This being said, what further passed is not important to relate. Philip wrote a short letter to his father, and having delivered it, and his secret pacquet, to Mr. Devereux, took his leave of him, and as he grasped his hand with a sensation, rarely, if ever, felt by him before, he sent from his sad heart a longing sigh towards his beloved native country, which fate, that had doomed him never more to visit it but as a corpse, gave to the winds, that dispersed it on its passage. CHAPTER V. _Another Soliloquy of Mr. Philip De Lancaster. Our History returns to the Family at Kray Castle._ When the Irish tailor, who had been a journeyman botcher in London, and was now become a master of journeymen botchers in Lisbon, had invested the well-made person of Mr. Philip De Lancaster in an ill-made suit of rotten black, the mourning bridegroom elect, having paid the bill and dismissed the bill-maker, examined himself in the glass, and thus, as was customary with him, mournfully soliloquized-- “Luckless man that I am, must I put aside this habit on my wedding-day? Wherefore; on what pretence; I have undergone that ceremony once already, and by experience can more than guess to what sad hours that ceremony leads. Marriage, by high authority denominated honourable, is, through perversion of its purposes, to many become disgraceful, burdensome to most, and a blessing, as I verily believe, to few, if any, who know how to compute what is a blessing, and what is their bane. There are indeed a few soft silly things amongst the mass of female spinsters, that a man, who knows the value of their ignorance, might possibly with proper care prevent from growing wiser; but a widow--(Oh my hapless fortune, Rachel Owen is a widow--) who can keep in ignorance? Not I; not any man.