her, and even, perhaps, to feel some degree of kindly
regard for her, at last, in return for her artless and unsuspecting
attachment to himself; but the bitterness of his self-condemnation for
his inward feelings towards that innocent being, his constant struggles
to subdue the evil promptings of his nature (for it was not a generous
one), though partly guessed at by those who knew him, could be known to
God and his own heart alone;--so also was the hardness of his conflicts
with the temptation to return to the vice of his youth, and seek oblivion
for past calamities, and deadness to the present misery of a blighted
heart a joyless, friendless life, and a morbidly disconsolate mind, by
yielding again to that insidious foe to health, and sense, and virtue,
which had so deplorably enslaved and degraded him before.

The second object of his choice was widely different from the first.
Some wondered at his taste; some even ridiculed it--but in this their
folly was more apparent than his. The lady was about his own
age--_i.e._, between thirty and forty--remarkable neither for beauty, nor
wealth, nor brilliant accomplishments; nor any other thing that I ever
heard of, except genuine good sense, unswerving integrity, active piety,
warm-hearted benevolence, and a fund of cheerful spirits. These
qualities, however, as you way readily imagine, combined to render her an
excellent mother to the children, and an invaluable wife to his lordship.
He, with his usual self-depreciation, thought her a world too good for
him, and while he wondered at the kindness of Providence in conferring
such a gift upon him, and even at her taste in preferring him to other
men, he did his best to reciprocate the good she did him, and so far
succeeded that she was, and I believe still is, one of the happiest and
fondest wives in England; and all who question the good taste of either
partner may be thankful if their respective selections afford them half
the genuine satisfaction in the end, or repay their preference with
affection half as lasting and sincere.

If you are at all interested in the fate of that low scoundrel, Grimsby,
I can only tell you that he went from bad to worse, sinking from bathos
to bathos of vice and villainy, consorting only with the worst members of
his club and the lowest dregs of society--happily for the rest of the
world--and at last met his end in a drunken brawl, from the hands, it is
said, of some brother scoundrel he ha