upon a long remainder, for the enjoyment of which it was the part of prudence to provide some substitute for the evanescent delights which had escaped his grasp. The provision to which he had recourse was matrimony, and he set about it with a precaution, and a spirit of calculation for which he gave himself the more credit, as it was the first instance of his life in which he had exercised either of those qualities. They did for him all that, perhaps, could be hoped for from such counsellors: they rather secured him from the mischiefs of the state than procured for him its pleasures. He had been too often in love to suffer love alone to decide his choice: he had gathered the flower and had found the serpent under it, and he rather sought to shun the rocks by which he believed himself to be surrounded, than hoped to attain that fairy land, where

every sun is bright, and every gale is perfume.

In having seen much of the wives of others, he concluded that he must have learnt what to avoid in choosing his own,- for once he resolved to be wise, and, alike to the surprise of his associates, and to his own, he stemmed the current of passion which was carrying him rapidly towards Lady Charlotte, and, under the gentler auspices of approbation and reason, he married Miss Hastings.

In her birth and her beauty he found all that could justify his selection to the world, and believing that education had given her all the qualities that would justify it to himself, he looked no further; naturally concluding that what was itself so lovely, must be to him an object of love.

The motives that had determined Isabella in the acceptance of Mr. Wil

loughby, if they were not more natural than those which had decided his choice in her favour, were at least more simple.

The earliest impression that had been made on the mind of Isabella was, that she had the best and most sedulous of mothers, and the next was the intended purpose of all these cares and pains. Why had all the honest impulses of nature been held down that the surface might not lose its smoothness, or the figure its proportion, but for the one great end of female existence? and that this end should be accomplished in Lady Jane's family, by the distinguished matrimonial establishment of all and each of the daughters? This had been the stimulant to industry, the promised reward of obedience. Isabella well understood all this, and knew that a failure in the attainment of the object so long, and so

assiduously looked forward to, would not be pitied in her as a misfortune, but would be punished as a fault.

She therefore held herself ready to be sacrificed at the shrine of Plutus, whenever the maternal sacrificer should give the word.

Isabella indeed neither thought of the god, nor the sacrificer, nor the sacrifice. It was not by these names that she designated the immorality that she was prompt to commit - she called the whole thing "being established; and being established as Mamma thought best."-Thus, when in hearing of the proposals of Mr. Willoughby she found the purpose for which she had been so carefully educated likely to be so soon and so eligibly answered, nothing occurred to her, but to acquiesce in the opinion which she had heard confidently expressed by others, that there was no

thing to be done but to

hand that was offered her,

accept the

and to re

joice that it was offered by a man whom she knew to have been the object of the hopes and fears of half her acquaintance.

She married: and was then at leisure to discover how far the having in possession all the requisites to matrimonial happiness of which she had ever heard, could in fact produce the result that had been promised from them.

Had Lady Jane been equally successful in petrifying the feelings as she had been in controlling the actions of her daughter, Isabella might never have discovered any error in the calculation which had made the destiny of her life. If she could have confined her affection to rich shawls and splendid jewels; if she could have gloated on the elegance and variety of her equipage; or have exulted in her