lingly communicate its substance to our readers.
The letter was addressed to Arthur Mervyn, Esq., of Mervyn Hall,
Llanbraithwaite, Westmoreland. It contained some account of the writer's
previous journey since parting with him, and then proceeded as follows:--

'And now, why will you still upbraid me with my melancholy, Mervyn? Do
you think, after the lapse of twenty-five years, battles, wounds,
imprisonment, misfortunes of every description, I can be still the same
lively, unbroken Guy Mannering who climbed Skiddaw with you, or shot
grouse upon Crossfell? That you, who have remained in the bosom of
domestic happiness, experience little change, that your step is as light
and your fancy as full of sunshine, is a blessed effect of health and
temperament, cooperating with content and a smooth current down the
course of life. But MY career has been one of difficulties and doubts and
errors. From my infancy I have been the sport of accident, and, though
the wind has often borne me into harbour, it has seldom been into that
which the pilot destined. Let me recall to you--but the task must be
brief--the odd and wayward fates of my youth, and the misfortunes of my
manhood.

'The former, you will say, had nothing very appalling. All was not for
the best; but all was tolerable. My father, the eldest son of an ancient
but reduced family, left me with little, save the name of the head of the
house, to the protection of his more fortunate brothers. They were so
fond of me that they almost quarrelled about me. My uncle, the bishop,
would have had me in orders, and offered me a living; my uncle, the
merchant, would have put me into a counting-house, and proposed to give
me a share in the thriving concern of Mannering and Marshall, in Lombard
Street. So, between these two stools, or rather these two soft, easy,
well-stuffed chairs of divinity and commerce, my unfortunate person
slipped down, and pitched upon a dragoon saddle. Again, the bishop wished
me to marry the niece and heiress of the Dean of Lincoln; and my uncle,
the alderman, proposed to me the only daughter of old Sloethorn, the
great wine-merchant, rich enough to play at span-counter with moidores
and make thread-papers of bank-notes; and somehow I slipped my neck out
of both nooses, and married--poor, poor Sophia Wellwood.

'You will say, my military career in India, when I followed my regiment
there, should have given me some satisfaction; and so it assuredly has.
You wi