of Commons; and though his
eloquence was of an order much better suited to the bar than the senate,
he had nevertheless acquired a very considerable reputation in the
latter, and was looked upon by many as likely to win to the same
brilliant fortunes as the courtly Mansfield,--a great man, whose
political principles and urbane address Brandon was supposed especially
to affect as his own model. Of unblemished integrity in public
life,--for, as he supported all things that exist with the most
unbending rigidity, he could not be accused of inconsistency,--William
Brandon was (as we have said in a former place of unhappy memory to our
hero) esteemed in private life the most honourable, the most moral, even
the most austere of men; and his grave and stern repute on this score,
joined to the dazzle of his eloquence and forensic powers, had baffled
in great measure the rancour of party hostility, and obtained for him
a character for virtues almost as high and as enviable as that which he
had acquired for abilities.

While William was thus treading a noted and an honourable career, his
elder brother, who had married into a clergyman's family, and soon lost
his consort, had with his only child, a daughter named Lucy, resided
in his paternal mansion in undisturbed obscurity. The discreditable
character and habits of the preceding lords of Warlock, which had sunk
their respectability in the county as well as curtailed their property,
had rendered the surrounding gentry little anxious to cultivate the
intimacy of the present proprietor; and the heavy mind and retired
manners of Joseph Brandon were not calculated to counterbalance the
faults of his forefathers, nor to reinstate the name of Brandon in its
ancient popularity and esteem. Though dull and little cultivated, the
squire was not without his "proper pride;" he attempted not to intrude
himself where he was unwelcome, avoided county meetings and county
balls, smoked his pipe with the parson, and not unoften with the surgeon
and the solicitor, and suffered his daughter Lucy to educate herself
with the help of the parson's wife, and to ripen (for Nature was more
favourable to her than Art) into the very prettiest girl that the whole
county--we long to say the whole country--at that time could boast of.
Never did glass give back a more lovely image than that of Lucy Brandon
at the age of nineteen. Her auburn hair fell in the richest luxuriance
over a brow never ruffled, and a che