F However, I will do the best I can for you. You shall go and break the matter to her first, and by the time that I may suppose that your rhetoric has prevailed on her to listen to reason, I will step in to reinforce your arguments. SIR JOHN. I will fly to her immediately: you promise me your assistance? STERL. I do. SIR JOHN. Ten thousand thanks for it! and now success attend me ! STERL Harkee, Sir John! -Not a word of the thirty thousand to my sister, Sir John. My STERL. But Sir John! one thing more. Lord must know nothing of this stroke of friendship between us. SIR JOHN. Not for the world. Let me alone! let me alone. STERL. And when every thing is agreed, we must ive each other a bond to be held fast to the bargain. SIR JOHN. To be sure. A bond by all means! a bond or whatever you please. (Exit.) STERL. I should have thought of more conditions, he is in a humour to give me any thing. Why, what mere children are your fellows of quality ; that cry for a play-thing one minute, and throw it by the next! as changeable as the weather, and as un certain as the stocks. Special fellows to drive a bargain! and yet they are to take care of the interest of the nation truly Here 'does this whirligig man of fashion offer to give up thirty thousand pounds in hard money. with as much indifference as if it was a China orange. By this mortgage, i shall have hold on his l'eira Firna! and if he wants more money, as he certainly will, let him have children by my daughter or no, I shall have his whole estate in a net for the benefit of my family Well; thus it is, that the children of citizens, who have acquired acquired fortunes, prove persons of fashion; and thus it is, that persons of fashion, who have ruined their fortunes, reduce the next generation to cits. CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE. --0000 CHAP. VII. BELCOUR AND STOCKWELL. STOCK. MR. Belcour, I am rejoiced to see you; you are welcome to England. BEL. I thank you heartily, good Mr. Stockwell; you and I have long conversed at a distance; now we are met, and the pleasure this meeting gives me, amply compensates for the perils I have run through in accomplishing it. STOCK. What perils, Mr. Belcour? I would not have thought you would have met a bad passage at this time o'year. BEL. Nor did we courier like, we came pósting to your shores upon the pinions of the swiftest gales that ever blew; it is upon English ground all my difficulties have arisen; it is the passage from the river-side I complain of. STOCK. Ay, indeed! What obstructions can you have met with between this and the river side? BEL. Innumerable! Your town's as full of defiles as the island of Corsica.; and, I believe, they are as obstinately defended; so much hurry, bustle and confusion on your quays; so many sugar-casks, porter buts, and common council men, in your streets; that unless a man marched with artillery in his front, it is more than the labour of a Hercules can effect to make any tolerable way through your town. ed. STOCK. I am sorry you have been so incommod. BEL. Why, faith, it was all my own fault; ac. customed to a land of slaves, and out of patience with the whole tribe of custom-house extortioners, boat-men, boat-men, tide-waiters, and water-bailiffs, that be set me on all sides, worse than a swarm of musque. tres, I proceeded a little too roughly to brush them away with my rattan; the sturdy rogues took this in dudgeon, and beginning to rebel, the mob chose different sides, and a furious scuffle ensued; in the course of which, my person and apparel suffered so much, that I was obliged to step into the first tavern to refit, before I could make my approaches in any decent trim. STOCK. Well, Mr. Belcour, it is a rough sample... you have had of my countrymen's spirit; but I trust you will not think the worse of them for it. BEL. Not at all, not at all; I like them the bet ter; were I only a visitor, I might, perhaps, wish them a little more tractable; but as a-fellow subject, and a sharer in their freedom, 1 applaud their spirit, though I feel the effect of it in every bone in my skin. Well, Mr. Stockwell, for the first time in my life, here am I in England; at the fountainhead of pleasure, in the land of beauty, of aris, and elegancies. My happy stars have given me a good estate, and the conspiring winds have blown me hither to spend it.. STOCK. To use it, not to waste it, I should hope; to treat it, Mr. Belcour not as a vașsal, over whom you have a wanton despotic power, but as a subject, which you are bound to govern with a temperate and restrained authority. BEL. True, Sir, most truly said; mine's a com mission, not a right: I am the offspring of distress, and every child of sorrow is my brother; while I have hands to hold, therefore, i will hold them open to mankind; but, Sir, my passions are my masters: they take ne where they will; and oftentimes. they leave to reason and virtue nothing but my wish. es and my sighs. STOCK. Come, come, the man who can accuse cbrrects himself, BEL. AL.! that is an office I am weary of; I wish a friend would take it up: I would to Heaven you you had leisure for the employ; but did you drive a trade to the four corners of the world, you would not find the task so toilsome as to keep me free fr›mfaults STOCK Well, I am not discouraged; this candour tells me I should not have the fault of selfconceit to combat; that, at least, is not among the number. BEL No; if I knew that man on earth, who thought more humbly of me than I do of myself, I would take up his opinion and forego my own STOCK. And, were 1 to choose a pupi, it shoul be one of your complexion ; so if you will come along with me, we will agree upon your admission, and 、 enter upon a course of lectures directly. BEL. With all my heart. 00000 WELT INDIAN. CHAP. VII. LORD EUSTACE AND FRAMPTON. LD. EUST. WELL, my dear Frampton, have you secured the letters ? FRAM. Yes, my lord, for their rightful owners. LD. EUST. As to the matter of property, Framp. ton, we will not dispute much about that. Necessity, you know, may sometimes render a trespass excusable. FRAM. I am not casuist sufficient to answer you, upon that subject; but this I know, that you have already trespassed against the laws of hospitality and honour, in your conduct towards Sir William Evans, and his daughter-And, as your friend and counsellor both, I would advise you to think seriously of repairing the injuries you have committed, and not increase your offence by a farther violation LD. EUST. It is actually a pity you were not bred to the bar, Ned; but I have only a moment to stay, and am all impatience to know if there be a letter from Langwood, and what he says. FRAM. I shall never be able to afford you the least information upon that subject, my Lord. LD. EUST Surely, I do not understand you. You said you had secured the letters. Have you not read them? FRAM. You have a right, and none but you, to ask me such a question. My weak compliance with your first proposal relative to these letters, warrants your thinking so meanly of me. But know, my lord, that though my personal affection for you, joined to my unhappy circumstances, may have betrayed me to actions unworthy of myself, I never can forget, that there is a barrier fixed before the extreme of baseness, which honour will not let me pass. LD. EUST. You will give me leave to tell you, Mr Frampton, that where I lead, I think you need not halt. FRAM. You will pardon me, my lord; the con sciousness of another man's errors, can never be a justification for our own; and poor indeed must that wretch be, who can be satisfied with the nega tive merit of not being the worst man he knows. LD. EUST. If this discourse were uttered in a conventicle, it might have its effect, by setting the congregation to sleep. FRAM. It is rather meant to rouse, than lull your lordship. LD. EUST. No matter what it is meant for ; give me the letters, Mr. Frampton. FRAM. Yet, excuse me. I could as soon think of arming a madman's hand against his own life, as suffer you to be guilty of a crime that will for ever wound your honour. LD. EUST. I shall not come to you to heal the wound, your medicines are too rough and coarsefor me, FRAM. The soft poison of flattery might perhaps please you better. 1.D. EUST. |