could have been surmised from his rugged, reckless nature; and conceiving a grudge against the inauspicious flock that awakened such painful associations, he waged a war of extermination against them. A sportsman from his earliest youth, it was an unusual occurrence for him to miss a bird, and yet, somehow or other, he often failed in bringing down these unwelcome mementos, who still hovered about the nestless Rookery, as if to taunt it with the unappropriateness of its name. He was exasperated at shooting so badly; the croakings of the retiring birds seemed to have something sinister in the sound; and the stumps of the trees as he wandered among them, were not by any means calculated to sooth his angry feelings. In vain did he leap over them to prove his activity and indifference, and whistle, and shout out remnants of bacchanalian songs, and recall old Lord Carnarvon's saying, that “wood was an excrescence of the earth, provided by Heaven for the payment of debts." He could not thus easily banish from his mind all the pleasant recollections of his youth; he felt that

he was moving among the ghosts of happier days. Every tree was individualized and dis tinctly pictured upon his memory. One he remembered to have climbed when a boy, for a woodpecker's nest; another in pursuit of a squirrel. A third had supported his target when he first shot an arrow into the clout; from a fourth a large bough had fallen, and frightened his pony when he was riding; a fifth had held the swing from which Emily fell; and on a bench beneath a sixth, he had sate with his father only three days before he died. Not a stump did he pass that was not fraught with similar reminiscences; and the remorse that smote him when he contrasted his present with his former feelings and prospects, was not the less poignant, because he struggled with it, and strove to smother it beneath a forced and boisterous merriment. Few would have given him credit for compunctious visitings of any sort, and none, except perhaps his sister Emily, suspected that his fits of rampant and drunken hilarity were but a desperate effort to drown these importunate and stinging self-reproaches.

Anxious to seek society, that he might escape from himself, he quitted the grounds, and hastened towards the house, where he had the pleasure to find that several of the expected visitants had already arrived. Enough were soon assembled to commence the bowlingmatch, in which, however, the Squire took no part at first, though he made heavy bets, placing himself in an alcove that overlooked the game, where he solaced himself with a pipe and bottle of claret, to prepare himself, as he said, for the more unflinching potations at dinnertime. Emily walked up and down the green, occasionally stopping to look at the bowlers, or chatter with Sir Ambrose Jessop, though she willingly abandoned both when Sir Harcourt Slingsby was seen to swim towards her in all the rich and exquisite elegance of his elaborate appointments, affably and gracefully congeeing on all sides as he advanced, and appearing to bring with him an appropriate atmosphere of perfumes, courtesy, smiles, gaiety, fashion, urbanity, comeliness, and all that was consummately polished, delectable, and debonair.

"They taste of death that do at heaven arrive,
But we this Paradise approach alive;"

he exclaimed, bowing complacently to Emily
as he reached her; "I thank my friend Sir
George Etherege for putting these words into
the mouth of Dorimant, for they have furnished
me with a most appropriate greeting at all
times, and never more so than upon the present
occasion." As he walked by her side, convers-
ing and bending his head, the ends of his glori-
ous periwig swang occasionally forward, cloying
the air with their rich odours; his flat silk hat,
never suffered to scare with its shadow a single
wave of his delicate peruque, was carried be-
neath his left arm; his frill and ruffles of right
point lace fluttered in the breeze; his cravat,
disposed with a studied inimitable nonchalance,
worthy of the artist he had imported for that
purpose, was edged with the rarest and most
superb Brussels; his sword-knot, ribbons, and
embroidery, were all in the same finished and
costly taste. From the wrist of his left hand,
which carried an agate snuff-box, studded with
rubies, depended a clouded cane,
whose inlaid

top was hidden by the gay silk tassels of the ribbon by which it hung; while from his right he had drawn off the fringed and scented glove, apparently for the purpose of taking snuff, but in reality to display the rare jewels upon his fingers, which flashed in the sun as he waved his fair hand backwards and forwards, while discoursing in his promenade. Behind him, at a respectful distance, walked his page to receive his orders, or inform him of any accidental derangement that might be discovered in his garniture or appointments.

any

From the motive that has been already explained, the Squire had thrown Sir Harcourt as much as possible into the society of his sister, without visible success, however, so far as the Baronet was concerned, although his appearance, deportment, and conversation, had not failed to make a deep impression upon Emily. Her brother's dissolute habits had prevented her accompanying him in his excursions to London, so that her manners, though not inelegant, betrayed that want of polish which generally characterised even the better classes