"Lord, papa, the very footmen could not keep their gravity!"

"Then let them strip off my livery, and laugh at their leisure. Mr Sampson is a man whom I esteem for his simplicity and benevolence of character."

"I am convinced of his generosity too," said this lively lady, "he cannot lift a spoonful of soup to his mouth without bestowing a share on every thing round.'

"Julia, you are incorrigible;-but remember I expect your mirth on this subject shall be under such restraint, that it shall neither offend this worthy man's feelings, nor those of Miss Bertram, who may be more apt to feel upon his account than he on his own. And so, good night, my dear, and remember, that though Mr Sampson has not sacrificed to the graces, there are many things in this world more truly deserving of ridicule than either awkwardness of manners or simplicity of character."

In a day or two Mr and Mrs Mac-Mor

lan left Woodbourne, after taking an af fectionate farewell of their late guest. The household were now settled in their new quarters. The young ladies followed their studies and amusements together. Colonel Mannering was agreeably surprised to find that Miss Bertram was well skilled in French and Italian, thanks to the assiduity of Dominie Sampson, whose labour had silently possessed him of most modern as well as ancient languages. Of music she knew little or nothing, but her new friend undertook to give her lessons; in exchange for which, she learned from Lucy the habit of walking, and the art of riding, and the courage necessary to defy the season. Mannering was careful to substitute for their amusement in the evening such books as might convey some solid instruction with entertain

3

ment, and, as he read aloud with great skill and taste, the winter nights passed pleasantly away.

Society was quickly formed where there

were so many inducements. Most of the families of the neighbourhood visited Colonel Mannering, and he was soon able to select from among them such as best suited his taste and habits. Charles Hazlewood held a distinguished place in his favour, and was a frequent visitor, not without the consent and approbation of his parents; for there was no knowing, they thought, what assiduous attention might produce, and the beautiful Miss Mannering, with an Indian fortune, was a prize worth looking after. Dazzled with such a prospect, they never considered the risk which had once been some object of their apprehension, that his boyish and inconsiderate fancy might form an attachment to the pennyless Lucy Bertram, who had nothing on earth to recommend her, but a pretty face, good birth, and a most amiable disposition. Mannering was more prudent. He considered himself acting as Miss Bertram's guardian, and, while he did not think it incumbent upon him altoge

ther to check her intercourse with a young gentleman for whom, excepting in wealth, she was a match in every respect, he laid it under such insensible restraints as might prevent any engagement or eclaircissement taking place until the young man should have seen a little more of life and of the world, and have attained that age when he might be considered as en titled to judge for himself in the matter in which his happiness was chiefly inte

rested.

While these matters engaged the atten tion of the other members of the Woodbourne family, Dominie Sampson was engaged, body and soul, in the arrangement of the late bishop's library, which had been sent from Liverpool by sea, and conveyed by thirty or forty carts from the sea-port at which it was landed. Sampson's joy at beholding the ponderous contents of these chests arranged upon the floor of the apartment, from whence he was to transfer them to the shelves, baffled all

description. He grinned like an ogre, swung his arms like the sails of a windmill, shouted "prodigious" till the roof rung to his raptures. "He had never," he said, "seen so many books together, except in the College Library ;" and now his dignity and delight in being superintendant of the collection, raised him, in his own opinion, almost to the rank of the academical librarian, whom he had always regarded as the greatest and happiest man on earth. Neither were his. transports diminished upon a hasty examination of the contents of these volumes. Some, indeed, of belles lettres, poems, plays, or memoirs, he tossed indig nantly aside, with the implied censure of "psha," or frivolous;" but the greater and bulkier part of the collection bore a very different character. The deceased prelate, a divine of the old and deeplylearned cast, had loaded his shelves with volumes which displayed the antique and