The evening was delicious, there was a stillness in the air, that seemed like the repose of nature, when our hero and his Amelia walked forth to enjoy those happy moments, which rural scenes and rural solitude afford to Love. They were no sooner out of ear-shot from the castle walls, when John began--Now, my sweet girl, when no witness is about us, but the unseen Spirit, that protects and guards you, I can open all my heart to you without reserve, for it honours you, it loves you, it adores you. I have been absent from you; I have visited another country, I have seen other women, and contemplated their charms and their allurements without emotion or the diversion of a thought from you. I am entirely and unalterably yours. I think you love me; nay, I am sure you do; nothing therefore but the hand of death can separate us, and when I dissuaded Anderton from leaving you his fortune, it was because I regarded you already as my wife. But time, my lovely girl, must pass before I can have legal right to call you by that name. You see within how short a period I have been deprived of both my parents, and although my grandfather De Lancaster treats or feigns to treat the late melancholy event as a philosopher, I cannot help feeling it as a son; for I was present to behold my father die and witnessed his last words. If I could charge my conscience with having hesitated or delayed to obey his summons, and hasten to his relief, I should be wretched in the extreme: but, thank Heaven, I had fortitude to tear myself from your arms, and cannot reproach myself with any breach of duty. Nothing can exceed the kindness I received from Mr. Devereux and his family: but neither his hospitality, nor the approaching nuptials of his daughter with my friend Major Wilson, could prevail with me to prolong my stay a single hour beyond the very first pacquet, that afforded me an opportunity of returning to the place where I had left my heart. You will perceive I gave you credit for a mind superior to the vanity of show and ornament; for I have not brought a single gem to glitter on that lovely person, whose elegance and simplicity are its best adornments. My dear Amelia, we must seek for other honours, than decoration can give us; we must find out better uses for the affluence we are entrusted with, than gems and equipage and splendid galas: If you and I decide upon a country life, we will not let our tranquillity degenerate into indolence, nor ever suffer these superfluities, which we have no present call for, to accumulate for those, may chance to come after us to inherit, and perhaps to misapply, them: No, we will consider prosperity as a loan, and administer our abundance as the almoners of Providence, and stewards for the uses of our fellow-creatures, whose privations and distresses shall have claims upon that, which is not given as a monopoly to be devoured by one, but as a resource against the wants of many. By this