e sameness of their repasts with his diversified
information; and in the evening he was equally gratifying to the ladies,
who being then generally confined to the uniform routine of domestic
privacy, loved to hear of what was passing in the great world. He could
describe the jewels which bound the hair of the Queen of Bohemia, and he
had seen the hood in which Anne of Austria ensnared the aspiring heart
of the Duke of Buckingham; beside, he led off the dance with matchless
grace, and to their native hornpipe enabled them to add the travelled
accomplishments of the galliard and saraband. What a concentration of
agreeable qualities! It must be owing to the invincible pressure of
secret uneasiness, and not to a suspicion of the cordiality with which
his entertainers welcomed him, if Evellin ever passed a day in solitude.

Yet he came into society with the air of one who sought it as a
temporary relief from anxiety, rather than as a source of real
enjoyment. A visible dissatisfaction, constraint, and unsubdued aversion
to the present, arising from regret at the past, sometimes interrupted
his graceful courtesy, and oftener made him indifferent to the passing
scene, or unconscious of it. This humour increased whenever he received
a dispatch from London, and at one time the mortification which his
letters excited, threw him into such a mental agony, that the cottagers
with whom he lodged, recurring to what was then deemed a specific for
troubled minds, called in the aid of Dr. Eusebius Beaumont to give him
ghostly consolation. I am not going to bring a mortified Franciscan
friar on the scene: his reverence was the village pastor, happy and
respectable as a husband and father, and largely endowed with those
which have signalized the Church of England, whenever she has been
called to any conspicuous trial. Learning and piety were in him two
neighbouring stars that reflected radiance on each other, and were
rather brightened than obscured by his humility. His manners and habits
of life retained the simplicity of the primitive ages, yet were they so
blended with courtesy, nobleness of mind, and superiority to every mean
selfish consideration, that the most travelled cavalier of the times
could not more winningly display the true gentleman. His example shewed
that the superiority which distinguishes that character consists not in
adopting the reigning mode (that poor ambition of a copyist), but in the
refined suavity which defies i