It was soon after this little event that my enjoyments were augmented by the arrival of Mr. Howard, who served the parish of Tarefield as curate to Mr. Snughead's predecessor, and who took up his residence as a boarder and lodger at Mr. Wilson's. Few circumstances could have more elated my spirits. The most intimate friendship had united us at Oxford. We were of the same College, and had enjoyed the instructions, and the good opinion of the same respectable tutor. Howard was my senior, and unquestionably my superior in learning: I had experienced the advantages resulting from this circumstance; for his attainments were a fund on which I drew for my own benefit. The external graces of this young man corresponded with the endowments of his mind; and the elegant scholar and unaffected gentleman was distinguished at the university, as the handsomest man there. Comliness in form and feature, was the hereditary donation which Howard had received from his family, with its high pretensions to ancient splendour and honours. Fortune had so sunk its prosperity, that his father had earned his bread by his sword; and on his death, in the field of battle, left to his young widow, with a small life annuity, and a pension from government, this only child, then an infant at the breast. The spirit of Howard animated the partner of his adverse fortune; she devoted herself to the care of her son; but with anxious solicitude implanted in him her own sentiments in regard to a military life; and by a rigid oeconomy, and the sacrifice of her own comforts, she was enabled to place him in a profession, which united the ideas of honour and safety for him, with peace of mind to herself. To invite a guest to my father's table, was not amongst the privileges which I enjoyed at Tarefield. Satisfied by finding myself received at Mr. Wilson's with hospitality, and the frankness so inherent in the mind of this worthy man, I neither regretted the apparently uncivil omission which rendered my friend a stranger to my home, nor wished to see him received there. Mary, approaching to her eighteenth year, was a dangerous object for Howard's sensibility; and he was formed to please her. These precautions of prudence and consideration settled my mode of conduct during the first week or two of Howard's residence; but nothing was talked of at the hall but "the _handsome curate_," "the _fine preacher_," who was come to Tarefield. My father, never a punctual church-goer, and who had been long disgusted by the old curate's Yorkshire dialect, and his ignorance, to which was unluckily added, his not playing either at cribbage or back-gammon, had, when disposed to say his prayers in a church, preferred that in the next parish, now in the hands, as it was then, of Mr. Greenwood; who was also a friend of Mr. Howard's, and who had been the principal inducement for his acceptance of the curacy of Tarefield. I was called upon for my report of my friend's merits, and truth dictated my answer.