er removed from you
before I am established in a home. And O how delighted shall I be when I
can say, Come, Matilda, and be the guest of your faithful Julia!

'I am at present the inmate of Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn, old friends of my
father. The latter is precisely a good sort of woman, ladylike and
housewifely; but for accomplishments or fancy--good lack, my dearest
Matilda, your friend might as well seek sympathy from Mrs. Teach'em;--you
see I have not forgot school nicknames. Mervyn is a different--quite a
different being from my father, yet he amuses and endures me. He is fat
and good-natured, gifted with strong shrewd sense and some powers of
humour; but having been handsome, I suppose, in his youth, has still some
pretension to be a beau garcon, as well as an enthusiastic agriculturist.
I delight to make him scramble to the tops of eminences and to the foot
of waterfalls, and am obliged in turn to admire his turnips, his lucerne,
and his timothy grass. He thinks me, I fancy, a simple romantic Miss,
with some--the word will be out--beauty and some good-nature; and I hold
that the gentleman has good taste for the female outside, and do not
expect he should comprehend my sentiments farther. So he rallies, hands,
and hobbles (for the dear creature has got the gout too), and tells old
stories of high life, of which he has seen a great deal; and I listen,
and smile, and look as pretty, as pleasant, and as simple as I can, and
we do very well.

'But, alas! my dearest Matilda, how would time pass away, even in this
paradise of romance, tenanted as it is by a pair assorting so ill with
the scenes around them, were it not for your fidelity in replying to my
uninteresting details? Pray do not fail to write three times a week at
least; you can be at no loss what to say.'

FIFTH EXTRACT

'How shall I communicate what I have now to tell! My hand and heart still
flutter so much, that the task of writing is almost impossible! Did I not
say that he lived? did I not say I would not despair? How could you
suggest, my dear Matilda, that my feelings, considering I had parted from
him so young, rather arose from the warmth of my imagination than of my
heart? O I was sure that they were genuine, deceitful as the dictates of
our bosom so frequently are. But to my tale--let it be, my friend, the
most sacred, as it is the most sincere, pledge of our friendship.

'Our hours here are early--earlier than my heart, with its load of care,
can c