"Here we are, Sneezum, my boy!" said old Morgan, on the Friday, at about two o'clock; "I've come on before, to tell you to get into good-humour; for perhaps you've forgotten the invitations you gave us all for to-day." "What has become of the young woman?" I asked, with a very disdainful look; "my uncle's unowned little girl?" "Do you mean William's wife?" inquired Mr Morgan; "they were married this morning, at St George's, Hanover Square, and will take you for an hour or two on their way to the North." "I think, sir, as her guardian--not to say her cousin"---- "There, my dear Sneezum, you are altogether wrong; she was no relation of your uncle. She was the daughter of a Mr Brown of the Commissariat, and left to your uncle's charge; you, of course, succeeded to the guardianship as his representative; but she is no more a Hindoo than you are." "That makes it worse, sir." "Come, come, old Sneezum, don't keep up your anger; recollect you are old enough to be her father, and that she likes you next in the whole world to William. Shake hands with them, and be friends; and if you ever had the folly to think of marrying her, keep your own secret, and nobody will be a bit the wiser." I thought old Morgan advised very wisely--so, if you show this to any body, alter the names a little; for I would not have it known for the world.--Believe me, sir, your obedient servant, T. S. S. MARLBOROUGH. NO. III. The campaign of 1707 opened under very different auspices to the Allies from any which had preceded it:--Blenheim had saved Germany, Ramilies had delivered Brabant. The power of the Grande Monarque no longer made Europe tremble. The immense advantage which he had gained in the outset of the contest, by the declaration of the governor of Flanders for the cause of the Bourbons, and the consequent transference of the Flemish fortresses into his hands, had been lost. It was more than lost--it had been won to the enemy. Brussels, Antwerp, Menin, Ath, Ostend, Ghent, Dendermonde, Louvain, now acknowledged the Archduke Charles for their sovereign; the states of Brabant had sent in their adhesion to the Grand Alliance. Italy had been lost as rapidly as it had been won; the stroke of Marlborough at Ramilies had been re-echoed at Turin; and Eugene had expelled the French arms from Piedmont as effectually as Marlborough had from Flanders. Reduced on all sides to his own resources, wakened from his dream of foreign conquests, Louis XIV. now sought only to defend his own frontier; and the arms which had formerly been at the gates of Amsterdam, and recently carried terror into the centre of Germany, were now reduced to a painful defensive on the Scheldt and the Rhine.