n fortune was that of a younger brother.

He took his son to reside with him at the rectory, but he soon found that
his disorders rendered him an intolerable inmate. And as the young men of
his own rank would not endure the purse-proud insolence of the Creole, he
fell into that taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to
death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only
returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy
youth was not without his good qualities. He had lively wit, good temper,
reckless generosity, and manners, which, while he was under restraint,
might pass well in society. But all these availed him nothing. He was so
well acquainted with the turf, the gaming-table, the cock-pit, and every
worse rendezvous of folly and dissipation, that his mother's fortune was
spent before he was twenty-one, and he was soon in debt and in distress.
His early history may be concluded in the words of our British Juvenal,
when describing a similar character:--

Headstrong, determined in his own career,
He thought reproof unjust, and truth severe.
The soul's disease was to its crisis come,
He first abused, and then abjured, his home;
And when he chose a vagabond to be,
He made his shame his glory, "I'll be free!"*
[Crabbe's _Borough,_ Letter xii.]

"And yet 'tis pity on Measter George, too," continued the honest boor,
"for he has an open hand, and winna let a poor body want an he has it."

The virtue of profuse generosity, by which, indeed, they themselves are
most directly advantaged, is readily admitted by the vulgar as a cloak
for many sins.

At Stamford our heroine was deposited in safety by her communicative
guide. She obtained a place in the coach, which, although termed a light
one, and accommodated with no fewer than six horses, only reached London
on the afternoon of the second day. The recommendation of the elder Mr.
Staunton procured Jeanie a civil reception at the inn where the carriage
stopped, and, by the aid of Mrs. Bickerton's correspondent, she found out
her friend and relative Mrs. Glass, by whom she was kindly received and
hospitably entertained.

CHAPTER ELEVENTH.

My name is Argyle, you may well think it strange,
To live at the court and never to change.
Ballad.

Few n