You see that I have _first_ registered my own part in our engagement, and generously bound myself, before I proceed to tie you down.--Now for _your_ undertaking. Remember, that when you reach the wilds of Kerry, you are under a heavy bond to devote a part of every day regularly to the task which I have assigned you of narrating, in minute detail, every circumstance connected with the external situation, personal appearance, mind, manners, and habits of your aunt and her family. Aye, there I see you at this instant in a full roar of laughter: so be it.--I am case-hardened; and have so long endured your merriment with becoming philosophy, that I am not to be subdued by a little louder ridicule than you are accustomed to level at my _romance_. Well, I will confess (now that I am a few miles distant from that taunting smile), that my notions are somewhat odd, quaint, old fashioned, or romantic if you will; and in return for this concession, I only ask that you will bear with me, and indulge your friend's peculiarities, as they are at least harmlessly eccentric. The bias of my mind is to be traced without difficulty to the circumstances of my early life, so different from your own, that it would be very extraordinary if much dissimilarity were not discoverable in our ways of thinking. My boyish years were passed in the seclusion of almost perfect solitude, with a mother, whose image lives indelibly engraven on my heart. A child of feeble frame, I was unable in early life to bear the "peltings of the pitiless storm," and from every wind that would have visited my infant form too roughly, did the tenderest of maternal affections shroud, without enervating, my childhood. My widowed mother was every thing to me--my friend, my tutor, my protectress, my play-fellow--my all on earth. In losing her at sixteen, I was left a mere wreck upon the ocean of life; and, while "Memory holds her seat," never shall I forget the sweet expression of her elegant and feminine countenance, as it spoke the language of love, kindness, or pity; nor shall I ever lose the recollection of that fine understanding which sparkled through her eye, in the brightest scintillations of intellectual energy, and acuteness. She was my _Gamaliel_, and no wonder if her lessons, her thoughts, her sentiments, have left traces upon my mind not easily to be obliterated. When I entered Cambridge, I felt no affection for any living creature. Relations I had none, that were not too remote to fill the chasm which death had created in my heart. My guardian, though an excellent man, only put me painfully in mind of my bereavement, when he attempted to condole or advise; and I turned from him, not with disrespect, but in disgust with all created things.