o do. You are all gone now,--all shot up
and become men; and when your old uncle sees you no more, and recollects
that all his own contemporaries are out of the world, he cannot help
saying, as William Temple, poor fellow, once prettily enough said,
"Methinks it seems an impertinence in me to be still alive." You went
first, Morton; and I missed you more than I cared to say: but you were
always a kind boy to those you loved, and you wrote the old knight merry
letters, that made him laugh, and think he was grown young again (faith,
boy, that was a jolly story of the three Squires at Button's!), and once
a week comes your packet, well filled, as if you did not think it a task
to make me happy, which your handwriting always does; nor a shame to my
gray hairs that I take pleasure in the same things that please thee! So,
thou seest, my child, that I have got through thy absence pretty well,
save that I have had no one to read thy letters to; for Gerald and thou
are still jealous of each other,--a great sin in thee, Morton, which
I prithee to reform. And Aubrey, poor lad, is a little too rigid,
considering his years, and it looks not well in the dear boy to shake
his head at the follies of his uncle. And as to thy mother, Morton,
I read her one of thy letters, and she said thou wert a graceless
reprobate to think so much of this wicked world, and to write so
familiarly to thine aged relative. Now, I am not a young man, Morton;
but the word aged has a sharp sound with it when it comes from a lady's
mouth.

Well, after thou hadst been gone a month, Aubrey and Gerald, as I wrote
thee word long since, in the last letter I wrote thee with my own hand,
made a tour together for a little while, and that was a hard stroke on
me. But after a week or two Gerald returned; and I went out in my chair
to see the dear boy shoot,--'sdeath, Morton, he handles the gun well.
And then Aubrey returned alone: but he looked pined and moping, and shut
himself up, and as thou dost love him so, I did not like to tell thee
till now, when he is quite well, that he alarmed me much for him; he is
too much addicted to his devotions, poor child, and seems to forget that
the hope of the next world ought to make us happy in this. Well, Morton,
at last, two months ago, Aubrey left us again, and Gerald last week set
off on a tour through the sister kingdom, as it is called. Faith, boy,
if Scotland and England are sister kingdoms, 'tis a thousand pities for
Scotl