CHAPTER III.

"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may divine laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good council the cripple."

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"O YES!" exclaimed Squire Merton, lying upon the flat of his back at full length on a sofa of very faded and antiquated appearance, "O yes!" repeated he, sipping a glass of exceedingly questionable port wine, and trying to look as if he liked it, "there's nothing simpler in the wide world, Charles. To preach-God bless my life! I would enter myself, fairly handicapped, with all the catholic and apostolic bishops in Chris

tendom for a sermon of one heat, and then freely and with pleasure back myself, at trifling odds, to take the lead and keep it to the finish. Faugh! preaching, indeed!"

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My dear father," replied Charles, smiling at the sporting description given of a discourse without the pale of ridicule, and in which the squire had no intention of indulging, "I entertained no idea of lecturing; but was merely giving my council for an observance of prudence so indispensable in the desperate condition of our pecuniary matters."

"And worthy it was of a flageolet-faced chancellor of the exchequer about to produce a shocking bad budget," rejoined the squire, draining his glass; and, as he did so, the expression of his features bore a close resemblance to the palate's having undergone the ordeal of a powerful dose of senna and salts, castor oil, or rhubarb.

"But you must confess," returned his son mildly, and scarcely able to retain a

seriousness of manner, "that ordering six dozen of port wine on the weakness—"

"The strength," interrupted the squire, raising himself from his recumbent attitude and looking his son steadfastly in the face; "on the strength of the funds received, my dear boy, I gave the order. Don't talk of weakness in such a harvest of unexpected plenty."

"But twenty-five pounds will soon be gone," returned Charles. "Indeed, I may say, it is already expended.

"When the things are paid for," added the squire." Well, well! No one but must say that I evinced a high degree of economy in its outlay. Let me see," he continued, pressing a finger upon his brow. "Eight bushels of meal for the hounds; three sacks of oats and a load of hay for the stud; and six dozen of port wine for the cellar, which, from my heart, Charles, I religiously wish was of a better quality, and did not so

unequivocally put one in mind of molasses and logwood."

"It's as bad as physic," said Charles, turning up his nose at the inky fluid.

"But the association's pleasant," replied his father, filling a bumper, and holding it up so that the bright flame on the hearth might flicker through it. "The association's pleasant," repeated he, "if in fact-if in itself-per se we used to say at college—the thing is of that order defined unpalatable. It brings delightful reminiscences of those times, long since unhappily past away, when the vaults beneath were crammed to repletion with wine, and such wine, too, that makes one's flesh crawl and creep to think such will never comfort it again. At least, only at those times when-waifs and strays, I call them-one is asked to dine at a house where the host is generous enough to appreciate my taste for that which is uncommonly good."

"Its extreme refinement and liberality

have proved a lamentable misfortune to you. father," rejoined Charles.

"Perhaps so," returned the squire carelessly, again sipping the nauseous liquid, a libel on the name of wine. "But my mind was never of that class called inquisitive, and I haven't troubled myself with the inquiry. In truth, knowing the utter uselessless of such questions, for they never occur or present themselves until an infinite deal too late, I could not patiently entertain a thought upon such subjects. To take things as they come, Charles, is a beautiful motto for a gallop across country, and it applies with the same aptness to a run through life."

"But discretion bids us look before we leap," added Charles.

"Discretion's the slowest, most calculating, cold-blooded fish that ever swam," said the squire, in a voice that savoured of irritation. "I, thank God, never felt discreet but once in all my life, and that was when I was about