which I do and always shall
consider a most unwarrantable encroachment on your rights."

I will confess that, on first hearing this news, I experienced a bitter
pang; but I reasoned it away. I was already under great obligations to
my uncle, and I felt it a very unjust and ungracious assumption on
my part, to affect anger at conduct I had no right to question, or
mortification at the loss of pretensions I had so equivocal a privilege
to form. A man of fifty has, perhaps, a right to consult his own
happiness, almost as much as a man of thirty; and if he attracts by his
choice the ridicule of those whom he has never obliged, it is at least
from those persons he has obliged, that he is to look for countenance
and defence.

Fraught with these ideas, I wrote to my uncle a sincere and warm letter
of congratulation. His answer was, like himself, kind, affectionate, and
generous: it informed me that he had already made over to me the annual
sum of one thousand pounds; and that in case of his having a lineal
heir, he had, moreover, settled upon me, after his death, two thousand
a-year. He ended by assuring me, that his only regret at marrying a lady
who, in all respects, was above all women, calculated to make him happy,
was his unfeigned reluctance to deprive me of a station, which (he was
pleased to say), I not only deserved, but should adorn.

Upon receiving this letter, I was sensibly affected with my uncle's
kindness; and so far from repining at his choice, I most heartily wished
him every blessing it could afford him, even though an heir to the
titles of Glenmorris were one of them.

I protracted my stay at Malvern some weeks longer than I had intended;
the circumstance which had wrought so great a change in my fortune,
wrought no less powerfully on my character. I became more thoughtfully
and solidly ambitious. Instead of wasting my time in idle regrets at the
station I had lost, I rather resolved to carve out for myself one still
loftier and more universally acknowledged. I determined to exercise, to
their utmost, the little ability and knowledge I possessed; and while
the increase of income, derived from my uncle's generosity, furnished me
with what was necessary for my luxury, I was resolved that it should not
encourage me in the indulgence of my indolence.

In this mood, and with these intentions, I repaired to the metropolis.

VOLUME IV.

CHAPTER XLIV.

Cum pulchris tunicis sumet nova consilia e