yourself by an affected contempt of others: those who do this are the real vulgar.

Having thus taken measure both of the lady of the house, and my fellow-guests, I gave my whole attention to where alone it was due, my forlorn friend, for such he seemed. After the ladies had retired, therefore, I suited myself to the seeming wishes of the young men, who preserved their distance at the other end of the table, by making no advance towards a junction with them.

"Whether from timidity or resentment, Bostock seemed to have the same feeling, nor did he at all join in their conversation, though it was entirely engrossed by their prospect of sport in his different manors, of which they seemed to think him the mere trustee for their use. We, however, did not refuse the alliance of the old gouty Lord Gayhurst, who hobbled to us, glass in hand, so that between the young honourables and our party, though that of their host, like that between Lazarus and Dives, a great gulf seemed fixed. Admirable proof of high civilization!

"The same boundary line that divided the plebeian husband and his friends from his lady wife and her relations was marked out in the drawingroom, after we had rejoined the latter at coffee. Unwilling, I suppose, to interrupt the reminiscences of former days between her husband and me, Lady Cherubina left us entirely to ourselves, and this accommodating disposition being fully shared by all her cousins, male and female, we took refuge on a sofa,

which seemed to have been left vacant for that purpose at the other end of the room.

"Meantime my brother reverend, being equally excluded, seized upon a splendid edition of the Conte Moraux, which lay open on the table, though he understood not a word of French, and devoured its fine plates for want of something to do. Bostock and I, therefore, were again left alone, as in a crowd, though in his own house.

"You would have been annoyed at all this; your blood would have been up; you would have complained of rudeness, and what not. At your age, I might have done the same; at mine, such things are too properly appreciated to give uneasiness. There was no rudeness intended, though there was most entire indifference; and what right had a rusty college tutor to expect any thing else? To be sure, as her husband's friend, her husband's guest, and in her husband's house, which house was only hers through him, she might have shewn me a little more attention; but as she shewed none at all to her husband, and all her friends followed her example, of what could I complain ?

"In short, instead of a guest, I turned myself into a philosophic spectator of what was exhibiting, and in truth, it let me into a secret, or rather, confirmed me in a secret I had long suspected, that poor Bostock, the wharfinger's son, had reaped no happiness from his marriage with an earl's daughter."

CHAPTER XXIV.

OF THE ADVICE GIVEN BY MR. FOTHERGILL TO MR. BOSTOCK, AND HOW IT WAS RELISHED.

Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To take the readiest way.

SHAKSPEARE.-Macbeth.

"THE evening," continued Fothergill's memoir, "now drew to a conclusion. The total absorption of his guests by Lady Cherubina, or by one another, to his own utter exclusion, was not less disgusting than remarkable. On one or two occasions he advanced from his sofa to the favoured circle, but soon returned, for nobody spoke to him, or if he spoke himself, nobody listened. He had no key to their mystifications ; he had not, as La Bruyère says, 'leurs usages, leur jargon, et leurs mots de rire.' They seemed to be engaged in the mysteries of the Bona Dea, and when he approached, looked upon him as profane.

"Once, when he only spoke to propose to the young lord, Lord Gayhurst's son, to shew him a particular beat the next day, where the game promised to be plentiful, he was cut short by the youthful aristocrat's coldly thanking him, but begging he would not

trouble himself, as he had himself already settled it all with the keepers.

"Bostock returned to his couch evidently hurt; and as I was shocked with this insolence, it was a relief to me, as well as to him, when we all retired for the night.

"It is inconceivable how I felt for him under these mortifications. I thought of them all night, indignant at his wife for allowing, if she did not promote them, and at himself for submitting to them as he did. I wished, nay thought, to expostulate with him; but not only I feared the thing was gone too far to be remedied, but I had no right to meddle, and I dreaded the character of a meddler.

"The next day, however, without incurring this reproach, he of his own motion opened the whole subject, and gave me ample opportunity to tell him what I had observed, and what I thought; for he very frankly asked my advice upon his case. I saw after breakfast that he endeavoured to get me alone; a thing by no means difficult, with the disposition which all his guests seemed to have to indulge us; so when he proposed to shew me a temple he had built at the end of a long shrubbery walk, no one interposed to prevent our being a tête à tête.

"In our way, Bostock fairly confessed the uneasiness of his situation, which he feared was too obvious to have escaped me. He said this in a low tone, interrupted every minute by examining whether any one was within ear-shot: but having now entered the temple and locked the door, he grew bolder, looking,

however, again up and down the walk which the windows commanded, to see that the coast was clear. He then began his meditated confidence pretty nearly as follows::

،، Yes, my good friend, you must have seen, without any confession of mine, that I am in the happy state of not being master of my own house. As for the company by whom I am inundated and devoured, they are out of the question; I am scarcely recognised by them as more, if so much, as Lady Cherubina's major domo ; and as to being her husband, it seems out of their thoughts, as well it may, since it never seems to be in those of Lady Cherubina herself. These guests, then, (often twenty in number), being first, second, or third cousins, or very intimate and dear friends of my lady, think they do me honour enough in passing the shooting season, or riding my horses for me after the hounds; for which they do allow me to sit at the head of my own table, though they scarcely think me worth speaking to when there. Yet while they eat my venison and drink my claret, they wonder that Lady Cherubina, with her fortune (her fortune, mind you), should not have a more regular supply of turtle, such as Sir John Pamper always has in Leicestershire.

"All this time to address me as master of the house, or to suppose we have any common topics of conversation, never seems to enter their contemplation.

6

"So much for my guests,' continued he, which I should not much mind, but that their example contaminates even my servants, none of whom, except the helpers in the stables, and what they call the odd