tentionally, through his despair, driven him from the paths of virtue, she ought, and will, I have no doubt, do what she can to smooth his return to it."

Granville, after some hesitation, from a fear of exposing his friend, withdrew his objection to the measure so far, that the purport of the letter, though not actually the letter itself, should be laid before Bertha and Mr. Hastings, who both gave Lady Hungerford all the assurances she anticipated, of their desire to second her benevolent object. But the letter itself, and the discussion which it prompted, excited much feeling, and many reminiscences, and hence the effect which, as I have related, so surprised and so interested me in the demeanor and countenance of both Bertha and Lady Hungerford.

I wish I could conclude this episode with satisfaction; but this the event forbids. Granville, after he got stationary, communicated to Sir Harry all the good wishes of both his old friends, and their readiness to allow him to renew his former habits with them. He was penetrated, and deeply grateful, but said he dared not profit oy it while his entanglement with Hortense continued. He would not shock them, he said, by bringing his unworthy person into their presence.

Meantime, all Granville's endeavors to procure the separation so much desired between him and his mistress failed. An immense settlement did not tempt her; she was about to make him a third time a father, and percieved by its effect upon him what advantage it gave her towards her object. In short, to use his own emphatic words, it plunged him deeper and deeper in the filth of his situation, by clogging more and more his attempts to extricate himself from it; so that the morals of English society (after all that has been said of our corruptions) not permitting a man with his inconvenient feelings of propriety to show himself here, he fairly renounced his country, and all his brilliant advantages in it, and settled himself at Paris.

There, a complete alien, he found himself without power to turn either his talents or fortune to account abroad, or to obtain peace or comfort from his ill-selected companion at home. On the contrary, his pledges of guilty intercourse (for he would not call it pleasure) increasing, he for their sakes consented, at forty, to marry Hortense, who was as old

as himself, then deprived of all personal attractions, and wholly without power to compensate the loss by any mental endowments.

Their life, therefore, may be imagined. Every thing like attachment having long been over-he despising her, and she never having loved him-their union was a perpetual bickering, and she would now have gladly consented to a separation, provided he would have allowed the children to follow her, which he refused.

But even these, whose education and welfare were the only interests he had left, failed to give him what he thought, as a father he had a right to expect. Not because they had any particular faults of character; on the contrary, they were amiable; but unfortunately this very circumstance made his regrets more poignant. They are bastards," said he, "and not presentable in the world; they are not even pledges of love, and therefore give no pleasure at home; their very merits reproach me the more, for having deprived them of their natural rights."

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In this state of mortification he dragged on many years, after being delivered by death from the millstone which had sunk him. But his estates being entailed, he could make no provision for his numerous progeny, except by savings, which he pushed to such an extreme of parsimony, that only with the character of a miser, and a sordid exterior, this once gay, liberal, and accomplished man returned to the hall of his ancestors; where, from long absence, and his misspent life, he found nothing in the respect of friends or neighbors to welcome him home, and looked in vain to the approbation of his own conscience to cheer and console him in his age.

A thousand blushing apparitions

To start into her face; a thousand innocent shames,
In angel whiteness bear away those blushes.

Idem.

THE chronology of facts as they arose, and the importance of the catastrophe of Sir Harry Melford, alone induced me to interrupt the chain of cheerful and happy events which now occupy these memoirs. I with pleasure return, to record the ceremony which united Granville and Lady Hungerford.

From the taste and temper of the parties, and Mr. Hastings' infirm state of health, the wedding and wedding-day of the beloved friends passed rather in happy calm than mirthful exaltation. Though the pattern of elegance and queen of fashion, as I have often called her, Lady Hungerford was attired at the ceremony in the simplicity almost of a village maiden. No pompous ornaments; no laced veils flowing from head to foot, and enveloping her graceful limbs; not even one of her dazzling jewelled bracelets, to outshine and put out of countenance the modest wedding ring, which Granville placed upon her finger. A gown of plain white silk, and a flower in her dark glossy hair, were all the display she chose to make. Her maid, Mrs. Barbara, was by far the most distinguished figure of the two; as (to follow her example) the faithful Margaret was superior to her young mistress, who, as bride's maid, was arrayed in equal simplicity with her friend.

But exclusive of the temper of mind in which those most concerned found themselves, there were no great family feelings. or prospects aroused by the event. Granville was no rich heir, to call upon an extended tenantry or neighbourhood of friends to compliment him with joy and jollity on his entering

on his new estate; and his accomplished and noble wife had been too much used to pomp and festivity not to wish to give play to her natural taste and disposition, which, without hating or despising granduer, were made for something better. She therefore, with her whole heart, preferred the quiet but sincere felicitations of her most beloved friend and her honourable father, to any exuberant display that could be made in compliment to her nuptials. She, however, herself made up for the want of stir and excitement in the adjoining hamlets, by a handsome gift of money, to be distributed to the poorer classes at the discretion of Bertha; and but for the joy occasioned by this, the church bells, and an ample dinner given by Mr. Hastings to his household, no one could have divined that a peeress had been married that morning to an ambassador of the state.

Strange to say, part of the honey-moon was to be kept in Berkeley Square, owing to the necessity for Granville's preparing for his mission abroad, and they planned, on leaving the church door, to pass some days on the road, in seeing the Dukeries, the wonders of the peak, and the witchery of Warwick Castle. But the great event which I have just recorded, involving so much of the future happiness of one so dear to them both, altered (fortunately for us) the whole of this plan of pleasure, which they generously gave up, that Lady Hungerford might not quit her friend when she most wanted her. The consequence was, that four, or ought I not to say five, happier people never were assembled than the Foljambe mansion saw under its roof during the week succeeding the nuptials.

It may be guessed how that week was passed by us all; but to me the interests were intense, and not the less because it was then that I learned from the lips of Bertha herself the whole of her story with Prince Adolphus, and was allowed to peruse those interesting letters which so well elucidated it.

An interest still greater was occasioned by Lady Hungerford. For that pattern of a friend having, as she said, been so instrumental in producing the present state of things, declared she could not leave her work incomplete, particularly as she was about to leave us all, perhaps for years. She was, therefore, eager to see things, so happily in train, brought to a still happier conclusion; and as she was all-powerful with

Mr. Hastings, as well as with Bertha, she did not scruple to propose, and urge to both, with all her talents for persuasion, that a day should be named.

To this the only answer returned by Bertha was by blushes, which Titian would have blessed his good fortune could he have seen; and on the part of Mr. Hastings there was no delay desired except what was in strict reason necessary from settlements, not required, but offered. For as well from my own wishes, as to shorten all delays, I made quick work of it, by desiring every thing I possessed in the world, together with every thing that Bertha might hereafter possess, might not only form her dower, but be hers for ever.

To this, the justice of Mr. Hastings made a large exception, in regard to the estates of Bardolfe and the Grange, which he insisted should be conveyed to my family in default of progeny. And thus days and weeks were spared in this most important matter.

During the interval, I cannot describe the felicity, from their pleasing employments, of every one of the inmates of Foljambe; the visions of happiness of the upper ranks, and the busy importance of the lower, down to the lowest, especially the females. For, from the looks and bustle of even the house and kitchen maids, not to mention the village laundresses, (who only felt a sort of reflected consequence from the hall), you might detect that some event, of a solemn and dignified character, affecting the peace and prosperity of the whole of this little community, was in preparation.

Here the Mesdames Margaret and Barbara naturally took the lead, and enterprises of great pith and moment, scilicet, certain daily expeditions to the milliners and mercers at York, -for which purpose, to their no small gratification, I lent them my post-chaise,-engaged the whole force of their genius in the service of their respective mistresses.

For my own part, the happy faces that surrounded me, the pleasure of Mr. Hastings, shewn in a profusion of paternal caresses to the darling and stay of his life, and the joy of our two admirable friends, would have made my heart dilate with pleasure, had there been no other cause for it. But Bertha ! my long-loved, long-despaired-of Bertha, now my betrothed as well as beloved! how can I tell the impressions of delight which the mere sight of her speaking animation inspired? 24*

VOL. III.