ll
of perplexity; and I have contented myself, as I have in my religion,
with the faith in which I was brought up, regulating my own conduct by
its precepts; but leaving to abler heads the task of making converts.

I shall continue on, therefore, in the course I have hitherto pursued;
looking at things poetically, rather than politically; describing them
as they are, rather than pretending to point out how they should be;
and endeavouring to see the world in as pleasant a light as
circumstances will permit.

I have always had an opinion that much good might be done by keeping
mankind in good-humour with one another. I may be wrong in my
philosophy, but I shall continue to practise it until convinced of its
fallacy. When I discover the world to be all that it has been
represented by sneering cynics and whining poets, I will turn to and
abuse it also; in the meanwhile, worthy reader, I hope you will not
think lightly of me, because I cannot believe this to be so very bad a
world as it is represented.

Thine truly,

GEOFFREY CRAYON.

THE HALL.

The ancient house, and the best for housekeeping in this county or
the next; and though the master of it write but squire, I know no
lord like him.

--_Merry Beggars_.

The reader, if he has perused the volumes of the Sketch-Book, will
probably recollect something of the Bracebridge family, with which I
once passed a Christmas. I am now on another visit to the Hall, having
been invited to a wedding which is shortly to take place. The Squire's
second son, Guy, a fine, spirited young captain in the army, is about
to be married to his father's ward, the fair Julia Templeton. A
gathering of relations and friends has already commenced, to celebrate
the joyful occasion; for the old gentleman is an enemy to quiet,
private weddings. "There is nothing," he says, "like launching a young
couple gayly, and cheering them from the shore; a good outset is half
the voyage."

Before proceeding any farther, I would beg that the Squire might not
be confounded with that class of hard-riding, foxhunting gentlemen so
often described, and, in fact, so nearly extinct in England. I use
this rural title partly because it is his universal appellation
throughout the neighbourhood, and partly because it saves me the
frequent repetition of his name, which is one of those rough old
English names at which Frenchmen exclaim in despair.

The Squire is, in fact, a lingering specimen of