past through a fiery ordeal, hot, perhaps, as the burning ploughshares of old."

In answer to this, I immediately related to him all that had passed with Hastings.

66 Well," said he, "as sooner or later this must have happened, perhaps you are to be felicitated that it has happened so soon. You are mournful, I see, and I should be sorry if you were not. The time will come when your mourning may be turned into joy; for what has happened will deliver you from the fear of that character, the very suspicion of which caused you so much and such just resentment. You may not sleep better for it to night, but you will to-morrow; you will tread lighter during the next day, and you will become more like your favourite emblem there (and he pointed to Maudlin Tower), seemingly rejoicing, as you said, in its own simplicity."

Moody as I was, I was alive to this poetry of my tutor, for such I thought it; and yet I could not help thinking, too, that something like a noble mind was overthrown in Hastings.

"There was honour, I allow," said Fothergill, "in his seeking to exculpate himself as he did, from the charge of having slandered you to Lord Albany; but he has changed towards you, nevertheless, changed for no cause but being corrupted by the tinselled prosperity he enjoys. Whatever he did, he does not now, I was going to say, love you as he does Lord Albany; but I will not profane the term. For it is not Albany that he loves, but his gay position in the world; his title, his fortune, already his own, crowning him in his youth; add to this the éclat of his fashion, so dazzling to old as well as young, in this place; and last, though not least, perhaps his sister."

"His sister ?"

"Yes! for is not Lady Charlotte among women, what he is among men ? and high and rich as are the Hastings, would not a Lady Charlotte among them be a sort of godsend ?"

Seeing I looked surprised, he added, “I do not mean that they might not pretend to her alliance, but still so propitious a connexion would be valued and courted, and therefore a godsend.”

The thought made me tremble, for it reminded me poignantly of my own comparative littleness in my dreams of Bertha.

"All these things conjoined," proceeded my tutor, "form, as you see, a train of inducements to this intimacy with the marquess, and yet contain no one real ingredient of that personal merit which makes a man valuable, or loveable for his own sake; and if he has no more than these, whole days with him, equal not in true and rational happiness one hour of that placid and self-approving time, when you opened your hearts to each other at Sedbergh."

The thought affected me, and seeing me moved by the recollection, Fothergill changed his hand, and checked the impression, by adding, "Yet you are the self-same person (only improved in knowledge) as you were at the school-house. Were Hastings so too, why should he slight you for a man who, though known enough here, is only known for the most common-place qualities that belong to youth-feats of activity and noisy merriment; while for genius, scholarship, or any one feature of mental merit, we look in vain."

I thought this no more than true, and not the less when he added,

"You see in this, I do not reason from the silly prejudices of many who abuse their superiors, merely because they are such, and deny merit to all ranks above

them, from mere envy. The supposition is as false as it is mean, and arises only from the selfishness of a vulgar mind. Nevertheless, as greatness may spoil those who possess it, they are to be tried as well as others before they are either trusted or condemned; and you have tried Hastings. You have not avoided him from a cowardly fear of finding him what you had no right to suppose, without proof. You have, indeed, each thrown the other off, but he from supercilious caprice, you from manly independence. Which has the most reason to be satisfied ?"

This appeared oracular as to Foljambe, but alas ! it touched not the case of Bertha. She had never been spoiled. She, I was assured (I stopt not to inquire how), was always the same, and so I told Fothergill, who said with some dryness, there could not possibly be a doubt of it, especially as I had such good proof for my assertions; "for you, of course," observed he, still more sarcastically, "have made yourself well acquainted with all her thoughts, feelings, and conversations; her companions, likings, and dislikings; in short, all her operations, from the moment you left her to this present time."

I had no answer to make to this raillery; indeed, I began to feel, and I dare say to look, a little foolish, for which I was not spared by my unmerciful preceptor.

your

"What," said he, "though you have never professed admiration, never assured her of your constancy-she knows it all, no doubt, by intuition-knows that you

'Fade away and wither in your bloom;

That you forget to sleep, and loath your food,

And youth, and health, and books are joyless to you ;' While you, on your part, are equally certain that your merit in one little visit, made an impression never to be

forgotten on her virgin heart. Upon my word, this Love is an admirable conjuror, and fools us passing well."

I now began to think Fothergill a tyrant, and repented me that I had ever made him my confidant, at least as to Bertha; and as to her brother, being put upon my mettle, I asked him with some spleen, whether in his philosophy as to unequal friendships, he thought that no friendship could exist except between persons born in the same rank, possessing the same fortunes, and even the same powers of mind?

"It is a nice question," said he, "and cannot be answered, except with modifications and explanations, which might lead us very far. To possess exactly the same rank and fortune, is certainly not necessary, though that there should be no great disparity of class or endowments, I think is. Yet were I pressed for a categorical reply, summed up in one general rule, subject of course to exceptions, I should answer you in the affirmative. For, as far as I could ever read in tale or history, the life and soul of friendship is equality. No doubt an equality of class, with equal endowments and perfect independence, may reduce the inequality of fortune, and even of power. A prince is a prince, though all princes are not equal; and God forbid that a gentleman less rich than another, should not be the companion and friend of a gentleman. But even here, if the stations are widely different; if the parties do not class well as to connexions; if the superior looks down upon those of the inferior, though he be glad to tolerate him for himself, there is an anomaly leading to danger. In this I speak not of those intimacies which often carry men through the world together, the basis of which is mutual usefulness. These are more properly alliances than friendships,

and such an alliance you might have had with Hastings, if nothing had intervened to mar it. But have a care, that even here your independence might not find itself wrecked. Recollect the fable of the mouse, who having done a good turn to the lion, demanded his daughter in marriage as his reward, which was granted; but just as the royal bride was stepping into bed, she accidentally trod upon her tiny husband, and crushed him to death."

I was still moody under this banter, for I own I thought of Bertha, and did not reply; so he proceeded. "You must not be offended at this illustration, or think it designed to damp other hopes or exertions which may really lead to honour. It is to guard them so as to prevent their ending in disappointment, that I tell you to what you may be exposed The beauty, the delight, the balm of friendship, is the perfect freedom of intercourse; the unrestrained exhibition of mind one to another. If there is dependence as well as inequality, these are out of the question. Sultan Amurath, in the midst of his rapture with a favourite wife, who he thought really loved him, frightened love away for ever by merely saying in jest, How easily now I could cut this little head off which I am so fond off! From that moment love fled from the sultana, and she was left a mere lifeless automaton,' instead of a warm and affectionate mistress. A philosopher, too, as you know, once said, he could not argue with a man who was master of twenty legions, whatever he might be of the argument. So with a patron,—which, depend upon it, the superior of two friends will for the most part be, whatever the inferior may think of it. If the inferior, full of independence, sets himself up to prove his equality, ten to one but he grows oppressive, or what is called a bore, and