be hid under it gems of the purest brilliancy. Nay, farther, continued Mr. Silton, there are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove. From the incidents I have already related, I imagine it will be concluded, that Harley was of the latter species of bashful animals; at least, if Mr. Silton's principle be just, it may be argued on this side; for the gradation of the first mentioned sort, it is certain, he never attained. Some part of his external appearance was modelled from the company of those gentlemen, whom the antiquity of a family, now possessed of bare two hundred and fifty pounds a year, entitled its representative to approach. These indeed were not many; great part of the property in his neighborhood being in the hands of merchants, who had got rich by their lawful calling abroad, and the sons of stewards, who had got rich by their lawful calling at home: persons so perfectly versed in the ceremonial of thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, (whose degrees of precedency are plainly demonstrable from the first page of the Complete Accomptant, or Young Man's best Pocket Companion,) that a bow at church from them, to such a man as Harley, would have made the parsor look back into his sermon for some precept of Christian humility. CHAPTER XII. Of Worldly Interests. THERE are certain interests which the world supposes every man to have, and which therefore are properly enough termed worldly; but the world is apt to make an erroneous estimate. Ignorant of the dispositions which constitute our happiness or misery, it brings to an undistinguished scale the means of the one, as connected with power, wealth, or grandeur, and of the other with their contraries. Philosophers and poets have often protested against this decision; but their arguments have been despised as declamatory, or ridiculed as romantic. There are never wanting to a young man some grave and prudent friends to set him right in this particular, if he need it; to watch his ideas as they arise, and point them to those objects which a wise man should never forget. Harley did not want for some monitors of this sort. He was frequently told of men, whose fortunes enabled them to command all the luxuries of life, whose fortunes were of their own acquirement; his envy was excited by a description of their happiness, and his emulation by a recital of the means which had procured it. Harley was apt to hear those lectures with indifference; nay, sometimes they got the better of his temper; and as the instances were not always amiable, provoked, on his part, some reflections, which I am persuaded his good nature would else have avoided. Indeed, I have observed one ingredient, somewhat necessary in a man's composition towards happiness, which people of feeling would do well to acquire,—a certain respect for the follies of mankind; for there are so many fools, whom the opinion of the world entitles to regard, whom accident has placed in heights of which they are unworthy, that he who cannot restrain his contempt or indignation at the sight, will be too often quarrelling with the diposal of things to relish that share which is allotted to himself. I do not mean, however, to insinuate this to have been the case with Harley; on the contrary, if we might rely on his own testimony, the conceptions he had of pomp and grandeur served to endear the state which Providence had assigned him. He lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, as I have already related, when he was a boy. The good man, from a fear of offending, as well as from a regard to his son, had named him a variety of guardians; one consequence of which was, that they seldom met at all to consider the affairs of their ward; and when they did meet, their opinions were so opposite, that the only possible method of conciliation was, the mediatory power of a dinner and a bottle, which commonly interrupted, not ended, the dispute; and after that interruption ceased, left the consulting parties in a condition not very proper for adjusting it. His education, therefore, had been but indifferently attended to; and, after being taken from a country school, at which he had been boarded, the young gentleman was suffered to be his own master in the subsequent branches of literature, with some assistance from the parson of the parish, in languages and philosophy, and from the exciseman, in arithmetic and book-keeping. One of his guardians, indeed, who, in his youth, had been an inhabitant of the Temple, set him to read Coke upon Lyttleton; a book which is very properly put into the hands of beginners in that science, as its sim plicity is accommodated to their understandings, and its size to their inclination. He profited but little by the perusal; but it was not without its use in the family; for his maiden aunt applied it commonly to the laudable purpose of pressing her rebellious linens to the folds she had allotted them. There were particularly two ways of increasing his fortune, which might have occurred to people of less foresight than the counsellors we have mentioned. One of these was, the prospect of his succeeding to an old lady, a distant relation, who was known to be possessed of a very large sum in the stocks; but in this their hopes were disappointed; for the young man was so untoward in his disposition, that, notwithstanding the instructions he daily received, his visits rather tended to alienate than gain the good-will of his kinswoman. He sometimes looked grave when the old lady told the jokes of her youth: he often refused to eat when she pressed him, and was seldom or never provided with sugar-candy or liquorice when she was seized with a fit of coughing; nay, he had once the rudeness to fall asleep, while she was describing the composition and virtues of her favorite cholic-water. In short, he accommodated himself so ill to her humor, that she died, and did not leave him a farthing. The other method pointed out to him was, an endeavor to get a lease of some crown-lands, which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate. This, it was imagined, might be easily procured as the crown did not draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with very considerable profit to himself; and the then lessee had rendered himself so obnoxious to the ministry, by the disposal of his vote at an election, that he could not expect a renewal. This, however, needed some interest with the great, which Harley or his father never possessed. His neighbor, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously offered his assistance to accomplish it. He told him, that though he had long been a stranger to courtiers, yet he believed there were some of them who might pay regard to his recommendation; and that, if he thought it worth the while to take a London journey upon the business, he would furnish him with a letter of introduction to a baronet of his acquaintance, who had a great deal to say with the first Lord of the Treasury. When his friends heard of this offer, they pressed him with the utmost earnestness to accept of it. They did not fail to enumerate the many advantages which a certain degree of spirit and assurance gives a man who would make a figure in the world; they repeated their instances of good fortune in others, ascribed them all to a happy forwardness of disposition; and made so copious a recital of the disadvantages which attended the opposite weakness, that a stranger who had heard them would have been led to imagine, that in the British code there was some disqualifying statute against any citizen who should be convicted of-modesty. Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, yet could not resist the torrent of motives that assaulted him; and as he needed but little preparation for his journey, a day, not very distant, was fixed for his departure. CHAPTER XIII. The Man of Feeling in Love. THE day before that on which he set out, he went to take leave of Mr. Walton.- -We would conceal nothing; there was another person of the family to whom also the visit was intended on whose account, perhaps, there were some tenderer feelings in the bosom of Harley, than his gratitude for the friendly notice of that gentleman (though he was seldom deficient in that virtue) could inspire. Mr. Walton had a daughter, and such a daughter! we will attempt some description of her by and by. Harley's notions of the beautiful, were not always to be defined nor indeed such as the world would always assent to, though we could define them. A blush, a phrase of affability to an inferior, a tear at a moving tale, were to him, like the cestus of Cytherea, unequalled in conferring beauty. For all these, Miss Walton was remarkable; but as these, like the abovementioned cestus. are perhaps still more powerful, when the wearer is possessed of some degree of beauty, commonly so called; it happened, that from this cause they had more than usual power in the person of that young lady. She was now arrived at that period of life which takes, or is supposed to take, from the flippancy of girlhood those spritlinesses with which some good-natured old maids oblige the world at threescore. She had been ushered into life (as that word is used in the dialect of St. James's) at seventeen, her father being then in Parliament, and living in London. At seventeen, therefore, she had been a universal toast; her health, now she was four-and-twenty, was only drank by those who new her face at least. Her complexion was mellowed into a paleness, which certainly took from her beauty; but agreed, at least Harley used to say so, with the pensive softness of her mind. Her eyes were of that gentle hazel color which is rather mild than piercing; and, except when they were lighted up by good humor, which was frequently the case, were supposed by the fine gentlemen to want fire. Her air and manner were elegant in the highest degree, and were as sure of commanding respect, as their mistress was far from demanding it. Her voice was inexpressibly soft; it was according to that incomparable simile of Otway's, "like the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains. When all his little flock's at feed before him." The effect it had upon Harley, himself used to paint ridiculously enough; and ascribed it to powers which few believed, and nobody cared for. Her conversation was always cheerful, but rarely witty; and, without the smallest affectation of learning, had as much sentiment in it as would have puzzled a Turk, upon his principles of female materialism, to account for. Her beneficence was unbounded; indeed, the natural tenderness of her heart might have been argued, by the frigidity of a casuist, as detracting from her virtue in this respect, for her humanity was a feeling, not a principle; but minds like Harley's are not very apt to make this distinction, and generally give our virtue credit for all that benevolence which is instinctive in our nature. As her father had for some years retired to the country, Harley had frequent opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some time merely with that respect and admiration which her appearance seemed to demand, and the opinion of others conferred upon her. From this cause, perhaps, and from that extreme sensibility of which we have taken frequent notice, Harley was remarkably silent in her presence. He heard her |