ne and well-informed--his generous soul
manifest in every expression of his manly countenance. He had honourably
acquired his wealth, and whilst he amassed, had been by no means greedy of
his gains. He dealt out liberally. There were many reasons why James
Mildred at the age of forty-eight returned to England. I shall state but
one. He was still a bachelor. The historian at once absolves the gentler
sex from any share of blame. It was not, in truth, their fault that he
continued single. Many had done their utmost to remove this stigma from
James Mildred's character; had they done less they might, possibly, have
been more successful. Mildred had a full share of sensibility, and
recoiled at the bare idea of being snared into a state of blessedness. The
woman was not for him, who was willing to accept him only because his gold
and he could not be separated. Neither was he ambitious to purchase the
easy affection of the live commodity as it arrives in ships from England,
with other articles of luxury and merchandize. After years of successful
exertion, he yearned for the enjoyments of the domestic hearth, and for
the home-happiness which an Englishman deserves, because he understands
so well its value. Failing to obtain his wish in India, he journeyed
homeward, sound in mind and body, and determined to improve the comfort
and condition of both, by a union with amiability, loveliness, and virtue,
if in one individual he could find them all combined, and finding, could
secure them for himself. It might have been a year after his appearance in
London, that he became acquainted with the family of Mr Graham, a
lieutenant in the navy on half-pay, and the father of two children. He was
a widower, and not affluent. His offspring were both daughters, and, at
the time to which I allude, full grown, lovely women. Their mother had
been a governess previously to her marriage, and her subsequent days had
been profitably employed in the education of her daughters; in preparing
them, in fact, for the condition of life into which they would inevitably
fall, if they were still unmarried at the dissolution of their father.
They were from infancy taught to expect their future means of living from
their own honourable exertions, and they grew happier and better for the
knowledge. Mildred had retired to a town on the sea-coast, in which this
family resided; and, shortly after his arrival, he first beheld the elder
of the lieutenant's children. She