These gloomy thoughts took him wholly up for some days, but he was not yet arrived at those years, in which misfortunes sink too deeply on the soul; these vexatious accidents by degrees lost much of their ferocity, and he began to consider how much beneath a man of courage it was to give way to despair at any event whatever, and that he ought to look forward, and endeavour to _retrieve_, not _lament_, the mischief that was past. He wrote to his father an exact account of every thing, and intreated his advice: he sent also a letter to the young lady, full of the most tender expressions, and pressures for the continuance of her affection; though this latter was more for the sake of form than any hope he had of being granted what he asked, or as he was circumstanced, any benefit he could have received from it, if obtained. The answer his father sent, gave him both pain and pleasure; it informed him, that the wounds he had given the person with whom he fought, were not mortal; that it was only the vast effusion of blood which had thrown him into a fainting, which occasioned the report of his death, and that he was now in a fair way of recovery; so that he, Natura, might return as soon as he pleased, there being no danger on account of the rencounter; but that the occasion of that quarrel being a party-affair, and represented in its worst colours by some private enemies, it had reached the ears of the ministry, who, looking on him as a disaffected person, had already disposed of his employment; he also informed him, that he must not flatter himself with being able ever hereafter to be thought qualified to hold any place or office under the government:--he also added, that the friends of his intended bride were so incensed against him, that they protested, they would sooner see her in her coffin, than in the arms of a man who had incurred the odious appellation of a _Jacobite_; and that she herself expressed her detestation of the principles he was now accused of, with no less virulence and contempt;--had torn the letter he had sent to her in a thousand pieces; and to shew how much she was in earnest, had accepted the addresses of a gentleman, who had been long his rival, and to whom it was expected she would soon be married.