My father’s ancient and valued friend, Martin Marston, Esq., of Marston Hall, has vegetated for forty years in his paternal estate in the West of England, proud and happy in the enjoyment of everything which makes the life of a country gentleman enviable. He is an upright magistrate, a kind master, a merciful landlord, and a hearty friend. If you believe his neighbours, he has not been guilty of a fault for ten years, but when he forgave the butler who plundered his plate-closet; nor uttered a complaint for twenty, except when the gout drove him out of his saddle, and compelled him to take refuge in the pony-chair. If his son were not the readiest Grecian at Westminster, he was nearly the best shot in the county; and if his daughters had little interest in the civil dissensions of the King’s Theatre, and thought of Almack’s much as a Metropolitan thinks of Timbuctoo, they had nevertheless as much beauty as one looks for in a partner, and quite as many accomplishments as one wants in a wife. Mr. Marston has always been a Liberal politician, partly because his own studies and connections have that way determined him. and partly because an ancestor of his bore a command in the Parliamentary army at the battle of Edgehill. But his principles never interfered with his comforts. He had always a knife and fork for the vicar, a furious High Churchman; and suffered his next neighbour, a violent Tory, to talk him to sleep without resistance or remonstrance--in consequence of which Dr. Gloss declared he had never found any man so open to conviction, and Sir Walter vowed that old Marston was the only Radical that ever listened to reason.