Already had the young friends thought the life they had led in the gay circles insufficient for happiness, or even comfort. Their hours dissipated away, not enjoyed, their kindred minds now felt their greatest treat was an evening en famille; Oriana more particularly so, who had been early led to the pensive pleasures of the mind, her mother having indulged her naturally-reflective disposition, in the full hope it would prove the rich manure in which she strove to plant, and bring in season, the best perfections of the human heart. When she saw the tables spread with cards-heard the mere nothings buzzing around her—the unmeaning laugh— with all the various modes of dissipating time, she would exclaim-" Ah, Glenmorris! for dearer is that loved, native vale, than all the rich redundance that plays in wanton gaiety around; they catch the eye-arrest the ear, but sink not to the heart, unless to vibrate from thence a sigh of pity and distaste!"

CHAPTER V.

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, and add another hue unto the rainbow, or, with taper light, to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

"Yet truth shall guide the pencil, nor hide a failing from the critic's eye."

THE slight sketch given of lord viscount Eglintoun is insufficient for a character which is to be brought into the foreground of this history. It is neither Oriana's secretly-avowed attachment for him, or his high descent, that gives him a forward position here, nor any of those approving marks of his character, or peculiar vices; it is the tout-ensemble that will be noticed through these pages, that induces us to speak more particularly of him now. His unaffected pleasantry and uniform be nevolence give him a claim to notice, while his unbounded charity, freed from

that spirit of ostentation which too often animates the outstretched hand, spoke the real sense he had of the value of his fellowcreatures, and of that wealth his birth had made him heir to; this ought to meet the light, and gain the praises it deserves. His hand shrunk, like the sensitive plant, from the eye of observation, as it was raising penury to comfort; at those moments, his humane and generous soul swelled elate, when unseen but by the happy he relieved; though much oftener was his purse borne by a young man, whose early misfortunes attracted his attention, and whose merit secured him his liveliest friendship; unlike the friendships of the young and great, it reflected equal honour on the patron and the patronized. The one too honest, too independent, to seek advancement by flattering the vices or follies of the rich-the other, with a candid humility peculiarly his own, took to his friendly bosom the man who dared to differ from him in opinion, though living on his bounty, and who presumed to check the volubility of headstrong passions, often yielding his darling propensities to the better-regulated

understanding of this his protégée; and had not this nobleman imbibed some free and destructive principles that disgraced his natural dignity, casting a veil over his many virtues, he would have shone as a bright northern constellation.

Travelling, while it enlarges the sphere of knowledge, too often lessens or disguises truth and virtue. The levity of foreign courts frees the British youths from those restraints a strict morality, founded on religious principles, enjoins, which had been early and judiciously implanted; he learns to laugh at the sage lessons experience and piety recommend, and pursues, without fear of censure, the dictates of his will. At the early period when youth travels for improvement, religion is oftener a speculative point than an established principle; therefore the mummery, ignorance, and superstition, so frequently met with on the Continent, which is absurdly styled religion, shakes the slight hold, if any had, on the young mind; reflection raises objection to that bigotry and tinselled parade they daily meet with; till classing all

it

tenets, whether arising from the fundamental principles of Christianity, from the mistaken warmth of the zealot, or the avaricious propensities of the great leaders of their established doctrines, abjure doctrinal truths, as well as falsehoods, altogether, weakly trusting to the blind guidance of morality and nature, without looking up to Nature's God. Such had been the case of lord Eglintoun, whose tutor, disappointing the sanguine expectations of his father, met, by his irregular conduct, an early grave.

Unhappily Dudley did not remain untainted by his example. Volatile and headstrong, he seldom yielded to reproof, and ever impatient of control, till Askew won his esteem, who, in a very high degree, obtained the mastery over him. Dudley was a slave to his passions, as soon as he had lost parental reproof and counsel, which required all the art of the grateful Askew to restrain, who chiefly did so by appealing to his sensibility, or nice sense of honour. Notwithstanding, having blended somewhat of the new school with his other foreign acquirements, he saw not in their