In pursuance of this determination he proceeded immediately after breakfast to Jonathan's Coffee-house for the purpose of looking over the Weekly Courant in which the different estates for sale were generally advertised. As he approached the threshold of the house, his eye was accidentally directed to a large board containing printed notices of the sales for the ensuing week, at the very head of which he distinguished the word GOLDINGHAM in goodly Roman capitals. At sight of this phenomenon he made a dead halt in no small surprise, but as few impressions were sufficiently vivid to urge him to any unbecoming hurry, he took out his spectacles, wiped them very leisurely with his handkerchief, and fixing his shrewd eye upon the paper, while his lower jaw fell upon his stock, he discovered that his friend Tibbs the Scrivener had the disposal of- "That truly valuable Freehold Estate, with Mansion-house and Offices, called GOLDINGHAM PLACE, near Lyme in Dorsetshire, situate in the centre of a Park at a pleasant distance from the sea, environed by two thousand three hundred acres of arable,

pasture, meadow, and woodland, divided into homestall and farms, partly in hand, and partly

let upon

lease to respectable tenants, in a healthy and beautifully picturesque part of the country, surrounded by excellent roads."

Goldingham Place!-Goldingham Place!" ejaculated the merchant, taking off his spectacles and replacing them in his shagreen case.-" I knew not that any place in England bore that appellation, nor that there existed another family of the same name. I remember, indeed, to have once read in the Mercury, that one Harry Goldingham, who was to represent Arion

a pageant before Queen Elizabeth, finding his voice to be very hoarse and unpleasant when he came to perform it, tore off his disguise and swore he was none of Arion, not he, but even honest Harry Goldingham. I question, however, whether this croaking varlet ever came to be a lord of the manor, and to bestow his name upon a mansion in a park. Curious enough—curious enough:-I must see Jemmy Tibbs immediately."

It seemed doubly extraordinary to Isaac, who

was always deeply affected by omens and odd coincidences, that he should at such a moment stumble upon a purchase so singularly adapted to perpetuate his name, if he wished to become the founder of a family, as from his large fortune he was well entitled to be. It was true his wife was dead-he had never had any children of his own; and it was somewhat of the latest to think of direct issue. He had a nephew, indeed, of his own name, Basil Goldingham, the only child of a deceased brother; but the youth was a moping, churlish lout,-one to whom Nature had been equally niggardly, not to say unkind, both in respect to his personal and mental qualifications; and having paid a handsome sum to have him received into the house of Sir Godfrey Kneller, that he might learn portrait-painting, the only art for which he seemed to have the smallest capacity, his uncle cared not to see much more of him, and of course never dreamt of making him the heir to his fortune and

estate.

He had another nephew, however, Reuben Apsley, the son of his only sister, who with her

R

REUBEN APSLEY.

husband and daughter were supposed to have perished at sea, as they had sailed homeward from India several years before, and had never been heard of since. Reuben, whom he had always intended to adopt as his own son, might take the name of Goldingham, and provide heirs for its perpetual transmission; although there were no particular motives for continuing a name which he could not trace beyond his grandfather, of whom he had no great reason to be proud. In the family, indeed, there had been dim traditions of a great-uncle who was within two of the civic chair when he died of a surfeit; but Isaac very candidly attributed all this shadowy grandeur to the vanity of his mother, who, being herself a common council-man's daughter, was of an aristocratical spirit, and prone to attach undue importance to worldly dignities and honours.

He was not himself, however, without a certain family pride prospectively, for it may be observed that many of those parvenus who affect the most supreme contempt for all the honours of ancestry, are the foremost in securing

them for their posterity, by entailing the bulk of their property upon an eldest son, and purchasing mansions and titles for transmission to his descendants, as if determined to constitute the root of a new family-tree, since they cannot attach themselves to any branch of an old one. Certain vague aspirations of this nature began to flit athwart the merchant's mind, as he bent his way to the office of Jemmy Tibbs, whom he fortunately found at home, and with whom he instantly proceeded to business. From his statement it appeared that Goldingham Place belonged to a nobleman whose occasion for money was so urgent, owing to heavy losses at play, that he was willing to make a very considerable sacrifice, provided he could have payment in three or four days. Within this short period it was quite impossible to travel into Dorsetshire and back, and it was altogether contrary to Goldingham's habits to make a blind bargain, or buy a pig in a poke, as he expressed himself. Having, however, carefully examined the rent-roll, and fully inquired into all the circumstances of the estate, which his friend the