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my friend, and prepared immediately for my return to London.

Three weeks afterwards, the papers informed me that Sir Simeon Saunter was married to Miss Mary Quickly, sister of Mounteney Quickly, Esq., the eminent solicitor of Ryegate.

Poor fellow! His happiness, if he had any with her, did not last, for a twelvemonth afterwards he was carried off by a brain fever, bequeathing, by a will made by the eminent solicitor, his brother-in-law, his fortune to his widow, to the exclusion of his heir-atlaw, and his library to me; the latter, I believe, not without considerable opposition on the part of both the widow and her brother.

The foregoing sketch, drawn from the life, went far, as I have said, to recover me from the sort of trance of indolence into which I had fallen, and which, had it continued, would, as Fothergill prognosticated, have proved my ruin.

At this epoch, therefore, I was more obliged to my kind adviser than ever, for it was his leniency and skill combined that alone restored me to the possession of myself. At first I was only amused by the memoirs of Sir Simeon. I laughed and passed on. But by degrees I meditated; and found that, by prompting reflection, memoirs may be made far different from a mere chronicle of facts. Sir Simeon, indeed, from Fothergill's account of him (though offered to me as a mere narrative), became a beacon, a lesson, a handwriting on the wall; in fact, a scarecrow; and when

ever I found indolence or indifference undermining resolution, he glared upon me, and I returned to study.

Much, however, was also owing to recovered health and spirits, and I in secret boasted to myself that the infliction I had suffered was the last tribute I should pay to the influence of Bertha.

The romance of the "Lover's Hope” fell, as it deserved, into oblivion, and perhaps no small help to me in the affair arose from the total absence of Granville. That feeder of flame, even when most intent on extinguishing it, returned not to Oxford for many months, and in the interval never wrote to me.

He had joined a gay party at Paris, of which the centre, ornament, and illustration, as he afterwards told me, was that Lady Hungerford whose bust I had observed in Bertha's garden-room. Here he passed the whole winter.

If Bertha had forgotten me, she at least had no opportunity of discovering that she herself was remembered. It is true, little remembrances of her kindness would too often flit across, so as almost to unman me; but the remembrance, also, that this kindness was nothing more than good-will, went far to arm me against her; and when I repeated, as I did, at least once a day, the emphatic words, " Mr. De Clifford, why is this? You must not breathe a syllable in this style; surely I have given you no reason to think I expect it"-all this operated upon me like a goading stimulant, whenever I felt my courage beginning to droop.

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Meantime, I was not ill pleased to think, from Granville's absence, that the family at the Park had not the means of knowing the influence they had so long retained over me. How far I may have indulged myself sometimes in thinking that they might wish this were otherwise, and desire to know at least what was become of me, I will not inquire.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE FRESH AND GREATER OBJECTS WHICH MY TUTOR SET BEFORE ME, AND MY EAGERNESS TO PURSUE THEM.

As the world were now but to begin.-SHAKSPEARE.—Hamlet.

THUS, in fact, passed a very long period of my early academical life, varied with little scenes, which have become favourites in my recollections. My progress to recovery was not only owing to my dedication of myself to letters, but the recovery advancing made my progress in letters still greater. In this, Fothergill never failed me, and opened, as I grew ripe for it, much wider sources of information than was confined to what is called learning. For a man who was to live in the world, which he always bade me recollect I was to do, there were two sciences, he said, worth all the rest-Modern History and Modern Manners-by which last he meant the morals of men.

It was surprising how much a mere Cumberland boor (as he with some affectation called himself) knew of the first of these. Of the last, I have given many specimens. In the first, however, he had profited by his intimacy with Lord Castleton, who, highly gifted,

and living himself on a sea of politics, was necessarily devoted to, and well understood, those subjects; and what he knew he had not failed to communicate to Fothergill, and Fothergill to me.

"Who knows," said my tutor, "but if you accomplish yourself in this interesting knowledge, you may one day be acquainted with this excellent and able nobleman, and bring it more to profit in the world than I did."

The thought struck instantaneously and deeply into my mind, and, without having any definite ideas upon it, it sharpened my industry, so that I acquired a very decent modicum of modern memoirs, politics, and diplomacy.

But even superior to this, in Fothergill's mind, was the inexhaustible, the never-ending, still beginning subject of human nature. This, however," he said, "you can never acquire with closed doors."

He was here indeed, or would have been, a favourite disciple of Johnson, and would have walked Fleetstreet and the Strand with as much success as the sage. In pursuance of this, he laid before me a plan for the long vacations (especially as my cure of Bertha advanced) which was charming to my fancy.

See the world in all

"Go," said he, "pay your duty to your father and mother; shew and gladden them with your improvements; but do not stay too long. "Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits.' the shapes of it you can master. grand seigneur; you cannot afford a post-chaise; and if you could, it would be the readiest way to de

You cannot do it en

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