tions of a younger brother, and had soon become so attached to his profession as to form no wish for such a permanent connection with the fair sex as would detach his thoughts from the duties of a soldier. Possibly the scanty provision of a younger brother, and the circumstance that Sir James was married, and had a family, might tend to preserve him from those violent attacks of wealth and beauty which are so generally irresistible. Certain it is, Colonel Mandeville was suffered to acquire a sort of a misanthropic opinion of the ladies, till, on the death of his nephew, a promising youth of sixteen, he became Sir Walter. He now, for the first time in his life, regretted that his days had been spent in celibacy, since it consigned the name of Mandeville to oblivion, and left himself and a young female orphan the sole inheritors of the blood of that illustri

ous family. He recollected that his brother, Sir James, on his death bed, had appointed him guardian to both his children; but whilst young Sir George lived, Emily was too insignificant to attract so much of his attention as to induce him to remove her from the care of her maternal aunt, lady Selina Delamore, though he believed that lady to be a most odious character, and was convinced she would quite pervert his niece's disposition.

Sir Walter Mandeville was turned of sixty, when the demise of the young baronet first introduced him to the possession of uncontrouled power, and superfluous wealth, for the disposal of which no human tribunal could call him to account. He had lived neglected and dependent till the heyday of life was passed. The treatment he had endured gave him a dislike for his species, and it was not removed by ob

serving that, though the poor soldier had been overlooked and despised, the wealthy baronet was courted and flattered. He could not believe himself suddenly transformed from something below mediocrity in talent to a gentleman of most respectable understanding; and though the stories which he had told when ensign, without discomposing one countenance, now excited thunders of applause, he had the discernment to perceive, and the humility to acknowledge, that this tribute was paid to his rank not to himself; and that he certainly was a worse jester now than he had been forty years before. Fortune, therefore, had a very different effect upon his sincere, blunt character, to what she usually exerts, by making him more out of humour with the world, and dissatisfied with. himself; and but for his strong attachment to that best part of his spe

cies, the line of Mandeville, his contempt of sycophants, and his pity of stupid old fellows who are placed in situations where they do nothing but expose themselves, would have induced him to surrender his patrimony to his sovereign, with a request that it might be placed in better hands.

Actuated by family pride, without one iota of what was personal, Sir Walter felt it his duty to keep up the Mandeville dignity. He had public days, and presided at his table, sullen through pique, and awkward from a consciousness of inferiority. He distributed charity with a sort of snarling benevolence, and joined in those rural sports for which he had an aversion, and found inconvenient to his personal infirmities, because the Mandevilles were all very bountiful and kept foxhounds. With a strong, and sometimes acknowledged, regret for those hap

py days, when, as an old half-pay of ficer, he could stroll about master of his own actions, or sun himself upon a bench in martial conversation with some other veterans, as Homer describes his Trojan counsellors, he consented to be steward of the assemblies; and with a persuasion that women were a greater plague than any Pandora carried in her box, he sought out partners for the tittering misses, who suppressed their ridicule of the old beau in his presence only from the hope that he would make them an offer. Indeed, Sir Walter's attachment to his family soon made all the prudent matrons in the neighbourhood point him out as a marrying man; and he often pondered in secret on the eligibility of resigning the comforts of singleness for the chance of giving a legal heir to an ancient and expiring race of worthies. Whoever considers, that though Sir