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hand-he should have been a calligrapher -but God's will be done."

The letter contained but a few lines, deeply regretting and murmuring against Miss Bertram's cruelty, who not only refused to see him, but to permit him in the most indirect manner to hear of her health and contribute to her service. But it concluded with assurances that her severity was vain, and that nothing could shake the attachment of Charles Hazlewood.

Under the active patronage of Mrs Mac-Candlish, Sampson picked up some other scholars very different indeed from Charles Hazlewood in rank-and whose lessons were proportionally unproductive. Still, however, he gained something, and it was the glory of his heart to carry it to Mr Mac-Morlan weekly, a slight peculium only subtracted, to supply his snuff-box and tobacco-pouch.

And here we must leave Kippletringan

to look after our hero, lest our readers should fear they have lost sight of him for another quarter of a century.

CHAPTER XVI.

Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her; I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter;

For when she's drest with care and cost, all tempting fine and

gay,

As men should serve a cucumber, she flings herself away. BEGGAR'S OPERA.

AFTER the death of Mr Bertram, Mannering had set out upon a short tour, proposing to return to the neighbourhood of Ellangowan before the sale of that property should take place. He went, accordingly, to Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it was in his return towards the southwestern district of Scotland, in which our scene lies, that, at a post-town about a hundred miles from Kippletringan, to which he had requested his friend, Mr Mervyn, to address his letters, he received one from that gentleman, which contained

rather unpleasing intelligence. We have assumed already the privilege of acting a secretis to this gentleman, and therefore shall present the reader with an extract from this letter.

"I beg your pardon, my dearest friend, for the pain I have given you, in forcing you to open wounds so festering as those your letter referred to. I have always heard, though erroneously perhaps, that the attentions of Mr Brown were intended for Miss Mannering. But, however that were, it could not be supposed that in your situation his boldness should escape notice and chastisement. Wise men say, that we resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence, only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us. Where the price cannot be paid, the resignation takes no place. For instance, no one supposes, that I am not entitled to defend my purse and person against a highwayman, as much as if I were a wild Indian, who

The

owns neither law nor magistracy. question of resistance, or submission, must be determined by my means and situation. But if, armed and equal in force, I submit to injustice and violence from any man, high or low, I presume it will hardly be attributed to religious or moral feeling in me, or in any one but a quaker. An aggression on my honour seems to me much the same. The insult, however trifling in itself, is one of much deeper consequence to all views of life than any wrong which can be inflicted by a depredator on the highway, and redress is much less in the power of public jurisprudence, or rather it is entirely beyond its reach. If any man chuses to rob Arthur Mervyn of the contents of his purse, if he has not means of defence, or the skill and courage to use them, the assizes at Lancaster or Carlisle will do him justice by tucking up the robber :Yet who will say I am bound to wait for this justice, and submit to being plundered in the first instance, if I have myself the

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