ist. Having succeeded in saving
his brother from being fleeced by a crew of aristocratic black-legs,
and thereby rendered an appeal to the duello unnecessary, he happened to
become acquainted with a very wealthy merchant, whose daughter, in the
course of a few months, he wooed and won. The thing in fact is common,
and has nothing at all of romance in it. She had wealth and beauty;
he had some title. The father, who passed off to a different
counting-house, about a couple of months after their marriage, left him
and her to the enjoyment of an immense property in the Funds; and
sooth to say, it could not have got into better hands. She was made
the Honorable Mrs. Richard Topertoe, and if a cultivated understanding,
joined to an excellent and humane heart, deserved a title, in her person
they did. After his arrival in London he had several conversations with
his brother, whose notions with regard to property he found to be of the
cool, aristocratic, and contemptuous school; that is to say, he did not
feel himself bound to neglect the pleasures and enjoyments of life, and
to look after his tenants. It was enough that he received their rents,
and paid a sensible Agent to collect them. What more could he do? Was he
to become their slave?

Richard, who now felt quite anxious to witness the management of his
brother's estate--if only for the purpose of correcting his bad logic
upon the subject of property, came over incognito to the metropolis,
accompanied by his wife; and it was to his brother, under the
good-humored sobriquet of Spinageberd, that he addressed the letters
recorded in these volumes. He also had a better object in view, which
was to purchase property in the country, and to reside on it. That
he did not succeed in rooting out of Lord Cumber's mind his senseless
prejudices with respect to the duties of a landlord, was unfortunately
none of his fault. All that man could do, by reasoning, illustration,
and remonstrance, he did; but in vain; the old absurd principle of the
landlord's claims upon his tenantry, Lord Cumber neither could nor would
give up; and having made these necessary observations, we proceed with
our narrative.

Better than a week had now elapsed; M'Clutchy had been interred with
great pomp--all the Orangemen of the neighboring districts having
attended "his honored and lamented remains" to the grave, each dressed
in his appropriate Orange costume. The provincial chaplain, remarkable
for singing h