LORD AND LADY HURST.

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto." VIRGIL.

IF F the satirist thinks himself obliged to record the vices and folly of the age; if malice and envy delight in drawing aside the impenetrable curtain that surrounds the mysteries ofthe human heart, and exult at finding there the thistle and the nettle, thriving on the hot-bed of passions; yet the eye of the writer who wishes well to all his fellow-creatures, of either sex, of whatsoever age and rank they may be, cannot but be pleased at the inspection of some characters stamped by the heavenly hand of virtue, and he culls there, with heart-felt gratification, the lily of innocenço and the laurel of learning, the rose

Introduction.

of love, and the holly-sprig of chastity; and of these he composes a wreath worthy of his impartial readers. To hear of virtue and worth is a pause in the mischievous storm and guilty bustle of common life, which is eagerly enjoyed by the good, whilst the wicked themselves cannot entirely turn aside their prying sight from the pages that force them to admire what they have not the good sense to imitate.

Lord Hurst is the second son of a noble Marquis, well known for his bravery in the field of battle, his skilful conduct in several diplomatic situations, and his impressive eloquence in the British Senate. His eldest brother, destined to succeed his father in the glories of his name and fortune, thought he might leave to a younger son the care of finding his way through life, sat himself down content, surrounded with his father's blazing titles, and never wished to have any splendour of his own.

Early Risings.

Lord Hurst was of a different opinion; though respectful to the utmost degree for his father's illustrious ancestry, he allowed himself to think that personal merit is still more adherent to man than the dignity of his blood, and, by all possible assiduity to the performance of his duties, he deserved the regard and love of all who had the opportunity of being acquainted with him.

At college he never permitted the sun to find him in bed; and has often declared that, if ever he said or wrote any thing worth hearing or reading, it was the result and production of those early hours: when disengaged from yesterday's bustle, and re-united more intimately to our organs by the balsamic operation of sleep, the soul is alive to the keenest perceptions, and expatiates in the wild regions of fancy and the realms of reflection as freely as the body would wander in the

1

College Education.

streets of the metropolis, at three o'clock in the morning.

The well-regulated succession of employments, the continual change of avocations, that life of abnegation, subordinate to the hour-hand of the dial, and a perpetual slave to the imperative tongue of the bell, taught him, at the university of Cambridge, a real knowledge of, and in. fused in him a decided love for, regularity.

The elementary diet of the college was congenial and wholesome to a body en. tirely subject to the lordly mind; and he carried every where that sense of temperance which had so much singularized him among his school-fellows. Aman who could understand and feel with rapture Homer and Virgil, read Milton and Tasso with exstacy, laugh and philoso. phise with Horace and Addison, could

His Appearance in the Great World.

not be busy at loo and faro, or silent at picquet and at whist. Gamblers he had classed in his common-place book among the beasts of prey, and he avoided them as such.

Fraught with these dispositions, he came within the vortex of our system, and found himself an extravagant comet among the regular irregularities of high life. He was shunned by the fop and coxcomb, dreaded by the demi-sçavant and pert scholar, but well understood by the learned, and loved by the good. Conscious of rectitude of conduct and stability of mind, he saw, like the polar star, the rest of the merry throng dance. through many a meandering zone around him, and as fixed and unmovable, concentrated himself in the narrow but not frigid circle of a few male and female friends, whom he cultivated with real pleasure and affection.