fited by it, and it had the effect of uniting me more than ever with one of the most rational guides and companions that a youth ever had. For by his knowledge of men and his knowledge of philosophy, Manners was a compound of Horace and Plato, to say nothing of his pastoral feelings, in those most pastoral of spots, Binfield, and Asher's Wood. The remembrance is still green with me, as the woods themselves when clothed in all their honours, and this will account for the rapture I indulged, in a former chapter, when I hailed my first approach to Windsor Forest, as the seat of my happiest acquirements.*

One effect of these country retirements was not only to relieve the waste of town occupations, but to give a greater zest to town society.

After all the fine things which retirement deserves to have said of it, particularly when sought in order to get acquainted with one's self, its advantages are best brought to perfection by a collision with other minds, which see things differently; so that by viewing them in other lights and by other experiences, the prejudice and one-sidedness of solitude may be corrected, and more chance obtained of arriving at truth.

Hence Manners, often on my quitting him to return to town, used to say,

"Go; continue to observe, to note, and to re

* See Vol. II., page 175.

member; lay in a fresh stock of materials, and come back with them, that we may examine their value, and turn them to shape."

The thought of this made the opinions and manners I met with in London of more consequence than perhaps they otherwise would have been. Here my intimacy with Granville was very valuable, as a mean of introducing me to a greater variety of acquaintances than I could have otherwise achieved; men of different complexions, the thinking as well as the careless, the theoretical, the practical, the strict, the loose; and the collision, as I have called it, of all these, by always producing some addition to our stock of ideas, seldom failed to end in good.

For this purpose, though not, as I have stated, passing rich, Granville occasionally indulged himself in a little dinner society, where, though the treat was not extravagant, it was elegant, and though the company was not numerous, it was select.

Having engaged me one day to one of these parties, he surprised me by saying,

"Among others, you will meet your old acquaintance, Sir Harry Melford."

I almost started at that name, and felt a little alarmed, from old, and not over pleasant, associations. This I told Granville, but he answered,

"Poor fellow! you need not fear. You will meet

a most altered creature. His gaiety, his goodbreeding, and that air of decorous self-possession which generally gained him favour, are gone; all changed into either a reckless tone of libertinism, or a sullenness, evidently from uneasiness of mind, which he in vain endeavours to conceal."

I felt seriously sorry for this, and asked if there was any reason for it.

"I can guess it," said Granville," and have long lamented it; for I have thought and still think him made for better things; and as, if I am right as to the cause of it, it was a fellow-feeling with you of despair as to a certain lady, I can only felicitate you upon not being involved in the same consequences."

This, as may be supposed, engaged all my interest, especially when he went on to tell me, that, soon after the final extinction of his hopes of Bertha, to recover himself, Melford went abroad, and most mistakenly sought his cure in a career of unbridled dissipation, not to say libertine pleasures, and returned after a year's absence, with a woman, beautiful, clever, and accomplished indeed, but dissolute and designing, and not even affording him the poor excuse, that she had sacrificed herself to him alone. In truth, though certainly very fascinating, she was a femme aventurière.

"You have seen her then ?" said I.

"Yes; and with all her personal attractions, so

evidently is she the cause of ruin to the originally fine mind of our friend, that I could not help hating her as much as I pitied him. That she had made him a father, by no means diminished the feeling of either one or the other. In a word, it was evident that she was making it instrumental to a design, which everybody could perceive but himself, to trepan him into marriage; and in the prospect of success in this, she had already become neglectful both of his comfort and the personal elegance to which she owed so much of her power.

"In truth," continued Granville, "soon after I first saw her, she seemed to have abandoned that minute attention to her dress and appearance which always goes for something with even an unworthy female, and actually shewed symptoms of a married slattern, who had relieved herself from the necessity of neatness. He saw it too, yet could not break his bonds. I wanted no other proof of his proximity to misery."

"This is a sad picture," said I. "Was it in his own house that you saw this? Had he gone such full length towards loss of character, as to take her home to him ? "

"Why no; what I allude to was at an inn at Wetherby, where he had put up for the night. In his way, you know, he passed the gates of Foljambe, and his change of life since he had been received there under very different colours, made

me mark the incident with more interest; for I was sent by my good uncle, who knew not this liaison dangéreuse, to invite him to the park."

"And did he comply?"

"No; and it was his mode of receiving the invitation, and evident distress upon it, that told me the real state of his mind, however he may have disguised, or attempted to disguise it since.”

"This opens a useful lesson," said I; "I should like to know the particulars.”

"It was by chance,” replied Granville, “ from a call by your friend Sandford, that Mr. Hastings knew Sir Harry was on the road, and as he had never been at Foljambe, but studiously avoided it, since his separation from Bertha, my uncle, out of his kindly nature, tried to tempt him to come and stay the night with him in preference to an inn, and with this view, as giving more weight to it, begged me to go over with the invitation.

"I did so, and shall not soon forget the scene. Though the evening had not closed in, both Sir Harry and his mistress were in slippers and robes de chambre. The lady, all dishevelled, was trying, though angrily, to quiet her brat (who was squalling unmercifully), and scolding poor Sir Harry for accusing her of having ill-managed the child. He himself looked sulky, and not the less for a dirty French nurse who took her mistress's part.