This dear little man is the soul of pleasantry, and seems to have an excellent heart, though bound up in a quaint outside. He is _very_ English, and has a _snug_ facetiousness of manner irresistibly diverting. I hope that I may be fortunate enough to meet him often in this neighbourhood, for he has both tact and feeling; and while his uncommon drollery amuses, his keen observation protects. He seems to delight in young people, and to understand _us_. My uncle enjoys his company, and they had a great deal of conversation, after which he took his leave, entreating that we should not fail to meet him at Lady Campion’s, to whose house we were invited for the following morning, to a trial of skill in archery. The time for these revels is not yet come; but as several families are prevented this year, I am told, from being in town, through one cause or other, they are doing the best they can to keep up the ball of pleasure, and _rehearse_ for a more full and fashionable season. Mr. Bolton was _my_ allurement, and the hope of seeing him, emboldened me to go under the wing of Mr. Otway, accompanied by Charlotte and Frederick. Lady Campion and her daughters are come home within the last month, from Italy. They are a lovely group. Mother and daughters beautiful, and dressed in the same way, like sisters, it was not easy to distinguish the parent from the offspring. I do not like this. Surely the most tender love may subsist without this confusion of relationships. In the deep attachment which binds my heart to the precious author of my being, how sorry I should be even for a moment, to forget that she is my _mother_. But though not yet twenty, I feel as if I were fourscore, when I look around me. Nothing could be prettier than the little lawn on which we marshalled to see the archers. The graceful figures, the skill with which they managed the bow, the beauty of the fair competitors, clad in a livery of “Lincoln green,” the exquisite flowers which perfumed the amphitheatre of their sports, altogether charmed Charlotte and me. We were asked to join the lists, but as we could truly plead ignorance of the art, we gladly dropped back upon a fringe of the finest rhododendrons I ever beheld, lined by a bank of arbutus, to witness the combat. There were from forty to fifty spectators, amongst whom were only two, besides Mr. Bolton, whom I ever desire to see again. These were a Mrs. and Miss Fraser, Scotch people, a mother and daughter, very unlike our pretty hostess, who, to my amazement, I found was a rival candidate for the prize with her _children_; and, alas, _can_ you believe it! is jealous of a Lord Thornborough’s attentions to the elder of them. This young and vapid peer was of our party; the most finnikin object that you can imagine. He had called one day at Marsden, so that I did not see him for the _first_ time at Lady Campion’s; and when he visited my uncle, Fanny, whose _fresh naïveté_ supplies a constant source of amusement to us,